California’s ethnic media have shone as trusted messengers of news throughout a year of polarization and fear for many of their communities.
About 250 ethnic media, community leaders, communications specialists and government decisionmakers attended an awards celebration for outstanding journalism produced by these media at the PG&E Conference Center in Oakland the evening of Friday, November 7.
And the Winners Are…
Arts, Culture, Entertainment and Sports
WINNER | Print/Online | Chico Sol | Yucheng Tang | Day of the Dead festivity leads to cultural rediscovery
Yucheng Tang wrote the online article “Day of the Dead festivity leads to cultural rediscovery,” published in Chico Sol, about a Day of the Dead celebration in Chico’s Meriam Park. The event’s lively atmosphere of music, dancing children, marigolds and sugar skulls surprises him with its joyful attitude toward death as he remembers, in contrast, his own childhood celebrations of a somber Tomb Sweeping Day festival held in his hometown in China.
This piece about bridging the living and the dead through memory and ritual closes with the image of a marigold-shaped sticker that Tang wrote on during the festival. Looking at the sticker, now on his desk, Tang wonders: “Guided by the marigold, could my Chinese grandfathers, Yongchao and Huanhua, find their way to my new home in California — a place they never could have imagined — to visit me?”
WINNER | Print/Online | Korea Daily | Kyeongjun Kim | Korean Immigrant Culture Showcased for the First Time in NHL History
For the first time in NHL history, Korean American culture took center stage at a professional hockey game, Kyeongjun Kim writes in-language in Korea Daily. On March 23, the Los Angeles Kings hosted “K-Town Night” at Crypto.com Arena, a sold-out event (18,145 seats) bridging the gap between Korean Americans and the U.S. major sports world. The event also featured exclusive Kings merchandise designed in collaboration with The Hundreds, a streetwear brand founded by a Korean American designer.
One attendee at the game, Taejoo Koh, said, “Watching the samulnori and harmonica performances by the seniors was incredibly moving. I know how hard it was for the first- generation immigrants to build their lives here, so seeing them in the spotlight brought tears to my eyes … With so many Japanese players in Major League Baseball, it sometimes feels like Korean representation in LA sports is fading — but tonight’s event made me proud to be Korean again.”
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | The Immigrant Magazine | Pamela Anchang | From Benin to Hollywood: Angélique Kidjo Makes Walk of Fame History
Beninese-born global music icon Angélique Kidjo will become the first Black African artist and immigrant honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2026, Pamela Anchang writes in The Immigrant Magazine.
Since fleeing censorship under Benin’s communist regime in 1983 for Paris, her career has encompassed 16 albums, five Grammys, and collaborations with artists such as Sting, Burna Boy, Philip Glass, and Alicia Keys. Her style, blending Fon, French, and Yorùbá music, makes her a bridge between Africa and the world.
“I became aware that the freedom we enjoy can be snatched away in a second,” Kidjo is quoted in the article, as Anchang adds: “To be an immigrant is to know dualities: love and loss, arrival and absence, and hope tethered to heartbreak. Kidjo embodies these truths not as burdens, but as bridges.”
Video by Tu Tiempo Digital Plus on Facebook. Most of the first part of the Awards ceremony.
Business and Economy
WINNER | Broadcast | Sing Tao TV | Joseph Leung, Eddie Chau, Dennis Chiu, Keen Ho | San Francisco: Paradise or Hell? An Immigrant’s View of a City in Decline
In this Sing Tao TV investigative segment, reporters Joseph Leung, Eddie Chau, Dennis Chiu, Keen Ho document public safety issues in San Francisco through the lived experiences of its Cantonese-speaking community, moving beyond headlines to identify the failures at the city government’s core : a broken economic ecosystem of rampant retail theft, vanishing industries and unsustainable public pensions.
The team shows the on-the-ground impact of stores locking down essential goods, soaring security costs crushing small businesses and a deserted downtown scaring away tourists and investors. These symptoms are directly linked to the cause: catastrophic policy failures and a pension system draining municipal resources, the reporters argue.
This reporting team says: “Thousands of viewers from San Francisco to Hong Kong validated our reporting with personal stories of lost businesses, break-ins, and the painful decision to leave the city—creating a vital record of this economic unraveling from the community’s perspective. This work does not just report on the economy; it provides irrefutable, community-sourced evidence of its collapse, proving ethnic media’s power to tell the stories that mainstream outlets miss.”
WINNER | Print/Online | Vida en el Valle | Maria Ortiz-Briones | California could lose up to 217,000 jobs if Congress cuts Medicaid, analysis finds
A UC Berkeley Labor Center analysis warns that California could lose up to 217,000 jobs if Congress approves proposed $880 billion Medicaid cuts by 2034, reports Maria Ortiz-Briones with Vida en el Valle. Roughly two-thirds of those jobs (145,000) would be in the healthcare sector, including hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, home care, and insurance companies.
In parts of the Central Valley — particularly Tulare, Merced, and Fresno Counties — more than half of residents rely on Medi-Cal. She highlights that Medicaid cuts would extend beyond healthcare access, threatening California’s economic stability, especially in rural and agricultural regions in the Central Valley where Medi-Cal is a lifeline.
“More than 41 percent of our patients rely on Medi-Cal for access to essential health services. Cuts of this magnitude would severely destabilize local health care systems like ours, threatening the very foundation of care in the Central Valley,” says interviewee Donna Hefner, president and CEO of Sierra View Medical Center in Porterville.
RUNNER-UP | Broadcast | Lo Nuestro TV | Juan Francisco Martinez | La Historia de Melqui Umaña
In this in-language piece, Juan Francisco Martinez of Lo Nuestro TV segment profiles Melky Humana, a Salvadoran immigrant who came to the U.S. as a teenager and built a successful restaurant chain, Wings Empire, starting from scratch in San Diego and recently expanding to Los Angeles.
Despite lacking culinary training, he learned on the job, guided by determination and a “keep it simple” philosophy, while remaining connected to his community and Salvadoran identity.
“We’re a people who don’t give up in the face of adversity — after wars, earthquakes, everything. We keep going,” Humana says.
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | Korea Daily | Kyeongjun Kim | Korean American-Owned ‘Fair Oaks Burger’ Becomes Symbol of Altadena’s Wildfire Recovery
After being forced to close for six months due to the devastating Eaton wildfire, Fair Oaks Burger — a beloved Korean American family-run restaurant in Altadena — has reopened and become a symbol of the community’s recovery, Kyeongjun Kim writes in an in-language Korea Daily story about the reopening celebration of the owners of the 38-year-old restaurant, Ki-Sun Lee and Jung-Ja Yoo.
Lee says, “It’s been such a difficult six months, but we’re so grateful to reopen,” while Yoo adds that the turnout “exceeded all expectations” and proved how much local solidarity mattered.
“What once served as a friendly neighborhood gathering spot has now become a symbol of resilience and hope for the entire community,” Kim writes.
Education
WINNER | Broadcast | Radio B’alam | Radio B’alam – Voces Maya team | Todosantera Martina Pablo Pablo balances entrepreneurship and an Ivy League education after seeking asylum in the United States
The Radio B’alam – Voces Maya team interviewed in the Mayan Mam language Martina Pablo Pablo, a student at Cornell who grew up in Todos Santos, Guatemala and sought asylum in the United States after being denied the possibility of an education in Guatemala. She experienced discrimination in school for being Indigenous Maya Mam and also faced gender-based violence.
As a newcomer at age 14, Martina went to school in Oakland and learned English with the support of her newcomer teachers, who helped her apply to universities at age 18.
“Our team interviewed her about her formative educational experiences in Guatemala and the United States and how she started her coffee business to fairly compensate her parents, who continue to work on coffee plantations in Guatemala, and supported her journey all the way into an Ivy League University,” says Radio B’alam.
WINNER | Print/Online | San Fernando Valley Sun | Semantha Raquel Norris | Valley Students Walkout to Protest Immigration Policies
Hundreds of San Fernando Valley students staged coordinated walkouts on February 28, 2025, protesting U.S. immigration policies and ICE raids under President Trump’s administration. Semantha Raquel Norris of the San Fernando Valley Sun reported on the demonstrations, dubbed the “All Valley Protest,” which drew participants from schools across Arleta, Reseda, and North Hills, culminating in a rally outside Van Nuys City Hall.
One student from Sun Valley described her fear of separation from her immigrant mother. Others shared stories of deported relatives and shouted “Stop tearing families apart!”
Student organizer Jazlyn Galdamez of Valor Academy High School says the walkout was inspired by historic student-led movements like the 1968 East LA Chicano Walkouts, where thousands protested educational inequality. “We’re not doing it to get out of school,” she says. “We’re doing it so our voices are heard.”
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | World Journal | Ziwei Liu | A Chinese Student’s Bright, Brief Life — and the Cultural Rift That Outlived Her
The article profiles the tragic story of Zhuang Menghan (“Emily”), a 23-year-old Chinese art student at CalArts in Santa Clarita, whose life ended violently in a homicide February 2025. Ziwei Liu in this in-language World Journal piece uses Emily’s story to explore the emotional and cultural struggles of Chinese international students navigating identity, independence and isolation far from home.
Menghan’s former roommate Xiaxia describes her as kind and idealistic, yet resistant to control, even refusing to list her parents as emergency contacts. Psychologist Zhang Yi explains that Emily’s story reflects a broader developmental crossroads: students aged 18–25, abroad, struggle to define their identity while being torn between traditional expectations and newfound autonomy, Chinese collectivism and Western individualism. For many Chinese students, Zhang notes, the shift from collective family structures to an individualist society can trigger disorientation and “identity voids.”
“When international students leave home, their relationships with their families are redefined,” Zhang says.
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | India Currents | Vignesh Ramachandran | The Price Of Indian American “Exceptionalism”
In an editorial in India Currents, Vignesh Ramachandran critiques how Indian American “success stories” held up as evidence of model minority achievement can obscure emotional, cultural, and psychological costs within the community.
Ramachandran recalls how his father, accepted into IIT Madras at age 15, later realized the emotional costs of early success and intentionally raised his children in the U.S. with more balance and play: no skipping grades, time for art and neighborhood friendships, rejecting the toxic competitiveness of elite-track education.
Ramachandran quotes and echoes Pakistani American journalist Zaid Jilani, who wrote a New York Times essay about Vivek Ramaswamy’s perfectionist rhetoric about Asian American students in STEM fields: “Fear of precarity doesn’t have to rule our lives. The Indian American dream doesn’t just have to be about hard work; it can also be about enjoying the life that hard work has produced.”
Environment
WINNER | Broadcast | Univision 19 Jose Villareal | Land of Women
In California’s fields, women carry the double weight of farm labor and hidden struggles. Extreme heat, poor sanitation, and climate change expose them to infections and pain, yet they keep working to put food on the nation’s tables, Jose Villareal with Univision reports in this in-language story.
Crew leader Ernestina organizes workers as the sun intensifies. Farmworker Julia explains that dehydration causes severe headaches and dizziness, while Alma describes the discomfort and infections that accompany menstruation in these conditions. Some women even wear diapers to keep working, since breaks and sanitary facilities are limited.
Despite these conditions, these women continue working 10-hour shifts in the fields, supporting the nation’s food supply while receiving little recognition. Julia closes the segment with a plea: “People should value what we do. Many think it’s just fieldwork, but without us, much of what’s on your tables wouldn’t exist.”
WINNER | Print/Online | Impulso News | Mireya Olivera | Oaxacan immigrants save at least 15 homes in the Palisades fire
When the Palisades wildfire swept through Los Angeles County in early January 2025, destroying thousands of homes and scorching more than 23,000 acres, three Zapotec immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico emerged as unexpected heroes, writes Mireya Olivera for an in-language piece in Impulso.
Oscar Santiago Martínez, Rafael Santiago and Pedro Jesús Mabas, longtime residents and handymen in the Pacific Palisades area, refused to evacuate when the flames reached Posetano Road, where they had worked for years. Instead, they spent nearly 48 hours battling the fire, using hoses, pool water and improvised tools to protect their clients’ properties.
Their efforts saved at least 15 houses. Homeowner Andy Steuer, whose property repeatedly caught fire, praised them online as “the truest heroes in history,” writing that his entire block remained standing because of their actions.
At one point, Rafael nearly gave up, saying, “We can’t do it anymore.” But instinct pushed them on: “It was like the fire was waiting for us to finish one house before moving to the next,” Oscar said.
RUNNER-UP | Broadcast | SBS International | Paul Chun | Seoul International Park – “From Riots to Festivals, Standing with the Korean Community”
In an in-language segment, Paul Chun of SBS International highlights the history and cultural significance of Seoul International Park to the Korean American community in Los Angeles. The park has long served as a symbolic gathering place for Korean Americans, Chun explains. During the 1992 LA riots, it became the site of a peace march calling for unity and coexistence amid turmoil. Formerly known as Ardmore Park, it later evolved into the venue for the annual LA Korean Festival—now in its 52nd year—and a central hub for celebrating Korean heritage and culture.
Today, Seoul International Park remains one of the few vital green spaces in Koreatown. Recognizing its importance, the Los Angeles City Council recently proposed an expansion plan to double the park’s size by permanently closing nearby roads.
“For more than three decades, Seoul International Park has stood as both a symbol of resilience and a reflection of the Korean American community’s growth and pride,” says Chun.
Health
WINNER | Broadcast | Univision 19 | Yarel Ramos | Depression of Latino Farmworkers
In an in-language segment for Univison TV, Yarel Ramos exposes a mental health crisis among Latino immigrant farmworkers in California, especially in the Coachella and Salinas Valleys, where long hours, poverty and isolation have fueled a silent epidemic of anxiety, depression and suicide.
The piece centers on Dionisia Martínez, a 39-year-old Purépecha farmworker from Michoacán, Mexico, who lost her husband to suicide a year earlier. He struggled with chronic sadness and economic despair. Dionisia herself nearly took her life but chose to live for her four children, finding help through a counselor.
“Sometimes I’d think, I can’t go on alone with the kids… maybe it’s better if I die too,” she says. “But I looked at them and said: if I leave them, what will they do?”
Ramos ends with Dionisia’s words, urging resilience: “Ask for help. Don’t give up. Keep fighting for your children.”
WINNER | Print/Online | Palabra | Aitana Vargas | Fentanyl: Death through Deception
For palabra, Aitana Vargas examines the rise of fentanyl-related deaths among U.S. youth, especially in Latino communities, and the mobilization of parents, educators and health workers fighting to stop the counterfeit pills, online drug markets and social stigma that have fueled a public health crisis.
Vargas highlights Daniel Joseph Puerta-Johnson, a 16-year-old who died in April 2020 after taking a counterfeit Oxycodone pill laced with six to eight milligrams of fentanyl, enough to kill several adults. His father Jaime Puerta later founded the nonprofit Victims of Illicit Drugs to educate students about drug risks and prevent future deaths.
While Puerta supports police partnerships in schools, other prevention groups like The Advancement Project argue that law enforcement increases suspensions and arrests among Black and Latino students, reviving the school-to-prison pipeline.
“So many children are dying through no fault of their own,” says Puerta. “They die through deception.”
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | Black Voice News | Breanna Reeves | 2 Part Series: Care in the IE: Death Doulas and The Most Important Conversation Most of Us Seek to Avoid and Care in the IE: The Urgent, Unrelenting, Ongoing Need for Caregivers
In a two-part installment in Black Voice News’ Care in the IE series, Breanna Reeves examines the growing caregiver crisis in California’s Inland Empire and the expanding movement to normalize end-of-life care and grief support within marginalized communities.
“Care in the IE: The Urgent, Unrelenting, Ongoing Need for Caregivers” highlights Patrice Brown, a 69-year-old caregiver in Victorville who has spent over a decade caring for her sister with cerebral palsy and her niece with an intellectual disability. Overwhelmed by isolation and stress, Brown found empowerment and solidarity after joining SEIU Local 2015, California’s largest long-term care union.
The story situates her experience within a statewide caregiver shortage: California will need 185,000 additional caregivers by 2028, including 17,600 in the Inland Empire alone.
Brown notes that her doctor “asked me how I was doing with the people in my home, and I just broke down. I could not stop crying. I love my family, but I felt like I was going through all the stress by myself … But the first thing the union did was let me know I was not alone.”
“Care in the IE: Death Doulas and The Most Important Conversation Most of Us Seek to Avoid” turns from daily caregiving to end-of-life care, following Nina Bailey, a death and grief doula in Upland who provides emotional and spiritual support to dying patients and their families. Trained through end-of-life doula training organization Going with Grace, Bailey says that helping patients navigate conversations about mortality, autonomy, and grief very often fills a gap left by overburdened hospices and medical systems.
“Most people are familiar with a doula or birthworker — a nonmedical person who supports an individual who is pregnant, preparing to give birth or postpartum,” Reeves writes.
Bailey explains: “Well, I do the same thing, except when people are leaving the earth realm. So, if they’re passing away, I provide the same type of emotional, spiritual, mental support for the person that’s either passing away or the loved ones that are around them.”
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | Nguoi Viet Daily News | Nhien Tra Nguyen | The Hidden Toll of Caregiving in the Vietnamese American Community
For Nguoi Viet Daily News with USC’s Center for Health Journalism, Nhien Tra Nguyen investigates the mental, emotional and financial toll of family caregiving in California’s Vietnamese American community, where cultural expectations of familial duty collide with silence around burnout, depression and help-seeking.
Nguyen highlights two caregivers in Orange County who describe being financially stretched, socially isolated and emotionally depleted, yet fearful of asking for help due to cultural stigma: Thanh Nguyen, who has cared for her mother with multiple sclerosis for nearly 30 years, sacrificing her medical career dreams and eventually contemplating suicide, and Thuy Vu, a former teacher who became the sole caregiver for her stroke-stricken mother after her father left. Overwhelmed by exhaustion, Thuy also battled suicidal thoughts during the pandemic before seeking therapy.
Meanwhile, many Vietnamese caregivers and patients like these depend on Medi-Cal and Affordable Care Act coverage to afford giving and receiving care, but federal Medicaid cuts threaten this long-term care safety net.
The key is spreading out these burdens, says Thuy: “Asking for help … is the key to unlocking emotional knots.”
Video by Tu Tiempo Digital Plus on Facebook. Most of the last part of the Awards ceremony.
Immigration
WINNER | Broadcast | Little Saigon TV | Hao-Nhien Vu and Ngoc-Lan Nguyen | Visiting Two Vietnamese Brothers from the “Vuon Cam Case” Awaiting Deportation
For an investigative feature with Little Saigon TV, Hao-Nhien Vu and Ngoc-Lan Nguyen follow two Vietnamese American brothers, Bo Pham and Quoc Dung Pham, who served over three decades in prison for their infamous “Vuon Cam Case” and are now detained again by ICE, awaiting deportation. Through exclusive interviews inside Adelanto, the story exposes the collision between criminal justice and immigration law — questioning whether America truly allows second chances, or if punishment never ends for some immigrants.
The story begins with the shocking ICE press release that reignited public debate over the long-forgotten “Vuon Cam Case,” a notorious 1980s rape case that sent the brothers to prison for over 30 years. Having served their full sentences and rebuilt their lives, they were suddenly detained again under changing immigration enforcement priorities — a move that shook the Vietnamese American community in Orange County.
The piece explores broader implications of how past convictions intersect with immigration law, how refugees from Southeast Asia are uniquely vulnerable to deportation decades after arrival and what “rehabilitation” really means when stigma never ends.
“Freedom remains fragile for those with criminal records and uncertain immigration status,” say the reporters, adding: “does America truly believe in second chances?”
WINNER | Print/Online | La Opinion | Jorge Luis Macias | Authorities warn of mental health crisis among minors due to raids
For an in-language story in La Opinion, Jorge Luis Macias explores the on-the-ground implications of a UC Riverside report warning that immigration raids are triggering a silent mental health crisis among U.S.-born children of undocumented parents. In response, the Los Angeles Unified School District has mobilized trauma crisis teams and urged parents to keep children enrolled even amid enforcement fears.
Macías interviews Lupita Martínez, a street vendor from Puebla, Mexico, whose children, Mario and Roxana, became fearful after seeing videos of ICE arrests online. 10-year-old Roxana begged her mother to “turn ourselves in to la migra” to avoid separation. Their school absenteeism rose until the family limited news exposure at home.
Martínez says: “ said to me, Mom, they’re separating the kids from their parents. I don’t want them to separate me from you, we better go and deliver ourselves so they don’t separate us.”
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | Boyle Heights Beat | Jacqueline Ramirez | This artist turned an East L.A. bus stop into a space to reflect on Immigration raids
In response to escalating ICE raids along Whittier Boulevard, East LA artist and Whittier College student Samantha Nieves transformed a bus stop at Atlantic and Whittier into a temporary art installation titled “A Healing Stop,” Jacqueline Ramirez reports for Boyle Heights Beat. Nieves adorned the bus stop with a hand-cut “papel picado” or tissue paper banner reading “NO ICE,” fresh flowers, and a table where passersby could write messages on leaf and butterfly cutouts.
For three days in August, residents stopped to read, smell flowers, or leave notes of resistance and hope: “La lucha sigue… Sí se puede!”; “No más migra! Fuera con Trump!”; “I wish everyone a beautiful and safe day every day.”
“La migra has been attacking our community members, kidnapping them at bus stops,” Nieves says. “This is a response.”
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | J. The Jewish News of Northern California | Analucia Lopezrevoredo | “Our defense of Jewish immigrants isn’t a remnant of the past. We need you now.”
In an essay for The Jewish News of Northern California, Analucía Lopezrevoredo, founder of Latin-Jewish multicultural leadership organization Jewtina y Co., calls for the Jewish community to defend and support Jewish immigrants amid escalating deportations and fear under the second Trump administration.
Lopezrevoredo, a formerly undocumented Jewish Latina, describes how federal crackdowns — over 3,500 arrests in the first week of the administration — have driven immigrants “into the shadows,” avoiding schools, workplaces and even synagogues, destabilizing entire communities of Jewish immigrants of color.
Recalling how Jewish activists once mobilized for Soviet refuseniks and global refugees, she writes: “As Jews, we are commanded to love and protect the stranger … Where is our compassion in this moment?”
International Affairs
WINNER | Print/Online | Viet Bao | Kalynh Ngo | 2 Part Series: Part 1: Midnight Deportation – Part 2: Return After 30 Years With Collective Freedom and ‘Backpack Project’
In a two-part in-language series for Viet Bao, Kalynh Ngo documents the stories of relatives of Vietnamese U.S. residents who have been deported.
Per a 2008 agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam, Vietnamese citizens who arrived in the US before July 12, 1995, are not subject to mandatory deportation to Vietnam — however, in reality, many Vietnamese individuals in the US are still unexpectedly returned to their country.
“These deportations occur silently, without prior notice, preparation or knowledge of their families,” says Ngo. “After more than three decades of absence from their homeland, many Vietnamese individuals have lost their fluency in Vietnamese, have no relatives in their country of origin and face numerous challenges in a society unfamiliar to them.”
WINNER | Print/Online | Tehran Magazine | Shahbod Noori | The Peace That Came Too Soon – A War That Never Ended
In an editorial for Tehran Magazin, Shahbod Noori says of the brief Iran–Israel conflict that erupted and abruptly ended in early 2025: What many Iranians had seen as a possible turning point—the fall of the Islamic Republic—became instead a “peace that came too soon,” leaving both exiled and domestic Iranians disillusioned and heartbroken.
Noori writes that for exiles who have lived through forty years of dictatorship and exile, this fleeting conflict felt like their “Soviet collapse moment,” a historical chance for the regime’s downfall, but after the ceasefire it never came.He asks: Why didn’t the Iranian people rise up during the war? and answers: The public spirit has been broken and survival-focused afterr decades of censorship, economic ruin and brutal state crackdowns, including 2019’s gas protests and the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising.
“Maybe our mistake was thinking the U.S. or Israel wanted to free Iran. They only seek to protect their interests,” Noor writes. “We cannot ask people to die for change when they see no outcome … But we can give them hope, we can educate them, and we can show a different path.”
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | Alex S. Fabros, Jr. | Positively Filipino | How Vietnam War Vets Wrestled With The Shadows Of The Toxic Orange Mist
In an essay for Positively Filipino, historian and Vietnam War veteran Alex S. Fabros Jr. traces the enduring trauma of Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide the U.S. military used to strip Vietnam’s jungles bare.
Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. sprayed 12 million gallons of Agent Orange across Vietnam. Fabros recalls how soldiers walked, slept and ate in the mist without realizing they were being poisoned by dioxin, a chemical linked to cancers, diabetes, heart disease and birth defects. Returning veterans discovered that their children and grandchildren also suffered transgenerational health effects long denied by government agencies.
Fabros describes one encounter with villagers at the foot of the Ba Na Hills: “To ease the tension, I used brightly colored band-aids to treat minor wounds. A young girl and her brother approached me cautiously. I gently applied yellow bandages to their arms. A few days later, after a Viet Cong raid, I returned to find those same children dead, marked by the yellow bandages I had placed. I never forgot the children’s faces. For me, those yellow bandages became a symbol of the war’s bitter paradox—how mercy could become a death sentence.”
Politics
WINNER | Print/Online | World Journal | Charles Ding | “Red-baiting” Provoked Outrage, Asian voters Helped Unseat Her
In an in-language story for World Journal, Charles Ding reports on one of the most closely watched House races of 2024 and the most expensive U.S. House race of all time (costing over $45 million), in which Vietnamese American Democrat Derek Tran narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Michelle Steel in California’s 45th Congressional District, ending a campaign marked by racist smear tactics and community backlash.
Steel’s campaign relied on “red-baiting”: accusing opponents of ties to communism, a major trigger in Orange County’s large Vietnamese refugee community, which is deeply anti-communist. Her team sent mailers to voters featuring hammer-and-sickle imagery and insinuations that Tran had links to the Chinese Communist Party, despite no evidence.
The 80-20 Initiative, a national Asian American political organization founded by Dr. S.B. Woo, led a campaign against Steel’s fearmongering by raising over $100,000 for Tran, running bilingual radio ads in Little Saigon about Steel’s lies and sending weekly newsletters encouraging voter turnout.
Ding writes that Woo “pointed out that if this dirty and completely untrue campaign strategy were widely accepted, no Chinese American candidate for public office would be elected in today’s anti-China political climate.”
WINNER | Print/Online | Hmong Daily News | Marc Yablonka | For Fresno City Councilman Brandon Vang, A Vote Is the Greatest Honor
For Hmong Daily News, Marc Yablonka profiles Brandon Vang, who came from a childhood of exile in Laos during the CIA’s “Secret War” in the early 1970s to become Fresno’s second Hmong American city councilmember, representing District 5. His family came to Los Angeles in 1979, then settled in Fresno, home to one of the largest Hmong communities in the U.S.
Having previously worked his way up to serving as president of the local school board, Vang won a special election to represent southeast Fresno’s District 5 on the City Council in April 2025, narrowly defeating his predecessor’s wife despite her establishment backing. His door-to-door grassroots campaign was met with smear mailers later found to violate campaign finance laws.
Now on the council, Vang says “One of the greatest honors that most people don’t realize is asking for their vote when they don’t know who I am, and they say, ‘You know, I am going to vote for you because I trust what you said.’ That is the greatest honor to have.”
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | AsAm News | Aneela Mirchandani | Lawsuit Challenging Cisco Caste Case Dismissed
For AsAm News, Aneela Mirchandani reports on a federal judge’s dismissal of the Hindu American Foundation’s (HAF) lawsuit against California’s Civil Rights Department, which had accused the agency of violating Hindu Americans’ rights through its caste discrimination case against Cisco Systems.
The state alleged that two Indian Cisco supervisors, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, discriminated against an anonymous Dalit engineer by enforcing a caste hierarchy at work, leading to lower pay and exclusion from promotions. Cisco denied any caste-based bias. The judge’s ruling, while a major win for U.S. anti-caste activism, marked a split within the South Asian diaspora community, as HAF “took exception to the CRD’s characterization of Hinduism as a system of rigid caste oppression, thus profiling Hindu Americans as casteist.”
“However,” Mirchandani writes, “reformers throughout India’s history have rejected caste as a valid part of Hinduism. Caste practice is banned in India’s constitution. The framer of the constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, was one such reformer—and a Dalit himself. While the practice is banned, and a majority of Indians today say they reject it, caste prejudice and oppression remain a live issue.
RUNNER-UP | Print/Online | CALO News | Amairani Hernandez | High school student leading Bakersfield walkouts: ‘We have to stand up for ourselves’
For CALO News, Amairani Hernandez profiles Hector Hernandez, a seventeen-year-old senior at Mira Monte High School in Bakersfield, who has become a leading youth voice organizing countywide student walkouts that have galvanized young Latinos across Kern County against President Trump’s immigration crackdowns.
Hernandez’s Mixteco mother, Gladys Flores, grew up undocumented and recalled being told to “stay quiet and don’t get in trouble” as an Indigenous immigrant. Breaking that generational silence, she encouraged Hector to “go for it.”
Quoting Mexican reformer Benito Juárez, Hernandez says “Malditos aquellos que con sus palabras defienden al pueblo y con sus hechos lo traicionan,” which translates to “Damn those who defend the people with their words but betray them with their actions.”
“I like this quote because it tells a lot about the struggle of the community,” Hernandez adds. “We see that politicians go to us and promise us many things to help us and defend us, but the moment they are in power they forget about all of us.”
Special Awards and Citations
California Senator Steven Glazer was honored with a “Communications Champions Award” for his work in government agencies, business, communications, academia and the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors to promote ethnic media.
Honorees receiving special recognition for community engagement were journalists Stephanie Williams of Black Voice News, Swe Swe Aye of Myanmar Gazette and Diana Ding of Ding Ding TV.
Honorees receiving special recognition as youth voices in their communities were Nancy Tran of TNT Radio and Vansh Gupta of Siliconeer.
