WESTMINSTER CITY COUNCIL.
By Jim Tortolano/Orange County Tribune
A resolution to ask the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to rescind its resolution honoring Jane Fonda was approved by the Westminster City Council on Friday afternoon.
The vote was 5-0.
JANE FONDA in Hanoi in 1972 (Wikipedia).
A two-hour special meeting of the council was called to register the council’s opposition not only to giving recognition to the actress but especially to declaring April 30 to be “Jane Fonda Day. That’s the day observed as the fall of Saigon.
“We lost Saigon,” said Assemblyman and former Westminster mayor Tri Ta, “but we didn’t lose our fighting spirit.”
Fonda angered many – especially Vietnam War veterans and Vietnamese refugees who fled to America and settled in Westminster – for her 1972 trip to communist North Vietnam. During her visit there, she was photographed seated at an anti-aircraft battery wearing a helmet, an image which suggested she was supporting the shooting down of American planes.
She has since apologized. The LA. County resolution referred to Fonda’s work on climate change.
Speakers called her “garbage, “treasonous” and “Hanoi Jane.” While nearly all of them were in support of the proposed council resolution, some suggested that it wasn’t relevant to Westminster and questioned the need to hold a special meeting on a Friday.
Councilmembers replied that because of the large number of Vietnamese-American residents in the city – about half of the population – is was something that concerned their constituents.
The next regular meeting of the city council is set for Wednesday, May 8 at 6 p.m.