The National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) improves the lives of day laborers, migrants and low-wage workers. Alongside its 60-member day laborer centers and grassroots workers rights groups across the US, NDLON builds leadership and power among those facing injustice so they can challenge inequality and expand labor, civil and political rights for all. Over the years, NDLON has collaborated with day laborers and grassroots groups across Orange County to defend the rights of day laborers and the migrant community at large from nativists’ bigotry and attacks.
In 2007, NDLON joined the Asociación de Trabajadores de Lake Forest to file a lawsuit and successfully defend, in federal court, the right of day laborers to seek work on a street corner. And in 2008, NDLON organized with the Laguna Beach day laborer center and residents to fight anti-immigrant attacks on the migrant community. In 2010, NDLON joined Colectivo Tonantzin, the ACLU of SoCal and MALDEF to sue the City of Costa Mesa to defend the rights of day laborers. All of these efforts helped build the legal and popular defenses for day laborers’ rights far beyond OC.
Years later, with many other grassroots partners, NDLON helped co-anchor the ICE out of Orange County coalition that would include a broad cross-section of grassroots groups and activists across OC. Over the Trump years, NDLON helped convene efforts across OC to defend sanctuary protections and fight back against a nativist offensive, organizing protests and trainings, with groups like OakView Comunidad in Huntington Beach, VietRISE in Garden Grove and Westminster, Korean Resource Center in Fullerton, and el Centro Cultural de Mexico in Santa Ana. In 2018, NDLON partnered with Los Alamitos Community United and the ACLU of SoCal to file a lawsuit against the city of Los Alamitos for trying to “opt-out” of state sanctuary laws, to collude with ICE’s deportations.
In 2017, NDLON partnered closely with el Centro Cultural de México and el Colectivo Tonantzin, both based in Santa Ana, and the UCI workers rights clinic, to increase capacity to address cases of wage theft committed against migrant day laborers.
Most recently, NDLON has partnered closely with VietRISE to launch the ICE out of Little Saigon campaign – and the Bring Human Rights Home concert and community festival.
Geographic Focus: County-wide/Regional SoCal
Founded in 2018, VietRISE is a community organization based in the heart of Orange County’s Little Saigon, home of the largest Vietnamese population in the world outside of Viet Nam. VietRISE advances social justice and builds power with working class Vietnamese and immigrant communities across Orange County. VietRISE builds leadership and creates systemic change through organizing, narrative change, cultural empowerment, and civic engagement.
Over the past five years, VietRISE has become a vital force for building community, independent voice, and autonomous power in Little Saigon and beyond. VietRISE continues to focus on addressing accountability of elected officials, housing justice, economic justice, immigrant justice, and COVID-19. VietRISE has provided organizing and civic engagement training, cultural programming, and leadership development support for hundreds of Vietnamese American youth and seniors.
In 2019, following the Defend Sanctuary movement in OC, VietRISE and NDLON launched the “ICE out of Little Saigon / Bring Human Rights Home campaign, a multiracial solidarity movement alongside Vietnamese and Latinx communities.
In 2020-21, VietRISE distributed half a million dollars to undocumented Vietnamese and Latinx individuals across OC who were excluded from federal and state COVID-19 stimulus programs. In 2021, VietRISE, HI, and OCJF partnered to expand Santa Ana’s deportation defense fund to $300k and made it a permanent program in the city to reach more communities. Later, VietRISE joined Tenants United Santa Ana (TUSA) and played a critical role in passing OC’s’s first rent stabilization and just cause evictions ordinances in Santa Ana. In 2022 VietRISE partnered with TUSA to establish a rental registry and rent board in Santa Ana. In 2020-22, VietRISE assisted over 3,000 Vietnamese residents with filling out the census and convened resident-led community redistricting committees in Westminster, Santa Ana, and Garden Grove, and provided testimony to the county, congressional, state assembly and senate redistricting processes that span Little Saigon.
VietRISE continues to organize with youth, seniors, and systems-impacted Vietnamese community members to build grassroots power and a lasting intergenerational movement for social justice and systemic change among Vietnamese communities in OC.
Geographic Focus: Santa Ana, Westminster and Garden Grove, county-wide
