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The Laotian community in California is not large enough to support newspapers or television news programs in Lao, leaving monolingual immigrants especially isolated. So these immigrants have created elaborate phone trees with designated leaders that can spread important information to thousands of people within an hour. In sprawling California suburbs, the phone trees are an attempt to re-create village networks from back home. And it's a crucial service — one that's especially important because there are not enough Lao speakers for government agencies to translate fliers, as is often done in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean. For instance, some Laotians did not know a COVID-19 vaccine existed until they received a call from the phone tree. On today's episode, our host is L.A. Times entertainment reporter Tracy Brown, and our guest is Times Metro reporter Anh Do.

More reading:

Elaborate phone tree links Laotian immigrants to COVID info, one another 

Column: Laotian Americans’ stories are obscured by history. That’s why we need ethnic studies 

San Diego’s Laotian community pushes for a place in California history books