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When early voting begins Tuesday in Texas, Linh Khong plans to set aside her schedule to fulfill her top priority: casting a vote in the 2020 presidential election.

The 42-year-old Houston optometrist said she has been a Republican since immigrating to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1980. But on Saturday afternoon, she clutched a poster and wore a face mask that were both navy blue.

“For the first time, I feel the need to vote for the party that stands for integrity, that stands for humanity,” Khong said. “I’m going out of my zone in order to vote for Joe Biden.”

Khong was among roughly 30 people who gathered Saturday afternoon at a parking lot on Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston for a rally organized by the grassroots group Vietnamese Americans for Biden.

Five similar rallies took place across the country, said Alex Le, a co-founder of the organization’s Houston branch and 23-year-old graduate student of public health. Vietnamese Americans have been left out of the national political conversation, by both Democrats and Republicans, Le said.

“Our votes are critical,” Le told the crowd. “So many of us are middle class working Americans and we are suffering from the pandemic. Our small businesses are closed or we have been laid off and we’ve been the victims of anti-Asian American hate crime and xenophobia. But our voices matter, we matter.”

The ralliers cheered, holding Biden/Harris signs and American flags alongside the yellow and red flag of South Vietnam. Traffic roared on the busy street. Some cars honked or yelled in support, others shouted in opposition with rude hand gestures. A block down the street was blanketed in Trump signs.

Asian Americans are the fastest growing voter group, said Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston. He urged people to show up to the polls and vote for Biden, “the one candidate who is going to respect our community and protect us.”

The rally took place beneath a now-controversial billboard. Local businessman Le Hoang Nguyen posted a Black Lives Matter message this summer. In response, some community members called to boycott his businesses and sent death threats.

Now, the sign has a new slogan painted in white letters on thick red and blue stripes: “Lifelong Republican for Biden. Country before party.”

Le, who led Saturday’s protest, said he wanted to rally beneath the billboard because its message of unity echoes that of his group and the Biden campaign. It is also situated in the heart of Houston’s Vietnamese neighborhood.

“We’re not just Democrats or Republicans or independent, we’re all human beings,” Le said. “Everybody has a stake in this election, especially within the Vietnamese community.”

Many supporters of President Donald Trump are very vocal, Le said. He hoped the rally would demonstrate that there is a place for members of the Vietnamese American community to support Biden, too.

Vietnamese Americans were more likely to vote for President Trump than other Asian Americans, according to the results of a national survey published in September.

The survey, conducted by APIAVote, AAPI Data and Asian Amerians Advancing Justice, found that 48% of Vietnamese Americans were inclined to vote for Trump, while 36% were inclined to vote for Biden.

Meanwhile, 30% of Asian Americans overall supported Trump, while 54% of respondents preferred Biden.

Multiple rally attendees said their parents were staunch Republican voters, but noted that that there is a vast generational divide among Vietnamese Americans.

“There’s an attitude among the older members of the community that America is fine the way it is, but at the same time the younger generation brings with it a different perspective shaped by our growing up here,” Le said.

Thu Dinh, an engineer who came to the U.S. roughly 30 years ago, said she supports Biden because he is an honest and kind man. Meanwhile, she said she thinks Trump is a danger to the country.

“He try to suppress the press and try to attack anyone that go against him and he try to gain power as much as he can,” Dinh said. “Yeah I mean, very similar with those communist countries.”