Rhode Island first lady compares youth activists to Bhutto assasins

Here’s an important message from my friend Julie, who lives in Rhode Island:

Dear Friends,

On Wednesday, Sue Carcieri, the wife of our Republican governor here in Rhode Island, joined her husband in leading an anti-abortion rally in our state house.

It’s been a busy week for her.

On Sunday, she took the time to rant on tape to the political columnist of the Providence Journal about local youth activists who spoke up about the impact of state layoffs of translators on the Southeast Asian community.

Rather than, say, applauding these Cambodian and Vietnamese teenagers for civic participation, she chose to compare them to the assassins of Benazir Bhutto:

“First of all, I think they have mentors who are much older than them who are training them up. You know - how those terrorists have kids blow up, you know, Benazir Bhutto and so forth? You think the kids thought of it? I don’t think so.”

(Click here for a view of these awful terrorists-in-the-making)

My outrage in the face of this statement equating youth of color with terrorist murderers is compounded by my profound respect for Lucey Ok and Tam Nguyen, the young people she refers to. They are just two of the young leaders from the Providence Youth and Student Movement (PrYSM) who are raising their voices for language equity and against mounting anti-immigrant and anti-poor measures in this state.

I am proud to be a board member of PrYSM, and to support the work of Lucey, Tam, their peers and the tiny, hardworking PrYSM staff.

Sue Carcieri says that the Governor should not meet with PrYSM about their translation concerns because it would “reward bad behavior.”

I hope you will join me in rewarding the exemplary behavior of PrYSM members fighting for their community.

If you will join me in making a contribution to PrYSM to help us stand up to this bigotry and anti-youth bias, I will match your contributions up to $200.

(as an aside, I’d like to also point out that PrYSM is one of only TWO organizations in the entire country that provides support and community to
LGBT Southeast Asian youth — and the integration of LGBT people into all aspects of PrYSM’s work is a powerful model for community work…)

If you can make a contribution of any amount, it is much appreciated… and please drop me a line so I can keep my part of the bargain. And please forward this message to anyone who may also want to know about this situation…

Thanks,
Julie

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Community Organizations, Friends, People of Color, Politics, Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.