Last Sunday, Charlie Bakst wrote a column about Governor Carcieri’s budget which included an encounter he had with the Governor’s wife, Sue Carcieri. From Mr. Bakst’s column:

[…] By the way, in regard to speaking up, someone who is not shy is Sue Carcieri. She was once a teacher and is a champion of such causes as wellness programs and opposition to abortion. The Carcieris have a spectacularly handsome family: 4 children and 14 grandchildren. The first lady has a high profile on the political scene. Episodically, the younger generations do as well; indeed, I saw a good handful at the State House on Tuesday night.

I want to tell you about the conversation I had with Sue Carcieri. It took place, with my tape recorder visible and running, near the doorway to the ornate State Room, where a post-speech reception was going on. I greeted her, and she immediately took me to task for something I said in a column in Tuesday’s Journal.

In denouncing a proposal the governor made recently to drop 2,000 children of illegal immigrants from RIte Care, I said the the kids would now swamp emergency rooms or just go to school sick and pose a health hazard to other kids, including citizens. Among the words I used to describe the proposal was ‘cruel’.

The first lady seized on this, called it ‘hate speech’, and said it didn’t ‘reflect the truth’.

She said her husband was faced with tough decisions, and she suggested that I, as a parent (actually now also a grandparent), should understand.
“You have children. Do you just give them everything whenever they say, ‘Daddy, I want this’? You just say, ‘Sure’? You don’t do any tough love stuff?”

A moment later, I said the children of illegal immigrants are young kids. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

She said, “No, they didn’t do anything wrong, but they have parents who ought to be taking care of them. The parents are responsible for them.”

I said, “Not all parents are capable of doing that, or they need help.”

She said, “You really have the bigotry of low expectations.”

Soon she turned the conversation to a protest last month against the governor’s layoff of three Southeast Asian interpreters. At a news conference, a 15-year-old Cambodian girl said, among other things, “The governor is sending a clear message to my community that we are not valued or welcome.” And a 16-year-old Vietnamese boy called his actions “racist”.

I wrote that if I were governor, I wouldn’t rest until I reached out to those two teens and others in the Southeast Asian community.

Now, on Tuesday night, Sue Carcieri suggested that if he were to meet with the teens it would be “rewarding bad behavior.”

She said, “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.”

If true, that would be all the more reason, I would think, that the governor would want to talk with the teens, find out more about them and have them learn more about him.

But the first lady said she didn’t like the idea that people could “say something really obnoxious and nasty” and then “get somebody important” to meet with them.

She said her husband is invariably “polite”.

She added, “He has to do difficult things. It’s easy to write about things, but it’s hard to actually do things”.

She’s right, but that doesn’t mean I find it pleasant when I have to criticize him.

Now she spoke in more depth about the challenge of what the governor is trying to accomplish. “It’s very difficult, and that’s why nobody’s ever done it, because people just, you know, cave to whoever has the greatest and loudest demands. But it’s hard to stand strong, and, again, I do relate to having children, because we raise children. You cannot always say, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes’. I mean there are those curfews and there are those restrictions on the allowance. Or, ‘You don’t get a new car because”

She said someone tough-minded must be in charge.

‘We have a lot of soft hearts but not people with tough minds.” [full text]

In response to this, Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM) is inviting First Lady Carcieri to come to the office of their community group “in hopes of building dialogue and trust.” Details of the event are as follows:

WHAT: Spirited press conference and colorful tour of youth space, which will include:

–youth labeled by these remarks asking for an apology and inviting the Carcieris to a meeting in their community;

–an update on the translator lay-offs and explanation of the legal right to translation services in the school system and human services;

–the launch of a sign-on statement uniting communities, individuals and political leaders against budget cuts that primarily harm immigrant and poor families.

WHO: Speakers will include:

Steven Brown, Executive Director of RI ACLU, which is pursuing a formal civil rights complaint in RI in support of translation services

Tam Nguyen, one of the PrYSM Youth Leaders referred to in Sue Carcieri’s comments

Pirom Ting, member of Youth In Action, supporting the rights of youth to speak for ourselves

Marilyn Soum, daughter of Molly Soum, a laid-off translator and past President of the Cambodian Society of RI

WHEN: Wednesday, February 6, 3:30 4 pm

WHERE: Providence Youth Student Movement, 807 Broad St. 1st floor (side door)