It was fitting that the young people of PrYSM (Providence Youth and Student Movement) held their press conference at the headquarters of the Rhode Island Indian Council. A reminder that most of us came to this continent from elsewhere. It’s an American tradition to welcome immigrants, and it’s an immigrant tradition to work hard.
Meeting in a run-down elegant brick manor that used to be the Steere House nursing home, about fifty high school and college students assembled to make their case. I didn’t see any sign of sinister mentors or groupthink. It was obvious that the students had a lot to say and were happy to be in a place where their voice counted. They want to bring their concerns to the Governor, who is not running an open door policy for his constituents. In fact, a gated community is more like it. As Mrs. Carcieri said…
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.”
I think what the teenagers are being taught is ‘civics’, as in our right and obligation to speak to our elected officials.
Comparing these Providence high-school kids to suicide bombers is nothing but racist fear-mongering. Mrs. Carcieri hasn’t met these teenagers, and she seems to need to see them as violent and brainwashed. Maybe it’s too dangerous to admit that Rhode Island children are being denied the basic tools they need to stay in school and climb the ladder, as the children of immigrants do. You can’t climb a ladder when the rungs are chopped off.
The difficulties of trying to succeed as a first American-born generation were well described by three eloquent young speakers…
Tam Nguyen
“On January 27, the Governor’s wife, Sue Carcieri, called [ a ] young man’s actions ‘bad behavior’. I am that young man.When Mrs. Carcieri compared me to a suicide bomber and my mentor to a terrorist leader, I was mad and disappointed. I wondered, How could the first lady judge me when she doesn’t even know me? I am not a bad kid. I am just trying to be an advocate for my community.
That’s why I would like to invite her to my organization and show her what we really do here. My mentors and the PrYSM staff provide academic help to Southeast Asian youth who have dropped out of high school. They are willing to take in kids who have nowhere else to go, and help youth redefine themselves and develop a vision for a better life. Does that sound like terrorism to you?
I said that Mr. Carcieri’s cuts were racist, and I stand by that, so please let me explain.
My community was singled out and targeted by the layoffs. My community already suffers from extreme poverty and this measure will push more and more families in deeper poverty. More youth are going to have to skip school to interpret for their parents. More families will lose their benefits because they are losing their only connection to those benefits. The Governor is trying to solve the financial crisis for the state, by creating a deeper crisis in my community…
I have one and only one challenge to the Governor: will you meet with us? Will you come down the hill and meet with the people whom you make decisions about?”
Pirom Ting
“Most of the people in my community are hard-working, and they pay the taxes that are meant to support all the people in our state.”
Marilyn Soum
“And now, due to state layoffs, it is expected for us teenagers, as Southeast Asian youth, to …interpret for our families and others in what I call our ‘isolated community’. We are now expected to be there for our parents, friends and family in ways that shouldn’t be expected of someone my age.
We are expected to be in places like doctor’s offices, lawyer’s offices, the DMV, school meetings, and don’t forget, welfare offices. We are expected at ALL times of need whether it’s before school, after school, or even during school.
Steven Brown, Executive Director of the ACLU, spoke last. He said the cuts are a violation of Federal law. It seems likely that there will be expensive lawsuits, and much wasted time before the interpreter positions are finally reinstated. By then, the three experienced interpreters may have taken other jobs, and the costly process of training new ones will commence.
I used to work in a medical clinic that was in compliance with Federal laws mandating interpreters. I can vouch that an experienced interpreter does far more than just translate. Interpreters mediate between the provider and the client. They are the public face of the organization. There is no way that drafting children, neighbors or maintenance staff, as happens when there is no interpreter, can come near meeting the need. A disembodied voice on a language line is no substitute.
So much waste and destruction comes from lack of understanding. I have no doubt that the Southeast Asian interpreters save the state far more than the cost of their salaries. To cut essential services to one group in order to favor another is not shared sacrifice. To shift the burden to the poor to favor the rich is not leadership. The Governor can dodge meeting with his constituents, but he can’t pretend that his cuts are fair, or that the burden is equal.
Kmareka.com 
Sue Carcieri’s children surely had mentors much older than they who trained them up in the way they should go. I wonder what the adult Carcieri children think of their mother’s remarks on the subject of those “other” children, the Southeast Asian youths–and whether the adult Carcieri children will teach their very own children to regard the Southeast Asian children as “brainwashed” and “badly behaved.” I wonder; but I don’t expect an answer, because “the family that prays together stays together” (and that’s true even if we change the spelling to “preys”). However interpreted by spokesman Jeff Neal, Sue Carcieri and her husband seem to consider themsselves entitled to feel insulted, whereas 16-year-old Tam Nguyan and grandmotherly I have no such entitlement.
Entitlement goes with power. Power is who gets to make definitions and set agendas, who gets to have whose way, who must be supplicated and appeased. When pale people who have power refuse to meet with darker people who do not have power, refuse to meet with them even in highly structured civic situations, their refusal might, to a reasonable observer, look racist even if it isn’t. Yet if it appeared racist, if it merely appeared so (though it really wasn’t), even appeared so at least to some people (to me, for instance, and I pass for pale, and it does appear so to me), I should think a gracious governor and a gracious governor’s wife would graciously meet with those darker people, and be graciously photographed with them, just so things that were perhaps right all along would also seem and appear right definitively. Demanding an apology instead seems, or appears, to confirm the allegations–though they may not be true, but there is this impression, this distinct impression, and instead of going away it becomes stronger and more widespread, continues to be discussed–and that is really too bad, since all Governor Carcieri really wants to do is administer a budgetary shortfall, and all the Carcieri Dynasty really wants to do is preserve their own privileges. Is there anything racist about that?