And the hits just keep on coming…

The background is as follows: this past November, Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri laid off all Southeast Asian interpreters at the Rhode Island Department of Human Services. The reasoning was that these translators only come in handy when there are clients who speak “not so commonly encountered foreign languages.”

Of course, there was no thought given to the fact that having native Southeast Asian language speakers on staff at DHS might actually help build trust between the department and the people they serve. Hiring private translators might get the job done on the surface, but it shows that there’s no investment in helping Southeast Asian communities in the state. From what I gather, folks at DHS know this and wanted to keep the interpreters on, but the governor’s budget cut them out. So many youth activists in Rhode Island – many of whom are affiliated with the dope organization PrYSM – criticized the move as racist.

To clarify: I don’t think anyone is saying the governor laid off people because of their race. I think the feeling is that by choosing not to have Southeast Asian language speakers on DHS staff, it shows a lack of care for the thousands of Southeast Asians in the state. And I think there is a reasonable way that the state’s executive branch could respond to that criticism, but…well…read for yourself:

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.

Rhode Island First Lady Sue Carcieri

First of all: wow.

Secondly: there are so many faulty assumptions in these four sentences, it’s almost like the comment from another planet. I don’t actually know where to begin…but I will try:

1. Just to get it out the way, I never heard any indication that Bhutto was assassinated by youth?
2. The statement completely ignores the issue at hand! Instead she attacks the people who dare have an opinion counter to hers.
3. There is always an assumption that youth who refuse to accept whatever information they are spoonfed by people in power are actually brainwashed. Sorry ma’am, you got it backwards.
4. She calls them terrorists!
5. When asked to apologize, she refused and then said she expected an apology from them!

Anyway, it’s not even a surprise that people in power feel it acceptable to disrespect the powerless. What’s more: she actually turned it around and claimed that she is the one who is offended!

After my post yesterday about the Harvard student who got 2 years for stabbing a young man of color to death, Stephen Bor passed on information about the resolution of a court case on the other side of the country on the same day.

Two men shot semiautomatic weapons into a car of unarmed Cambodian men; two of the men in the car – Sovintha Nhem and Sophea Sun – were killed. One of the gunmen also died. The other gunman – after two hung juries – copped a plea and walked free yesterday.

The shooting stemmed from a confrontation that began when Nhem, who had been asked to leave a Skyway bowling alley and casino with his friends, wandered into the yard of Sidorchuk’s nearby rental home. The two exchanged increasingly heated words — with Sidorchuk and Belk hurling racial slurs and Nhem’s group shouting threats in return — until Nhem and his four friends backed a car into Sidorchuk’s driveway.

At that, Sidorchuk and Belk opened fire with semiautomatic weapons, shooting more than 20 rounds into the car. None of the young men inside were armed.

Deputies who later rushed to the scene discovered a marijuana-growing operation inside Sidorchuk’s home, but no testimony about that was allowed at trial.

From Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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In 2003, a Harvard student stabbed 18 year-old Michael Colono to death in Cambridge. The press went crazy about it because it was like good Harvard boy gone bad, I can remember so many details about this guy. His parents were divorced. His mother was an attorney in Colorado. He lived in Somerville, and that night had decided to walk home from a bar in Cambridge. He drank Jim Beam. He had been hanging out with 2 women earlier in the evening, and done the gentlemanly thing by seeing them off in a cab. I remember his name, although I won’t use it here, because as far as I’m concerned this person is not human and doesn’t deserve the courtesy of being thought of like a human.

But the information about Michael Colono was slow to come. So slow. I remember just wanting to know anything about him. I can remember picking up pieces here and there, that he had a young daughter and I think he worked as a cook. But the press told us other stuff about him, I think he had been picked up by police once or twice for fighting or something relatively minor.

But why did we need to know the victim had past experiences with police? How did that matter when he – unarmed, sitting in a car, with his friends – was the one who was killed? And why did we need to know the family story of the assailant? The killer was older, taller, heavier, and carrying a concealed lethal weapon – not just a small switch-blade, but a large knife. All the victim did was laugh at how drunk this random pedestrian was, and I guess the killer felt like a big man and was so offended by being the butt of an inoffensive joke that he killed an 18 year-old.

I hate to take away the focus from human life, but just imagine if the killer had been the young Latino father, and the murdered was the one who was the white Harvard student. Whose backstory would we have heard about in the news? Honestly. (more…)