From Kohei Ishihara, Executive Director of the Providence Youth Student Movement:

Dear Friends,

Over the past year, PrYSM has worked hard to organize the Southeast Asian youth in Providence to fight major cutbacks effecting our schools and our community at large. Rhode Island’s governor, Donald Carcieri has cut back services for our community, and now his wife has launched insults against our community.

Last week, Sue Carcieri 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)

Info on how to donate after the jump…

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 the Executive Director of PrYSM, and to support the work of Lucey, Tam, their Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong peers.

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.

If you can make a contribution of any amount, it is much appreciated..
And please forward this message to anyone who may also want to know about this situation…

Thanks,

Kohei Ishihara
Executive Director
Providence Youth Student Movement

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