Pao, right in the Kisser
June 20, 2007 2:26 PM Subscribe
"Honor Your Process," read some of the signs held by protesters in a recent school board meeting here in sunny Madison, Wisconsin. They were protesting naming a new elementary school after General Vang Pao, Secret Army fighter during the Vietnam war, and ex-patriot of Laos after the Communist government took over in 1975. Amidst local Hmong leaders' charges of racism against the Hmong community (Wisconsin is no stranger to these charges, as Mefi featured here), protesters pointed to the recent arrest of Pao in California, charged with weapons trafficking to support a revolution against the government of Laos. The school board ended up agreeing with the protesters, and have returned to their original list of finalists for the elementary school's name.
Wait, they were going to name an elementary school "Pao"?!
Setting aside the idea of naming an public elementary here in the USA after a foreign general, forcing kids to attend a comical-sounding school is setting them up for years of misery. What's next? Putz? Wang? Hogg? Dingleberry?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:28 PM on June 20, 2007
Setting aside the idea of naming an public elementary here in the USA after a foreign general, forcing kids to attend a comical-sounding school is setting them up for years of misery. What's next? Putz? Wang? Hogg? Dingleberry?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:28 PM on June 20, 2007
Wait, they were going to name an elementary school "Pao"?!
Well, "Vang Pao Elementary".
For full disclosure, if named as such, my daughter would have attended this school, as it's being built to accommodate my neighborhood.
posted by thanotopsis at 3:33 PM on June 20, 2007
Well, "Vang Pao Elementary".
For full disclosure, if named as such, my daughter would have attended this school, as it's being built to accommodate my neighborhood.
posted by thanotopsis at 3:33 PM on June 20, 2007
Since when is it a bad thing to plot the overthrow of Communist dictatorships in this country?
posted by Megafly at 4:08 PM on June 20, 2007
posted by Megafly at 4:08 PM on June 20, 2007
Well, SLoG, most of the people I know who attended schools named for a Hogg (James or Ima) were pretty proud of the fact -- even with a ridiculous name, Miss Ima was one of Houston's great philanthropists. And since Jim was a state governor, there are schools named for him in most cities in Texas.
posted by katemonster at 4:13 PM on June 20, 2007
posted by katemonster at 4:13 PM on June 20, 2007
Vang Pao and his followers have been in this country for a couple of decades.
The Hmong, like other Laotian hill people, worked hand in glove with the CIA and US Special Forces, not necessarily a bad thing under the circumstances and at the time. Naming a school for him isn't any weirder than US schools celebrating a Mexican holiday like Cinco de Mayo.
He is very much the center of his generation of Hmong, who suffered a lot both in Laos and in this country (Does anyone remember the mysterious deaths of Hmong men back in the 1980s?) Thousands of Hmong settled in the cold, cold midwest to be near him. You can't overstate his importance to his generation of Hmong or his value to the US military. Anyway, I find the school board seems to be acting awfully quickly, given the fact that he's been indicted, not convicted. And I challenge the wording of the posting a bit:
They were protesting naming a new elementary school after General Vang Pao, Secret Army fighter
Weren't they protesting the decision to NOT name the school for him? Perhaps I read in haste.
posted by etaoin at 5:24 PM on June 20, 2007
The Hmong, like other Laotian hill people, worked hand in glove with the CIA and US Special Forces, not necessarily a bad thing under the circumstances and at the time. Naming a school for him isn't any weirder than US schools celebrating a Mexican holiday like Cinco de Mayo.
He is very much the center of his generation of Hmong, who suffered a lot both in Laos and in this country (Does anyone remember the mysterious deaths of Hmong men back in the 1980s?) Thousands of Hmong settled in the cold, cold midwest to be near him. You can't overstate his importance to his generation of Hmong or his value to the US military. Anyway, I find the school board seems to be acting awfully quickly, given the fact that he's been indicted, not convicted. And I challenge the wording of the posting a bit:
They were protesting naming a new elementary school after General Vang Pao, Secret Army fighter
Weren't they protesting the decision to NOT name the school for him? Perhaps I read in haste.
posted by etaoin at 5:24 PM on June 20, 2007
And this is why schools should never be named after people who aren't dead. But this is a good story -- I think it's healthy that
Megafly: according to the indictment, the conspirators were buying up C4 and rockets, and described their goals for downtown Vientiane as "to reduce [the targets] to rubble, and make them look like the results of the attack upon the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001." So yeah, private citizens in the U.S. aren't allowed to plan strings of suicide bombings, even if the ultimate aim is to overthrow a bad government. (Important caveat: we won't know for a while which of the charges hold up, and I don't think we know which charges have to do with Pao personally and which are attached to his accused co-conspirators.)
Artw: So are these guys kind of like Cuban ex-pats? The Hmong community here in Madison has historically been much less politically active than the Cuban population of Florida. That may start changing.
posted by escabeche at 5:27 PM on June 20, 2007
Megafly: according to the indictment, the conspirators were buying up C4 and rockets, and described their goals for downtown Vientiane as "to reduce [the targets] to rubble, and make them look like the results of the attack upon the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001." So yeah, private citizens in the U.S. aren't allowed to plan strings of suicide bombings, even if the ultimate aim is to overthrow a bad government. (Important caveat: we won't know for a while which of the charges hold up, and I don't think we know which charges have to do with Pao personally and which are attached to his accused co-conspirators.)
Artw: So are these guys kind of like Cuban ex-pats? The Hmong community here in Madison has historically been much less politically active than the Cuban population of Florida. That may start changing.
posted by escabeche at 5:27 PM on June 20, 2007
Oh, sorry, the "this is a good story" part was part of a sentence that I got bored of and decided not to include.
posted by escabeche at 6:06 PM on June 20, 2007
posted by escabeche at 6:06 PM on June 20, 2007
Weren't they protesting the decision to NOT name the school for him? Perhaps I read in haste.
The protesters in the main link were there to attempt to get the school board to reverse their earlier decision to bypass the nomination process and arbitrarily name the school after the General, hence the signs for "Honor Your Process". That meeting saw the school board eventually agreeing with those protesters.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:09 PM on June 20, 2007
The protesters in the main link were there to attempt to get the school board to reverse their earlier decision to bypass the nomination process and arbitrarily name the school after the General, hence the signs for "Honor Your Process". That meeting saw the school board eventually agreeing with those protesters.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:09 PM on June 20, 2007
General Pao led Hmong fighters in a U.S. supported covert war during Vietnam and is a hero in the Hmong community. Now those who submitted his name to the district say they are offended.
"My question would be was it because of our race?" asks Doua Vang. "If General Vang Pao would be a white man would it be different?"
Hi, I guess I'm reading this story differently. This sounds like a Hmong guy complaining that Van Pao's name was removed. But it's not the best piece of writing, so who knows? Thanks.
posted by etaoin at 6:30 PM on June 20, 2007
"My question would be was it because of our race?" asks Doua Vang. "If General Vang Pao would be a white man would it be different?"
Hi, I guess I'm reading this story differently. This sounds like a Hmong guy complaining that Van Pao's name was removed. But it's not the best piece of writing, so who knows? Thanks.
posted by etaoin at 6:30 PM on June 20, 2007
To break it down to a timeline:
* School board builds new school, and after two-stage nominating process, names it after Gen. Pao.
* Weak protests ignored.
* Weeks later, Pao indicted.
* School board votes not to return to list of finalists and to start naming process over again.
* Protesters hold signs saying "HONOR YOUR PROCESS", i.e. return to the already-chosen finalists and choose a name from them. The other finalists are not Hmong. The protesters are not Hmong. They are the same group that objected to his selection in the first place.
* School board ignores protesters, reboots selection process.
* Hmong are insulted, the last thing anybody wanted.
There's a better story from a Madison newspaper. The TV story text might work with B-roll video running, but not in print.
If you ask me, escabeche is right -- this is a prime example of why we should return to the traditional rule of only naming things for people after they're dead. Lately, and this goes for US Navy ships as well as county-level facilities, there's this stupid desire to treat the naming as a way to honor a living person so they can die happy or something.
etaoin: You're right, the Hmong guy was complaining that Pao's name was removed. Would he have been removed for an arrest and indictment, if white? I think he would, at least in Madison.
thanotopsis: No, they didn't arbitrarily name it for the general. The general was one of four names the board was permitted to choose from as finalists.
posted by dhartung at 7:23 PM on June 20, 2007
* School board builds new school, and after two-stage nominating process, names it after Gen. Pao.
* Weak protests ignored.
* Weeks later, Pao indicted.
* School board votes not to return to list of finalists and to start naming process over again.
* Protesters hold signs saying "HONOR YOUR PROCESS", i.e. return to the already-chosen finalists and choose a name from them. The other finalists are not Hmong. The protesters are not Hmong. They are the same group that objected to his selection in the first place.
* School board ignores protesters, reboots selection process.
* Hmong are insulted, the last thing anybody wanted.
There's a better story from a Madison newspaper. The TV story text might work with B-roll video running, but not in print.
If you ask me, escabeche is right -- this is a prime example of why we should return to the traditional rule of only naming things for people after they're dead. Lately, and this goes for US Navy ships as well as county-level facilities, there's this stupid desire to treat the naming as a way to honor a living person so they can die happy or something.
etaoin: You're right, the Hmong guy was complaining that Pao's name was removed. Would he have been removed for an arrest and indictment, if white? I think he would, at least in Madison.
thanotopsis: No, they didn't arbitrarily name it for the general. The general was one of four names the board was permitted to choose from as finalists.
posted by dhartung at 7:23 PM on June 20, 2007
So... this is a different CIA than the one that tortures people?
posted by Artw at 7:43 PM on June 20, 2007
posted by Artw at 7:43 PM on June 20, 2007
The kind of greatness that gets schools named after you is not the same great that makes one a "great guy."
By all accounts Gen. Vang Pao was not only a ferocious soldier, brilliant leader and masterful politician, he was also a murdering, conniving, swindling, rotten guy.
This is why you should name things after people shortly after they've died so that the second half of that "great" equation can get a pass.
OTOH, I think it's a laudable goal to celebrate the Hmong of Lao, considering that for 15 years after the end of the 2nd indochinese war the US government not only refused to acknowledge their sacrifice in the Secret War, but even to admit that there had been a war.
Oh, and whenever I start thinking someone's name sounds funny I remember that mine, "Tom" means "shrimp" in vietnamese. It's all relative, people.
posted by grubby at 4:41 AM on June 21, 2007
By all accounts Gen. Vang Pao was not only a ferocious soldier, brilliant leader and masterful politician, he was also a murdering, conniving, swindling, rotten guy.
This is why you should name things after people shortly after they've died so that the second half of that "great" equation can get a pass.
OTOH, I think it's a laudable goal to celebrate the Hmong of Lao, considering that for 15 years after the end of the 2nd indochinese war the US government not only refused to acknowledge their sacrifice in the Secret War, but even to admit that there had been a war.
Oh, and whenever I start thinking someone's name sounds funny I remember that mine, "Tom" means "shrimp" in vietnamese. It's all relative, people.
posted by grubby at 4:41 AM on June 21, 2007
So... this is a different CIA than the one that tortures people?
posted by Artw at 10:43 PM on June 20 [+] [!]
No, 'fraid not, but the hill people were being butchered by the Pathet Lao and so took friends where they could find them. Their reward? Years and years in refugee camps before being allowed to trickle ino the US.
posted by etaoin at 4:41 AM on June 21, 2007
posted by Artw at 10:43 PM on June 20 [+] [!]
No, 'fraid not, but the hill people were being butchered by the Pathet Lao and so took friends where they could find them. Their reward? Years and years in refugee camps before being allowed to trickle ino the US.
posted by etaoin at 4:41 AM on June 21, 2007
Oh, and whenever I start thinking someone's name sounds funny I remember that mine, "Tom" means "shrimp" in vietnamese. It's all relative, people.
posted by grubby at 7:41 AM on June 21 [+] [!]
This is an excellent explanation of what went on. Thanks. And yes, the translation of foreign names: I once worked with a refugee resettlement program and ran across a Vietnamese guy named My Long Dong.
Whenever I tell that story, the women all say that the guy must have changed his name to something else in English once he realized how it sounded. The men all scoff and clearly wish they had such a great name.
And yes, Gen. Vang is not a sweetheart by any means. But I can't think of a guy in the Southeast Asian refugee community who is practically worshipped the way this guy is/was.
posted by etaoin at 4:46 AM on June 21, 2007
posted by grubby at 7:41 AM on June 21 [+] [!]
This is an excellent explanation of what went on. Thanks. And yes, the translation of foreign names: I once worked with a refugee resettlement program and ran across a Vietnamese guy named My Long Dong.
Whenever I tell that story, the women all say that the guy must have changed his name to something else in English once he realized how it sounded. The men all scoff and clearly wish they had such a great name.
And yes, Gen. Vang is not a sweetheart by any means. But I can't think of a guy in the Southeast Asian refugee community who is practically worshipped the way this guy is/was.
posted by etaoin at 4:46 AM on June 21, 2007
dhartung: thanotopsis: No, they didn't arbitrarily name it for the general. The general was one of four names the board was permitted to choose from as finalists.
No, they had 3 finalists. Prior to the final measure of the process (to pick from one of the three) a lobby lead by the one Hmong representative on the board convinced the members of the board that the process, and the finalists, should be discarded in favor of naming the school after the general. The nature of the parent protests were relating to a perceived "breaking of the rules" that lead to the inclusion of the general's name in the first place.
Had the general's name been submitted as a nomination at the very start of the process, and voting determined that it belonged in one of the finalist positions, and then it was voted in favor over the other finalists, no one would have protested at all.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:36 AM on June 21, 2007
No, they had 3 finalists. Prior to the final measure of the process (to pick from one of the three) a lobby lead by the one Hmong representative on the board convinced the members of the board that the process, and the finalists, should be discarded in favor of naming the school after the general. The nature of the parent protests were relating to a perceived "breaking of the rules" that lead to the inclusion of the general's name in the first place.
Had the general's name been submitted as a nomination at the very start of the process, and voting determined that it belonged in one of the finalist positions, and then it was voted in favor over the other finalists, no one would have protested at all.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:36 AM on June 21, 2007
...no one would have protested at all.
Oh, someone would have protested.
We're talking about Madison, after all.
posted by Floydd at 7:43 AM on June 21, 2007
Oh, someone would have protested.
We're talking about Madison, after all.
posted by Floydd at 7:43 AM on June 21, 2007
Opposition to naming an elementary school after Vang Pao is not necessarily racist (although I wouldn't be surprised if some nativists were involved), because Vang Pao has a dark past that includes involvement with the opium trade, summary executions of prisoners and his own soldiers, and forced conscription of rural teenage peasants. The historian Alfred W. McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, provided a briefing paper that summarizes what historical sources about the Vietnam War have to say about Vang Pao, and it's not pretty. There are some Hmong immigrants to the United States who look at him fondly, because he helped them get settled in a new country, but that can't erase the many black marks on his record.
posted by jonp72 at 7:59 AM on June 21, 2007
posted by jonp72 at 7:59 AM on June 21, 2007
We're talking about Madison, after all.
Agreed, I hadn't considered that.
posted by thanotopsis at 9:18 AM on June 21, 2007
Agreed, I hadn't considered that.
posted by thanotopsis at 9:18 AM on June 21, 2007
why on earth would we name an american public school after a laotian general?
the racists here are the hmongs. we gave them a new home, and when we fail to name our schools after their old-country heroes, the first thing they do is accuse us of racism. this is incredibly tiresome. they should either stfu and assimilate, or go back to their native home.
posted by bruce at 9:41 AM on June 21, 2007
the racists here are the hmongs. we gave them a new home, and when we fail to name our schools after their old-country heroes, the first thing they do is accuse us of racism. this is incredibly tiresome. they should either stfu and assimilate, or go back to their native home.
posted by bruce at 9:41 AM on June 21, 2007
why on earth would we name an american public school after a laotian general?
the racists here are the hmongs. we gave them a new home, and when we fail to name our schools after their old-country heroes, the first thing they do is accuse us of racism. this is incredibly tiresome. they should either stfu and assimilate, or go back to their native home.
posted by bruce at 12:41 PM on June 21 [+] [!]
Because he's here. He's an American. He represents leadership to a large population in the city. The Hmong people worked with American soldiers, fought for the US, saved American aviators. That's aside from Vang Pao's questionable behavior. So we're not talking about naming a school after someone who lives in another country but rather, an actual ally of the US who's been living here since the late 1970s. The Hmong people have had a terrible, terrible time but have finally gotten their footing That's why they are trying to assert themselves now. They may not be right but they're allowed to question what is going on here.
posted by etaoin at 11:48 AM on June 21, 2007
the racists here are the hmongs. we gave them a new home, and when we fail to name our schools after their old-country heroes, the first thing they do is accuse us of racism. this is incredibly tiresome. they should either stfu and assimilate, or go back to their native home.
posted by bruce at 12:41 PM on June 21 [+] [!]
Because he's here. He's an American. He represents leadership to a large population in the city. The Hmong people worked with American soldiers, fought for the US, saved American aviators. That's aside from Vang Pao's questionable behavior. So we're not talking about naming a school after someone who lives in another country but rather, an actual ally of the US who's been living here since the late 1970s. The Hmong people have had a terrible, terrible time but have finally gotten their footing That's why they are trying to assert themselves now. They may not be right but they're allowed to question what is going on here.
posted by etaoin at 11:48 AM on June 21, 2007
Miss Ima was one of Houston's great philanthropists. And since Jim was a state governor
And Gov. Jim named his daughter Ima, the arrogant schmuck. Even as the daughter of a powerful man, imagine going through childhood with the name "Ima Hogg" and you'll know why Ima's principle charitable concerns involved mental health.
/honorary Texan
posted by spitbull at 1:10 PM on June 21, 2007
And Gov. Jim named his daughter Ima, the arrogant schmuck. Even as the daughter of a powerful man, imagine going through childhood with the name "Ima Hogg" and you'll know why Ima's principle charitable concerns involved mental health.
/honorary Texan
posted by spitbull at 1:10 PM on June 21, 2007
So why doesn't this Pao guy hang around Fisherman's Wharf with his own "Nam Vet Needs Beer" sign? I gave 67 cents to one of those once.
posted by davy at 4:21 PM on June 21, 2007
posted by davy at 4:21 PM on June 21, 2007
By the war, the Police Action in Indochina has been OVER since 1975. "We" lost. Pass it on.
posted by davy at 4:22 PM on June 21, 2007
posted by davy at 4:22 PM on June 21, 2007
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posted by thanotopsis at 2:33 PM on June 20, 2007