Posted on 04/10/2007 6:12:18 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Retiring Madison School Board member Shwaw Vang's eloquent speech to honor a revered Hmong leader and ally of American forces during the Vietnam War clinched a unanimous decision by board members to name Madison's newest school General Vang Pao Elementary.
"Your vote will honor the Hmong people who were loyal allies of the United States during Vietnam and will give Hmong students and their families a sense of belonging," Vang explained in English and in Hmong to an enthusiastic audience that included 75 to 80 members of the local Hmong community.
Applause broke out when the vote was announced, and happy members of the crowd laughed and hugged each other.
Board members were smiling warmly as they congratulated Vang, who is retiring next week after serving six years on the board. He is highly respected for his quiet, thoughtful comments and unwavering dedication to encouraging a voice for all students and their families in School Board business and deliberations.
But it's likely that the decision to name the new school, on which construction starts this spring on the far west side, for Vang Pao will be controversial.
There are those who would have preferred to honor an individual with stronger local ties. The names of longtime Madisonians Shirley Abrahamson, first female state Supreme Court member and chief justice; and Paul Olson, a respected teacher, principal and school board member who helped develop the Madison School Forest, were final contenders to be the namesake of the new school, for example.
Perhaps more problematic will be allegations about Pao's role as a military leader, including what some say is a shadowy background involving drug trafficking and alleged war crimes during his years of work with the CIA during the Vietnam War.
Forty-one names were considered, and comments that were e-mailed to the district as the choices were narrowed suggested some sharp divides over naming the school after Pao.
In his remarks to the board Monday night, Vang said that Pao is revered among the Hmong community as a tireless advocate for education for boys and girls as well as for his leadership during the Vietnam War, when the Hmong became American soldiers' first line of defense in unfamiliar territory.
Vang noted that tens of thousands of Hmong were killed during the war, and families were torn apart, displaced and persecuted as the result of their loyalty to the United States.
About 30 years ago, he said, Hmong refugees began arriving in this country. Wisconsin has the third-largest Hmong population in the country, behind California and Minnesota.
There are now more than 800 Hmong students in the Madison School District.
Ruth Robarts, who seconded Vang's motion to name the new school for Pao, said she believed the vote was "a way for us to recognize and give respect to the Hmong people in our community."
And board member Lucy Mathiak said at the meeting's end that the vote for naming the school to honor Pao was "a very good thing."
Doua Vang, an East High School graduate who has lived in Madison for 25 years, was the head of the effort to name the school for Pao. He said it was a "historic moment" in both the Hmong community's history and in American history.
In hours of public commentary to the board in recent weeks, members of the Hmong community have said repeatedly that is known as their most-revered leader, and is known for his strong advocacy for education and self improvement.
Both Doua Vang and Shwaw Vang said they believed this was the first time that Pao's name had been honored in this way anywhere in the U.S.
But five years ago, an effort to name a local park for Pao was shelved because of the controversy surrounding allegations by a University of Wisconsin professor and others that Pao was involved with the heroin trade during his years of work with the CIA.
Alfred McCoy, a UW-Madison history professor, said he was very disappointed with the board's vote to name the school for Pao.
"I think it's completely irresponsible for the School Board to name a school for a man about whom there are serious allegations that when he was commander of Hmong forces for the CIA during the Vietnam War, he consistently ordered summary executions of his own soldiers and enemy captives," McCoy said in a phone interview this morning.
Among those making the allegations, McCoy said, are the authors Christopher Robbins and Jane Hamilton-Merritt.
McCoy said he thought it was entirely proper to name a school to celebrate Hmong contributions to the community, but that he would have recommended someone like Shong Lue Yang for that honor.
"He was a brilliant religious leader and known as the 'Mother of Writing' who invented a Hmong system of writing. He was reportedly tragically murdered by Gen. Vang Pao's soldiers," McCoy said.
McCoy said that the story of Shong Lue Yang is told in a book published by the University of Chicago Press by William Smalley, Chia Koua Vang and Gnia Yee Yang entitled "Mother-of-Writing: The Origin and Development of a Hmong Messianic Script."
Parent Marisue Horton, who worked on the referendum to provide funds to build the new far west side school, said she had not followed the naming issue very closely.
"If it celebrates diversity in our community, and honors someone who had a strong commitment to education, I'm fine with the name," she said today.
But please...MUST our local 'Advocate Moms' be SO CLUELESS as to our shared history with other cultures? Especially those that fought and died right beside our Sons, Brothers and Uncles? (I lost a Great Uncle in Korea and an Uncle Vietnam.)
To wit:
"If it celebrates diversity in our community, and honors someone who had a strong commitment to education, I'm fine with the name," she said today.
Yeesh!
Eh...it’s Madison.
This really puts the lie to the anti war leftist radical agenda of diversity.
There is no interest in diversity. Death by Marxism is always a good thing for these academic radicals and anyone who gets in the the way is an immoral human being.
God bless the Hmong for fighting in Vietnam and for their good efforts here in America.
I saw that he was a candidate a few weeks ago and commented to someone around me that a school would never get named after a general in Madison.
I was pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong when I read this today.
This is GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is an honor due the general and the tough, noble Hmong people. God Bless everyone of them!
Having spent some time with these folks in the mid 60s, I find nothing wrong with this. Fine, noble and laudable people. Served us well in the Nam, always thought they got the short end of the stick in recognition for what they did for US forces in our little conflict in South East Asia.
Local in country CIA operatives who gave their all to fight Red Communism are true heros.
“...always thought they got the short end of the stick in recognition for what they did for US forces in our little conflict in South East Asia.”
They sure did as did the Montagnard/Degas people. The Hmong especially among the Lao tribes were loyal to us and the Lao Royal Family and have stayed that way. They deserve our thanks and OUR loyalty in return!
Hi, Moose! It was surprising to me, too.
Of course the local leftists that run this town and voted this in remain CLUELESS as to the core issue, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a great while, LOL!
I LOVE these little victories. I live for them. Can’t wait to volunteer at this school once it’s built. :)
And BTW...I thought Madistan was out of money and was going to CLOSE schools if they didn’t get their way through various tantrums for approval of the latest school budget? Well, go figure! They’re threatening to close schools on the one hand, yet naming NEW schools and breaking ground for them on the other.
We Taxpayers who are footing the bill for all of these School Board protestations must be perceived as stupid or something... ;)
If anybody deserves the recognition, he does. Naturally, the Lefties in Madisonstan still look on him as an enemy. These people are beyond the pale.
Hmong
Definition: A CIA cover story for the collection of South Vietnamese Government agents and Military officers who needed a good cover story to bug out of Vietnam with. And they also brought with them all the gold that the South Vietnamese Government had left. I never saw a group of people buy so many hand grenades.
Why do I know this you might ask? Well I was obligated to finish High School with a bunch of them and they tended to talk too much.
You need a better source for the gossip you listen to. This source is wrong. And remember, its gossip, not fact.
Check out some history on the Hmong and Montangard peoples of the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. Its an interesting study of persecution and resistance.
‘Some say....’
I am getting so damned tired of this cliche’d crap the media foists on us.
Identify them or be quiet!
This counrty has turned into abunch of cranks. There’s always someone outraged about something.
And since was involvement with the CIA a crime! We were at war with international Communism at the time ferchrissake.
Naw, no need.
You see I got it from them.
My research is based on the first person.
That happens when they live next door.
The only thing I could never figure out is why they all had to carry a hand grenade in the coat pocket.
Maybe for fishin’....;)
I did know a guy that used dynamite. He killed everything in that pond.
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