Subject: Forum tonight on Sawyer County tragedy Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:30:46 -0600 Message-ID: <B14120EE5C432443B21102F7925DAD020142021C@COKE.uwec.edu> From: "Grossman, Zoltan C." <GROSSMZC@uwec.edu>
12/13/2004 12:42:23 PM
Forum to talk about tragedy
Leader-Telegram Staff and news services
Concerns about increased racial tension after last month's hunting
tragedy in Sawyer County have prompted a public forum Thursday.
The Eau Claire Human Rights Coalition will host the forum to give
community leaders and residents a chance to discuss the fatal shooting
of six white deer hunters. A Hmong man has been charged with murder.
Cynthia Gray-Mash, a founding member of the coalition, said she's heard
Hmong residents say that racial tension has increased since the
shooting.
"I don't think they indict everybody, and it's not a Hmong versus
non-Hmong issue, but I think there are some acts that the community
should respond to," Gray-Mash said, referring to reports of racism.
"We don't want this to turn into a shouting match or something
negative," she said. "We just want to have a dialogue about it."
The forum will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday in the Eau Claire Room of
the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire. Panel members
will include Dave Carlson, host of the "Northland Adventures" TV show;
John Hildebrand, a UW-Eau Claire English professor who has written about
hunting with the Hmong; Joe Bee Xiong, executive director of the Eau
Claire Area Hmong Mutual Assistance Association; and Hmong radio host
Kao Xiong. Other panel members will be announced soon.
Despite isolated reports of racial animosity, people helping to resettle
thousands of new Hmong immigrants from a refugee camp in Thailand say
last month's shootings have not caused any backlash against those
efforts, which continue on schedule.
Nathan Hecker, a logger and hunter in Hayward, where Chai Soua Vang
faces six counts of murder in the Nov. 21 shootings, acknowledges some
people in northern Wisconsin dislike Hmong immigrants. He cites the
perception that Hmong hunters "tend to shoot everything that moves and
take it home - squirrels, birds, rabbits."
"There can be good and bad people wherever. But some people feel that
way. That's not going to help matters," he said.
Among the evidence of racial tension since the shootings:
n At a community prayer service in Rice Lake, the area where all six
slain hunters lived, a woman told about how a friend saw a bumper
sticker that read: "Save a deer, shoot a Hmong."
n In Menomonie, police say a white man painted the word "killer" on two
trailer homes and a truck owned by Hmong neighbors. Police cited him for
misdemeanor property damage and set a Dec. 21 court appearance.
n Joe Bee Xiong of the Eau Claire Area Hmong Mutual Assistance
Association said his organization received an unsigned letter urging
Hmong people to go back "where they belonged," apparently a reference to
the Hmong homeland in Laos.
n Ker Vang, executive director of the Hmong Association of Green Bay,
said a Hmong woman there reported that two white men angry about the
shootings yelled at her and a friend and called them derogatory names.
n The Wausau Area Hmong Mutual Association received a few calls from
people who made inappropriate comments about the Hmong, office manager
Babs Zehren said.
Last month's shootings came in the midst of an effort to resettle an
expected 3,190 Hmong refugees in Wisconsin.
The refugees are among more than 15,000 Hmong leaving Thailand for the
United States. They join thousands of Hmong already in the country,
including 46,000 in Wisconsin.
Leaders of Catholic Charities for the Dioceses of La Crosse and Green
Bay, the agencies in charge of resettlements in northeast and western
Wisconsin, reported no problems because of the shootings.