原文的后半部:
Local groups in Utah, led by Ha, are already in the process of coordinating
a response. Ha, a member of Utah’s small but growing 8,000 plus Vietnamese
American community, as well as first vice-chairman of the Utah Vietnamese
American Chamber of Commerce, is leading a coalition of local Asian American
and LGBT civil liberties organizations, namely the Organization of Chinese
Americans (OCA) and the Utah Pride Center, to pursue a path of legislative
changes through the Utah State Senate to combat bullying, as well as legal
redress for the Phan family. To that end, according to Ha, the Phan family
currently has several options to pursue multiple complaints and lawsuits.
Complaints will be filed by the ACLU to the Civil Rights Division of the
Department of Justice and the US Department of Education. The Phan family
has also accepted pro-bono services from the Salt Lake City firm of Ford and
Huff, who will assist in deciding if national law firms may be more
suitable. A separate suit for defamation and wrongful death is being
considered as well. Ha hopes that national API organizations and individuals
will support these legislative and legal efforts to prevent more tragedies
like David's suicide from happening again.
However, Esther Kim, a queer Korean American organizer living in Salt Lake
City (and a product of the Granite School District), would like to see other
forms of mobilization that provide effective resources to local APIA and
queer youth of color. As Kim wrote on a Facebook thread about David’s death
, “The API community in Utah is hella heteronormative and it makes me
uneasy as a queer API person to see a desire to do this work in such a
reactionary, savior-esque way. Queer folks of color existed and were
marginalized before David Phan and we will continue to exist after the dust
settles. This work requires a real commitment from allied communities to get
into it and not just folks who are looking to benefit off of a tragedy.”
In a separate interview, Kim added, “It’s really frustrating to live in
Utah and then have connections to national organizations on the coasts. But
the practices of these national organizations are really space-specific.
They work at the places where they’re at because they have a specific kind
of infrastructure to support them. So when you try to apply those kinds of
models here, they don’t work. I know queer API people who are doing
marriage equality in San Francisco. I understand why they’re doing that,
but for me, that is not important in Utah.”
Emilio Manuel Camu, president of the Asian American Student Association of
the University of Utah, had this to say: “As a student that graduated from
the Granite School District, I’ve witnessed and been a victim of the
neglect by the administration whenever bullying was discussed...They
continue to blame the victim and the family and try to uphold their status
as a wonderful and safe space for students to learn." Camu added, "If any
place is a strict believer of the Model Minority Myth of Asian Americans, it
’s Utah...As long as they do well in class, they're noticed, but that’s
about it. I think it’s a little different in Utah because a lot of the AA
students I’ve worked with think they're the only AAs because we have such a
small community that they can’t reach out for support, because the '
support' they're given is deemed sufficient and their 'problem' is neglected
."
For his work as president of the AASA, Camu said, "We've received plenty of
complaints from counselors about hosting our annual Asian American High
School Conference because we talk about issues of gender, sex, racism within
the Asian American community. It’s not something they feel comfortable
discussing, and even some of the administrators at the U [nickname for the
University of Utah] have discouraged us from talking about being AA [and]
queer.”
Unsurprisingly, Utah school districts have a long pattern of aggressive
discrimination of organized queer students. I remember in 1995 when the
formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance club at a high school I attended, East
High School, prompted the Salt Lake City School District to shut down all
non-curricular clubs, a move that led the ACLU of Utah to file two lawsuits
on behalf of students. It also prompted the formation of a different club at
another high school I attended, West High School -- SAFE, or Students
Against Fags Everywhere. In October 2000, the Salt Lake City School District
reinstated all nonacademic clubs, including East's GSA, and the ACLU
dropped its litigation.
Since then, despite its status as the headquarters of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City has surprised many by coming to
be known as a gay-friendly city, culminating in its selection by The
Advocate as “the gayest town in America” (based on an active gay nightlife
and anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people, adopted
by the LDS Church in November 2009). That said, the Salt Lake metropolitan
area has miles to go to address bullying of youth, queer youth, queer youth
of color, and APIA youth:
- According to a 2011 report by the Utah Department of Health, Utah teens
commit suicide more often than their peers in other parts of the nation,
with two youths treated for suicide attempts every day in Utah;
- According to Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Utah Pride Center,
more than 70 percent of LGBT teens in Utah recently reported being verbally
or physically harassed for their sexual orientation;
- According to a 2005 national study by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight
Education Network (GLSEN), 44 percent of LGBT students of color reported
experiencing verbal harassment due to both their sexual orientation and race
/ethnicity, while 13 percent of LGBT students of color experience physical
harassment due to both sexual orientation and race/ethnicity;
- And according to a recent report released by AAPI Nexus, findings show
that Asian American students are bullied in U.S. schools much more than
students belonging to any other racial group.
All together, these harrowing numbers speak to the hostile climate that face
queer APIA youth like David, a climate that Bennion Junior High and the
Granite School District -- and many other schools and school districts
across the country -- cannot, or will not, alleviate.
While the Phan family grieves and Ha solidifies his coalition for legal and
policy redress, Cindy Huynh, a PhD student in the Department of Education,
Culture & Society at the University of Utah, along with Thanh-Tung Than-
Trong, David’s cousin, Phan family spokesperson, and a PhD student as well
in the same department, will speak with different Vietnamese organizations
and communities around the country to gather support. And individuals
representing various queer-specific APIA and non-queer specific APIA groups
have expressed interest in supporting the Phan family and various forms of
mobilization. While the Phan family might never receive the answers they
deserve from Bennion and Granite, hopefully these different efforts to
address anti-gay bullying will produce some measure of solace and justice to
the family for the loss of David.
