Thousands of Hmong demonstrated today in Sacramento to support General Vang Pao and others who were requesting dismissal of charges that they conspired to overthrow the Laotian communist government. The judge delayed a ruling.

Many of our students missed school to attend the rally.

I don’t support what General and ten others allegedly did.  At the same time,  it does seem a little surreal that the U.S. government is prosecuting them now for trying to overthrow the communist government after paying them to organize an army to do just that for fourteen years, and then, after they (and our country) lost that war, our government let them continue to pretty openly organize in this country for another thirty years with the same goal.

This whole ongoing saga has provided many opportunities for English-language learning —  civics lessons, English oral activities, newspaper articles developed into clozes (fill-in-the-gaps),  vocabulary acquisition, etc. As I’ve previously posted, non-Hmong students are fascinated by this stuff, too.