After the Marathon County Board rejected a watered-down version of a resolution declaring the county a “community for all” in August, Lada Xiong-Vang felt something had to be done.
“(The resolution) was a way to publicly show that our community was a place of belonging. And I don’t want to say that it’s not. I think that there’s a lot of action and work in our community that’s happening behind closed doors that really already creates that sense of belonging and welcomeness and support, unfortunately, publicly, it went in the direction that it did,” she said. “It also really made a lot of the BIPOC community reflect on why they’re choosing to be in this community. And so from the resolution failing, we learned that people were impacted by it emotionally and from a mental health and wellness perspective, as well as trauma from the past has revealed itself again and people had to relive some of those trauma through this process.”
Xiong-Vang is the president of Central Wisconsin Hmong Professionals, an organization that aims to help Hmong professionals thrive in the Wausau area while staying connected to their heritage and Hmong identity.
Xiong-Vang, who works as a business development manager, said many people of color face difficult conversations in their professional lives. At 5:30 pm tonight, the organization will host an online event providing some guidance on how to navigate those conversations.
“The purpose of this event is to provide those communication tools that will really help the BIPOC community identify environments where some of these discrimination, microaggression and instability incidents may occur, and that you can respectfully communicate that and articulate yourself to the person on the other side so the education happens both ways, so that the whole community can grow and move forward,” Xiong-Zang said.
UW-Eau Claire history professor Dr. Selika Ducksworth-Lawton will headline the event. She is also president of Uniting Bridges and founder of the “Conversations in Color” radio and online event series.
Her presentation will be followed by a question and answer period.
The organization exists primarily to serve the Hmong population, all are welcome at the event.
“Our topic will always be around the Hmong community, but we don’t ever reject invites from anybody outside of that community,” she said. “So we even open invites to anybody who’s an ally of the BIPOC community that’s willing to move in the same direction and work towards the same efforts that we’re working towards. Our attendees are not just all Hmomg. We have a mixture of Laotian and Vietnamese and some white folks are part of our attendee list too.”
Registration is required and a Zoom link will be emailed to all registered participants. You can register at this link. More information is available on the organization’s Facebook page.
Today’s discussion is the second of three planned events. The first, in January, dealt with the “Bamboo ceiling” and how Hmong people are often passed over for promotions; the third, in March, will focus on health and wellness from the person of color perspective. A date has not been set but will be announced on Facebook soon.
