Probe of LePage’s role in World Acadian Congress president’s resignation sought

[jpak]

Source: Bangor Daily News

AUGUSTA, Maine — Two Democratic lawmakers are requesting that the Legislature’s watchdog group investigate an allegation that Gov. Paul LePage pressured the former president of the World Acadian Congress to resign.

The request, submitted Tuesday to the Government Oversight Committee by Reps. Roland “Danny” Martin of Sinclair and Robert Saucier of Presque Isle, follows a report outlining the allegations by Mike Tipping, a progressive activist whose blog is hosted by the Bangor Daily News.

In the blog, Tipping wrote that former WAC president Jason Parent confirmed he resigned from his post in 2013 after a LePage appointee communicated the governor’s displeasure with the fact that then-U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, a Democrat, received a commemorative license plate from the group before LePage did.

Michaud had not yet announced that he’d run for governor, but his intentions to run against LePage the next year were well-known. LePage allegedly threatened to withhold state funding for the World Acadian Congress if Parent did not step down.

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Read more: http://bangordailynews.com/2015/07/28/politics/state-house/probe-of-lepages-role-in-world-acadian-congress-presidents-resignation-sought/?ref=regionstate

[dmr]

1. What is the World Acadian Congress?

[magical thyme]

2. had to google it...

The Acadian World Congress, or Le Congrès Mondial Acadien, is a festival of Acadian and Cajun culture and history, held every five years. It is also informally known as the Acadian Reunion. The creator of the Acadian World Congress was André Boudreau (1945 - 2005).[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadian_World_Congress

[Android3.14]

4. I attended

Last edited Wed Jul 29, 2015, 06:51 AM - Edit history (1)

Few people realize there is a thriving bilingual community of Acadian Franco-Americans living in northern Maine.

This is an image of the tintamarre, or the Great Noise, in which the Acadians gather and bang pots and pans and make noise to proclaim their existence after governments used institutional racial aggression to try to separate the Acadians from their culture. This took place in Madawaska, Maine in 2014.


The KKK harangued these folks for years. Not only did they speak French, but they were Catholic. The bitterness of some of the older Acadians is palpable. They have folk songs with titles like "I will not speak French in school" commemorating how the school teachers would punish them for communicating with their friends by forcing the kid to write the sentence thousands of times as punishment.

The Acadians were the only Europeans who integrated with the First Nations rather than try to force the natives to integrate with them.