NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

For a few hours on the last day of the UN C24 Regional Seminar, we were given a tour of some historic locations around Kingstown, the capitol of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

This image is from a canon in Fort Charlotte, which was built high atop a hill overlooking the capitol by the British in the late 18th century. As we toured the fort, our Vincentian guide shared many colorful, sometimes humorous and sometime tragic stories about his island's colonization. He connected the struggles today, to those of the past. He echoed what so many had told us over the week we and other experts and foreign delegates were in the country, that everywhere you go, you see the legacies of native genocide and African slavery. From the fort's battlements he showed us failing banana plantations, areas where underground economies are surging, the divisions between rich and poor neighborhoods around Kingstown and even incorporated some Caribbean musical lyrics as well.

When I took this pictu…

As a contemporary colony, Guam doesn't get much attention anywhere.

In a world where colonialism isn't supposed to exist anymore, being a colony isn't that great.

When you try to articulate your colonial existence people tend to respond in a number of different ways.

They may dismiss the colonial nature of your situation since it can't be as bad as colonialism was in the past.

They may dismiss your complaints because you come from a small island that should be grateful to be colonized, especially by the most powerful country in the world.

They may attempt to correct you and say that Guam is really a territory not a colony. Or a dependency and not a colony. Or a protectorate and not a colony.

The United Nations is one of the few places where the idea of there being colonies left in the world isn't controversial, although this remains a salient topic in only certain parts of the bureaucracy.

For example, a place like Guam doesn't have much representation or powe…

A 2014 study by The Guardian/UK shows that in 50 different colonies/territories since 1860, 88% of the time they chose independence as their option. Very very few chose to become integrated into their colonizer, it was almost natural to seek their own fortune and destiny, even if it might lead to a time of difficulty. The study looked at places such as Samoa, East Timor, Mongolia, Iceland and Iraq. Given the way in which independence is often imagined in places such as Guam that remain colonies today, it is intrigued to see how normal seeking independence was in the past, but how today it feels so fearful.

Most people would argue that the resistance that people in Guam feel today is tied to the island being too political immature or the island being too small or too far away from the centers of power. All of these points make some sense, but not enough to really build up the type of fear that people experience when discussing the notion of Guam becoming independent. As the United Nat…

2016 World Conference against A & H Bombs
Declaration of the International Meeting


Seventy one years ago, the USA used nuclear bombs for the first time against humanity by releasing atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With tremendous destructive power and radiation, the two bombs burned out the cities and claimed the lives of about 210,000 people by the end of the year. It was a hell on earth. The Hibakusha who survived then had to suffer from latent effects and social discrimination for many subsequent years. Such inhumane weapons should not be used again in any circumstances whatsoever.

The nuclear powers still maintain more than 15,000 nuclear warheads. Not a small number of them are on alert for launch. The concern for the outbreak of nuclear war due to deteriorating regional tensions is real. A recent study shows that even if only a small percentage of existing nuclear weapons are used, it would cause serious climate change and would bring the human race to…

Last year when I attended the United Nations Regional Seminar in Nicaragua I had the chance to meet and talk to Reverend Conrad Howell from the Turks and Caicos, a fellow Non-Self-Governing Territory just like Guam, albeit in the Caribbean and with a different colonizer, the United Kingdom. Reverend Howell was clearly charismatic, even just from the few days that I spent with him at the seminar. He was articulate and not afraid to stir up controversy.

Like many other people that I've met from Non-Self-Governing Territories, we face similar problems of being small, being faraway and being forgotten. These issues are relative of course, but when we imagine the possibilities for our future, we feel a massive weight bearing down on us, which seems to compel so many of us to think that we shouldn't try to change anything, that our colonial situations are necessary because of our minuscule realities, we just need to accept being hopelessly dependent. But in each of our islands, we …

Although on Guam, we tend to the see the United Nations as being inefficient and taisetbe because of the way we have waited for decades for decolonization, this issue is actually something that the United Nations has actually been very successful in terms of promoting. Since 1946, more than 80 former colonies, more than 750 million people have decolonized. In looking at the past few centuries of human history, this is a very substantial reversal. At one point a small group of colonizer controlled the maps, planted the flags and draw the lines of the world. We still live with that legacy in so many ways, but one cannot deny the shifts that have taken place.

But there are still losers in this game of decolonization. The United Nations recognizes 17 official colonies, which amount to close to 2 million people. If we look beyond this formal level of recognition you could easily add in several dozen more territories or peoples that could be called colonies. We are the ones who are stillin…

In the United Nations there are various ways of "protesting" or challenging something. At the regional seminar this year, like most years, the usual verbal sparring took place between countries and colonies. The Falkland Islands or Malvinas are off the coast of Argentina, but are a longtime colony of the UK. A war took place over them several decades ago, which Argentina soundly lost. The Argentinian delegate to the seminar always asserts the right of his country over the islands. The representatives of the Falklands always challenge and counter that. The Latin American countries will always come to the aid of Argentina, all proclaiming that the Malvinas are part of Argentina! Sometime these exchanges wake up the attendees, sparing them from more dreary diplomatic time gnashing. Other times, they are so used to the angry spitting of accusations that this is more boring than the usual tame speech reading and droning posturing.

But the more passive aggressive way of protestin…

The issue of gay marriage is really being push right now in Guam. There seems to be a much broader support for it as opposed to a few years ago. There is still some resistance, especially on religious grounds. I haven't seen any reports yet on whether or not local bakeries are supporting or fighting this issue. This is intriguing because as you can see from the reports below, cakes, the making of, the selling of, the religious freedom involved in deciding who you do and do not make cakes for, has become a ground zero of sorts

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This Bakery Refused to Serve a Same-Sex Couple and It May Cost Them $135,000
Published: April 26, 2015 | Authors: Aviva Shen | Think Progress | News Report 

A bakery that turned away a lesbian couple looking to …