NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Guam Mentions are always interesting. The random places that Guam will appear in the speech of military planners, world leaders, comedians and filmmakers is always so intriguing to me. Taking serious these mentions are sort of traces of the structure of American imperialism and colonialism was the main theoretical intervention of my dissertation. Moving away from seeing the random way that Guam gets mentioned sometimes whether it be by Bob Hope or David Letterman as actually possessing serious meaning and truth and not just being an accidental or random mention. For most the flexibility and labiality of meaning attached to Guam, the occasional invisibility that it is shouldered with or assumed is just a misrecognition, is something people say just because they don't know better or something you can just attribute to ignorance. But for me there is far more that just that. The colonial status of Guam and the ability to shift and produce meaning for it, the ability to

The issue of Okinawa can provide us an important example in terms of the power of media. The coverage of Okinawa, Guam, Diego Garica, Hawai'i and so many other places where the US has bases within the United States plays a significant role in whether or not the network of bases the US has is accepted or challenged. The media is not objective and not neutral, but always proposes certain accepted frames of reference which make the news easier to digest and create. In most countries in the world there is not an accepted assumption that the nation should have bases in every corner of the globe, but in the US there is. The media's coverage of that base as an accepted fact and acceptable part of American reality legitimizes it and also helps prevent people from understanding the legitimate protest movements build around those bases. In the case of Okinawa, we also see how the media will take on certain angles in order to protect the alleged greater interests of the country. Cho

Okinawa is well known around the world as a site of protest. Its history has been marked with numerous protests regarding the many US military bases that is "hosts" as well as its colonial and neo-colonial treatment by the Japanese central government. Just last year over 100,000 people gathered for a demonstration. Okinawa is an island of protests, some big and some small. All protests are not equal. There is a logic to how they are perceived by the public. Some will appear to be more important than others. Some sites of protest will appear to be more essential than others. People will be more easily drawn to them. They will see those who stand along the fence, along the road, holding signs as being heroic. They will see places beside them where others should stand, where they could themselves stand. They will see this protest as representing important things, even if it violates laws and social norms. Other protests will be seen as less important. There will be an ever g