NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Meggai malago' yu' bei sångan put si Donald Trump yan i sinangån-ña (yan håfa ti ha sångan lokkue') put i nina'triste giya Charlottesville.  Fihu ilek-hu na ti hongge'on i bidadå-ña si Trump. Ya siempre ti siña ha ikak este na malabida pat este na eskareng. Lao atan ha', kulang un chatpago yan sen mutong na fafa'tinas milagro este na taotao. Sigi ha' ha na'långga yan na'manman yu', kada simåna.   Meggai malago' yu' na bai hu sångan, lao ti nahong i ora på'go, guaha meggai otro cho'cho'.  Lao este ha' malago' yu' na bei ensima gi kombetsasion.  Gof na'chalek yan "ironic" na i manapå'ka, ko'lo'lo'ña i manracist, fihu ma såsangna na manchenglong i manminorities gi i manma'pos na tiempo. Gi fino' Ingles, "they are stuck in the past." Ma sångan este, sa' i manAfrican Amerikanu par otr ti apå'ka na råsa siha, guaha ma keketulaika gi halom i Estådos Uni

LEARN MORE ABOUT RECENT THREATS TO CHAMORRO RIGHTS AT INDPENDENT GUÅHAN’S MARCH GENERAL ASSEMBLY THURSDAY Educational Presentations will focus on the Davis vs. Guam case, the Chamorro Land Trust and moving forward towards self-determination For Immediate Release, March 20, 2017 – Independent Guåhan invites the public to its monthly General Assembly (GA) on Thursday, March 23rd from 6 – 7:30 p.m. at the Main Pavilion of the Chamorro Village in Hagåtña. This month’s educational presentations will focus on the need to respect the Chamorro people in their quest to self-determination in light of current actions on behalf of the US Federal Government deeming the decolonization plebiscite and Chamorro Land Trust, “race-based discrimination”. In honor of Mes Chamoru, the meeting will be bilingual in both English and Chamorro. Eartlier this month, Federal Justice France Tydingco-Gatewood ruled that a non-binding decolonization vote for Guam’s native inhabi

There are days, especially given the buffet of political rhetoric over the past few weeks, where I want to just quit my job and follow the presidential campaign in the United States full time. Normally, campaigns at this level, operate based on familiar assumptions. Very little happens, because both candidates, even if they attempt to demonize each other, accept certain basic principles about how their political positions are to be formed and defended. Bernie Sanders to some extent upset things this time around, by pushing a number of ideas and programs to the center, making the Democratic party as a whole contend with them. Trump however has changed everything, simply because of his refusal or inability to play the political games that politicians normally play. I don't mean that as a compliment, as many of his supporters like to point out. There is something attractive about that in certain candidates, as it seems like they would be able to offer a chance to break

In the United States and its territories, it is common to look at other places, in particular Europe and lament the way racist and xenophobic political parties have emerged, which sometimes achieve a relatively significant amount of power and legitimacy. When viewing them from a distance, it is easy to critique them as being out of touch in a world with nice things such as tolerance, diversity, multiculturalism. But such positioning too often allows the exact same problems, the same contradictions, the same nasty hatred and evil to go unanalyzed or unexamined. In Chamorro there are a variety of ways of calling this out and challenging such simple forgetfulness. Cha'-mu tumoto'la hulo'. Saosao i mata-mu antes di un sangan put i inaplacha' i otro. Trump's presidential primary insurgency has kicked things that have been developing for decades into hyper-drive. The Republican party has been feeding off of white anger and loathing for quite a while now, Fox News , wi

I remember the beginning of Donald Trump's campaign, and how the end was always insight. The conventional wisdom always suggested that this flip flop, this racist rant, this sexist remark, this revelation was going to be the one to finally burst the fantasy bubble of Trump as a viable candidate. But the media and Republican establishment routinely underestimated the way Trump would tap into certain parts of the national schizophrenic psyche. Obama in 2008 taped into the desires of people for change and for the hope in a better world. Trump seems to be tapping into white anger over the changing of their country and the losing of their privilege. It is interesting to watch, how the conventional wisdom in recent times has been that racist remarks, gaffes or associations could spell the end of a candidate's career or at least hurt them politically. This isn't true with Trump however, at least not yet. Trump's sometimes thinly veiled, sometimes overt attacks on immigrants,

I would have loved to have talked to Martin Luther King Jr. And when I say that, I don't mean the fiction that is often trotted out each year by governments and educational systems. That MLK Jr. is a neutralized version of the man I've read about. That figure is one who has been shorn of all his radical content, and becomes a middleman for the American nation, allowing it to bury its racist past and present, without having to adequately deal with either. The MLK that I've studied was eloquent and fiery, but his targets were much higher and much more difficult to strike. He wasn't just seeking white and black children to play together on playgrounds. He wanted some fundamental changes to American society which would ease the terrible systems of economic and social inequality, which continue to disproportionately affect non-whites. I'm looking forward to getting a copy of this book Death of a King: The Real Story of Martin Luther King Jr's Final Year

There is so much that we can say about "terrorism." For most people this is something you connect to the most terrible acts humans can commit. You hurt people, soldiers, civilians, anything. You treat them like objects, and use them like weapons, wood to create flames from your political fire. Although we my be accustomed to conceiving that some cultures are more predisposed to commit acts of terrorism that others, in truth we find the potential for this type of human damage within all peoples. But there is generally a difference in how we assign value and meaning to these acts. Although people may articulate that there is a clear and simple truth to naming something terrorism, this is not the case. People will hedge and fudge constantly when confronted with this type of violence, depending on their relationship to who has committed it and how they see that person in terms of the ideological coordinates that form their identity. Terrorism in its most virulent form, in