NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

For my Pacific Daily News columns over the past month, I was focusing on providing some reflections for the recent passage of Juneteenth as a national holiday in the United States. This was partially in response to some young activists and educators on Guam, hosting a special Fanachu! episode discussing the issue from a Guam perspective. There was so much more that I could have addressed in more columns and I may return to the issue of African American history in Guam or Chamorus navigating US racial hierarchies at a later date in my column. But until then, here are the columns: ************************ Juneteenth celebration connects history of CHamorus, African Americans Pacific Daily News By Michael Lujan Bevacqua  Jun 25, 2021   Last week the United States recognized Juneteenth as a federal holiday. This is an important day whereby the U.S. can reflect not only the history of slavery, but the legacy of that inhuman institution and how it continues to impact African Americans today.

Last week I wrote my column in the Guam Daily Post about the comfort women issue in South Korea and how the governments of Japan and South Korea are working towards a process of restitution over the use of South Korean women as sex slaves during World War II. The issue of the comfort women extends far beyond just South Korea, and is something that affected cultures across Asia and the Pacific. I have been talking more intensely about the comfort women issue over the past year as i nobia-hu Dr. Isa Kelley Bowman has been conducting research into it. It has been difficult for her, as the issue is one shrouded in so many different forms of silence. The lack of writing around the issue in Guam is often thought to be simply a matter of stigma and social shame, with women and their families seeking to keep the issue quiet and not be reminded of what happened. But it is far more complicated than that, and it can be frustrating, how people will accept one level of silence as being the truth

The Michigan GOP's War on 'A People's History' by Matthew Kovac September 3, 2015 Common Dreams Michigan State Senator Patrick Colbeck is at it again. Back in 2013, Colbeck sponsored a bill calling for schools to institute a  Patriot Week  that would indoctrinate students with nationalist and militarist “history” lessons. Now, in a series of red-baiting  Facebook   posts , Colbeck is railing against late civil rights activist and historian Howard Zinn and the use of his book A People’s History of the United States in Michigan classrooms. First published in 1980, A People’s History popularized “history from below” by emphasizing the struggles of those overlooked by mainstream historical accounts: indigenous people, African Americans, women, and working people. In the decades since its publication, this bottom-up approach to U.S. history has sold more than two million copies. Zinn’s work is hardly a new target for right-wing censors. In an  e

I may have only been in Japan for a little less than a month, but it seems to me that Japan enjoys a heavy emphasis on instructions, signs and communicating properly. Perhaps because I can't read most of these signs as they are in Japanese and so because of that they are more visible and noticeable to me, whereas for others they simply fade into the background like visual cicadas. When walking by a construction site, signs are everywhere warning people to be safe, to not enter and even to apologize profusely for the inconvenience. Everywhere you go helpful and usually colorful mascots offer everything from advice, advertising and even just cheery, "hang in there!" messages. I'm used to walking into stores where I exchange less than ten words with a clerk, but here each employee is their own tenderu techa and every purchase offers their their own rosary or two about what I am buying, the money I am giving them and the importance of having a good day as I leave. Even

After hearing for weeks about how the "terrorists" or North Koreans were winning the war against and for freedom, due to the decision of Sony not to distribute the film "The Interview," the company has decided to release the film on a limited basis. It can be streamed online and can be bought. Eventually it may be released through iTunes. It was interesting to see how a film which most people would probably not want to watch because of the abundance of jokes dealing with human genitalia, becomes an artifact over which freedom not on a national scale, but an international scale is fought. Screenings of The Interview have been filled with patriotic discourse and singing, in order to make that important argument that, this may be crap and it may be garbage, but I should have the right to eat crap and copulate with garbage if  I want to! Speaking of freedom, people in Guam attempting to watch the Interview online soon found that they were prevented by most sites