NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

When the military buildup was first announced, I remember people speaking so positively about the idea that "Guam could be just like Hawai'i." That the buildup would usher in such a period of fantastic ti hongge'on na economic prosperity that we would move to the next level of our island existence, becoming Hawai'i! Guam has long imagined Hawai'i as a greater, better, more American and more prosperous version of itself. People from Guam have long passed through or visited Hawai'i and understood it not through the lens of a fellow Pacific Island, and a fellow occupied island, but rather as that fantasy American space. Hawai'i is rich because America has fantasies about it, and because it has such a large, famous tourist industry. People imagined that Guam becoming like Hawai'i, would mean that all the superficial and largely meaningless things that you see when you visit a place as a tourist, or as a clueless subject of American empire would manif

Recently my friend Sung Hee Choi was released from being imprisoned for holding a banner in front of a construction site for a Naval facility in Gangjeong that she was protesting. The banner stated "Touch not one stone. Not one flower." She was imprisoned for 3 months. I have written several posts about the struggle of the people of Gangjeong against the construction of a base in their small town in Southern Jeju which would destroy much of their beautiful ecosystem. If you'd like to learn more Save Jeju is a great website to start looking at. Earlier today the police entered the village and arrested 5 people including Mayor Kang as construction began of the facility there. The Navy base there is being built by the South Korean Government but will also be used by US forces and the ships that dock there will be purchased from the United States (Aegis Destroyers). When I spoke to Mayor Kang last year when I visited Jeju he had much to say about how he did not approve w

Several years back I posted on Minagahet Zine a page called "Famoksaiyan gi i Rediu" which featured various interviews on the radio given by members and allies of Famoksaiyan regarding issues of militarism, colonialism, decolonization, the UN, cultural revitalization and anything else which someone with a microphone and ten to twenty minutes wanted to chat about. As the years have passed the links for those interviews have gone dead, the files have been moved and even the server for Minagahet Zine itself has changed and is no longer on Geocities but now can be accessed directly at http://www.minagahetzine.com/ Recently, Martha Duenas, who is part of Famoksaiyan West Coast and blogs at Too Late To Stop Now, updated the Famoksaiyan gi i Rediu page, found the new links for interviews and even added some more which have been conducted as the military buildup issue has become even bigger and occassionally garnered the attention of progressive and mainstream national media. I&#

Our delegation arrived in Jeju late last night and there wasn't much to see in the middle of the night riding on a bus to the hotel. Today, we have a packed schedule of meeting with some of the villagers of Gangjeong, their mayor, a tour of different military facilities on Jeju Island, and finally a presentation this evening to the villager on our work and what is happening in other communities affecting by similar problems of militarization. For those who may not know much about Jeju or Gangjeong, I'm pasted an article below which puts the local struggle here on this island into a wider global strategic context very well. From the little I know so far about what the South Korean and US militarys have planned for this island and this tiny village, it is clear that every large grand plan depends upon small, local places. Often times the most valuable asset that these small, tiny place provide to those big grand plans, is that they are small, and outside of the vision of most pe

I complain regularly on this blog about how, despite the incredible similarities that the people of Guam (mainly Chamorro, but others who call it home as well) have with the people of Okinawa, we barely know each other. Long colonial histories, shared experiences of military destruction and dispossession after World War II, and contemporary statuses as lynchpins to America's strategic posture in Asia. That is one of the reasons why Okinawans see Guam as a possible solution to their problems(to get rid of the US military), and many on Guam see the problems that Okinawans have with the US presence there, as a solution to Guam's own economic problems (bring them to Guam instead). People on Guam think of Okinawa as a US military base, or simply just another part of Japan, while people in Okinawa see Guam as a US military base and just another part of the US. We are ridiculous caricatures to each other, caricatures which serve the interests of those who claims our seperate but int