Buildup/Breakdown #10: Chumilong

For those who don't know, the word "chumilong" is Chamorro for "to become equal."

One of the most interesting things to come out of the DEIS comment period and the flurry of activist activity that has taken place, is that after four long and frustrating years, the media does actually start to treat the buildup is an issue which has more than one side. For years, the Pacific Daily News set the tone making primary any positive information related to the buildup and generally minimizing any possible negative issues. The Marianas Variety to its credit often has problems talking about an issue in a very full or complete way. They tend to give one side of the story in most of their pieces, and then another completely different story in another piece. Part of this comes from their regular printing of press releases.

In general though, the buildup, even if it has "some questions or concerns" there was still this impression that it was nearly all good, and that the voices of those who say it is good are the big and important words of story, while those who disagree, are the quiet, almost irritating comments at a story's end. They are there in the story, but not in a balanced way, they tend to be the concluding remark, short, sweet, without much basis or evidence, presented in such a way that you can't really take it seriously. Those who supported the buildup were crafted into the prose of a news piece with authority, with commonsensical weight and seriousness to their statements. Those who were cited as the other side of the issue, those who were critical or resistant, tended to be characterized in less serious ways, and sometimes were quoted in ways that were barely critical.

In May of 2006 I wrote about this on my blog in a post titled "How the Interests of the Military Become More Than Our Own:"

It has been only recently that apprehensiveness about the arrival of these 8,000 Marines is being recorded by the island's leaders. Prior to that, the discussion seemed to follow the two most pathetically simple forms imagineable, first the delusional "what will we do with all that cash!?" and second, "how can we be good hosts and fix up the island for their arrival?!" I remember clearly the initial articles in the PDN covering this military increase. It was truly pathetic, because the only real critique the PDN offered in contrast to all the excitement and hoopla over the economic windfall of these 8,000 bodies and their families, was 1. our infrastructure sucks we can't support them, even though we love them! 2. they better respect!

Media teaches complex lessons in what appear to be very simple statements. First of all, the first critique is hardly a critique at all, since given the universe of statements that these sorts of remarks enter into, they only make the case that more military is not just good, but necessary. The Chamber of Commerce and other rabidly capitalist
organizations in Guam gain their super powers not just from the sacrifice of Chamorros on the altar of war and colonialism, but because of the way the eternally crumbling infrastructure of Guam, plays into their arguments of the need for the military. By saying that the poor infrastructure of Guam is an argument against the influx of Marines, you are actually arguing for their arrival, because of the way it is commonly understood that it is only an arrival such as this which can cure those sorts of material ills. The paradox here being that only the arrival of these Marines can fix the problems which prevent their arrival.

The second reason I've pasted below direct from the October 31st, 2005 article in the PDN, "Marines Welcomed Warily,"

Byron Garrido, 43, of Yigo said he is not excited to see the shift of Marines to Guam. "At first, I thought it would be good, but then think back to the past," he said describing how he has seen fights break out between local residents and military personnel. Garrido said he hopes military officials will brief all troops who move to Guam about the culture on Guam and how to respect that culture. "Respect, learn where you are at," he said. "You are not in the states, this is Guam."

Here we encounter a similar problem, where the critique leaves unscathed a number of assumptions that must be tampered with.

Through the laundry list of reasons why we should support this miltiary increase we see a very important dash of culture/history (love of the US from liberation) mixed with a deluge of real-world/material factors most importantly economic. On the otherside of the issue, we have a very large dose of culture (respect us!) but little to no mention of the negative (or less than rosy) impact of the Marines in economic or material terms.

One thing that the media tends to teach very well is to what realms of life authority and value belong to, or emmanate from, and to where else should this authority be connected to. Take for example this common justification for voting for Felix Camacho in 2002, "he's a businessman, he'll know how to fix the island's economic problems." Underwood on the other hand was a teacher and therefore will only know how to fix the schools. These assumptions are actually pretty ridiculous for so many reasons, I feel like my brain would try to escape through my eye sockets if I even try to explain why. A connection like this however is common in the media, especially in a newspaper such as the PDN which is tied very closely to the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests in Guam (in other words, articulate that those who want control over the economy (for profits, for their business), should have the most control over it (but only because they have the know how to help all of us).

What we are meant to learn from the PDN coverage of the pros and cons of this and nearly all military increases, is that the positions of those in favor and support for the increase are bolstered and justified through "real world" arguments. Stone cold economic indicators and facts. Those against the increases appear in the media without any such support. There is no economic data to support whatever they say, common sense is definitely not on their side (there is for example no argument that if they don't respect our culture, interest rates will fall). The only argument they really do have is a cultural one, which as I've most recently started to write about after reading The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories by
Partha Chatterjee, seems to always crumple beneath someone who proposes to speak on behalf of the "material" or the "real" world.

As the island has shifted in the past two and a half months, so too has the media. There has been an equalizing effect. It may be small at times, and so people may not even notice it or be aware of it. It doesn't keep the PDN from still regularly reminding the people of Guam at their are owned by the United States and should just do whatever they can to embody that life as "the tip of America's spear." Nor does it keep them from writing buildup articles, which only for those who are really paying attention, can see them as angry retorts against some errant discourse floating around out their that irritates the editors. But what it has done is created far more space than before for the other side of the debate. What it has done is created a more frequent possibility that an opposing view on the buildup will not only be reported, but be in some cases, given the same amount of weight as a supporting view. I have to admit, that after years of unofficialy blackouts from news outlets on certain topics and on certain groups, it has been freshing to see an insurgent grassroots group treating like such a major player, or as something which could even be considered as opposition to the Chamber of Commerce.

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Both sides of buildup debate release lists:
Chamber, Coalition post 14 separate reasons on their Web sites
By Amritha Alladi
Pacific Daily News
January 19, 2010

Increased crime rates, stresses on the public school system, and more sex and drug trafficking are reasons the Guåhan Coalition for Peace and Justice says the military buildup's economic opportunities will be overshadowed by its negative impacts.

Responding to the Chamber of Commerce's "14 Reasons Why We Need the Military Buildup," the Guåhan Coalition of Peace and Justice released "14 reasons Why We Don't Need the Military Buildup."

According to the list posted on the Chamber's Web site, the relocation of 8,000 Marines and their 9,000 dependents to Guam will provide revenues "our government desperately needs ... in order to provide services our people depend on." The list includes a revenue surge, infrastructural improvements and investments in health-care facilities and equipment as benefits resulting from the buildup.

Yet the coalition argues there is no mention of the 26,000 jobs that will no longer be needed by 2017, according to Audrey Ward, a member of the coalition.

Among the things listed by the coalition of what the draft EIS doesn't provide are solutions for job competition between Guam residents and 9,000 military dependents scheduled to arrive.

"There are no training options outlined in the EIS to help unemployed Guamanians better qualify for buildup jobs," the coalition list states. "The military will not be helping locals get any of the positions they are offering."

Neither has the local government, for the most part. The bulk of job training being offered in connection with the military buildup has been provided by the Guam Contractors Association's Trades Academy, with some construction-related programs at Guam Community College.

The coalition also says tourism will be hindered by an increase in crime.

Plus, some tourism expansion opportunities also may curbed, too, according to Gary Hiles, chief economist with the Guam Department of Labor.

"Increased military activities will open up new economic opportunities, but at the same time, will limit or preclude operation or expansion of other productive economic activities which could employ a large number of people in more labor intensive activities, such as tourism, due to increased land use and access restrictions and create costs of opportunities lost for other activities," Hiles said.

However, Gerry Perez, the general manager of the Guam Visitors Bureau, has said that the island has been starved for cash in recent years to make necessary upgrades to the island's infrastructure and tourism attractions; the buildup would not only widen Guam's tourism market, but help fund some of those improvements, he said.

"The military buildup will stimulate new markets, attract higher-spending business travelers and generate more income to pay for improvements in public service," Perez said.

Hiles also said while the buildup will bring more jobs to the island and more revenue to the government of Guam, it will also create substantial additional capital investment for infrastructure and increased operating costs in public safety, health care and education.

But if some residents have been strongly opposed to the buildup's negative effects on the local culture and environment, local businessman James Adkins said they haven't suggested any other viable alternatives that will solve Guam's economic problems.

"We have to have something to bring cash money back onto the island," Adkins said in late December. "We are spending more money than we are bringing in."

According to Ernie Galito, deputy general manager at the Guam Visitors Bureau, Guam's proximity to Asia and its status as an American territory opens up possibilities to develop other industries.

"Guam could develop finance, insurance, arbitration or ship registry industries," Galito said. "Of course, much of the market study work has yet to be done, but these examples would seem to be the most viable opportunities outside of tourism."

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Chamber's support for buildup meets criticism
by Heather Hauswirth
KUAM NEWS
2/1/10

Guam - The back-and-forth between the Guam Chamber of Commerce and the We Are Guahan Coalition over fourteen points in support of the military buildup has created a bit of friction between members of the island's business community and coalition members who feel that the buildup will marginalize the people of Guam. With time ticking for comments to be submitted on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and buildup plans underway, we delve into the two-step the Chamber has to dance with all the special interests.

For president of the Guam Chamber of Commerce David Leddy, the Chamber's list of fourteen reasons why Guam needs the military build up is entrepreneurial in spirit. "As with any island-based economy with very limited natural resources, our options are limited, and the military economy has always co-existed with the tourism economy so we presented the fourteen reasons simply to demonstrate the positive attributes that could be derived from its growth," he said.

However, We Are Guahan members don't see eye to eye with the Chamber. They fired back with a fourteen-point rebuttal of reasons we do not need the military buildup. The Coalition boasts some 3,000 members, including Facebook fans. Cara Flores Mays is a core member who works as a self-employed web developer.

"As a businessowner, I do stand to benefit from the buildup, however I don't think it is good for our island. There is the idea that there will be more tax revenue coming in, and of course there will be more tax revenue, but there will also be a huge increase in service demand," said Mays.

Mays says the Coalition's concerns are many, but from an economic standpoint they fear the very heart of the island's economy would be in jeopardy. "I would say there needs to be a balance between what is best for the community. I don't know how the tourists will feel about it, but we will no longer be able to promote ourselves as a family friendly destination if our red light district grows," she said.

The Chamber president meanwhile welcomes differing opinions but wants it clear that the organization is against land condemnation. "Our Chamber members are people who live and work here in Guam and make their living in Guam. The Chamber though it's the voice of the business community, the local business community- first and foremost we are an advocate for our community and we do not want the people of Guam marginalized in this buildup process," said Leddy.

Yet Mays maintains that the Chamber's math overall just doesn't add up, saying, "If you balance the increased revenue with the increased demand and that's just a small portion of it, I'm just wondering how the Chamber manages that equation and how we end up benefiting from the increased tax revenue. I'd like to see that done; I'd like to see the math done on that."

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Dissecting the DEIS

For the past few weeks I've been working with some friends on writing columns for the Marianas Variety about things that we've found and analyzed about the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Guam's military buildup. The Variety has been published them daily as DEIS Perspectives, and even some members of the community, who I didn't contact have been joining the discussion. They will keep publishing the columns until the DEIS comment period ends Feb. 17th.

I published a column the week before last, and I'm currently working on another right now (ti apmam munhayan). The point of these columns was that, so many people have been talking about the DEIS and about the military buildup, but most haven't actually seen the document and perhaps don't actually know what's in it. While, I am happy to hear more and more voices which are speaking critically and negatively about the buildup, I am always happier when those voices come from a place of knowledge or engagement. The main goal of the columns wasn't to attack the buildup, but rather to show what was in the DEIS (which makes it worth attacking) and then hopefully give people the tools to write their own critical comments.

The first column that appeared a few weeks ago was written by Marie Ada Auyong and very effectively gave some background on the DEIS process and how to write good comments. In the time since, there have been great columns on jobs, roads, the economy, the environment and the firing range. I'll probably be posting more later.

For my first column, since I was tasked with discussing cultural and Chamorro issues, I decided to talk about how the military buildup will and won't affect Chamorro culture. I mentioned a number of ways in which the DEIS admits Chamorro culture and the Chamorro people will be impacted by the military buildup, but also cautioned that this buildup is not like buildups of the past and so there is not easy or automatic equation for calculating cultural damage or loss. If things such as the Chamorro langauge or certain Chamorro cultural practices do decline, it won't be directly because of the buildup, and so we should be careful not to act as if it is someone else's fault, when in truth it is our own. Para i mina'ok i lenguahi-ta, Hita la'mon. Yanggen sigi' mumafnas este i fino'-ta, debi di ta suknen maisa hit, sa' Hita muna'falingu gui'.

Because of the topic, I decided that my column would be best written in Chamorro. It took me a little extra time to write it up, because I ended up having my grandmother go over the column to make sure the Chamorro was okay. I'm pasting it below for those who are interested. Otro fino'-ta, my next piece will be in Chamorro as well. As I just said a sentence or two ago, it takes a little bit longer, but its truly important nowadays, to not just provide tokens to the language, but to actually show that it can be used for something other than Malafunkshun or tourist slogans.

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Put Taimanu na Inafekta i Kutturan Chamorro nu i Buildup

by Michael Lujan Bevacqua

1/25/10

Marianas Variety

Meggai na taotao siha guini giya Guahan manchathinasso put i mamaimaila na finatton i militat guini gi tano’-ta. Ochenta mit yan mas na prohemos u fanggaige guini gi 2014 na såkkan. Guaha manma’å’ñao na siempre manmachonnek huyong i Manchamorro para otro lugåt. Gaige gi hinasso-ta na ti åpmam mafñas i raså-ta sa’ parehu hit yan ayu i manmafa’na’ån “endangered species.” Yanggen sigi ha’ mamta’ i otro taotao siha, i Chamorro siempre malingu.

Ta tungo’ ha’ na despues di i manmaloffan na sien años siha, annai manmåtto otro nasion siha ya ma gutbetna hit, ya ma cho’gue i minalagon-ñiha giya Hita, siempre på’go ta fandeskunfiao.

Ta tungo’ ha’ lokkue’ na este siha i para u fanmacho’gue yan para u fanmakåhat siempre inafekta i Chamorro: i tano’ yan i taotao-ta. Lao guaha manera nai siña inafekta i kutturå-ta nu i finatton i militat, guaha manera lokkue’ nai ti debi di ta sukne i militat put i minalingun i kutturå-ta.

Sigun i DEIS, guaha siha manera ni’ siña inafekta i kuttura, put hemplo i sagrådu yan antigo siha na lugåt, taiguihi i Liyang Pågat yan i Sabånan Humuyong Manglo. Siña manmapribi i publiko gi duranten i såkkan, osino patte gi såkkan.

Gi che’cho’ siha yan manmakåhat sagayon siha para i militat, siempre manmadestrosu meggai na lugåt nai siña un sodda’ i trastes i lina’la’ i manmofo’na na taotao-ta yan tinanom yan trongkon håyu siha ni’ gof impottante gi i kutturan Chamorro (put hemplo trongkon ifit yan diferentes na klasin tinanom ni’ sesso manrinikohi ni’ i suruhånu siha para amot). I DEIS lokkue’, ilek-ña na put i maumentan ti Manchamorro siha na taotao, mas tumunok i nina’siñan i Chamorro gi bandan ekonimiha yan pulitikåt. I hiniyong-ña, siempre menos na salåpe mana’guaha para programma siha put i mina’ok i kutturan yan lenguahin Chamorro.

Mas ki este siha, i DEIS, ti ha li’e’ na todu i che’cho’ siha ni’ para u fanmacho’gue, inafketå-ña gi tano’ yan i taotao tano’. Ya ti ha apagåyi i responsibilidåt para i dañu.

Yanggen en hasso na i che’cho’ siha u inafekta i kuttura mas ki este siha i manmasångan, pues cho’gue taiguihi i fino’ Ingles, “connect the dots” ya sångan i hinasso-mu yan na’annok i punto-mu. Guaha siha dipattementon i Gubietnamento taiguihi The Historic Preservation Office yan The Department of Chamorro Affairs ni’ manresponsible ni’ umaligao yan tumungo’ i afekton i che’cho’ siha gi entre i Chamorro siha yan i kutturan-ñiha. Yanggen guaha malago hao na un faisen pat malago hao manrisibi infotmasion, debi di un espiha siha.

Nisissita na umahasso na achokka’ este siha i che’cho’ ha aminåsa hit na siña ha na’dåñu i lina’la’ guini giya Guahan, ti parehu este yan i manmaloffan siha na fina’pos, ko’lo’lo’ña put i kuttura. Ti parehu este na klasin “buildup” yan ayu siha gi duranten i Tiempon Españot gi 1668 pat 1672. Ti parehu lokkue’ yan i finatton i Amerikånu siha gi 1898. Guihi na tiempo siha, manmaafuestsas i Chamorro na u yute’ i lenguåhi yan kutturan-ñiha. Gi på’go na momento, Hita i manmå’gas gi kutturå-ta yan lenguahi-ta. Yanggen i lenguahi-ta sigi ha’ malingu yan i kutturå-ta tit a praktika, ti sina ta sukne i militat. Hita ha’ manggaiisao. Yanggen un gof guaiya i kutturå-mu yan i lenguahi-mu, pues taitai fine’nina i DEIS, yan tuge’ i mas tomtom na hinasso-mu ya fama’comment. Lao mina’dos, cho’gue manu i nina’siñå-mu para un na’siguru na i famagu’on-mu, i nieton-mu yan un mit na henerasion ni’ manmamaila, na siña a fanmausa este na gefpago na lenguahi-ta yan este na taitahgue na kuttura lokkue’.

Two Portraits of Tan Esther Taitano Underwood

For the first time ever in my life, I have a real job. I make not just some money, but enough money to pay my bills and to live somewhat comfortably. Its a weird feeling. Fihu chatguahu yu' put este. I'm still technically a student, since I have yet to submit the final draft of my dissertation to my graduate, but the social web around me, the way people talk about me, talk to me, expect things from me has all drastically shifted. Gi i hinasson i meggaina na taotao, esta to'a yu'. Esta gaiidat yu' sa' hokkok i umestudiante-ku.

I am a molder of young minds, or a poisoner of young minds depending on your perspective. I'm someone who has students that I advise on their work and I'm even serving on graduate student committees now. I am a father, a chaos father as I like to refer to myself. I am now an adult grandchild, so since my grandfather has become ill recently, I'm elevated to the status of being someone who attends doctor's appointments with him and rotates shifts watching him and helping take care of him everyday.

But two things snag my mind, and keep me from feeling that I've really moved on or that I've really advanced to a different stage in my life. Estague i masokka-hu. The first, as I've mentioned is that I still haven't technically finished my dissertation. People call me doctor sometimes, and I always flinch because I'm not quite there yet. I already defended, but the revisions have taken far longer than I hoped they would.

The second, is frankly salape' issues, or money issues. Even though I have a decent job now, I also have a Marianas Trench-load of debt. This debt includes both credit card and student loan, and combined it adds up to six times my annual salary as a professor at the University of Guam.

Now that I'm working I get alot of pressure from family and friends, to start buying things which mark my entrance into decent wages and middle class life. I should get a new car, I should start building a house, or start investing and saving up, or try to buy a cheap condo, house or apartment. Whenever I hear things like this, I always get scared, and worried. I start to wonder how is it that everyone around me can afford these things on less money or as much money as I get, yet when I make a budget, I can't afford any of them?

When I returned to Guam after spending the summer in the states, my family threw a party for me to celebrate my finishing my dissertation and graduating, even though, as I've said several times already, ti mismo munhayan yu'. Despite being fun and bringing together so many people that I hadn't seen in a long time or had lost touch with, the event was still very stressful. Even though family members contributed some money to help pay for the costs, I still ended up putting myself just a little bit more in debt to hold the party.

As an artist though, my mind is always filled with a thousand creative, but not practical or not effective ways of making some money or helping get myself out of debt. So for instance, while planning the party, I decided that one thing I might want to include in the schedule was a silent auction with different pieces of art that I've made over the year up for grabs.

Over the past ten years on Guam, I've contributed to dozens of silent art auctions and helped organize half a dozen, and they tend not to do very well. Guam has different types of art crowds, but no real art buying crowds, which is essential in the absence of formal patrons in terms of supporting artists and giving the means to keep producing. When I say there's no real art buying crown, I mean there's no scene where rich people, educated people, or even poor people attempt to purchase the best new thing, the hottest new artist. Guam has what you would call a tourist art market, even amongst people who live here. This means, people who buy art are looking for incredibly shallow things. They want paintings which are very simple, very cheap and with a dull sort of spice of culture.

So when I proposed to myself putting together a silent art auction, in my mind I was convincing myself that I would make some money off this, but in some more realistic corner of my mind, I knew that it was a foolish thing to do. In terms of sharing my work with family and friends, it was a good idea, but actually making any money off of it was a joke. Nonetheless I started going through all my storage on Guam, looking for paintings or prints that reflected different points in my artist careers. Abstracts, portraits, figurative/expressive figures, sunsets, famalao'an. I even found some t-shirts and posters from some of my old shows. A copy of the books Sumahi the Blacksmith and Sumahi the Storyteller. I even put out some political buttons that I had purchased while I was in Denver last year at the Democratic National Convention.

The day of my party, my nephew Dylan and I paintined a big canvas banner to be hung over the auction area. The banner read: " SILENT ART AUCTION: Guam Economic Recovery Act for Student Loan Relief and General Art Opportunity Increase." The title was meant to reflect the awkward nature of the titles of Congressional bills, but also meant to reflect my desire to somehow magically receive some of that infamous stimulus money that everyone is always talking about. In addition to this title, we added a Guam seal, a flying proa and a sunset.

Of the twenty items that I put out for auction, 2/3 of them were bid on. Of that 2/3 that were bid on, about half actually ended up picking up their artwork and paying for it. I raised about two hundred from the event, which was a nice touch, although as a poor artist, who has become more used to people not buying my stuff than ever buying it, I was just glad that the paintings had left the boxes or the closets they were stored in, and hopefully would end up on peoples' walls.

A few weeks after the party, when I had already started working at the University of Guam, I received an email from my uncle, my hero and my boss at the University of Guam, former Guam Congressman, current UOG president Robert Underwood. Congressman Underwood had been at my party, and had even written me a touching, but truthful message to me on a large board upon which people could write their wishes or wisdom or congratulations to me. He had written "Bunito i che'cho'-mu, lao guaha mas." As I said, touching, but truthful. For Robert Underwood, someone whose work I have admired so much, and without which, the things I would say would still considered to be insane or too radical, to see that "my work (or what I've done) is beautiful" is in some ways a dream come true. Its very similar to the moment where Chamorro singer Johnny Sablan, came up to me and thanked me for a blog post that I had written about his version of the song An Gumupu Si Paluma. Here was Johnny Sablan, someone whose songs had such a big impact on me, my acquiring and loving the Chamorro language, thanking and complimenting me!

But, the truthful aspect of his message, was the sobering second half, "lao guaha mas." A reminder, that even if what I have done is excellent or important, there is always more to do. Gi este na tinige'-na ha na'hahasso yu' put i na'an este na blog, "No Rest for the Awake."

Back to the email I received from Underwood. It referenced the student loan debt that I had frequently mentioned at my party and also the hopes that I could sell some of my art in order to retire it. Underwood asked me to paint a picture of his mother, my grandmother's first cousin, Tan Esther Taitano Underwood, and offered to help me and the alleviating of my student loan debt, by paying me for the painting. School, dissertation writing, parenting, a sick grandfather and the usual spate of activist activities all helped contribute to several months passing before I eventually finished the painting. Or actually, in truth, I should say that several months passed before I finished the two paintings.

Robert Underwood gave me some photos of his mother to scan, from different points in her life. I also did some research at the Guam Public Library, and looked up her file in the Guam Educators Hall of Fame. I decided upon two pictures, one when Tan Stet was in her eighties, with those large biha glasses, pure white hair and a priceless smile. The other picture was of a more restrained smile, when Tan Stet was several decades younger, when she was on vacation with family in Mexico. With these two pictures I decided to paint two different portraits, and then let Underwood choose which one he preferred. Both of them represent different approaches and styles, neither of which are my usual instincts when painting, but when given the opportunity to create something to important for Underwood, I could not pass up the chance.

Below are pictures of the two portraits. Which one do you prefer? Which one do you think Underwood would want to keep?

GUAM DEIS

MINAGAHET ZINE

"GUAM DEIS"

Volume 8 Issue 1

January 10, 2010

Hafa Adai, yan welcome to i mina'kuarenta unu na Minagahet.

While speaking to a friend the other day she remarked that what is happening right now on Guam is the most pivotal moment in our lives, we will find the near future of this island and everyone on it defined by what happens in the next few months and then, the next few years. My friend was of course referring to the massive military buildup which the United States Department of Defense has been planning since at least 2005, and is less than a year away from "officially" starting. My friend went so far as to say that this will be what for us, what I Tiempon Chapones or World War II was for our parents and grandparents. Ti manggaige hit pa'go gi i parehu na klasin gera, lao guaha minagahet gi este na sinangan.

Even if you look objectively at the buildup and what is being planned for Guam and how it will likely be impacted, then this is not hyperbole. Very serious problems loom on the horizon. Guam will, over the next few years be hit with a literal time bomb, meaning that it will be forced to undergo 20 years of natural population growth in just 5. At its peak of military construction Guam's population will increase by 80,000 people. All public services from utilities, to health care, to infrastructure such as roads will all be strained by this increase. Teneki manlinemlem hit gi 2015 put Guahan.

For those of you who don't know, last November, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the military buildup was released, and the Government and people of Guam have until February 17th to read this document and respond to it. The DEIS is i guinifen i militat, it is basically full of their dreams. The dreams they have for what they want to do to the island, and also dreams meaning how optimistic they are about how limited the negative impacts will be. The DEIS itself is ominous and almost seems to take on a life all its own. It is more than 8,000 pages long, and as you pour through its pages, you can actually feel the life being drained from you. The sheer volume of what Guam will face itself should send everyone into the streets to protest. Not only will at least 8,600 Marines and their 9,000 dependents be transferred from Okinawa to Guam, but the buildup also entrails the creation of a missile defense task force, dredging of Apra Harbor to make way for an aircraft berth and also massive amount of construction for housing and land to be leased or bought to make way for training and firing ranges. All in all the DEIS estimates that the military, in addition to the 30% of the island they already control, will seek to obtain at least 2300 more acres.

It is crucial that during this short period of comment for the DEIS, that people on Guam make known their concerns, their discontent and their frustration. There are a multitude of ways in which we can do these things, both within the system and without it. Those who are interested can read through the DEIS and provide some comments or questions, raise concerns or suggest alternatives and give them all the Joint Guam Program Office before the February 17th deadline. For those who see this commenting process as a farce, and that our comments don't really matter, just as our interests have not value here since Guam wasn't even consulted as to whether or not it wanted or could handle this buildup, there are other venues as well. There are groups who are trying to organize and mobilize people. They are reading through the DEIS and disseminating its contents, picking out the problematic or scary parts so that people who don't have time to scan through an 8,000 page monster of a document can still be informed. They are also planning demonstrations and protests, working to put pressure on Guam's leaders and regulatory agencies, to not just rubber stamp this DEIS, but to actively challenge it.

For those of you who are looking for information, you are in luck as there are a number of websites out there which are actively collecting and disseminating information on the buildup. First off we have the usual suspects the Guam-Guam-Guam Blog, and the Decolonize Guam Blog. But recently two more websites dedicated to a more critical and progressive take on events on Guam ( in particular related to militarization) have appeared. They are Mil-Marianas and We Are Guahan. The Para Guahan website also has information about how to get involved in resisting or critiquing the military buildup.

Put fin, in this issue of Minagahet Zine, I've brought together a number of different articles on the military buildup. One thing that has given me much hope over the past few months, is how many people have appeared (kalang ginne taya' gi hinasso-ku) to not only pass on information, but also speak up and stand out. Since this round of militarization was first announced in 2005, there are been plenty of grumbling on Guam, but very few people writing about it, thinking about it and providing some commentary to the struggle. I'm glad to no longer feel like this is the case, as I now see around me many others who are writing and seeking to articulate in creative and urgent ways, what is happening on Guam now and what lies ahead for us if we don't act now.
Meggai para ta cho'gue, pues sa' hafa sigi un taitai este? Fanhuyong yan fanachu!

Sahuma Minagahet yan Na'suha Dinagi

Sahuma

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ARTICLES

The Real Story Behind the Marianas Military Buildup

by Koohan Paik
A Military Buildup Fact Sheet

"The Military Buildup is NOT a “done deal," as the Pacific Daily News would have us believe... So, it isn't a "done deal" after all. It is a future that can be shaped by the strategy and foresight of the people, starting at the grassroots."
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Who Can We Trust?

by Kie Susuico
Testimony Given to the 30th Guam Legislature

"This is why we cannot allow Pagat to become another name on the list of places where the u.s. has uprooted our people and severed our connection to the land, wiping all traces of our history off the face of the island like they've done in Sumai, Fena, Me'po, Ypao, Ulunao, Litekyan, Jinapsan, Talage and Machananao, just to name a few."
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Guam Resists Military Colonization

by Ann Wright
From Common Dreams

"Guam officials said that they too have been perturbed about the extraordinarily high expenditures on US military base facilities, when the Government of Guam is strapped financially. The officials said they were amazed and horrified when they learned that the Air Force recently built an on-base animal kennel for $27 million, with each animal space costing $100,000, when locally, the government is unable to provide sufficient infrastructure for its citizens, much less animals."
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Militarization on Guam and the Erasing of Places

by Sasha Davis
Written after a research trip to the Marianas in 2007

"These military plans view Guam through a distinctly colonial eye. Preserving historical sites, maintaining the island’s environmental integrity, continuing access for cultural practices, establishing original land ownership; these factors are erased through the representations of place portrayed in the maps and plans the military produces. What is left off these maps? What exists under the red dashed lines of future firing ranges?"
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Hi! We're Guam, Nice to Meet You

by Desiree Taimanglo Ventura
From The Drowning Mermaid

"This Organic Act is something that you really need to understand if you are trying to give us advice. You can't tell us to run to our local government, because the truth is... our local government isn't real. Our governor and locally elected leaders do not really run the island. Our island is actually run by the Department of the Interior. This means that any laws made on Guam can be reversed by Congress. The United States has complete power over us; and can legally do anything they want with the island and its people."
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Guam as a Modern Day Bikini

by Patrick Thibodeau
From the Guam Blog

"Guam has no choice in the build-up. The interests of the people of Guam are secondary to U.S. strategic needs. The people of Bikini lost their entire island. Guam’s people have lost a third of their island to the military and stand to lose more. Disfranchised from voting and out of mind in Washington, Guam has no more voice in the build-up than the Bikini islanders did."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Negotiating Our Future

Tinige' Si Michael Lujan Bevacqua
From Guamology

"There are always two ways in which a community can respond to a crisis, the first is to cling to the ways things are and just pray that all will be okay. The second is to try something different. Even if it seems radical, crazy or impossible, a period of difficulty can be the best incentive to try something else, to work to free yourself from dependency or work to build your own sustainability. As Guam faces this military buildup and the possible benefits, changes and damages that it will bring to Guam, which path do you think we should take?"
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chamorros Must Weigh Pros and Cons of Self-Determination

by Wyld Hook
"When the Chamorros of Guam are debating future political status, they must consider the pros and cons. Many point to the trickle of Military Spending and sub-standard social assistance as invaluable benefits that the U.S. bestows upon the Guamanians. However, it’s the United States that benefits far more from Guam ."

________________________________________________________________________________________
Hita Guahan! Chamorro Testimonies at the United Nations - 2008

Hita Guåhan is a compilation of testimonies presented by Chamorus from Guåhan to the United Nations in New York in 2008. These testimonies carry on the legacy of more than 20 years of Chamorus who’ve appealed to the United Nations on behalf of Guam and Chamoru human rights. It can be downloaded free of charge by clicking the above link.

Adios Howard Zinn

Matai gi i ma'pos na simana Si Howard Zinn. Gof ya-hu i tinige'-na siha, pi'ot i lepblo-na A People's History of the United States. Un diha puede ha' bai hu fanuuge' un lepblo put i estorian Guahan, ginnen i sinienten i manakpappa' na taotao guini.

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Published on Thursday, January 28, 2010 by The Progressive
A Just Cause, Not a Just War
by Howard Zinn

Editor's note: The following essay appeared in the December issue of The Progressive in 2001, and was reposted here at CommonDreams.org shortly after, just three months following the events of September 11th. As Rudyard Kipling long ago and famously observed, you can recognize wisdom amidst crisis by locating those who 'keep their heads when all about are losing theirs.' Zinn's work is too vast and too incalculable to paraphrase or compile, but when you read his Violence Doesn't Work or Changing Obama's Mindset you easily understand the wisdom and integrity of a man who saw beyond the hysteria of a moment. Howard Zinn was, as Daniel Ellsberg has said, "the best human being I've ever known. The best example of what a human can be, and can do with their life." We could hardly agree more.


A Just Cause, Not a Just War (December, 2001)

I believe two moral judgments can be made about the present "war": The September 11 attack constitutes a crime against humanity and cannot be justified, and the bombing of Afghanistan is also a crime, which cannot be justified.

And yet, voices across the political spectrum, including many on the left, have described this as a "just war." One longtime advocate of peace, Richard Falk, wrote in The Nation that this is "the first truly just war since World War II." Robert Kuttner, another consistent supporter of social justice, declared in The American Prospect that only people on the extreme left could believe this is not a just war.

I have puzzled over this. How can a war be truly just when it involves the daily killing of civilians, when it causes hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to leave their homes to escape the bombs, when it may not find those who planned the September 11 attacks, and when it will multiply the ranks of people who are angry enough at this country to become terrorists themselves?

This war amounts to a gross violation of human rights, and it will produce the exact opposite of what is wanted: It will not end terrorism; it will proliferate terrorism.

I believe that the progressive supporters of the war have confused a "just cause" with a "just war." There are unjust causes, such as the attempt of the United States to establish its power in Vietnam, or to dominate Panama or Grenada, or to subvert the government of Nicaragua. And a cause may be just--getting North Korea to withdraw from South Korea, getting Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait, or ending terrorism--but it does not follow that going to war on behalf of that cause, with the inevitable mayhem that follows, is just.

The stories of the effects of our bombing are beginning to come through, in bits and pieces. Just eighteen days into the bombing, The New York Times reported: "American forces have mistakenly hit a residential area in Kabul." Twice, U.S. planes bombed Red Cross warehouses, and a Red Cross spokesman said: "Now we've got 55,000 people without that food or blankets, with nothing at all."

An Afghan elementary school-teacher told a Washington Post reporter at the Pakistan border: "When the bombs fell near my house and my babies started crying, I had no choice but to run away."

A New York Times report: "The Pentagon acknowledged that a Navy F/A-18 dropped a 1,000-pound bomb on Sunday near what officials called a center for the elderly. . . . The United Nations said the building was a military hospital. . . . Several hours later, a Navy F-14 dropped two 500-pound bombs on a residential area northwest of Kabul." A U.N. official told a New York Times reporter that an American bombing raid on the city of Herat had used cluster bombs, which spread deadly "bomblets" over an area of twenty football fields. This, the Times reporter wrote,"was the latest of a growing number of accounts of American bombs going astray and causing civilian casualties."

An A.P. reporter was brought to Karam, a small mountain village hit by American bombs, and saw houses reduced to rubble. "In the hospital in Jalalabad, twenty-five miles to the east, doctors treated what they said were twenty-three victims of bombing at Karam, one a child barely two months old, swathed in bloody bandages," according to the account. "Another child, neighbors said, was in the hospital because the bombing raid had killed her entire family. At least eighteen fresh graves were scattered around the village."

The city of Kandahar, attacked for seventeen straight days, was reported to be a ghost town, with more than half of its 500,000 people fleeing the bombs. The city's electrical grid had been knocked out. The city was deprived of water, since the electrical pumps could not operate. A sixty-year-old farmer told the A.P. reporter, "We left in fear of our lives. Every day and every night, we hear the roaring and roaring of planes, we see the smoke, the fire. . . . I curse them both--the Taliban and America."

A New York Times report from Pakistan two weeks into the bombing campaign told of wounded civilians coming across the border. "Every half-hour or so throughout the day, someone was brought across on a stretcher. . . . Most were bomb victims, missing limbs or punctured by shrapnel. . . . A young boy, his head and one leg wrapped in bloodied bandages, clung to his father's back as the old man trudged back to Afghanistan."

That was only a few weeks into the bombing, and the result had already been to frighten hundreds of thousands of Afghans into abandoning their homes and taking to the dangerous, mine-strewn roads. The "war against terrorism" has become a war against innocent men, women, and children, who are in no way responsible for the terrorist attack on New York.
And yet there are those who say this is a "just war."

Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end. I can see an immediate objection to this equation: They (the terrorists) deliberately kill innocent people; we (the war makers) aim at "military targets," and civilians are killed by accident, as "collateral damage."

Is it really an accident when civilians die under our bombs? Even if you grant that the intention is not to kill civilians, if they nevertheless become victims, again and again and again, can that be called an accident? If the deaths of civilians are inevitable in bombing, it may not be deliberate, but it is not an accident, and the bombers cannot be considered innocent. They are committing murder as surely as are the terrorists.

The absurdity of claiming innocence in such cases becomes apparent when the death tolls from "collateral damage" reach figures far greater than the lists of the dead from even the most awful act of terrorism. Thus, the "collateral damage" in the Gulf War caused more people to die--hundreds of thousands, if you include the victims of our sanctions policy--than the very deliberate terrorist attack of September 11. The total of those who have died in Israel from Palestinian terrorist bombs is somewhere under 1,000. The number of dead from "collateral damage" in the bombing of Beirut during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was roughly 6,000.

We must not match the death lists--it is an ugly exercise--as if one atrocity is worse than another. No killing of innocents, whether deliberate or "accidental," can be justified. My argument is that when children die at the hands of terrorists, or--whether intended or not--as a result of bombs dropped from airplanes, terrorism and war become equally unpardonable.

Let's talk about "military targets." The phrase is so loose that President Truman, after the nuclear bomb obliterated the population of Hiroshima, could say: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

What we are hearing now from our political leaders is, "We are targeting military objectives. We are trying to avoid killing civilians. But that will happen, and we regret it." Shall the American people take moral comfort from the thought that we are bombing only "military targets"?

The reality is that the term "military" covers all sorts of targets that include civilian populations. When our bombers deliberately destroy, as they did in the war against Iraq, the electrical infrastructure, thus making water purification and sewage treatment plants inoperable and leading to epidemic waterborne diseases, the deaths of children and other civilians cannot be called accidental.

Recall that in the midst of the Gulf War, the U.S. military bombed an air raid shelter, killing 400 to 500 men, women, and children who were huddled to escape bombs. The claim was that it was a military target, housing a communications center, but reporters going through the ruins immediately afterward said there was no sign of anything like that.

I suggest that the history of bombing--and no one has bombed more than this nation--is a history of endless atrocities, all calmly explained by deceptive and deadly language like "accident," "military targets," and "collateral damage."

Indeed, in both World War II and in Vietnam, the historical record shows that there was a deliberate decision to target civilians in order to destroy the morale of the enemy--hence the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, the B-52s over Hanoi, the jet bombers over peaceful villages in the Vietnam countryside. When some argue that we can engage in "limited military action" without "an excessive use of force," they are ignoring the history of bombing. The momentum of war rides roughshod over limits.

The moral equation in Afghanistan is clear. Civilian casualties are certain. The outcome is uncertain. No one knows what this bombing will accomplish--whether it will lead to the capture of Osama Bin Laden (perhaps), or the end of the Taliban (possibly), or a democratic Afghanistan (very unlikely), or an end to terrorism (almost certainly not).

And meanwhile, we are terrorizing the population (not the terrorists, they are not easily terrorized). Hundreds of thousands are packing their belongings and their children onto carts and leaving their homes to make dangerous journeys to places they think might be more safe.
Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a "war against terrorism."

We might examine the idea of pacifism in the light of what is going on right now. I have never used the word "pacifist" to describe myself, because it suggests something absolute, and I am suspicious of absolutes. I want to leave openings for unpredictable possibilities. There might be situations (and even such strong pacifists as Gandhi and Martin Luther King believed this) when a small, focused act of violence against a monstrous, immediate evil would be justified.

In war, however, the proportion of means to ends is very, very different. War, by its nature, is unfocused, indiscriminate, and especially in our time when the technology is so murderous, inevitably involves the deaths of large numbers of people and the suffering of even more. Even in the "small wars" (Iran vs. Iraq, the Nigerian war, the Afghan war), a million people die. Even in a "tiny" war like the one we waged in Panama, a thousand or more die.

Scott Simon of NPR wrote a commentary in The Wall Street Journal on October 11 entitled, "Even Pacifists Must Support This War." He tried to use the pacifist acceptance of self-defense, which approves a focused resistance to an immediate attacker, to justify this war, which he claims is "self-defense." But the term "self-defense" does not apply when you drop bombs all over a country and kill lots of people other than your attacker. And it doesn't apply when there is no likelihood that it will achieve its desired end.

Pacifism, which I define as a rejection of war, rests on a very powerful logic. In war, the means--indiscriminate killing--are immediate and certain; the ends, however desirable, are distant and uncertain.

Pacifism does not mean "appeasement." That word is often hurled at those who condemn the present war on Afghanistan, and it is accompanied by references to Churchill, Chamberlain, Munich. World War II analogies are conveniently summoned forth when there is a need to justify a war, however irrelevant to a particular situation. At the suggestion that we withdraw from Vietnam, or not make war on Iraq, the word "appeasement" was bandied about. The glow of the "good war" has repeatedly been used to obscure the nature of all the bad wars we have fought since 1945.

Let's examine that analogy. Czechoslovakia was handed to the voracious Hitler to "appease" him. Germany was an aggressive nation expanding its power, and to help it in its expansion was not wise. But today we do not face an expansionist power that demands to be appeased. We ourselves are the expansionist power--troops in Saudi Arabia, bombings of Iraq, military bases all over the world, naval vessels on every sea--and that, along with Israel's expansion into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has aroused anger.

It was wrong to give up Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler. It is not wrong to withdraw our military from the Middle East, or for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, because there is no right to be there. That is not appeasement. That is justice.

Opposing the bombing of Afghanistan does not constitute "giving in to terrorism" or "appeasement." It asks that other means be found than war to solve the problems that confront us. King and Gandhi both believed in action--nonviolent direct action, which is more powerful and certainly more morally defensible than war.

To reject war is not to "turn the other cheek," as pacifism has been caricatured. It is, in the present instance, to act in ways that do not imitate the terrorists.

The United States could have treated the September 11 attack as a horrific criminal act that calls for apprehending the culprits, using every device of intelligence and investigation possible. It could have gone to the United Nations to enlist the aid of other countries in the pursuit and apprehension of the terrorists.

There was also the avenue of negotiations. (And let's not hear: "What? Negotiate with those monsters?" The United States negotiated with--indeed, brought into power and kept in power--some of the most monstrous governments in the world.) Before Bush ordered in the bombers, the Taliban offered to put bin Laden on trial. This was ignored. After ten days of air attacks, when the Taliban called for a halt to the bombing and said they would be willing to talk about handing bin Laden to a third country for trial, the headline the next day in The New York Times read: "President Rejects Offer by Taliban for Negotiations," and Bush was quoted as saying: "When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations."

That is the behavior of someone hellbent on war. There were similar rejections of negotiating possibilities at the start of the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the bombing of Yugoslavia. The result was an immense loss of life and incalculable human suffering.
International police work and negotiations were--still are--alternatives to war. But let's not deceive ourselves; even if we succeeded in apprehending bin Laden or, as is unlikely, destroying the entire Al Qaeda network, that would not end the threat of terrorism, which has potential recruits far beyond Al Qaeda.

To get at the roots of terrorism is complicated. Dropping bombs is simple. It is an old response to what everyone acknowledges is a very new situation. At the core of unspeakable and unjustifiable acts of terrorism are justified grievances felt by millions of people who would not themselves engage in terrorism but from whose ranks terrorists spring.

Those grievances are of two kinds: the existence of profound misery-- hunger, illness--in much of the world, contrasted to the wealth and luxury of the West, especially the United States; and the presence of American military power everywhere in the world, propping up oppressive regimes and repeatedly intervening with force to maintain U.S. hegemony.

This suggests actions that not only deal with the long-term problem of terrorism but are in themselves just.

Instead of using two planes a day to drop food on Afghanistan and 100 planes to drop bombs (which have been making it difficult for the trucks of the international agencies to bring in food), use 102 planes to bring food.

Take the money allocated for our huge military machine and use it to combat starvation and disease around the world. One-third of our military budget would annually provide clean water and sanitation facilities for the billion people in the world who have none.

Withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia, because their presence near the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina angers not just bin Laden (we need not care about angering him) but huge numbers of Arabs who are not terrorists.

Stop the cruel sanctions on Iraq, which are killing more than a thousand children every week without doing anything to weaken Saddam Hussein's tyrannical hold over the country.

Insist that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories, something that many Israelis also think is right, and which will make Israel more secure than it is now.

In short, let us pull back from being a military superpower, and become a humanitarian superpower.

Let us be a more modest nation. We will then be more secure. The modest nations of the world don't face the threat of terrorism.

Such a fundamental change in foreign policy is hardly to be expected. It would threaten too many interests: the power of political leaders, the ambitions of the military, the corporations that profit from the nation's enormous military commitments.

Change will come, as at other times in our history, only when American citizens-- becoming better informed, having second thoughts after the first instinctive support for official policy--demand it. That change in citizen opinion, especially if it coincides with a pragmatic decision by the government that its violence isn't working, could bring about a retreat from the military solution.

It might also be a first step in the rethinking of our nation's role in the world. Such a rethinking contains the promise, for Americans, of genuine security, and for people elsewhere, the beginning of hope.

© 2010 The Progressive

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) is the author of “A People’s History of the United States,” “Voices of a People’s History” (with Anthony Arnove), and “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress."

Buildup/Breakdown #9: Okinawa

Amidst all the discussion of US - Japanese relations and the feelings of Guam being excluded from this process, or being yet again an object of US militarization, its easy to forget about the place where the Marines are coming from to Guam. Namely Okinawa.

Early on in the buildup process, people on Guam didn't know much about Okinawa, and despite years of this "transfer" looming over our heads, we still don't know very much. Those who have served there have some recollections of life there, but for the most part our imagining of Okinawa is defined solely by the premise that the people there, don't want the Marines there anymore and are thus sending them here. Some high-profile rapes by US Marines of Okinawan women and young girls have helped to cement this impression in people's minds. In a way, this lack of information has been helpful in pushing people to be distrusting of the buildup and those who are planning it. The lack of a strong connection with Okinawa, has let peoples' imaginations run wild and helped create a strong, but factless resistance. For instance, if last year, you were speaking to a crowd of people who were sort of undecided on the buildup, to get them moving in a critical direction you need only ask them "Why are they being kicked out of Okinawa?" or "Why do the Okinawans not want them? Why should we?

Although I have appreciated that, its been disappointing, because even in resisting this buildup and what it predicated on, namely the Department of Defense thinking of Guam primarily as its spear tip and little more, people on Guam have sometimes come to think of Okinawa in the same way. We assume that its just another part of Japan and thus erase its own colonial history and present. We reduce it to a caricature in the same way the Chamber of Commerce sometimes does to Guam in order to sell it to the DOD.

In this imagining, its often lost that Okinawa has itself long been a colonial or a sort of exceptional territory in relation to Japan, in the same way that Guam is to the United States. Not all Japanese consider Okinawa to really be part of their country and not all Okinawans consider themselves to be a fair and equal part of Japan. I have heard and read plenty of critiques about Okinawa's treatment by the Japanese home government, which treats them more like a weapon or a possession which can be sold or leased off to foreign powers in the making of defense agreements. I have also heard Okinawas discuss themselves as culturally distinct from the Japanese. But I have never heard this articulated by anyone from Okinawa as being a political difference, in the way in some Guam say that its colonial difference between its colonizer requires decolonization or a political status change.

For most people, these sorts of distinctions don't matter, but for those who are trying to resist militarism or seek peace instead of war in the Peace (or Asia-Pacific), it is crucial to see Okinawa as its own community, just as complex and complicated as Guam. As I've complained about before on this blog, for years (after the buildup was first announced), there was a massive gap between Guam and Okinawa, which both the Government of Guam and the media on Guam helped to create.

Governor Camacho's decision in 2005 to not meet with representatives from Okinawa that were traveling to Guam, set the tone for the past four years of how Guam would relate to this place form which the Marines were coming to Guam. They would relate to it through the United States. They would rely on representatives of the Department of Defense to tell you about it and tell you what's going on there. For any and all information on the buildup, the words that came out of someone representing the United States were assumed to be the truth, and both the Government of Guam (especially the Governor's Office) and the media here helped maintain this idea.

So when there would be some rumor that there were problems on the Japan side of this deal, the media here would go straight to JGPO or the DOD to hear what they had to say, and whatever they said was the reported as the truth. In recent months however, this "truth" has been repeatedly challenged, to the point where (thankfully) it no longer exists. Historic power shifts in Japan last year set the stage for everything to possibly change in terms of the buildup, or at least be delayed. Although we should be grateful that this openness and willingness to see Okinawa as something other than what the US military says it is, it is disappointing that it took this long. How much time was wasted over the past four years while we waited for another Federal official or Navy commander to come through to tell us what was going on? Or how much energy did we waste worrying about the unknown of this buildup, when Japan and Okinawa are literally just a short plane ride away?

Just last week, there was some more interesting news out of Okinawa related to this buildup. As I've written about before, this buildup on Guam is part of a large agreement between Japan and the United States, which involves the movement of, closing of, opening of other facilities throughout Japan. In the past, the position of the US has been that if one part goes, the whole thing stops. Its either all or nothing.

A recent mayoral election in Okinawa represents another potential snag in the whole process. Read below for more information.

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Mayor's election in Okinawa is setback for U.S. air base move
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 25, 2010

TOKYO -- In a small-town election that may have a big impact on U.S. ties with Japan, voters in Nago on Okinawa chose a new mayor Sunday who opposes the relocation of a noisy U.S. military air base to his town.

Susumu Inamine, who said during his campaign that he did not want the air station constructed in Nago, defeated the incumbent, Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, who has long supported hosting the base as a way of increasing jobs and investment.

"I was campaigning in the election with a pledge not to have a new base built," Inamine told supporters Sunday night.

The United States and Japan agreed four years ago to move the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, now located in a dense urban area in the center of Okinawa, to Nago, a town of 60,000 in the thinly populated northern part of the tropical island. It was to have been built on landfill along a pristine coast on the edge of the town.

But to the exasperation of the Obama administration, that deal was put on hold last fall after the election of a new government led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who says Japan has been too passive in its dealings with the United States. Hatoyama has suggested that the base be moved off Okinawa or out of Japan altogether -- and has also said that the outcome of the mayoral vote in Nago would be a factor in his government's final decision, which he has promised to make by May.

Inamine's anti-base campaign attracted support from environmentalists and from local members of Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan and its coalition partners, as well as from the Japanese Communist Party.

Nago's mayor avoided mention of the airbase in his campaign, saying its relocation was not a matter that could or should be decided by him or residents of his city.

That view is shared by U.S. Marine Corps commanders, who view the Futenma air station as a linchpin in the continuous training and on-call mobility of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force, which is based on Okinawa and is the only such U.S. force in the Far East.

"National security policy cannot be made in towns and villages," Lt. Gen. Keith J. Stalder, commander of Marine forces in the Pacific, said in an interview last week.

Relocating the Marine air station to Nago is a key part of a $26 billion deal between Japan and the United States to transfer 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam and turn over valuable tracts of land to people on the island. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said last fall that the deal would probably collapse if the air station does not move to Nago.

Several U.S. officials said last week they believe that senior leaders in the Hatoyama government have begun to realize that there is no workable alternative to relocating the air station as previously agreed. They also said that such an important decision should be made in Tokyo and not in a local election.

Construction of the air station in Nago would require a massive landfill in a picturesque stretch of waters now used by fishermen and snorkelers. It is opposed by environmentalists who have filed a lawsuit saying it would destroy habitat of the rare dugong, a manatee-like sea mammal. A Japanese government environmental assessment has said that dugongs have not been seen in the proposed construction area for many years.

For many Okinawans, the Futenma air station has become a symbol of the noise, pollution and risk of accidents that they associate with the large U.S. military presence on the island.

Surrounded by 92,000 people in the city of Ginowan, Futenma torments its neighbors with the comings and going of combat helicopters and transport aircraft.

In 2004, a helicopter based at the airfield crashed into the administration building of a nearby college. There were no deaths, but the incident angered local residents and led to the 2006 agreement to move the air base to Nago.

The vote in Nago does not necessarily kill the relocation of the air station. The final decision is up to the governor of Okinawa, who has shown qualified support for the base relocation plan, and the central government in Tokyo.

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Japan Municipal Election Win Bad For Guam
ABC Radio Australia
1/26/10

A municipal election in Japan has thrown American plans to reorganise its military forces in the Pacific, including its proposed buildup on Guam, into disarray.

Weekend elections in the town of Nago, on the Japanese island of Okinawa, were won in a bitter campaign against honouring a US-Japan deal that would see a Marine airbase relocated from Futenma to Nago.

The win almost certainly means mroe delays for Washington's plans to reorganise its forces in the Pacific.

Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speaker: Susumu Inamine, mayor-elect of Nago; Yukio Hatoyama, Japan's prime minister; Gavan McCormack, Japan defence analyst at the Australian National University; Gary Hiles, chief economist at the Guam Department of Labour

PODGER: Nago is a tourist town in northern Okinawa - famous for its beaches and pineapple fields. But it's also home to US Marine Camp Schwab. Four years ago the previous US and Japanese administrations reached a deal to relocate the US Marine Corp's Futenma base to Camp Schwab. Since then, there's been a change of government in both Washington and Tokyo and there's escalating opposition on Okinawa to the US presence. Locals are angry at the pollution and noise that come with an airbase, and there's persistent anger following a series of high-profile rape cases involving US soldiers. In Nago, Susumu Inamine ran a vocal campaign against the relocation, and won.

INAMINE: I wish to deliver the voice of people to the nation and prefecture.

PODGER: I wish to deliver the voice of the people to the nation, Mr Inamine told his supporters at his post-election celebration.. It was a firm message to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. In response, Mr Hatoyama has promised to find an alternative site to Nago for the Futenma facility, within four months.

HATOYAMA: As expressed before, the government will take responsibility and present a final decision by the end of May - starting from a clean sheet. We will definitely carry it out.

PODGER: Professor Gavan McCormack is a Japan defence analyst at the Australian National University. He says Mr Hatoyama may be hard-pressed to find an alternative to Nago within that timeframe.

MCCORMACK: Investigative groups are going around the country looking at alternative sites, but to find an alternative site and then to persuade the Pentagon that that site will serve all American military objectives by May - it's a very tough call.

PODGER: Professor McCormack says there are half a dozen potential alternatives for Futenma inside Japan. Another option that's been put forward is to ditch the idea of relocating Futenma within Japan altogether, and focus on Guam instead.

MCCORMACK: There's also the fact that the Marines themselves have been planning for a huge expansion of the Guam facility, and some Okinawan specialists on this matter suggest even that the American Pentagon plan is a plan that would make the Hinoko plan unnecessary because most of the Marine facilities are going to be withdrawn to Guam anyway.

PODGER: That's rung alarm bells in Guam, where there are already concerns about whether the health system, schools and infrastructure like ports and roads can cope with the US troops and facilities the buildup will involve. Gary Hiles is the chief economist at the Department of Labor.

HILES: That was proposed previously by the government of Japan, and the governor of Guam has indicated that Guam really can't handle a much larger expansion than is currently proposed.

PODGER: At the same time, the build-up is being looked to by Guam as a major new source of jobs and income. It's barely a week since the head of the US Joint Guam Project office, US Major General David Bice, said the transfer of 8-thousand US Marines from Okinawa to Guam would be delayed by two years to 2014 and both Tokyo and Washington have hinted even that deadline may not be kept. Gary Hiles says the election outcome in the Nago may further delay the Guam build-up holding up federal and private construction projects, and impacting on local jobs.

HILES: Certainly there's private investors that are planning for things such as worker housing and looking forward to getting some of these contracts for military construction activities that could be affected if there's a delay. So at the moment it's kind of a wait and see and we'll try to assess the situation and see how it plays out.

PODGER: But while another delay in the arrival of US military personnel on Guam has some downsides, there's a silver lining - a bit of extra time, Mr Hiles says, to get the facilities the troops will need on arrival, ready in time.

HILES: There's a lot of activities related to the infrastructure and the roads and the port, the educational system - the additional time and to secure funding and implement projects would be helpful.

PODGER: Whether or not Prime Minister Hatoyama can find an alternative to Nago for the Futenma airbase, either by May or, indeed, at all, Japan analyst Professor Gavan McCormack says Tokyo remains firmly committed to its multi-billion-dollar contribution towards the Guam facility.

MCCORMACK: There's no - or there's little - dispute in Japan as to the obligation entered into by the previous government to pay $US6 billion towards the expansion of Marine facilities on Guam. That, I think, is not in question. But what is in question is whether in addition to that $US6 billion, the Japanese government will proceed to construct a huge new Marine facility in Okinawa or indeed elsewhere in Japan. That's what at issue I think now.

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FOCUS: Nago race puts Hatoyama under pressure to pick new site for Futemma
NAGO, Japan, Jan. 24 KYODO
January 24 2010 21:54

21:54:00 Sunday January 24, 2010 in Japan converts to
22:54:00 Sunday January 24, 2010 in Pacific/Guam

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is now under further pressure to pick a new site outside Okinawa Prefecture for relocating the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station following Sunday's victory in the mayoral race in Nago, Okinawa, of a candidate who has been opposed to accepting any more U.S. facilities.

In the closely watched mayoral election, Susumu Inamine, 64, defeated incumbent Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, 63, who said his city would accept the Futemma airfield if the government led by Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan decides to transfer it to Nago.

One local resident, Satoshi Higa, said, ''What's good about Nago is that we have beautiful oceans around it.''

''Why do we have to see the oceans reclaimed and ruined?'' the 73-year-old retiree said.

Under the 2006 accord between a previous Japanese government led by the Liberal Democratic Party and the U.S. government, the Futemma airfield, which currently sits in a residential area in Ginowan, Okinawa, must be relocated to a new facility to be built along the coast of the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Schwab in the sparsely populated Henoko area of Nago by 2014.

Hiroshi Ashitomi, who leads a sit-in campaign against the planned building of two runways in a V-shaped formation in Henoko, expects that the government will be able to use Inamine's victory as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the United States.

''Japan can take a tough stance toward the United States (saying that local people are against the relocation),'' Ashitomi, 63, said in an interview with Kyodo News.

But political pundits say that it is yet to be clear if Hatoyama would renege on the bilateral deal and give up the original relocation plan, a move that could sour the Japan-U.S. relationship, noting that the premier simply might have used the election as one reason for postponing his decision on the issue.

Some even argue that he may not come to a conclusion by the end of May, which is his self-imposed deadline, or even after the House of Councillors election this summer, while making various excuses.

''He (Hatoyama) has just been selecting a path that could work the best for him,'' Masaaki Gabe, a professor of international relations at the University of the Ryukyus, said. ''He is running away (from making a decision).''

''In the first place, national security should be a matter that he should be responsible for,'' he said.

Ichiro Miyagi, a senior official of the Shimabukuro election camp who is also a secretary for an LDP upper house lawmaker, was resentful at the Hatoyama government's handling of the issue, saying, ''We already made an agonizing decision 13 years ago and I find it outrageous (for Hatoyama) to leave a decision to local people again.''

Miyagi was referring to a local referendum in 1997 in which a majority of citizens voted against the relocation plan and the following decision by then Mayor Tetsuya Higa who agreed with Tokyo to accept the Futemma facility, defying the result of the referendum.

Toward solving the relocation dispute, pundits point out that Hatoyama needs to show his determination to remove the Futemma facility from Okinawa if he truly hopes so and convey it to the United States.

''If the United States understands that Japan is serious about removing the facility outside the prefecture, it would also deal with it seriously,'' Gabe said. ''Unless it becomes clear exactly what Hatoyama is thinking, the United States won't do anything but to wait until Hatoyama gives up.''

Washington officials have so far underscored that the existing accord is the sole feasible plan, pressing Japan to quickly implement the relocation plan as agreed upon.

Some local residents also expressed concerns that a funding scandal involving DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa could further delay the government's decision on the Futemma issue.

''I am worried that our fate is going to be swayed by Mr. Ozawa's case,'' a 73-year-old Nago resident, Hirokuni Iha, said.

Ozawa, who is widely believed to have wielded the biggest clout in the ruling party, is embroiled in a funding scandal that has led to the arrest of three people close to him, including a DPJ House of Representatives lawmaker.

As possible relocation sites other than Henoko, the tripartite coalition government of the DPJ, the Social Democratic Party and the People's New Party has brought up such places as Ie Island and Shimoji Island, as well as the U.S. territory of Guam.

But both of the islands are in Okinawa Prefecture and are unlikely to gain approval from local governments, while Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, who visited and inspected Guam last year, has indicated that the plan of transferring the Futemma facility to the island will be hard to realize.

Each of the three parties is scheduled to present specific relocation plans by mid-February to a task force on the Futemma base issue, which was set up late last year and is led by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano of the DPJ.

==Kyodo

Buildup/Breakdown #8: Something for Everyone

As I said when I was interviewed for the short documentary below on the military buildup, there is a place for everyone on this island in terms of critiquing this buildup.



When you look at the Draft Environmental Impact Statement itself, and its thousands upon thousands of pages, even if you are overwhelmed or feel intimidated by its massive size, paralysis or apathy is the last thing you should be feeling. The buildup is so massive and will not only affect, but damage so many things, so that there is simply no room for any conscious detatchment. If the buildup was something which was going to be merely good for Guam, or be some good, mixed with some bad, then the DEIS would be a few hundred pages long, or would be split up into several different documents. But when each of us either look at that document (ya hongge yu', esta meggai hu taitai yan atan ayu), or even just hear about its scope and delirious depth, then we must realize, that there is something in that tome for each and everyone of us. There is some small glint of damage, some small or big shred of negativity that will touch you and impact you regardless of how much or how little you are paying attention. This is not an issue where only those who are screaming at the tops of their lungs are the ones who will be affected. This is something that everyone from the activist with the sign by the roadside, to the clueless student killing time until they hit the real world, to i amko' hating on their always-absent children will all get hit by.

As with any massive trauma or shock to a system, there are those for whom the impact will be negative, disorientating and something which they don't have the means to mitigate or master, and there will be those who have the resources to make sure that the disaster works to their advantage and is something they can profit from.

My point in saying all this, is that whenever any trauma hits a community or is on the verge of hitting a community, you can make general statements about how it will affect everyone and who it will affect the most. Trauma does not discriminate and always operates with a wide open tent, where anyone and everyone is forcibly welcomed it. The response, the preparation and the reaction should also be as inclusive as possible. In resisting this military buildup, in responding to it, there is a role for literally everyone. As of this moment, there is an open process of commenting on the buildup in which everyone can participate and submit. Soon there will be gatherings and protests at which there is plenty room for all.

This post was spurned by something I just received in my inbox. I know so many different people who are working on their comments or trying to organize others to write comments and send them off. At the University of Guam, all the Guam history professors are incorporating into our classes as the first assignment, the researching and the writing of a comment for the DEIS, and so this process will hopefully bolstered with at least a few hundred more comments (from those who most likely would not have paid attention otherwise).

The email that I received today however had a comment that was written by the 9 year old goddaughter of a friend. After attending a public meeting on the buildup, the 9 year old had asked if her godmother would help her write a comment. The 9 year old spoke her thoughts and her goddmother typed it down. I've pasted the comment below. If you know of anyone, hoben, amko', kalamya ni' palabras pat ma'a'nao nu manunuge', who has similar thoughts or concerns, but not the means to write it themselves, I suggest that you work with them as my friend did. Type it up for them, or help them with their thoughts.

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I am a 9 year old girl who lives in Chalan Pago, Guam. I go to school at Santa Barbara Catholic School and one of my favorite hobbies is going to the beach and swimming. I am just learning how to snorkel and I like seeing many kinds of fish. I have gone on dolphin watch trips with my family and seeing the dolphins is one of the best times of my life.

I went to one of the military build up meetings and heard that the the military is going to destroy part of the reef and the home of the sea turtle and the spinner dolphin. I don't want you to do this because I love dolphins and turtles and want them to be here for when I have my own kids. Please do not hurt Guam's reef because it is an important part of our island.

If you destroy the reef, you will be destroying the coral. And also, if a tsunami comes to Guam, the whole island will be hurt because the reef won't be able to protect us. I think you should use what is already available and if your ships are too big, then they should go to some other place, not Guam.

Chamorro Public Service Post #15: Pues Adios, Esta Ki

A lot of people end up visiting this blog because they are searching around the internet for lyrics to Chamorro songs. Over the years I’ve pasted a couple here and there, but haven’t really kept up with it as much as I should. I complain all the time about there not being enough internet presence for the Chamorro language and for Chamorro thoughts and so I feel bad when I inadvertently contribute to that absence.

På’go, gaige yu’ gi i gima’ iyo-ku grandfather. Desde i ma’pos’ña na mes, kumakatre gui’. Kana’ hineart attack gui’, ya sumaga’ gui’ gi i espitåt para tres meses. Mana’huyong gi i ma’pos na mes, ya sumåsaga’ gui’ gi i gima’, lao ti ha hulat tumohgue sin ayuda. Kada na puengge måtto yu’ gi i gima’-ña para i tetno-hu pumulan gui’.

Gi este na tiempo, tåya’ internet, pues siña hu usa este para bai hu fanhasso. Manhasso yu’ put i lina’la’-hu pat i guinife-hu. Buente i chinathinasso-ku siha lokkue’.

Tonight, I was trying to figure out what would be the best song to share the lyrics for on my blog. Things have been so emotional lately and crazy politically because of all the public hearings and activism surrounding opposing and critiquing the military buildup on Guam. Part of me wants to pick a song which is fiery or loud, bold and assertive, but unfortunately Chamorro music doesn’t have (in my opinion) enough of those. There are a few, but considering were one of the few people left in the world who can claim to be colonized in the formal sense of the world, we should have a lot more kicking and screaming and speaking/yelling to power songs.

I decided to pick a song which was simpler, quieter, but no less profound, and on which has also been significant in the recent history of Chamorros. The song is “Pues Adios, Esta ki,” and is a song about longtime friends who are saying goodbye to each other. There are a number of people to whom the original writing of this song have been attributed to, and I really have no idea who did write the first version. It is most likely a Chamoritta song, whose tune was taken from a song which arrived in Guam during the American era. Some say it’s a prewar song, others a postwar, some say a man in Saipan wrote it, others say a man from Guam. Regardless of who wrote it, its still a very beautiful and as I said, simple song.

There is no deep imagery to the song, no real vivid metaphors or even language. The version that I’m providing the lyrics for below is from a version which students at school would sing to each other when the year would end or after graduation. But even though the verses may be meant for this specific situation, there is another image which this song evokes for Chamorros, especially those who came of age in postwar Guam and that is of gathering together at the airport to wave goodbye to a family member or a friend as they leave to head lågu, or to the states.

As a historian, pat un taotao ni’ gaimeggai na tinigno’ put i estorian islå-ta, I sometime experience an interesting sort of social vertigo on Guam. Although we might assume that knowing a lot about your history, would help anchor you into the world, and make secure your place, your identity and your vision of it. This is not always true. The majority of people in any community are not knowledgeable, it is simply the way the world is. Those people understand the world around them through very small soundbytes, historical snippets and generally conveniently simplistic answers to most questions of life. To these people, the complexity of history is actually pretty scary, and is something which tends to be resisted and they seek to dismiss. As a result, having a more nuanced idea of history and the present, and having more evidence or knowledge at your disposal in understanding it can actually make you feel less secure, less normal, less bound to reality, since so many appear others appear to be impervious to what you know.

So for instance, Guam has, since the mid-1990’s I would guess, settled into the state of being a comfortable colony. This comfort is not defined solely by things on Guam being better than things elsewhere, although this is how people tend to interpret something like this (as a way of saying that Guam, because it’s a colony of the United States is far better off than those who are neo-colonies or independent third world basket case nations. When I say comfort, I mean that the shared memories of society were pared down, especially in terms of the relationship between Guam and the United States. Liberation Day was carried through, but so many other events were lost or their meaning in society diluted to the point where they are either forgotten or empty signifiers, only of use to maladjusted activists. The colonial difference between Guam and the United States has slowly appeared to have shrunk to the point of meaning nothing anymore. The ways in which, prior generations, because of the way they were treated or excluded from the United States, always had this form their identities and their lives around these massive bones that stuck out and ruined most attempts at Americanization, these ways have slowly disappeared. And their disappearance has been so effective, for those who are born into the world without them already in place, have no idea that the world could have existed without them.

Today, we on Guam can travel freely to the United States (achokka’ guaguan) and so the smoothness of the travel gives us the impression of being just as American as everyone else. Nevermind that most carriers consider Guam to be an international destination and trip, or that last year I was not allowed to travel from California to Guam because they deemed my US Birth Certificate from Guam to not be a recognized American birth certificate. These are small, little things, which just detract our eyes from the smoothness, easiness and Americaness of our travel.

Things were not always like this however. The first decade after World War II on Guam, saw a massive exodus of Chamorros to the United States. They settled in areas with plenty of Navy bases, or locations which (mainly because of the plenty of Navy bases) had become enclaves for Chamorros making the trip to the land of the colonizer. Until 1962 however this migration was largely unidirectional. As part of the new strategic importance of Guam, the Navy had established a security clearance requirement for the island, meaning that anybody who wanted to travel to Guam had to get permission and be cleared by the United States Navy first. This requirement ended up being a significant factor in helping lay the foundation for the Chamorro diaspora of today (which outnumbers the Chamorro presence in the Marianas Islands). It deterred Chamorros who were leaving island for school, for work, or simply to see a different part of the world, from returning to the island.

So when a Chamorro made the decision to leave island in those years, it was assumed that this might be permanent. It was assumed that you, like so many others who had left as whalers or sailors, might never be heard from again. As such, the gatherings to say farewell, whether at the docks, or later at the airport, became a huge moment. A final time to say goodbye to someone and wish them well, and also come together and silently pray that (whatever the world’s empires decide to do to Guam again) you will indeed see each other again.

As you can see in the lyrics below, it is indeed, a very simple song. But when I think back on my own comings and goings from Guam over the years, even though I didn’t know this song or couldn’t speak Chamorro then, I can still think back, and imagine this song as the soundtrack to my travels. As I left Guam so many times to come out to the states, as I said goodbye to so many family and friends, this hope and wish that we will see each other again, all of us as well, as myself and this island was always there.

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Pues Adios, Esta Ki
By Hekkua’

Gi todu i lugåt, maseha månu
Guini gi, hilo’ tåno’
An manakhihot hit, pat manachågo’ hit
U ta fanagofli’e’

In all places, anywhere
Here, on earth
If we are close to each other, or we are far apart
We will still care for each other

Pues adios, esta ki
Pues adios, esta ki
Manali’e’ hit ta’lo adios
Pues adios, esta ki
Pues adios, esta ki
Manali’e hit ta’lo adios

So farewell, until then
So farewell, until then
When we see each other again, farewell
So farewell, until then
So farewell, until then
When we see each other again, farewell

Gi todu i tiempo, na manhihita
Guini gi eskuelå-ta
Manafa’maolek hit
Managofli’e’ hit
Sin akuetdo di rasa

All the time that we’ve been together
Here in our school
We’ve helped [made things good] for each other
We’ve cared for each other
Without any thought of race [or family/clan]

Pues adios, esta ki
Pues adios, esta ki
Manali’e’ hit ta’lo adios
Pues adios, esta ki
Pues adios, esta ki
Manali’e hit ta’lo adios

So farewell, until then
So farewell, until then
When we see each other again, farewell
So farewell, until then
So farewell, until then
When we see each other again, farewell

Pues put uttimo adios, i manhanao todus
Buen biahi adios
In diseseha na en fangefsåga’
Mungnga hit, manmaleffa

So this is the last goodbye, to all who will go
Good voyage farewell
We are hoping that you will be prosperous
Please don’t, forget about us

Pues adios, esta ki
Pues adios, esta ki
Manali’e’ hit ta’lo adios
Pues adios, esta ki
Pues adios, esta ki
Manali’e hit ta’lo adios

So farewell, until then
So farewell, until then
When we see each other again, farewell
So farewell, until then
So farewell, until then
When we see each other again, farewell

Buildup/Breakdown #7: Youtube

I've written over the past week in various ways, that the organizing against the military buildup on Guam (or the critiquing of it) has helped spur alot of new activity and new creativity. One of the primary outlets that we've seen this energy and this concern expressed is through Youtube.

The uploading of footage or clips of people giving some very insightful and emotional testimony has been the largest presence, but there have been small attempts by others to create short videso to make use of the medium and also get the word out about what is going on.

In the past three weeks, these videos have all together been viewed thousands of times, and for Guam related videos which don't involve nearly naked women or high school children beating each other up, this is a very big deal. Across Youtube, you'll find ways in which people are using it for critical and progressive causes, but Guam and Chamorros have yet to take advantage of this yet (except for a few scattered examples). As someone who regularly uploads videso onto Youtube, and follows closely what goes on in terms of videos about Guam and Chamorros, the recent rush of videos on Youtube is truly something inspiring. It is something which is organic and that has stemmed from people coming together to work on videos together, or working alone to upload vidoes they feel others should see. Although it is a far greater and stronger presence than two months ago, it is still not much. But, este i tinituhon, and therefore it has the potential to grow into something much, much larger.

I've pasted below some of the videos that you should take a look at (that is, if you haven't already watched them).

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First off, here is one of the testimonies from the four public hearings on Guam sponsored by JGPO. In this video Senator Ben Pangelinan does not pull out any stops in criticizing both the buildup and the manner in which the prep for the buildup has been conducted by JGPO and DOD. Although, everyone on Guam can feel like they don't know enough about the buildup and what lies ahead for Guam because of it, those in power right now, in particular the Guam Legislature are in a crappy spot right now. The Governor long ago, ha bende i ante-na, for this buildup, he basically (much like George W. Bush), gambled his legacy as a leader on something massive, overblown, and very poorly planned. We will see how it turns out.

But the Legislature can't make any similar claims, as they have constantly been snubbed in the planning for the buildup by both Camacho and JGPO and DOD, as the Feds have made it clear that they will work with the executive branch of Guam's government, and that any interaction with the Legislature is out of the goodness of their hearts.

For years, the political line for the buildup, the way to make use of it effectively was to voice concerns, but not too many concerns. To be worried about it, or have some problems with it, but not too many problems with it. As the political season is just around the corner (or already here and ha uchachani hit taplerun pulitikat siha), and the buildup itself is to start (officially) roaring to life this summer, politicians are started to develop new calculations. The longstanding meekness of Camacho, or the recent round of angry lame duck tactics aren't sitting well with voters and so what people most likely want right now is strength, leadership, un ma'gas ni' para u tachuyi siha. Ben Pangelinan, in his rhetoric in his public comment, might simply be expressing his personal feelings on the buildup (frustration and anger, a feeling that mamfina'gaga' hit as Siha), or could be trying out some new more aggressive rhetoric, which could help (or hurt) his chances at a bid for Governor.

To view the others that can be found online now click on this link to return to an earlier post, "Buildup/Breakdown #2: Mananachu Hit."




Just to warn you, I'm in the video above. Its a mini-documentary made by the director of the DVD Discover Guam. He made the video as a favor to a family which may be forced to lease their land to the United States military to make way for a firing range. The video is very simple, me talking about the buildup, with plenty of images of the lands that might be taken. Despensa yu' kontiempo put i kinalamten-hu siha gi este na mubi. Ai adai, guaha na biahi, annai kumekuentos yu' gof grabu taiguihi, hu na'palapap i kannai-hu kalang un paluma yu'.



This is video made by my cousins Cara and Jason after the We Are Guahan hike to Pagat Cave earlier this month. The hike to this historical, beautiful and sacred site was very inspiring for those who went along, and really helped build a foundation for some people who have now become active members of We Are Guahan.



Although this next video isn't (directed) buildup related, it was shot during the We Are Guahan hike to Pagat. Its of my nephew Dylan jumping off the cliffs near the cave and everyone's reactions when he attempts to do a dive, but instead splats on his side into the water.



This is a poem uploaded as a vlog about the buildup. Fihu annai lumailai yu' giya Youtube, hu diseseha mohon na mas vloggers guini giya Guahan. Pues manhasso yu' na sina Guahu, lao siempre ti manmalago i taotao guihi huyong gi i internet, siempre ti ya-niha umatan este na chatpago na mata-hu.



This was made several months ago, but its still very relevant. If I remember correctly, this video was made by a UOG student who was inspired to do something to try to effect positive change after he watched the film Sway.



Another video that is several months old, but still very relevant. Its a segment from the Working Families show which was made by the Guam Federation of Teachers. The second half of this segment (starting at 1:49) covers the Reclaim Guahan Rally which took place in May of last year. Too often on Guam, things happen and there is little to no record of it, save for in the minds of those who were there. As long as our actions remain at that level, it doesn't change much. It needs to be embedded in the landscape of the island, in different media forms so that others can discover it and connect to it. So that it changes from just being a singular event, but something which remains in the world and one of many points through which a society can be pivoted around, and transformed through.



Finally, here's a video which incorporates the text of Maga'lahi Hurao's 1671 speech against the Spanish, in order to both text and perpetuate the Chamorro language, but also inspire people to rise up against the buildup. The video is made by Jay Quintanilla, who is known for his Chele sitckers and the Chamorro music podcast on Youtube.

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But even if the sky is falling, the Marines are landing and the economy is imploding, i mas paire yan i mas sua'nu thing on Youtube is always i hagga-hu Sumahi. Not necessarily the most talented thing on Youtube, lao siempre i mas kinute.