NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I interviewed so many cool people over the last week in Okinawa and Ishigaki Islands. I did so with the help of Okinawan activist Shinako Oyakawa who I first met in 2010 during a demilitarization study tour to South Korea. I was fortunate enough to join her, Bruce Gagnon and Corazon Fabros on on a trip to South Korea where we visited areas affected by US military facilities and training. Later I met Shinako in the context of solidarity activism in connection with Okinawa. She is a member of an academic association which is pushing for Okinawan, Ryukyu or LewChu independence from Japan. Her group has invited me to several conferences in Okinawa over the years and she is usually stuck translating the mindless things I say into Japanese. Another connection I have to Shinako is that she is a language revitalization activist. She is from Okinawa, one of many islands in what most people consider to be "Okinawa" or the Ryukyu Islands. Most people in Okinawa speak Japanese, but t...

I have been working for the past week on answering some questions for an antibase group in Italy. Through David Vine, best known for his book Islands of Shame about Diego Garcia, they held a virtual meeting amongst demilitarization activists from around the Pacific and Europe. A physical gathering of antibase activists in Italy coordinated virtual presentations from speakers representing struggles in Guam, Okinawa, South Korea, Hawai'i, Diego Garcia and elsewhere. It was an inspiring and invigorating moment even though because of time differences I was hunched over my computer at 2 in the morning. The group found the exchange of information so interesting they decided to produce a book that would give a road map to the struggles that are happening around the world, to help us better see how we are connected. Here is the text for the short presentation that I made during last year's demilitarization network solidarity meeting.  ***************** --> I apolog...

My pare' Julian Aguon always talks about people on Guam today having no imagination. How they cannot see the world as having any richness or possibility, especially in a local context. They see the world through dependency and inadequacy, and as such everything around them, especially the future is fearful and frightening. You feel like you can't do anything because the delicate threads that you depend upon might snap if you do.  I agree with this metaphor for understanding things on Guam, but I often use "dreams" instead. Dreams are closely related to imagination. Imagination is what you can see, how you can stretch what you take as given in the world and expand it and push it, and hopefully yourself further. Dreams are what you see as possible, viable or beautiful as you move towards the future. It is a question of desire and what you want. Imagination is what you can want, dreams are an indication of what you want and where you see yourself moving in order t...

The symposium at Okinawa International University that I attended and had the privileged to speak at today and yesterday is historical I’ve been told. While speakers and organizers were introducing themselves, it became clear that not only were all of them liberal and critical, they were all openly supportive of Independence for Okinawa. This conference on decolonization and demilitarization is one of the first public gatherings of academics who want Okinawa to become an independent state. Given my experiences over the years interacting with Okinawan activists I knew that this wasn’t the norm. The first activist I ever met from Okinawa was a trade union leader and although he expressed a clear different between himself and Japan, it was not a political one, but a cultural one. He felt that Okinawans had a right to protect and promote their own culture and what disgusted him, were Japanese attacks on Okinawan culture. I met Sh inako Oyakawa a political and linguist activi...

Solidarity message from Gangjeong to World friends!! http://youtu.be/KpSLk9OMrGQ CALL FOR GLOBAL PROTEST Jeju: pax et justitia Jeju: peace and justice Sunday 6th May 2012 from 3:00 to 6:00 PM at the Trocadero, PARIS Join us at the Trocadero in Paris, France to support peace and justice in the South Korean island of Jeju. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is the only one in the world crowned with all three UNESCO Natural Science Preserve categories: Biosphere (2002), Word Heritage (2007) and Geoparc (2010). http://english.jeju.go.kr/index.php/contents/AboutJeju/Beauty/PhotoGallery For the past 5 years, the 1,500 inhabitants of Jeju’s Ganjeong village have been leading a peaceful struggle against the construction of a vast naval base on one of Jeju’s most culturally significant sites. Against mounting local and international objections, the South Korean government recently forced through a bill authorizing the construction of this base, the largest of ...

Two urgent messages about the situation in Gangjeong, Jeju: ************************** From Save Jeju Dear friends, Starting today, Gangjeong is in an emergency situation. Nearly 700 police have arrived from the mainland in Gangjeong village to monitor the blasting of Gureombi, the volcanic rock coastline, and the dredging of the seafloor. Not only will the marine life, including endangered crabs and coral reefs, be swept away, the blast has already impacted the fresh water springs that the majority of the island is dependent upon. Though our numbers are small in the village, we will do our best to fight to stop the blast of Gureombi. It is still uncertain whether the Seogwipo Police will allow the Navy to blast Gureombi on Monday, when the Governor of Jeju Island is supposed to make his decision. Please send an email to the Governor NOW asking him to please stop the blast of Gureombi. Thank you for one minute of your time. We urgently need international solidarity NOW. In p...

Another update from Brue Gagnon on the international peace conference that took place in Jeju, South Korea over the weekend. I've pasted it below: ************************* The Navy is expanding its effort to put razor wire all along the rocky coastline so the villagers cannot any longer stand on their sacred ground. But the people keep coming by swimming or on kayaks. They are determined. They continue to be arrested. As I write this a group will find their way there for the Sunday morning Catholic mass. Yesterday we had a joint meeting between the villagers and our international guests. Our folks shared stories about U.S. and NATO space technology expansion into Sweden and Norway, the effort by the U.S. to get India to create their own aggressive Space Command to help "contain" China, and the Vandenberg AFB in California space missile launching center. One elderly man from Gangjeong village told us he can't sleep at night, suffers from depression, and sees ...

An update on Day 1 of the Jeju International Peace Conference taking place this weekend in Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea. The update is written by Bruce Gagnon of The Global Network. You can find more updates throughout the week on his personal blog Organizing Notes :  ****************  There is so much to write about and so little time. Yesterday we began our time here on Jeju Island (South Korea) with a conference at the museum where the story of the April 3, 1948 massacre of tens of thousands of Jeju residents is told. Following the end of WW II the U.S. took control of Korea and put the former Koreans who collaborated with fascist Japan in charge of the country. The U.S. began the process of dividing Korea and the people of Jeju were accused of being communists because they were independent minded and did not want to follow the corrupt leaders appointed by the U.S. military. The people rebelled and the U.S. military directed the new Korean g...

I just noticed that I passed a pretty big milestone yesterday. As you can see from the image to the left, I recently passed 300,000 hits on this blog. This means that according to Statcounter, pages on this blog have been loaded 300,000 times, and it does not necessarily mean that 300,000 people have read my blog ( olaha mohon na taiguihi). What's weird is that if I follow the internal counter that Blogger uses, then I've had 300,000 hits for quite a while, since Blogger's counter always counts twice as much as Statcounter. Needless to say, this is an exciting day for me and my blog. I started this blog in August 2004, and this post is my 1,431th. I meant to commemorate the 7th year of this blog last month, lao maleffa yu'. In 2004, my blog posts were brutally short. Sometimes one or two sentences, sometimes a paragraph. Sometimes I would post several tiny posts in a day. Although I only had this blog for 4 months in 2004, I still posted 120 times, meaning at least ...

NOTE: Sung Hee-Choi was arrested in May for protesting the construction of a Navy base in Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea. She was released last month. Here is a link to an interview David Vine conducted with her in July. Below is a statement from her on the struggle from: Ten Thousand Things : The pictures are from my trip to South Korea last summer, for which Sung Hee was my guide. ******************* [Translated by John Cha, Jinsoo An, Jun-Hyung Kim] Final Testimony Case: 2011 고단/Kodan 318 Obstruction of Business (2011 Kodan 511, Combined) The Accused: Choi Sung-hee Your Honor, I, Choi Sung-hee, am a visual artist. I have been drawn to the beauty of Jeju Island, the pearl of Korea, and to the beautiful ecological preservation of Gangjeong village, which has been called the diamond of Jeju Island. I have also been drawn to the friendly spirit of the Gangjeong villagers who live peacefully with nature. Their will to protect and love the natural environment has move...

Every few months I remind people to visit No Base Stories of Korea , and get updated on the latest in the South Korean people's struggles against militarization, both from their own government and from the United States as well. This post is yet another reminder to go over there and check the blog, which is run by artist and activist Sung Hee Choi. I recently finished an article where I discussed some of my experiences while I was in South Korea last year on a solidarity research trip. Some of the places which Sung Hee regularly provides updates about are areas that I visited, where I got to learn in detail about the struggles that took place or are taking place against militarism. As I wrote in my article, one of the things which made this trip important was the fact that it wasn't your usual "solidarity trip" where everything is neat and tidy and ready to be wedged into an assume matrix of solidarity formation. There is a formula to how we form solidarity, a simp...

I'm writing a post right now about the "beauty" of the current situation in Gangjeong Village on Jeju Island South Korea where the people there have been resolutely resisting the building of a 400,000 square meter base which will be a dock for Aegis Destroyers from the US and South Korean militaries. Protests and civil disobedience were begun to stop construction, 34 people were arrested yesterday and I'm waiting for more details to say more. But in the meantime, I wanted to share some pictures from the current attempts to stall construction and also share a statement of solidarity with the people of Gangjeong from Japan. ************************** 【緊急声明】　Urgent statement 긴급 성명 韓国・済州島における海軍基地建設に反対します We oppose the construction plan of a navel base on Jeju Island, Republic of Korea. 우리는 남한 제주도 해군 기지 계획 건설에 반대합니다 韓国政府は現在、済州島における海軍基地建設のための工事着工を、住民の反対の声を無視して強行しつつある。北東アジアの平和を求める私たち日本の市民は、工事着工の中止と基地建設計画の全面撤回を要求する。 The government of ROK is about to force throug...