NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

On July 17th, myself and some of my friends will be walking 19 miles from Merizo to Manengon, Yo'na in honor of the Chamorros who endured Japanese occupation in World War II. The name of this event is "Remember Our Strength," in order to explain why we are walking and from where to where I wrote the following: In July of 1944 Guam had been turned into a warzone. As the Japanese, recent occupiers of the island dug in, erecting haphazard defenses and brutalizing Chamorros in anticipation of an American invasion, 13 days of Americans bombs fell on the island, all with the calculated intent of destroying every structure on the island. Chamorros were caught desperately in the middle. The final weeks of World War II in Guam or I Tiempon Chapones, were filled with tales of violence and suffering. After 32 months of Japanese occupation which was difficult and trying to say the least, the final month of the war on Guam is riddled with massacres, rapes, torture, and a long collec...

"Bending the Arc of History" Michael Lujan Bevacqua July 6, 2011 The Marianas Variety In his speeches President Obama likes to quote Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that the arc of history, or the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. He used this in his Nobel Prize speech last year, to talk about how things may work slowly sometimes and it can be frustrating, but ultimately they do get better. Like so much about Obama, he uses this quote because of how it is inspiring, comforting and yet also conservative. A key part of his road to the White House was the way he captured in his "Yes We Can" speech,” a brief history of how different people at different points in American history refused to accept the status quote and had risen up to force the country to change. Obama is the current spiritual/political figurehead of the US (which is one of the reasons why the birther movement has emerged), and that means that his rhetori...

From Christine Ahn, Korea Policy Institute Dear friends, In three weeks, I will be going to Jeju Island in South Korea to bear witness to the extraordinary nonviolent resistance underway now to stop the construction of a naval base. Through incredible acts of courage, the villagers and activists from the peninsula have established a system where if construction trucks carrying cement approach the site, they blow a siren which then signals to the villagers that they must drop their farming and work to come and protect the coastline from being dredged and concrete poured over the coral reefs. We are slowly gathering a larger delegation, including potentially a Spanish filmmaker, a German faith worker, and a Japanese peace activist. So far three of us will be traveling from the United States. We hope to gather at least 100,000 signatures from around the world for this petition and hand deliver it to the South Korean President Lee Myung Bak at the Blue House. Will you please sign thi...

From now own I'm going to start pasting my Marianas Variety column "When the Moon Waxes" on my blog. Some of the columns will have appeared in some form or another on this blog, but it's still a good way of collecting them all here in a place where they are easily accessible for me. Sometimes newspapers, in particular the PDN tend to cut their links to articles after a certain period of time and so this way they can still be found online. I'll also be tweeting about them, for those who are interested in reading them and follow me on Twitter (all 30 of you). ****************************** "Ideological Chains" Michael Lujan Bevacqua The Marianas Variety June 29, 2011 IN THE drafting of any petition, there is always tension over the language and images you use in order to inspire, frighten or convince people to sign. Whatever your particular fight is, you tend to want as many people as possible to sign, which means you usually make the petition as n...

I receive regular updates about news on the Korean peninsula from a group called the Korea Policy Institute. The description from their website is as follows: The Korea Policy Institute is an independent research and educational institute whose mission is to provide timely analysis of United States policies toward Korea and developments on the Korean peninsula. If you would like to receive their emails and updates you can easily sign up . You can also donate to support them by clicking here . After traveling to South Korea last year, I keep up with news there about places that I visited and people that I met. One reason I appreciated visiting there was the way it helped deepen my understanding not just about South Korea itself, but about the larger network of US bases in the Asia-Pacific region. From Guam you know the US has bases all over the place, but you think about that network and much of the world through those bases and not through the countries that "host" them. ...

A few months back I started up a Tumblr in hopes of exploring the angsty, curious teenage girl inside of me (j/k). In truth, I have no idea what the teenage girl inside of me is like, we don't talk very much, sina gof ekpe gui' lao ti siguru yu', hassan na kumuentos ham. Actually I did think about getting a Tumblr long ago, but it was precisely the abundance of angsty, curious pre-teen and teenage girls on there which made me shy away. Would getting a Tumblr mark me in a social-virutal way that I wasn't expecting? I don't know how cool or uncool Blogger is, but I'm certain that having a Tumblr is cooler, but would it be the right kind of cool? Esta meggai na blogs-hu siha, lao ti mangcool siha. Ya mungga yu' mama'tinas nuebu ya para bai hu makase' ta'lo. I asked my younger sister Alina who is a living, breathing angsty teenage girl what she thought about Tumblr and her response was, "What's that?" So that's when I decided it ...

I mentioned I was working on an editorial with Victoria Leon Guerrero the other day and it was published in the Pacific Daily News this morning. We crammed alot of statements about what has been going on lately in terms of attempts to shift the buildup conversation into something of pre-DEIS period mode. We discussed Para Hita Todu and some of their motivations and also why they can't be taken seriously as a group that will lead Guam on this issue. All in all I think it was a pretty good editorial and so I wanted to paste it here as well. ********************** Guam Needs Leadership on Buildup Issue Michael Lujan Bevacqua and Victoria Leon Guerrero Pacific Daily News June 26, 2011 Given last week's Sunday Forum topic, which focused on whether or not people should express their support of the military buildup, we eagerly await a future Sunday Forum that will ask the obvious next question as to whether or not people opposed to the buildup should speak out as well. Last...

The United Nations is supposed to represent everybody. For countries weak, strong, big and small there is supposed to be a place for each and everyone. But for those who are not nation-states or are nations within nations or colonies, the UN is a very different experience. There is no official, permanent place there. You are literally a ghost which is called into existence and every once in a while given a temporary place from which your story can be told. In the case of Guam, there is an official place for this tiny little island each June and July when petitioners from Guam can speak before two different committees. Below is the summaries of the most recent visit this June. ************************ United Nations Press Release Special Committee on Decolonisation 6th & 7th Meetings (AM & PM) Special Committee on Decolonization Adopts Draft on Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Amid Petitioners’ Concern that Text Ignores Islanders’ Self-Determination Wish ‘Committee ...

Fellow activist and instructor at UOG Victoria Leon Guerrero and I just finished our letter to the editor weighing on the emergence of Para Hita Todu and the recently reinvigorated pro-buildup bias of the Pacific Daily News. This past week has had alot of letters in support of the buildup, many of them exceeding the usual limit the paper puts on submissions. All of these letters made similar points and talked about opportunities being missed and the buildup been a once in a lifetime or golden chance for so much more. None of them were particularly helpful for the discussion and were all built upon the hopeful, wishful but pointless premise that good things will happen if we believe in the buildup and support it. Gof na'chalek nu Guahu, that opponents of the buildup were for so long accused of not offering anything but just negativity and critique, whereas those supporting the buildup were somehow offering a real concrete solution to problems despite not even knowing what they wer...

Last week the Pacific Daily News, the most powerful and most influential media outlet on Guam which has been a longstanding devout mouthpiece for the military buildup, burying much of the negatives but always careful to blazon in sometimes stupid ways any potential or even mythically positive, provided this in a way far more clearly than ever before. Each week the PDN hosts a Sunday forum where people in the community who are knowledgable about a subject are invited to write in letters to the editor addressing said subject. Last week's topic was about whether or not people who support the military buildup should voice their opinion. Most topics are about issues where there is a pretense to address the subject in a comprehensive way, or at least from two sides. In this instance no such pretense existed and it was merely a ploy to create a space for supporters of the buildup could crame the editorial pages of the PDN with pointless platitudes of how awesome the buildup is and how eve...