NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Below is what I'll be doing for the next three days, the Fourth Chamorro Conference. Posting on this blog will naturally suffer, but at least it is for a good cause. ******************* Hafa adai todus, Please join us for I Mina' Kuattro na Konferensian Chamorro. *PLEASE PASS THE WORD...* There's a group of people who worked hard to organize and coordinate I Mina Kuattro Na Konferensian Chamorro. This project has no budget but a lot of committed and passionate people desiring to bring everyone together to develop a vision and action plans for the advancement of Chamorros. It is our hope that we can *come celebrate our collective progress and find common ground, as we work to address current and future challenges as a community and chart our course . * *Our Mission: * *To advance and promote the sustainable cultural, economic, and community development of Chamorros based in our indigenous cultural values; to educate our people; and to promote research ...

FOR MORE INFO ON EVENT, HEAD TO Latin American Solidarity Coalition . ***************************** Call: Day of Action to Confront US Militarism in the Americas October 11, 2010 Our organizations urge you to join us in a National Day of Action to Confront US Militarism in the Americas on Monday, October 11, 2010. October 11 is the day the United States “celebrates” the beginning of the European invasion of the Americas and when indigenous peoples mark as the 518th year of resistance to invasion and colonialism. We represent Latin America solidarity and peace groups. We are initiating and urge others to undertake the formation of local and regional coalitions – across movements for indigenous rights, immigrant justice, fair trade, peace, human rights, labor rights, gender justice, drug policy reform and other urgent goals – to confront the growing militarism of our culture and budget, the increasing propensity to commit national resources to wars of aggression, and the milita...

  I'm writing my column for next week's Marianas Variety and I've hit a bit of a dead end. The month of October is full of Chamorro related events, with the Micronesian Island Fair next week, as well as the Mina'Kuattro na Konferensian Chamorro. The week after there are Chamorro Language Forums for Senatorial and Gubernatorial candidates at UOG. With all these things going on, I decided that for next week I would write on the Chamorro language. A few weeks ago, Pa'a Taotao Tano' released the results of its six-month study on the state of the Chamorro language on Guam. Two years ago, I helped write a similar grant for the San Diego-based Chamorro organization CHELU Inc, which was meant to study the health and use of the Chamorro language in the San Diego area. These sorts of studies are always both depressing and irritating. First, since the data is based on self-reporting the almost always over-estimate the levels at which people are using the language and ...

I thought for sure that when I saw this article in my inbox this morning, that Guam would be on the list. In 2006 Foreign Policy magazine listed Guam as one of the six most important "foreign" bases of the more than 800 that it has around the world. Others included on that list were Camp Anaconda in Iraq, Bezmer Air base in Bulgaria, Manas Air Base in Kyrgistan, Guantanamo Bay, Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, When I saw this article about the "Cost of Empire: Five expensive, controversial U.S. Military bases" I was sure that Guam, especially after all the extra attention it has gotten this year (Obama almost visiting, Guam almost getting capsized) would get a place on this list. But when I read through it and saw Guam missing, I wasn't quite sure why. Was this another case where Guam was now considered to be domestic and not foreign? Were these sites decided by region and so Kadena took the Asia-Pacific slot which Guam might have had? The author d...

This Thursday I'll be giving my first ever colloquium. I've given speeches, spoken at conferences and symposiums and plenty of other types of public engagement, but in terms of having my very own forum or colloquium, taya' nai hu susedi este, ya pues didide' chathinasso yu'. The title of my talk is "The Gift of Imagination: Solidarity in the Asia-Pacific Region," and will be this Thursday, October 7, 3:30 - 5:00 pm at the UOG, CLASS Dean's Professional Development Room. The topic of my talk is based on my research/solidarity trips that I took over the summer to South Korea and Japan, representing Guam and informing others about its current struggles against US militarization, but also learning from farmers in Jeju, hibakusha in Nagasaki or Hiroshima and activists in Seoul. The paper, which I'm still refining slightly as I type this, is an interesting mixture of political activism and theoretical musing, moving between talking about how we might...

Just finished up at the Realizing Our Destiny Rally held at Adelup today and organized by We Are Guahan. Mampos yafai yu', lao mampos malulok yu' lokkue'. It was tiring, stressful, chaotic, lao sen gaibali, absolutely worth it. At least 500 people showed up (by my quick counts) to hear the music of Biggah and Bettah and Rockbottom, to take literature from the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice, and also sign up for the decolonization registry. The highlight of the rally was when we formed a human chain around the Adelup field, with more than 300 people, and screamed at the top of our lungs that we would defend this island and that the DOD must hear and pay attention to and act according to what the people of Guam want. Hunggan, esta ma fitme i ROD, lao taya' guaha. Esta hu tuge' gi este na blog, na achokka' ma sangan na makpo' este, a'annok ha' na ti makpo'. Ma diseseha i militat, na yanggen ma fitma este, fitma ayu, fitma enao, para ta f...

We Are Guahan  WeAreGuahan.com *FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE *  *September 23, 2010; Guam*- With the release of the DoD’s Record of Decision, it has become evident that the Department of Defense will continue to disregard concerns voiced by the people of Guam. Guam’s local residents will be the demographic most severely impacted by plans to increase the US military’s presence within the region through one of the largest peacetime military relocations in modern history. We Are Guahan will be hosting a rally on Oct. 1 to unite the community in response. The island participated actively within the NEPA process, with over 10,000 comments submitted in response to the Draft EIS from the community and Government of Guam agencies. Despite the outpouring of community involvement, the Final EIS failed to incorporate many of the island’s concerns into their final plans. Guam’s community and local leaders presented a united front in opposition to the condemnation of land and the taki...

The shortcut for talking about the US military fighting in Afghanistan is to say "Afghanistan." Even though fighting there has dramatically increased in the past two years, it still hasn't come to the point where it has been embedded in peoples' minds as being a "war." There are few very people who say Afghanistan War and the phrasing of "the war in Afghanistan" could simply be descriptive and not meant to convey a unique particular set of events or a stand-alone period of time. Although the war there is getting bloodier and bloodier and more and more hopeless (at least it seems), it still is not its own experience, or hasn't had its own substantive impact on the US and its psyche. Even tiny, public relations wars such as Grenada have their own particular meaning, even if the events of the US invading a tiny island in the Caribbean for no real reason cannot under any circumstances be counted as enough to shoulder the label of being a "war....

Achokka' esta apmam desde hu na'funhayan iyo-ku Ph.D. pat esta apmam desde humokkok i umestudiante-ku, guaha na biahi, kada diha na hu alok "Si Yu'us Ma'ase" na makpo' ayu na patten lina'la'-hu. Achokka' hu gof agradesi ayu na tiempo, ya bula ineyak-hu, mas ki 13 na anos umestudiante yu', ya hagas esta listo yu' para bai hu tutuhun i otro na patten lina'la'-hu. Lao, put i chinatsaga' UOG, ti hu tungo' ngai'an nai na bai hu tutuhun ayu gi minagahet, ya ti hu tungo' kao Guahan i lugat nai bai hu tutuhuni. Esta mas ki un sakkan hu kekena'halom maisa yu' guihi, lao sesso ma fama'dagi nu Guahu. Lao para ayu na klasin institutsion, ti gaibali iyo-mu merits pat i bida-mu pat i minalate'-mu. I mas impottanten na arekla na kao manmassa' i esta manggaigaige gi halom nu Hagu? Put este na i meggaina na ma'estro yan ma'estra siha giya UOG, ti mangkapas. Lao ai adai, este na prublema-hu, bai fa...

After the Record of Decision was signed, the Pacific Daily News  collected responses from Senators in the Guam Legislature, detailing their thoughts and concerns on the military buildup finally being officially declared "begun." I have pasted them below for people to read and reflect on. I have heard so many people over the past few months speak with some satisfaction that the rhetoric of so many of our political leaders have changed, that the efforts of so many who were critical of the buildup have helped make it so that no potential political leader who wants to be taken seriously can be 100% supportive of the military buildup, but instead has to hover around 50% - 70% good and the rest bad. This is a very real shift in rhetoric since for the first few years of the buildup, politicians would try to convince people that the buildup was a boon, that it was great and that the problems were minor and not such a big deal. That was how the public was shaped back then, in such a ...