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Native Hawaiian Anne Keala Kelly on Resistance Radio

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noho-hewa

For the August 3rd episode of Resistance Radio, Derrick Jensen interviewed Anne Keala Kelly, a native Hawaiian filmmaker, journalist, and activist focused on the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Her documentary Noho Hewa, on the illegal occupation of the nation of Hawai’i by the United States, has been screened around the world and is widely taught in university courses. (Read a review of Noho Hewa on the Deep Green Resistance News Service.)

In this interview, Kelly shares an indigenous perspective on genealogy and what it means to be native Hawaiian, the history of Hawai’i prior to European arrival, the history of the illegal occupation and its parallels to other imperialistic moves by the US, and the current condition and effects of military and foreign takeover of Hawaiian lands. She explains that Hawai’i as a linchpin of the global US empire makes the struggle to free Hawai’i central to environmental and social justice worldwide, not just here. Finally, she summarizes the modern movement towards sovereignty and resistance to the occupation.

Kelly tackles a broad subject with at least a dozen major strands, doing a good job of tying together seemingly disparate issues. This interview is well worth a close listen, both for residents of Hawai’i and for anyone anywhere concerned with the ability of the US to project its power around the globe. Hawai’i could be a strategic intervention point against imperialism and its resultant environmental and social destruction.

Download an mp3 of the interview with Anne Keala Kelly, play the embedded audio below, or listen to the interview on the DGR Youtube channel.

Browse all of Derrick Jensen’s Resistance Radio interviews.

Monday August 11 – Honolulu Town Hall meeting on PRIMNM

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People who want to protect our moana nui for everyone, including Hawai‘i, need to be heard in regard to Obama’s proposed PRIMNM expansion. The Town Hall discussion will be held on August 11 at the Ala Moana Hotel, Carnation Room, 410 Atkinson Drive Honolulu, from 5:00 – 7:00 pm. Even if you can’t attend the Town Hall meeting, you can send comments to PRI@noaa.gov, deadline is August 15.

This notice reposted from an email sent out by KAHEA: The Hawaii-Environmental Alliance.

Our oceans are threatened by overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction, ocean acidification, and climate change. According to The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2014, about 90 percent of global fish stocks are overfished or fully-fished. Researchers found that fully protected marine reserves are essential to rebuilding species abundance and diversity and increasing resilience to climate change. At least 20-30 percent of our ocean should be in protected marine reserves to ensure the productivity of marine fisheries and overall ocean health. Currently less than 1 percent of the ocean is protected in no-take marine reserves.

On August 11, 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will host a Town Hall meeting in Honolulu to hear your comments on U.S. President Obama’s recent proposal to expand – by nearly nine-fold -the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM) to the outermost reaches of the already existing U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). PRIMNM currently consists of 5 uninhabited island or atoll complexes (Wake, Jarvis, Howland and Baker Islands, Johnston Atoll, and Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll) plus the ocean surrounding each.

The expanded PRIMNM would be the largest monument in the world, and commercial fishing would be banned in its 200 square mile area. Unsurprisingly, the most vehement criticisms of PRIMNM expansion have come from members of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (Wespac). Wespac says the Pacific Remote Islands are important U.S. tuna fisheries and American Samoan purse seine fisheries; these fisheries don’t harm coral reef habitats in the area; and local subsistence fishers depend on access to these areas. The Pacific Remote islands are uninhabited, save for conservation personnel, and the area accounts for only about 5% of their tuna catch.

PRIMNM expansion complements actions of Pacific Island nations that are most affected by the health of our oceans. We do not often support U.S. federal actions in the Pacific, but PRIMNM expansion aligns with policies of putting marine conservation above commercial fishing interests on which many Pacific nations – Palau, Kiribati, and Cook Islands – have already led the way. Earlier this year, Palau announced it would protect 80 percent of Palau’s EEZ; Kiribati is closing two significant areas to commercial fishing; and Cook Islands have created a no-take marine reserve 50 miles around the southern islands in the archipelago.

The expanded PRIMNM would protect irreplaceable natural resources, including:

  • 241 seamounts, undersea mountains that are hotspots of biodiversity;
  • migratory species, such as dolphins, that use these seamounts as stopovers on trips between the Hawaiian Islands and other Pacific areas;
  • 14 million seabirds representing 19 species, which use these areas as feeding and breeding grounds;
  • Reef and open ocean habitat for protected species of sea turtles and marine mammals;
  • Deep water coral ecosystems, a variety of unique coral species live at great ocean depths, some of which are up to 5,000 years old;

Further, deep seabed mining – the extraction of minerals from the seafloor or sediment below the seabed – is prohibited within the existing PRIMNM and the boundary expansion should protect more of the Pacific. Mining destroys life on the seafloor in the target area; it pollutes adjacent waters and seafloor; heavy metals and sediment discharged from seabed mining can accumulate in fish; and sediment plumes that suffocate life can travel thousands of miles from a mining operation. In Papua New Guinea, where the first mining lease was granted in an area known as Solwara 1, an estimated US $740 million per hectare is needed to repair damage to the biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, and ecosystem function caused by seabed mining.

Petition against trash incinerator in Hilo

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Please add your opposition to this proposed project. Instead of finding ways to break our addiction to international commerce and start meeting our needs from the aina, this threatens to lock our county into mandatory long-term generation of trash. And as usual, the proposal calls for this source of air pollution to be sited near an already vulnerable, poor Native Hawaiian community.

If possible, please also submit testimony to the County Council, either in person Friday, July 18th, or via email to counciltestimony@co.hawaii.hi.us (Email must be received by noon, Thursday July 17th.)

Review of Assata: An Autobiography

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Review by Norris Thomlinson, Deep Green Resistance Hawai’i

Once you understand something about the history of a people, their heroes, their hardships and their sacrifices, it’s easier to struggle with them, to support their struggle. For a lot of people in this country, people who live in other places have no faces.”

–Assata Shakur

A World Apart

assata-autobiography

I grew up in the same country as Assata Shakur, but as a poor black woman, her autobiography reveals an experience a world apart from my own middle class, white male upbringing. She ably captures these differences in a series of anecdotes revealing that she did in fact grow up in a different country: “amerika”, while I enjoyed the facades of democracy, peace, and justice in America. I’ve been aware of the shocking statistics of incarceration rates of people of color, disproportionate distribution of wealth, heartbreaking inequity in education systems, increased exposure to toxins, decreased lifespans, and on and on. But I haven’t read much by black authors about their personal experiences navigating these systems of oppression and injustice. Shakur’s autobiography is surprisingly easy to read and even enjoyable, despite and because of its humorous tragedy, and makes an excellent introduction to a different reality for those of us born into white and/or male privilege.

Beyond her personal insights into the impacts of class, race, and gender, Shakur shares her astute political analysis, and draws a logical line from her childhood acceptance of the systems of America to her adult revolutionary struggle against amerika. Based on voracious reading, observation of the world around her, and careful thinking, she developed a radical analysis of structures of power and how to fight them. She understands that “What we are taught in the public school system is usually inaccurate, disorted, and packed full of outright lies” and that “Belief in these myths can cause us to make serious mistakes in analyzing our current situation and in planning future action.” She links the “interventions” and invasions of the US abroad to its theft of indigenous land and oppression of people of color at home.

Shakur knows none of this is an accident, fixable by asking those in power to change their ways. The people need to fight back, using violence if necessary:

“…the police in the Black communities were nothing but a foreign, occupying army, beating, torturing, and murdering people at whim and without restraint. I despise violence, but i despise it even more when it’s one-sided and used to oppress and repress poor people.”

Horizontal Hostility

Shakur explains that while those in power use schooling, media, the police, and COINTELPRO to divide and conquer those who might oppose them, the solution is simple (though not necessarily easy):

“The first thing the enemy tries to do is isolate revolutionaries from the masses of people, making us horrible and hideous monsters so that our people will hate us.”

“It’s got to be one of the most basic principles of living: always decide who your enemies are for yourself, and never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.”

“Some of the laws of revolution are so simple they seem impossible. People think that in order for something to work, it has to be complicated, but a lot of times the opposite is true. We usually reach success by putting the simple truths that we know into practice. The basis of any struggle is people coming together to fight against a common enemy.”

“Arrogance was one of the key factors that kept the white left so factionalized. I felt that instead of fighting together against a common enemy, they wasted time quarreling with each other about who had the right line.”

Parallels with Deep Green Resistance

It seems many of Shakur’s insights directly informed the Deep Green Resistance book, or the authors came to the same conclusions after studying similar history. For example, Shakur clearly states the need for a firewall between an aboveground and a belowground:

“An aboveground political organization can’t wage guerrilla war anymore than an underground army can do aboveground political work. Although the two must work together, they must have completely separate structures, and any links between the two must remain secret.”

She sees one of the main flaws of the Black Panther Party as having mixed aboveground political work with a militancy more appropriate for a belowground, especially in attempting to defend their offices at all costs against police raids. While understandable as symbolic of their pride and a willingness to fight for what was theirs, the simple reality was that the Panthers weren’t ready to go up against the military might of the state, and it was suicide to attempt to hold this symbolic territory. In asymmetric warfare, you must give way where the enemy is strong, and strike where the enemy is weak.

Perhaps most importantly, Shakur emphasizes several times the necessity of discipline and of careful, logical, long-term planning. She recounts an embarassing situation where she and some friends smoke marijuana in a public park while carrying radical literature, risking beatings or arrest by relinquishing full control of their faculties. After another revolutionary group helps them out of their precarious situation, a dazed Shakur resolves to take the struggle more seriously. This contrasts sharply with the drug- and sex-fueled Weathermen and their contemporaneous white radicals, whose self-indulgence in machismo and rebelliousness resulted in a strategy of instigating fistfights and rioting in the streets.

It reassures me that so many of Shakur’s hard-won lessons are foundational to Deep Green Resistance, as it reinforces my confidence in DGR as a well-researched analysis of historical movements and a solid guide to proceeding from here:

“There were sisters and brothers who had been so victimized by amerika that they were willing to fight to the death against their oppressors. They were intelligient, courageous and dedicated, willing to make any sacrifice. But we were to find out quickly that courage and dedication were not enough. To win any struggle for liberation, you have to have the way as well as the will, an overall ideology and strategy that stem from a scientific analysis of history and present conditions.

[…]

Every group fighting for freedom is bound to make mistakes, but unless you study the common, fundamental laws of armed revolutionary struggle you are bound to make unnecessary mistakes. Revolutionary war is protracted warfare. It is impossible for us to win quickly. […] One of the hardest lessons we had to learn is that revolutionary struggle is scientific rather than emotional. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t feel anything, but decisions can’t be based on love or on anger. They have to be based on the objective conditions and on what is the rational, unemotional thing to do.”

Read This Book

If you want to better understand racism, read this book. If you enjoy a well-told story of a unique and fascinating life, read this book. If you’re interested in historical revolutionary movements, read this book. If you’re interested in a modern revolutionary movement, read this book, read Deep Green Resistance, and let’s start putting the theory into practice.

“It crosses my mind: i want to win. i don’t want to rebel, i want to win.”

–Assata Shakur

Review of Sophie Scholl – The Final Days

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Sophie Scholl - The Final Days

By Norris Thomlinson, Deep Green Resistance Hawaii

Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (a German film with the original title of Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage) depicts the true story of a courageous young German woman, standing strongly behind her principles, as she faces charges in 1943 of undermining Nazi Germany. Scholl and a network of more than twenty others comprised the White Rose, opposing the Nazi regime through propaganda of graffiti and leaflets. The film centers on Scholl and her capture, interrogation, time in jail, and trial. A few other White Rose members are shown peripherally, most notably her brother Hans, captured with her during the same action.

After the depiction early in the film of the leaflet distribution which got the Scholls caught, the “action” ends, but if you’re interested in the dynamics of resistance movements and state repression, there’s still plenty to keep you engrossed. Sophie Scholl’s calm weaving of a plausible cover story under interrogation, followed by an equally calm steadfast defense of her beliefs, is gripping in its opposition to power in the face of grave danger. Scholl fights a battle of words for freedom and possibly life not only for herself, but for her brother, her parents, and many other comrades.

Stanley Diamond diagnosed: “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.” Once the Scholls’ guilt is unequivocally revealed, Sophie eloquently argues with her interrogator and with the court, addressing the implications of Hitler’s empire. The argument ranges from practical concerns of the impossibility of Germany winning against the combined opposition of America, England, and Russia to philosophical questions of blindly following government laws vs using conscience and God as moral guides. The Scholls point out the inevitability of military defeat and the senseless slaughter of German and foreign soldiers; and decry concentration camps, the extermination of mentally ill children, and German soldiers killing women and children. As we experience now regarding modern atrocities, those in power react with willful denial, rage meant to silence, detached sociopathic justifications, and of course retribution. The poignancy of these few young people raising their voices against mass consensus and state repression is alleviated only by the viewers’ knowledge of the accuracy of their predictions of Nazi defeat and repercussions for those who upheld its odious operations.

We can take inspiration to be as brave and accurate as the Scholls and the White Rose as we speak out against civilization at the root of our ecological and social crises, and as we call for, predict, and enact its dismantling.

Besides aspiring to their level of courage and honesty, we can also learn from their mistakes. Hans and Sophie Scholl knew they were taking a huge risk by distributing leaflets during the day; the rest of their group urged them not to try it. Hans carried evidence incriminating not only himself, but another member of their network, and left more incriminating evidence at home, easily found in a house raid.

The lack of compartmentalization of the White Rose network exposed and endangered them all following the capture of the Scholls. Aric McBay describes aboveground and underground organizational structures in the Deep Green Resistance book and in his video presentation Organizational Structures for Resistance. Careful consideration of organizational structure and of Security Culture is required now more than ever in the face of advanced surveillance and investigative technologies.

Finally, the White Rose believed first that their leaflets and then that state persecution would spark a student uprising. That hope may or may not have been justified, but such a revolt never occurred, and is reminiscent of the belief of the 1970s Weather Underground that they could provoke a youth rebellion by rioting and fighting cops in the street. We need to work from a realistic strategy based on a realistic assessment of likely engagement, and not just hope that our example will motivate a critical mass to take action.

Sophie Scholl – The Final Days is a moving glimpse into one of many historical resistance movements from which we can learn and take inspiration.

Seven GMO Events in May

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This announcement was put together by Occupy Hilo and distributed by GMO Free Hawai’i Island:

There are seven GMO‬ related events happening on ‪Hawaii Island‬ in the next two weeks. Please mark your calendars for the following:

MON 5/19 Hawaii Seed and the Mom Hui presents

as part of the Raise Awareness Inspire Change Speaker Series: Dr. Tyrone Hayes – Silencing the Independent Scientist

Where: UH Hilo campus, Science and Technology Building, room 108

When: Monday evening, May 19th, 6-8pm

A free and open to the public presentation by UC Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes, about his findings from 15 years of research on the herbicide Atrazine and his struggle with the Syngenta corporation, the maker of Atrazine.

TUES 5/20 Kona Island Naturals

6-8 pm ~Dr. Tyrone Hayes, UC Berkeley Professor/research on pesticide Atrazine and struggle with Syngenta Chemical Corp.

TUES 5/20

Agriculture Advisory Commission 10:00 am Puna Conference Room. Agenda items include a discussion of GMO legislation

THURS 5/22

9:00 am to 4:30 pm UH Hilo room UCB100

UH Soil health and composting symposium. The College of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resource Management (CAFNRM) at the University of Hawai`i at Hilo and the County of Hawai`i will host a free, public forum entitled “Building Momentum Toward a Resilient and Sustainable Local Farming Culture.” Dr. Hector Valenzuela of the UH Manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) and Dr. Norman Arancon of CAFNRM will be the lead presenters with discussion facilitation by Interim CAFNRM Dean Bruce Mathews and County Councilwoman Margaret Wille, Chair of the County Council’s Committee on Agriculture, Water, Energy, Sustainability. Morning presentations and panel discussions will focus on eco-friendly agro-ecological models, integrated crop-livestock systems and feed options, improving soil health, and increasing economical options for high quality compost. The afternoon sessions will include a discussion of little red fire ant control strategies and facilitated breakout sessions, followed panel discussions on how to move forward on the key areas of interest.

SAT 5/24

1:00 ‪March Against Monsanto‬ March/Sign Waving against Monsanto in Kona. Queen K toward Mormon Temple

SAT 5/24

6:30-8:30 pm UH Hilo STB108 Dr. Lorin Pang of Maui, informs us about the health effects and other issues around genetic engineering and genetically engineered food and farming. His focus will also be on pesticides, and how pesticides affect the human body at the cellular level, and the unintended consequences of mixing different pesticides together. When mixed, as is done more often than not in the farm fields, they combine to create brand new untested chemicals that wreak havoc on the human body’s ability defend from the toxins.

THURS 5/29

4:30pm GMO ISSUES: Pro and Con Panel Discussion by Four Experts, STB108, UH Hilo Campus. Free presentation sponsored by AAUW and UHH Women’s Center.

Pro presenters:

Richard Ha, Hamakua Springs Country Farms/ Hawaii Board Agriculture

Dr. Russel Nagata, County Administrator, UH Manoa, College Tropical Agriculture Human Resources

Con presenters

Councilwoman Margaret Wille, Chair County Agriculture/ Sustainability Committee

Dr. Hector Valenzuela, UH Manoa Professor, College of Tropical Agriculture

Community members who have questions or concerns about this topic are encouraged to attend. There will be an opportunity to have questions answered.

Hilo & Kona: Dr. Tyrone Hayes – Silencing the Independent Scientist

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Hawaii Seed and the Mom Hui presents, as part of the Raise Awareness Inspire Change Speaker Series:

Dr. Tyrone Hayes – Silencing the Independent Scientist

Where: Hilo, UH Hilo campus, Science and Technology Building, room 108

When: Monday evening, May 19th, 6-8pm

Where: Kona, Island Naturals upstairs meeting room

When: Tuesday evening, May 20th, 6-8pm

A free and open to the public presentation by UC Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes, about his findings from 15 years of research on the herbicide Atrazine and his struggle with the Syngenta corporation, the maker of Atrazine. His story of scientific and political corruption was featured recently in the New Yorker magazine.

At 6-6:30 pm will be light refreshments and a chance to meet the speaker. A question and answer period will follow the presentation. Paul Towers from Pesticide Action Network will be speaking as well, presenting an overview of pesticide use nationally as well as internationally and the significant role Hawaii plays as ground zero for open-air pesticide experimentation.

It was Dr. Hayes who discovered that the herbicide atrazine, the most widely used herbicide in America, was a disruptor of the endocrine system emasculating male frogs and transforming them into fully functioning reproductive females. Highly published in peer-review journals since the 1990s, Dr. Hayes is an advocate for the critical review and regulation of pesticides and chemicals that cause adverse health effects in our communities.

Right now the County of Kauai is embroiled in a lawsuit over regulating and enforcing articles in the pesticide bill that was recently passed. This bill called for the creation of buffer zones around schools, hospitals, etc, and the public right to know pesticide use in agriculture. This is a critical issue for us all to understand. The links between human health, environmental health, children’s ability to learn, and the future of healthy thriving communities depends on informed community understanding.

Mahalo!

From the team at GMO Free Hawaii Island gmofreehawiiisland@gmail.com

Please feel free to share and send this out widely – thank you!