WVWS at Community Alternative to APEC
Women's Voices Women Speak Stand in Solidarity with Jeju Island Activists
On Sept. 4, 2011, Women's Voices Women Speak, Ann Wright, and a few friends gathered at the Korean Consulate of Hawai'i to hold a vigil in solidarity with peace activists on Jeju Island. This action was catalyzed by the current military and police encroachment on the Peace Camp at Gangjeong Village, Jeju. As we prepared for this event, Ann Wright reported back on her recent trip to Jeju Island. Despite the fact that Jeju island activists are being arrested and harassed for protecting the island from the naval base construction occurring on the island, they continue to protest. Women's Voices Women Speak read the International Women's Network Against Militarism letter of support to Jeju Island activists to contextualize the vigil. They left messages of opposition to the Naval Base at Jeju on the Korean Consulate compound. Some wrote letters to the Korean Consulate. The Naval base on Jeju is to house Aegis destroyers, equipped with U.S. anti-ballistic missile and radar systems. This construction matters to Hawai'i because the Barking Sands Pacific Missile Range on the island of Kaua'i is also part of the anti-ballistic missile defense system network. In 2009, Hawai'i Senator Daniel Inouye pushed for funding for Aegis Ashore test facility at Barking Sands. Women's Voices Women Speak stand in solidarity with peoples of Jeju island to expose how Asian and Pacific island nations are being used to connect networks of U.S. Military weaponry.
No Naval Base on Jeju!
No Military Expansion in Hawai'i!
End Military Dependence in all Nations!
APEC from Japan People's Movement Perspectives 2010
APEC had a meeting in 2010 in Yokohama Japan. Here are perspectives from No APEC TV! and People's Plan Study Group about what is APEC. These are resources on alternative views on APEC from people's perspectives.
Message from the International Women’s Network Against Militarism to the peoples movement for No Naval Base on Jeju!
September 1, 2011
Dear friends in the struggle against US military expansion at Jeju Island,
We women from Okinawa, mainland Japan, the Philippines, Marshall Islands, Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Australia and west-coast USA send our greetings in solidarity with the people of Ganjeong who oppose the construction of a new naval base to house Aegis destroyers.
We understand that 94 percent of the residents do not want this base. We admire and respect your strong opposition by occupying land seized by the government and by blocking roads in an attempt to stop construction. We deplore the fact the South Korean government has ordered police to take further measures against you, especially as you have used every possible democratic means to overturn the decision to construct the base in the pristine waters and land that have been your livelihood for many generations.
We agree that this base and the increased militarization of the island of Jeju will create new security threats in an increasingly tense region.
We also live in communities that experience increased militarization and the effects of enormous military investments that distort our local economies and take resources needed for our communities to thrive. The political and military alliances between our governments and the United States jeopardize our genuine security. Indeed, U.S. military expansion in the Asia-Pacific and the Caribbean relies on these alliances to tie our communities together according to their version of security that is not sustainable.
The plan to relocate U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam includes military construction projects that involve labor from Hawai’i, Micronesia and the Philippines. In addition to the destruction and loss of life caused by continued wars in the Middle East, these wars are also destabilizing our economies. For example, Filipinos who have been recruited to work on military construction projects are laid off during times of crisis and return to the Philippines where they have no jobs. On Guam, local companies cannot compete with larger military contractors and are seldom able to get contracts for base construction projects. The establishment of the U.S. military base at Ke Awa Lau o Pu’uloa, or Pearl Harbor, has transformed Oahu's food basket into a toxic “Superfund” site where many of Hawai’i's poorest communities live along its contaminated shores. In Puerto Rico, Governor Luis Fortuño has unleashed brutality against citizens, and suppression of their civil liberties because of protests against budget cuts to public services and education. In the continental United States a new campaign is calling for new priorities in federal spending away from war and toward services to support local communities.
We see your struggle as part of a wider pattern of people’s protest against increasing militarization.
Although we are far away, please know that we stand with you. We thank you for your courage to resist the militarization of your home. Your example inspires and strengthens us.
In solidarity,
Signed, on behalf of the IWNAM:
Kozue Akibayashi, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Japan
Ellen-Rae Cachola, Women for Genuine Security/Women's Voices Women Speak, U.S. & Hawai'i
Grace Caligtan, Women's Voices Women Speak, Hawai'i
Lotlot de la Cruz, KAISAKA, Philippines
Cora Valdez Fabros, Scrap VFA Movement & Philippine Women's Network for Peace and Security, Philippines
Annie Fukushima, Women for Genuine Security, U.S.
Terri Keko'olani, Women's Voices Women Speak, Hawai'i
Gwyn Kirk, Women for Genuine Security, U.S.
Rev. Deborah Lee, Women for Genuine Security, U.S.
Bernadette “Gigi” Miranda, Women's Voices Women Speak, Hawai'i
Eri Oura, Women's Voices Women Speak, Hawai'i
María Reinat Pumarejo, Colectivo Ilé: Organizadoras para la Conciencia-en-Acción
Aida Santos-Maranan, Women's Education, Development, Productivity and Research Organization (WEDPRO), Philippines
Dr. Hannah Middleton, Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition, Australia
Suzuyo Takazato, Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, Okinawa
Lisa Natividad, Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice, Guahan (Guam)
Ana Maria R. Nemenzo, WomanHealth Philippines.
Darlene Rodrigues, Women’s Voices Women Speak, Hawai’i
The International Women’s Network Against Militarism was formed in 1997 when forty women activists, policy-makers, teachers, and students from South Korea, Okinawa, mainland Japan, the Philippines and the continental United States gathered in Okinawa to strategize together about the negative effects of the US military in each of our countries. In 2000, women from Puerto Rico who opposed the US Navy bombing training on the island of Vieques also joined; followed in 2004 by women from Hawai’i and in 2007 women from Guam. The Network is not a membership organization, but a collaboration among women active in our own communities, who share a common mission to demilitarize their lands and communities. For more information, visit http://www.genuinesecurity.org.
Melanie and Eri at UHM Spring 2010 Colloquium Series
The UHM Women's Studies Program is pleased to close our Spring 2010 Colloquium Series with the two Capstone presentations by Melanie Medalle and Eri Oura, graduate students in the Advanced
Women's Studies (AdWS) Certificate Program.
Each student enrolled in the AdWS Certificate program designs, develops, and completes a research and/or community involvement project that culminate s in a publishable- quality work or comparable
product, and a Capstone presentation given in the student’s final semester of the program. Melanie Medalle's presentation is entitled: "'1898 Unfortunates' : Sex, Race, and Space in the Philippine-American War" and Eri Oura's talk, "“Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot”: Deconstructing Representations of the 2007 Waikele Case"
The event will take place at 2424 Maile Way, Saunders 624 (the Harry Friedman Room in the Political Science Department) Friday, April 30, 2010 from 12:30pm-2pm. Please spread the work.
Best,
Bianca Isaki
'1898 Unfortunates' : Sex, Race, and Space in the Philippine-American War
Melanie Medalle
Gathered in Paris on December 10, 1898, Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded and sold to the United States the territory it had occupied for over three centuries
in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. At the signing of this massive real estate transfer, all persons native to the colonies implicated in the transaction were barred entry from the meeting, as
the enfleshment of their bodies were blurred in the language of the document. Drawing on violent tableaus such as this, in this paper I resituate an alternative genealogical imaginary of the control and
production of colonial and imperial bodily membership and intimacy.
In its first overseas insular colonial projects in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans at the turn of the nineteenth century, American proponents of imperial expansion continued a longer US project of
racialized sexuality/sexualize d raciality discourse production. The subaltern experience and contestation of this moment rendered a vastly different conceptualization and contribution to the development of US imperial aspirations and imaginaries of itself. I focus here on the period surrounding the Philippine-American War, explore a selection of cultural texts and consider how aesthetic and discursive narratives serve to coalesce and dissipate the imagination of the realities that
the subject and the state both fluidly inhabit. I argue that technologies of imagination are critical in the self-making of disparate and yet intimately connected bodies in a tightening transnational geography of power and resistance.
“Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot”[1]: Deconstructing Representations of the 2007 Waikele Case
Eri Oura
In 2007, a Native Hawaiian family was involved in a physical altercation with a haole military couple as a result of a minor traffic accident. This case caught the attention of local and national media sources because of the violent nature of the physical and verbal actions that were exchanged. The description of the case in the media was disturbingly one-sided, portraying the Pa’akaulas (who
self-identify as Native Hawaiian) as racist and barbaric, while the Dussells remain to be represented as the only victims in the case. Before the hearings for the two Pa’akaula men involved in the incident, police and FBI investigated the case to determine whether the assaults were racially motivated and could be considered a hate-crime because the phrase “f-----g haole” was used during the incident.
Shortly after the investigation began, USAToday published an article entitled “Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot,” which questioned Hawai’i’s tourist-based economy’s claims to
being a harmonious “melting pot” society that is the model for multiculturalism. The article also prompted national attention to the many of the losses Native Hawaiians have been facing since the
mid-1990s and the resurgence of political resistance for independence, but missed many critical points about the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Hawai’i. Instead, the article blamed Native
Hawaiians for the racial tensions in Hawai’i and included many statements that represent haole as the victims.
This essay deconstructs the representations of this case in local and national news media and analyzes how these articles construct the “perpetrators” and “victims” through different processes of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The results of this study questions how gendered these constructed roles are and what the role and nature of the American nationalist government in Hawai’i.
Women's Studies (AdWS) Certificate Program.
Each student enrolled in the AdWS Certificate program designs, develops, and completes a research and/or community involvement project that culminate s in a publishable- quality work or comparable
product, and a Capstone presentation given in the student’s final semester of the program. Melanie Medalle's presentation is entitled: "'1898 Unfortunates' : Sex, Race, and Space in the Philippine-American War" and Eri Oura's talk, "“Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot”: Deconstructing Representations of the 2007 Waikele Case"
The event will take place at 2424 Maile Way, Saunders 624 (the Harry Friedman Room in the Political Science Department) Friday, April 30, 2010 from 12:30pm-2pm. Please spread the work.
Best,
Bianca Isaki
'1898 Unfortunates' : Sex, Race, and Space in the Philippine-American War
Melanie Medalle
Gathered in Paris on December 10, 1898, Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded and sold to the United States the territory it had occupied for over three centuries
in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. At the signing of this massive real estate transfer, all persons native to the colonies implicated in the transaction were barred entry from the meeting, as
the enfleshment of their bodies were blurred in the language of the document. Drawing on violent tableaus such as this, in this paper I resituate an alternative genealogical imaginary of the control and
production of colonial and imperial bodily membership and intimacy.
In its first overseas insular colonial projects in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans at the turn of the nineteenth century, American proponents of imperial expansion continued a longer US project of
racialized sexuality/sexualize d raciality discourse production. The subaltern experience and contestation of this moment rendered a vastly different conceptualization and contribution to the development of US imperial aspirations and imaginaries of itself. I focus here on the period surrounding the Philippine-American War, explore a selection of cultural texts and consider how aesthetic and discursive narratives serve to coalesce and dissipate the imagination of the realities that
the subject and the state both fluidly inhabit. I argue that technologies of imagination are critical in the self-making of disparate and yet intimately connected bodies in a tightening transnational geography of power and resistance.
“Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot”[1]: Deconstructing Representations of the 2007 Waikele Case
Eri Oura
In 2007, a Native Hawaiian family was involved in a physical altercation with a haole military couple as a result of a minor traffic accident. This case caught the attention of local and national media sources because of the violent nature of the physical and verbal actions that were exchanged. The description of the case in the media was disturbingly one-sided, portraying the Pa’akaulas (who
self-identify as Native Hawaiian) as racist and barbaric, while the Dussells remain to be represented as the only victims in the case. Before the hearings for the two Pa’akaula men involved in the incident, police and FBI investigated the case to determine whether the assaults were racially motivated and could be considered a hate-crime because the phrase “f-----g haole” was used during the incident.
Shortly after the investigation began, USAToday published an article entitled “Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot,” which questioned Hawai’i’s tourist-based economy’s claims to
being a harmonious “melting pot” society that is the model for multiculturalism. The article also prompted national attention to the many of the losses Native Hawaiians have been facing since the
mid-1990s and the resurgence of political resistance for independence, but missed many critical points about the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Hawai’i. Instead, the article blamed Native
Hawaiians for the racial tensions in Hawai’i and included many statements that represent haole as the victims.
This essay deconstructs the representations of this case in local and national news media and analyzes how these articles construct the “perpetrators” and “victims” through different processes of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The results of this study questions how gendered these constructed roles are and what the role and nature of the American nationalist government in Hawai’i.
100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day Statement and Invitation
Honoring the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010
On the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s day, the O'ahu women of 3rd Path for Reproductive Justice commemorate and honor the collective cultural survival and wisdom of our female ancestors and she-roes. We know our her-story is a key resource which guides us in our work to secure reproductive justice for ourselves, families, and daughters, aunties, mothers, and grandmothers of Ka Pae `Aina Hawai`i.
On this special day, we continue to stand and hold a vision of reproductive justice: the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social well being of women and girls. And we call you to join us in working towards securing the economic, social, and political power and resources to support women and girls in making healthy decisions about their bodies,their sexuality, and their lives.
Please join us in celebration!
When: March 8, 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Where: Ho`oulu `Aina, Kalihi Valley Nature Park, 3659 Kalihi Street,
Honolulu, HI 96819
What: Move the Movement with Adela Chu, Poetry with Darlene, Melanie, Keisha and Angela, and circle time for connection and sisterhood! Come in comfortable, warm clothes!
WHO WE ARE:
As indigenous, immigrant, and local women living in Ka Pae`Aina Hawai`i, we are united in supporting women’s ability to exercise their self determination. In supporting this inalienable human right, we share in Kanaka Maoli’s pursuit of being able to freely determine the political status of the lahui, while simultaneously, acknowledging the ancestral places where Hawai`i residents come from, the places they now live and honoring the historical migrations that bond us all together.
When we began, we started as women working primarily in the field of domestic violence. At that time, we first organized under the Hawaii State Coalition for Domestic Violence as the Women of Color Caucus. In 2009, we recognized the need to also address the violence directed at our communities through marginalization, lack of language access, and unspoken forms of exclusion and exclusivity. We also saw the need to draw critical connections between land and the freedom of women’s bodies--something way beyond the scope that the current DV movement in Hawaii could not address.
Today we have reorganized as the 3rd Path for Reproductive Justice to expand our coalition and fully address the web of our concerns. We are doulas, child and family advocates, workers in the domestic violence and sexual violence field, students, lawyers, social workers, parents, caregivers to elders, demilitarization activists, marriage equity advocates, artists, mentors, and youth. We welcome you in sisterhood, while sharing and collectively organizing for the above concerns.
I Kareran I Palåbran Måmi (The Journey of Our Words)
WHAT: I Kareran I Palåbran Måmi (The Journey of Our Words)
WHO: Poets, Angela T. Hoppe-Cruz (MSW/MA Pacific Islands Studies Candidate) & Kisha Borja-Kicho`cho` (MA Pacific Island Studies Candidate). Both women are Chamoru and were born and raised on the island of Guåhan (Guam).
WHERE: University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, Campus Center, Executive Dining Room
WHEN: Friday, February, 12, 2010
TIME: 5:15-8:00pm
We will be reading pieces we have collaborated on as well as our own individual poetry. Much of our work centers on the impact U.S. militarization and colonialism have had on our home island community of Guåhan and the other Micronesian islands, much of which is manifest in social, economic, and environmental injustice. Our work also focuses on Chamoru culture and identity. Immediately following the reading, there will be a facilitated discussion.
Food will be served (sponsored by the UH Marianas Club and C.E.J.E.).
The event is free and open to the public!
Your support is greatly appreciated!
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