Mr. Romeo needs an agent!
As of this morning, his now-famous YouTube video, “Wake-up call,” has had 23,718 views.
His count is increasing nearly 1,000 views a day.
Amazing.
Also amazing. APEC.
I can’t get that perfect APEC symbol out of my mind–Honolulu police in new aloha shirts with body armor underneath. A local variation of the old “iron fist in a velvet glove” image. How appropriate for a meeting that critics say embodies modern colonialism.
If you’re thinking about heading into Waikiki, better be sure your papers are in order!
Once APEC gets rolling, we’re reportedly looking at mandatory ID checks to get into Waikiki. If there’s any wiggle room, better take your passport, you may need it!
A friend with a small retail store in the heart of Waikiki said this morning that crews have been welding manhole covers in place in Waikiki.
Then there’s the concern about increases in prostitution during APEC. At least one group has been sounding an alarm, while others, more jaded, say the same thing happens during other large conventions and military maneuvers.
And how does HPD respond? According to the Star-Advertiser, HPD set up its own prostitution sting on Wednesday night and arrested three local men and a visitor on prostitution charges. Those are petty misdemeanors, by the way. Hardly worth the time and expense of setting up and staffing a sting. And, of course, many APEC participants don’t have to worry about arrests because they have diplomatic immunity. So it’s hard to see that HPD’s actions do much to address the prostitution issue, if in fact it is an issue.
You have to wonder whether the decision to host APEC would have been different if all these disruptive and intrusive security measures, and the resulting costs to the host city, had been fully disclosed up front.
Of course, it’s too late for us now, but perhaps the experience could help inform future decisions in other venues.
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The aloha attire for the HPD is ridiculous! If push comes to shove, and there’s any kind of contestation at all, can you imagine the photos on the national news? Police festooned in festive shirts, in formation behind bulletproof shields, marching on protestors?
Whose bright idea was this, anyway?
This morning I saw HPD ‘escorting’ a homeless person from her camp under H1 near Market City. She’s been there for at least a month – time to clean up the image! Argh.
I also appreciated the comment heard on the news earlier this week. “When HPD arrests protestors”… so if you protest you’re automatically assumed to be a) doing something illegal and b) be automatically arrested? Double argh.
I have decided to stay on the Windward side during APEC. None of the activities give a good impression of Hawaii, a police state (?).
Have you seen the digital sign near JJ Seafoods in Kaneohe warning of traffic delays during APEC?
I think that — hopefully — we’re making a disproportionate and unreasonable, crybaby-like fuss about this APEC deal!
In about a week and a half we’ll know better. I suppose the worst of the traffic and other negative impacts will occur when most of the heads of state come here, maybe on Thursday, or so, until early the next week… an inconvenience sort of a like a typical storm, road work, electric outage, or sewage leak, if you will.
A reasonable counter-argument could be that we don’t host enough of these “Mighty Potentates of the World” conferences here.
If we did this would become more routine, and more likely accepted as a norm, as it is in, say, New York City with the U.N. buildings events… It might be better all around – we need the business, prestige, and, hopefully, positive free advertising! Maybe then we could address matters that affect more of us, than say folks in Waikiki, near the HiCon and Disney?
Maybe it would be a good idea to host more of these, at least on a smaller scale.
It would be nice to have the place kept spic and span instead of neglected, as is the norm.
We need to learn how to do it, for one thing. I have reports that handivans have been commandeered by the police, which probably means that anyone waiting for dialysis or other medical procedure will have to wait longer for transportation. If true, it’s an unnecessary and unwanted sacrifice. Plus all the traffic jams and restrictions. Who needs that? Either learn how to do it, and learn what size event we can handle without stopping life on Oahu, or don’t do it.
No one asked us ordinary citizens if we wanted APEC here. This was imposed on us. I kind of doubt we will see any benefit while hoping I am wrong about that.
Another part of learning will be not to look ridiculous. Those police look kind of funny, don’t they? Won’t APEC visitors think they look funny? Is that what police in a banana republic wear? Most serious cops wear serious cop uniforms. It’s ok to look like an actual cop instead of a third-world-attempt-to-impress-important-visitors-charade-cop.
Won’t they look silly to the world as they beat up demonstrators, for example? I hope they realize this and will refrain from beating up demonstrators. The image could make Hawaii a laughingstock of the Internet.
The standard HPD uniform has the officer’s name on the pocket, so you can identify the individual officer in case of problems. Where’s the name tag on these uniforms?
As far as I can tell the economics are this: we spend $137 million and we rake in $120 million. But some of the $137 we would have spent anyway…except earlier we were told that the State was broke.
OK, carry on.
The first lady will be going to Ma’o Farm on the leeward side as well as Kualoa Ranch on windward- that alone will close traffic horrendously.
Every time some bozo head of state wants to move around O’ahu, our lives will be put on hold- and the projected cost far outweighs any income- what the world will see is a police state with lousy traffic- and uku paila homeless- they have to go somewhere- unless perhaps HS is planning an internment camp…
The ersatz “free speech” zone is an insult to every citizen. Anyone arrested (including protesters ) will be sent to the Kaneohe District Court.
From KITV:
” law enforcement officials said arrests and initial court appearances are being moved to Kaneohe because it’s far away from Waikiki and Ko Olina, where key APEC events will be held. For instance, it would take protesters arrested at Waikiki demonstrations a long time to get back to Waikiki after posting bail or waiting for court appearances in Kaneohe”
really disgusted,
Cathy
Hawaii is about to be in the national news, yet again!
Hawaii News Now sources already say the D.C. Federal agent arrested for killing a man at McDonald’s in Waikiki … was here for APEC.
The federal agent is 27 years old ….. and was at McDonald’s in Waikiki at 2am.
people in the restaurant were flabbergasted.
for some reason, i don’t think shooting was a 007 moment.
KHON reports there was an “altercation” between the Federal agent and an apparently drunk 23-year-old Kailua man, and that they did not know each other. KHON sez the Federal agent admitted to shooting the man in the chest, killing him.
With the several recent, bizarre happenings in Hawaii ……….. by the time APEC is underway, methinks the summit itself may seem a relatively boring event, protests included.
So the one APEC-related arrest so far has been for a federal agent. Did they book him in Kaneohe?
OMG. That HPD attire is … embarrassing.
If you remember the 1992 LA riots after the police accused of beating Rodney Kind were acquitted, then-President George HW Bush came on television and said that what we see is a false vision or distortion of how American really is. Nothing could be further from the truth. The veneer of daily life was stripped away and the true nature of the social order revealed itself.
But the media distorted the riots to some extent, portraying the riots like a replay of black frustration expressed in the riots of the 1960s. From what I’ve read from sources on the ground, however, is that hispanics were disproportionately involved in the riots, and blacks were underrepresented. In fact, “everybody” was out there stealing televisions and burning down Korean grocery stores. Basically, the factory jobs have gone to Japan, South Korea and China, and the middle class has shrunk accordingly. The general working population is screwed.
So there are some voices on the left saying that APEC represents the global plutocracy and that it is in a sense invading Hawaii, and that there are efforts by the local elite to sugar coat the nature of this presence — to put a velvet glove on the iron fist of power. But this is how all societies work, including Hawaii. Ironically, this belief that Hawaii is somehow special or a kind of ‘paradise’ is something promulgated by the local tourist industry — the local plutocracy — and absorbed by popular culture globally, including local culture. Again, what we see with APEC is not a perversion of local culture but a revealing of the true nature of the local social order. There were always strong elements of plutocracy and propaganda in Hawaii.
In a way, I welcome APEC because it serves an educating function, showing us how the world really works when homeless families are simply brushed aside in order to present a certain image to global elites (most of whom have already been to Hawaii and know all about the ghetto nature of the place). However, the problem is that a lot of people locally will learn the exact opposite lesson and try to resurrect the old propaganda of Hawaiian exceptionalism. They will think “Oh, these capitalist outsiders are bringing their police-state tactics to our paradise….” No, there were always police goon squads and suchlike in Hawaii, and efforts to sugar coat the iron fist, its just that now we cannot help but notice them. Again, all societies are like this.
I can agree with much of what you have written here. BUT, there was a period of both US and Hawaii history when citizens were able to press demands for more equality, through unions, through elections and political reforms. Inequality actually declined in both the US and Hawaii from the New Deal until the late 70s. In Hawaii, the Big Five/haole oligarchy was displaced by a much broader-based alliance of union members and non-haole aspiring professionals and small business owners.
So many of us developed hopes, even expectations about the possibility of using democratic means to improve our society. We organized to make demands from outside investors–and our own elite. Look at struggles like Waiahole-Waikane as perhaps the biggest success in this type of organizing. And that victory caused a lot of developers to change their plans, so the victory was generalized beyond those two valleys.
Whatever hopes (or illusions) we had of “Hawaii multi-ethnic working class” (a phrase popularized by the Ethnic Studies program) wresting control from the multi-national corporations have been dashed as neo-liberal illusions have taken control of the US economy in a more blatant manner than before.
The Love Fest being promoted in honor of our APEC “guests” is just rubbing salt in the wounds. And when the “festivities” begin with the shooting of a local kid, it becomes (almost) too much to bear.
And I don’t think your closing comment is helpful: “All societies are like this.”
I am not eager to “sugarcoat” the class nature of societies, but it IS possible for societies exist with greater equality, more democracy, less environmentally damaging practices, even while maintaining a high standard of living. Your “all societies” remark suggests their is no reason to struggle for change, even if that may not be your intention.
I once read a book by James E. McClennan on the history of education in the US. His critique was that there are periodic reform movements in the US that do transform the education system, but as soon as these reforms take root, they are corrupted into the status quo. (Think of the establishment of the high school SATs.) However, despite this compromising of the reform process, the movement itself has a rejuvenating influence on the system. Without reform movements, there would be dire stagnation.
We need to struggle against the status quo not to establish the One True System, but to revivify the status quo. That sounds perverse, but I take it as the hard reality.
I also understand the labor unions as part and parcel of the current status quo. At one time, the labor movement challenged and then rejuvenated the system. But the unions are no longer a ‘movement’. They need to be challenged by a new movement (which will itself be absorbed and corrupted), perhaps for their own good (since unions are part of the status quo and would be rejuvenated by a societally transformative movement).
The kind of “equality” that you speak of is the leveraging of union power to raise workers salaries.
Along these lines, I keep hearing that without labor unions, Hawaii would not have a middle class.
But these people do not look, talk, act or think like middle class people.
As I once read, the working class defines class status based on money, the middle class defines class status on education levels and the upper classes define class status on “values” (tastefulness, generosity).
Now, I’ve been in Asian countries, and my impression is that there is a very bourgeois ethos even among the working class, where they want their sons ideally to graduate from elite universities. Now, this might be based on a desire for more money, but I suspect that there are Confucian values lurking in the background.
I’m not advocating Confucian or bourgeois values. That’s not my point. But I do think that there is no real middle class in Hawaii because there is not that much in the way of a real middle class ethos here. Maybe that’s true with the US as a whole, with working-class people buying McMansions in order to maintain the image of worldly success.
But true middle class life revolves around credentials and ambition, which I don’t see much of locally, and so I really do not see this great movement toward equality that you speak of. I look at the labor unions in Hawaii and i see a desire for security and consumption. I see no proper middle class or a desire to be truly middle class, and hence i see no drive toward a greater equality. I just see uneducated people who want to go to Las Vegas six times a year.
Also, I don’t think most people want equality or freedom or diversity. I believe that most people want security, luxury and status. So I am not sure if the valuation of “equality” really has much traction with most people, except when people feel jealous and want more stuff and feel entitled to it.
The only thing that comes to my mind is “Be careful what you wish for, for it might (and in this case, has) come true.”