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from the you-can't-lie-in-front-of-the-bulldozer-indefinitely dept.
Hawaii Protesters Block Access Road To Stop Construction Of Massive Telescope
About 300 demonstrators are trying to halt construction on the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope, developers of which are supposed to break ground on Hawaii's Big Island this week. Before the sun came up on the summit of Mauna Kea, the island's tallest mountain, a group of about half a dozen protesters chained themselves to a grate in the road at the base of the dormant volcano in an attempt to block workers from accessing the only paved road onto the what they say is a sacred site.
Imai Winchester, a teacher from Oahu who was among the protesters chained to the road, said he arrived at about 3 a.m. local time. "A handful of us committed ourselves to this action to bring light to the situation here," Winchester told KHON. The goal of the civil disobedience, he said, is to inform people about the "desecration of our lands, the failure of the state and its agencies to properly manage something that is important." He added that he expected to be arrested for the nonviolent protest but that it is the group's "burden as well as our privilege to show our children and the rest of the world how much we love our land."
Daniel Meisenzahl, a spokesman for the University of Hawaii, a member of the international partnership of scientists behind the telescope, said it is unclear if the protest has delayed construction convoys.
Previously: Divisive Giant Telescope Cleared for Construction on Hawaiian Peak
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 16 2019, @03:08PM (3 children)
For a certain subset of we... not including those who might be characterized as "the other side."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Tuesday July 16 2019, @03:56PM (2 children)
I honestly haven't read enough about this story to have a side. I personally like the idea of huge telescopes, but don't wish to force them on others. If the protesters are holding a view that is a minority in their locality I'm on the other side, but if the local populace is mostly opposed to the telescope so am I. Seems like 0.002% of island's population showed up for this demonstration (rounding up), but that isn't a great measure of support, and having been involved in demonstrations that reporters lied about the size of I don't necessarily believe media estimates of protester numbers. Regardless of if I'm on their side or not, I'm willing to call their actions civil disobedience. I would extend the same language to any groups I disagreed with, given that their actions fit the definition.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 16 2019, @04:39PM (1 child)
That's a tough one to define in their locality. I had the same issue in West Coast Florida in the 1970s... in my high school Social Studies class they asked everyone who was born in Florida to raise their hands - me and one other kid, out of a class of 30. My parents were also born in Florida - their parents came down from Tennessee after WWII.
So, do you define minority as less than 50% of the current resident population? Do those residents have to own property? Do they have to actually be present on that property for more than 4 months of the year? More than 8 months? How many years do they have to have been resident before they count as part of the locality? 1, 5, a generation, two generations?
Hilo area is experiencing huge immigration growth, and has been for 20+ years. The people opposing the big telescope have (mostly) been residents of Hawaii for multiple generations. If you draw that majority line at 50% of "current residents" - the natives lose easily. If you go back far enough, obviously they win. At what point do the opinions of newcomers outweigh the opinions of the people who made the place the newcomers liked enough to move to?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday July 16 2019, @06:19PM
In its general form that's a super tough question I like to dance around without addressing directly, TBH. I get why letting the immigrant population, the relatives of violent invaders, control local policy seems problematic. I also see how not allowing current residents an equal say seems problematic. Does the context of the immigration matter? Should we treat the descendants of conquerors different than the descendants of asylum-seekers? What if an immigrant isn't the descendant of a conqueror, but falls into the same demographic pigeonholes that the descendants of conquerors do? Do we really want to discriminate based on skin color? Aren't we incentivising future genocide and invasion if we don't discriminate based on skin color in this context, given that $CURRENT_YEAR isn't any better of a starting date than any other? This will be a simpler topic when humanity has more thorough woven our culture, history, and genetics into one entangled ball of string. I don't think ethno-nationalism is a sustainable or clever strategy of governance, even if I do have empathy for those people who find themselves in shitty positions because their ancestors faced invading forces, but if we're being totally real I also wonder how much being a white guy living in America has to do with that -- I've gone through some very "I hate modern society" sort of phases, and I can imagine that those might have had a tinge of ethno-nationalist flavor to them if I found myself in the shoes of the historically oppressed rather than the shoes of the historic oppressor.
Now that the big question has been kinda answered but mostly danced around, I have a small, specific question.
Emphasis added, obviously. Are you sure of this claim? While I might not consider it a be-all-end-all deciding factor, I would be interested in knowing if the indigenous people poll strongly against it. I don't know how integrated Hawaii's culture is, and it wouldn't surprise me either way.