Arab Spring on display to the world presented images of young minds creating a new world and a new way of being. In its' early beginning around 2005 there was a group of young, creative, committed, fierce and visionary like-minds who hold a great love for the island, culture and people of this place we call Guåhan, who came together to discuss the concerns raised regarding initial releases and leaks of the military buildup on the island. Moreover, the alarming presumptions and intoxicated euphoria locked any conversation or reference to the buildup into such deceivingly radiant terms. In this group were students, graduate students, healthcare professionals, musicians, poets, educators, community organizers, and artists. The San Diego conference was emotional and inspiring. Prior to this, many of us had no one to talk to about our concerns.
Ninety percent of the group has since returned home to take part in the discussions, provide the needed and relevant information, standing firm, challenging instruments of the state, protecting and defending home. This is the leadership we want for our island ~ ~ ~ ~
Pacific Daily News
June 25, 2011
Guam Needs Leadership on Buildup
Given last week's Sunday Forum topic, which focused on whether or not people should express their support of the military buildup, we eagerly await a future Sunday Forum that will ask the obvious next question as to whether or not people opposed to the buildup should speak out as well.
Last Sunday's topic coincided with the recent appearance of a new pro-buildup group Para Hita Todu, which is seeking to carve a place for itself in the buildup conversation.The tone of the topic made it seem as if the pro-buildup side of the debate, such as the leaders of Para Hita Todu, have been cowed into silence and become marginalized in the process. In addition to the lack of any semblance of objectivity, it is laughable to think that such captains of industry and influence, with their thousands of employees, millions of dollars and obvious power, who have dominated the discussion of the buildup since it was announced, have somehow been silenced and need to be given a special space to make their case.
For years, the people of Guam were fed a steady stream of fantasies and wishful thinking about the buildup. Before people even knew what it was, while it was just numbers in press releases, people made promises of billions of dollars, better futures and jobs for everyone, without any specifics. But those days are over and the people of Guam have come to a point where we don't crave promises or platitudes about the buildup, but want answers and solutions to either the problem it represents in and of itself, or the problems that will arise because of it.
This is the sign of a maturing community; one which does not want to be lied to, but wants to be informed and wants to be able to make their own decisions.
What Guam needs now is leadership on the buildup issue, and this is something that as of yet Para Hita Todu is not offering. Their recently released study showing 60 percent buildup support in the community is a perfect example of this. They refuse to address the valid concerns of our community. Instead they have polarized the issue, making it just about who does or does not support the buildup, and not about why our community is apprehensive in the first place.
Proponents of the buildup have long attempted to substitute support for the buildup with a judgment that the buildup is good for Guam. Polls conducted over the years have always showed various high levels of "support" for the buildup, but this bears no relation to whether or not it is a good thing for the island.
The EIS gave the people of Guam answers about what the buildup might bring and much of it was bad. Thus, if Para Hita Todu wishes to blow the kulo' of buildup awesomeness, it must be able to tackle the legitimate concerns that people have about everything from Pågat, traffic, public institution overcrowding, environmental damage, a higher cost of living, and the list goes on.
From what we have seen so far, they are unwilling or unable to do so and have rebuffed these concerns with whimsical remarks of such things "being taken care of." The concerns of the people of Guam were kept at bay with such language for years and it did us little good.
Now that the military has revealed its plans and we know the potential impact, it does us even less good to ignore them. We need to continue to take a serious look at the buildup plans and address the valid concerns our community raised during the draft EIS commenting period, many of which are still being avoided by those orchestrating the buildup.
Para Hita Todu's inability to make a solid argument for the buildup is not truly their fault, but most likely tied to the inherent fact that the buildup has always been a potential boon for some and a possible burden for most. There are those who may reap incredible rewards from the buildup. They are the ones who are already at the top of Guam's society and have the means to leverage their already abundant resources into possibly much more resources.
For the majority of Guam's people, however, the opportunities are mixed, to say the least. The EIS said as much, by indicating that the quality of life on Guam may take a significant hit and the responses to these cautions from the pro-buildup side always boil down to vague promises of more money to take care of everything.
Yet when asked what kinds of jobs will be offered, what wages people will receive, who will get the big buildup contracts, how the government will pay for the necessary infrastructure and public service upgrades, how our island's middle- and lower-class families will be able to afford the increasing cost of living because of the buildup, those saying the economy will simply improve have no concrete answers.
While we agree that all voices must be heard in every discussion of our future, these voices must be informed by facts and not false promises. The people of Guam should always consider whether or not groups that claim they represent all of us truly do.
With Para Hita Todu's emphasis on "supporting" the buildup rather than understanding it or analyzing it, they are leading the island away from making concrete plans for all our people, and instead are supporting the interests of the select few who will profit and will not be disproportionately affected by the buildup's negative impacts.
Maolekña na mafana'an siha "Para Siha Todu."
Michael Lujan Bevacqua, Ph.D., and Victoria-Lola Leon Guerrero, M.F.A., both teach at the University of Guam.
Showing posts with label Guam Military Buildup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guam Military Buildup. Show all posts
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Monday, November 29, 2010
War Reparations Attached to Military Buildup
Guam Seeks Closure to Its Nearly 30 Year Quest for Wartime Reparations
By Travis J. Tritten
Stars and Stripes
Published: November 29, 2010
HAGATNA, Guam — Rita Santos Cruz is still haunted by the terrifying day when Japanese soldiers burst into her grade school and abruptly ordered all the students to line up outside.
Then the soldiers dragged Cruz’s pregnant mother into the school courtyard.
“They were beating her up,” recalled Cruz, who is now 73. “And here we were, watching her.”
Her mother, who had refused to bow to the Japanese forces occupying Guam during World War II, was beaten so badly she suffered a miscarriage, Cruz said, wiping away tears.
“We were not even Americans,” she said, “and we were punished.”
More than 60 years later, survivors of the Japanese occupation of Guam still harbor painful resentment — toward the United States. That’s because many feel the U.S. abandoned Guam at the outbreak of the war, letting it fall to the Japanese and thus condemning the population to mass executions, forced labor, torture, internment and rape at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Now, as the U.S. military pushes forward with its largest buildup here since World War II, the tiny U.S. island territory is pressing for closure of its wartime suffering and an end to its nearly 30-year quest for compensation from the federal government.
“If you want us to accept what is going on [with the buildup], let’s resolve this,” Guam Sen. Frank Blas said.
The Guam legislature declared in September that war reparations should be paid to survivors like Cruz as a condition of the planned $10 billion U.S. military expansion on the island, which will bring 8,600 Marines from Okinawa, visiting aircraft carriers and possibly a missile defense facility by 2014.
Meanwhile, Guam’s congressional delegate, Madeleine Bordallo, has said war reparations are her top priority in Congress and are “important for the military buildup to be successful.”
The total cost of reparations for the island could be as much as $126 million, according to a 2004 report by the Guam War Claims Review Commission.
The territory has been unable to strike an agreement with Congress on the payments — part of a legislative struggle dating back to 1983 — and the Guam legislature’s resolution in September is unlikely to exert any real leverage over the military buildup, which is set to begin within months.
The Joint Guam Program Office, which coordinates the buildup for the military, declined to comment on the war claims and referred all questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
But the island is still pushing ahead doggedly on the reparations.
“It is just about the recognition,” said Blas, who founded the website www.guamwarsurvivorstory.com, dedicated to survivors and reparations. “Many were beaten, many were tortured. A lot of it was because of their loyalty to the United States.”
Chris Reyes, 69, who retired after two decades in the U.S. Army, is one of fewer than 1,000 Guamanians who endured the Japanese occupation on Guam and are still alive to tell their stories.
Reyes, who was just 4 months old when Japan invaded, said he remembers living in a dark jungle cave “like a mushroom” during the nearly three-year occupation because his family feared he would be killed.
His father was a slave laborer for the Japanese and fed a starvation diet while he unloaded cargo ships. Reyes said he eventually escaped into the jungle during a mass execution.
The only U.S. compensation his family ever received was $810 paid to his grandmother for land taken by the military immediately after World War II.
“Why did we suffer so much?” asked Reyes, who is now an outreach counselor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Guam. “The American government did not provide protection [against a Japanese invasion], and Japan treated us like Americans.”
The United States determined before the war that Guam, then a U.S. possession and military outpost, would fall quickly to Japan, according to a history published by Andersen Air Base.
While Guamanians waited helplessly, all military dependents and U.S. citizens were evacuated from the island ahead of the expected Japanese invasion, which in December 1941 easily punched through a “meager, outdated” U.S. arsenal and about 600 inexperienced servicemembers, the air base history shows.
About 14,700 Guamanians were killed or endured hardship before the U.S. liberated the island from the Japanese in 1944, according to the National Park Service’s War in the Pacific memorial.
“Sisters looked at their brothers being killed with open eyes,” Reyes said. “Kids looked at their fathers being beheaded.”
Guam has always been patriotic — its 170,000 residents produce more military recruits per capita than almost anywhere else in the country — but there is also a strong underlying feeling that the territory was once snubbed by the U.S. government.
“People have very long memories,” said Ron McNinch, a political analyst and professor at the University of Guam. “War reparations are treated as a form of social transgression by these older people who felt they were wronged and their children, or now even their grandchildren, feel they were wronged or mistreated.”
Despite those feelings, the island’s claims of neglect are not so clear.
Guam received at least $8 million in compensation from the U.S. right after World War II, the Guam War Claims Review Commission showed in its 2004 report to Congress.
The claims commission was created by the Department of Interior to investigate the reparations issue and included the chairman of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, which handles U.S. war claims.
It found only about 716 Guamanians were compensated for death or injury from the war, though incomplete records don’t reflect a precise dollar amount for the claims compensation.
The lion’s share of Guam’s reparations went to 6,018 Guamanians who filed claims for lost or damaged property in the late 1940s.
Meanwhile, many Guamanians were not aware of the claims process and were not given enough time to file, according to the report.
Guam Sen. B.J. Cruz, a member of the claims commission and former chief justice of the Guam Supreme Court, said the U.S. has not settled its debt to Guam, despite the early reparations and arguments the U.S. lost 1,438 servicemembers in the liberation.
“There are some who will say the … Marines who died coming on shore are payment,” Cruz said.
“We keep saying, ‘You are the ones who put us in the middle of this fire and you’re going to tell us because the firemen died trying to save us that we owe you?’ ”
The war claims commission recommended Congress pay an additional $126 million in reparations — $25,000 for each death and $12,000 for instances of rape, malnutrition, slave labor, forced march, internment or hiding to avoid capture.
The recommendation was sent to lawmakers in 2004 but was killed on the Senate floor by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and a “small group of fiscal conservatives,” according to Guam Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo.
Now, the payments are again being sponsored by Bordallo in the U.S. defense budget for the coming year — the same budget that contains initial construction funding for the $10 billion military buildup on Guam.
But Bordallo says there is still opposition in the Senate, especially the Armed Services Committee, which holds sway over defense spending and is headed by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Levin and McCain oppose paying the heirs of Guam war survivors and are concerned the payments could lead to more war claims in future versions of the defense budget, Bordallo said in a prepared statement on her website. She refused an interview with Stars and Stripes.
The senators offered Bordallo a compromise in 2009 — they would support the measure “if I agreed to limit claims only to those killed during the war and to those living survivors of the occupation,” she said.
But the compromise failed and the Armed Services Committee cut the reparations from the defense bill.
McCain refused to comment for this story. Levin did not respond to a request for comment.
This year, the Senate did not include the provision in its original version of the bill. The House bill contains the reparations along with a number of other controversial measures, including a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, and may not pass at all this session.
Guam has been down this congressional path before.
Year after year, Guam congressional delegates, who have no vote, have made reparations a top issue and pressed lawmakers to approve payments.
Year after year, they have failed.
In 1988, Congress approved $12,000 payments to Aleutian islanders who were forced to relocate ahead of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Alaska, which was a U.S. territory at the time of the war.
Guam was nearly included in the reparations but the island legislature backed out of the deal in Congress, saying payments of $5,000 for personal injury and $3,000 for slave labor, forced march or internment were too small.
Few on the island are willing to compromise for less.
“With all this money they are giving away, the money we are asking for war reparations, hell, that is only a drop in the bucket,” said Vincente Taisipic, 74, a war survivor who retired from the U.S. Navy.
Chris Reyes is still waiting to finally get compensation and a formal apology from the U.S. government for the terrified times he and his family spent in a cave nearly seven decades ago.
“Money is not really the issue here,” Reyes said. “We are just confused as to why for so long we have been neglected.”
trittent@pstripes.osd.mil
http://www.stripes.com/guam-seeks-closure-to-its-nearly-30-year-quest-for-wartime-reparations-1.126894
By Travis J. Tritten
Stars and Stripes
Published: November 29, 2010
HAGATNA, Guam — Rita Santos Cruz is still haunted by the terrifying day when Japanese soldiers burst into her grade school and abruptly ordered all the students to line up outside.
Then the soldiers dragged Cruz’s pregnant mother into the school courtyard.
“They were beating her up,” recalled Cruz, who is now 73. “And here we were, watching her.”
Her mother, who had refused to bow to the Japanese forces occupying Guam during World War II, was beaten so badly she suffered a miscarriage, Cruz said, wiping away tears.
“We were not even Americans,” she said, “and we were punished.”
More than 60 years later, survivors of the Japanese occupation of Guam still harbor painful resentment — toward the United States. That’s because many feel the U.S. abandoned Guam at the outbreak of the war, letting it fall to the Japanese and thus condemning the population to mass executions, forced labor, torture, internment and rape at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Now, as the U.S. military pushes forward with its largest buildup here since World War II, the tiny U.S. island territory is pressing for closure of its wartime suffering and an end to its nearly 30-year quest for compensation from the federal government.
“If you want us to accept what is going on [with the buildup], let’s resolve this,” Guam Sen. Frank Blas said.
The Guam legislature declared in September that war reparations should be paid to survivors like Cruz as a condition of the planned $10 billion U.S. military expansion on the island, which will bring 8,600 Marines from Okinawa, visiting aircraft carriers and possibly a missile defense facility by 2014.
Meanwhile, Guam’s congressional delegate, Madeleine Bordallo, has said war reparations are her top priority in Congress and are “important for the military buildup to be successful.”
The total cost of reparations for the island could be as much as $126 million, according to a 2004 report by the Guam War Claims Review Commission.
The territory has been unable to strike an agreement with Congress on the payments — part of a legislative struggle dating back to 1983 — and the Guam legislature’s resolution in September is unlikely to exert any real leverage over the military buildup, which is set to begin within months.
The Joint Guam Program Office, which coordinates the buildup for the military, declined to comment on the war claims and referred all questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
But the island is still pushing ahead doggedly on the reparations.
“It is just about the recognition,” said Blas, who founded the website www.guamwarsurvivorstory.com, dedicated to survivors and reparations. “Many were beaten, many were tortured. A lot of it was because of their loyalty to the United States.”
Chris Reyes, 69, who retired after two decades in the U.S. Army, is one of fewer than 1,000 Guamanians who endured the Japanese occupation on Guam and are still alive to tell their stories.
Reyes, who was just 4 months old when Japan invaded, said he remembers living in a dark jungle cave “like a mushroom” during the nearly three-year occupation because his family feared he would be killed.
His father was a slave laborer for the Japanese and fed a starvation diet while he unloaded cargo ships. Reyes said he eventually escaped into the jungle during a mass execution.
The only U.S. compensation his family ever received was $810 paid to his grandmother for land taken by the military immediately after World War II.
“Why did we suffer so much?” asked Reyes, who is now an outreach counselor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Guam. “The American government did not provide protection [against a Japanese invasion], and Japan treated us like Americans.”
The United States determined before the war that Guam, then a U.S. possession and military outpost, would fall quickly to Japan, according to a history published by Andersen Air Base.
While Guamanians waited helplessly, all military dependents and U.S. citizens were evacuated from the island ahead of the expected Japanese invasion, which in December 1941 easily punched through a “meager, outdated” U.S. arsenal and about 600 inexperienced servicemembers, the air base history shows.
About 14,700 Guamanians were killed or endured hardship before the U.S. liberated the island from the Japanese in 1944, according to the National Park Service’s War in the Pacific memorial.
“Sisters looked at their brothers being killed with open eyes,” Reyes said. “Kids looked at their fathers being beheaded.”
Guam has always been patriotic — its 170,000 residents produce more military recruits per capita than almost anywhere else in the country — but there is also a strong underlying feeling that the territory was once snubbed by the U.S. government.
“People have very long memories,” said Ron McNinch, a political analyst and professor at the University of Guam. “War reparations are treated as a form of social transgression by these older people who felt they were wronged and their children, or now even their grandchildren, feel they were wronged or mistreated.”
Despite those feelings, the island’s claims of neglect are not so clear.
Guam received at least $8 million in compensation from the U.S. right after World War II, the Guam War Claims Review Commission showed in its 2004 report to Congress.
The claims commission was created by the Department of Interior to investigate the reparations issue and included the chairman of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, which handles U.S. war claims.
It found only about 716 Guamanians were compensated for death or injury from the war, though incomplete records don’t reflect a precise dollar amount for the claims compensation.
The lion’s share of Guam’s reparations went to 6,018 Guamanians who filed claims for lost or damaged property in the late 1940s.
Meanwhile, many Guamanians were not aware of the claims process and were not given enough time to file, according to the report.
Guam Sen. B.J. Cruz, a member of the claims commission and former chief justice of the Guam Supreme Court, said the U.S. has not settled its debt to Guam, despite the early reparations and arguments the U.S. lost 1,438 servicemembers in the liberation.
“There are some who will say the … Marines who died coming on shore are payment,” Cruz said.
“We keep saying, ‘You are the ones who put us in the middle of this fire and you’re going to tell us because the firemen died trying to save us that we owe you?’ ”
The war claims commission recommended Congress pay an additional $126 million in reparations — $25,000 for each death and $12,000 for instances of rape, malnutrition, slave labor, forced march, internment or hiding to avoid capture.
The recommendation was sent to lawmakers in 2004 but was killed on the Senate floor by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and a “small group of fiscal conservatives,” according to Guam Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo.
Now, the payments are again being sponsored by Bordallo in the U.S. defense budget for the coming year — the same budget that contains initial construction funding for the $10 billion military buildup on Guam.
But Bordallo says there is still opposition in the Senate, especially the Armed Services Committee, which holds sway over defense spending and is headed by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Levin and McCain oppose paying the heirs of Guam war survivors and are concerned the payments could lead to more war claims in future versions of the defense budget, Bordallo said in a prepared statement on her website. She refused an interview with Stars and Stripes.
The senators offered Bordallo a compromise in 2009 — they would support the measure “if I agreed to limit claims only to those killed during the war and to those living survivors of the occupation,” she said.
But the compromise failed and the Armed Services Committee cut the reparations from the defense bill.
McCain refused to comment for this story. Levin did not respond to a request for comment.
This year, the Senate did not include the provision in its original version of the bill. The House bill contains the reparations along with a number of other controversial measures, including a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, and may not pass at all this session.
Guam has been down this congressional path before.
Year after year, Guam congressional delegates, who have no vote, have made reparations a top issue and pressed lawmakers to approve payments.
Year after year, they have failed.
In 1988, Congress approved $12,000 payments to Aleutian islanders who were forced to relocate ahead of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Alaska, which was a U.S. territory at the time of the war.
Guam was nearly included in the reparations but the island legislature backed out of the deal in Congress, saying payments of $5,000 for personal injury and $3,000 for slave labor, forced march or internment were too small.
Few on the island are willing to compromise for less.
“With all this money they are giving away, the money we are asking for war reparations, hell, that is only a drop in the bucket,” said Vincente Taisipic, 74, a war survivor who retired from the U.S. Navy.
Chris Reyes is still waiting to finally get compensation and a formal apology from the U.S. government for the terrified times he and his family spent in a cave nearly seven decades ago.
“Money is not really the issue here,” Reyes said. “We are just confused as to why for so long we have been neglected.”
trittent@pstripes.osd.mil
http://www.stripes.com/guam-seeks-closure-to-its-nearly-30-year-quest-for-wartime-reparations-1.126894
Friday, September 24, 2010
We Are Guahan Call to Action
Community Response to the Record of Decision
We Are Guahan
WeAreGuahan.com
Friday, October 1, 2010
4:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Adelup
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 taking of more sites considered culturally and historically significant to the island’s indigenous people. However, the Department of Defense’s Record of Decision (ROD) indicates that the condemnation of land through eminent domain is still a possibility. Although decisions regarding the use of Pågat, an ancient Chamorro village and burial site, have been delayed, the site remains affected by the Department of Defense’s preferred alternatives for live-ammunition exercises.
Guam boasts one of the highest rates of enlistment into the United States Armed Forces per capita. Guam’s soldiers have fought and defended American values at rates higher than any other state within the Continental US, but remain excluded from discussions that greatly determine their futures. As a United States colony, residents of Guam lack any real control of their home and its resources. The lack of Democracy involved in the processes surrounding the military build-up in Guam have prompted residents to demand a role in the decision making process.
Plans to realign US troops stationed in Okinawa highlight a critical moment in the island’s history. Residents are uniting in efforts to empower themselves, protect their home’s resources, and shape their futures.
We Are Guahan invites all residents to participate in an island-wide rally to demonstrate unity, commemorate the island’s many sacrifices, and to empower the community to prepare for their home’s future. The rally is scheduled for Friday, October 1st from 4:30pm to 7:30pm at Adelup.
###
Not For Publication
Media Contact/For more information:
Moñeka De Oro, We Are Guåhan
Events Coordinator
Please contact for any concerns at 678-3240
Our islands and our people are bracing themselves for a massive change in tides. We Are Guåhan is a multi-ethnic collective of individuals, families and grassroots organizations concerned with the future of our islands. We Are Guåhan aims to inform and engage our community on the various issues concerning the impending military build up. We Are Guåhan aims to unite and mobilize our people to protect and defend our resources and our culture. We Are Guåhan promotes peaceful, positive and prosperous change for our island. We envision a sustainable future for all of Guåhan’s people.
We Are Guahan
WeAreGuahan.com
Friday, October 1, 2010
4:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Adelup
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 taking of more sites considered culturally and historically significant to the island’s indigenous people. However, the Department of Defense’s Record of Decision (ROD) indicates that the condemnation of land through eminent domain is still a possibility. Although decisions regarding the use of Pågat, an ancient Chamorro village and burial site, have been delayed, the site remains affected by the Department of Defense’s preferred alternatives for live-ammunition exercises.
Guam boasts one of the highest rates of enlistment into the United States Armed Forces per capita. Guam’s soldiers have fought and defended American values at rates higher than any other state within the Continental US, but remain excluded from discussions that greatly determine their futures. As a United States colony, residents of Guam lack any real control of their home and its resources. The lack of Democracy involved in the processes surrounding the military build-up in Guam have prompted residents to demand a role in the decision making process.
Plans to realign US troops stationed in Okinawa highlight a critical moment in the island’s history. Residents are uniting in efforts to empower themselves, protect their home’s resources, and shape their futures.
We Are Guahan invites all residents to participate in an island-wide rally to demonstrate unity, commemorate the island’s many sacrifices, and to empower the community to prepare for their home’s future. The rally is scheduled for Friday, October 1st from 4:30pm to 7:30pm at Adelup.
###
Not For Publication
Media Contact/For more information:
Moñeka De Oro, We Are Guåhan
Events Coordinator
Please contact for any concerns at 678-3240
Our islands and our people are bracing themselves for a massive change in tides. We Are Guåhan is a multi-ethnic collective of individuals, families and grassroots organizations concerned with the future of our islands. We Are Guåhan aims to inform and engage our community on the various issues concerning the impending military build up. We Are Guåhan aims to unite and mobilize our people to protect and defend our resources and our culture. We Are Guåhan promotes peaceful, positive and prosperous change for our island. We envision a sustainable future for all of Guåhan’s people.
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