Sunday (low key) rant

taking off from saturday's low key events... imiola's celebration of life at the opelu project in waianae was good. most of the activist-types sat on one table. i guess it's always time to hook up again with folks in struggle whom you haven't seen for a while. james greeted kalani ohelo as "maurice", which dated their relationship to "before" the movement. everybody's gettin' old. most of the folks i recognized were long time activists in the movement, certainly long before i came along. i remember when i met soli back in 1992 and first listened to him speak at a hui na`auao meeting. i was blown away by what he said at the time--it all made sense to me. at the gathering yesterday, he pretty much reiterated what he said back then: we should never forget that for those who seek social justice, it's important to know who the enemy really is. it's not about race or ethnicity (although that may play into it), but rather who calls the shots, who has the power to call the shots. so developing a strategy (i'm using my own words here, but i think i got the gist of it) is about identifying who the players are in the struggle and realizing that the big players are the same in all the struggles. money, power, the ability to manipulate someone else's life, these things feed into (and are part of) a system that oppresses us all. what to do about it? soli says use political analysis to determine what the action should be. okay! i'm good. i may not agree with every little thing, but i won't counter what he says, as he is correct. let's not ever think that all hawaiians are in the same boat. some actually call the shots, or think they do, so those hawaiians-by-blood participate in the oppression of other hawaiians. soli's talk was a lead in to how he knew imiola. imiola helped introduce political analysis into the discussion of activists at the time. he did his part. the question for us today might be 'what is our part?'. i had to go home and sleep on it, which i did. this morning i woke up thinking about what it's like to feel oppressed (in several areas of my life, actually) and what i can do about it. i also thought about the lesson for me to learn in trying to deal effectively with the issue. i'm afraid to look, for fear i might actually see something. yikes! i don't want to be the oppressor!

i stuck in a photo of soli and kekuni, and kekuni, jade young (imiola's sister), marsha joyner, and claire shimabukuro, just to give folks a sense of who all was there at imiola's life celebration. it was a really nice day, but hot as hell.

today i'm packing up more stuff (i have too much stuff, hence no light footprint for me). while i was outside in the garage, i saw a beautiful green gecko catch a roach. it was a huge roach, and that whole encounter caught my eye. so of course i had to run in to get my camera and see if i could get a good, clear shot without getting too close and frightening the gecko. i've posted this shot, too. i think i'm turning into a crazy person driven only by my own spur-of-the-moment desires. get that photo! yesterday, while i was walking around taking pix i thought about how intrusive i might have seemed. but after a short moment of reflection, i decided i didn't really care what anybody thought. i feel like (for the most part, except for some shots of ducks and lizards) i'm serving the movement and capturing a sense of what it is/was like to be an activist type in service to the movement, to humanity, to life in general. what would the world be like without activists? activists are the ones who advocate for 'fixing'--wages, job safety, cultural rights, human rights, environmental rights, animal rights, cultural practices, truth in labeling, healthy everything, pono everything. the system itself is not interested in fixing things as, for those who (again) call the shots, everything works just fine.

ginny metaxas, my friend from connecticutt, left yesterday. james and i didn't even have time to say goodbye to her. we ran from meeting to meeting until we were exhausted, then finally went home. i think i have to re-think my life. even though all the meetings seemed essential, what if i didn't go? would anybody notice? probably not. except when i take photos. then they'd notice they didn't get any. so i'm useful because i archive the movement and aspects related to it. that's a good thought to end with on a hot and still day in kahaluu. i added a photo of what this area looks like from makai side, at the bus stop on kamehameha highway.