Do your job, mayor
After many phone calls and e-mails, the reason for Hinalo Street, Lauone Street and Honua‘ula Street not being reopened is Mayor Harry Kim.
He has taken it upon himself to determine that it’s too dangerous to have access to our land.
Harry, that’s not your job. Your job is to repair the roads with the FEMA money, and we will decide what we do with our land. We are in no more danger then anyone else, and you don’t have the right to decide the fate of our properties.
Do your job, and restore our roads. If that’s too scary, then retire and let someone else take over.
Ian C. McArthur
Pahoa
Back to absurdity
I’ve got a great idea. Let’s reopen the economy just the way it was, with jobs paying inadequate wages so that there’s no tax base for decent schools, or adequate housing, or for people to eat healthy, nutritious food.
That way, we can still have a lot of really cool domestic violence, resulting from the natural frustration that ensues.
We can keep pumping billions of tons of plastic into the environment that now falls as microscopic particles in rainfall, that will soon choke out all the living things of this planet.
And it would be great fun to keep pumping billions of tones of fossil fuel carbon into the atmosphere to cook what’s left of the living things in a kind of gray, steaming, pressure cooker that used to be a green and beautiful planet.
While we’re at it, we can ridicule any other scheme for organizing human existence as “unrealistic.”
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a lot of fun to me. I like to see those hard-driving capitalists striding resolutely down Fifth Avenue to their doom, certain they’ve got it all figured out!
It kind of tickles my taste for the absurd. Let’s get things going, boy! Let’s get back on track! I can’t wait.
Harley Brent Hightower
Hilo
Responsibility and obedience
The Founding Fathers’ purposes for state executive powers and citizen responsibilities have existed as long as the union. So you must ask yourself: What power does the Constitution intend to operationalize, especially in quarantine? Nothing beyond the expectation that our state authorities prioritize protecting public health.
The document reserves to the states and its people whatever powers are not prohibited to them and their republican government. These are powerfully vague statutes that allow states to enforce local laws and protect public safety in whatever manner they deem necessary, including strict quarantine measures.
It is true that citizens possess the same privileges regardless of where they travel within the bounds of America, but privilege to live free comes with the expectation that we obey the authorities who protect us. Privilege is not without due responsibility and obedience.
Opponents might respond that the quarantine measures in Hawaii target visitors, to which they are wrong. The quarantine measures placed on visitors do not target non-Hawaii citizens, and is no different than what other states expect of visitors and returning residents who are traveling from unknown areas.
As someone traveling from New Hampshire to Nevada, I will be expected by state authorities and my own neighbors to respect quarantine measures for the sake of public health. And I will do so because it is simply the right thing to do.
Iliana Godoy
Hilo
We’re not color blind
I am a student at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and I noticed that a recent article referred to the aloha spirit being color blind (Tribune-Herald, June 14). Although there is positive intent behind this message, I believe strongly that the phrase “color blind” should not be used in future articles.
The Black Lives Matter movement was created to raise awareness and spark change in the black community. A particularly common chant at the BLM marches is: “See us, hear us.” In the state of Hawaii, we are not color blind. We see many different shades, and with our aloha we welcome all.
We are not blind or ignorant to the struggles that black students face. We cannot call ourselves color blind because in doing so we deny the inequality and injustice that black people are facing.
We see you, we hear you.
Mia Rosa
Hilo