Removal of ohia
To whomever decided to cut down the giant, stately kupuna ohia at the entrance to Keaau Shopping Center opposite the police station: Congratulations on erasing 100 years of growth, beauty, shade and natural bird habitat in only a single afternoon.
I hope you are proud of yourself.
Our community is left with only more hot, dry, lifeless parking lot, something I guess everyone needed.
Auwe.
Joel Aycock
Keaau
Explaining Pride
This is in response to “Creepy message” by Allen Russell (Your Views, June 24).
You know what’s creepy? Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill that bans public school teachers from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Or Norway’s mass shooting near a gay club in Oslo, just hours before the city’s Pride Parade, which was cancelled this year as a result.
Or the 2016 Pulse gay nightclub mass shooting that killed 49 people and wounded 53 in Orlando, Florida.
You know what’s creepy? Same-sex sexual activity is a crime in 70 countries, including 13 countries where being gay is legally punishable by death (USA Today, June 14, 2019). Or the fact that the five of the most challenged books of 2021 were banned, challenged or restricted in U.S. libraries and schools because of LGBTQIA+ content.
Like other awareness months (Black History Month in February, Women’s History Month in March, etc.), Pride Month is a time for both celebration and consciousness-raising.
Pride is held in June to honor the Stonewall Uprising, when police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in New York City on June 28, 1969. Brave arrest-resisters sparked riots that went on for days. These protests served as a catalyst for the modern gay rights movement.
Pride is a time for the LGBTQ+ community to come together and celebrate our freedom to be ourselves. This includes parades with Dykes on Bikes, drag queens and kings, radical fairies, and all manner of queer and gender nonbinary folk that don’t fit into the “mainstream.”
If you find the Pride parade and festival creepy, just stay home. The adults and youth — including our straight allies from keiki to kupuna — who attend Pride events won’t miss you a bit! Instead, we’ll be dancing in tiaras and tutus, waving rainbow flags, and admiring the fabulous queens lip-syncing in six-inch stilettos.
Julie Mitchell
Kurtistown
