Isles ready inauguration protests

A “Day of Resistance” on Friday organized by University of Hawaii students, staff and faculty will add teach-ins, a march in front of the Trump International Hotel Waikiki and a concert at the Waikiki Shell to protests across the country over the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.

“We’re hoping to number in the thousands,” said Nicholas Chagnon, who received a UH doctoral degree last year and is now a UH lecturer in women’s studies and sociology. “The majority of people do not agree with Donald Trump’s agenda and we’re not going to celebrate his inauguration.”

Then on Saturday, marches on Oahu, Kauai, Maui and Hawaii island will coincide with a much larger Women’s March on Washington to express concerns including women’s health care, equal pay and paid family leave.

“Everything that matters is under threat,” said UH art and art history professor Gaye Chan. “Justice. The environment. Truth. Freedom. Just human decency. I don’t even know where to begin. The entire globe is at a tipping point.”

Friday’s “Day of Resistance” is being organized by a UH group called Hawaii J20. The day begins at 8:30 a.m. at UH with teach-ins touching on black lives, law and justice, Muslims, Japanese artists who resisted fascism and other topics.

Then around 2:30 p.m. marchers in three groups coming from UH’s Campus Center, the Atkinson Drive/Ala Moana Boulevard end of Ala Moana Park and Honolulu Zoo will converge at Waikiki Gateway Park, march to Trump International Hotel Waikiki and end up at a 7 p.m., free concert at the Waikiki Shell hosted by the Democratic Party of Hawaii.

“It is absolutely significant,” said Tim Vandeveer, chairman of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. “Students bubbling up through the undergraduate and graduate student organizations and the professors have come together to say, ‘These are the values we share and will not compromise.’ We haven’t seen these kinds of demonstrations in a long time, perhaps in some of these students’ lifetimes. These students will have to live with the consequences of the Trump administration.”

The Democratic Party also is organizing a community service project from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Friday to clean up Manoa Community Gardens “for people who don’t want to tune into the national stage but want to give back,” Vandeveer said.

“It’s an opportunity to say, ‘We’re standing unified, and we’re defined by our diversity, which is unique in Hawaii,’” Vandeveer said. “We want to give folks an opportunity to put some of their concerns and frustrations and angst into something productive, to give them an opportunity to stay involved and stay active and stay engaged.”

UH law school professor Linda Krieger, who is also chairwoman of the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, has been working with Honolulu police on logistics for the “Day of Resistance” but has no idea how many people will show up at the various events.

“There is no planned civil disobedience,” she said. “We are not in any way antagonistic to the police department.”

Krieger plans to attend some of the UH teach-ins “as a student,” she said. “I want to learn and hear what people have to say. The situation we’re in right now is unprecedented. We’ve never had a president-elect doing the kinds of things our current president-elect is doing, not recognizing treaty obligations, encouraging hostile foreign governments to disrupt the election. I have no memory of anything happening like this in my lifetime.”

For more information, visit hawaii-j20.com.