#deoccupy

at the rim: towards a truly pacific Pacfic

RIMPAC 2012 (https://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/military_photos_20120722221539.aspx)

pacific adjective / pa .Ÿ cif Ÿ. ic

1 a: tending to lesson conflict: conciliatory b: rejecting the use of force as an instrument of policy

2 a: having a soothing appearance or effect b: mild of temper

3 capitalized: of, relating to, bordering on, or situated near the Pacific Ocean

RIMPAC noun / rim Ÿ. pac

1

The (de)Occupy Honolulu movement celebrated the anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement on September 17th. They decided to camp out at UH for a week in what they're calling "Occupy UH Manoa-santo" because of their aversion to UH's Center for Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources which received money from Monsanto to do research for GMO's. 

I'm going to be totally honest and say that I'm one of those irresponsibly unaware people when it comes to current events. I was just ignoring those people camping out at the corner of University and Dole until this Saturday when they finally started to bother me. The thing(s) that caught my eye are the chalk messages ALL OVER CAMPUS. I spent Friday afternoon walking all around upper campus for my sound mapping project, and it was as clean as it's ever going to be. Saturday morning, I start walking around for our GPS lab and all of a sudden there's this awful chicken scratch everywhere. (I wanted to take a picture but I wasn't carrying my phone because I was trying to complete the Walden 2.0 mission.) 

First of all, if you're going to do that, please at least try to make it aesthetically pleasing so I'll want to stop and read it, or at least won't want to call someone to get rid of it. 

Secondly, isn't that technically vandalism? Should it matter if just a strong rain will wash it away? Isn't that still defacing UH property? If I want to walk around and write UH SUCKS SHIT everywhere would that be okay just because its in chalk?

Third, why are they executing this graffiti plan on a Friday night? Why didn't they start (last) Sunday night so a whole bunch of people will see it on Monday? Especially because it's been somewhat rainy recently.

I don't know if I'm bothered by this because I consider it ugly graffiti or because I think their plan was so poorly executed. If you're going to ambush the campus, shouldn't your message be clear and well-thought out? 

I don't know why, but I also didn't realize that these people choosing to camp out at UH aren't students. It made sense for them to be at UH if they were students, you know? Apparently they're just regular people not taking showers, not going to a conventional job and living in tents. Why shouldn't anyone with a tent be allowed to camp out on that sidewalk? Just because these people have a "cause" that means they're allowed to stay there? We should open up that area to all homeless people with a tent then!  I had to walk on the sidewalk right in front of those tents, and I was just waiting for someone to reach out of the tents and drag me in, and I'd be gone forever. I don't necessarily think the dOH people are violent or criminals, but if I was a rapist who wanted to target college students, might I not pretend to hate GMOs and put up tent and just snag some unsuspecting victims? Or what if someone wanted to maliciously target a specific student? Just set up a tent, wait for your target to walk by, and push them onto University Avenue! I just didn't feel safe walking there.  Right now I'm just irritated with their poor planning, aesthetically unpleasing and hard-to-read handwriting, confusing message (are they for occupying or for deoccupying? Just pick one issue at a time!), and position on the sidewalks. Also, I'm 90% sure deoccupy is not an English word. I'll give them one thing, their presence did push me to ask my lab partner to tell me more about the movement, but only because I wanted to know all the facts before complaining about it.