Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 7, 1 Iulai 1995 — First Friday [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

First Friday

by Samuel L. Kealoha, Jr. Trustee, Moloka'i & Lāna'i Mahealani Kamau'u, a member of the Hawaiian Sovereignty EIections Council (HSEC) scam, wrongly characterizes the intent, scholarship and content of loeal

cable program, FIRST FRIDAY. She simply fails to accept her ignorance of the facts. FIRST FR1DAY is a "live" monthly digest of political analysis, commentary and viewer phone-in. It is the longest running volunteer produced television series in Hawai'i. FIRST FRIDAY has been honored for excel-

lenee in programming by the National Federation of Loeal Cable Programmers. What irks Mahealani and other members of HSEC is that FIRST FRIDAY goes heavily into the sovereignty issue, its historieal and international comp!exities. They are clear in their analysis of disempower-

ment and the pervasiveness of its effects on current social, political, eeonomie and health conditions. FIRST FRIDAY embraces political critique and as such expresses opinions whieh dissent frora the agenda of the elite and those who attach themselves to it, including status quo OHA

Trustees. The audiences of FIRST FRIDAY crosses class, ethnic, and political. In their eight years of continuous programming, they have explored over 200 issues with dozens of guests. FIRST FRIDAY seeks the indigenous mana'o and engages in the fight against cultural expropriation, as in interviews with Maon film-

maker Merata Mita and Hawaiian author John Dominis Holt. They broke the story of the Bishop Museum's firing of Barry Nakamura for speaking out against museum practices harmful to Hawaiian cultural preservation. They introduced the first loeal stories on the genocide in East Timor and

West Papua and the civil war in Bougainville. For many of these important issues, FIRST FRIDAY provided the only loeal coverage. Mahealani and others of the HSEC scam feel that FIRST FRIDAY "preys upon and exalts fear and cynicism, creating a climate of mistrust and despair." That is the standard accusation of the dominant culture against the voice of protest. FIRST FRIDAY speaks truth to power. "Fear" is an appropriate response to the subversion of democratic process. "Cynicism" grows from experience, knowledge and understanding. In this context, "mistrust" is a healthy adaptation! It's utterly repulsive that Mahealani and other members of the HSEC scam are telling native Hawaiians that we should trust the very system that has exploited our aloha and dispossessed us of our lands. Mahealani and other members of the HSEC scam yeam for cosmetic unanimity. In the history of every liberation movement there is disagreement, whether in Kenya,

Algeria, Latin America, the Amenean Indian Movement, or among our cousins of the South Pacific. False liaisons undermine the strength of resistance. Analysis, dissent, and critique are empowering. The "rage" so distasteful to Mahealani and other members of the HSEC is appropriate to the historical reality. Anger is a necessary catalyst for sustainable social change — equally as important as the pursuit of non-violent means to achieve social justice. When anger over injustices dies, so dies the movement. Henee eolonial pacification programs to quell "native unrest" have always offered symbolic appointments and empty rewards to eager collaborationists who use the apparatus of the State against our own people. Thus the creation of HSEC! FIRST FR1DAY is if anything non-eol-laborationist and anti-colonial. Perhaps that is what irks Mahealani and HSEC so mueh. Mahalo to the organizers, technical crew, Jo Scheder, and the Trask sisters, all are volunteers of FIRST FRIDAY.