Will Espero at the (De)Occupy Honolulu Public Forum

[This was originally posted yesterday at Larry Gellerʻs DisappearedNews.com, which covers news that has either escaped local media or been "disappeared" mysteriously. Doug]

Mahalo to Larry Geller for inviting me to contribute to Disappeared News, Hawaiiʻs major source of the news you wonʻt see covered in the mainstream media. Iʻve been covering much of the continuing story of (De)Occupy Honolulu, particularly the 24 raids on the camp conducted by the police and the Cityʻs Department of Facilities Maintenance. At 212 days, (De)Occupy Honolulu is the longest running encampment in the entire Occupy Movement worldwide.

One of its goals is to establish a 24/7 public forum. A public forum is a traditional use of public space, and is one of the identifying features of a real democracy. When Senator Will Espero dropped by this past Sunday, 6/3/12 (after getting a lot of feedback from his Facebook photo of the encampment), he became the first elected official to participate in the encampmentʻs Public Forum.

He spoke of various things, including food security and future legislation which I post here:

(De)Occupy Honolulu is in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the worldwide Occupy Movement which asserts that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We urge people to exercise the right to peaceably assemble, occupy public space, create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.  

Stay tuned for more reporting from and about (De)Occupy Honolulu.

H. Doug Matsuoka

05 June 2012

Makiki, Honolulu