Disappeared News

By H. Doug Matsuoka

DeOccupy Honolulu day 234: Since Honolulu Police Department (HPD) officers and Department of Facilities Maintenance (DFM) crews "tagged" property yesterday, todayʻs "Bill 54" seizure raid was expected. These coupled tagging & seizure raids have become somewhat routine to DeOccupy Honolulu who have endured more than 20 Bill 54 raids since the first ones on February 1 & 2.

But todayʻs raid offered a glimpse into how news is effectively disappeared in the first place. I expect to see a one sided story about todayʻs raid on tonightʻs news (KHON I think, but I donʻt watch TV so I canʻt ID the reporter). I suspect one sidedness because I was at the raid, livestreamed and photographed it, saw how the "news" crew covered only a very carefully selected one half of the story.

But I jump ahead of myself. I mounted a Flickr set (here) to tell the story, but here are some of the highlights:

Per HPD and DFM current practice, they cordoned off the entire area in crime tape after forcing everyone out of the area.




Westley Chunʻs DFM is suppose to be fixing potholes. Why is he leading raids on homeless? It's a cabinet level position that pays $112,000. He will be waving a Carlisle sign on a corner near you.

The actual tags say (and the ordinance language requires) that the items be stored for reclamation. City crews do not even make a pretense of that any more and the stuff goes directly into the garbage truck.

HPD and City crews then moved to the Victoria Street homeless encampment where they cordoned off the corner again.

In response to press release the "news" shows up. Yay, the people of Honolulu will find out whatʻs going on. NOT:

Westley Chun was interviewed, but no one at DeOccupy Honolulu, and no homeless person either. Would you believe either of these people have something to say about all this? Should we make a judgement about these raids based only on what the raiders have to say?

And hereʻs the spooky question: How much of the rest of the news you see is manufactured like this?

Hereʻs the full Flickr set arranged as a narrative: 120626 Raid on DeOccupy

(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.

H. Doug Matsuoka
26 June 2012
Makiki, Honolulu

Labels: DeOccupy Honolulu, Mayor Peter Carlisle, Occupy Honolulu, Trish Morikawa, Westley Chun