The following statement of solidarity with Palestine was read at the solidarity rally on August 13, fronting Kennedy Theatre at the University of Hawai’i. “ª#”Žfreehawaii”¬ “ª#”Žfreep
Movement for Aloha no ka ʻĀina (MANA) is a movement-building organization, established to achieve independence from the United States and social justice in Hawai’i. Hawai’i has been under US occupation for over 120 years, an occupation that is illegal both under international law and US domestic law, a fact that the United States has yet to refute. We follow in the history of Aloha “Ä€ina in HawaiÊ»i, and in the tradition of peoples throughout the world who struggle for liberation, freedom, and justice.
Under US occupation, our people and land have suffered what some might consider a more “tender” violence than what we are currently witnessing in Gaza where the the most explicit of US-backed state violence is being wielded upon Palestinian families. Nonetheless, for the same reasons, for the economic exploitation of our land, the US has systematically repressed our Independence, oppressed Kanaka Maoli, tried to erase us from our land and from our culture and has and continues to drive us and our stories off our lands for housing developments, military expansion, and other corporate interests.
To rub salt into the wound, the US military uses our lands to prepare armies around the world to do to other people, what they have essentially done to us. It is both dehumanizing and humiliating to not have control of our own country, to not be able to determine whether our sacred Ê»Äina will produce food or whether she will be forced into the production of US wars.
We are both outraged and strengthened as we witness the PalestiniansÊ» own commitment to struggle to maintain their ancestral connections to land and we are committed to continue to struggle in Hawai’i to liberate our ourselves and our lands toward the liberation of all victims of US empire.
