Hawai'i peace rallies evoke memories of Vietnam
By Beverly Creamer and Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writers
Peace rallies around the Islands and a University of Hawai'i teach-in yesterday against the war in Iraq seemed, in some ways, to hark back to the Vietnam war protest days.
Some of the faces were the same, albeit with a few more lines and wrinkles. The chants and some of the signs were similar. A few of the groups that were active in the 1960s and early 1970s were still around to participate in the protest near the Federal Building in Honolulu, another demonstration in Kahului and the UH teach-in.
Charlie Luce, an Air Force veteran who stood on the Ala Moana roadside holding a "Veterans for Peace" sign, said he had protested Vietnam as well and thought he noticed at least one significant difference between protesters of the two eras.
"Support for the troops," Luce said.
The current group, he said, nodding toward the line of protesters that grew to more than 150 people during the rush hour, seemed less inclined to blame the troops for the political decision to go to war.
"We support the troops," Luce said. "And we want them out of there."
A few hours earlier, on the UH-Manoa campus, more than 100 people gathered for the "teach-in" that quickly become a de facto peace rally.
The appearance of 1960s anti-war activist and associate professor Oliver Lee and the brief appearance by fellow Vietnam-era activist Noel Kent, also a UH professor, brandishing a toy gun and wearing a rubber Bush mask, drew boos.
Lee characterized the new war as an attempt "to overcome the Vietnam syndrome to prove we can fight and win." And he said the United States "wants to dictate to the whole world," essentially intimidating others not to even dare to challenge its might.
Many of the professors said they feared the course the Bush administration was steering for the nation.
"During the time the Soviet empire was dissolving," said professor James Dator, director of the UH Center for Future Studies, "America was indeed the vision of the future most of the world had in mind.
"No more. Now and forever we are seen as an arrogant, ignorant, self-righteous and utterly brutal madman intent on having his own way, through killing, regardless of the desires of anyone else."
On Maui, about 50 people lined Ka'ahumanu Avenue in Kahului. Among them was Latvia-born Astrid Watanabe, 68, of Ha'iku, who said America isn't the same country she immigrated to in 1957.
"After World War II, America was so open and helpful," she said. "I thought America was wonderful.
"But something happened. It took a wrong turn. Now, money rules."
