Hundreds in Waikiki protest administration policies
By Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writer
Protesters toting anti-Bush signs and chanting anti-Bush slogans lined both sides of Kalia Road in front of the Hilton Hawaiian Village yesterday to demonstrate their discontent with the administration.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
People representing an array of ideologies, ranging from abortion rights activists to Hawaiian sovereignty supporters, converged at the site of Bush's speech to state Republicans.
Hundreds of demonstrators wait outside the main entrance to the Hilton Hawaiian Village hoping to confront the motorcade bringing the president to the Hawai'i Republican Party's fund-raiser.
"I disagree with every single policy this administration has put forth," said Rebecca Anderson, a paralegal.
Ursula Penrose, a member of Planned Parenthood of Hawai'i, said she was concerned that Bush's policies do not adequately consider women's issues. "He has an agenda to chip away at women's rights, and we want to open America's — and especially Hawai'i's — eyes to it," she said as she stood next to a woman who had an anti-abortion message scrawled across her exposed, pregnant belly.
Protesters from different groups and organizations mixed with hotel guests and passing tourists to create a crowd that police estimated was close to a thousand people.
About 150 people carrying protest signs marched from Ala Moana Beach Park to the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
The sight of police officers everywhere ensured that the demonstrations remained peaceful. Plainclothes police officers and Secret Service agents moved throughout the crowd, monitoring protesters as individuals and in groups.
However, the protesters didn't get a chance to send a message to Bush because the motorcade took a different route to the hotel.
At one point, police cleared a wide swath of sidewalk on both sides of Kalia Road near the mauka end of the street where a blue-and-white floral-print cooler had been left unattended. The bomb squad was called in to X-ray the cooler. The X-ray found nothing.
Police officers were posted on both the 'ewa and diamondhead corners of Kalia Road and Ala Moana while officers on bicycles patrolled the streets, herding the protesters and onlookers to the sidewalks as a police helicopter circled overhead.
Tony Sang, chairman of the State Council of Hawaiian Homestead Associations, said his group was not protesting but, rather, was demonstrating peacefully. "We are asking the president to consider supporting federal recognition of Native Hawaiians," he said.
Bush supporters were in the crowd, too. A group of schoolchildren holding pro-Bush signs and waving the Texas state flag waved to passing motorists in front of the Hale Koa Hotel.
Small groups of uniformed military men lined the wall on the third floor of the parking garage on the diamondhead side of Kalia Road, shouting their support for the president.
"This is the United States of America; they have the right to be ignorant," Gary Hill, a 20-year Marine Corps veteran, said of the protesters. "For the first time in eight years, we have a commander in chief that the troops are proud of and believe in. I know because I served."
Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.
