My Little Grumble
You know …
I have been living in Hawaii for almost 10 years now and it seems like about every three months some story like this breaks. ORI, Rail Contracts, Sandwich Isles, Mold at Honolulu Hale (guaranteed if it were a private company, government would have shut them down long ago). Really too many to mention casually, I am sure a list can easily be compiled. (can you, Civil Beat, build that and amend this?)
During my years here I have noticed pretty much five distinct groups:
1) First, you have the typical Hawaii resident that is taxed so high they find it necessary to work two and sometimes three jobs to try to survive in this state. This group is more concerned about keeping a roof over their heads and feeding their families than they have time to even bother keeping track of the people in power moving the money around.
2) Then you have the people that are all shocked and outraged, but rarely do anything about it. They might go online and grumble a bit. Sometimes they do get involved and volunteer, protest or try to make a difference, but often these are a subclass of group 1 and eventually submit back to survival mode.
3) Then you have the various government people saying they will “conduct a study” and “take a serious look at the ‘allegations.’ ” BTW, I have completely lost count of the number of times I have read that someplace. And of course nothing really changes because the people in power just move around to different positions of power and never really get out of the game.
4) Then you have the people like Occupy that are more than willing to do something and demonstrate, but then are labeled crazies and slackers and the government purposely creates laws to shut them up and minimize their impact. Have to shut them up otherwise it might disrupt the status quo.
5) Then you have the people that are more involved in a daily basis of trying to make positive change happen. This is a cross section of people from various areas: non profit orgs, the average person, the Occupy people, some few government peeps, organizations like Civil Beat and others. However, like Occupy that touts the 99 percent, I would place our total numbers at maybe 5 percent or rather 50,000 people in the state that are really intent to improve things out of the total population of about 1.3 million.
Bottom line is we are really outnumbered and need to get more people involved.
Until that happens we will continue to see abuse of power on a relatively regular basis. At what point does the average person from Groups 1 and 2 in survival mode say enough is enough and cross over to Group 5?
Maybe we need more people like Group 4, Occupy, to provoke a reaction. Maybe if more people were to see how much time and resources the government spent disproportionately trying to shut them (Occupy) up as opposed to actually addressing any of the real problems, then it would get more people involved? Maybe that is how you get people to pay attention to what is going on around them.
Occupy needs a better marketing department. And realize, Occupy is not the problem, they are simply calling to attention what the problems are and the government is trying to shut them up. Ultimately telling you, the average citizen, to shut up as well. Shut up and do what you’re told, we the government knows what’s best for you. And don’t you dare ask us to explain our actions or reasons for anything.
Well, a good start right now is Civil Beat. I am glad that there is a daily publication and people willing to investigate issues and put it out on the “front page” for everyone to see. Maybe Civil Beat should consider creating a section for Occupy and posting all of the factual data so people take it a little more serious. How much TOTAL money has the government spent so far trying to shut them up?
I said this about two years ago, and will repeat it again. I think Civil Beat should be mandatory daily reading. If you want to know what’s going on and want to see some changes happen, tell all of your friends and family to be here daily and read it. Then get involved! And THAT is the important part. DO SOMETHING, GET INVOLVED, not just go online and grumble a little.
About the author: Curtis Kropar is a longtime Honolulu resident. You can read his bio on his member page.
Community Voices aims to encourage broad discussion on many topics of community interest. It’s kind of a cross between Letters to the Editor and op-eds. This is your space to talk about important issues or interesting people who are making a difference in our world. Columns generally run about 800 words (yes, they can be shorter or longer) and we need a photo of the author and a bio. We welcome video commentary and other multimedia formats. Send to news@civilbeat.com.
