No justice for Roger
We’re coming up on the second anniversary of the incarceration of Roger Christie. That’s right, two years in federal custody and seizure of all property. No trial, no bail — all for distributing cannabis (marijuana). No guns, violence or resistance involved.
This wasn’t for selling methamphetamine, “ice,” or any other really dangerous drugs. Just “pot.”
How many other cases have you heard or read about in the last two years where people have been convicted of possession or selling dangerous drugs and they get sentenced to diversion or some jail time and/or probation?
Roger has been locked up in Honolulu for two years now without even a trial. Even if you don’t think this is morally wrong, want to take a guess about how much this is going to end up costing taxpayers? I know, I know — local prosecutors say “that’s federal, not state” (Who do you think called the feds in?) — but it still ain’t right.
Michael Engstrom
Hilo
Deter the vandals
I find much graffiti, or so-called “street art,” to be beautiful and of artistic merit. But neither of these attributes can be used to describe the ongoing eyesores by one “artist” on the sides of vacant buildings on Haili and Keawe streets in downtown Hilo.
I see this deranged individual’s xenophobic, racist Sharpie manifestos every time I walk over to work. The first couple of times I saw them, I was mildly amused and puzzled, but laughed it off as simply the usual sort of weirdness that often permeates downtown.
“SCOTTISH HOLOCAUST,” read the first one, in garish red chicken scratch. The follow-up, “SCOTTISH PIGS MUST DIE,” needless to say, was disturbing to me. These (presumably) drug- and/or psychosis-fueled rants are subsequently brushed over with white paint, and then immediately a new one appears.
I was compelled to write in today after seeing a friend of mine who, like me, is of Portuguese descent and shares my passion for our culture. She always has something new and cool to show me about something in popular culture or happening locally that pertains to us. But today she showed me, in bewilderment, a photo she had taken of a new “work” near KTA. It read: “PORTUGUESE ARE LITERALLY RETARDED.”
While I can generally laugh off this person’s paranoid utterances as sheer lunacy, as a person of both Portuguese and Scottish ancestry, it does affect me personally and hurts a bit.
With this letter, I would like to urge downtown business owners, the Downtown Improvement Association and whoever else may be involved with the maintenance and/or regulation of vacant spaces to consider the implementation of some sort of metal/steel/non-permeable surface as a sort of temporary barrier (until renters acquire said buildings) to keep them from being defaced.
Seeing as there is no way to be ever-vigilant and catch these persons in the act, and because some of these spaces are seemingly unoccupied for years, wouldn’t it make sense to block it off to public use, rather than leave it as blank white space, which is an attraction to the Sharpie “artist”? Or, alternatively, sell off the entire block of storefronts to a viable commercial vendor (i.e., KTA downtown) and have the community artists make another beautiful mural on the side, as was done to great effect recently.
While I don’t want downtown Hilo to lose its character, I feel something needs to be done with the increasing numbers of unoccupied/vacant spaces, because for an increasing percent of our population, they are just seen as empty receptacles in which to splay out the contents of their psyche, which unfortunately often includes the examples given.
People need to exorcise their demons; we just don’t need to see it on the streets of our town.
Cherdan Grant-Johnson
Hilo
Modern conservative
Every time we, as citizens, are exposed to a Paul Ryan preaching that the poor and elderly must be taught to adjust their moral compasses for insisting on their right to so-called “entitlements”; every time Eric Kantor or John Boehner pontificates that our children and grandchildren must be protected from the profligacy of progressive politics; every time a Mitch McConnell insists that the defeat of President Obama is the primary aim of conservatives within the Republican Party, it would serve us well to recall these words from John Kenneth Galbraith: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification of selfishness.”
Vernon G. Freitas
Hilo
