Hawaiians are rising!
Pahus are pounding, their ranks are swelling, the upside down Hawaiian flags are fluttering from here to Las Vegas and across the country.
There haven’t been this many Hawaiians together since the takeover and good for them. This TMT thing is lighting them up.
Lightening their hearts to be so together and look out! The governor, and The Rock himself payed a visit, with Aquaman raising his trident, shouting “Aole TMT!”
It is heartwarming to see it unfold. You see Hawaiians in Walmart loading up their carts with sleeping bags, coolers, food, folding chairs to head up the mountain.
Today at Costco there was a caravan of food on six of those long loading carts, with 50 gallons of milk, 100 loaves of bread, copious amounts of canned food, being pushed by smiling protesters, young men, older ladies, all heading up the mountain.
It’s a Hawaiian Woodstock but without the drugs. It is a pure gathering filled with aloha. And pumping through every heart is one wish, save our Maunakea.
They are not just protectors of the mountain, they are protectors of all of us from a disaster that would snarl-up our island home. They only protest what needs protesting, like Kahoolawe being bombed, The Superferry that was too big for our small harbors, and now a monstrosity so huge it defies common sense.
The scientists have told us about gazing at the stars but they don’t want us gazing too closely at the telescope. It is gigantic, out of all proportion.
The TMT at 180 feet is about as tall as three King Kamehameha Hotels stacked on top of each other. It is four telephone poles tall, and 30 feet taller than the 151-foot Statue of Liberty!
Sitting up on the mountain it would be a big dark knob four times higher than the observatories around it, that would look like little white mushrooms sprouting beside it.
The TMT would be an eyesore and overshadow our mountain for the rest of our lives.
There are so many reasons for no TMT, and so many false arguments for it.
They have cleverly and deviously pitted the Hawaiians against scientific knowledge. This is false, Hawaiians are all for the TMT, just not here. If they build it somewhere else we’ll still get the same knowledge only without the endless problems. And there will be unforeseen problems, social, costly and dangerous.
If this ill-conceived project goes forward, there will be protests for years. Our neighbors and their ohana will be resentful and hurt. It will disturb our calm aloha.
With about 50 TMT workers, many more cars and trucks will be driving up and down the steep gravel road every day for 10 years. This traffic mingling with tour buses and tourists will tear up roads and tempers and accidents will happen. Our county will pay.
Huge telescope parts will have to be transported on flatbeds up steep roads. How they will get a 100-foot-wide glass TMT lens up that thin, bumpy road is a total mystery.
Ours is a small world with limited resources, we must not overburden them. Developers eye our island with their outrageous projects, spaceports, Superferries, giant telescopes. We fend off the bad ones and keep the good. The TMT is a bad one.
We are asking the scientists to bow out and please leave, it is the right thing to do.
Dennis Gregory writes a bimonthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com