# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Photo taken by me, painted by my community

# data[].attributes.body
Valeria Roque
Professor Baik
GSST 129
6 JUNE 2022

Photo was taken by Valeria Roque, painted by my community

# data[].attributes.body
Hello! My friends and family call me Vale. I’m currently an undergraduate at UC Riverside, majoring in Gender and Sexualities studies. My journey to discovering what I wanted to study was influenced by my mom and best friend Kayla, who are victims of male violence. The more I unraveled the truth, the more I am devoted to the cause of ending all forms of gender-based violence. The course “Feminist Critiques of Militarization” has shown how US imperialism takes advantage of land and bodies wherever they go. The worsening part is the lack of accountability for war crimes in the US. At the start of the course, Russia and Ukraine had set to be at war, and I remember I was glued to the tv screen because I feared it. The historical trauma that was going to change these people, hearing the interviews of the citizens that felt too familiar within the Palestinian community. The chain reaction of what comes when there is war and whose involvement will be asked to support. Imperialism is detrimental, and to be anti-imperialist, we need to organize and build a coalition for its dismantlement.
I am a community made and stand in solidarity with my comrades. We stand at the forefront of a political battle, the brunt our brothers and sisters face from the hands of US imperialism. As an immigrant woman of color whose country had severe US intervention, which left Nicaragua as an impoverished state, forced my mother’s migration. The past of Nicaragua's history will no longer define us but how we plan to move past the damage. As we navigate through revolutionary building, we must look at decolonizing the US empire at the roots as we recover our country.
On a side note, I love to read when I am not in academia. Some personal favorites are; Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi and Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. Also, I like to play PC games and am a huge coffee connoisseur.
Photo Credit.

# data[].attributes.body
Calling all comrades! Your attention is needed once more! I ask that you cry out! Land and women are not for conquest! The time to demand LAND BACK must go beyond words. An action plan is necessary to implement social change; RESILIENCE IS NO LONGER SUFFICIENT. Turn your eyes to Hawaii and their RESISTANCE to Militarization that occupies their land today.  Hawaii has been turned from sacred temples to a military playground and attraction for tourism. The deprivation leaves its native people to deal with the gentrification and infiltration of their homelands. Militarism is a tool to serve the US agenda, a mere extension of the body that pushes a cycle of violence of its own.  As long as the military remains, especially in Hawai‘i, Native & immigrant women, girls, and trans people are at risk of sexual violence. The collective must rejuvenate our fight against imperialism and demand an end to the military-prostitution complex. We must create a world without desecrated land, poisoned water, and marginalized women and gender-expansive people. US militarism continues to rip land away for its own selfish and beneficial means, but let us follow the steps of Hawaii natives, for they have model resistance seen today.
*I use “comrade” as “ally.”
Photo Credit.

# data[].attributes.headline
Infiltration of militarism and its effects in Hawaii

# data[].attributes.subject
Infiltration of militarism and its effects in Hawaii

# data[].attributes.body
At the start of the cycle, U.S. colonialism and militarism expansion took lands from Hawaii and used stolen land as nuclear sites. Specifically, militarism has used Hawaii in its history, using its islands as sites for testing grounds and creating chemical contamination of the environment. As said by Trask, "The violence of nuclearization and militarization associated with nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands includes the detonation of over 66 bombs. We must all remember that the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested on Bikini Island. The force of this weapon of destruction was 1,000 times stronger than the Hiroshima" (Trask 2004, 12). As a result of the Bikini islands, military occupation created pollution on the land. Its residents were left to deal with the detrimental effects of chemical contamination, working as an indirect form of sterilization. Women who had been exposed gave birth to babies with various deformities. Fast forward to current times, Hawaii still faces current occupation and continues to endanger indigenous living. According to the University of Hawaii West Oahu, a list of media coverage dates back to 2014 of Red Hill contaminating Hawaii's water supply. The argument of whether it should be implemented, to the "guarantee" of no contamination. Only to result in the leak occurring multiple times and leaving residents (including the military families) exposed. Historically recorded that occupation poses a threat to its residents and those who initially have been here.
Photo Credit

# data[].attributes.headline
"Local environmental groups want US government to shut down Navy fuel tanks" by AUDREY McAVOY - Associated Press, HPR News Staff

# data[].attributes.subject
"Local environmental groups want US government to shut down Navy fuel tanks" by AUDREY McAVOY - Associated Press, HPR News Staff

# data[].attributes.body
"Sierra Club of Hawaii Director Wayne Tanaka speaks at a news conference and rally in Honolulu, on Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. Citing threats to Honolulu's drinking water, environmental groups called on President Joe Biden and military leaders to shut down tanks that provide an important fuel reserve for the U.S. forces in the Pacific."
Photo Credit.

# data[].attributes.body
“The privatization of military housing, along with the voucher-like housing allowance system for military families, has created an inflationary housing market in Hawaiʻi; civilian residents are increasingly outcompeted by subsidized military buyers and renters” (Kajihiro and Kekoʻolani 254- 255).

Photo Credit

# data[].attributes.body
From destruction to its physicality to erasing the culture of Hawaii to become a recreational center that caters to capitalism and patriarchy through prostitution and tourism. American military men are taught to be entitled to sex and paradise. They have forgotten they are unwelcome intruders and work as militarized violence against land and women.
“The prostitute and the institution that creates and maintains her are of patriarchal origin. The victims participate in their victimization with enormous ranges of feelings, from resistance to complicity, but men shape the force and continuity of the institution. The pimp is the conduit of exchange, managing the commodity that is the prostitute while acting as the guard at the entry and exit gates, making sure the prostitute behaves as a prostitute by fulfilling her sexual-economic functions” (Trask 2016, 25).
The military is not a safe place for women and their bodies. We know the realities of sexual violence at the hands of US militarism intimately. We are not alive to please the colonizer’s eyes or appetite for sex and power. We know that the military is not a safe space for women and our bodies. The US military occupies and exploits indigenous homelands and women on the battlefield and the barracks. Battle against US militarism because LAND & WOMEN are NOT for CONQUEST.

# data[].attributes.body
“The prostitute and the institution that creates and maintains her are of patriarchal origin. The victims participate in their victimization with enormous ranges of feelings, from resistance to complicity, but men shape the force and continuity of the institution. The pimp is the conduit of exchange, managing the commodity that is the prostitute while acting as the guard at the entry and exit gates, making sure the prostitute behaves as a prostitute by fulfilling her sexual-economic functions” (Trask 2016, 25).

Photo Credit.

# data[].attributes.body
“The original imperial violence enacted by the United States to indigenous genocide and colonization in North America continues to this day in the name of natural resources territorial positioning and profit” (Red Nation 2021, 62).

On Protection and Restoration of Sacred Sites (Red Nation 2021, 130-131).
❀ We must end the criminalization and brutalization of water protectors and land defenders.
❀ We must understand that what happens to the lands happens to the people (and vice versa). The protection of relatives must include all relatives. No one is free unless we are all free.
❀ Public land is stolen land. Outdoor recreation is often on the land that has been stolen and converted into a public lead. Conservationist and nature lovers who participate in progressive causes most respect the sacred, even if this means they can no longer use land for recreational activities.
❀ Mass movements must be willing to educate about what is sacred and why is it important to respect and protect what is sacred
❀ Stolen land must be return
❀ Mauna Kea: protest to stop the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope; amplify the international divestment campaign; support the struggle through writing
❀Support international movements and grassroots organizing through education, solidarity events, film screening, teach-ins, protest and rallies
❀ Provide free legal work and service for water protectors and then defenders
❀ Donate to legal funds like Unist’ ot’ en camp and Water Protectors Legal Collective.
Photo Credit.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Hawaiian Elders Protesting Telescope Construction Are Arrested" by New York Times

# data[].attributes.subject
"Hawaiian Elders Protesting Telescope Construction Are Arrested" by New York Times

# data[].attributes.body
Photo Credit.

# data[].attributes.body
The true enemy of our liberation as women, trans, Black, immigrant, Indigenous, and nonbinary people are colonization, militarization, and global imperialism. They work together as a force to create & uphold the most violent industry around the world. We must fight for a world without violence against those in the sex tourism. We fight for Bodies Back because our relatives and community deserve more. Fight for the liberation of our whole selves. Land Back! Bodies Back! In action, camaraderie & community is tending to land, healing & strategizing for a future free from patriarchy & colonialism.

# data[].attributes.body
-Aikau, Hokulani K., and Gonzalez, Vernadette. "The Hawai'i Detour Project: Demilitarizing Sites and Sights on O'ahu"
Detours : A Decolonial Guide to Hawai'i. Durham: Duke University Press. Accessed June 9, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central.
-Ginoza, Ayano. "R&R at the Intersection of US and Japanese Dual Empire: Okinawan Women and Decolonizing Militarized Heterosexuality." American Quarterly 68, no. 3 (2016): 583-591. doi:10.1353/aq.2016.0054.
-The Red Nation. The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth. Brooklyn, NY: Common Notions, 2021.
-Trask, Haunani-Kay. 2016. “Lovely Hula Lands: Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture”. Border/Lines, no. 23 (July). https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/bl/article/view/24958.
-Trask, Haunani Kay. “The Color of Violence.” Social Justice 31, no. 4 (98) (2004): 8–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768270.