Public meeting on Coast Guard security rules and the Superferry

Well that was interesting. Nobody particularly shined tonight. The Superferry is sailing into Nawiliwili Harbor on the 26th and the meeting was essentially a forum for the government to read the riot act to potential demonstrators. On the way into the hall, attendees were handed fliers listing the consequences of violating various state and federal laws commonly violated, I suppose, in heated confrontations between demonstrators and rules. It was objectively an insultingly paternalistic show and the crowd, for its part, stooped to the occasion.

County Council member JoAnn Yukimura, who had led or at least participated as a VIP in a large demonstration prior to the meeting, and then marched with the participants into the meeting hall, spent an uncomfortable first 20 or so minutes of the meeting hopping up and down to shush or hold up a hand to quiet especially insistent or profane hecklers.

HDOT Director Barry Fukunaga rose to speak early in the proceedings and was summarily and roundly shouted down. Governor Lingle was also greeted with cat calls and heckling. My sense is that she had intended to have all the panel members speak (including, among others, officials from HDOT, the Coast Guard, Kauai Police, Public Safety, office of the attorney general, and Land and Natural Resources) however, it was clear early on that the crowd was in no mood and Lingle, in a flash of genius, simply turned the floor over and opened the mikes to those who wanted to vent or ask questions.

I don't want to diminish the thoughtful and heartfelt questions and statements made during the next four hours, but the evening was in large part an exercise in which someone would challenge the Governor or another one of the panel members with a loaded or rhetorical question, hecklers would shout, "answer the question! Answer the question!" and then, when the quesion's target tried to answer, he or she would be shouted down.

A typical exchange went like this:

Questioner: "How would you feel if a child died demonstrating against the Superferry?"

Governor Lingle: "I would feel terrible if any child died anywhere."

Questioner: "Then do the EIS."

Governor: "Thank you for sharing that."

A woman who claimed to be "old enough to have marched in the civil rights movement" said that "this feels like those days" then, when the applause died down, proceeded to complain that the beaches are already a lot more crowded than when she moved here ten years ago and worried also that the Superferry would bring child molesters who would take her daughter from in front of her school. I had an uncharitable thought about how Martin Luther King Jr. might feel about evoking the movement he died for to justify our wish to loll on uncrowded beaches.

I was kind of amazed also at the brazenness with which people - white people - would complain that when they moved here ten or however many years ago, traffic wasn't nearly so bad as it is now and people therefore just shouldn't be allowed to bring cars to "our" island.

I don't mean to dump entirely on the Ferry's vocal opponents. The meeting's premise couldn't have been better designed to insult and inflame the community. The 'summary of legal consequences' we were all handed upon entering the meeting was meant to dissuade people from interfering with the ferry next time it appears in the harbor. Instead it ignited a storm of righteous indignation. A point the crowd found especially galling, and repeatedly raised from the floor mikes, was the threat that parents of youngsters caught paddling out into the harbor in violation of the security zone could be investigated for endangering the welfare of a minor.

Right or wrong, a central theme consolidating the opposition here on Kauai is the narrative that the Superferry is imposed from monied interests on Oahu, without the consent or even the input of the people of Kauai, who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by its operation. This meeting did nothing to alleviate that suspicion. On the contrary, it only reinforced it. It was a PR bungle. That's for sure.

An interesting aside - the crowd enjoyed a moment of triumph when Lingle, accused of accumulating $25,000 in campaign money from Superferry "directors," stated that she couldn't refute the claim.