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After the Byran Uyesugi verdict in June, a nerve of concern -- long repressed by circumstances -- started to surface in me. Workplace violence is
everybody’s businessEditor's note: Byran Uyesugi is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for first-degree murder in the deaths of seven Xerox coworkers last November in Hawaii's worst multiple slaying.
My mother trade is construction work and I have been a journeyman for 33 years. A couple of years back, I was involved in an altercation at work that has caused me psychological stress that continues to this day.
I was the older guy on the crew and noticed a foreman and co-worker liked to talk to each other a lot in private. They were the typical gossip types you would find at large construction firms during the go-go-go days of the rich 1980s.
I had no interest in their kuleana, so I easily "turned off" their chatter at lunch and ate by myself, knowing that after a long hot day in North Kona, I would drive home to cool and beautiful Holualoa.
I did notice that these two guys didn't have many nice things to say about their boss. Eventually, I was chosen as their new object of verbal abuse.
At the time, I was 53 years old and weighed150 pounds. One of my antagonists was about 6-foot-6, 270 pounds. The other guy, a resentful journeyperson about my size, was 20 years younger.
All I had to do was say one wrong thing and it was the aina for me. I felt it.
Imagine living on the Big Island, working amid so much hatred and dangerous obstacles in 100-degree heat!
One morning, in a dark tool storage area, the big co-worker looked in the tool box with his flashlight for an item that he had let me use on the roof. It was a safety harness or something, which the company usually supplies.
Since the foreman had taken me to another area the day before, I had to leave the borrowed piece of equipment up on the roof.
When the big guy started yelling at me, I said to him, "I don't have to take this from you!" Then he pushed me and I fell hard on my right shoulder. I had to have two surgeries to repair the damage almost three years later.
The point of sharing this anecdote is to demonstrate that violence is widespread in the workplace, even here in "paradise."
On the mainland, little resentments turn into "postal tragedies." Soon, our horrible slaughter at Xerox Corp. on Oahu will have its own sick jokes and our grammar school kids will be snickering over them.
Television is all persuasive. We all know that. Newton Minnow's "vast wasteland" is now the killing fields of this new millennium.
Paul LaMehieu, state schools superintendent, has a big job ahead of him to improve and keep the peace in public schools. He needs our help and a lot of prayers -- along with the banning of all handguns in the Hawaii. After the paperwork of Byran Uyesugi's mental-health troubles was lost at the Honolulu Police Department, I figure that complete abolition of firearms is our only recourse.
In closing, as a citizen of Hawaii, I have a vested interest in what's going on. We all have to address the malignancy of anger in our everyday lives. A few years ago, a friend of mine quoted an old bard who said, "Whom the gods destroy, they first make angry."
Let's turn off the TV, get outside in the backyards and parks after work with our keiki every night (not just on holidays), and go with our families to the library, theater, ballgame and good movies.
Only then can we set an example for the rest of our violent country that there is a loving solution nurtured at home. I believe our time has come.
Michael E. Powers is a Big Island resident.