Uncertainty lingers over
season of peaceThe issue: Hawaii and the nation celebrate
the season of hope and good will during
perilous times at home and abroad.THIS Christmas is at once like so many of the past, yet so unfamiliar. Dark events have cast a plaintive shade over a holiday that celebrates hope. War and peace compete for our attention, diffused through the pain of loss that has swerved too close. Some no longer have jobs or a place to call home. For others, the loss plunges deeper, through the wives, husbands, fathers, sisters and grandparents gone from this world. Absent from everyone at one moment or another has been an assurance, a confidence that all's well -- or will be.
Still, trees laden with gleaming ornaments shed drying needles over the gaily wrapped gifts that tempt keiki impatient with curiosity. The savory aromas of roasts and pies waft from kitchens humid with the steaming dim sum and pot-cooked laulau. Uncles pull bottles of beer from the cooler in the garage, alternating sips with bites of limu poke, aunties slice the sushi they rolled just this morning and the cousins sort with bare toes through the dozens of rubber slippers on the front porch in the hunt for their own.
It is strange that in this season of peace we seek vengeance from the "evil ones" who have intruded upon our self-possession. They have killed, so we strike back, fully justified by a notion of righteousness. But prowling restlessly beneath this is an ideal that evil can be understood, talked away from itself. How difficult is it to imagine that the enemy, those turbaned men with dusty faces and rifles, ache for the companionship of their children and wives? Yet forces beyond an individual's control shove us one against the other and the struggle for grace in despair becomes elusive.
As we embrace a war, the solace that Christmas bears may shelter our conscience from the reality of retaliation. But to transcend fully through the meaning of the holiday, we also may strive to honor the humanity of the evil and the innocent alike. There is mercy and charity if we look for them.
The potency of the season abides despite the duality of the times. See the brilliant lights, the smiles of pleasure and contentment, hear the voices of delight, the laughter. It's Christmas.
Free expression ends with
physical threatsThe issue: Two activists in San Francisco
face criminal charges of harassing political foes.PEOPLE can become emotionally caught up in public issues, as we have long known from the raw version of some letters to the editor. Before allowing their political expression to escalate beyond control, activists should consider the plight of two San Francisco men being held in jail on more than $1 million bail. When political opinion takes the form of harassment or physical threats, they learned, criminal changes may result.
Whether the actions of David R. Paquarelli of the advocacy group Act Up San Francisco or gay activist Michael A. Petrelis rose to that level has yet to be determined. The fact that they were arrested and face more than 10 years in prison if convicted should give pause to those who believe anything goes on the public forum for some hot-button issues.
Lawyers for the two men acknowledge their clients' in-your-face approach to political enemies but deny they surpassed the First Amendment. In an e-mail message to gay-rights advocates, Petrelis listed home phone numbers of government officials and urged activists to barrage them with calls protesting "Dr. Josef Mengele KKKlausner and his call for quarantining gay men with HIV."
Actually, Dr. Jeffrey Klausner of the San Francisco Department of Public Health had made no such proposal, although some people may have inferred as much from an omission in a national magazine article, later clarified. Klausner says he could accept some of the vitriolic attacks as healthy political dialogue, but calls at home spewing obscenities at his wife overstepped the bounds of debate.
Paquarelli and Petrelis did not let newspaper reporters off the hook, according to the criminal complaint. It includes more than 30 charges of harassing, stalking and threatening nearly a dozen city health officials, researchers, journalists and their families over the telephone.
Carl T. Hall, a science writer for The San Francisco Chronicle, says he is always happy to discuss a story with anybody, "but I'm not going to discuss it with someone who calls my house in the middle of the night and threatens my children. They told me they were going to hunt me down, that I was in their sights. I don't know what that's got to do with the merits of our coverage."
The issues of AIDS and abortion rights have been most vulnerable to violence in recent years, although the intensity seems to have declined. National AIDS workers, including Act Up members, are concerned that the high bail for the two defendants sends a "clear message" that "activists must beware." The message should be that freedom of expression does not extend to committing crimes.
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
Frank Bridgewater, managing editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, assistant managing editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.comRichard Halloran, editorial page director, 529-4790; rhalloran@starbulletin.com
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