Thread by @ALUhawaii

UHM workers, never forget that Provost Michael Bruno, took the opportunity of #MLKDay to defend allowing white supremacists to have a platform on campus. This is who our bosses are. From an email sent today entitled "Provost message on National Day of Racial Healing." @uhmanoa

ALU member @adi_gajigan: "The problem w/ this supposed "neutral" take is it helps the oppressors. White supremacy is the dominant ideology. They control the state & its apparatuses. Unis should be used to deplatform these terrorists or at the very least struggle against it."

This is the same "good people on both sides" argument that Trump and other fascists use to appease white moderates' aesthetics of multiculturalism while refusing accountability for propping up white supremacy. There is no neutrality. There is only justice or no justice.

Of course, we can't be surprised. @uhmanoa was founded on stolen land, sends police to arrest and terrorize Indigenous people, has a history of eugenics, and profits from militarism. The institution is imperialist through and through.

"First, I must confess that over the last few years
I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor...

"or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."
-Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail" 1963

Provost Bruno, you should keep Dr. King's name out of your mouth.

@threadreaderapp please unroll

UHM folks can attend the university's webinar "Connecting Racism, the Climate Crisis, and Indigenous Knowledge" tomorrow from 1-2pm and ask admin what is "correct" about the perspective that white supremacists should be on our campus. Register here: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

The speakers actually do not include Bruno, Lassner, or other high up admin. Instead, it might be a good space to discuss the message from Bruno with the speakers. manoa.hawaii.edu/nhpol/language…