Guerrilla History - Shut Down Red Hill! Naval Pollution Disaster w/ Mikey from O'ahu Water Protectors: Dispatch

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

In this Dispatch, we talk to Mikey from O'ahu Water Protectors about the both ongoing and impending disaster at the Red Hill facility, where the US Navy's fuel continues to leak into the largest aquifer on the island of O'ahu.  We discuss the history of this fuel facility, and the activism taking place to shut it down! You can find Mikey on various social media platforms, including Twitter, @karaokecomputer.  You can find more information about O'ahu Water Protectors and the efforts to shut down Red Hill at oahuwaterprotectors.org. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki,

joined by only one of my regular co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Henry. It's really good to be with you. Yeah, it's great to see you, too. Longtime No See, which is a joke between you and me, because listeners, we recorded something else yesterday, so it really hasn't been that long. Unfortunately, we're not joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast, as he had something come up at the last minute and was unfortunately not able to join us today.

This is a guerrilla history and dispatch. Dispatches are our episodes that are based more on contemporary events, using historical context to understand what is going on in the present and hopefully aiming to use that knowledge to organize for the future. We have a great guest today, and on a fascinating topic that is not getting nearly the media attention that it should be, we have Mikey, who is an organizer with the Oahu water protectors. Hello, Mikey. How are you doing today?

Aloha. Thanks for having me. Big fan of the show. Glad to be on. Well, we're a big fan of the work that you've been doing, so the fandom is mutual here, and we're really happy to have you. So, Mikey, we're going to be talking today during this. recording about Red Hill and the efforts to shut down Red Hill. So since I mentioned that there really hasn't been much media coverage of this event

at all in the mainstream, why don't we just start out with the most basic question possible, which is, what is Red Hill, what is going on at Red Hill, where is Red Hill, and why are their efforts to shut it down? So Red Hill, its actual place name is Kapukaki. And its English name is Red Hill, and within Red Hill, there are 20 fuel storage tanks that contain at a maximum up to 250 million gallons of jet fuel and marine diesel. It was constructed by the U.S. Navy during World War II, completed around 1943, and it has literally been leaking ever since. And these fuel tanks sit just 100 feet above our sole source aquifer, the Mwanalua Waimalu aquifer, which provides water to hundreds of thousands of people on this island. And this project is considered by the U.S. military a stroke of engineering genius because it uses the force of gravity to,

carry this fuel down to Pearl Harbor, where they fuel their weapons of war, right? But nobody ever gave any special consideration to the fact that, you know, oil and water don't mix, quite literally. And when they do, the results are tragic and lethal. And as early as the years 1943 to 1945, there was a leak of 1.3 million

gallons of fuel and hundreds of thousands of gallons have leaked straight into the soil and groundwater ever since. The entire existence

of Red Hill was technically classified until the early 90s, but it was kind of an open secret. Like as early as the 1970s,

one of our senators even wrote an op-ed in one of the local newspapers about how we needed to appropriate millions of dollars to address renovations and necessary repairs to this deteriorating

Red Hill facility. And this was back in the 1970s, which is 50 years ago. And so the most public leak prior to last year's leaks was in 2014, when anywhere from 27,000 to 40,000 gallons of jet fuel leaked out of a tank that they had literally just repaired. And the people operating the facility ignored multiple warnings. We're talking about like a fucking like Homer Simpson style scenario where they're just ignoring alarms because there's so many false alarms that they've been going off in this facility. When an actual correct alarm was going off about a fuel release, they ignored it for days until they realized that finally like, oh shit, something is wrong with this tank that we just repaired. And that happened in 2014, and then in 2015, this whistleblower Victor Peters came forward to talk about the various structural failures of the Red Hill fuel facility.

And then state agencies and our misrepresentatives in this fake state basically came together to create what's known as the AOC, the administrative order of consent, which was basically this toothless agreement whereby the Navy would be, quote unquote, accountable to officials and do a better job of monitoring the facility and being in more open communication with state agencies. Yeah, I just wanted to stop you there for a minute to ask Mikey about this administrative order of consent.

It's clear that the 2014 spill, became very public. It got media attention. And the Defense Department, the Navy, was put in a position where it actually had to be dealing with public pressure, local and state agencies that were concerned about pollution of the water, the consequent health effects. But it seems that everything that I've noticed about how the Defense Department talks about the issue is always the assumption that isn't any spills. And, you know, like, that's the basic assumption is that it's a safe facility

and that very little would ever spill and that these are just amazingly remarkable exceptions that we can come together to monitor, not to fix, not to change how the facility actually works, not to put in protective infrastructure. If they wanted to keep this facility, why not invest in ensuring that it's safe? Instead, it seems like everything they do is, well, we will monitor to kind of see if it is leaking when there's been such a history of leaks, it sounds like.

But the assumption should be the other way it sounds like that this is a dangerous facility with toxic, you know, chemicals that are being stored in an old concrete and steel facility right above. I think I read somewhere that it's only 100, like, feet above the aquifer. I mean, this sounds incredibly, you know, dangerous from the start. So, you know, how is that public pressure responded to this kind of assumption that the government seems to take all the time, which is that it's fine. We'll monitor, but there's nothing more we need to do after the 2014 spill. The U.S. military has really ever since this issue first came. to light dramatically downplayed the structural failures of the real health facility and the imminent

threat it poses to basically all life on Oahu. And I think the reason behind that is because they operate from a completely different ideology, right? That places importance not on human and more than human life, but on capital. accumulation and the securing of those private interests by force. And it's important to understand that Hawaii is not the 50th state. It became a state after having its sovereign nation led by indigenous people of Hawaii overthrown in no small part with the help of the USS Navy of the USS Boston,

which is a part of the U.S. Navy, right? and then having statehood forced through by joint resolution, which is basically the United States agreeing with itself to take Hawaii into the United States. And the major intent behind that was to use the Hawaiian Islands as a geostrategic outpost of U.S. Empire to dominate the rest of the entire Pacific, right? And so what originally started as kind of a coaling

station for all of their imperialist expansion in places like every basically every everywhere all of the colonial holdings including like Cuba and Puerto Rico and and Gua Han that they wanted to dominate and control and eventually China which we're seeing again today they needed to have that place and they also needed to have in the event of a world war a enormous few facility like Red Hill. Listeners, I think that it might be useful to remember that at the time of the Pearl Harbor attacks, that Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was not the only place that was attacked.

The Philippines were also attacked by the Japanese at the same time. And the Philippines had roughly the same status as Hawaii at this time. But it's only because of the status change of Hawaii since then that we've focused so heavily on the attack on Pearl Harbor and have put almost no emphasis on what happened to the Philippines during those early days of U.S. involvement during World War II. It's also, as you mentioned, the U.S. really needed this place to have a base in the Pacific. With the Philippines's changing status after World War II, Hawaii was really the only place that they had left that they could use as a military outpost in the middle of the Pacific of any

significant size. And they already had a base at Pearl Harbor there. So with the Philippines as changing status, they had even. more incentive to bring the Hawaii fully into the U.S. so that it was just part of the imperial apparatus of the U.S. state as opposed to being some tangential element of it. I think that that's worth keeping in mind because a lot of times, just based on how history is reported in the U.S., nobody thinks about the Philippines in those early days of World War II. And that's a large part because of Hawaii being subsumed into the U.S. empire, whereas the Philippines

had a complete change of status and independence. Yeah, nominal independence, right? Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, and speaking to that, like, President McKinley, who was instrumental in kind of, like, creating a neo-colony in the Philippines, being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipino people, he is also quite justly reviled within the sovereign nation of Hawaii. In fact, there is still a school called McKinley High School here, and there is a statue of President McKinley, Kinley holding a fake treaty of the annexation of Hawaii, basically a symbol that gaslights the entire population here about how the creation of Hawaiian statehood went down, where there is no treaty of annexation. That shit in his hands and that statue is made up. It doesn't exist.

But it kind of creates this myth of a consenting occupied people. And this is one of the primary messages carried out by the statues and monuments in the U.S., in Hawaii in particular, which I can get into later as well, because the U.S.S. Arizona plays a very specific and important role, not just in its continued, the United States military's continued control of the Pacific region, but also of its role on the world stage. Okay, so now that we've talked a little bit about that, let's jump back to where we left off talking about Red Hill in 2019, 2020, and can you take us up to the present from there? Yeah, the Sierra Club, which has been actually very good on this issue, organizing around this and pushing for actual accountability and transparency from the Navy and all the state officials that have been far too friendly with the Navy over the years. they basically sued to kind of create more of a accountable process for the approval of underground storage tanks for Red Hill.

Because prior to that, the Department of Health was basically just letting the Navy do whatever they want, even though these tanks, which again, were built almost 80 years ago, right, are single-line tanks. You can't even have a gas station with an underground tank if it is not double-lined. And in some of these tanks, like the thickness has corroded to like a slipper. And every single one of these tanks are corroding. In fact, you can't even fill these to the top anymore because they're so corroded at the top that if you fill them all the way to the top, they'll start leaking from the top. And there is just kind of an ambient leak, barring any catastrophic leaks,

that result in about 5,000 gallons of fuel leaking into the surrounding environment every single year. And so during that contested case hearing, so while this contested case hearing was going on, there was a leak that the Navy knew about that was happening closer to the Pearl Harbor side of the facility. And a whistleblower leaked emails from the Navy correspondence where they said, like, basically they don't, want this leak to go public because of what the anti-red-Hill community might do with this information during a time where they need to get these storage tank permits greenlit, right? And when this came to light and this whistleblower sent this information to shut down Red Hill organizers, that's when we as a collective and now an organization got involved.

So that was kind of around mid-2021 of last year when we started getting organized around this. And eventually this loose coalition of water protectors, Kanakamauli, Kya'i, water protectors, other community organizers like myself, Hawaii Peace and Justice, Sierra Club, women's voices, women speak, and various other, organizations, we all got together and formed this organization, Oahu Water Protectors. And then several months after we started organizing around this issue, the story came out about 911 phone calls from places like Foster Village and Red Hill Malka, where people reported the air around their homes smelling like a gas station. And we were some of the few people to know immediately what that was about. We even got on a Zoom call, and some of us cried because we knew what that meant, right?

That Red Hill had leaked catastrophically. And sure enough, the news eventually came out that, yeah, this was about Red Hill, that Red Hill had leaked. And then in November right around Thanksgiving weekend, thousands of people, many of them active duty service members, but also civilians, they got sick. Adults got sick, children got sick, babies got sick, pets died. I've heard multiple stories since through my organizing of miscarriages and premature births and infants, newborn infants coming down with symptoms consistent with acute exposure to petroleum hydrocarbons. And that is what really galvanized the rest of the community, but also Oahuahua,

water protectors into organizing this whole island community around this issue and then on December 10th we staged our first major action which we called a die-in and a rise-up action and that was also our first major major press conference and on that same day we learned that the board of water supply which is one of the few state agencies that has done any good on this issue announced that they were going to shut down several of their key water shafts because they were less than a mile away from where the leaks happened.

And one of them is the Halava shaft, which combined with another shaft provides water to nearly a quarter of the population in downtown Honolulu. And Ernie Lau, the head of Border Water Supply, said, we're shutting this down indefinitely and we may never be able to open this shaft again. they have to drill for a new shaft which would cost over $100 million just for construction

and they have to find that water source first as well and he also later said that during these summer months we're already facing a historic drop because of climate change now over the next couple months we may face water shutoffs and that's not like a water shortage where you have to conserve water and not wash your car that's when you turn on the faucet and nothing comes out when you turn on the showerhead and just sputters, right? And so around December of last year is when we got really, really activated and we started organizing community, we mobilized community, we activated a bunch of people around this issue, we worked with existing organizing relationships and existing international solidarity networks, particularly with other folks who are survivors

of the wages of U.S. Empire, people in Guahan, in Korea, in Palestine, in Okinawa, in the occupied continental United States. And we pushed from every angle. We organized neighborhood boards to pass resolutions. We lobbied the House and Senate. We cyberbullied some of our bought and paid for senators, we stage actions, we canvass small businesses and neighborhoods, and educated the public on what was going on, and that's what we're continuing to do to this day. We also engaged in a lot of mutual aid to provide material support for affected families who have been woefully failed, mistreated, and lied to, by, the U.S. military, their superior officers, and also to their landlords. And I can get into that

and the details of that and how that's been, how mutual aid has kind of fed our organizing and building relationships with many of the affected communities. Before we get into the organizing, I'm really curious, you know, I opened this up by saying that there's been very little media coverage of that. And at least from what I've seen, I've seen almost nothing outside of, from, you know, left-wing independent media sources like Empire Files, our friends at Empire Files, podcast appearances like our friends, millennials are killing capitalism.

But I really haven't seen any like mainstream media pieces about this. You'd think that having an absolutely catastrophic potential leak over the top of the main water aquifer of the most populous island of the Hawaiian Islands, a water source that over 400,000 people rely on, You'd think that periodic leaks of fuel into the water supply and impending larger leaks that almost certainly are going to happen according to the Navy's own analysis, like studies commissioned by the Navy, that radical left-wing organization, the United States Navy, they have their own studies together that say there's roughly a third chance that any given year there will be a massive leak into this aquifer that gives water to more than 400,000 people. you'd think that that would make the news somewhere. So, yes, there have been actually plenty of stories from major mainstream news outlets.

All of the major networks have covered this, but not nearly to the extent that they should. Like, I would argue that Flint, Michigan, and what happened there, has and is undercovered, right? But the coverage on Red Hill doesn't even hold a candle to the amount of coverage that Flint has gotten, right? which was undercover itself. And so this, if it were being reported to the proportionality of the crisis, would basically be front page news every single day, right? But it's not because it's happening to an outpost of U.S. Empire, for one. And here's the other thing is, lately I've been comparing what U.S. Empire does

to its occupied, colonized people as much like, an abusive relationship on the interpersonal scale, right? And what that implies is kind of like there's that Darvo at work, this reversal of victim and perpetrator, where the victims are basically blamed for the plight that they face, but also that level of gaslighting, in this particular case, both literal and figurative, but also this kind of idea that the U.S. is here to protect us

from threats foreign and domestic. But what the U.S. really reveals particularly in cases like Red Hill is that they are the domestic threat, right? And to bring this back to your question, if literally any other country had done this to their own people, this would be Block A news on every major U.S. news station every single day, right? If Russians or the Chinese government, if the CPC had been responsible for the poisoning of thousands of people, if Cuba or the DPRK had been responsible for contamining a major water source to such a degree that 93,000 homes are still without water,

if literally any other country that is in opposition to U.S. capitalist interests did this to their own people, this would be nonstop covered. And more than that, if any other country did this to a U.S. neocolony or a U.S. state, we'd be in a world war, right? And they'd be dragged before the Hague to face what would be legitimate war crimes. But because it's the U.S. doing this, who would literally invade, who would literally invade, you know, if the Hague ever tried to drag them for the innumerable crimes that they've committed against humanity, because of that, there isn't this level of coverage. But what folks in the U.S. Imperial Corps in particular need to understand is that this is an existential climate crisis. And if there is another catastrophic leak in Red Hill, that could basically spell the end of life on Oahu as we know it.

And that's not hyperbole. That is just a simple statement of fact. And, well, a lot of people also don't know, even within our own community, which is why we're really engaged in our new kind of island-wide canvassing campaign. and in our political education efforts is there are still over 100 million gallons of fuel in those tanks and they haven't even started the defueling process yet. In fact, there's a very recent report

where they're now claiming that they may need two to three years before they even begin the defueling process. And Henry, as you mentioned, you know, these tanks could leak again at any point even if they're not in operation. Right? They're leaking. They have been leaking even when they're not operating. The board of water supply has also mentioned that they've kind of reached, the aquifer and the soil around these tanks have reached a saturation point.

So kind of imagine like a sponge. You can pour any kind of liquid on it and it will absorb as much as it can. But eventually, once that sponge reaches its saturation point, any drop of liquid you poured on that is going to spill right out, right? And so, So that's the state of things in Kapukaki right now, which means that another 5,000 gallons that just leak every year from the Red Hill facility could just be going straight into our groundwater. And here's one of the more haunting things about this. I just spoke to Victor Peters, the 2015 whistleblower, recently.

And what he told me in my interview with him was that he got this like $80,000 modeling software. And when he was working in the Red Hill facility. that modeling software basically, based on what he knew about its projections, he kind of estimated that the leaks from 2014 were up to 40,000 gallons leaked out of the tanks into the surrounding environment, could get into our groundwater within eight years. And that was eight years ago. So the thing is, like, the thousands of people who got sick back in November of 2020, That could be the result of a leak from 2014, which is to say that any of the leaks that we know about that have happened within those eight years, they might not be poisoning people until eight years from now. And so we're dealing with future crises before they even happen now, which is why we need to shut down Red Hill yesterday. Because if there's any more leaks in the future, we're going to have to deal with that possibly generations down.

and if there's a catastrophic leak in the future, that's not even something we can deal with because it will take multiple generations to address that issue, and that may not even be enough. I have two quick notes before I let you hop in and none, just very quick. So I know that this might sound a little bit abstract to the listeners. You know, there's 40,000 gallons that leaked here, or 27,000 gallons that leaked there. What does that mean for the average person? Well, according to some analyses that were done of people's drinking waters coming out from their tap, there was 350 times the safe levels of these chemicals in their drinking water. I think that that hits a little bit more on the personal level for listeners, you know, as opposed to X amount of gallons leaking into a, you know, into a hill above an aquifer in your drinking water, turn on your tap.

You have 350 times the safe limit of these chemicals. And that really does highlight the existential crisis that this is, really, if you have an even bigger leak. I mean, that in itself is unsafe. And you had thousands of people that were falling ill because of this level. And that was without what would be considered a major leak, one that the U.S. Navy, again, that radical left organization, is saying in their studies that could be impending. And then the other quick note that I just wanted to mention because it was just relevant for today. You mentioned Flint and the coverage of Flint being inadequate. And then you mentioned how if this was happening somewhere else in the world,

the Red Hill crisis was happening somewhere else, it would be front page news every day. But because it's in the U.S. and a peripheral part of the U.S. at that, it's not. And I just had this experience today at work. I was telling some people at my work here in Russia about the Flint water crisis. And they could not believe that. the United States would have something like this.

I said, it's not just Flint. We have dozens of cities across the U.S. They have unsafe lead levels. One person at my work, who's from the UK, had heard of the Flint crisis, but nobody else heard of it, and they found it hard to believe. Then I told them about the crisis at Red Hill. And we completely blew everybody away because I said, you know, this, there wasn't even the amount of coverage that we had with Flint.

And you people here, most of what? whom are expats at my work, you didn't even know about the Flint crisis, which was like a pretty big news story in the U.S. This hasn't hit the news at all. And they just find that, like, unbelievable that something like that can happen in the U.S. and that it's not covered at all. So the fact that you brought that up just reminded me of my experience that I had, you know, a few hours today, a few hours ago at work today. Adnan. Right. Sorry, I just want to address what, sorry, just one point to what you were saying, Henry. Like, in addition to the contamination that's going on in U.S. military installations in Hawaii,

pretty much every major U.S. military installation, both in the United States and abroad, is contaminated, including the vast majority of military housing. And, I mean, there are over 700 military sites, U.S. military sites around the world that are contaminated with a forever chemical in firefighting foam called PIFOS, right? That's known to cause, you know, autoimmune disorders, liver issues, and even a higher morbidity rate among COVID patients. And there are all types of instances of major contamination like Camp Lejeune and various, you know, bases around the world,

including in Guajan and in Okinawa, where they have contaminated water sources, including with underground fuel storage tanks and with, you know, explosive ordinance disposal, where they basically just detonate unexploded ordinance in next to primary water sources. Well, you mentioned Phefoss.

There was a researcher, sorry, sorry, Adnan. There's a researcher who did a study about, well, it's been going on for about 10 years, but some of the findings were published about two years ago. He's been researching PFOS and what's been, you know, what the U.S. military does with it to dispose of it, because as you mentioned, it's considered a forever chemical. You cannot get rid of it. So when you want to dispose of it, how do you dispose of something that you cannot get rid of? The U.S. military decided that burning it was a good idea. That was how they were going to dispose of the PIFS. Well, this researcher found burning it

doesn't get rid of this forever chemical either. It just puts it into the air. And so this is what's been happening at military bases for at least a decade now, according to the study, which I don't have the citation in front of me, but I believe that it was a researcher at a Wisconsin-based university, if I'm remembering correctly. I did contact him once. But yeah, the U.S. military bases are no burning Phaas to try to get rid of it, just aerosolizing it. Okay, Adnan, I'm sorry. Oh, no, that's all right. I mean, it brings up so many interesting connections. And I'm so glad, Mikey, that you raise the point about U.S. military bases around the world being prime polluters. And it relates to this projection of U.S. Empire and the fact that they don't care about the local and indigenous populations in the pursuit of these geopolitical and military aims.

I mean, when you mentioned the analogy to the coverage that Flint received, which was inadequate and that this has been so far less, what the situation that reminded me most closely of actually was Vieques, you know. So again, another place where there's a U.S. Navy base where they were exploding ordinance and, you know, as a so-called training facility and where all of these armaments and explosions were devastating the environment of this Caribbean, you know, island associated with Puerto Rico. And so it's very similar that we have the same institution, the U.S. Navy. with a military base and hardly any coverage of this fact were it not for the large you know kind of Puerto Rican community in diaspora in the U.S. that, you know, had contacts and

where, you know, there could be some coverage. So it's very important to talk about what's happening and to put it in terms that frame it not as an exceptional case, but as one that's systemic to U.S. military bases. And so going up against the Navy here is a pretty heroic thing that the community in Oahu has achieved. I mean, one thing you skipped over a little bit that I think would be useful to talk about is as a result of the crisis and the organizing against the crisis of the Oahu water protectors and the coalition that you described in late November, December 2021, you know, what has been accomplished? Now, you mentioned, okay, they haven't yet removed the fuel from this facility,

but, you know, there have been some pretty big accomplishments. It seems like the Department of Health put in an emergency, you know, measure to say that they had to stop pumping and using the facility. And, you know, it seems that even though... So, you know, up until November, late November, the Navy was claiming that the most recent spills had not affected the quality of the water. But soon thereafter, they had to kind of backtrack from this. What has been achieved? What kinds of political pressure, you know, was placed? And what have been the consequences of the campaign that you've been involved in in terms of results?

Because I think that might be inspiring for people to know. you know, what is the U.S. Department's, defense department's position now on the Red Hill facility? Yeah. The results of our organizing and mobilizing over the past seven months have been kind of staggering. And, I mean, we got a historic W from the U.S. military, which it still kind of trips me out to think about that. Like, yeah, it was a result of our concerted and organized pressure campaigns that led Lloyd Austin, you know, the Secretary of Defense to announce that they were going to shut down Red Hill. And that was major. But it's also just the beginning of a new stage in this struggle, right? And that's why we've actually had to double down our organizing efforts and our political education.

because this is what U.S. Empire does so frequently as well, right? They'll give you kind of a Pyrrhic victory to put people back to sleep and to de-radicalize people to make people think that the broader struggle is over when, in fact, it's actually intensifying. And this is one of those instances where they say now that they're going to shut down Red Hill and they're going to defuel Red Hill. And a new emergency order was issued by the Department of Health, which are also, in my opinion, pretty toothless because these new deadlines that they've instituted are for the submission of plans, not the implementation of plans.

So there's a deadline coming up just one week from now. At the end of June, the Navy is supposed to submit a plan to defuel. but as we already know they plan to stall even further because they're now claiming that they need two years just to repair this deteriorating facility that they have said for decades was fine and just

the level of mendacity there is fucking incredible that you could only expect from the US empire where it's like they spend decades lying to the public and dismissing anyone, including whistleblowers, who say that the Red Hill facility is in its end-of-life stage, right? They deny that.

They even sued the fake state government to contest that claim that Red Hill was falling apart, and which is why it had to be taken offline. And now what they're saying, they've done a full 180, where they're now saying, you know what? You were right. In fact, Red Hill is so much on its last. last legs that we're going to need two years just to safely start to defuel the facility,

which itself could take another year just to defuel, even though in one of their own reports in 2019, they bragged about how they could safely defuel a tank, and each of those 20 tanks can store up to 12.5 million gallons of fuel. They claim that they could defuel those tanks, each one of those, within 36 hours. And during the marathon contested, case hearing, which ended up culminating in a ruling that, where the Department of Health ruled that Red Hill presented an imminent threat, basically to the entire environment and all human life on the island. The attorneys arguing on the Navy side stated that Red Hill, that the Red Hill facility

and the fuel within could be used in the case of a national emergency. where other ships and planes could be fueled by the facility speedily, like a speedy defueling, essentially, right? Which they're now claiming is impossible, given the current state of the facility. And so all the more reason why our organizing efforts have had to ramp up, because what we know to be the case, they're already starting to walk back their commitment to defuel. and decommission Red Hill.

Because we know what their long game is. It's to, quote, unquote, repair Red Hill. It's the same playbook, right? So they're going to wait two to three years for people to go back to sleep, to forget about this issue, to have other news dominate the headlines, and then a couple years from now say,

oh, hey, you know what? We've so successfully repaired this facility that we don't even need to defuel it. We can bring it back into operation. in fact, to gear up for, you know, our new hot war with China, you know? Like, so, I mean, and again, this is the only reason a facility like this exists for World War. There's no other reason to have 250 million gallons of fuel on a single island than to stage a World War. There's no other reason.

Right. So actually, as a follow-up to this in terms of ramping up the continuing organizing, what are the goals and objectives of the OI? water protectors, are you seeking reparations for the, you know, devastating environmental harm over generations that has occurred? It was a result of the polluting of the waters with this jet fuel and marine diesel. And also, you know, to make the Navy and the Defense Department responsible for paying for the cleanup since it's clear that, you know, some of these aquifers have been, you know, waters of the aquifers have been poor. It needs to be filtered out. You know, there has to be an expensive cleanup process for the damage that has already been done. What kinds of organizing is taking place around that?

And what are the sort of objectives overall of the Oahu water protectors? So our primary objective is to shut down Red Hill as soon as humanly possible. And what we mean by shutdown Red Hill is, one, defuel it immediately as soon as safely possible. and not the Navy's new definition of the term safe. We know that they can do it. They're the U.S. fucking military. They have trillions of dollars at their disposal. They can do it if there's the political pressure

and the institutional will to do so. And that's the only thing that's currently preventing them from doing it. Two, they need to shut down and decommissioned Red Hill. Three, they need to not make it any other sovereign people's problem because the other solution is that, you know, they're just going to distribute it to the Philippines and to Australia. and to Guahan and to all of the other places

where the U.S. military has storage facilities, right? And we know that what they've done with Kapukaki and Pu'uola, otherwise known as Pearl Harbor, they have done and will do to any other place

that they put that fuel, right? And it's not just incompetence or negligence. It's kind of homicidal malice. It's homicidal negligence. It's homicidal incompetence. Omnacidal, I would argue. And beyond all that, I think

Oahu water protectors are broader objective is to expand what it means to be a water protector, right? This goes way beyond Red Hill to what it really means to be in protection of water.

And it definitely means being against U.S. imperialism. Right. Standing strong against U.S. Empire. it means the destruction of capitalism and an indigenous led movement toward an eco-socialist future. And it means protecting each other because we are water too, right? And to protect each other is to protect water. And there's that old wobbly slogan, right? An injury to one is an injury to all. And if we're all water and the water we protect is us, then to protect our water is an act of solidarity.

Through our organizing, we are re-learning what it means to be water. And also what it means to be in community and in solidarity, not just with each other, but with all of our non-human relations. Yeah, that's great. And I just want to, for the listeners who are wondering about that citation that I mentioned, the researcher that I mentioned that did the P-FOS research is David Bond, who is a researcher and associate director at the Center for Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College, which is in Vermont, not Wisconsin, but they both wear flannel, so it's okay. But yes, he's writing a lot about P-F-F-F-S, and you should definitely Google his name,

David Bond, P-F-A-S, and then you'll find lots of materials, including some great articles at the Guardian. But the information that I said about burning P-FAS is actually out of date. Two months ago, the Defense Department temporarily halted its burning of P-FOS chemicals until they come up with some guidance for how to actually dispose of it on a more long-term solution. So what I said before in terms of the military burning P-FOS was accurate, but not right now. Okay. One more thing. One more thing about PFOS that's going to blow your mind.

Sure. Okay. So our initial concern about the Red Hill fuel facilities fire suppression system was that, so their recent like narrative that they've constructed about how these leaks happened and how the initial contamination from last year happened. One, it beggars belief. So it's like, take it with a grain of salt. But their claim was that, like, a fuel water mixture leaked into the fire suppression system lines,

which then went into the groundwater through a drain that they didn't even know about until they looked at World War II era diagrams of the facility that, you know, collected the ambient moisture from the air in this underground facility to then drain directly into their Navy water lines. So what we were worried about is that if these fire suppressions, if these fire suppression lines, had PFOS in them, that they would be going directly into the water. And what we recently found was that the truth is even worse, that their fire suppression system doesn't even have fire suppression chemicals in them. So in the event of a fire, including a chemical fire in the Red Hill facility, there would

just be water being sprayed at a chemical fire in an underground fuel storage facility. how incredibly dysfunctional, this entire facility is. Totally unsurprising, though. So, Mikey, you've been organizing pretty heavily with the Oahu water protectors. What I would like to turn to for a little bit now is your experience with organizing. So in the organizing that you've been doing, has there been anything that you've found that has been particularly successful, any strategies that you've tried that perhaps you thought might be great ideas but didn't actually end up working. And then any other stories that you think

would be useful for the listeners who maybe to inspire them with their own activism and organizing within their own communities. What do you think that they should take from this? Wow. Yeah. So let me start before answering that question by letting people know I'm a communist. So never in my wildest imagination did I think that I would be organizing directly with and getting very close with military families, including active duty service people. But what I realize as an organizer is you can't choose the most affected community, right? The material conditions and the material reality that we're faced with in this end stage of capitalism, it chooses the affected community.

And while I would argue that Konakamali historically in Hawaii have been the end stage of capitalism, in Hawaii have been the most affected community with respect to the U.S. military and continue to be. In this case, we have had to organize with military families and it has been really, really illuminating as we're building relationships with many of these people, how ready they are for a decolonial politics and how ready these affected families are to build bridges, of solidarity and understanding with the indigenous people of this Ainah, who are the Ainah, and to be in solidarity not just with shutting down Red Hill, but in the broader struggle for sovereignty and the de-occupation of Hawaii, for a free Hawaii.

One example that sticks out in my mind is as I have been organizing affected community members and affected military housing, I was also working with Malama Makua, with people like Auntie Lynette and Uncle Sparky, who are the Kiya'i, the protectors of Makua Valley, which as a result of Malama Makua's organizing and active resistance, we're able to stop the army from decades of bombing and desecration of this beautiful valley on the west side of Oahu. And they have been struggling ever since for further access to be able to Malama that place, to care for that place and to care for the Ahu that they've built there, but also to eventually reclaim

and to help in the healing process of that valley. I would highly recommend everyone who's listening to this to Google Makua Valley to see just how beautiful it is. And if you have any investment in the U.S. project, just try to think as you're looking at those images, what it would take for someone to look at Makua Valley and their first thought that comes to their mind is let's bomb the shit out of this, right? And so I asked the folks at Malama Makua if I could bring people who were poisoned by the Red Hill. contamination, who I felt were ready to experience the lessons that Makua had to teach us if I could invite them over. And Auntie Linette's words were, fuck yeah, bring them. And so we did.

And every one of those people that I invited, they wet. And I think it's because they saw Makua was poisoned in the same way that they were poisoned. and their families were poisoned by the same people who poisoned their families. And I think for a lot of them, it was a real eye-opening moment for what Kanaka and what this Aina have been going through ever since the US military came to this place

and used it as a base of empire to secure their position as the global capitalist hegem It's been amazing to see what we have been able to build with folks who I couldn't have even imagined having these kinds of conversations with just seven months ago. And that's the kind of solidarity we're going to need to build, the kind of movement we're going to need to build, to end U.S. Empire. And there's so many things about the state of this world that we're in right now that, that makes even the most hopeful people kind of inclined toward despair. You know, that, you know, we may, we may already be too late to avoid climate catastrophe, right? Given all of the knockoff effects that we can't even accurately measure.

The same applies for Red Hill, where the legacy of contamination there is beyond our current understanding and ability to properly or accurately gate. and that we may already be too late to stop some of the worst contamination that's still slowly heading towards our groundwater. But it's still worth fighting for, right? And I choose to believe that both with respect to Red Hill and with respect to climate change on the global scale, that we're not too late. And we have to organize and operate as if we aren't too late. with the belief that a better world still is possible and I do genuinely believe that but we got a fucking fight

like it is possible yeah how do people get involved I mean since I think that's absolutely correct and those are very inspiring words I'm sure many listeners are feeling now that they do want to engage both with the global struggle that we're all involved with but also in any way they can

to support the Oahu water protectors to shut down Red Hills And you also notice that a network is going to really be necessary because we don't want this fuel to just be transported to other toxic facilities of U.S. Empire and military bases around other parts of the Pacific so that they can continue to conspire in a Cold War against China. So what can you tell our listeners to do? How should they get involved? what can we do to help support you and the great work you're doing with the other Oahu water protectors and indigenous struggles and anti-war struggles taking place in Oahu.

Thanks so much for asking Adnan. First go to Oahu waterprotectors.org. We have recently updated the site with a ton of educational resources, both on podcasts, videos and reading materials, as well as various ways to get involved on the local and international level. And for all of the listeners who live outside of Hawaii, the best thing you can do is tell

all of your friends and family about Red Hill. And if you are a member of an organization that is in any way connected to the struggle for sovereignty or for environmental justice or against racial capitalism, definitely talk about how you can be in solidarity with this struggle, because it is definitely connected to all the other struggles under U.S. Empire, right? And for those who want to help the cause of our mutual aid efforts and our organizing, we just got thousands of bumper stickers. So if you donate $5 or more to the Venmo of our mutual aid account, which is Shut Down Red Hill Mutual Aid Aid at Venmo, we will mail you a bumper sticker, a shutdown Red Hill bumper sticker,

and they are going like hotcakes. People love bumper stickers, especially in Hawaii. And yeah, that all of those funds go directly towards water protector organizing expenses, and primarily to serving affected families and providing them with material support and resources for them to advocate for their own communities. And if you live in Hawaii and you're listening to this and you want to get involved either with mutual aid or our massive canvassing campaign,

also go to awaha waterprotectors.org to find out how you can get plugged into the movement. Fantastic. Yeah, tremendous. Thank you so much for coming on the program. Mikey, hopefully you had fun. Listeners, again, definitely check out Oahu waterprotectors.org. Mikey, how can the listeners find you if they want to engage with you directly or the work that you're doing?

Yeah, I'm terminally online on Twitter, Cataoke computer. You have to pronounce Cataoke correctly in order to get the pun there. And also, you can follow us on our. organization socials also on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, at Oahu Water Protectors on Twitter, we're at Oahu WP, and we just started a TikTok account as well. And just one last thing. I am not Kanaka Maoli. I am a descendant of Japanese and Korean settlers.

I would very much love if you all are down to have, you know, if you want to learn more about, you know, the history of this place. and its people and resistance to U.S. Empire and the assertion of sovereignty and land and the fight for land return in Hawaii, I would love to bring on some other Kanaka comrades to guerrilla history if you all are interested at some point. That would be fantastic. Mikey's taking a page for my book. I always ask guests to come back on while we're still recording so that they can't say no. But, Mikey, we've talked about this before.

I already said yes. You don't have to do, you don't have to force me. I just wanted to get it on the record. No, no, believe me. We're very excited about it. But yes, absolutely. So listeners, you can look forward to a future episode on native Hawaiian resistance. I'm not going to try to say it because I mispronounce things even in English.

So, you know, we heard Mikey's pronunciation and that's good enough. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other podcast? Well, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N, and check out the M-A-J-L-I-S. Not the one, as Henry always wants to remind everyone, not the one that is a State Department cut-out. Radio-free Central Asia, baby. Exactly, yeah. You can find the M-A-J-L-I-S on all the platforms. one sponsored by the Muslim Society's Global Perspectives Project at Queen's University.

And if you're interested in the Middle East, Islamic world, questions of Islamophobia, Muslim diasporic history and culture, maybe you'll find a few episodes of interest there. So do check it out. Thanks so much. Yeah, absolutely. You will certainly find episodes of interest on there, even if that's not something that you focused on before listeners. I can tell you I've learned a lot from that program.

To plug Brett's things, even though Brett is not here today, you can find everything that Brett is associated with at Revolutionary Left Radio.com, and I highly recommend you do that. He puts out excellent stuff all the time, both with us at Guerrilla History, as well as his other two podcasts that he does. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-1-9-5. My partner and I just started another show, which is like a jumble of whatever we feel like talking about. It's called What the Huck. You can find it on any podcast feed or on YouTube. What the Huck? Question mark exclamation point.

You know, you'll see what comes out because we don't even really know what's coming out next until we do it. As for guerrilla history, you can follow us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-A-U-Sk. And you can help support the show by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, guerr being spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-S. LLA history. Until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you.