This is interesting on a couple of levels.

On the one hand, it is inspiring that people in the small community of Kauai (an
island in the Hawaiian chain) rose up and rebelled against this
Republican/military/big business venture. Some of the information here about
Hawaii and how it is perceived, and the differences between rural and urban
Hawaii is useful. It's a cool image to imagine surfers and canoe paddling teams
stopping this monstrous military prototype dead in the water.

On the other hand, the analysis of the author falls short at times. She paints
the people of Oahu as out of touch with nature and having a "Costco mentality"
that everything free is there to be plundered. She says that people on Oahu
"just aren't there yet" when it comes to knowing about the stewardship of the
land. There may be some truth to the charge of insensitivity, but it seems to
place a classless environmentalist reformist stance above the class issues at
the heart of the Superferry, militarism, pollution and plunder and all the rest.
She goes on to laud the cross-cultural (I agree that's good), but also the class
collaboration of the protest, with people "from across the socio-economic social
strata" out together in force for the protest. She mentions the pristineness of
Kauai, and how they have more organic farms than Oahu, and how hard "we" worked
for that. Do all the people "own" these farms communally? I must have missed
that part. This class collaborationist fight against "city folk" seems to be a
self-defeating delusion of resistance based on romantic notions of connection to
the land. Perhaps a new feudal system is in order, one in which the lords and
peasants administer a wise stewardship of the motherland. It may be hyperbolic,
but this sort of anti-globalization crap veers toward eco-fascism.

Having said that, I can't totally dismiss the heartfelt joy of the resistance to
authority, and the possibilities such actions leave open as far as the inclusion
of class consciousness in such activities. People really did spontaneously stand
up against the government, and that is worth something. See my reservations
above again.

For a classless society
Dave on Oahu