Attending 47th Hawaii Statehood Day Celebration Friday August 18, 2006 was an eye opening experience. It gives a whole new meaning to the word “Aloha.”

After setting up an illegal sound system and haranguing the audience for some time before the beginning of the festivities, the Native Hawaiian protestors of the celebration moved into full gear when State Senator Sam Slom began speaking. Sidling up to him on both sides when he began to mark the meaning of the day and why we were there, they literally shouted him down.

They in turn threatened the Kalani High School Marching Band students should they begin to play, implying potential physical violence. After a few minutes of this abuse the conductors of the band wisely instructed the band to leave. It was a scene the children should never have had to endure in the first place.

Screaming with bullhorns in the faces of those they disagreed with the protestors made quite a spectacle of themselves without even realizing they were doing so. What they were really doing is demonstrating that they have no idea of what the word “Aloha” really means. Or that it only applies to those they agree with.

Intimidating children, spitting on the American flag, rudely shouting in the faces of others is not what one would normally associate with the concept of “Aloha.” It is, in fact, the opposite of Aloha.

One fellow who kept getting in my face and screaming at me was stymied when I asked him, “Do you think your arguments are more valid the louder you shout them?” He dropped to a conversational tone for about 30 seconds and once again returned to his high decibel exhortations, his lips trembling in anger. When I asked him the same question again he leaned into my ear and in an exaggerated whisper that was nearly a shout restated his point again, a slogan really. He then made suggestions that I literally cannot even allude to here in good taste.

When the Kalani High Band left the protesters took this as a victory. They didn’t realize that intimidating children into leaving didn’t mean they could intimidate adults and they had expected the adults would vanish as soon as the children did. They were mistaken. The celebration was scheduled for an hour and it continued for that hour.

So the event degenerated into pockets of protesters yelling in the faces of Statehood Day celebrators. What was striking was the dignity and aplomb held by the celebrators. None raised a voice to match the shouting of the protestors. Many refused to answer the protesters at all and merely silently stood there or turned their backs.

In other words the Aloha was all on the part of the celebrants and there was none to be found on the side of the protestors. At one point a celebrant said something in Hawaiian and the protestors almost went berserk. “Don’t you speak our language! How dare you speak our language! You have no right to speak our language!”

All in all it was a sad display. Yet it was worthwhile. It demonstrated that the protesters were nothing more than bullies. Other points of view are not permitted to be uttered or celebrated. One has to wonder if this would be the nature of the Native Hawaiian government they would impose, the banning of all points of view that do not conform to their orthodoxy. All the more reason for Hawaii to celebrate statehood and remain a part of the United States.

So what became of “Aloha?” Is Aloha to be reserved for only with whom you agree? The Kalani High School Marching Band felt no Aloha that day. Neither did many of the brave people who remained to celebrate the meaning of the day. Is screaming in someone’s face with a bullhorn the meaning of Aloha?

As the celebration came to an end and we all pitched in to stack the chairs that had been provided for the Kalani High Band the protesters once again demanded that we leave the “sacred grounds” of Iolani Palace, oblivious to the fact that we could not do so until the rental company came and picked up the chairs.

Screaming in their bullhorns, causing them to feedback so they would shriek at us as we sat along the wall of the palace awaiting the truck, they seemed unable to understand the reality of the situation. Finally they gave up and began packing up their equipment and leave.

Then came what is probably the most incongruous moment of the whole event. One of the protesters, who had quietly sat talking with Bill Burgess at one point after things had died down, walked by our group sitting in the shade of the Palace while waiting for the rental truck and as he walked away he turned and said “Aloha.” And the approximately ten of us that remained, to a man and woman, instantly turned and said virtually in one voice “Aloha” in return.

There were smiles all around and there was no cynicism in that moment. It left me wondering what really happened here. What was the real sentiment? All that yelling and anger, or the softly spoken “Aloha” after it all. Where was that Aloha for the children of the Kalani High Band?

If Aloha is only to be expressed when it is convenient then perhaps the word has no meaning at all anymore. Or if it does retain meaning it must mean something other than is traditionally thought, a universal benevolence. That principle no longer applies.

I guess you could call it the new meaning of Aloha.

Don Newman, senior policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii can be reached at: mailto:don@grassrootinstitute.org