Not Quite Communist

Filipino cauliflower farmhand near Santa Maria, Calif. in 1937. Photo: Dorothea Lange.

October is Filipino American History Month. For many, that means cultural pride: food, dance, music, parades. And yes, those things matter. But Filipino American History Month is also about remembering the parts of our history that were meant to be silenced, the stories that remind us how fragile belonging in America has always been for people like us.

One of those stories is the Repatriation Act of 1935.

The United States was in the Great Depression. Millions were out of work. And across the West Coast and in Hawaii, Filipino immigrants, who were U.S. nationals, not quite aliens but not full citizens, were an easy target. They had come in the 1920s and 1930s to cut sugarcane under the Hawaiian sun, to pick asparagus and lettuce in California fields, to do the brutal labor that kept America’s food supply running. These were mostly young men, dreaming of sending money home to their families, believing that America meant opportunity.

But instead, they found hostility. They were called invaders. They were accused of taking jobs. White mobs hunted them. Politicians and newspapers railed against them. One of the most infamous moments was the Watsonville Riots of 1930 in California. For five straight days, mobs of white men dragged young Filipino farmworkers from their homes and bunkhouses, beat them in the streets, and in one case murdered a young Filipino man named Fermin Tobera. His only crime was being Filipino in a land that did not want him.

Other violent outbreaks followed across the West Coast, fueled by resentment over interracial relationships between Filipino men and white women, and the racist fear of “unassimilable” Asians. This was the climate Filipinos lived in: one of constant danger, constant othering, and constant pressure to disappear.

And disappear is exactly what the U.S. government wanted. Congress acted, not to protect these workers, not to grant them citizenship, but to get rid of them.

The Repatriation Act of 1935 offered what seemed like a gift: free, one-way passage back to the Philippines. The government would pay your ticket. You could go home. But this was no gift. It was a trap. Because under the Tydings–McDuffie Act, Filipino immigration to the United States had just been capped at 50 people per year. If you left, you almost certainly could never return. You were gone. Your American life ended at the dock.

It was deportation without calling it deportation. It was exclusion disguised as kindness. Thousands accepted, pressured by poverty, racism, and fear. Entire communities shrank. Families were split across oceans. Filipino American history was pushed back, cut down, diminished.

And this is where my family’s story meets the larger story.

My great-grandfather was given this option. He was told he could take the ticket and leave. He was told that if he stayed, life in America would be harder, crueler, narrower. He had to choose between erasure and endurance. And he stayed.

I am so glad he stayed. If he had taken that so-called offer of repatriation, I would not be here today. My life in Chicago, my service in the Presbyterian Church, my voice telling this story, it would all be gone, erased with a single decision. My great-grandfather’s choice to resist, to plant himself in hostile soil, is the reason I am here. His courage is my inheritance.

That is why Filipino American History Month matters. Because history is not just in textbooks. It lives in families. It lives in bloodlines. It lives in choices made under impossible conditions. And when we tell these stories, we remind the world that we did not disappear, even when they wanted us to.

But the story does not end in 1935. It is happening again.

Today, in 2025, ICE is raiding communities across the United States. Under the xenophobic agenda of the Second Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans, immigrants once again live in fear. People vanish from jobs. Children come home to empty houses. Families are torn apart in the middle of the night. And once again, the same tired arguments are being used. Immigrants are taking jobs. Immigrants are draining resources. Immigrants do not belong.

It is the same scapegoating cycle. Recycled, repackaged, but never gone. Then it was Filipinos. Now it is Latinos, Haitians, Africans, South Asians. The faces may change, but the machinery of exclusion runs the same way. Politicians exploit fear, redirect anger toward the vulnerable, and distract people from the real causes of hardship.

And just like in 1935, deportation is framed as a solution. ICE raids are presented as law and order. In truth, they are about erasure, erasing families, erasing futures, erasing the possibility of belonging.

So when I honor Filipino American History Month, I cannot stop at food and dance. I must remember the Repatriation Act of 1935. I must remember my great-grandfather’s decision not to go. I must remember the young men of Watsonville who were beaten for existing. I must remember Fermin Tobera, who was murdered for being Filipino. And I must look at the present moment and see the same playbook unfolding in front of us.

The lesson is clear: history repeats when we do not resist it.

To honor Filipino American History Month is not only to celebrate survival. It is to take up the same resistance. To stand with the undocumented mother hiding in a church basement, terrified of ICE. To defend the worker who wonders if he will make it home tonight. To protect the child who deserves to grow up without fearing a knock on the door.

My great-grandfather’s no to erasure echoes in me today. His choice to endure makes me a witness. His courage obligates me to stand up now, when history is trying to erase others in the same way.

This October, as we mark Filipino American History Month, let us honor the lives of those who refused to disappear. Let us commit to refusing erasure again. For my family, for your family, for the families under attack today.

Because Filipino American history is not just about the past. It is about the living struggle to belong, to stay, to endure, even when the world says you do not deserve to.

Kahi Hali’a Aloha. Photo: Mapquest.

Today, I want to take you back to my homeland, my birthplace. Makemake au e kaʻana like i ka hoʻāno o nā kānaka o laila a me ka moʻolelo e pono ai ʻoe e ʻike —I want to share the sacredness of the people there and a story you should know.

When we think of Waikiki today, we imagine a glittering shoreline. Hotels rise high above the sand. Restaurants, shops, and tourists line Kalakaua Avenue. It is marketed as paradise, a place where the world comes to play.

But beneath the surface of that paradise lies a story most visitors never hear, and even some locals forget.

It is a story of desecration and erasure.

It is a story of bones.

In the year 2000, at the Diamond Head end of Kalakaua Avenue at the entrance of Queen Kapiolani Park, a monument was constructed. It was called a burial mound, designed to house 50 sets of indigenous remains—the iwi kupuna—that had been unearthed during infrastructure projects related to the newer hotels and resorts being built along Waikiki Beach.

But the mound was not built only for them. It was constructed with room for 1,400 sets of remains—an anticipation that more bones would continue to surface as Waikiki was reshaped by further modernization and redevelopment for a “Hawaii in the 21st century.”

Developers chose a Native Hawaiian to design it, a descendant of the mother of both King Kalakaua and Queen Liliuokalani. On the surface, that might seem like honor. It might look like respect.

But many Native Hawaiians I encounter do not see it that way. What they share is grief. Deep grief. They even cry at the thought. Because this mound tries to erase the fact that these remains should never have been disturbed at all.

It is important to remember: Hawaiians did not build burial mounds.

That was never their practice.

Each original burial had been done with care, with ritual, with reverence for the land and the spirit world.

To gather bones torn from the earth and place them together in a mound was not a return to tradition—it was an invention. A gesture that looked solemn but covered a violation.

The 50 ancestors within were once scattered across Waikiki, laid to rest in ways that bound them to their families and to their aina. But once developers began reshaping the shoreline into a playground for outsiders, those sacred burials became obstacles. And in the eyes of developers, obstacles must be cleared.

The mound, with its stone covering and commemorative plaques, was meant to soothe the conscience of a city that thrives on tourism dollars. It was meant to signal respect, even as the deeper truth went unspoken.

That truth is this: the iwi kupuna should have been left where they were found.

To many Native Hawaiians, the mound is not comfort. It is not reconciliation. It is grief. It is the visible mark of how empire works—how it disturbs the sacred, covers it with something artificial, and tells the world it is respect.

And yet, there is something that cannot be erased. The bones remain. The ancestors remain. Their mana is still present beneath the stone.

Perhaps that is the quiet act of resistance—that no matter how empire tried to gather them into one place, the iwi kupuna are still there. Their presence lingers, a reminder that sacredness cannot be bulldozed away, no matter how many resorts rise along the shore.

Waikiki’s burial mound is not a monument of honor. It is a monument of theft. And it calls us, even now, to tell the truth.

And so, maybe the question we should carry is this: how do we remember rightly?

Not by accepting the false monuments. Not by pretending that plaques and flags erase the violence done. But by telling the truth, by speaking aloud what happened, by naming the desecration and refusing to let it be forgotten.

To remember rightly is to honor the iwi kupuna, the ancestral bones, not as curiosities of history but as living presence. It is to say their mana is still here. It is to walk past that mound not with casual eyes, but with reverence and sorrow.

And perhaps, to remember rightly is also to resist the same patterns today—to resist the ways empire still tries to bury what is sacred for the sake of profit.

E ola nā iwi kupuna. May the ancestral bones live.

E mālama kākou i ka ʻāina. May we care for the land.

E hoʻomanaʻo mau kākou i ka ʻoiaʻiʻo. May we always remember the truth.

May we remember rightly.

May we honor those beneath the mound.

May we speak their truth, so that silence does not become erasure, and false monuments do not stand as the last word.

The Evanston Nouveau Rotary Club at Bookends and Beginnings, Evanston, Ill. Photo: Gerald Farinas.

This week, beginning October 5, we enter Banned Books Week—a time to honor the freedom to read, the freedom to think, and the freedom to imagine. But we do so in an era where those very freedoms are being pushed back hard.

Across the country, parents and political groups are pressing for books to be pulled from the shelves of school and public libraries. And the pattern is unmistakable. The books most often targeted are about Black history and empowerment, the lives and struggles of people of color, and the stories of LGBTQ people. The language used is almost always indirect: “protecting children,” “mature themes,” “inappropriate content.” But the intent is clear—it is about control, exclusion, and silencing certain voices.

The numbers tell the story.

According to PEN America, in 2023–24 alone there were more than 10,000 instances of book bans in U.S. public schools.

And the American Library Association reports that in 2024 there were 821 separate attempts to censor materials in schools and libraries, targeting 2,452 distinct titles.

These are not isolated disputes. This is a movement, coordinated and deliberate.

And what are the books being silenced? They include powerful, acclaimed works like:

* Flamer by Mike Curato

* All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson

* Ban This Book by Alan Gratz

* Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

* I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

* The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

* Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

* The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

* Looking for Alaska by John Green

* The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

These are not fringe books. They are modern classics, widely taught, widely read, and deeply meaningful. To erase them is to erase the opportunity for readers—especially young readers—to engage with voices that broaden their world.

For my part, I am almost absolutist in opposing the censorship of literature and art, so long as the work is not created by exploiting vulnerable people. A democracy cannot breathe if it stifles the voices of its writers and artists.

That is why, yes, I even believe books like Mein Kampf should remain available. Not because I endorse it, but because the only way to confront dangerous ideas is to bring them into the open, where they can be studied, critiqued, and defeated.

On my website, GeraldFarinas.com, I openly share the titles I read. And I know that many of those books would be banned in certain communities. That is exactly why I share them. Because freedom to read is not freedom from discomfort.

Democracy requires discomfort. It requires us to wrestle with hard histories and painful truths.

When we allow censorship to dictate which books are permitted, we are not protecting anyone.

We are impoverishing the public square.

We are closing doors to conversation.

We are creating silence where there should be dialogue.

So this Banned Books Week, let us affirm that a democracy worth living in is one where the shelves are full, where the stories are many, and where no one has the power to decide for all of us which voices may or may not be heard.

Because when a book is banned, the loss is not only to the author.

The loss is to the conversation that will never happen.

And that is a loss our democracy cannot afford.

Photo: Oliver Holzbauer via Wikimedia Commons.

I wish more people asked what happens to a deportee after they’re sent to a destination country. So I’ll explain here.

When a plane touches down in Vietnam carrying deportees from the United States, the scene is often quiet, almost invisible to the larger public. These are people who may have lived most of their lives in the U.S.—people who built families, held jobs, and put down roots. But when they step off that plane, they step into a country that may feel as foreign as any other place on earth.

What happens next?

There is a blur of immigration questioning, temporary papers, and a sense of dislocation. Vietnam may issue them a six-month temporary passport. Sometimes, they’re escorted back to a province they’ve never even seen, the province of their parents or grandparents.

But beyond that bare minimum, there are no programs. No counselors, no government office waiting to provide orientation, no safety net.

The official support ends almost as soon as the ink dries on the paperwork.

This is where grassroots solidarity tries to fill the gap.

In Vietnam, one of the few community-led efforts is called the Ba Lô Project—“ba lô” means backpack.

Volunteers meet deportees at the airport with nothing more than a smile, a ride, and a starter backpack filled with essentials. Inside might be clothes, hygiene items, a pair of shoes, even a phone to call family in the U.S.

It’s a small gesture, but for someone arriving with almost nothing, it can mean the world. Ba Lô also helps with the next steps—navigating IDs, filling out forms, learning how to catch a bus or open a bank account in a society they don’t fully understand.

Let me paint a picture.

Imagine a man named Khoa, who came to the U.S. at age six as a refugee. He grew up in California, went to public schools, and discovered he was gay as a teenager. In the U.S., he found his queer community—friends who affirmed him, bars and churches that welcomed him, and a chosen family that held him when his biological one struggled to accept.

But a mistake—a conviction for a theft at a drug store as a teen—put him in the sights of immigration enforcement. After months in detention, he found himself shackled onto a plane to a country he barely remembered.

When Khoa landed, he had no relatives waiting for him. No one knew his face. He didn’t even know how to read the street signs.

And layered on top of that dislocation was fear—fear of being an openly gay man in a country where LGBTQ life is tolerated in some spaces but stigmatized in many others. He wondered: who could he trust? Would an employer refuse to hire him if they guessed his sexuality? Would neighbors whisper and target him if he didn’t marry a woman?

The airport crowd moved around him like a tide, and he was drowning in silence. Then two volunteers from Ba Lô waved a simple cardboard sign with his name on it. They handed him a backpack.

Inside was a clean shirt, toothpaste, a small guide to the city, and a cell phone with a SIM card. The phone worked. He could call his sister back in California. He could hear her voice and not feel completely erased.

That backpack didn’t solve everything—but it told him that someone cared enough to meet him at the gate.

Still, Khoa’s journey would not be easy. He needed housing, but landlords wanted deposits he didn’t have. He needed work, but his American accent and criminal record made employers suspicious. He wanted to find queer spaces, but he didn’t know which places were safe, which gatherings might be raided, which friendships might endanger him.

His vulnerability as a deportee compounded with his vulnerability as a gay man.

And here is the deeper tragedy: Khoa was lucky. He landed in a city where Ba Lô exists. Many do not.

In countless deportation stories, there are no backpacks, no volunteers, no smiling faces. Just silence, bureaucracy, and the long walk out of an airport into a strange country with nothing but the clothes on your back.

This is the hidden human cost of deportation.

We hear political rhetoric in the U.S. about “sending people back,” as if the story ends when the plane door closes. But it doesn’t.

It begins again, often in hardship and in silence, in countries that never prepared to receive them.

Without programs, without structures, the responsibility falls on ordinary people—the grassroots, the volunteers, the strangers who turn up with backpacks.

And when those grassroots groups aren’t there, the void swallows lives. The tragedy is not just in the deportation itself. The tragedy is that when people land, they land into nothing.

As a leader in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I can say definitively a sentiment that Pope Leo recently shared: there is nothing Christian about what we’re doing here with our undocumented immigrants. And ironically, the people doing this are doing it as self-proclaimed proud Christians.

Photo: Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

When I share resources from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, I know I am amplifying one of the most successful networks of defense against ICE raids in the country.

The Family Support Network hotline, their reporting systems, and their rapid response legal aid have already protected thousands of people in Illinois from being caught in the dragnets of deportation.

They provide not just warnings about ICE activity, but also legal representation and referrals for families torn apart in the middle of the night.

It is one of the few lifelines people can hold onto in the face of fear and uncertainty.

But every time I post these resources on my own network of social media pages, groups, and accounts, there is a predictable chorus of backlash. A few voices always rise with anger.

“Why are you helping people who are bumming off our country?” they demand.

“Why are you helping illegals but not Americans who need help?”

Others accuse me directly, “You’re a criminal helping criminals get away.”

And then there’s the oldest, laziest, most tired insult of them all, “Go back to your own country.”

Let’s pause right there. Because these questions, these accusations, reveal more about fear and misinformation than they do about immigrants themselves.

By the way, I’m from Hawaii. It’s a U.S. state. I’m already in my own country.

First, the idea that immigrants—especially undocumented immigrants—are “bumming off the country” is flat-out false.

Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, pay billions of dollars in taxes every year. They work in our fields, in our restaurants, in our factories, in our hospitals, in our homes. They are the backbone of industries that most Americans take for granted. And the undocumented among them do this without the basic protections that citizens enjoy, often at risk of exploitation and abuse.

Second, the false choice between “helping immigrants” and “helping Americans” is a rhetorical trick. It’s a wedge used to divide working people against each other. The truth is, when we protect the rights of immigrants, we are protecting the rights of everyone. Stronger worker protections, access to healthcare, safe housing, freedom from state violence—these are universal goods. Every person deserves them.

And third, when someone says “Go back to your own country,” I hear the echo of centuries of xenophobia. It was said to the Irish, to the Italians, to the Jews, to the Chinese, to the Mexicans, to the Puerto Ricans, to the Vietnamese, and to wave after wave of immigrants who built this country. It’s not original. It’s not clever. And it’s certainly not patriotic.

What it is, is fear. Fear that sharing resources, like the ICIRR hotline, means losing control of a narrative where immigrants are always “the problem.”

But here’s the truth: immigrants are not the problem.

The problem is an enforcement regime that tears families apart, that terrorizes communities, that wastes taxpayer money on detention and deportation instead of schools and healthcare.

The problem is scapegoating—using immigrants as the convenient target for all of society’s ills while letting the powerful walk away with the wealth and resources of this country.

That’s why I continue to post. That’s why I continue to share the hotline. Because silence in the face of injustice is complicity. And because I believe in a different vision of America—not one where neighbors are torn apart in the dead of night, but one where communities look out for each other, across every line of language, status, and identity.

So when you hear me share the number 855-435-7693, remember it’s not just a hotline. It’s a line of defense. It’s a refusal to bow down to fear. And it’s a reminder that solidarity is stronger than scapegoating.

That’s why I post. That’s why I won’t stop.

Photo: Mount Rainier National Park via Wikimedia Commons.

Today I am watching the political theater around the government shutdown. And I cannot sit quietly while a dangerous lie gains traction. The White House and Congressional Republicans are hammering a message that this shutdown is the fault of Democrats. They are saying that Democrats want to keep funding Medicare, Medicaid, and other benefits for undocumented immigrants. That sounds alarming. That sounds shocking. But it is not true. It is false. And yet I see people around me starting to believe it.

I need to say this as clearly as I can. Undocumented immigrants cannot receive these benefits. They cannot. The law already forbids it. Medicare is an earned benefit. Workers pay into it through payroll taxes over the course of their careers. If you are undocumented, you are not eligible. Medicaid is for certain categories of United States citizens and legal residents who meet strict income or disability requirements. Again, undocumented immigrants do not qualify. The same is true for food assistance programs. The same is true for Social Security. The same is true for nearly every other form of federal aid.

At most, undocumented people may access emergency medical treatment in hospitals. Federal law requires hospitals not to turn away people in life-threatening situations. They may also sometimes qualify for disaster relief in cases of national emergencies, because those programs serve anyone who happens to be present in the disaster zone. But the idea that Democrats are pouring taxpayer money into long-term benefits for undocumented immigrants is a lie. It is a distraction. It is a trick. And it is being sold to Americans who do not know the rules. And unfortunately, some are buying it.

But this is more than a lie. This is an old playbook. This is a tactic that has been used again and again and again. We have seen this before. We have seen it in history. We have seen it in other nations. And now we are seeing it here.

Dictators and authoritarian rulers have always understood the power of a scapegoat. They take a group of people. They point to them as outsiders. They blame them for the nation’s problems. If there is inflation, it is the outsiders. If jobs are scarce, it is the outsiders. If crime feels high, it is the outsiders. We have seen this before. By giving the public someone to hate, leaders distract the public from noticing the corruption. They distract the public from the mismanagement. They distract the public from the greed happening in plain sight.

This is what fascist leaders in Europe did in the twentieth century. Hitler demonized Jews and Roma and others to unite the German people around a vision of purity and power. At the same time he consolidated control over every part of government. Mussolini blamed foreign influences and internal enemies to justify violence and dictatorship. And even in more recent times, we have seen strongmen use immigrants or refugees or ethnic minorities as punching bags to hide their own failures. We have seen this before. We know how this story goes. The tactic is always the same. Take the pain people feel. Redirect it toward a vulnerable other. Then cash in on the political support it generates.

That is what Republicans are doing now. They know undocumented immigrants do not receive Medicare or Medicaid or other benefits. They know it. But they also know that fear of immigrants can rally their base. They know it can stir up resentment. They know it can create the illusion of moral clarity. And most importantly, they know it can open the door for them to advance a much larger agenda. That agenda is not about government benefits. That agenda is about reshaping America. That agenda is about reshaping America into something narrower. That agenda is about reshaping America into something harsher. That agenda is about reshaping America into something defined by white Christian nationalism. It is about reshaping America into a place where power is concentrated in the hands of a few and everyone else is told their place.

This shutdown fight is not really about dollars and cents. This shutdown fight is about who defines America. Republicans are using undocumented immigrants as a smokescreen. They are using them as a cover. They are using them as a distraction. And while the public looks at the distraction, they are pushing through policies that weaken voting rights. They are pushing through policies that roll back protections for women and LGBTQ people. They are pushing through policies that privilege their religious ideology over pluralism. They are pushing through policies that reward wealth at the expense of working people. If you can convince the public that Democrats are using their tax dollars to care for so-called illegals, then you can convince the public to look the other way while you dismantle democracy brick by brick.

The truth is simple. This talking point is not about government benefits. It is about scapegoating. It is about using fear. It is about using lies. It is about using outsiders as a tool of control. We have seen this before. We have seen it in history. We know what it means.

The reason for the shutdown is not undocumented immigrants. The reason is that politicians cannot agree on how to responsibly fund our nation’s priorities. Pointing the finger at people with no voice in this political system is easier than admitting that dysfunction in Washington is homegrown. It is easier than telling the truth. The truth is that this shutdown is a manufactured crisis. It is a crisis designed to win loyalty to an agenda that will hurt the very people who are cheering for it.

And that is why I feel compelled to speak. Because I know how misinformation spreads. If a lie is repeated loudly enough. If a lie is repeated often enough. People start to accept it as truth. We have seen this before. We know how it works. And we know the danger.

The shutdown is painful. The shutdown affects workers. The shutdown affects families. The shutdown affects communities across this country. It is not caused by imaginary benefits for undocumented immigrants. It is caused by political leaders who would rather weaponize falsehoods than govern responsibly. And behind their falsehoods lies a more dangerous truth. The dangerous truth is that scapegoating is not just a tactic to win the news cycle. Scapegoating is not just a distraction. Scapegoating is a strategy to control a nation.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in 2022. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stood before our highest officers and made an announcement that should chill us all. This was not just another speech. This was not business as usual. This was a declaration.

“The era of the Department of Defense is over,” he said. “From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win … unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit.”

Read that again. The mission is no longer defense. The mission is no longer security. The mission is no longer protection. The mission is war.

Hegseth pushed harder. “We fight wars to win, not to defend. … War is something you do sparingly on our own terms … We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.”

Defense is dismissed as weak. Offense is raised up as noble. Violence is praised as cleansing. Violence as policy. Violence as purpose. Violence as pride.

This is not new. We have heard this language before. We heard it when President McKinley and his successors justified empire. We heard it when America seized the Philippines and Puerto Rico and Guam. We heard it when “Manifest Destiny” was used to excuse conquest. Hegseth has dragged us back to that age.

And he did not stop there. He announced new rules that will strip people of their dignity. “Each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS … returns to the highest male standard only,” he said. If women can make it, fine. If not, too bad. If that means entire jobs are closed to them, so be it.

So be it. So be it. That was his answer to decades of sacrifice by women, LGBTQ service members, and people of color who had to fight simply to be recognized as equal.

He sneered at what he called “identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses.” He told them all: you do not belong. He told them all: there is no place for you here. He told them all: the only standard is manliness, and if you cannot meet it, you are out.

Then came his vision for training. “Basic training is being restored to what it should be, scary, tough and disciplined. … Yes, they can shark attack, they can toss bunks, they can swear, and yes, they can put their hands on recruits.”

So recruits will once again face hazing. Recruits will once again face humiliation. Recruits will once again be broken down by fear instead of lifted up by discipline.

And what if someone dares to complain? He already had an answer. “No more frivolous complaints … no more anonymous complaints … no more repeat complainants.”

No more voices. No more appeals. No more protection.

But the spectacle at Quantico did not belong to Hegseth alone. President Donald Trump himself addressed the flag officers. And what did he expect? He expected what he always expects: applause. He expected cheering. He expected hollering and chanting that echo through his campaign rallies.

He did not get it. The generals and admirals sat in silence. They listened. They did not roar. They did not clap like a crowd at a stadium. They did not behave like an audience at a Trump rally.

And he was angry. Visibly angry. He wanted the raucous acclaim that crowds now give Kim Jong Un, where every hand must clap in perfect rhythm, where every cheer must rise like a choreographed wave, where silence is treated as treason. He wanted the orchestrated adoration that followers once gave Adolf Hitler, where crowds in Nuremberg lifted their arms in unison, where the spectacle was as much a weapon as the tanks. He wanted the orchestrated frenzy that Mussolini demanded on the Piazza Venezia, when every general, every official, every soldier was required to shout their loyalty or face suspicion.

But he did not get it. The officers of the United States military are not his campaign crowd. They are not his stage actors. They are not his applause machine. Their silence was not disrespect. Their silence was dignity. Their silence was discipline.

Still, the expectation itself is alarming. That a president of the United States believes he deserves thunderous applause from the very officers sworn to uphold the Constitution is not a small thing. It is a warning sign. Because in every authoritarian regime—from Pyongyang to Moscow to Berlin to Rome—the first demand of the leader is not competence. It is not honesty. It is not results. It is applause.

Applause on cue. Applause without end. Applause without thought.

And when applause is not given, punishment follows. When applause is not loud enough, purges begin. When applause is not wholehearted, suspicion takes root. This is the politics of fear, the politics of performance, the politics of dictatorship.

Trump expected applause at Quantico, the way he gets it in arenas. He did not receive it. But do not mistake that for the end of the matter. His anger revealed what he wants: loyalty displayed, loyalty performed, loyalty shouted until it drowns out truth.

And that expectation fits perfectly with Hegseth’s message. A Department of War that conquers, not defends. A military that bullies, not protects. A leader who demands cheers, not questions.

Together, Trump and Hegseth are painting a picture of what they want America to become: a nation where strength is measured in dominance, where service is measured in submission, where loyalty is measured in noise.

We must not mistake this for patriotism. This is not patriotism. This is personality cult. This is not defense. This is destruction. This is not leadership. This is dictatorship in waiting.

And in the end, what did this speech accomplish? It did not improve readiness. It did not sharpen strategy. It did not strengthen the armed forces. What it did do was waste millions of dollars to fly flag officers in from around the globe, to house them in hotels, to feed them at government expense—all for a one-hour publicity stunt. One hour of bravado. One hour of spectacle. One hour that ended in silence, not applause.

The Secretary of War told us exactly who he is and exactly what he wants. The president showed us exactly what he craves. And the military, by its silence, revealed exactly what is at stake.

We must say no. We must say it again and again. No to war for its own sake. No to hazing. No to humiliation. No to a military that punishes difference. No to a president who wants applause like a tyrant. No to a Department of War.

Because when America turns its back on defense, when America turns its back on inclusion, when America turns its back on dignity, it does not move forward. It moves backward. Backward into empire. Backward into arrogance. Backward into ruin.

And we should not let that happen. Not now. Not ever.

President William McKinley, a Manifest Destiny proponent, annexed Hawaii as part of an imperialist agenda. Painting: National Portrait Gallery.

When we talk about history, we’re also talking about power—who gets remembered, who gets honored, and who gets erased.

I was recently reading about how Boston University debated the changing of a dorm’s name. BU dropped the name Myles Standish Hall—the dorm is now just 610 Beacon Street.

They didn’t make this choice lightly. They made it because Myles Standish, celebrated in colonial lore as a military protector, was also a man who unleashed violence, terror, and massacres against Indigenous people in New England after the Mayflower’s 1620 landing. There is documented proof of this.

And almost as soon as the decision was announced, the chorus of complaints rose up.

“This is revisionist history.”

“Woke people are destroying the heroic American image.”

“We’re losing our history.”

If this feels familiar, it should. We heard the same arguments when the Christopher Columbus statue was removed in downtown Chicago and elsewhere.

But let’s pause here and ask an honest question. Whose history are we talking about?

For generations, textbooks and monuments presented Myles Standish as a hero. But if you were Wampanoag or any of the other Native peoples who faced the sharp edge of his sword, he wasn’t a hero. He was an oppressor. A figure whose “protection” of the Plymouth settlers meant the death and displacement of your ancestors.

When Boston University honors him with a dormitory name, it isn’t just remembering history—it’s choosing sides in history. It’s declaring that his violence is worth celebrating, that his victims don’t count.

And this isn’t just about Massachusetts or about Columbus in Chicago. This is something I’ve seen in my own hometown of Honolulu.

For years, there have been debates about renaming William McKinley High School and Theodore Roosevelt High School. These aren’t just abstract arguments. They’re about what names Hawaiian students see every morning when they walk into class, what lessons they absorb from the built environment around them.

William McKinley High School in Honolulu, Hawaii. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Before McKinley and Roosevelt became presidents, they were loud voices for Manifest Destiny, for the expansion of American power at the expense of Indigenous nations and sovereign peoples.

McKinley oversaw the annexation of Hawaii. Roosevelt championed the ideology that justified it. Together, their policies stripped the Hawaiian Kingdom of its sovereignty, pushed aside a peaceful queen, and imposed the will of outsiders on a people of color.

Now, I’ll be honest—I’ve admired Roosevelt in other contexts. I love his progressive policies: standing up to robber barons, protecting national parks, supporting workers, even had the first ideas of national health insurance. His platform stated a belief in “the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use.”

He was one of the most forward-thinking leaders of his time in those areas.

But as much as I admire him, I can’t ignore the fact that in Hawaii, his name is tied to conquest and colonization. That is the legacy stamped on the walls of Roosevelt High School. That is what Hawaiian students are asked to celebrate—white domination over a brown-skinned kingdom.

This is why the argument that we’re “losing history” doesn’t hold water.

The history of Myles Standish, of Columbus, of McKinley and Roosevelt—it isn’t going anywhere. History is not being erased like MAGA talking heads are screaming. Scholars will keep studying them. Students will keep learning about them.

What’s changing isn’t the history itself. What’s changing is our judgment about who deserves the honor.

Because let’s be clear. Statues, plaques, and building names aren’t neutral. They’re not just reminders of the past. They are celebrations. They say, “This person is a role model. This person represents the best of us.”

Keeping those honors in place while ignoring the victims isn’t teaching history. It’s distorting history. It’s telling only half the story.

And half the story is a lie.

Imagine you’re a Native student at BU. Every time you walk past a dorm named for Standish, you’re reminded of the massacres your ancestors suffered.

Imagine you’re a Hawaiian teenager at McKinley High. Every time you say your school’s name, you’re reminded of the leaders who stole your nation’s sovereignty.

That isn’t neutral history—it’s humiliation disguised as civic pride.

Revisionist history is not about fabricating lies.

It’s about refusing to stop at the sanitized version.

It’s about listening to voices that were silenced for centuries and integrating them into the narrative. History is not a frozen monument.

It’s a living conversation across generations. Each generation has the responsibility to tell it more truthfully than the last.

And that’s especially true in Hawaii, where the struggle for sovereignty is not just a matter of history books but of daily life.

Native Hawaiians continue to fight for land rights on Mauna Kea, to protect sacred spaces from development, to revive the Hawaiian language that was once outlawed in schools, to demand housing justice as land is swallowed up by resorts and absentee investors.

Every one of those fights is connected to the legacy of McKinley and Roosevelt—the legacy of an imposed annexation that turned a sovereign nation into a colony, and eventually a state, without the consent of its rooted people.

So when Hawaiians say those school names need to change, they are not just talking about the past. They are talking about dignity in the present.

They are saying, “We deserve schools that honor leaders who represent our culture, our survival, and our future—not the men who stole our sovereignty.”

And that’s the point.

Renaming buildings and taking down statues is not about erasing history.

It’s about refusing to enshrine oppression as something noble.

It’s about choosing truth over myth, dignity over domination.

So the next time someone says, “We’re losing our history,” we should answer with conviction.

“No, we’re finally telling it right—and in telling it right, we’re giving justice a voice.”

Also read: Plaque installed at McKinley High to correct inaccurate portrayal of Hawaii’s history

Instead of going to my regular Advocate doctor this year, I decided to do something different: I booked my flu shot and COVID booster through the Chicago Department of Public Health. With a quick online appointment at the Uptown community health center on Wilson Avenue near Sheridan Road, I wanted to see how easy it really was. Spoiler alert: it was one of the most painless and convenient healthcare errands I’ve ever done.

When I walked into the building, I signed in at the front desk. A kind nurse came out right away, confirmed my information, and invited me into her office. It wasn’t a sterile white medical room—it was decked out in Chicago kitsch, with the flag and city pride everywhere. It felt personal and welcoming, like this was care rooted in the community. Within minutes, I had rolled up my sleeve and gotten both the flu shot and COVID booster.

Here’s the best part: through CDPH, I got both shots for free. No billing, no insurance runaround, no co-pay surprises. Just straightforward public health in action. I sat in the waiting room for the standard 15-minute observation period to make sure I didn’t have a bad reaction, and before I knew it, I was back in my car just 30 minutes after arriving.

As someone who has worked in healthcare for 20 years—and who was honored as a Crain’s Chicago Business Healthcare Hero in 2020—I can say with confidence that this is one of the smartest things you can do for yourself and the people around you. Vaccination saves lives. The flu is still one of the top causes of death among seniors. Immunocompromised people count on the rest of us to reduce transmission. And let’s not forget the reality of the holidays: we’re all about to be surrounded by children with sticky fingers and coughs, relatives with underlying conditions, and crowded gatherings that make it easy for viruses to spread.

Busting the myths about vaccines

“The flu shot gives you the flu.”It doesn’t. The flu vaccine is made from either inactivated virus (dead) or a single protein from the flu virus. Neither can cause the illness. If you feel tired or achy afterward, that’s your immune system revving up its defenses.

“I’m healthy, so I don’t need it.”Even if you recover quickly, you can spread flu or COVID to someone who won’t. Vaccination is an act of protection for your grandparents, your neighbor with cancer, or the coworker with asthma.

“Natural immunity is better.”Not when it means risking hospitalization, long-term complications, or death. Vaccines give your body a safe practice run, not a life-threatening battle.

“I got vaccinated before and still got sick—so it doesn’t work.”Vaccines aren’t magic shields. But they make illness much less severe and drastically lower your risk of hospitalization and death.

“I don’t have time.”My whole visit—from walking in to walking out—took 30 minutes. Less time than picking up groceries or standing in line for coffee.

Why it matters

Flu and COVID are still here, and they still take lives. Seniors remain at high risk. Immunocompromised people depend on us to keep spread low. And as we head into a season of family gatherings, crowded airports, and holiday parties, vaccines are our best defense.

If you live in Chicago, CDPH makes this easy—and free. If you’re outside Chicago, look for community health clinics near you. Many offer flu and COVID shots at no cost. And if they don’t? Call your local leaders—your village trustees, city council members, or alderpeople—and demand it. Public health should be accessible to everyone, not just those who can pay or who happen to live in a major city.

So don’t wait. Make an appointment, roll up your sleeve, and take 30 minutes to protect yourself and the people around you. It’s one of the smartest—and kindest—choices you can make this season.

President Manuel Quezon of the Philippine Commonwealth broadcast from Washington to Manila. For the 25 minutes he was on the air, Quezon discussed woman suffrage and urged the 10-year independence program be limited to a shorter period. April 5, 1937. Photo: Library of Congress.

When we tell the story of the Holocaust, the names that rise most often are European. Anne Frank in Amsterdam. Schindler in Kraków. The French resistance. These are vital stories, but if the telling stops there a deeper truth is lost: resistance to evil was not confined to Europe or to the West.

Across the world, people who were themselves colonized, displaced, and occupied recognized the shared humanity of Jews under Nazi persecution, and they acted.

Si Kaddour Benghabrit was the rector of the Great Mosque in Paris. Photo: Public domain.

One of those often-forgotten figures was Si Kaddour Benghabrit, rector of the Great Mosque of Paris. During the Nazi occupation, when deportations and arrests terrorized Jewish families, he and his staff quietly issued certificates of Muslim identity. With these papers, more than 500 Jews were able to pass as North African Muslims, evade capture, and live another day. Some even hid within the mosque itself. The Qur’an commands the protection of life, and Benghabrit lived that command with remarkable courage.

Thousands of miles away, in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Philippines, another act of defiance took shape. President Manuel Quezon worked with American High Commissioner Paul McNutt and Jewish relief groups to welcome around 1,200 Jewish refugees to Manila. Quezon even dreamed of building a Jewish settlement on the island of Mindoro, a place of new beginnings.

His words still echo, “The people of the Philippines will have in this land a place where they can live in freedom.”

For a nation itself living under colonial rule, this was not only politics, it was empathy, born of knowing what it means to live without freedom.

In Asia, Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania, became known as the “Japanese Schindler.”

Against his government’s orders, he wrote thousands of visas by hand, his arm cramping from the effort. Each visa meant escape across Siberia, through Japan, and often onward to Shanghai.

And Shanghai itself, war-torn, crowded, under Japanese occupation, became an open city where nearly 20,000 Jews found refuge because it required no entry visas. There, Chinese residents and Jewish refugees lived side by side, proof that even in poverty and hardship, compassion builds community.

Even Turkey, neutral during most of the war, quietly extended protection.

Its diplomats shielded Sephardic Jews in France and Greece, sometimes stretching legal definitions to cover whole families. Turkey also allowed refugees passage to Palestine, defying pressure from Nazi Germany.

What ties these stories together is not geography, but courage. Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists. Leaders of nations and administrators in mosques. Diplomats with pens, islanders with open doors, families who shared their food and shelter.

They remind us that the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, not only a European one. It was a crime against humanity. And humanity, East and West, colonized and colonizer, believer and unbeliever alike, rose up to resist.

For Christians, these acts echo their Gospel.

Jesus said in Matthew 25 that when the hungry are fed, when the stranger is welcomed, when the vulnerable are protected, it is done unto him.

These stories are testimonies of that truth, lived not only by Christians, but by people of every faith, and even those with no faith but compassion.

In our own time, there is still a temptation to draw lines of division, Christian and Muslim, East and West, refugee and citizen.

History offers another witness: when the image of God is recognized in one another, when life is defended against hatred, the legacy of Benghabrit in Paris, Quezon in Manila, Sugihara in Kaunas, and the unnamed families in Shanghai and Istanbul is carried forward.

Their courage is now the call.