This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The migration began shortly after sundown. For most of the encampment’s residents, it had become routine. State officials had swept the park and rousted its inhabitants four times the previous week, and four times the week before that. The residents started by taking down their roofs — tarps, mostly, sometimes patched together with umbrellas. Next came the walls: tents for those who had them, cardboard and sheets for those who didn’t. Finally, they packed up their possessions. No one had many of these. A few sleeping pads and blankets, and maybe some mementos.
Some of the residents loaded their belongings into shopping carts and pushed them down Ilalo Street, away from the park they’d called home since the last sweep. One man pulled his things in a child’s red wagon. A few people attached carts to their bicycles and pedaled northwest, as night fell on the palm trees and grassy squares of Kakaako Waterfront Park, the beachside public recreation area just south of Honolulu’s downtown.
Jaymiola and Jerana had ... Read more
