Cleaning Homeless People from APEC route

 A L O H A !

 click on the photos

The New Colossus

 By Emma Lazarus, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" 

Cries she with silent lips.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 Jewish-immigrant children wave at the Statue of Liberty.

Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

 How's That Working Out?

Honolulu Star Bulletin

By Dan Nakaso

POSTED: 12:45 p.m. HST, Oct 25, 2011

" State prisoners and Department of Transportation landscaping crews are busy clearing homeless people and their belongings from 17 different areas along Nimitz Highway and the H-1 Freeway that will be seen by delegations attending next month's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

The week-long clean-up is expected to cost $100,000, said DOT spokesman Dan Meisenzahl.

"We anticipate someone's going to ask us to do it again as we get closer to APEC," Meisenzahl said.

The clean-up crews include 50 DOT landscaping employees and 25 prisoners, Meisenzahl said.

They are primarily focusing on clearing homeless people and their belongings around bridges along the APEC travel routes, Meisenzahl said.

In August, the DOT spent $200,000 just to clear homeless people and their belongings from the H-1 Freeway viaduct near Honolulu Airport.

This week's anticipated $100,000 cost for the viaduct and 16 other locations is much cheaper "because most of them and their stuff is already gone," Meisenzahl said. "

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