Hawaiian citizens gathered around President Barack Obama’s motorcade on Saturday to protest against the use of drones and other political issues.
The Hawaiian vacation exposed the president to protesters for the second day in a row as the president was headed back home from an early morning gym visit.
A line of protesters stood along the side of the road with a variety of signs such as, “Drones: Unethical and Illegal,” “U.S. Bases Out,” “Close Guantanamo Now” and “Stop Drone Killings.”
Other protesters were there to ask the president to do something about genetically modified foods.
On Friday a group of about 30 protestors gathered together to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that is currently being negotiated between the U.S. and several Asian and South American countries.
The organizer of the protests, MoveOn Honolulu council member Mike Hasselle, said that the protests have not earned a much of a response from the president.
“Other than a friendly ‘shaka sign’ from the president as he drove by in his motorcade, we have not received a formal response from the White House,” Hasselle said.
Other than the two protests, the president’s reception in Hawaii has been a welcoming one.
Hundreds of locals in Hawaii have been swarming around the president’s motorcades cheering and snapping photographs.
Political leaders in the state are even hoping that Hawaii will one day be the home of President Obama’s presidential library although they are currently the underdogs compared to the city of Chicago.
While Honolulu is the president’s hometown, it was in the city of Chicago that he gained political acclaim and eventually grew to become President of the United States.
Hawaiian Senator Brian Schatz has hopes that even if the library is not built in Hawaii that some other institution in the president’s name will be.
“We really don’t se it as an either-or proposition,” Schatz said. “We see no reason that the president has to be forced to choose between his two hometowns.”
Other presidents have followed the same logic including President Bill Clinton who built his library in his home state of Arkansas but chose New York, where he served as Senator from 2001 to 2009, as the home for his foundation and humanitarian efforts.
Meanwhile, the White House has decided not to dispute a New York Times article published on Saturday that suggested the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya was sparked by an American-made video rather than al Qaeda.
Republicans had initially criticized the president for allegedly downplaying the attack’s connection to al Qaeda for political gain but the new report suggests that the president was guilty of no such thing.
“The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi,” the Times reported after it completed an extensive investigation and surveyed Libyans who had direct knowledge of the attack.
The report also said that a video published by Americans mocking Islam served as the motivation behind the attack that killed four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
