Mark Kaniela Ing is a jackass.
Mark recently had his first grade son protest over at Ewa Elementary over Lincoln Day. Mark claims it was all his sons’ idea but I find this hard to believe. The full story can be found here. An eyewitness account posted this to Reddit:
“I was at the event and here are my thoughts.. I personally did not have any issue with his kid holding up a sign during his class’ performance. Honestly, I think most of the other parents would agree as I heard no boos aimed towards him. After his class had filed off back to their seats, ING was still up there taking pictures of his son. A community member went up there to kindly ask them to move. At this point, still no boos.. just confusion. More ppl tried approaching him and from my viewpoint, it looked like he was just arguing with everyone. The program was put on hold and the next class couldn’t perform. I’m thinking.. how long is he gonna keep this up?? How is my 3yo doing up there? We had no idea what Ing was trying to do here so of course parents are gonna get upset and start booing. And I didn’t hear any profanities just mostly “let the kids go”
The thing is he took a small bit of hostility that was exhibited and ran with it to form his narrative. He held our kids hostage and when he got a negative reaction from a few, he threw the rest of us under the bus with them and painted all of us as the anti-Hawaiian villains that harassed his son. I have video of him exiting and literally no one is saying anything to him as he’s walking out and talking at ppl. And the whole “it was a five minute inconvenience”, “your kids will be fine”.. well in that moment, there was a lot of confusion and when it comes to the well being of your child, 5 mins can feel like an eternity. For me it wasn’t about ruining Lincoln Day. I couldn’t give a eff about Lincoln and actually support the sentiment of celebrating local ppl instead but that’s a discussion that doesn’t need to involve our young children that don’t understand.
And I’m not excusing the guy that ripped the sign. That was pretty aggro“
It’s all kind of a shame in my opinion because I was a big Ing supporter back in 2013-2014 when he was backing gay rights and taking positions that looked to improve the lives of all people living in Hawaii. However, after his run for Congress in 2018 when he was caught stealing campaign contributions and filing false reports he seems to just jump from outrage issue to outrage issue. Too bad. Could have probably been a good representative of Hawaii.