 Good afternoon. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Kempanya. Today, we're going to talk a bit about the transitioning from the resistance to a movement and how that can happen and some of the players involved in that. And for that conversation, we're going to have Mr. David Molynex with us. David is organizer of our Hawaii, I'm sorry, our revolution, Hawaii, and we're going to learn a bit about that. We're going to learn a bit about what David has been up to, and then we're going to talk about this transition process and some of the things that go on with that. So hopefully, we all learn a little bit from that. I'm looking forward to learning myself. So thank you for joining us again, and thank you, David, for joining us. Thank you for having me, Carl. Great to have you on the show. I really appreciate it. For starters, tell us a bit about yourself, what you've been up to, and what has sort of led you to this point of organizer role. Wow, that's an interesting question. I've been doing it for a long time. I was a kid in the 60s. I really got, I thought Martin Luther King was just an incredible human being, and I walked through civil rights. I protested the war in Vietnam, and I just wanted that to be my life, organizing, making things better. I had to go into college and have some federal businesses of my own, and eventually came around to organizing, and I started organizing with a group called Alliance for Survival in the Los Angeles area. We were the main organizers for the anti-nuclear movement, nuclear power, nuclear weapons. We got trained by a guy named Fred Ross. You know who Fred Ross is? I do not know Fred Ross. Fred Ross was an organizer from the Union Organizers in the 1930s, and he had this idea that the farm workers should be organized, and so he went looking for someone to help him do that, and I said, this kid, Cesar Chavez, just lives down the road. We should talk to Cesar. So he trained Cesar and founded the farm workers union. So he trained us on basic organizing, and I've been organizing ever since. I worked here in Hawaii. I was the first executive director for Habitat for Humanity, Building Houses for the Homeless, and we... You know what, more of those. We do. That's a different show. Affordable housing. Talk about what's going on. It's not just affordable housing. It's low-income housing. It's housing that the people can afford, not affordable housing. Yes, and all this stuff about homeless is easy solvable. We get the highest rents and the lowest pay in the country. Yeah. That's easy to solve. So, yeah, so I was the first executive director for Habitat and built a lot of houses here. And then, sure, anyway, we had the Occupy Movement came along, and we founded the Occupy Camp at the Thomas Square. We were there for two full years. You were there on Sam Mitchell? Yeah, yeah. Sam's down there every Sunday. We feed the homeless with Sam. That's right. Yeah, Sam is a great human being. So, yeah, we were there for the longest encampment in the country. We went there originally about the banks, and we got involved in a homeless issue just because the homeless kept showing up. Because it became relevant. It was in front of you. It was on top of you. We walked right into it. Right. Yeah, that wasn't what we were there for. But, you know, it was safe for them. There was no drugs, no alcohol. The police went harassing them. They got good food. So we were there for two, and we got two lawsuits against the city, which we actually prevailed in. But the city ignores the fact that we prevailed and keeps harassing the homeless here in Honolulu. It's really shanda. It's a travesty of how we treat the homeless here in Hawaii. 70% work, you know, 50% are native Hawaiian, 30% are children, and they're treated like they're mainland alcoholics and drug addicts, and it's absolutely false. Well, I want to invite you back to talk about that. Right. So let's take this back to this idea of resistance to movement. So the next thing up for them would be the organizing for the Sanders campaign. Okay, so that was about a year ago, a little over a year ago. Yeah, and we got 70% of the people in the state of Hawaii to vote for Bernie Sanders. And then recently, we've been involved with 350.org and the pipeline in North Dakota. Yeah, Dappel. Dappel. First Hawaiian Bank, the divest, two million dollars divested for First Hawaiian Bank, who was supporting that. So that was a great movement. So we have a lot of things happening here in the state of Hawaii. A lot of people are involved, a lot of different issues. And since some got elected, there's people just coming out of the woodwork. They're like freaking out. People are looking for how they can be involved, how they can get engaged. What can they do? They're scared. They're afraid. And actually, a lot of people are scared, but the thing that I think worries some of us is how the Trump supporters are not only not scared, they're giddy. That's the part that is most worrisome. We're seeing blatant racism. They're not afraid to be racist now. No, not at all. Blatant racism, the hate crimes just seem to be, it's like an acceptable thing almost. And how some of that is occurring. What Sessions is doing and rolling the law back to the 80s and the 1980s, and all these things that are going on in some ways 1950s. And some of the research that I've been doing, what the GOP agenda right now seems to be rolling everything back to the Hoover era, to just before and what led to the Great Depression. Right, exactly. So why is that a good idea? So that's what we're scared of. So that includes everything from the economy to civil rights and social rights. Now, before we jump into this, I want to hear this. You commented already that you were part of and you marched in the 60s and 70s. How do you feel right now knowing that you have to do it again? Well, I never stopped. I mean, it's hard to stay in the movement because you have to get a job, raise a family. But that's what I wanted to do. So I just figured that out. So I've gotten jobs where either I was actually working in the movement, like with Habit, not Habit, Habit, Alliance for Survival or other organizations. Or I was doing something that's comparable, like Habit F. Humanity Building, doing something socially. So that was, I made my career doing that. Okay, so you found one way or another to continue not necessarily marching, but then taking that from, and that's the whole topic of this conversation. How do you go from a resistance into a movement? And what you're saying is that you've sort of made your career about saying we're against this, so now let's do something about it because that's the movement part, right? Well, it's like we can't do something, we can't do something. We all have responsibility to make the world a better place. That's where I see it. We were born with the responsibility to make the world, when you leave here, it should be better than when you came in. You shouldn't just trash it out and say, well, great party, undoubt the door. You guys clean up the mess. That's what basically the oligarchy is doing. But for us, you know, regular citizens, we have looked for the future for our children, for our grandchildren, for the environment. And I have to wonder why, and just taking that for a moment, I have to wonder why no one thinks they're the bad guy. Everyone thinks they're the good guy. So the Republicans who are on that side who are trying to take away health care from all these millions of people, who are trying to roll back all of these regulations, who are trying to recreate this old world scenario of how this country or how this globe works, they think they're doing the right thing. Well, their view is if you're making money, you're doing the right thing. It's like an attorney that, you know, if he wins the case, even though you were innocent, then if I won, I must have been right. So, you know, the guy must have been guilty of something. So that's kind of the attitude that, and it's really more self-involved. If it's good for me, they're really psychopaths and sociopaths. They don't care about anyone else. They don't care if people die. That's the Einrandian individualism. Yes. It's about me, and I take care of myself, and as long as I'm benefiting, and if everyone is doing the exact same thing, looking after only themselves, then we'll all be fine, because everyone is taking care of themselves. Right, which is a fallacy. It's not how society works. It's not how human beings are designed to be. You know, we have what we call families, you know. Families, and that family has a community, and that community is connected to other communities, and we rely on each other. And it's not a matter, one of the things going back to what they're trying to do is rolling this stuff back, is since Reagan, when they really started this back, this whole idea of the trickle down supply side economics, that's what, that's one of the big pieces that failed us in the 20s that led to the depression, is overproduction, right? Yeah. So anyway, okay, so it's not meat stocking. I want to hear from you. Let's go transition back to this thought. So, okay, tell me your thoughts. Now, you've gone through this once, where you marched, you were inspired, and you marched, and then you decided to take that and create a career out of it. That's where it went from march to movement a bit. Tell us about that thought process and what was going on then and how that compares to now. Well, see, nothing really ever changed. I mean, you know, after the 70s, we had Reagan, and that was, we were fighting him. We had wars in illegal wars in Central America, genocidal wars in Central America. The Iran-Contra scandal, he was giving weapons of mass destruction, right? He created that whole problem. They were bringing drugs into the United, see, I was bringing drugs in the United States. So there was a lot to be organizing against in the nuclear arms race. And then along came, Clinton wasn't any better. He gave us NAFTA. We had to fight NAFTA. He got rid of welfare. I mean, the reason we've got all these people on the street now is because of supposedly progressive Democrat Clinton. He wasn't a progressive at all. So we had to fight that. So we were, it's been ongoing battles the whole time. Part of the people on the streets, though, are one of the things that Reagan did and correct me, because I may have this off. But one of the things that I recall that Reagan did was he changed the rules with regards to mental health. Yes. And all of the people who were in a facility, a mental health facility, because they needed care, he basically turned them all out. Yes. And therefore, as we go from city to city, town to town, in some cases, you've got a percentage of the homeless who are in desperate need of mental health care. And a lot of them are vets with PTSD. And, and it's, it's another, it's a pure one there. Oh, I wear my ribbon for the military. Yet you're like looking down on these homeless vets that you don't know are vets, you know, and you're acting like there's some kind of terrible human being. So, but your bigger question is, how do we go from, you know, resistance to building a movement to me? And because we, you and I can talk about it. I don't want to lose up all your show up like, wow, what I did back then. But the I think that we can, the things have changed definitely in the 60s, we had a momentum and I had a lot to do with civil rights. You know, the black community was like, Hey, we have a right to vote. We have a right to eat where we want to eat. And then came along to Vietnam War. And we were very motivated as teenagers, not to go to Vietnam and kill innocent people or being blown up ourselves. So all the students in the country were pretty much aligned against the government. We are on the edge of revolution. And they realized it. And they really got scared. They're like, Oh, my God, they could overthrow. So we had Bobby Kennedy. And you know, and so the assassinated them. We had Martin Luther King and then the assassin and they had we had Malcolm X and the assassin. So yeah, the assassin leaders because that was the new era that was, you know, the group that was going to take over. And that scared the heck out of them. So that I think I got a track that's right. We have to take a break right now. Anyway, so we'll come back and hone in on our revolution, our Revolution Hawaii and how that is working today. Yes. Thank you again for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. Thanks again to our guest today, Mr. David Mullenix, organizer of Our Revolution Hawaii. And we'll be back in one minute. Thank you. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which streams live on ThinkTechHawaii.com, uploads to YouTube and broadcasts on cable OC 16 and O'Lello 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Sounds like scuba divers are the poor man's astronaut. At DiveHeart, we believe that to be true. We say forget the moon. DiveHeart can help children, adults and veterans of all abilities escape gravity right here on Earth. Search DiveHeart.org and imagine the possibilities in your life. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. And once again, welcome to the show, Mr. David Mullenix. Yes. Again, organizer of Our Revolution Hawaii. So yeah, all right. So let's get to let's get we want to understand. Yeah, from a resistance movement. And by resistance, we're talking about resistance to Donald Trump and the Republican agenda at the moment that seems in many cases to many of us diabolical, not just we oppose it, but it seems like awful and horrendous. So there was a huge and the biggest story to me of this of 2017 is not Trump. It's the resistance. To me, that's the biggest story, because it's been working. So the resistance has been there standing up and fighting against and pushing back and saying, No, we don't want this. No, we don't want this and making all of those phone calls to all of the legislators and challenging them and doing everything we can to suppress that what we consider to be a diabolical agenda. Right. How do we take that and turn it into a movement? How do we say we've got all this energy? How do we now turn that into a movement that encompasses more people that creates, I guess, the opportunity, ultimately for us to make the changes we need in 2018 and 2020, because that's the goal, right? Yeah. So what are some of your thoughts on that? Well, like I said, in the 60s, we were motivated by war by civil rights. Now we're motivated by something much larger and is much bigger than Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a blip on the on the on the issue. What the problem is, it's systemic. It's the capitalist system itself. It is looking at everything as a resource, privatizing everything just for the benefit of making money, where you're willing to like, you know, destroy the environment, you're willing to destroy your children's future, you're willing not to educate children, you're willing to impoverish people, you know, that's the bigger issue. And that's what the millennials see. And that's why so one of the big drivers right now is climate change. We are on the edge of the extinction of human life on this planet. The problem with a lot of that, though, is, and I hear all of that. And I am 100% behind all of that. The problem is, for most people, that has nothing to do with their household economics and how they're going to eat today. Right. No, it doesn't. That is true. Climate change they're voting for. So that's what Republicans come back and say, No, no, no, we don't want to talk about that stuff because all that's going to do is make your life more expensive. Yes. Go our way and your life will be less expensive is what they tell them and they believe them. You've got two groups you're talking about here. You're talking about regular folks who've been doing this for a long time and you've got the new generation coming in who can see climate change means the end of their opportunity. And so they are really freaked out about climate change. They're very much involved in that $15 wage. They're very much concerned about that. They're concerned about the fact that they are going to be in debt for the rest of their life because they went to college and they may never, ever, ever pay it off. I'm still paying off my school debt. Yeah, right. So I'm trying to say this to you is so all the motivators are there. You know, so and it's much bigger than Donald Trump. Yeah, there's two groups that I that I work with. I appreciate them. I really glad they got involved. They jumped in. They're very excited. And their main goal is to impeach Donald Trump. And I was like, well, then what? You get Pence, who the same guys who are telling Trump what to do or telling Pence what to do. So changing presidents isn't going to change a thing. And the problem with that would be with Pence as president. He knows how to operate and he'd stay on Twitter. Right. He'd be more dangerous. He'd be friendlier. You know, it's like having a Democrat pretending to be a Republican in office, which we've had the last couple of times. Yeah, who's putting forth the Republican agenda. So that president's very sweet and nice. You know, it's like, Oh, geez, the Dakota Access Pipeline, I'm against that. Why he okayed 200 pipelines across the country. They'll talk who expanded using fossil fuels. So it's a systemic problem. It's much bigger than that. And that's what the young people see. And that's why they're so motivated. That's this corporatist agenda thing. Yes. That gets in the people's sides of the conversation. So what what's so it's that everyone's in the street now. It doesn't matter whether like, I'm against Trump, or whether I'm for climate change, or I want to do something about LGBT, they're excited and they want to do something. So what's the difference, though, we've got all the people who are up in arms who are who are for a cause, right, whether it's to address climate change or the economic concerns or civil rights issues that are coming back again that we have to deal with again. Yes, there are a number of people who we all have a cause and there's dozens of groups out there that all have their own version or their own perspective on that cause. Yes. Is that the movement or does the movement itself need to be more cohesive? Well, what we said, we met a couple of weeks ago now, we say, you know, it's like we just had this came to me, it's like, you know, we need to move from resistance to building a movement. And because it's all there, we have so many people now, and it hasn't been like this since the sixties and seventies, there's so many people now who want to do something, they're desperate to do something. The first part you have to do is educate them to understand that taking Trump out won't change anything. You've got to do the next step, you know, and that's like we need to get progressives to run for office here in the state of Hawaii. Thank God for Hapa, you know, they are teaching people how to run for office, how to get progressives into office. So we need to get people who are doing the sign waving to think about maybe you should run for office or maybe you should support somebody running for office or maybe you should go down to a city council meeting and testify, you know, getting them to take the next step. So that's what I tell people, no matter what you're doing, waving signs, making phone calls, do one more thing. It doesn't matter what that one more thing is. So that transitions us into into the movement is taking action. Yes. Doing the next step. Yes. So that's collecting as much information, getting people's emails, phone numbers. I tell people, you know, join a group. I don't care what group you join. Join any group because the groups right now are working for your betterment, whether it's Sierra Club, you know, or 350.org. It doesn't matter what group you join. If that's a revolution or women's march, they're all, yes, everybody's, so one of the things that needs to be done, and this is my thought to add to this, and I know there's been conversation about this, is how do we make sure that we're not competing against each other, stepping on each other's toes? How do we make sure that all of these different groups that have their perspective on it are collaborating? How do we make that happen? Well, like I told the people at our first meeting, I've never built a movement before. So, you know, I know that it can be done because I've lived through it, but so we're kind of going piece by piece. So we first met, and we had about 18 organizations show up. So that was pretty good first meeting. And I know we're going to have a lot more next time. Yeah. And it doesn't matter if we have two or three groups, or three or four groups. If one group wants to focus just on the economy, great. Another group wants to focus just on the environment, fantastic. Another one wants to focus on immigration. Yes, but we all agree to work together on the bigger issue. So that's what I think it may be a progressive candidate running, that we all say you know what, this guy. I think it's a combination. I think it's looking at all of it and saying, okay, what are the common goals that all of these groups have? They all have a common goal of well, we want to understand better and have more accountability in one way or another. We want to make sure that you know what, we're getting new people, not just engaged in the process of the movement, but running for office. And maybe there are some seats that we need to start looking at, well, how do we flip them and how do we do that and how do we work together? So I think it's a combination of pieces, getting engaged, getting involved, learning how the system works, how you can participate and how you can step up in another way. Right. And we're seeing this through locally, through the state legislature, complete democratic party legislature could not pass the democratic party agenda because of money in politics, because of the oligarchs, because of the capitalist guys who just want to make money. Those guys are on a take, man. It's legal bribery now because of Citizens United. They can link illegally, bribery, they can buy them. Carl, you want to be senator of Hawaii? Wait, I'm a billionaire. I am going to like put you in office and I'll just buy it. But I expect you to do this and this and this. And that's what you're going to do. And that's what's going on in our Congress and that's what's going on in our state legislature and that's what's going on in our city council. So how do we combat that? How do we combat that? Because that was one of the challenges. And I know that President Clinton had his issues. I know President Obama had his issues. But what Clinton did, Clinton invited the corporate money. Yes. And he corrupted the Democratic Party. He was the one who brought because it was a yes, primarily a grassroots. Yes. But what he saw was three Republican administrations in a row with Clinton and then before that Carter for a minute and then Republican. So what he saw was well, we need to make a change. We need more money. So he made the decision that we're going to invite the corporate money and to give us more money so we can actually be more competitive. That was the strategy. Well, the end goal is here we are now 25 years later going up. This isn't what we intended. Right. Democratic Party is now the Republican Party. How do we put the sausage back in the casing? Well, it's happening in the revolution. I mean, the burners all across the country. They also this dem-enter started to get all the progressives to join a Democratic Party. And they have been fighting. They've been fighting all across the country to get in power. But the corporate Democrats are also fighting very hard to stay in power. Yeah. Even though they just lost a thousand elections. Right. Yeah. And 13 million people have left the Democratic Party since this last election. So the Democratic Party is not growing. It's dying on the line. So basically the old guard corporate Democrats are on the Titanic right now moving the pictures around, you know, as the ships going down and they are preventing the people who could say, Hey, we've got lifeboats right here, or we can patch the whole, you know. So all of the millennials across the country who watched as the DNC stole the primary and gave it to Hillary Clinton, they watched it go down. They saw how illegal it was. And now they have a lawsuit right now and the DNC is acknowledging. Yes, we didn't do it fairly, but we have every right to do, we can do whatever we want. We don't have to listen to our voters. So that kind is not inviting, you know, the young people into the Democratic Party. So most people now are not Democrats, are not Republicans. Bernie Sanders today started his own party. He would be the next president of the United States, because most people would join his party. Former Republicans, former Democrats. Yeah, that's one of the concerns. That's one of the concerns is there has not been a viable third party in this country. There has not been that opportunity. And what we have to try to consider is if we split up and we kind of are split and in my opinion, we need to get back together because I understand the Clinton Bernie thing. But you know what, that is not helping us, maintaining that is not helping us, finding a way to come together and say, okay, fine, that was last year. Going forward, we have to have a better approach, a more cohesive approach, right? So that we said that's the movement is what are our common goals, right? What do we want to achieve? At the very least, we need to start putting the fires out so that we can try to move forward. It seems to me. Yeah, let's see the burners aren't the one, the problem. Nobody thinks they're the problem. The corporate Democrats are not letting them have any seats. We're not going to have you have any power at all. So that's the problem. They're not letting the millennials in. They're not letting progressives into the party to take any power. And so since they're not letting him into positions of power, where are they going to go? Let me divide this up a little bit. There's a difference between the party and the elected officials. Yes, there is a difference. Yes. And I think that's an important distinction that people don't actually quite understand, right? Is the party itself, certainly in Hawaii, the party itself has its own people and its own agenda and its own platform and its own way of trying to do things that has been disconnected from what the actual elected officials in this state have been doing. Right. And therefore, yeah, when we look at this, wait a minute, the Democratic party platform says we should be doing these things. And we look at the legislature and say, wait a minute, this session you didn't do any of that when you had the opportunity. Why? Well, that's because one reason why, at the very least. One reason is that platform was not put together in collaboration with any of those elected officials. That's one challenge. The other challenge is, well, it's then the corporate interests who are involved in this whole thing and they don't want to deal with any of that stuff as well. So, part of the movement needs to be how we address and connect, how we take the common goals of the people and how we connect and address that to what our elected officials are doing and why they're doing it and how. So that's really, so that's when you're saying get engaged and take it to the next level. That's what we're talking about. Right. What is it that's your cause that is going to make you step up? Right. I think people have to realize that no politician ever changed anything. Right? It was the people always who motivated and made the change happen. And that's exactly true and it's the people. So, we are at the end of our show. Oh, okay. So, this happens really quickly. Oh. Thank you, David, for joining us. Mr. David Molenex. Thank you. Organizers of our Revolution of Hawaii. Yes. Thank you for joining us, Think Tech Hawaii, Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. Thanks to the crew and everyone involved in Think Tech. We will see you next week. Happy 4th of July. We have 4th of July coming up. My episode next week is going to be about some history of the 4th of July. So, see you then.