 I'm Marcia Joyner and this is Community Matters. We are taking this time at ThinkTech to talk to and invite candidates from all over the state, from the tip of the big island all the way up to Kauai and everything in between. And today we are going to talk to a gentleman I've known for 42 years who is running for governor of the state of Hawaii and it is one of those that the mainstream media does not look at. They only talk to the top two of the Democrat and Republican Party. They don't—it's if no one else matters or even if it's there. So welcome today. We are talking to the one and only Jim Brewer. Okay. I love her, Jim. I love her to you and thank you so much. I love fair-minded people and that's what this is. It is just absolute fair-mindedness. Well we want the public to see the plethora of people that want to be engaged in government. So tell us about Jim. I just said 42 years now. Yeah, the problem is though in the Green Party is that we take no corporate money at all. So you are a member of the Green Party. I'm a member of the Green Party and if I go back, actually things that I can relate to with Hawaii is I first came here in 1958. I was on board a ship. I was just turned 18. My cousin lived here. He lived out on Kalani and only highway and that was long before— Oh yes. It's a long way out. It was way out. The most memorable thing that I had when I was here is we went down the old Polly Road. I don't even know where there was a new Polly Road then but we went down the old Polly Road and the wind coming up was just horrific and here, you know what a refrigerator box looks like. Well they also have one for big stove. Well one of those boxes was coming up and it hit our windshields. Oh dear. Anyway, we were going down to Kailua and it didn't break the windshield or anything. Just a very memorable experience. Yes. So that's when you—and you decided to stay? Basically because I grew up in the segregated south. I grew up in what they call the boot heel of Missouri. If Arkansas had been cut off straight across the Tennessee there at the Mississippi, then I would have been born in northeast Arkansas, a corner of it. It's 85 miles north of Memphis. My dad and mom—actually I was born on a farm that my dad would plow with mules and whatnot and 20 acres of farm and he wasn't doing too well. And that was, you know, at the end of World War II, big ag started, mechanized ag. And so he had to go—so he went down to Memphis. And he and my mom broke up and she went to Detroit. And so I was adopted by an uncle and aunt and she was a school teacher. And she bought me a set of encyclopedias. I read them and became a bookworm and some guy in the Democratic Party died and left money for a library in our little town, a first-class library. And I read almost all the books in it. I used to go back when I was a petty officer in the Navy and go in there and they remembered me because some of the books still had my name. But anyway, so I was a real bookworm. And I think my aunt, also my aunt though, that my dad's brother married her. She was from a family that all of her brothers and sisters were superintendents of school. She and her sister were college professors and whatnot. And so when we had Thanksgiving and when they visit and we'd eat around the table and stuff, I'd stand up and listen to them talk. And I remember when I was about eight years old hearing them talk about the New Deal and all that. And back then, you know, one family working one person, 40 hours a week, could get a paycheck and 20% of it would go for their housing. And that meant, you know, and then you had your subsistence. But then you also had a bank account. A savings, yes. A savings. And so the thing today is what we have is we have two people working. And that has caused child care problems, which I worked out here in Hawaii. I was the first person, I think really, we had a thing about child care, I forgot what the name of it was. But anyway, we started off the idea of having the kids just stay in school. I said that at a meeting. We had it down at HCC. And we had about 300 people in the cafeteria there. And I was sitting up and I says, hey, why don't we just leave them on the campus and let their parents pick them up after work. And so anyway, that had to go on another four years before under Kaya Tunnel. We got the A-plus after school. That was in the 80s, just in case anybody doesn't remember. It was in the 80s. And that seems like yesterday to me, but for most people, that's a long time. Well, in 92, that was when I started my TV show on the Lello in our program. And it was called Employees Today. And I covered everything from unions, everything. And one of the things that really struck me was I found out that our Federal Reserve system actually keeps about 10% to 20% of the people unemployed all the time. And the way they do it is they do it by manipulating interest rates. When the unemployment gets down to only 6%, they start raising interest rates. And what that does is people who are going to start a new business couldn't borrow at that interest rate. And some of the people who are marginal, small businesses, they couldn't forward the raise. And so they went out of business. And so what happens? You had more unemployed people. So we intentionally, I mean, it's policy in this country to have people unemployed all the time. Well, so what is full employment? What— Full employment would be every person has a job. No, I meant—but in terms of quote numbers, because Hawaii is supposed to be one of those states with full employment. I'm not—I don't go into— No, I meant— The numbers, I don't remember usually. Yes. But if you have, like the state says, they have full employment, yet I don't think that means anything, because if you're making $10 an hour and the rent is $1,800 a month, you're unemployed because there's no place to live. Right, exactly, exactly. So what does that mean, is what I'm asking about unemployment and full employment. What does that mean? So to me, what it means, for instance, is a woman that I knew, and I used to organize down at various places here and with a homeless and whatnot. But one woman one day said, Jim, she said they are—you know, everybody says that most of us are mentally ill. And she says, you know, Jim, you're homeless for two weeks and you're mentally ill. You surely would be if you're living on concrete. Now this is my thought. This is mine. But the creator, when we were created, like all animals, we were created to live on soil, grass, what have you. Then when you lay down concrete, that does different things to the body. So if you're sleeping on concrete, can you imagine what that does? Yeah. Yeah. Or sleeping on the grass with the centipedes and whatnot. Yes. So—and yeah, you're right. So anyway, the thing is, like under John Whitehay, we actually got some housing built. And I think we were holding signs. I think we had a 62-day vigil. The state legislature was in session, but they were out of the building. They were down at the office tower. Oh, that's when they were modeling, yes. Yeah. And so anyway, we had—we could catch them every day when they went in and out. And so they got the message. We had 3,000 kids homeless. Afterwards, they gave me a thing, a fancy thing. And it was commending me for getting 800 families or 800 kids' homes. And I said, what about the other 2,200? And that—see, that's the thing that irks me about the Democratic and Republican parties is that they never solve anything. They really never solve anything. They come back year after year and fight the same old fights over and over. And that's where I will be a different kind of a candidate. I will solve these problems. Well, now— And I have a special way to do it, which I'll tell you. Okay. Let's look at this. As governor, the governor of Hawaii is the most powerful governor in the United States, if he or she recognizes that. There are at least 18 departments that the governor—the governor has under his purview or she, whichever they—and they get to pit the department heads and the deputies. And then we see now that they just turn them loose and take no responsibility. We look at the health department and it's—and the governor said that he cooled 1,100 classrooms. Well, there's 283 schools and the university with deferred maintenance. Tell me about that. Well— Talk to me about what happened with deferred maintenance. I talk about this in a different way. I usually just say, basically what has happened, if I'm elected governor, what I will do is I will immediately organize what I call citizen action roundtables, CARTS. And these CARTS is something I've kind of developed in the Green Party of Hawaii. And what you do is you get to get—I want to get together everyday people, you know, people who are going to get—but the point is that what we do is we gather all the facts, face the truth, and then decide what needs to be done and what could be done, and then we do it. And so— Well, now we need to take a break. Yeah. When we come back, let's go through what you say needs to be done and how, if you're elected, how this can happen, okay? Sure. We'll be right back. Okay. I'm Marcia Joyner and this is Community Matters. And today we are talking with gubernatorial candidate for the Green Party, Jim Brewer. And we were just beginning to talk about—you mentioned roundtables and getting things done. So tell us your idea of roundtables and how to get things done. Okay. Well, the thing, too, is that this will, in a way, we will be replacing the people down at State Capitol, because they don't—like I said, they don't ever really solve hardly anything. And then you came in with something I think is very important, too, is that you have all these bureaucrats and whatnot. And I don't mean to besmirch anybody's character or anything, but the thing is that there has to be a purpose for each of these things, and everybody should get up in the morning and that's their purpose, and they're raring to go to solve a problem. But I think a lot of people under the present system just thinks that if we solve these problems, we won't be coming back here. So they'll solve the problem and get out of a job, huh? Is that what— Yeah. No, I mean, seriously, that's what's happened in some places. Some places just meet one month out of the year, and they're volunteers and whatnot. But when we look at the health department, and all kind of craziness happens, and they somehow are not on it, on top of it, they—the federal government failed the health department in its caring for nursing homes. They had nine inspectors for the whole state. So how do we deal with those kinds of things? The Hawaiian Homes Department is under the governor. They returned $30 million that they didn't spend, and we have homeless people. I need you to talk about dealing with—how do we deal? How do we make these things happen to fulfill their mission, as you mentioned? Well, I think it's because of the leadership. I mean, that's why if I'm elected, we take no corporate money or whatever. I notice that—one of the things I noticed over the years is that all the people that come down to be real advisors, like in the tax taxes—I mean, the tax foundation of Hawaii—you look at the board of directors, and they're all the big boys on Bishop Street. Yes. And then what happened is they—going away from the elected school board, the first thing they did was appoint a bank of Hawaii as chair of the board of education. So you see that was a privatization of a public institute already, as a form of privatization. Instead of it being public, people—regular people being elected to get our kids educated and whatnot—it's back to, we're all supposed to be raised to be employees. No, we're not equal. I mean, we want to—see, the thing is, that was what was good in going to school in the 40s and the 50s, is that they were preparing us to be anything we could be. And that's what we needed. And these citizen action roundtables—as a matter of fact, I'll just go over it right here. Green for—right here, this is our thing. This is a centerfold of our magazine—the magazine we used to kind of acclimate people to join the Green Party. And it says, Green Party of Hawaii citizen activists through mutual self-education. Mutual self-education. In other words, we mutually educate each other because we all assign each other what are all the different points of this problem. And we want to know more than the big boys on Bishop Street know about it. And so, then we're going to put forward a bill. And if they won't do it, then we will do a petition. And they'll tell you down there, don't worry about—don't do petitions because we don't respond to the petition. No, they don't read them anyway. But the thing is, though, is if you get enough on a petition, I get you, they will respond. And the thing is, that's what I would like to do, is go to a situation where we really don't need the legislature. So anyway, so anyway, here—see, the thing is, we call—we think we call what we do is we have a power of knowledge democracy college. I like that. Say it again, repeat that a power of what? Power of knowledge democracy college. That's a great idea. And so the thing is, Green Party on Hawaii, Oahu citizen activists do mutual self-education for action. In our power of knowledge and democracy college, actionability, actionability is the basic requirement. In other words, when we get together, we don't get there at infinitum. We go last forever and ever. We have a timeline to get all the basic information. And then we say, actionability is we have action at the end that solves the problem. What— I love that. What—how do you enable people to do that, given where we are? People say there's nothing to vote for, so they don't vote. But those that do vote don't hold their legislators or the governor accountable. They vote and go home. So how do you get people to do exactly what you're saying, enable people to tell their legislators, this is what I want. This is what we want. How do you motivate, enable people to do just that? You show them something like this. In other words, this is concrete. People are leaderless. They're really not leaderless. They're being led by a narrative, which is set by people who have big money. And basically, the—see, the characteristics that we have to be in competition with as opposed to every person being an equal voter, because campaign contributions, all kinds of things, they throw everything out of whack, and then the people don't get anything so they don't want to participate anymore, so they don't even turn out to vote, because they don't feel like they're a part of the solution. And so that's what we do. That's what we want, why I'm asking. How do we make people part, not just vote, but to feel a part of? Well, you show them that there's a reason to have hope. That's what you have to do. You have to show them, and to me, a lot of our problem could be solved at a three-year-old kindergarten level. Because what happens is that—what happens is people in this society who get to be successful are greedy, bully, self-centered people. That sounds like the president. Exactly. It's a perfect description of Donald Trump. He is the most—you know, that's it, greedy, bully. And see, he's the president of the United States. That is where, right now, the way the system works, that is what we end up getting. I mean, we have a media that sets a narrative. And the thing is, they call the Democrats the lesser of two evils. But you know what that—that's what the people call it. And so, subconsciously, they know that both of their political parties are evil, because they take corporate money. We are not evil. The Green Party takes no— No corporate money. No corporate money at all. And we work with the people. We set up these roundtables, and we attack each problem. And so, in other words, okay, actionability is a basic requirement. A problem studied is immediately followed up by actions that will solve that one problem. And we are the leaders we've been waiting for. Our definition of activist is, citizens working side by side in full democracy mode. We work in citizen action, roundtables, cart. And one issue, as an action group, we gather the facts, historical, and scientific. Then we face the truth together. We then take responsibility, and we do the right thing together, starting with action prep for doing the solution. Then that means we're acting simultaneously with all the other carts of our power of knowledge democracy college. In other words, we have what we call—it's a non-official thing. It's an unofficial college, but it is a college. And we have all these things feeding into it. And we go out and we gather all the facts. And for instance, now, if we go into real democracy where there were no campaign contributions, we'd eliminate the Campaign Spending Commission office. We wouldn't even have that anymore. It wouldn't be part of—and the thing is, I went to hearing about that, and I was like, oh, my gosh, the rules of one—but the point is, the thing is, it's rules governing people with money taking over our election. Yes. Citizens united. Yes. Yes. And so this is—the world is upside down. And we want to turn it right side up. We want to solve the solution. Now, and how much time do we have left? Two minutes. Two minutes. I want to say that I—after I got out of the Navy, I was a nuclear submarine, and we had things that could destroy one country, one country. And the thing is, if we went to war, it would be more than that. And we probably had nuclear winter and ruined the whole atmosphere, the whole world. But the thing is, I got out and became a peace activist. Well, now, just to let you know, my husband was on nuclear submarines from 1950—whoa, on submarines from 1950 to 1974. And now he's—well, of course, he's married to me, so he has to be a peace activist. But now, once you see that power, it changes your viewpoint. Right, right. Yeah. And so the thing is, though, is I decided to go on a quest for human unity. I just—I got out of the service at 12 and a half years. I just left my career. And I embarked on what I call a quest for human unity. And then one of the first things that I—I was going to do it through the pulpit, following Martin Luther King's model. And then one semester, and then I realized all of a sudden, I'm on a quest for human unity, and what is the biggest, most divisive, most horrible things that happen in human history? It's religions fighting each other and fighting within each other. And so, no, this is not human unity. And I finally fell down and figured out it's full democracy. When you actually have one person, one equal education, one equal access to information, true information, like Fox News, and the other thing is one equal voice that has a right to be heard, and then one person, one vote. And that will give us full democracy. And then every time we take a vote, 50% plus one, we will take another step forward in human evolution towards being a humane humanity. And that's—so, and the three legs of that is— Well, now what I want you to do is look right into this camera and tell us why we should vote for you. Okay. And if my spouse were here, she would be saying something like this. And by the way, Renee Ng is a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and I call for you under the Green Party and invite you to vote Green, even in the primary, because there's no opposition, but it shows that people want something different. And so that's what I do. I'm basically, like I say, a quest for humanity, and it's going to be democracy, and truth, and love. And the thing is, we need to learn how to get along, and we can solve that problem in kindergarten when we teach kids not to be greedy, not to be a bully, and not to be self-centered. Thank you so much. This is a pleasure. Thank you for spending this time with you, and as you move along in your campaign, keep in touch. Let us know. Thank you. Thank you. Aloha. We'll see you next time.