 Thank you and good afternoon to all of you. Today we have the extreme good fortune of having with us for exceptionally articulate, highly respected, very experienced professionals and people who have been colleagues and friends for a number of years and are treasured all of them. We have Dean Danielle Conway of Penn State Dickinson Law. We have Redine Cahiolo. Damn, I knew I shouldn't blow that. Hey, Sandra Sims, thanks for having much easier with and Bill Harrison. We're going to talk about racial and ethnic injustice in a particular sector but as exemplary of what's happening in virtually all sectors and needs to be understood and dealt with, we have reached the enough already point. Hey, Redine, can you start us off with an example from history of where we went way wrong and what's happened since? Sure. Thank you very much for having me, Chopkin, and I really appreciate the opportunity. I did my research on the political history of incarceration in Hawaii and one of the things as a political scientist that I wanted to look at was how different systems and networks play into the disproportionate incarceration and disparate treatment of Native Hawaiians in the justice system. And, you know, one of the things that I did with my research was to look at different case studies throughout history, and one that was really striking, which is very not well known is the public hanging of Steve Kamanova, who was Lili'u and Kalakaua's grandfather. A lot of us in Hawaii know about the overthrow that happened in 1893, but we don't know the actual genealogy of punishment, really, in Hawaii and how it all began with the coming of the different minorities and the change in the landscape with Western ways and Western culture and Western laws. In 1840, Chief Kamanova was found allegedly guilty of committing adultery, which was a foreign law, obviously for Native Hawaiians is alleged to have murdered his wife to escape some of the consequences that would have come for him. Chief Kamanova was the very first person in Hawaii to be publicly hanged at the Honolulu Fort, depending on the source that you read before either 800 or 10,000 Native Hawaiian witnesses who were forced to witness the hanging at gunpoint. There's a book called Governing through Crime, and I think there's a really big difference between governing crime and governing through crime. And what I mean is that by making the public hanging a spectacle, a public spectacle, really what the missionaries at the time were trying to do was to sort of politically inscribe foreign power. In particular, that was really important because the Chief was one of the highest ranks. At the same time that this was happening, it's important to note that the young, the last two monarchs in Hawaii who were children at the time were attending royal boarding school, which really was a setting much like a juvenile detention home where the teachers sort of were surveilling and having these verbal contests with the royal children rather than really educating them. And if you look, read through the diaries of the missionary teachers at the time who also orchestrated the public lynching. You will see that it was a very, very racialized forms of punishment, including not only verbal abuse, but also physical abuse, broken bones, broken shoulders, you know, withholding food. And we find a lot of those kinds of disciplinary punishments in prisons as well. At the same time this was happening, there were also numerous articles that were written on the U.S. continent about how well the Americans were doing in Hawaii to sort of help the heathens, you know, rehabilitate them. And there was a lot of talk about the public hanging and the way that it was a good thing and how Americans were bringing this sort of civility into Hawaii. One of the things that I really am interested in as part of the research too is how the criminal subject is identified. And, you know, I often tell people if you close your eyes and somebody says, well, there's a criminal that just ran in the store and and robbed it. Like what would you picture? What's in color? What's the gender? Are they poor? Are they rich? And I think we know the answer. They're black, they're brown, they're poor, they're demonized. And I think there's a construction of the criminal identity that occurs through many forms and many systems that work together, whether it be through narrative or policy or media. Following the children's experience of actually witnessing their grandfather being publicly hanged as well, when they became adults and started to engage in the legislature, there was this concerted effort to demonize them as drug lords when they were trying to decriminalize opium. And at the same time, the very people who were demonizing them in the legislature were confiscating, you know, thousands of dollars worth of opium and selling it to the British. So, I guess my point is, when we look at the justice system, we need to look at what's not being said and what's not being seen. What's not so visible. I don't think it's either or I think it's a very complex system that feeds off of each other and enables this disparate treatment to continue. And, you know, we might not have, we might not see things so obviously today, but the subtle keys are just as dangerous. Absolutely. So, you know, that that's kind of in a nutshell my research. Phil as a criminal defense attorney for decades here. What's the reality of how this system impacts. Okay, so we fast forward, we fast forward to today. And that historical perspective is in place today. And I think some of the charts as to who do we imprison. It's clear that we imprison black people brown people. Specifically, if you look at these charts and these were done about within the last five to 10 years. So, what is clearly a significant imbalance in the prison population, relative to Polynesians, black folks, and clearly their numbers in society, a well overrepresented in the prison system and that's, that's the same way nationally as well, but this is something to roost here in Hawaii that this is commonplace and it goes back to the implicit racialism or implicit biases in the system that started back. As we deem speaks about with this hanging and a time of imperialism, it just continues on and as this implicit biases systematic. Parties in the system here, don't even know what's happening but continue to perpetrate it. Yeah, without knowing it's happening and look at the numbers that we have here. These charts. They don't lie. Look at the, the over imbalance in terms of the incarcerated individuals in our system and they're clearly weighted significantly on the Polynesian and and black scales. And, you know, we talked a little bit yesterday but I want to bring this point up that, you know, one of the first things that I learned as I became a criminal defense attorney, going through the system. You can see these numbers here. I went in on a Saturday in the prison here and it was the old. Oahu prison which is OP and in Saturdays the families are there. The families are, I'm walking in here and I'm a young attorney. This is the early 80s. I know I look like I just started, you know, practicing, but I did around a while. I go in there and I see these kids running all around in the prison and fathers are coming out from, you know, the cell blocks coming into the population area, and they're high five and one another the shock and one another. And the kids see this and they see it's a normal system it's normal for them and their and their dads to be in this prison system, and it just continues sir, you know perpetuate itself and we need to look at that specifically, I've gone through three generations of family members you know from to son to grandson representing them and clearly that kind of normal attitude is prevalent and that continues the cycle, we need to break that cycle and so that's really a concern for me is that we have this over representation in a prison system. And in particular, we have a system that as those early charts say that we incarcerate more people than anybody else in the world. Okay, one of those charts. Yeah, and one of those charts show that Hawaii over incarcerates more people than many nations. It's just one state. Okay, so clearly we have to address that and that's sort of the most recent trend in the mainland is we have to step away from blocking people up from the time of arrest, you know, on down, and we have to realize that the devastation you do when you when you actually incarcerate someone because you take that person away from the income you take that person away from their families, families suffer, you know, it's just pervasive and just spreads beyond the initial thought of we have to take these people off the streets we have to rethink that process. And these figures show that. Yeah. What did you encounter as a judge with people coming before you that showed you this pattern. I think Bill is absolutely right and I think we shared I shared one of the incidents that that that I recall involving a young man who had come before me at the time he was at that time he was just turning 18 and coming into the adult system. His father was incarcerated fact I had imprisoned his father for some very serious charge but he had his name, and it was a, you know, well known name within you know some criminal circles. And here was this young man coming into the criminal justice system, having had some issues with as a juvenile, but much of that conduct that he was involved in had to do with the fact that he was carrying the father's name. He would just literally come at him expecting that this is what you were going to do. And his goal was to try to kind of pull away, but he couldn't because you know because it was just people expected that from him and then when he came into the system. No one could see beyond that. This is the name you have and so therefore you must be wanting to do this. So, even like with bill is the ability to kind of like break that to break that system was even apparent to me then at some point we've got to stop. That's the one that just actually asked him you know like you know what you're doing is you're fighting people, not because you're wanting to fight but they're calling you out because of who you are, or expecting that you want to do something. So what is it that you want to do. And he told me, I want to be a plumber. So we have this person, you know, we've, we've labeled them like, like Redine was pointing out we have this notion of a criminal identity. So we have this person who was appearing there is like, Yes, your name is so and so you are you are native Hawaiian so therefore you must be a part of this system we've got to begin to see people away from that notion of a criminal identity and see people as people. You know, that's kind of one of the things that I sort of have a pinching about is like not making that stereotypical identity with someone just because of that you're, you know, and it was it was so simple he was a you know really smart young man, but the leaders had labeled him the community had labeled him, and hence there he was, until this, this crazy lady asked him what do you want to do. Okay, let's figure it out. You know, but I mean we're laughing about it but these are very serious issues and, and I couldn't help but note the parallel between the chiefs hanging the very public hanging and lynching it took place in this place in the south I did was the same to really sort of instill this fear. And within those who were forced to watch because blacks were forced to watch it as well to see this is what's going to happen to you if you run a file of, you know, of our system and so again you get that sort of generational in in what did you call it bringing historical trauma is that what is intergenerational trauma, intergenerational trauma, and you have that as well carrying an over into into these communities and so. Yeah, those are. Those are some of the things that I saw as well. Thanks Chuck for asking. So Dean Conway in your position as having to somehow bring our educational system with law students people are going to go out and deal directly with our legal system with this problem of normalizing conditioning that bills. The most iron clad patterns walls that it's hard for youth to get out of. How does that impact how our educational system and our legal systems response to it have to change. Change is going to happen because of this movement that we are seeing black lives matter. LGBTQ, we are looking at indigenous peoples and how they are being now identified as the center of harm take the Washington. Redskins and the final recognition based in economic discourse that this should not be the name I mean so there are these all these opportunities to look at how we address this and how we in systems like a law school. Teach, respond, leave but what I want to say is I want to intervene in the conversation, because we are talking about what I call the criminal industrial complex, not the criminal justice system. I understand that we have to intervene where the problems are happening and that's the systems that precede any connection to the criminal industrial complex. I'm talking about disproportionate poor education for black and brown people, indigenous people, health disparities in these communities that first of all make it harmful for them to work but then we don't want to employ them so that brings in the employment. And so then they become oh look at us in COVID-19 essential workers on the front line. So we have employment disparities, we have income and poverty disparities. All of these work together against black and brown people to cement the institutional racism and bias that acts on them and then when you're trying to do something to help your situation. You come up against the laws that sometimes aren't even written to respond to how you have been disproportionately impacted. They're responding to another segment of the community, and what that community thinks about black and brown people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So my responsibility is to teach that and then to teach how the law should not be handled as some romantic notion, but rather how we can use it as a tool to try to disrupt these institutions and the systematic discrimination and the bias that we experience in these communities. Excellent. And that generates the question, is there a connection between educational teaching of equality right from the very beginning, within the home within the schools within the society. Reinforcement of equality in all sectors, housing, education, healthcare, employment, income, mental health. Yeah, there's a great deep programming that has to happen. And one of my, one of my desires out of this movement is that people latch on to this opportunity to begin to learn about history. The history that Radine is sharing with us, the history that Sandra alluded to and if you read any of Ida B. Wells's work to def to explain lynching in post reconstruction communities. When you see books that talk about Jim Crow and the slave codes that reinforced institutional racism so as to keep racial hierarchy in place, even though the law said, we're going to enfranchise you. These are opportunities to learn not to close your eyes and stick your head in the sand. Exactly. Exactly. You know, I shudder to think about the impact that we're making on the children who are at our borders in the cages and sleeping under those aluminum or mats. The impact that that generation is, is going to have on what we do in our systems. These are, these are, these are kids, children, and poor. This is the impression that they're being given. And so how do you, how do we expect that that generation is going to respond to how they have been seen, regarded and treated in this system now. Bill gave us proof, right? Bill, Bill gave us the proof. Yeah. Yeah, you know, the job is in this regard is going to be very difficult because we have to dismantle as everyone's talking about the system that we have. And yeah, and educate people that the system that they've put in place that they thought were to be systems that take care of their, their communities and the safety and prosperity really has done the exact opposite. And that was this instability, right, in our systems and in our communities. So we need to refocus and redefine what we really want in our communities and that's going to be the real difficult part and it's wonderful that we are now having this discussion, because unfortunately, you know, people have been killed, black people have been killed in the process. This has been going on for generations and no one's been talking about it, no matter that we're talking about it now. We're going to grasp this time and use this time in a wise manner to go forward with a different perspective as to how we're going to look at these systems. Okay, and in doing that, let me ask all of you. The critical process is the mechanism that in X changes in at least formal logs, it may not be in the attitudes or the practices or perspectives or behaviors of people, as we've seen. But how do we get past what is in essence, right now, a racial ethnic class war, being waged between one party and the rest of the country. That first, I think, and I me included I think there's been a lot of apathy around voting for many years, but I think we're all waking up as to how important that is and I'm just going to talk about our local prosecutorial race is now is the time for us to get behind a progressive candidate and I watched the recent debate and was so surprised that two candidates actually do not believe there's implicit bias in the system. This is the 21st century, I don't know how anybody can say that and the other ones may feel that but they didn't say it. But I do know at least one candidate is showing that she's very progressive and I think we need to start rallying around those people and changing the system, starting with the way we vote and educate ourselves before we make the vote. Absolutely. And one of the problems with, you know, politics is that money is an issue to be elected you need the money right and that's always been a problem here because, you know, as Daniel points out we've got industrial complex when we're talking about this issue with regard to that like for instance the prison system. You have a prison system core civic that leases prisons to us, it spends money on politicians to make sure that this whole system continues, because bodies in the prison is important or core civic. Okay, so those kinds of things where we have politicians that are dependent upon money to, to be elected. That runs a file of what we really need here we need people that want to be there and not have to be beholden to any kind of a, you know, individual or organization. And I want to go back to Danielle's comment which I think is an extremely valuable insight and an important one the illusion to John Kenneth Galvress military industrial complex as what is currently a criminal industrial complex there are literally huge entities making obscene amounts of money off of the excessive incarceration both in number and in duration of racially ethnically disproportionate groups that puts money in their pockets. And they in turn put money in the pockets of the politicians who endorse and further that system. I mean the idea is we were growing up that we would have so many incarcerated black and brown people that we would need to send some to Arizona of all places, which when we were growing up with the home of Goldwater, who another good reason that send people there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we turn this around. I just want to say, I mean, I don't know the answer to this, but how do we move away from a society that values retribution over restoration and rehabilitation. I mean, it's part of the culture to be vindictive and, you know, want to punish punish. Interesting. I shared with I also teach sometimes at the shaman not in the criminal justice program. And I shared with my students once, once the notion that the the correctional company that does so many of the prisons wanted to name an athletic state in for I think it was Florida Atlantic University. They wanted to donate the money to, and I just mentioned it, you know, to the students, I think Bill you might have been there for that one. And they were simply appalled. It's like, wait a minute, is this the place that is going to be is building prisons and now they want to come on a college campus and tell us what by their support so I think if you say we're getting this business awareness and this coming to this realization, you know, addressing the issues of apathy that are young people have to start thinking wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense. Why should a prison be financing our stadium. What are they want to what are they telling us where they want us to know. And I apologize. Kind of come to the end of our time for today but real quick wrap up one minute shot Danielle. Thank you again for having me and for continuing these discussions. This is what we should be doing. Come back in two weeks there will be more reading last words. I, you know, I just think we need to keep our finger on the pulse and not let go. We have to use it wisely as Bill said this is the time we have is use it wisely we have an opportunity to really speak to our communities and our constituents and this is the time to do it. Bill. Yes, grasp it and go with it right now. How's the time. You get a small window. No 11 days actually. Thank you all. Let's re gather in two weeks. Great discussion. Thank you so much. Take good care. Thank you.