 Hey everybody, welcome again to another episode of On The Go with Ian Davidson, that's me. Last week or a couple weeks ago we had a person on Lenore mollison, she was a guitar player. A lot of people tuned in, I'd like to thank you for doing that, I really appreciate it and for all of the youth that have tuned in to the iTunes and listened there too. Today we have a special guest, a guest for a show. We're really excited about Beatrice Cantelmo. She is with the Amnesty International chapter here in Hawaii and we're really excited to talk about the things that they're doing here. Let's get right into it. Hello Beatrice. Hello, thank you so much for having me. Thank you very much for being on, especially with short notice. Some people out there might know what Amnesty International is. Some people probably have these vague ideas just because they hear in the media or whatever these little Amnesty officials doing this. Can you tell us just briefly what Amnesty International has an organization as a whole does? Yes, so we are the largest human rights grassroots organization on the globe. We started 55 years ago in London and now we have checked us pretty much in every country, most of the countries. We are supported by 7 million members which are average people like you and I who not only pay membership but also take human rights very personally because it impacts all of us. So we have a chapter here in Hawaii. I think the first chapter was opened in the early 90s and I was active and then it got phased out and so 2014 was when I moved to Hawaii and we had a chapter that was restarting again and so I began as a member and soon thereafter became the co-chair and then the chair. So the way Amnesty walks all over the globe, including here in Hawaii, is that we look at being agents of social justice and human rights advocacy and we do that through awareness. When there are issues and concerns of human rights violations we usually do a very thorough job in terms of documenting those concerns and also reporting on it. We also walk a lot with advocacy and that is done in two ways. One is educational opportunities not only for the members but also the community at large and also with state legislature and then the second part of the way we promote change is through lobbying and advocacy for policy evaluation and changes and so that's what we're doing here in Hawaii. Okay so you're physically going into the state capital all those places and pushing for change? Oh absolutely. Here in Hawaii we hear a lot of things. What is it the Hawaii chapter is up to in particular? Let's say criminal justice reform here in Hawaii. What are the things here in Hawaii that need reform particularly? So do we Amnesty walks? We usually walk within a frame on either global or national priorities and so as you mentioned criminal justice reform is a priority and something that we're involved with not just here in Hawaii but also nationwide. So this year we started walking more at legislature to look at proposed bills so that for example the OCCC budget that's being proposed so that we build a new prison facility. We don't believe we need that and that they are all the social justice advocates that have been doing this walk here in Hawaii for more than 20 years that you know supports the same way because we look at the amount of people who are incarcerated right now at OCCC so it's like close to 1400 people that 999 of them could be free because they really have very like small offenses it's like plastic felony or lesser type of offense so there's no reason why we should be spending $145 a day about $4,500 a month $55,000 a year per person to incarcerate them where they could actually be free and that money could be allocated to rehabilitate them so that's one of the conversations we I think that's very interesting because I've seen some of those numbers and it's pretty staggering the amount of people that are in prison here in Hawaii for many different reasons but many of them are people that really didn't do very big of a big of crimes you know these aren't like they're not the majority of them are like murderers or you know you know what I mean like it seems like we spend a lot of money and there's it's strange because here in Hawaii people like to talk about you know this cost us this this cost us this and not many people talk about that and so are you saying you're lobbying against making better bigger better prisons like if we keep them smaller is that what you're saying we would like to actually walk in conjunction with other social justice advocates here in Hawaii and not just look at prison and keeping it smaller but really looking at a reform where it's not about the culture of being punitive it's really more of a culture of rehabilitation also we need to look at who is in jail are in Hawaii and in the current ultra pussy population 38 percent of them are native Hawaiians or partially native Hawaiians and that is really quite an alarming number because what we see on the mainland in terms of representation of minorities and incarceration because of overcharging issues you know it's happening here so Black Lives Matter movement uh on the mainland that can be very easily translated into native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander lives mirror so we really need to address looking at statistics it doesn't seem that hard to have a jump to getting to the to the we have prisons here solely to house native Hawaiians in some way or to sort of subject them to keep them down here in Hawaii what do you say to people that that tell that say oh well if we rehabilitate they're just gonna go back and do crimes again when we when they get out what do you say to those people that are saying you know you know well I think we need to really take a much broader look at our entire system it's not just the petty crimes you know you have to also look at what doesn't mean you know for somebody of uh you know that comes from a risk uh community not because of native being native Hawaiian but because of poverty perhaps and lack of access to opportunities uh since they're very little and you know i gotta look at uh education i gotta look at our housing situation i gotta look at living wages um how does that translate and how does that you know can be improved also in a in conjunction with criminal justice reform because it's not just working with our criminal justice system it's really addressing the other layers that supports that you know so i would say that uh we're not asking uh criminal justice reformer to let people free uh if they have committed an offense it's really about uh rehabilitating in sense of restorative justice in terms of helping them understand that their actions does have consequences but instead of locking them up you know in jail for a year two three put them in solitary confinement uh that we really are investing in the person that we're investing in education that we're investing in counseling if there are issues with mental health or substance abuse or both uh if there has been issues of chronic poverty that we address that too i would say that the money is here because if we can spend 55 000 to lock somebody up in jail we could easily convert that money into really uh addressing the core issues you know that would perhaps prevent somebody from you know exploring you know criminal life you know as small as that may be it's very interesting all of these sort of topics that you touched on those are sort of things that are occurring here and nationally you did mention that amnesty international does everything you know they're watching things right like internationally and sort of on a larger scale here in america here in america as you know we've got donald trump you've mentioned the word grassroots when you talk about amnesty international i think or at least i do when i think of the word grassroots organization something like that i think of the little man i'm thinking about people that don't have people you know people that are fighting for people that may not have someone there to fight for them watch dogs if you will right now in america i think people are afraid of the things that donald trump and then administration might do to those people because traditionally and you know their views republican views are who cares about the little man ultimately they'll figure it out themselves so i suppose and you know and all the things that donald trump has said i suppose it's pretty easy to assume that amnesty international has probably got some sort of thing going on to watch the things that he's up to oh absolutely we actually are quite active even though we are bipartisan organization and by that we mean we don't really support one political party over the order because we believe it's important that we work with both parties as soon as our trump administration came into power and we started seeing the new executive orders that were issued to address immigration and refugee and anti-muslim mandates amnesty was right there and so we issued a lot campaigns you know in every state to urge members and allies to come together in solidarity and in action so what that means for us here in hawaii and it was quite an organic process because we have aclu we have the muslim association we have several churches we have several social justice organizations they were very concerned about same issues so in January we came up with a joint statement to our attorney general and to our state addressing those issues and say we're really concerned and we don't want this to be something that we want to support as a state these are not aloha values these are not our values in our community and soon thereafter a new collision was formed and it's called hawaii collision on civil rights so that collision is comprised of 30 i think 32 social justice organizations now and uh and so we are looking at why is that together we can address what's happening with trump administration so within two months so much has happened i mean i'm so proud to say that you know we have an attorney general that you know is quite on board with what needs to be done here uh we had a federal judge watson last week that very last hours you know of the new executive order reviewed being in effect say no i don't think so no under a watch and we took a lot to scrutiny for that you know being hawaii but um that's the part of the people it's not the social justice organizations we are listening to the people and just to give you an example when the second review was issued uh ms international have put a uh post on our website on facebook uh asking our constituents here and our members and allies to connect with our congresswoman two cigabas and the senator shatts and uh him himudel and asked them to pretty much uh oppose to these new measures and that within four hours we had close to 500 viewers and six hours later we actually got a note from our congresswoman two cigabas in our own site saying okay we have issued a statement and that cigabas is opposing uh you know to these new ordinances and then uh it was just really powerful to see that it was not just an organization it's the people the grassroots piece of you know the average person who will see something and say what can i possibly do to make a difference for your voice matter and that together we're stronger and within the day we had 750 people who saw that uh yesterday also was a big day for hawaii because uh we are now we now have a measure that's in effect uh uh state legislature have approved that with amends that we are a welcoming state the whole because state i'm sorry if i have mispronounced it to my hawaii language is not that good but what that means is that not only we are uh in the reassuring not only members of our community uh you know who are native hawaii and they come from all over the globe whether they're here as residents or visiting that we are safe state but also this our measure addressed something very important which has to do with ferro immigration laws uh under the new trump administration uh there is one segment of immigration law that would allow for local police to be deputized and walk with ice and do the job of you know immigration police under state of hawaii said no we don't want to do that not only we cannot afford fiscally but it would be something very unfair to those who are here for several reasons but you know it's very important that as as a state you know we were able to make a verbal commitment in writing in our laws in our by laws saying that we protect and we respect and we honor everybody who is here regardless of their immigration status and that this measure also allows for people who may commit a crime and to you know also be uh accountable for it but without targeting them without the racial profiling that our current government administration at a federal level is trying to push so you know it's quite amazing i think in terms of you know how much we have been you know hit in these last months to see people coming together and saying maybe alone we can't do much but together we do have a voice look at what happened today obama care is still i know in effect it is quite amazing at what the power of people can do and one of the things you know all of those things you were just talking about in the past few months here in hawaiian you should see some of the vicious things people have written on our youtube page on the topics and we've touched on these things and there's some pretty scary stuff out there i think a lot of it's blustery you know it's just they don't know but i need to be quite honest i'm very proud of the way that hawaii has sort of taken a stance at trying to be at the forefront of something of maybe something right it's really cool we got to take a break okay please stand by we're going to talk about uh consensual sex workers and some stuff that's going on in okinawa this is on the go i have a Beatrice Ken from amnesty international hawaii chapter here we'll be right back after this message hello ha my name is josh green i serve a senator from the big island on the conus side and i'm also an emergency room physician my program here on think tech is called healthcare in hawaii i'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month we'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in hawaii we hope you'll join us again thanks for supporting think tech thanks for watching think tech hawaii and look forward to seeing you at education matters on tuesday with me carol monley hi my name is seymour kazimersky i have a show called seymours world on think tech hawaii our show is about opening minds and facilitating conversations to tell you the truth i have no idea what we're going to be talking about i have no idea who our guests are going to be but i guarantee you we're going to have lots and lots of fun aloha from seymours world we're back to on the go and i'm ian davidson the host we were just talking about some of the stuff that's gone on in um healthcare today the sort of basically the announcement that obama care is land is law of the land i thought that was really cool did you see that i think that that's really cool you know basically everything that people have fought for and i'm sure you fought for um it's a big one change is coming excited about that we were just talking about some of the things that internationally our internet amnesty international takes care of sorry about that um there's a few things that i'm interested in that we've talked about let's talk about consensual sex worker here and particular in hawaii but before you get into that i find it quite interesting that culturally we're now talking about this kind of stuff like it's it's something it's a change i think is kind of good just i mean i know that it's a kind of the idea is pretty hard fought both sides kind of have ideas on this topic but i wanted to point out that i think it's quite interesting that culturally people can now talk about consensual sex work without getting all crazy in the most recent hawaii business magazine there was a whole article about professional cutlers and i know that that is a is sort of the same sort of sort of thing people paying for an emotional connection or something like that maybe you can set me straight on this but i thought it was interesting that in a mainstream magazine they're talking about sex work in a way that isn't bad or isn't criminal tell me about what consensual adult sex work is so this was actually the first campaign that i'm in this international hawaii trip that i got involved with that's really what our members back in 2015 wanted to work on that year our legislation was going through a lot of change where unfortunately for our state it did not make the lives of adult consensual sex work any easier in fact the current laws that we have criminalizes them quite heavily for several reasons one our state laws the policies they have conflated meaning they bound up and they now consider sex work whether it is co-host sex or whether it's trafficking and prostitution is the same categories and they are not and so we had Amnesty International USA legal team looking at proposed laws back in 2015 and making a statement supporting a good part of the legislation that was being proposed and also pointing out the human rights and violations issues so back in 2015 Amnesty International have just finished their ground work investigation and reporting globally on the human rights violations of adult consensual sex workers one day i exposed to a criminalized system where their trade and their themselves you know are just pretty much put out there you know as criminals so here in hawaii pretty much if you are an adult consensual sex worker and you have somebody searching for your services that person is considered a trafficker don't just a client uh under the person who is providing the sex work uh they have two choices if they get arrested either they say yes i was doing adult consensual sex work and then they get charged with being you know a trafficker as well or they can say i am a victim of sex trafficking which is not accurate either but that's pretty much the choices that they're given also the other thing that our laws have is that it allows for law enforcement to do stink operations where they can have sexual contact with a potential client sex worker in opposing it to be a client arrest them afterwards and be completely exempt from any consequence and because they were on the line of duty and that is not as bad as like what some of the laws they are happening you know in china so that's where we at so to answer your question really by the united nations our definition of trafficking adult consensual sex work is not considered trafficking and it's not considered a co-asked sex so in order to be considered adult consensual sex work it has to be a sexual arrangement between a consenting adult they have to be over the age of 18 and it has to be of their own will and uh and whatever happens between them it's really their business so it is a business transaction um and uh you know unfortunately there is a lot of issues with that too in our society because we talk about it but not really sex is a big taboo there's the religious aspect of it there's the shame and the stigma attached to it as well it's a tricky one i found it quite interesting consensual you know people probably first think prostitutes that's not really not it's you're not just necessarily a prostitute because you choose to do this this is the other business i think what do you say to people that instantly go to oh it just leads to this crime or this crime they're just put it all together and what would you say to somebody that might say um um you know the idea of trafficking in the bundling up it's wrong so i think it's quite interesting because part of where i think amnesty carries a lot of uh credibility in this process we just don't go there and say oh you know we're just going to go and support this because it looks you know cool or because you know we just feel like compelled to do so we have to do a lot of reports and a lot of studies you know to be able to support our position uh so the largest organization that supports anti-trafficking uh education and advocacy on the globe which is the global alliance women against trafficking and they serve over 90 countries uh they and this has been like 20 years of work that they've been doing in this field that they have come to the conclusion that actually by criminalized adult consensual sex work uh you're actually increasing the ability of perpetrators to actually traffic people uh in which ways uh you know if you are actually afraid of law enforcement and you know that they will come to you to penalize you it is at least likely that you're going to come forward to say that you're being abused by perhaps an employer or a client or if you have seen an activity that is really more like an alignment with trafficking you're not going to report it also gives much more room for this type of the trafficking piece of it to run underground uh and because it's hidden and it's you know it's something that there is not much leverage for people you know to really do much about it uh but the other part too is that I think people really have to start working with the unlearning process and being able to separate what trafficking means from cost you know prostitution from consensual prostitution we call it sex work actually because that's what it is it is work uh and uh and so once you're able to see the differences uh and you're able to handle it differently I think then that there is a counter counterculture of of change too within our own laws where law enforcement trained to differentiate all three parts you know from an amnesty standpoint we do not support trafficking whatsoever in any way shape or form we do not support commercial sex done by anyone under the age of 18 and so you know we really have a big commitment to you know prosecute and also to criminalize criminals you know that commits crimes against people because they are either forcing someone or because they are doing that you know with a minor but in the case of an adult who is you know doing adult consensual sex work we have to also protect their rights and it's not just their right to walk it's their right to safety it's their right to access to health because once you are criminalized it's this likely that you're going to seek health services because you're afraid that your information is going to be shared with law enforcement so then you have to look at STIs and HIV you know percentage beyond the rise you also have to look at what does it mean to have a criminal record for actually doing something that's consensual and it's not considered a crime by the United Nations so you know like if you really try to look to someone look I don't support prostitution you can do something different or the first part of it is to criminalize it because once you do that then you have to address all the issues which is like what kind of options are you really providing to people who may wish to leave the field but you know financially it makes a lot of sense for them to continue to be there so that they can support themselves and their families and they are making actually a choice as an adult to say I'm going to do this right it's not that they are being forced to do it so you have to look at this you know from several angles and so that's one thing that we've been doing it now for two years and we had the two new bills that were introduced and Amnesty actually provided a statement in support of that would decriminalize sex workers in the state of Hawaii and also would expunge their criminal record you know from previous years that they have been arrested for practicing you know their job and so the bills were not killed which is a good news but it was also not hard this year so we'll have a year the good news is that we have a year to work with our state legislature to educate them about what is it that we're asking of them in terms of you know all of these reforms and that's the way I think we can play a big role as Amnesty is through education and also work with the grassroots piece of it where sex workers can hopefully come forward and also talk about their own experiences not only by being criminalized but also about their job their trade the older states in this country that they actually have sex workers associations and organizations and cooperatives and that they are doing you know a lot to to protect one another and to support each other so hopefully they will also move forward here in Hawaii well hopefully you know these things take time and you know these things aren't going to happen overnight and like I was saying culturally there's our shifting as much as I'd like to talk about this forever we have sort of run out of time it goes fast yeah it's they're telling me my ear cut it off come on but before we do I do there was one other topic I want to talk about people talk about you know political prisoners in other countries all the time we talk about people here in America you know the big names that Chelsea Manning you know Snowden these are sort of political people that are prisoners of their own selves for things that they've done that things that they've done that they felt they were doing or are doing for the right reasons I did want to you did mention to me just short quickly if you could just mention the person's name in Okinawa that is standing up against American bases being moved in there and is subsequently incarcerated by the Japanese government yes so that son Mr Hiroshi Yamashiro he's a 64 year old peace activist on that he was doing peaceful assembly and protest against the expansion of a US military base in Okinawa when he was arrested in 2015 no 16 and then he's been denied bail even though really the Japanese Supreme Court does not have much grounds to keep him under custody and so Amnesty has issued a global urgent alert not only to educate people about you know his human rights that are being violated and to ask that he be free immediately but that he also be allowed to have medical assistance and also to be able to see his family which he's not allowed to and also that you know the Japanese government and the world in general so look at the rights of people of free assembly and to be able to speak freely about things that they believe in and all being persecuted for that so we thought that Hawaii would be a very wonderful place to be able to bring that level of awareness because of the ties that we have with Japanese and Okinawan cultures you know that we have many members of Okinawan community and also the Japanese community living here in Hawaii and also the history that we have with militarism that is not very different from what has happened you know and is happening in Okinawa so the conversation we'll have to talk about this some more there's stuff going on all around the world and watch watch go out there and google some stuff check out Amnesty International what they're doing thank you very much Beaches for being on I appreciate you for tuning in this has been on the go if you're listening on the podcast watching on YouTube subscribe tell a friend all that good stuff see you next time