 Thank you for joining us. My name is Durasian and I'm the host of this thing tech show which is called finding our future and I'm here every other Wednesday at 1 p.m. interviewing someone I love and respect in the community just to get perspectives on issues sustainability and ways that we can have a more secure and just and sustainable future. So today we have Kanyela Ng. I think to me you're like semi-famous you're like well-known in our circles I think and Kanyela was a really progressive politician that inspired at least a lot of young people that I you know have worked with to get involved in politics and care more about progressive issues so you can introduce yourself that would be awesome. Thanks for having me first of all I'm excited to be here. Yeah so I'm Kanyela Ng and I think as you stated in the beginning I'm a recovering politician so you know I started really early I got in office at 23 years old before that I was working with Stanley Cheng in the City Council and OHA in DC then I saw someone in my home island who was elected as part of that Tea Party wave in 2010 and you know my father passed away when I was young so like my mom had four kids and she had to figure out how to make it and we relied on all these programs like social security pretty much everything you think of food stamps and this dude wanted to cut all those programs right like drastically that's what he said in one of his questionnaires I was like oh I don't know if he really represents my values one and he's like supported by all these developers that are just wiping out our coastlines and making it not for normal local people working people on my home island so I had to move home and take a shot and we weren't supposed to win because we were outraised and outspent 10 to 1 but knocked on every door and we ended up winning by quite a bit 26% since then we just kind of worked my way up the eight house you know passing a lot of cool stuff marriage equality we worked really hard on on the first 100% renewable energy goal in legalizing industrial hemp that's with like a lot of help from all of our colleagues of course but started to realize like there's only so much that can be done this like system that requires all this compromise but like meanwhile Wall Street doesn't really compromise nature doesn't compromise so if we're like doing these incremental half measures it's not really gonna solve our most pressing problem so I have a three-year-old kid now I have a six-month-old kid within their lifetime Waikiki could be underwater we can see a up to six and a half would sea level rise now is a new estimate right so a lot of my works now is around climate change or fighting the climate crisis or at least the most migrant effects of it and helping folks out with like indigenous movement what's going on in Mauna Kea and making sure that we stop criminalizing the protectors of our planet that's what I've been up to yeah long long version there's so much there when I get into a lot of that but since we're talking about Mauna Kea I remember I wanted to have someone on the show but I couldn't find someone who had like been there and you had that deep ties and roots so if you could just share like a brief reflection from your time being there with the protectors on the mountain I would love that. Sure so my role in the beginning was just to amplify so one of the people that volunteered on my campaign Mikey Inouye on Hawaiian Great Ally he filmed this super gripping video of the first arrest of the Kuna and we were able to take that video and get it way out there so our friends on the Sanders campaign the Warren campaign Alex Ocasio Cortez who was a justice Democrat with me when I ran for Congress we had them I had them retweeted and within like a few days it got over two million views and we raised $200,000 for the bail fund just off and we just like got on the board of this bail fund like two weeks before that so you know a good friend Kevin Landers got out he realized that like as a white man in Hawaii that's not from here that if he's starting this great initiative it might be appropriate to get like a bunch of Kanaka Molly on the board so it's like I'm the only guy it's like a bunch of really strong and really quickly we grew this out and we've bailed out about 150 folks so far this year a lot has to do with movement so that's been my role a lot of amplifying but also and then the bail fund so on the ground organizing and you know being up there it's just it's really humbling it's the first time I've seen this kind of focused energy and like a chance where a lot of these people that are going up to the Mono like native Hawaiians are like really downtown types like they never knew they had this like aloha in our environmentalist side until now and and you know I think this movement of like indigenous people and non-indigenous are native people and non-native environmental allies like that's how change has happened historically even like in Principal Heels time so it's kind of this cool repeat of history yeah but we got to figure out how to like keep it going as you know oh a lot of it everyone still dies out everyone's depressed again yeah yeah occupy same thing but then you just gotta wait for like the next moment but in the meantime you have like governors that are zeroing out DHHL and stuff like that so it's like how do you build this yeah how do you capture momentum into a structure so that's what I'm working on the pictures of the Mauna Kea folks that Kamiella was with on the screen and then yeah if you can share also like what like what do you envision for your for the future of this movement like how how would you like to see it move forward and like what would you like to see it so in like an hour when I have a meeting with a bunch of folks from different native Hawaiian organizations and environment organizations we're gonna focus this not I think there's like this this thing where it's like okay there's people on the streets now we got to get them to the polls and like we got to get them testifying in the legislature but like there's like 20 steps in between that that we cannot ignore right and like not everyone should be an advocate like we need activists and like the sunrise movement's a good example of that for climate justice like they're not trying to they're not building up a bunch of young active like lobbyists that's not their goal right their goal is you escalate it with like an action like when you bird dog Center Feinstein and let them yell at she's like yelling at this kid that video was viral then you figure out a way to capture all those new public supporters into your movement and they continue it and then train up those new people so they can do it again and the cycle repeats until you grow grow grow yeah now there's like hundreds of sunrise hubs across the US yeah because the target isn't necessarily the decision-makers all the time the target is the public and if you can change the public to have like actively support your cause then you win and that when the electoral wins come easy let's say the wins come easy without it like even if you get a legislative win it gets like reversed the next year or watered down because the public pressure isn't there so like when you look at the lunch counter sit-ins and like civil rights era they're not or Selma they're not targeting politicians or target the public and that's how like even the latest the LGBTQ movement kind of all that same thing we use legislation like marriage equality as a vehicle to organize around but it shifts the conversation so now climate change isn't just about us like driving less and not using bags it's also about transforming a system that incentivize yeah and it's all because of these like a few young kids yeah I think what you said reminded me of this I think in Linda's a civil beat investigative reporter and he's been around for a while but I saw him on a panel and he said like what if you know we reported on politics as like the same way we did with sports so we're like oh Councilmember Fukunaga killed the styrofoam bill and like just like characters and like enthusiasm and like play-by-plays and replays because if we did that and I think that's what social media is so good at like the Sunrise movement they have these like they like basically got these great videos like Joe Biden and Senator Diane Feinstein like embarrass them because they're just being themselves and they're not listening to young people and they're being disrespectful to the needs of the community and like these 10 15-second clips can go so viral on social media that they become this movement kind of like similar to how a sports creates conversation so I think that's like I don't know that's really fun for me to like see how social media I know it has its downsides but it's able to like move people to get energized about politics yeah it's interesting example because there's a lot of criticism about politics being a spectator sport right but like I guess rather than like just like blue team red team you know we're gonna win this maybe a more like fantasy sports like fantasy football like where people pick their players and their issues but they're actually invested in it personally yeah it's like that's the goal right it's not just like the news and like watching the highlights but like your skin in the game so that's what these movements are starting to do starting to be more about collective empowerment than just individual choices which you know both are important but like the fact is there are 10 corporations that like emit was it and there's a few corporations that are is responsible like 70% of the parking emissions and the US military is like bigger than most countries right so unless we're addressing these issues in like a holistic way like demilitarization is is climate action right so I think that's like what the young voices folks much even much younger than us are really pushing these days and I titled this show perspectives from a recovering politician because that's how you introduce yourself at the People's Congress this weekend and I wanted to ask you why you say that like what is it that you're recovering from and how does it how does your perspective now differ from the way you felt when you were 23 you said 23 and one and you're I'm guessing you're like one of the youngest ever so can you just share like Bernie that you had and where you are now yeah I mean I was like a lot of people from my court maybe you're a little bit younger me was more like the Bernie stuff but like an oh wait I was really engaged by the Obama campaign he was like the change candidate right like oh he captured everyone the left middle right whatever and I got in thinking that like change was possible in the paradigm that he presented and you know once he got in he was like I'm not letting any lobbyists in the White House three months later he did I'm not appointing any donors as ambassadors surely did well I mean he had like the big banks actually vet all the people that he pointed on into his like cabinet and it's for a drone strike was like three days out so I at the time wasn't like disillusioned because I was still like riding off of the high of like that campaign but like in retrospect it's like man is that really all necessary in order to create change like you had both chambers you had the Senate and the House and the White House supermajorities like we could have had Medicare for all we could have had meaningful climate action but because of the way the donor and everything was set up we didn't so when I like that's now that's my perspective now but when I came in I was still like believed in that like we can just all bring people together and kind of moderate our voices and win and yeah we passed some bills like we passed same-day voter registration which was meaningful like on Maui we use that to increase the turnout by 25% if the council like a lot of stuff we did was too incremental like oh we're gonna economic justice and like we're running embodied in her in our newsletters but it's a $25 food tax credit and like yeah that helps some people a little bit but like the rising cost doesn't even balance it off like yeah so it just a lot of it seemed really disingenuous and like the need to compromise was really just a need to appease your donors yeah so that's coming out like coming out of the legislature it's like I know like people are like look why don't we just elect more progressives or elect more Hawaiians the thing is like if you're not allowed to be Hawaiian or progressive in the legislature then what's the point like if you got to suspend that self or compromise a part of yourself we should really be focusing on creating an environment that welcomes those kinds of perspective so how do you I mean it sounds like there's a there's a deep brokenness about the system so I mean you've been in it for several years and now you're out so what is what do you feel is the healing that's needed like if these few things were fixed and healed well like then you would feel comfortable going back into that system to enact I mean I think we all have our roles and even like people within the system are like our allies and you know I'm not saying like it doesn't work it's just like you're gonna be like honey you got to be balanced the thing is yeah it's just so off-balance right now there's a Star Wars it'd be like full Empire like yeah I'm like the Jedi's were asleep for a long time because they felt like they weren't needed but like sometimes you need that like hardcore people that are gonna lay it out I keep hearing the Jedi analogy just to balance it out right it's not like the balance isn't there I can I'm not gonna name names but you can easily find like five people on this street or history or five to maybe 20 people that are also on every like nonprofit board that matters and are largest donors and it's like it doesn't have to be that way like the things that Bernie Sanders talks about how three men have more wealth than 50% of Americans it's not we're not immune to that here and especially when it comes to power and so I think you know we're looking at like elections or the best nature of let's actually look at real power in real terms like what this who's actually calling the shots right and so I mean literally sounds like some of that is like fixing how donations work I know there's a lot of regulations but it seems like there's potential there to reduce the amount that corporations can influence a politician yeah and those things matter like we had good bills like I ran as a public funding candidate I know there's there's you know we propose what Andrew Yang is proposing now those democracy dollars or vouchers yeah we propose that like five years ago publicly funded campaigns like full comprehensive public funding like those are good things but they don't have a public support they're not gonna move like it has to outweigh the donor influence and the same we're like you know people wanted rent control in our district or like some form of it like all California has I'm not like old-school rent control that life was housing stock but new kind and it was a bill and then it's just the realtor association which are a lot of good people I agree with them a lot of stuff but like there's no one on the other side representing renters yeah exactly and you do like a living wage bill and there's like cool like academic advocates like yeah let's go but there's no actually wage workers there and it's like so how do you organize that you know without like the unions right now they're busy just protecting what they have so like there's no worker center advocates so like a lot of these organizing on the ground is gonna be more important than these like posing incremental legislation yeah so yes there are fixes we can do within the system for like campaign finance and stuff but unless it's like a movement of people it it can only go so far okay well we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll come right back hello I'm Catherine nor and I'm the host of much more on medicine on think tech Hawaii we talk about medical issues and I interview guests regarding medical matters and I'm really excited about upcoming guests I hope you join us every other Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha and see you then Aloha I'm Jane Sawyer with the Small Business Administration and one of your hosts for Adventures in Small Business a partnership with think tech and with the Hawaii Small Business Development Center the Mink Center for Business and Leadership and the Veteran Business Outreach Center all serving small businesses in Hawaii and telling you the story about their strategies their ideas their drive and the way they help Hawaii succeed and be a bright light in small business you'll find it here every Thursday at think tech thanks for joining us and we hope to see you soon thanks for joining us my name is duration I'm the host of think tech Hawaii show finding our feature it's here every other Wednesday at one o'clock and today I'm here with Connie Ella Ing so we were talking about politics and change and the challenges and opportunities that exist within our existing framework and I would like to I guess I want your feedback because I'm interested in getting more progressive people into politics I think that that's kind of my lesson as a 27-year-old activist been doing activism for 12 years it just seems like we need better people in there to not have to convince like they're convinced so we know we have a vote instead of like you know it's seems like so inefficient to be like convincing conservative corporate bought-out people that like people matter and climate crisis is urgent for someone to care yeah so it seems like you're kind of like in you're kind of sharing multiple perspectives of like you know you can't do everything from inside but we do need more people in there so like what your thoughts are yeah I don't want to like I think when I say like focus on the public opinion yeah like that's really important but look what happened with like the Obama campaign or the Bernie campaign like Justice Democrat who like were monumental getting Alexandria Ocasio Cortez elected those are volunteers from the Bernie campaign like so was the sunrise movement and the Bernie campaign arguably came from the energy of the occupied movement right 99% his whole messaging so like it's all kind of connected the inside outside and they reinforce off each other and candidates are part of movements women's are part of the candidates energy and movements are within larger movements throughout history like we're all just kind of following our ancestors footsteps so yeah I think it's like all the above if you run a really we still live in a really individualistic society so like ironically these individual electoral campaigns around one person can create like this collective community like that's our campaign even though we lost we had like 400 people out on election day fine-waving and we're doing like over 1200 doors a day or it's the last few weeks unfortunately for us our momentum peaked when 75% of people already submitted their ballots because they're early voting but it shows that like and then a lot of those candidates are like trying to look into run for office now a lot of those volunteers or they're moving up in high-level activism so it's all connected I'm with you that like if we got people that like saw the world the same way as us it would be a lot easier but that can't it can't be all the eggs in the basket right because like just Democrats their goal was to fit 400 seats they got a few wins and just those wins already changed American politics so it helps to shoot big because if you think incrementally and the other side is like Koch brothers we're gonna you know sell out everyone and build a wall and it gets her bad and all that stuff we're gonna lose because the compromise is gonna be over here so you got to hold it down and I want to go back to what you had said before that you were saying how people inside the legislature were like oh you know you have to be balanced and you were like you know there's no balance right now and so what I took from that is that if you say balance in the way that powerful people wanted then you're basically maintaining a status quo that's not taking care of people on the planet and I really like that because AOC says something along the same lines is like everyone's like she's a radical leftist socialist and it's like she says like I'm not moving the party far left and moving the party back home because I think the Democratic Party and any movement that claims to be progressive isn't truly progressive if people are still suffering and not being taken care of and so I think that's really important is not to like claim this identity as like left or right but to stay like where are our values and are we still there and I think that's like really what we need to do in Hawaii as well. Yeah that was our message it was you know we're returning the party home or in our campaign we said coming back to our roots because like our Democratic Party for example comes from a really radical history of struggle like our you know people were shot and killed on a pebbin massacre like it was native Hawaiians that rose up Filipinos like we brought together they purposely separated us by race so we couldn't communicate with each other but it's like hey we're gonna create this like pigeon so we can like figure this out among workers and come together and it worked like we rose up and we took on the corporate establishment I want and we created this political party even and we did it before and we can do it again. Totally. What is your sense on engagement of young people slash new voters like do you feel like that's improving I know we have one of the lowest voter turnouts but like do you have the optimistic sense for all of that? Yeah the thing about turnout in Hawaii is it's strange because we say we have the lowest turnout but we don't I mean we do in a general election but like there's no action in general election if you look at the primary election we're actually one of the highest turnouts in the nation we're at like 25% 26% and primaries matter more in some ways. Right so you look at AOC's district which is also decided by a primary right it's Democrat plus 18 advantage her turnout was around 2% so when she says we're gonna flip the people who vote she only has to turn out 1% of the electoral and that's a 50% skew of who actually vote so that's a good strategy for us when you're talking about 25% of people and it's a lot harder to like get new voters out it makes sense to target people who vote regularly and they happen to be richer they happen to be from like affluent areas and a lot older so that's where like a lot of the campaigns it's like a reinforcing it's a system that reinforces itself right because if we only target willing age of people the same people over and over yeah it is a strange myth like my race we needed 50,000 people to win if it was one-on-one we'll cost you only to 10,000 there are city council races that are like much bigger that's like the state Senate Julia Salazar from her same district in Bronx needed more votes to win in this congressional so it's it's a I think people gotta look at the numbers a little bit more I think it's like understanding that primaries matter more in Hawaii because basically everyone's a Democrat and so the primaries where you get the winner right it's almost like the general it's just like an obligatory pretend thing for a lot of races right but when you a lot of focus is like oh we were like not turning out and like we're scolding young people like if you only came out and it's like first of all you're not gonna shame anyone at the voting so you gotta meet them where they are and and like rock the vote that kind of stuff doesn't really work because like if you're talking about voting the only people are gonna pay attention or like people who care about voting you gotta talk about something else like the whole brand should be different right and if you talk to a lot of people our age like you probably have friends who aren't like super political I know I do yeah and like they don't really know what a primary election no they don't understand what it is yeah they kind of know election day but like you talk about a primary like wait what I gotta vote twice the same year but yeah it's confusing it's a lot of like vocab and I've talked about people that went through law school and stuff even them they're like so I think it's more about that like just getting people to understand where like the power really lies right so where do you want to focus your energy I mean what I guess where are you focusing your energy now and now that you're not a politician like where do you see yourself best being of best value to our community yeah so right now I have two kids I have a six-month-old and a three-year-old so you know my partner works full-time so I stay home and I do contracts where I can helping progressive causes the border this bail fine and that's that's where I want to be I want to spend time with a baby it's a lot of fun but on the line I think when you're in office and you're like speaking against certain powerful institutions in Hawaii you become a target in a very real way and what I want to help focus on right now is creating a movement that's not leaderless but leaderful so that there's only target people to take down the whole thing right so even a lot of trainings organizers across the state because especially with monarchy happening like this so this picture right now is that's the bail fund that's a bunch of the reason why they're all young men is because they separated the folks of different genders into different police stations and I happen to meet them at Pearl City and bail them out a lot of these people are like willing to do more than just come out to a march but they're not necessarily like gonna be giving testimony at a hearing that's not really where they see their role is so like how do you train them up to be new leaders let's kind of be my role that's interesting yeah I'd love to see where that goes and do you have anything that you want to feel or know like what would be like a message that you put on a billboard or something that you would like want to share one message with everyone I just want to focus on climate change a little more in Hawaii I mean everyone likes to talk about it like you know it's greenwash propaganda like HECO to say to white but these are really folks that have been purposely slowing things down I feel and at this point if I know there's there's not one way to tackle this problem I'm not gonna say like we have like the best solutions but if you think that we have 25 years to act and you're saying 100% by 2045 and that's inconsistent with science like that's climate denial right if you're saying that we can fix this with cap and trade or like a nominal carbon tax that's inconsistent with economics that's also climate denial you can't just like you need of a measure that's actually gonna rise the scale of the problem because nature doesn't compromise so I just hope folks understand that message like how high the stakes are and even in terms of real dollars like really paying billions and billions in the future and like the red climate refugees that would be coming here it can't be overstated really the risk is too high to not act right away in a meaningful way that's a message to like you know Senator Shotzi's been an environmental champion for a long time but I'd love to see him like rise to the occasion and really champion like a green new deal style that's yeah I totally get urgent rapid change man you know what waiting to see that I think there's a growing movement so thank you so much for being here with me it was awesome just to interview and hear all your thoughts oh likewise yeah thanks for having me