 This is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey. Navigating the journey is dedicated to exploring the options and choices that we want in our lives and to assist people to talk about their wishes. It's time to transform our culture so we shift from not talking about it to talking about it. It's time to share the way we want to live our lives. It's time to communicate about the kind of care we want and what we don't want. We believe that the place for this to begin is not in the intensive care, but together we can explore various paths in life. Together we can make these difficult conversations easier. Together we can make sure our own wishes and those of our loved ones are expressed and respected. So if you're ready to join us, we ask, navigate the journey. Today we are going to navigate the journey that is here and now with us right now. And we have my dear friend, and of course you know I only ask dear friends, my dear friend Josh Cross, to talk about a new, at least it's new to me, Pono Hawaii initiative. Now that sounds like something we should talk about, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. In making choices in life initiative, Pono meaning really good, and in Hawaii we want these choices. So tell us Josh, what is Pono Hawaii initiative? Pono Hawaii initiative is a political non-profit. So we do lobbying and we do campaigning. It's sort of a sister, although not immediately related to Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action, which I'm guessing a lot of your watchers know about. So it was founded by myself and Gary Hoeser earlier this year and the idea being that you know at the state level and at the county levels we are frustrated with the slow pace at which things are moving, advancing, progressing. And Hapa sort of took that and really pushed out on issues, but because they're a C3, they're an educational non-profit, they can't do the lobbying effort. And the campaign efforts. What is Hapa? Hapa is Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action. That's a C3 they've most famous for pushing on pesticide disclosure, buffer zones, GMOs, stuff like that. But they're a fantastic progressive organization and they've really helped to transform and bring progressives together across the state of Hawaii. Pono Hawaii Initiative isn't really a spin-off, but is trying to pick up the work that Pono Hawaii can't do. So you're a C4 so you can lobby. So we can lobby. That's our primary mission is to work on issues, $15 minimum wage, paid family leave insurance, disclosures, housing issues, homelessness issues. And our favorite, of course, is medical aid and dying. Yes, medical aid and dying. We also support decriminalization of marijuana and criminal justice reform. I mean, the list of issues that we'd support from a progressive perspective is lengthy. My goodness. How do you get to all of that? Well, so we need to prioritize and the organization officially formed in April of this year. So the board is still relatively small. There's three of us, four of us here on Oahu. We just added a board member from the Big Island and we just added a board member from Maui. So we're still trying to put some of the pieces together and in the meantime, I've been working on and trying to coordinate efforts on the fight for 15. I'm also working closely with the family leave insurance to try and get a bill finally passed next year. So we're still looking at a legislative agenda. So yeah, and we're right at the opening of the legislature, so do you have bills that you have already targeted that you know are going to show up or do you help in writing the bill? Do you at what point do you come on board with a bill? Well, so it sort of depends. So on the minimum wage, you know, I definitely working, helping draft actually a couple different pieces of legislation for minimum wage related issues. Yeah. Yes. Let me go back a few years when we spent two, I did anyway, two years every day lobbying for minimum wage. Yes. And we thought we had a good bill until the Chamber of Commerce showed up. The Chamber of Commerce does not, I think, I won't speak for them, if I had to guess, they would be for abolishing the minimum wage altogether, right? So any attempt to increase it, they are our main opposition and the restaurant association is the other. Well, the restaurant association wasn't too bad, but I remember at when we thought we had a good bill and we all showed up and it looked like it. And then the director of the Chamber of Commerce sits at the table and she says, can we talk? And then when they came back, we didn't have a good bill. Well, so let me say this. So this is 2014. And a lot of ways the circumstances then are mirrored next year, right? We have a congressional race, we have a gubernatorial race. And so a lot of the circumstances are the same. In 2014 and 13, we pushed, I believe we were pushing for a $12 minimum wage, elimination of the tip credit and a CPI chain so that future minimum wage increases were automatic. What we got was 10-10 over four years, 10-10 over four years. They changed, reduced sort of the tip credit and no CPI chain. And at the time, I admit to being fairly frustrated, but a good friend of mine reminded me that these people hadn't received races in a very long time and anything that we could get was better than nothing. Yeah, well, that was what I was told, calm down, Martin, take what you can get. We got to remember that the perfect can't be the enemy of the good. And I often have to remind myself, or people have to remind me, that sometimes we have to compromise in a democratic society, what we do. Well, one person did tell me, because I said that in their organization, and they are a nonprofit organization, that the pay raise was killing them, they said they had to let go of some people because they just didn't have the money. I had to look at it, okay, well, you know, some. This is what's sort of sad and frustrating, is a lot of our allies on progressive issues are nonprofits. They're small, they're funded by donations. And even though they support minimum wage, sadly, they're in a situation where they don't pay their employees, and so it gets to be a hard thing. One of the other things that we're going to be looking at is eliminating the differential for minimum wage for people who are disabled. Right now they can't. That's terrible. Right. And this is news to me. Like just in the last few months. Really? Someone came to me and said, well, that came up in 14 hours of difference. I don't remember that. But so, and it's the same sort of thing. So good organizations like Alanaquilla or Goodwill, these are good organizations that help people, but they're going to oppose an increase in the differential. And you know, in other things they'd be our allies. Like Walmart, for instance, the amount of money they make, and they pay there, and they have all plethora of disabled people. I mean, they really employ a lot of them. And they're also not, they're not big fans of increasing the minimum wage. And then, yeah, they're part of the problem. They are. Right. But they can afford to pay these people if they don't. Right. Right. And the fear is at least the argument that folks like Goodwill and others would make is if we give these people purpose and community and they come and do work for us, but my responsibility was their work less valuable than someone else's work, who you'd pay minimum wage. Why is their work less valuable? And the big issue, Hawaii leads the nation in homelessness, and my thought on that is because you're paying $10 an hour and your rent is $1,800 a month, how do you, how did, that's why we have so many homeless people. Well, it's one of the reasons, right? I think the housing shortage and the homelessness issue is complex and I do believe that a low minimum wage contributes to our high rate of homelessness, but I don't think raising the minimum wage for $15 an hour is going to eliminate homelessness in Hawaii, right? That's not, no, but we have to address, we have to look at that because the powers that be tell us, oh, these people are drug addicts, they're, all this crap. They do not address the big issue is the cost of living and what we are paying people. Well, and so these are, these are, you know, these are symptoms of a larger problem and they're all problems that Pono Hawaii is trying to address in a larger sort of economic justice, you know, platform, right? And paid family leave or paid leave insurances is a huge thing. People, if they're sick, if their kids are sick, they won't take time off because either they don't have it or they don't get paid enough and can't afford to take time off, right? And so a lot of the issues having to deal with, with, you know, cost of living and housing have to do with, we need to do a better job of allowing people in Hawaii to support themselves and their family. How can we continue to say this is the aloha state when it's very criminal, it's very mean? Right. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, I mean, in a lot of, it's a lot of it's really hard to navigate. It is. And homelessness is just one component. You know, if you look at criminal justice reform and what they're trying to do with OCCC and decriminalization, you know, the number of people who are in prison, either because they can't afford in jail, because they can't afford jail or because they can't afford bail, you know, sentences on drug possession, you know, nonviolent criminals in our justice system. And it costs the state a lot of money that if they changed it, it could be put towards other things. Yes. Right. If we, if we just look at that. Okay. So you've got a youngster with one ounce of marijuana and he gets picked up and now the whole system comes into play. So that's an expensive right. And they might get stuck in jail because they can't afford the bail. Yeah. Right. So even before trial, even if they get released, right, or they, they plead down, they've still spent all this time in jail waiting for trial because they can't pay the $500 bail or whatever. Whatever it is. Right. We need to take a break. Oh, okay. And we will be right back with Josh Frost and talking about all the ailments and how we can remedy some of them. Absolutely. Okay. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. I thought I could play, so I didn't chance to play at all. You know, that's my life. I love music. I so I do. Aloha. Welcome to Hawaii. This is Prince Dykes, your host of The Prince of Investing, coming to you guys each and every Tuesday at 11 a.m. Right here on Think Tech Hawaii. Don't forget to come by and check out some of the great information on stocks, besties, your money, all the other great stuff, and I'll be your host. See you too. Aloha, and we're back with my dear friend Josh Frost, and it is Pono Hawaii Initiative. That's right. And its very name, Pono, tells us a lot about the organization. So let's talk, we are coming up on midterm elections. All of the House of Representatives is up for reelection and half of the Senate. Roughly, yeah. As well as our congressional delegation, both and the governor, and the governor, and all those kind of people. So let's talk about elections, because that is at the heart of what happens. All of those people in that square building would not be there if it wasn't for a low turn up. Yes. Well, that's one of the reasons, yes. That's why they get re-elected. Last year, we had 51 members, we had 30 that ran unopposed. Yes. That's not good. So weird. Let's talk about elections, what it is that you can do, what do you want our audience to do to see that this low turnout, I mean, it's okay to re-elect some of these guys. But it has to be a better way to do this than just not being just, you know, like it's your job for the rest of your life. Well, I mean, it's, low voter turnout is one component, right? People running unopposed is another component. Depending on who you ask and for what reasons, people have chosen not to vote, right? I think a lot of it has to do with just a feeling that it doesn't matter, right? People get elected and then they do whatever they want for two years, and then they come back and say nice things and sound nice and ask for money, and then they go back and ignore working people. So finding good progressive candidates to run against some of these people in the House and Senate, and even at the city council level, and the county council, finding good people who share our values and who are electable, right? I mean, it's one thing to be progressive, but if you don't present yourself in a professional way, if you can't speak professionally, if you can't appeal to people in a sort of professional way, then you're not going to get elected, and, you know, so it's really important to identify viable progressive candidates for elective office and then support them. Yes, and they, personally, I think if the candidate, the old and the new, if they don't talk about the very issues we were talking about, homelessness, paid leave, minimum wage, the things that go to the heart of who you are. It's wonderful, you know, okay, so I am against the carpettone that kills the loot. Oh, the sunscreen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's fine, and you know, I support that, but I have a roof over my head. If we don't talk to the people who are on the edge who about the things that, when we, on the way this morning, we see somebody sleeping on the sidewalk, you know, if we don't talk about these things, how do we get, those are the people, the candidates that talk about, these are the ones we want to get elected. Right, well, and we also have to, you know, I mean, that's absolutely right, and talking about issues that affect working people and local people is really important. Now, some of them, you know, do get excited about hot-button issues, right, whether it's sunscreen or pesticides or Mauna Kea, right, people are passionate about those things, and they'll come out to vote based on those things. The problem is, at least from my perspective, those are very sort of surface, right, everyone can say, right, everyone that supports education, right, everyone supports renewable energy and clean environment, but what have, but those people who we continue to elect, what have they done to prove it, right? They want to support working people, what have they done, right, they want to do something about housing and homelessness, what have they done, right, and that is the issue, right, and so challenging them on those core issues and holding them to account is critical. Yeah, you have been in office all these years, and there was homelessness when you came in, there's homelessness now, what have you done in all those years? Right, right, and that has to be at the core of the challenger. Right, but they've got to be able to do it, there is an article or a column in Civil Beat, and someone had done a poll that showed something like 45, 49 percent of people will support a candidate based on their sense of integrity, right, so it doesn't necessarily even have to be about issues, it's how do you come off, right, when I knock on your door, right, do I look friendly, do I sound friendly, do I listen to you, do I, you know, answer your questions, and that's part of it, right, we need candidates who we're going to listen to and respond to the issues in their community, and I think to a large extent the folks at the legislature haven't done that, they send money, right, they do GIAs and things, but they're not, they're not working on the core issues that are really troubling the state, right, and so Pono Hawaii, as we go forward, we will be, we'll be endorsing candidates, candidates that are progressive, that are, you know, working on economic justice and social justice and environmental justice that are viable, can they raise money, right, do they have a professional campaign, are they doing the work of door knocking and fundraising and reaching out into the community, those people that we endorse, we're gonna need volunteers, we're gonna need, you know, money for them and for Pono Hawaii to do the work that we do in supporting them, and then we need everyone to get out and vote. Yes, that's the issue, how do we get people to turn out, and my thought is people will vote if there's something to vote for, not against but for, so how do we present the issue that you just talked about so that people want to vote for? Well, I think, again, in Hawaii a lot of people will vote if they like you, right, so I think, I mean, what you're talking about is, at least I think, is restoring faith in government. People want to know that if they're voting, that their vote translates into action at the legislature, at the county councils, right, and that's not something that we can do in one cycle, right, but we need to be able to say, we're gonna do A-B-N-C, we're gonna fight for A-B-N-C, and even if we don't get them, we need to be able to show that our candidates are pushing hard on those issues. What, now how do we get those that are already in office to realize, how do we get to them and say, look, you're taking up space, we paid for you, we pay your salary, how do we get them to see that they're not doing the job? Well, and I would say that... They protect each other. Well, then this is, yeah, I mean, and, and having been doing this for a while, it's, it's, you, we need to put pressure on them, right, at the end of the day, they care about getting reelected, right, so appealing to that. So some, there's a few of us who sort of say, you know, we don't need to reelect, we don't need to kick out everyone at the legislature, right, we need to build power in a new progress, sort of a new left, right, and, and, you know, in the House or in the Senate, when the leadership starts to see more and more progressives getting elected and standing up for the things they care about, they will have to respond, right, because they'll see sort of a trend shift. So we don't necessarily, I mean, I think they're in the people in the building who would be supportive of our issues if they were sort of forced on them, right, and so getting a handful of, of progressives elected to the, the House and a handful of progressives, I mean, in the Senate, we only need really three or four to really start to change, you know, the environments in the Senate and the House, it's maybe half a dozen, right, to really start, now we don't change leadership, but we won't, you know, transform things overnight, but a solid core of a new progressive group of legislators will go a long way to waking up the people in the building and saying, oh, well, we better start paying attention, otherwise they're coming for me next. Yes. How do we let them know in January that by September or August the primary, that we are going to make sure that there's somebody, that we are going to look for somebody to run against you? How do we, how do we, I know that's kind of hard to say, but how do we let them know that there is this group, these people who have had enough and? Well, again, I, you know, I don't want to, we don't want to make threats that we can't make good on, right, so to say we're going to run someone against you, if we have to let them know that we are building, they know, I mean, that they, you know, the, the, the folks, the legislature, this is what they do, right? So they, they saw what happened in 2016 and, and, you know, a lot of the Democratic legislators were at the presidential preference poll in March of 16, they saw the turnout for Bernie Sanders, yes, they know that that energy still exists, still in Hawaii, right? And, and, and from a broader perspective, the, the, the progressive energy that is, you know, that exists now in the state, I've been in Hawaii for like 15, 16 years, and I've never seen the level of organization for progressives, the, the sort of cross talk, the breaking down of silos minimum wage last year, Sierra Club was a huge supporter of the fight for 15 and for paid family leave and, and they're an environmental progressive organization who's now supporting economic justice causes and we want to support them in their issues. Of course. And so the, the, the, the amount of activity that's going on, the legislators are aware of it, right? There were a handful of people, progressives who ran last year, most of them didn't win, but they're running again. And the people at the legislature and at the county's, county councils, they know they're paying attention. And, and so what happens during the 2018 legislative cycle is going to be really telling for what we think the outcome is going to be in, in the election. And, and whether we are successful or not at the legislature, and even if we don't win as many races in 2018 as we'd like, or as we hope, okay, we're going to come back around and we're going to, we're building a movement. Yes. Well, you know, of course, you're too young to know, but that was the whole way that the modern day Democratic Party took years of building from the time the AJAs came back and the end of the plantation system. It took years of building to be a force. Right. And so now one last thing is time runs out. That's right. Well, on the opening of the legislature, will your organization, will these people, the Bernie people, your organization, will they show up? Will there be some way to identify? Because there's huge crowds, you know, the crowd. Yeah, there will be identified. Will they be identified so that the legislature, when they go to his office, they see how many people. Well, I, there is some, there are, there are some, there's some discussion going on about organizing sort of a progressive rally and different organizations are sort of having the conversation. At the moment, for better forest, Puneau White doesn't have the capacity to sort of help out. Yeah. We will definitely try to turn our people out and be supportive, but we don't necessarily, we won't show up in t-shirts, right? What's important is that, that people, when they go in to talk to legislators, these are the things I care about and what are you doing, right? They don't have to say, I'm from Puneau Hawaii or I'm from Sierra Club or I'm from Democratic Party. They need to say, I am a member in your district. What are you doing to help me and my family? Okay. Well, we are just about out of time. Tell us now the name of the organization, how they can reach you, how they can help, and myself so. So the organization is Puneau Hawaii Initiative. We have a website, PuneauHawaiInitiative.org, and it's all spelled out. It's a very long address. You can contact me at Josh at PuneauHawaiInitiative.org. There's a sign up page on the website if you want to get emails from us. If you want to support us financially, there's a place to donate online and that money goes towards our efforts in supporting candidates, in building the organization, and in the efforts we'll be doing lobbying at the legislature starting in January. Great. Okay. I thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, Josh. We will look forward. Hopefully, because the legislature opens in this time slot, hopefully we can be there with the cameras and I hope so. That would be cool. Yes. Thank you, Josh. As always, it's a pleasure being with you. I know how.