 Aloha, good morning, or good afternoon. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Kimpanya. I'm going to do my little Trump dump segment here for a minute, and then I'm going to jump in with my guest today. I'm very happy to have my guest today, Mr. Tim Vandevere, chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. So my Trump dump is this. When is enough enough? How much do we have to see? And when will there be even? There has been outrage. But when will there be enough outrage so that the Republicans will actually do to Trump what they did to Hillary before she was president? What is the deal with all of that? Why is there such a disconnect? It's obviously political. It is obviously hypocritical. And it's a problem. And why isn't there more outrage forcing this whole situation into a greater conversation? There seems to be some movement mostly by the Democrats. There Chavitz says yes, he's now going to ask for the memo from Comey with all of this stuff that's been going on. So he fires Comey. He meets with the Russians potentially in the Oval Office without the US press there, excluded them, but got let the Russian press be there. Okay, why is that acceptable? And then he proceeded potentially, we don't know the truth, this potentially gives classified information to them or at least based on some information that he'd heard. What was that about? Why can't we learn more about it? Why is it being hushed down? And then we come back with, oh, now this memo where he asked Comey to kind of let the whole thing with sessions go or let whole thing with fling go. When is it enough? When is it enough? It needs to be enough. So okay, that's my Trump dump rant. So I'll let that go out. All right. Thank you for letting me get that. Okay, now, today, I'm very happy to have as our guest on this show, Mr. Tim Vandevere, as I mentioned, Chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me back on the show, Carl. What a difference an election makes. So I know kidding. No kidding. You know what? I have been over the years, and this is interesting, and I'm hoping it's not going to hurt me in any way. But it's interesting. Over the years, I have been more of a rational, not moderate, but rational person where I thoroughly consider things and think things through. And I don't just come out and rant and rave. I think things through. Ever since Trump got elected, my insights have just refused to not yell and scream about something. And I think that that is something that is the cause of a lot about rage and a lot of the movements that have been happening out there, the women's march, and you name it. Sure. So what I want us to talk about, and that's going to be a lot of different things that will come up here, but what I want us to talk about is, from the Democratic Party of Hawaii, we've got all of these issues going on. We have all of these races going on across the country, these special races going on with Ossoff and all of these up in Montana, and in Georgia, and in all these places. Let's start off by talking about here in Hawaii, what can the Democratic Party of Hawaii do? And what are we doing to help support other races across the country in our opposition and our sense of resistance to Trump and that what seems to be the Trump agenda? So let us know a little bit about from the party's perspective, what's being done? What can we do? Well, I appreciate the way that you frame that because as you know, our focus, my focus as the chair of the state party has to be on local politics, has to be on organizing our members, providing the infrastructure, providing a place where people can interact with the party, and working on our local and state races. But at the same time, obviously, with what's going on on the national level. And I think your reaction actually, what you mentioned in your reaction, the outrage yelling at the TV said, I think that's fairly normal. What I don't think is normal is allowing these things to sort of go unsaid, right? To actually normalize that behavior, I think is the more dangerous thing, right? So those of us who care deeply for our country, for our democracy, I think it's very important for us to have a sense of outrage and to sustain that sense of outrage. So what the local party can do, in regard to that is to be ready when it's time for us to lead, right? I've in the last few county conventions, be it on Maui or Oahu, or a couple of weeks ago on Hawaii Island. I've been reiterating this this sort of counterintuitive point, which is this is a good time to be a Democrat, right? That's a weird thing to say about the party that is in the minority nationally, the party that's in the opposition. But I do believe it's a good time to be a Democrat, because if we can take all the energy that you mentioned, Women's March, Indivisible J-20, and translate that into political power, we're going to have a real opportunity. We are going to have an opportunity, I think, like we haven't seen perhaps, since the new deal. But we have to be worthy of the title. And so in many ways, we have to reflect, I think as local Democrats, I think we have to organize as local Democrats, some of the things we have been doing, just to sort of keep people engaged and interested, and give them a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose is to allow them to come into the headquarters and make phone calls into places like the Georgia 6th Congressional District. And one of your co-hosts here, Governor Wahey, has come in to help us out, former Governor Abercrombie has come in to help us out to bring our members together and say, Hey, this is what makes us Democrats. And we're going to help those folks that are on the front lines right now, because we know we're going to be there very soon ourselves. And there has been a huge effort. There's also the guy Beto in Texas going up against Ted Cruz. Beto O'Rourke. Beto O'Rourke. So there's a lot of opportunities there. So one of the things that's been happening, and this is an interesting thing. So I'd like to get your perspective on this. One of the things that's happening is all of these resistance groups. So you mentioned several of them, there are many more people power, winward resistance, J 20 indivisible women's march, but then there are many more. And many more people who have been part of the establishment more groups that have been more considered establishment or ready to work with the establishment are starting to take a step back and say, You know what, enough enough with the ethics issues, enough with the lack of transparency, enough with the no accountability, where what what can we do? So I think that's that's that energy. And yes, I like to talk about that energy as well. This is the time we have the opportunity right now to capture that energy and do something positive with it. And hopefully we are. So what, how can we how can so okay, the phone banking that we're doing and helping other areas. And one of the things that's happening is all of these resistance groups, individuals are donating are helping directly to the candidates. And some people are saying I'm skipping the party, I'm going right to the candidate. Sure. Sure. And I can kind of see the point there, you know what, I don't want to give the money to the party because how do I know all of it's going to go to the candidate I want? And how do we know what's going to be used effectively? So I don't know, would you have a comment with regards to that? Well, I can understand it to some degree. I mean, this is what I what I mean when I say things like we have to be worthy of the title worthy of being Democrats. And obviously, on a national level, our party is undergoing a transition. We saw during the primaries a very heated discussion about the future of our party. I still believe that we're a big tent party some say a too big tent party, but I do believe that we're a big tent party. But what I would say is that we have seen in our big tent different ideologies sort of rise to meet the challenges of our times. And there are many that are very frustrated with the way that we have responded to privatization and corporatization of our democracy in the last 20 or 30 years. Yes, absolutely. And some of that began with Bill Clinton. Yes, and in that bringing in the corporate side to the Democratic Party. Yes. So okay, so maybe that's something that could be historically, but yeah, very quickly. So I mean, there's an argument to be made that, you know, that that was what was necessary to sort of meet the challenges of those times, right, arguing under this Reaganomics framework. Perhaps that was the only way a Democrat could have been elected president after eight years of Ronald Reagan, four years of George H. W. Bush. But what I would say, and what I think many in our party are saying have been frustrated with this center left approach is that we need to go back to the New Deal. We need to go back to bold action, a strong social safety net, responding to the privatization and corporatization with organization and mobilization, getting people out. So I understand that some extent sort of circumventing the party, but at some point we do need to come together if we're really going to address the problems. And that frankly has been one of the conversations. I feel fortunate that I've been able to be involved in a number of different conversations from some of these groups. And they all say, yes, we marched. Yes, we are standing in opposition and resisting. But you know what? We needed to be more. Yeah. And they're now trying to see in what ways they can come together. A lot of them talk about, yeah, I really should be more engaged with the party. I really should. But how do we make that happen with some of the dissatisfaction that some people have? Sure. So I think that's one of the challenges that here locally we have as a party is how we get the local people engaged in a Democrat dominated state. We still don't have all the people who consider themselves Democrats engaged in the party. They're engaged in other ways, but not as the party. So I think that's we need more conversations and we need to bring more people together. There's efforts for that. But how do we create a message that says we're with you, not against you? It starts with authenticity. It starts with making our party more accountable to the grassroots and more responsive to the grassroots. But that also means raising money from the grassroots. Exactly. So how do we do that though? How do we make ourselves more accountable to the grassroots? How do we make ourselves more accountable so that people will say, yes, the party is standing for something and I can get behind it. How do we do that? By improving communication first and foremost, communicating with our members. Here are our values. This is what we're trying to do. These are the things that we would like to see enacted into law. And it's going to be frustrating as we've seen in this last session. The other thing is by providing training and building capacity in our members. And we've started to do that. The DNC, by the way, is getting the message. I believe the DNC is getting the message. There are always a little sort of behind the curve, and they're slow. But I believe that through this transition period, we have seen the DNC take an approach going back to the 50 state strategy, going back to the grassroots. We were disappointed in Atlanta that a resolution to go back to the corporate and soft money prohibition, that resolution did not succeed, right? But we will introduce it again. We will continue to try to prohibit soft and packed money from coming into our party to go back to the grassroots. So the DNC is getting the message. The state party, however, can provide training. This past January, we embarked on what I'm calling the 51 district strategy, right? So 50 state strategy, it's really 57 with states, territories, et cetera, et cetera. Here locally, 51 house districts, we need to be in every single one to make sure our district chairs have the resources they need to make sure that our precincts are staffed and viable, that we've got members that are engaged at a whole new events that are people who are number one in the positions and number two, willing to do the work as a volunteer from those positions. Because I was region three chair a couple of years ago, and for a few years I was region three chair, and I would try to get all of the districts and all the precincts to get together and do stuff. I would get five people from the entire region, which consisted of four and a half or five house districts, five people. So getting them engaged, getting them to say, yes, I will show up, because that's one of the other complaints that we hear is, okay, where's the party when it comes to showing up? And I think that it gets mirrored or gets, I guess it gets blocked sometimes, or at least the vision of that gets blocked sometimes, because the union members, and there are a lot of different unions, and as we've talked about with a lot of different opinions and perspectives, they're the ones who show up for all of our electives, for all of these races, for the sign waving, for phone banking, but they're also Democrats. So I think that being able to see that and recognize that, yes, the Democratic Party shows up, they show up through the union, in various unions, not the union, but through the various unions to support the candidates and the issues that they want, and they're also Democrats. So I think that's the thing that needs to be a little bit better understood, but then, but then we have, and we have to take a break in a minute here, but, you know, then we have situations like, how do we consider working with, and I'm putting this in a very specific way, how do we consider working with our elected officials in a way that is consistent with what the perceived, based on our bylaws and based on our platform, the perceived values and principles of the party are here in Hawaii, how do we work with them more in those directions, because it doesn't, from this last session, it doesn't appear at all to be like they're interested in it. And I don't know, I don't believe that's true, and it certainly isn't true for all of them, but how do we better understand it, how do we better engage that? I don't know that you have an answer for that, but it was a lot packed into that question. And I'm very sorry, I went on and on and on, because there's so much that just needs to be discussed. So the, so training and reaching out to people getting more people engaged, that training piece was never there, and it's been talked about forever, and bits and pieces of training, but still getting the people to show up. Okay, so how do we get them to show up more? One question. I'd like to unpack that question just a little bit. So starting with our unions, and this is, this is I think applicable to the approach we're taking in the state, but also nationally as the Democratic Party, and that is talking to and working for working people, right? Yes. This party, the Democratic Party of Hawaii would not exist if not for organized labor. So we have to be willing to work with our union brothers and sisters, we have to be willing to talk about the issues that are affecting them, and we have to be willing to go back to the organizing model that made our party viable, right, that made it a force to be reckoned with. Yes. I mean there are some unions that are very aggressive in organizing and even organizing outside their self-interest, and there's some that are not, it's not a better or worse scenario, but it is. It's what each of their groups decides exactly what we want to do. Exactly right. It's a quick break and then we'll come back. So thank you for joining us again. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Thank you again to Mr. Tim Vandevere, chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii, for this lively discussion. So see you in a minute. Hi, I'm Carol Cox. I'm the new host of Eyes on Hawaii. Make sure you stay in the know on Hawaii. Join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon. We will see you then. Aloha. You're watching Think Tech on ThinkTechHawaii.com, which broadcasts five live talk shows from noon to 5 p.m. every weekday and then streams our earlier shows all night long. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Once again, many thanks to my guest, Mr. Tim Vandevere. Thank you, Carl. Chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. Now you've got one more year left, right? I do. And you've got some stuff planned for the rest of this year, this next year. We've got a lot of plans. Tell us about some of the things. So currently we are hosting what's called T3 training. This is made possible through the Association of State Democratic Chairs, of which I am a member. This is T3, stands for train the trainer. So for the first time, I believe in the history of this training and perhaps in the history of the party, every single district either has a district chair who is enrolled in this training program or a representative from the district that is enrolled in this training program. It's a six-week training program which is broken into web modules, webcast modules twice a week. At the end of the training, they get certified. It's everything from the Democratic Party 101 to opposition research, to organizing models, to collaborate with some of the resistance groups, to technology, to the voter action network, etc, etc. So we've got a good response from the members. I've been taking them alongside. We've been hosting them at our headquarters. Others have done it via web around the state. But it's been a great, I think, sort of intro training module. Now what we'll be doing from the state side, in the middle of the summer, is actually offering our own module, our own training program that is. It'll be more abbreviated, but comparable, I think, to what they're offering on the national level for our districts and precincts. We're rewriting, updating our precinct tanbook. This is sort of what you had mentioned in your last question. Sort of how do we get people engaged? How do we inspire them to step up within the confines of the party? Not just, you know, when it comes to marching or sending emails, but actually doing something tangible for the party. And I think the first thing we've got to do is make it more accessible. Make it more accessible. Because that is one of the key things. People want to be engaged. They want to be involved. But they don't know how. And even people who are registered members of the Democratic Party, they don't necessarily know how to be engaged. Or people are afraid to start talking because of what their neighbors might think or because they don't know how, they feel they don't know how to speak. A number of these demonstrations and marches, people show up like, I don't know what to write on my sign. Well, a lot of times it's just, what do you feel? What do you think? I've seen some good ones, too. But there's some amazing ones, right? So it's getting into that and recognizing like, okay, if you want to march, this is how you do it. If you want to engage in the conversation, this is how you do it. You can't be afraid, right? So our training module or our training program will be broken into, I think, five different pieces. And one of those will be civics, basic civics education. Not just civics as it pertains to our legislature or to the city council or county councils, but also the party. How does the party work? So I'm a district secretary. What do I do? Yeah, I'm a district treasurer. What do I do? I'm a precinct captain, you know, etc. What can I do? Exactly. What resources are available to me? Another will be preparing them for get-out-the-vote in the coming year. So we know 2018, we have to increase the numbers of folks that are going to the polls. We have abysmal numbers. I believe we ranked dead last now and voter turnout, and that is unacceptable. Is there any research being done to figure out why? We have such low numbers. We have not put any kind of polls in the field. I have seen research that emanates from the mainland. I haven't seen any in Hawaii, for Hawaii in particular. What I do know though, and this is from years of union organizing myself, is that a lot of times people aren't going to come out unless you actually engage them. And there's no more effective tool, I believe, than actually standing on a doorstep and having a conversation. I know that you're a firm believer in this as well, but that means we're going to have to put some boots on the ground. And so this training will help prepare people to do that and build some capacity. The last thing I'll say is that we also have been offered to participate in a grant program through the DNC, this resistance summer that Deputy Chair Keith Ellison is heading up, which will go throughout the summer. We'll hopefully enable us to hire some field organizers to go out and actually contact, touch the folks in the precincts in the districts and teach them more and teach them how to bring them with them. Exactly right. That's a skill. That's a skill that going out and knocking on somebody's door and saying hi, asking them about anything, even if it's someone you know, it's a little disconcerting and it's awkward. And it takes time to figure out how to do that, how you engage them in a question, how you engage them in a positive way for an issue, issue about the community, issue about the neighborhood, issue about the district and the state, how you get them engaged and then asking them to sign a petition and do they understand it. So there's a unique approach here, right, not only historically from our proud labor history and how that organizing helped overthrow an oligarchy and completely transform the nature of power in our state, but there's also a very interesting and unique approach from Hawaii in particular. Aijin Pu, the organizer, the phenomenal community organizer and member of the DNC transition team, entitled one of her lectures, Organizing with Aloha. I spoke with a long time, stalwart member of our party, Jimmy Toyama, I hope you don't mind me mentioning your name, Jimmy, but he talks about approaching this from the fundamental, you know, this fundamental part of the conversation, right, we're boiling this down to what are our values and having conversations, why are you a Democrat? Why do you believe that collectively we can solve these problems? Why do you feel that government can actually help people, right, is it based on your family experience, is it based on your differences? It is, but I think that's, we really have to be having those conversations, right, what do we care about as individuals and I think we can share that with the rest of the mainland and the rest of the world. I think, I agree with that. I agree with that completely. What I would like to see is a series of town halls, types things, series of forums from district to district and precinct to precinct, engaging and inviting people, so ahead of time send out the precinct reps and send out the district reps to engage the people, invite them with handouts, knock on their doors, invite them to this event that we're doing in your community to talk about these things. Yeah. That, maybe some people will show up and some people will show up. I think another way is accessing the neighborhood boards and showing up the neighborhood boards and sometimes I'm on the neighborhood board, sometimes three people from the neighborhood show up, but what's more to that is it's not about the people who show up sometimes and this is one of the things that I realized. It's not about the people who show up at the neighborhood board, it's about the fact that that the minutes from those meetings get mailed out to the entire district, to the entire neighborhood and the people read it and the reason we know, the reason I know that the people read that is we put one month, we put earlier, we're going to have a conversation about this controversial issue, you know, but you know if anybody shows up that'd be great, but we're going to talk about this thing so we hope people show up. Forty people showed up because that issue was so, it touched so many people's lives and was such an important issue this has to do with a facility in my neighborhood actually that has been abandoned and is a potential danger and what people want to return to versus what other people are trying to turn it into. So all of a sudden, just because we put it in the minutes, 40 people showed up saying no no no no we want it to be this, we don't want it to be that. So people do read it, so the value so again, going to the neighborhood boards and making sure that there is a presence and a conversation and invitations to other forums to discuss these issues. That's I'm just offering that as a thought. I think that's a tremendous idea and I also like this notion of hosting town halls that don't really have an agenda, right? We've held a series of informational forums, this is also something that goes back to engaging the members of our party and sort of tapping into this this resistance, this energy, this this frustration, passion, what have you, but it's typically been on specific issues. Healthcare, we had a movie night, our women's caucus talked about the ERA and being the first state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Most recently, back in April 420, it's kind of cute, but great discussion, very serious discussion about cannabis, the future of cannabis in our state. What we've seen in those conversations, even though they are very specific, is people wanting to talk about our values, wanting to talk about our legislative session, issues that are that pertain to their lives, in some cases very specifically, but not necessarily on topic. So I got a couple, couple approaches to that. I think those are both great ideas. I would like to see something like that, perhaps even culminating this resistance summer, having something where we actually are driving toward a destination, it's a series of these discussions throughout the state. We do know that on the mainland, the DNC plans to have these big rallies and discussions to sort of cap, bookend the summer. Yeah, yeah. And that's a great idea. I think for our state, now you mentioned earlier before our break, how can we engage our legislators? And these informational forums are ways to do that. Well, we saw... We'll invite them to it. Invite them to it? They show up? They do show up? Yeah, they do. And something that has come to my attention that House leadership specifically mentioned is educating the members, giving them an opportunity to connect with our members, with our membership, but also helping to educate our legislators. These are our priorities. Here are some of the experts to talk about how this might be reflected into policy or law. Which also goes back to how we engage them with that policy and in the legislative sessions and so forth, and teaching that. I know that I'm going to be having a conversation this coming weekend with a bunch of people explaining, oh, by the way, you want to start engaging anything that the budget oriented this summer with the budget and ways that you need to be starting right now. You need to start right now. You need to have your ideas there now. And then by November, you need to have whatever resolutions and legislation you want put in front of them so they can begin going through that and getting it prepared for the session. Not a lot of people understand that. And then once it's been introduced, what do you do and how do you proceed to continue each step in each phase of that? So those conversations are important to have so people know, oh, that's how you do that. So it's that easy. Well, yeah, I know. So anyway, unfortunately, the show's already over. Really? So it was not an hour. It was not an hour. It used to be 45 minutes. It's now I have 20, 28 and a half minutes now. So thank you for joining us. This is so many more conversations and so much more that can be done. And as always, let me know how I can help and in what ways. I'm just a member at the moment. I'm a basic member. And I can say I need more communication coming my way. I thank you for being available to me. Not everybody is. So that's something I think to work on. Any time, Carl. Thank you for everything you're doing. Yes, thank you. Appreciate it. And thank you for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Thank you again, Mr. Tim Vannevere, chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii. There's a lot of work to be done and a lot of resistance to capture. So remember, your voice is our purpose and your action is our strength. See you next time.