 I'm your host Winston Welch and delighted you're joining us again today for this out and about show where we explore a variety of topics, organizations, and events with the people who fuel them in our city, state, country, and world. As a disclaimer, any views or opinions expressed by me are strictly my own and not connected with any organization. Joining me in the studio today, I am delighted to have Carolyn Goliou, president of the Rainbow Family 808. Welcome to the show, Carolyn, and thanks so much for being my guest. It's an honor to have you here. It's an honor to be here, and thank you so much for asking me to join you. I appreciate that. Well, you know, you are sort of a personal heroine of mine, and that the first time I remember meeting you years and years ago was you were at the very front of the Pride Parade, and you were wearing a big P-flag button, and you had a sash or something that said, I love my gay son, and you were right out there, and there were some folks that were, we'll call them haters, for shorthand at the end of the parade with giant signs telling us how horrible we were, and you had no problem going right up to them and telling them what they could do with their sign, and I loved that because you're just a feisty person but filled with great aloha and passion for folks. So yeah, I just wanted to get that out there that was so impressive for me. So tell us about your background and your history, but maybe we should start first with the Rainbow Family 808. What's the background of this organization and its mission? This started, Rainbow Family is almost seven years old. It started the weekend that marriage became legal in Hawaii. We had been a P-flag, parents, family, and friends of lesbians and gays, and then we realized that, number one, our mission had changed. We had marriage for the people in Hawaii. And so that very weekend, a group of us got together and we're going, well, I guess I'll just sit back and, you know, I don't know, vegetate. And they said, no, you've got a momentum going, you need to do it. You need to go forward. And so that was the beginning and we wanted to be Rainbow Family. That's it. And we couldn't. Someone else has that moniker. And so I said, let's do Rainbow Family 808. Then for sure they know exactly where we are coming from, 808 being our area code. And so that's how it started. And right there, people took out their laptops and they started plugging things in. And before we left that day, we were, and so, yeah, we became out at Bellows Air Force Station in a small cabin with just a bunch of people that stopped by, you know, and it was like the night before we got our feet off the ground. And that was, we hit the deck of running, like they say. We immediately jumped in and helped yo that holiday season and filled in the pucas. And we just, because they were the most at risk. When we looked at who did we want to focus on, we wanted to focus on the kids. The under 18 that are thrown up on the street still are today. And there's a couple of bills going through the house this session that are hopefully, if it goes through, will finally get us off the ground for shelters. What I wanted from them before the beginning was 247 shelters for those under the age of 18. They're the most at risk homeless minors in the state. And we did the 808 and we talked about this 808 because I said, I would like to see this on all islands. And it's taken us seven years. We've doubled the donations that we give out because we give out weekly fresh fruits and dairy to two different groups. It started out in the very beginning with yo youth outreach, Waikiki, which is under the umbrella of the Waikiki Health Center. And they've had this going on for 30 years or more. More than that because when we first came in, they were 25 years old. And just this last year, RISE, R-Y-S-E, came on the scene. And so we just, oh my gosh, we've got to go over there. And so we have doubled our output, and which I'm very proud of, but we haven't gotten our feet wet over on the neighbor islands. And they certainly, and that's one of the reasons I, with one of the bills, I said, well, I don't know if I can support this bill because of the fact that I don't like the age limit. They wanted to put the age limit at 16, anyone 16 and over. And I said, no, no, no, no, that's, you're missing the point. The kids are out there for all different reasons. It's not just because they're LGBTIAQ. It's because whatever religion their parents belong to, they've broken one of their mandates, and you're out of the house. And I'm sorry, it's like, pardon? Go ahead, go ahead. I used to think it was just like marriage, you know, till death do us part. But what they're doing to the children is not a divorce because you can't divorce a child unless you let them go to court and become an adult at 12. Are you going to do that? I mean, that's insane. So that's where we got our start and that's where we're going in. And one day I don't know, I'm hoping that we'll have some younger people come on and pick up the slack because every Monday morning is our ritual. We go, we go to Costco and we pick up a list, which they, which the groups have sent to us. And Ryze always says, well, whatever you want to give us, but we take 10 gallons of milk a week to Ryze. And during the holidays, it was 12. And what does Ryze again, what does that stand for? Ryze is, it's, it starts for the residential youth. And then I can't remember what the SE is. I always get that mixed up, but it is a program. The only thing with Ryze is they basically work with 18 years and older. But from the morning, from eight o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock at night, it's open to anyone. So that's when you see the young, the minors coming in. Can you talk about that a little bit, Carolyn? Because I think, you know, with maybe folks don't quite understand the gravity of the problem here, but you're talking specifically. So Rainbow Family 808 has a mission to reach out to all folks whose baby family members might be LGBTQIA or people that are themselves. But especially with a focus on younger people, you said, and especially under 18, but it may be young adults in general, maybe over 18 as well. And that you're helping them because they have been thrown out, essentially, from their homes. Is that, is that a true way to characterize that? Right on the button. You've got it. That's it. Is this a widespread phenomenon? Or, you know, we saw that our point in count this year of homeless is 7,000 on this island alone, which puts us second in the nation. We got dethroned by California, but you could say that it's terrible no matter what it is. And a huge percentage of those are young people, are kids actually, and growing up on the streets. But in this case, these kids have mostly either been forced out of their houses by their parents, kicked out, or they've left because they, what, they felt bodily harm or just mental stress or... No, they have. They're beaten children. Sometimes they're even sexually abused besides the physical and verbal abuse. And when they can't stand it anymore, they run. Some of them are able to stay until they're 18 and then they go off to college and leave the abusive home behind. But you have, you're right on the nail, right there, because that's the saddest part is when we first started almost seven years ago, I had to explain to every single person, no, these are not bad kids. These are kids that are really in the wrong family. Their family is nowhere near. Leave it to Cleaver. Leave it to Beaver, whatever that show was. Yeah, leave it to Beaver, or leave it to Cleaver. Leave it to Beaver, and so those are not the type of families that throw their children out. And in fact, I've talked to the mayor and said, you know, you have one daughter and you have always supported her. Even when there was a little thing about marijuana back in the, oh my God, that's so old. That's a real old story. But anyway, they turned around and I've said to him, we need to help the kids because they are the most at risk. They're not 21. They have to get parental approval. And to go into, they say, oh, well, they can go into the shelters. They can go into foster care. No, they can't. For some of them, no, because the focus of foster care is to reunite the family. Now, they don't want back into an abusive home. That's the bottom line. And so I'm happy to hear you talk and you understand what their plight is, but so many people do not understand that. I think in general, they just kind of want to turn their, they don't want to look at it just because, you know, as our society, and I don't know when this has happened. It's just sort of like the frog in the pot. But when did we become a nation of sociopaths? This is a question I ask in my city council. When did we stop caring about our brother? When we did stop becoming our neighbor's keeper? And that includes looking after kids that have been thrown out because their parents are lunatics, for lack of a better word. Or just that the kids felt in danger or that the situation was so untenable that they had to leave. And I think that when we don't want to look at homeless, which is so corrosive in our society, because then we end up criminalizing all types of behavior, they wanted to close the parks from dusk to dawn. And so we all get punished because we won't attack the problem, which is providing housing, medical care, food and just social care for our fellow human beings. And so to look deeper into that at children, it's just maybe too much of a psychic blow for people to see how low we've become as a society. And then adding on the marginalization of the LGBTQIA children is just overwhelming. So people say, I'm not even going to look at it. I guess I'm guessing that's what happens, but I really don't know. Yes. In a small way, my efforts come from my mother. She said when I was three years old, and I'm 73 now, and she said, in our country, no one should go hungry. And that thought, that concept has stayed with me all these years. And now I'm trying to reach out to those kids, you know, and over at Rise, when we come in and we're coming in with 10 gallons of milk, and they come out to the car and, oh, may I help you, Auntie? And they're so, so grateful. And I feel so bad because it's so little. You know what, Caroline, you have to say, you're doing 10,000 times more than the average person is. You're going in there and you're making a difference. And so I realize it's hard in our society because you think, oh, it's 10 gallons of milk that they didn't have. And more important than that, it's the energy behind it. It's an adult that they're looking up to that says, wow, this lady doesn't know me and she cares for me. And that's a very powerful statement. You know, I want to talk more about your background, but we have to take a short break here. And, you know, you can see, folks, that when you got people like Caroline out here, they make all the difference in the world. And we all make a difference when we do the smallest little things, whether it's vending over, picking up the trash, smiling at an old person or helping people like in this situation. We are going to take a short break. I'm Winston Welch. This is out and about on the Think Tech Livestreaming Network series. We're here with Caroline Gulauyu, president of the Rainbow Family 808. You can Google it during our break and we'll be back in a minute. So stay tuned for more of the story. Aloha, I'm Daelyn Yanagita, one of our hosts of our Business in Hawaii talk show on the Think Tech Hawaii. The theme of business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people. And our guests share with us their journey to building a successful business right here at home. We are streamed live on Think Tech weekly at 2 p.m. on Thursdays. Thank you so much for watching our show. I am Daelyn Yanagita, and we'll look forward to seeing you then. Aloha, y'all. My name is Mitch Ewen. I'm from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, and I'm the host of Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy. We're on every Wednesday at four o'clock, and we hope that we have interesting guests who talk to us about various energy things that are happening in Hawaii, all the way from PV to windmills to hydrogen, close to my heart, electric buses and electric vehicles. So please, dial in every Wednesday at four o'clock on Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy. Aloha. Aloha. We're back for live. I'm Winston Welts, and this is out and about on streaming network series, and we're talking with Caroline Golauiu, president of the Rainbow Family 808, where you can visit them at rainbowfamily808.com to follow in, to donate, to get involved, to be helping Caroline go to Costco and going down to be an example like she is. So thank you so much again, Caroline, for being here. I really appreciate your time today, but also just your example, as we were saying before the break. You do make a huge difference in the life of these kids. You made a difference in my life, just the fact that here's this lady out there willing to, first of all, just identify herself as a parent of a gay child. And not only that, but just to say, I love my gay child. And this is, and I'm fighting for his equal rights and dignity in our society, because this is the way that he was born. This is the way he was made. So when you were, when you were a youngster, you probably didn't imagine when you had, when you had your children, you didn't say, oh, I want to have a gay son. Right. How did this happen? I didn't, I didn't even know there were gay children with, you know, the nomenclature of gay, you know, it was back in Southern California. All my mother would say is, don't go buy that house. And there was a woman that lived down the street. She rode a motorcycle and she was, oh, if I knew her today, I wish I'd, you know, I could just go give her a big hug because all my mother would say is just, don't go buy her house. And if you go buy her house, don't talk to her. And I thought that's weird, you know, and then I thought it was just because she rode a motorcycle and she had her hair slicked back into what they called a duck tail at that ruins, old enough to remember those days. But a DA, that's what. Yeah, DA, OK. And she had look at up with the sleeves rolled up, the pack of cigarettes and some more bras in there. That's right. That's right. And so I just thought she was rather colorful, not that, you know, I was scared of motorcycles. I was a little scaredy cat of a lot of things, but not too much scares me anymore. And I want to thank you for recognizing my passion for the kids because many people say they don't see it as passion and they have some negative. You know, she's a grouchy old lady. Well, I wouldn't have to be grouchy if you would treat your children right. If you would cuddle them, if you would be there and give them a hug for the days that don't go well. If you would stop beating them, then I wouldn't be, you know, as passionate as I am. Oh, we need your passion. Don't let it go away anywhere. But so when you when you get people that call you up and they say, you know, Auntie, I I'm really having trouble with this. My child is identifying as as a boy when when her name is Mary. And how or my son is saying he's gay and he's only 13. How could he possibly know this is a phase or or how do you how do you deal with folks when they come to you in that capacity? Because before, as you mentioned, you were very actively involved in P flag. And then now have transitioned over to your own organization here because P flag is a national chain. But you maybe wanted some more local control and focus of what you're what it is, which is specifically about mostly about kids. But what do you tell people when when parents come to you or when kids may come to you? They may find this online and say, wow, here's this lady who maybe could advocate for me or I don't know point me in a right in the right direction. Well, those questions have come up and they continue to come up. And when I'm talking to a parent, the first thing I say is. Do you love and then it's your son or daughter. Do you love your child? Yeah. And every parent that comes to me with questions about their gender identity. I always ask that question and every single one of them says, of course I do. And so then that, you know, breaks the ice for me because they're just concerned. And so it's just a little bit of knowledge that I can give them. I talked to them about some books that they can get out of the library. I talked to them about one of them said, well, what one of them said to me once, well, what would a what would a neighbor say? And I wanted to lean through and punch her, but I didn't. Of course, I just smiled and said, and this is on the phone. I said, your neighbors will continue to treat her with the respect you show her. If you treat her with respect and love, that's what those neighbors are going to think. And so I never did get to talk to that one person. I knew because of certain things she'd said that she was a military family. And so I said, you know, when before Michael came out, we were stationed on many bases, candidate all over the United States, Germany and Italy. And I didn't know he was gay, but he was my son. What did I know? He was my son. I thought he was absolutely darling. I thought he was extremely bright. And I hope he's not watching or listening today. Is he still darling and extremely bright? He can be darling to other people, and he is extremely bright. And so he's got a bill before the House right now. Tell us about that. What are the bills that he's there because your son has followed in your footsteps of being on the forefront of fighting for some social justice and change issues. And we've had him on the show with the compassionate choices that he was advocating for a couple of years ago. What bills are up right now that people can call their legislators about that are specifically that you, that Rainbow Family 808 has a stake in that you'd like to see passed or denied? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Well, the one, the first one, a better talk best. The first one is to establish a LGBTQIA commission on the status of LGBTQIA. I know that I'm doing that badly, but that's that's the bill. It will establish in the state of Hawaii the same type of organization that they have for women because and see the thing is, I'm saying if they don't pass this, this is utmost discrimination. I've already heard, well, what's it going to cost? And I don't care what it's going to cost. If you have money for your raises like they did last year, then they have money and they have to do it because otherwise it's discrimination. Women have had a status for over 25 years. It's the status of the Bureau on the status of women here in Hawaii. And so to deny the LGBT people population would be discrimination. And so what would what would a commission do? I think for people out that this, oh, why do you get your special rights? But but it's not about special rights. It is it? No, it's not. No, it is not. It's about civil rights. I've had people call me. They can get fired at the drop of a hat. This one young man called me. Well, remember, I'm 73. So everyone's a young man. He called me because he was working for one of the big hotels downtown and he'd gotten fired. Of course, they've waited until after the holiday season where he pitched in for all those on the, you know, working there so that they could be with their families on different days. And he just knocked himself out because he said, well, I don't, and that's sad. I don't have a family. So that's fine. Let those with have without a family. Let them have the time off, you know. And right after the season was over, the manager made sure he followed him out to the parking lot and fired him there. And he said too bad the young man didn't have a microphone on him. He said, I don't want any bag working in my in my restaurant. And this was this year. Is that right? Yes. And that was right here. Now the thing is, I told him right away, get a hold of the, well, you could go through ACLU. But the first line of defense, especially for working situations, is the equal rights commission. The equal rights commission. Thank you, the Hawaii's Equal Rights Commission. And they were able to help him. And he walked away from that because he, regardless, he had to find himself a job because as of that moment, and because of what was in our state, he could do it. And he may win a lawsuit down the road, but that doesn't pay the rent for right now. And so this, this commission would actually, from what I understand, look at LGBTQIA folks. And the challenges that they face to, in fact, enjoy the same equal civil rights as other people. And it would address these issues so that we have a one-stop shop where we can talk about homeless youth, where we can talk about gay vets, where we can talk about violence against trans folks. And this whole thing where we, it's where we can, at least start gathering information. And we would be joining other free, fair-minded states in doing so, certainly. And so it's long past due. And people can go on a website, right? And Google Hawaii State Legislature, and then maybe put in some search terms, LGBTQIA. Search words. TQ bills. Status on LGBT. LGBTQIA commission. I think they use just LGBTQIA. And, you know, but even LGBT, if you look at that, that should take you to it right there. That's the one bill. And you're so right. It would do a lot of things. And it would be a protection out there. And it will make people think, maybe. A little bit more. Well, you know, and that's just it. We can, maybe you can post that on your website, which is rainbowamily808.org or .com, .com, .com, .org. Just type that in. You know, Caroline, there's so many other things that I would like to talk to you about. And we are, this time always goes so fast. These are really critical, fundamental issues. Will you agree to come back on the show so we could talk about this? Other things that are political, social. And the statutes of limitations for the youth. Well, we will have to talk about that next time then. But I really appreciate you being on the show. Like I said, you're my personal heroine. I adore you. And thank you so much for all the work that you do. Well, you're a mover and a shaker. And I appreciate your support. Well, you know, it's a mutual love fest here. And we're going to have to leave it at that. But having Caroline back brightens my day. And I know it will brighten you, our viewers' day as well. And with that, I am going to have to sign off and thank you again, Caroline. Golaou from Rainbow Family 808. Tongue Trister there. Google them for more of the story. Thank you for tuning in. We welcome your feedback. Also, our broadcast engineer is Eric Colander, floor manager, Hayley Kada. She puts a lot of stuff together for us. And Jay Fidel is our executive producer. I'll see you here every other Monday at three for more of Out and About on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha, everyone.