 Welcome to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kauai Lucas here Fridays at 3 p.m. This Friday I have Gary Hooser, that name alone, you know, he has been in and around politics in Hawaii for a very long time. And he's worn many hats, majority leader of the state senate, kauai council member, many things. But in the last couple of years, Gary's been doing something very interesting in addition to all of the politics. He's been promoting progressive action at a deeper level by committing to two organizations. And instead of me trying to describe it, I'm going to let Gary describe it for us. Welcome Gary. Thank you Kauai. Thank you for having me here today. And you know, I think that in Hawaii, perhaps in the world, that we're at a very special time right now that this is a time for change, this is a time that there's a tipping point, I believe, with stuff that's going on. It has to be. I saw it. It has to be. And so I've been working with people all over the state and helped found two organizations, the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action, which is a 501C3 and the Pono Hawaii Initiative, which is a 501C4. And they both of them are trying to create change in Hawaii. Policy and politics. The 501C3 is focused on education and the C4, the Pono Hawaii Initiative, is on re-hardcore policy change and political change. So let's maybe, the HAPA has been around for longer years. Yeah. Yeah. So we're a little bit, so tell us what the experience of working within HAPA and getting some of these bright minds energized with Hawaii. With HAPA, we have a statewide board of people on every island, and it dawned on us about 18 months ago that we're all talking about why don't we elect better people, more progressive people, people who value the environmental protection and economic justice, social justice. Why aren't there more people like that elected? And we came to the conclusion that there wasn't good candidates. There were good people, but they didn't know how to run, and good candidates weren't stepping up. We formed a program called the Kuliana Academy, and the Kuliana Academy identifies and trains emerging political leaders, if you would. It's non-partisan. We don't support those candidates, but we train them, and it's been a phenomenal success. So you've had a couple of quohorts. Is that right? Yes. We're on our third one. Third one right now. It starts in September. Do you already have all of those? Yes. I'm open, and I encourage people to go to hopahai.org, h-a-p-a-h-i-dot-o-r-g, look under Kuliana Academy, and there's still room to apply. To apply doesn't cost the applicant anything. It's a competitive process. We have a class between 15 and 20 people, and it's just a phenomenal program that again identifies and supports and trains emerging leaders into how to run for public office, issues in advocacy, leadership development, and things of that nature. So I was very excited when I saw who was part of the first couple of quohorts, and very much looking forward to the next election. Now, is there a commitment to run for office if you sign up for the Kuliana Academy, or? There's no commitment. There's no firm commitment. We're looking for people interested in being involved in the electoral process. They either run for office in the near future or at some point, or to help somebody else run. That's the main thing. And there's no, I should say, there's no litmus test in terms of issues. So you don't have to be check a box that you believe a certain thing. We're looking for people who share our general worldview of economic, social, environmental justice. But beyond that, we're just looking for solid people around the state. We have a big group from Maui. All islands are welcome. Fantastic. And that tends to happen on, it's weekends. Yes. The program is five weekends spread over three and a half months. We fly everybody in from the New Orleans. We put them up in an hotel. We stay for two days. High quality educators, trainers, coaches, professional fundraisers, teach them how to raise money, professional communications people, teach them how to develop messaging. We brought in former governors to speak to them. It's a really top notch program. We're very proud of it. Okay. So that was the first floor. Now we have the Pono Hawai'i initiative. The Pono Hawai'i initiative is a totally separate organization. Separate boards, separate staff, separate budget. I'm the executive director on the Pono Hawai'i initiative at our president of the board of Hapa. That's the connection. You're the Hapa-Papa. I'm the Hapa-Papa. Who's the Hapa-Papa? Now the Pono Hawai'i initiative has two branches of activity, policy and politics. And we want to affect change in both of those areas. So the policy side would be developing solutions, affordable housing solutions, environmental justice solutions in terms of policy initiatives. Okay. So developing those. That is such a big deal. So let's just take a minute right there. Okay. For instance, how do you go about the developing affordable housing initiative? Well, first of all, you talk to those people that are in the business of doing that. Groups like Apple Seed or FACE or other advocacy groups will focus on affordable housing. And then you start asking questions. You start drilling down. I posted on Facebook a crowdsourcing question, you know, what should we do for affordable housing? That's almost 300 posts of people giving suggestions. What Facebook page? Well, this is my own Gary Hoosier. Okay. Yeah, so I did that. The Pono Hawai'i initiative has a Facebook page as well. So you start talking to people who know about housing, and then you start looking at what's realistic, what is within our constitutional legal purview, what can the state and county actually do, how much does this stuff cost, and will it have tangible impacts in our lifetime? Which I say in the next few years, it's my criteria. So we're in the process of doing that now for affordable housing. You want to develop initiatives, present them to councils or legislatures for action, hopefully, and then also look at a ballot initiative. The counties, each county, the four counties have the authority or the power in their charter where citizens can go out and get signatures and change the law directly or change the charter directly. You can't do that on the state level. How much control do you have on the actual wording on those ballot initiatives? Well, the sponsors have total control. The sponsor being? So if the Pono Hawai'i initiative, working with other groups in the community, came up with, let's say, a proposed charter initiative or ballot or ordinance, we would develop a language working with our attorneys. Okay. And we would go out and get the signatures. You present those to the county clerk or the council, and they then would put it on the ballot. They would smith the ballot language, which is an abbreviated version, and that's what therein lies the problem sometimes. Yes. We saw that in a big way this past election. But there has been, on the neighbor islands, especially, several instances of people doing ballot initiatives and successfully. And so my goal would be to have one done in the city and county of Honolulu. It takes a lot of about 29,000 signatures, but to find subject matter, whether it's affordable housing, which is the leading thing right now, or it could be environmental, it could be anything within the county authority. And you can make broad strokes and policy change. Right now, the reason for our existence is the people in charge, the councils and the state legislature, are either moving way too slow or moving backwards, in our opinion. They're not as aggressive as they need to be to protect the environment, to help working people and social justice issues. They're taking tiny little bites or no bites at all. And I believe in the people that I'm working with that we require more. That the condition of the world, the disparity between the very rich and the very poor, the degradation of our environment, climate change, these issues are real and they're urgent and we need to take bold action now. And if the councils and the state legislature is not going to do it, the people through this ballot initiative can take those big steps. So for instance, last night I happened to come across a nice, I posted on my Facebook page, nice seven minute outtake of a meeting on Hawaii Island with Russell Ruderman and he described the process of why a lot of bills like the pesticide bills and the rat lung worm disease bill, why they didn't pass and how they didn't get heard in committees because there's this culture of we don't want people to look bad. So what do we do with about that? I mean, how are you, that's one of the... I think that our state government and to a large extent county government too is at a low. I was sort of in the state senate for eight years and I've been watching this and being involved with it for 15 or 20 and I've never seen as dysfunctional organization as what we've saw this in 2017. So what do we do about that? I think there's only two things we can do. One is to elect new people and so Hawaii initiative that's our second is the electoral political side. We are going to look out in the community, we are looking out in the community now looking for candidates to run for public office in 2018 and then we want to support them in alignment with our friends around the state. So changing people and pushing hard on the policy. We can't afford just to sit around and wait. The legislature is either frozen, pushed around by special interests, they don't want to make a decision or they err on the side of big business and money. So what do you think the impact of having no republicans in the senate has been? I don't think that's healthy. I think we need a minority voice and if it's not coming from the republican party it should come from democrats and progressives that are there. Or maybe another party. But right now we will be looking to support people that will be more than likely running against democratic incumbents as a democratic. So that's kind of sacrilege in a party perspective about competitive primaries. Encourage one democrat to run against the other democrat. You said the Kuyana academy was nonpartisan. Exactly. But that's different from the Pono Hawaii initiative. Is there a party affiliation there? There's no party affiliation. The Pono Hawaii initiative will look at all parties. We're looking at people who support our worldview and who can win. And the reality of it is the democratic party dominates the politics in Hawaii. And I believe if you look at the platform of the party, that platform is a good solid platform that supports the environment, it supports these issues. It's beautiful. Yes. It's natural that that will be, a lot of our focus will be on those types of candidates. But if a green party or some other party emerges a candidate and they can win and they're willing to do the work, then we will certainly look at supporting them as well. The Kuyana academy in Hapa is nonpartisan. And we actually have republican speakers come in and speak to the class. We have green party speakers and we have other people do that. We don't target races. We don't support the candidates. We're strictly, and I don't participate in selecting whoever attends the classes. It's a competitive process. People fill out a form, they're interviewed by others. The Pono Hawaii initiative is different. It is politics and policy. And the difference, the fundamental difference is the federal law and donation, how donations are treated. The Pono Hawaii initiative, donors do not receive a tax deduction. On the Hapa is like other, like probably think tech might be where it's a five, one, two, three, it's for education, it's not a political bot. Okay. Well, I think this is a great place for us to take our little break and then come back and talk more. Great. We all play a role in keeping our community safe. Every day we move in and out of each other's busy lives. It's easy to take for granted all the little moments that make up our every day. Some are good, others not so much. But that's life. It's when something doesn't seem quite right, that it's time to pay attention. Because only you know what's not supposed to be in your every day. So protect your every day. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. Living in this crazy world, so caught up in nothing that's making sense. Aloha. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I'm the host of Shrink Wrap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at three o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kawi Lucas. And with me here today is Gary, who's the executive director of the Pono Hawaii Initiative, which has two arms we learned. Policy and politics. We just talked about policy. So let's talk about politics. Politics, and I want to be clear, I'm a volunteer executive director. But politics is facing the reality of changing the people that sit in the state legislature or on county councils. There are people there, good people, people with good hearts that believe in a different future than I believe in and that the people I'm working with believe in that will err on the side of big business, big money, rather than the side of people and the environment. And I would like to support people that err on the side of people and the environment. And so I'm working under those parameters, if you would, and to say, well, how do we change, how do we move the needle at the state legislature? It's taken, we still have not banned single-use Styrofoam food containers. And how many years have we been working on that? We're banning plastic bags. It is crazy that it takes so many years and we're supposed to have a legislature and councils dominated by people who, Democrats, who believe in this stuff, but yet we still can't pass it. Payday lending, a practice that preys on the very hardest working people and old people and that we can't cap interest rates at 32%. Year after year we've been working on this stuff and it's just unacceptable. So how do we change that? We can lobby and we should. We should testify. We should write letters to the editor. We should carry signs. We should march. At the end of the day we need to change some of the people sitting in those chairs and that's what the politics side of it is, is going on and looking for people and say, you know, that person would be great. I wish they would run. And then asking them, why don't you consider running and then supporting them and nurturing them for public office? I have to say that we have friends in the legislature. I don't want to paint them all with a bad brush. We do have friends there who are working hard on these issues, but a few more people, like-minded people would move that needle and change the dynamics into a more friendly environment for the kind of issues that I believe we need to focus on. So as you've said this past session was, I can't remember the words you used exactly, but it was a disappointment, shall we say. Previous ads said epic fail. Yeah, that'll work. And so the advertiser called it an epic fail, civil beat called it a failure. I wrote it up a piece on many, many levels. There were some bright spots. Yes, yes. I went to signing about the inmate ID bill. Now before they're let out of prison, inmates will have IDs that allow them to get jobs, get a bus pass, all of those things. The really astonishing thing for me was, why did that need legislation? And why does it take so long to get? And that's part of the frustration. It should not. A lot of these things, again, like the plastic bags or disclosure of pesticides, they are simple basic requests that shouldn't take so long to achieve. And so the answer, in my opinion, is to look for new leadership, quite frankly. If the leaders that are in charge are not fulfilling the community's expectation, and I don't believe they are, then the community needs to take ownership of its government, find new candidates, support those candidates, and then stay involved in the process. It doesn't stop there. You know, a person can't just vote and then go back to their life. They need to take ownership of their government, and it takes work. A lot of work. And you have been at this for a very long time. And one of the things that's different about your path is you're not a lawyer. I may have been a husband, but that would have been my life. And I was sort of wondering, what is the mix in these Kuliyata Academy, or I don't know if you have chosen anybody yet through the Pono-Hoei initiative to support, but can you talk a little bit about how you think that mix of having attorneys, is that a good thing? Yeah, that's a good question. I think we look at who would make a good candidate and a good leader, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Generally speaking, the person would have some background or some experience in leadership. They would serve on an organization, they've been involved in something in a leadership. It could be the PTA, it could be the Sierra Club, it could be some organization. They've done some public advocacy, they've written some letters to the editor, they've testified, they maybe helped somebody on a campaign, they've been involved in a party. But somehow they're doing something, they're not just talking about, they're actually doing something. We have a good mixture of emerging leaders coming out of the University of Hawaii, and I think that we need to get more of those coming out of the law school. We did this last class, we had 17 participants, 17 students, and I believe about four of them were practicing attorneys. It's not all time, and the ages range from 20 years old of our participants to the 50s. It's easy to say young emerging leaders, but all ages are welcome. We have all ethnicities, backgrounds, again, we have all islands, because leaders come in all shapes and sizes, and it depends on the community that they're representing. That's one of the first lessons, when someone starts talking about what they hope to accomplish, we remind them that what is the community want to accomplish? They might be focusing on listening to environmental issues, that's their passion, but the community might be education, it might be traffic, it might be other things, so they need to be in touch with the community so they can represent the community. They don't need to let go of the passion, but they need to be in touch with the community. Okay, that brings up a question, I've been a staffer at the legislature for the past two sessions, and one of the things is that it's sort of interesting disconnect between the calls you get in the office about the potholes. There are a lot of that, and then the sort of, or the homeless, and then the larger issues that are needing attention, our environment, our water supply, our sewage treatment facilities, our infrastructure, how do you get people to care about those things when it's not something they see, but it really impacts us. You know, I think the potholes are there every day, you know, it's in front of your house, you want to get it fixed, you know, or if it's a bus stop, or if it's something that directs you, impacts you directly, it is a lot more top of mind for people. I have to say, I believe the last two years with the Bernie Sanders campaign, followed by the election of Mr. Trump, followed by the, or involved at the same time with the TNT issue and the GMO issue, there's been a tremendous upsurge in the involvement and awareness of people on publications. I think people are more aware than ever that they need to get involved and they need to pay attention. And so, I mean, when did we ever have that many women march in the state of Hawaii, you know? I know, that was a glorious, glorious moment. And yet, what did we see actually on the floor in the legislature with our women legislatures? So, you know. I served, obviously, I served eight years in the Senate, eight years, two four-year terms in the council, and there's a couple of fundamental rules that I've learned that I believe every person who serves in public office understands. And one of the main ones is, you can't serve unless you get elected. And it's not a bad thing to have that on your brain all the time. So, every decision you make bears on your election. And, but they want to stay in office. But they have to, and so that, that both is a, is a frightening, freezing kind of thing, but it also is something that you have to do something. And if people understand that, that's what drives politicians, then that's where you have, that's why we have to run candidates. That's why we have to publicly say, we're not happy with the work you're doing. And to be clear, I don't believe in attacking the person, not attacking what's in their heart. Because I believe Legislator A may be pro-development, but doesn't mean he's getting paid off by developers. It means he looks at the world a different way than I do, you know, in terms of values. I might lean toward the side of environmental protection. He might lie here, she might lean on the side of development and jobs. And that's the way the world works. But I need to find people who are more interested in preservation than development to push the world that I want to see from my children forward. Okay, so one of the things is glacial pace. What do you think we can do about that? You know, glacial pace has a price, you know, a real, a tangible price, a price, endangered species are being launched every day. You know, climb sea levels are rising, people on the street dying, literally dying. So glacial pace, we can't just wait till next year. You know, and that's what I hear, that's what's so frustrating is, well, we'll do this next year. Well, people are getting hurt. People are in the planet. And so a glacial pace is not acceptable. And that's why 2018 is going to be a pivotal year. And that's what we need to focus on. It's, you know, the elections of 2018 have, we have to see change. We have to see change at a local level. And I think we can set an example here. And because if we can focus on 2018, then I'm hopeful that we can mobilize people and to for that, this final, I should say final, but this big push during the next year. Okay, so digging a little more in this glacial pace thing, though, it's, you know, I had high hopes because, you know, absolutely one party state, we just really can't call each ourselves anything else anymore, that that was really going to make, okay, the Senate's going to be on it. They're just going to be able to get stuff done. And that didn't happen. That didn't happen. I agree. And it's about changing the dynamics. And the good news is that small numbers matter. So in the Hawaii State Senate, adding three new progressive, green, people-friendly, bold, transparent, I know it's asking too much possible, but adding three new people, three, just three, could throw the whole leadership of the Senate to an opposite direction in the house, because it's about numbers. There's 25 senators. So what's the most important number in the Hawaii State Senate? 13. 13. 13 is a majority. 13 can run the show. Three added to other good people that are already there could shift that dynamic. In the House of Representatives, four or five could do the same thing. It empowers other people who are like-minded, who are already there, but are in a minority. One person speaking out empowers other people to speak out. One person being bold empowers other people to be bold. Gary, I can't believe it. Our time is up, but we're ending on a very high note. That is something we can sink our teeth into. Three in the Senate, four in the House of Representatives. Yes, let's do it. Let's do it.