 Thank you all for joining us. We have the honor of having with us here today, Joyce Mitchell, a truly esteemed arbitrator, mediator, and attorney internationally. She's been on Zoom connections with people all over the world today alone. Sandra Sims, one of our retired judges and author, and just an incredibly strong contributor to the community in so many ways. And Louise Ng, not only an outstanding, outstanding attorney, but one of the women's rights leaders professionally and personally in Hawaii for many, many years, more than you would think, looking at her young face. So today, we're going to take on just some easy stuff. We know we're coming out of a time, hopefully coming out and not staying in, a time of extreme chaos, high risk, high tension, high stress. Where are we? Where do we need to go? How can we get there? And what might that look like? Joyce, Sandra, Louise. It's like we're coming out of a storm. And there's there's there's the sun is is peeking through the clouds. And it's about to be a bright sunny day. And then another cloud comes over. There's a little bit more rain. And then it opens up again. But we're still feeling in that place of hopefulness that the sun is coming out. That's kind of how I'm feeling at this point, that the sun is coming out. Obviously, it's not going to be the perfect day. But we've got more sun than we had at another time. And that feels good. Feels better. That's why I'm like this. No, and that's spot on, Sandra. I mean, and these are not just rains. These are Mississippi floods. These are these are hurricanes. These are hurricanes. I feel so much better about the openness that I think we're going to see as time goes on. I'm I'm sensing and feeling that the new cabinet will get a chance to get over their honeymoon. They will bring their expertise to bear. And we will be able to tell them what we think we need. But you know what I think most of all is going to be great for us is with all the technology we have now and the people that we've seen here, we're going to get a chance to touch each other again and see each other as humans. And it's going to be a great model for our kids because we're going to learn something that our kids felt while they were requested. And those of us who've moved through many, many channels to get where we are know that sometimes the basic foundations that we got years ago have led us. We go back to them, sometimes depend on. Maybe we might find ourselves. How do I say a bonding more with the younger generation? Because they really will need us to help understand some of those interpersonal things that are happening with them that they've been missing. And we need them for the technology to be able to survive in this world. Yes, yes, yes. Louise, what's your take? Well, well said, everybody. I certainly relate to that feeling of emerging from a storm. I have to say that almost on a daily basis, I am still grateful that when they refer to president of the United States, it is Joe Biden and it is a competent president who has the interest of the country in mind and unity and competence and social justice, you know, and getting things done in a competent, efficient, principled way. So I am really happy about that. And although, of course, we can't treat our youth in the next generation as a monolith, they all have different views. I see so much help too in our next generation, what they've been through their social conscience. So I think as our population ages and we get ready for the next generation, as you say, Joyce, we need to focus our efforts and work together with them to make this a better place. I think the president, I'm sorry, go ahead, Joe. I think the president and the vice president are going to be great models for our kids. I think there's a lot of unlearning that has to happen for the next couple of years. And that's going to be the difficult part. How do we unlearn something when they were over the last four years bombarded with things that they were perhaps told prior to then should not happen between us? So the unlearning is going to be necessary. And I am looking forward to spending time with my grandchildren to work through that. And as Louis says, to have the two competent leaders there, two people who worked in the Senate and one who has served under, I see he served under one president and he's been in this, he was in the Senate for many, many years. So he understands the workings of government, the legislature, and he understands the importance of negotiation. And I think that's going to work very well for him. And thanks, Joyce, and all of you, for kind of grounding us in a couple of things. One is that we have been given our humanity back. We've been encouraged to not only manifest it, but to share it, to connect with each other through it, to support each other with it. And a few weeks, no, months before the election, Brian Schatz, our state senator, really good guy. Also my daughter's high school classmate. So I get to have a US senator to call me Uncle Chuck. So that's not. So I'm asking Brian, this is months before the election. He said, and I said, so what do you think? What are the chances? And he said, check, I'll tell you three things about Joe Biden. Number one, he's been there for 40 years. Everybody knows him. You will never hear a single person in Congress say a bad word about Joe personally. They'll accuse him being liberal, progressive, communist, whatever, the political rhetoric. Personally, not a bad word from anyone, not Mitch, not any of them. Second, he said, he is a team leader. Every issue he targets, every decision that evolves, comes from a team of people who are the cream of the cream. They are the scientists, scientists. In climate change, his team is better than Bill Gates' team. And look at how much money Bill has to bring his team together. In education, his wife and the team that she is putting together and helping him put together, they're incomparable in health care. When he named his team, the health care scientific professionals in this country applauded. They were elated. That tells you, in the people who know the most about the areas that have the worst problems and the most harmful effects on those who are marginalized and underserved, he has the people who know how to approach those and heal those for the benefit of the people they serve. He said, one more thing. I know, he said, Joe Biden, I will tell you, Chuck. He has suffered. He has lost family members. He has gone through things that none of us can imagine personally. And he is a decent human being. The scene of him reaching out to the little boy with a speech impediment, he said, that's Joe Biden. We have been given back the choice to be human beings with and for each other. Joyce, Sandra, Louise, you are spot on. It is a gift that is incomparable. How do we make it long term? How do we systematize it? How do we bring it where it is needed most? I think we're starting to see that in communities. You stress a good point about his humanity, which comes from having lived life and suffer things that people go through and understanding what that feels like and empathizing with those things that occur in life, including serious loss. And so that does make you see and relate to people in a different way. So when we come to our communities, I think that encourages people who are engaged in community activities to understand that that is now value. I don't think that we value that sort of humanity, that sort of compassion and caring for one another. That almost, I won't say we lost it, but it was certainly not something that we saw in leadership in the last few years. But I think that's an important component that's returning and making our community and our community organizations and our community leaders be more effective as well. And then, like you said, Joyce, reaching out to that younger generation, to those grandchildren, and they're able to see that again. That is going to help you because you've got to start there. You've got to start with having some sense of empathy and humanity and compassion for your neighbors. It starts there, and if you lose that, then you just kind of, you're lost. But when you have that, then it helps you to be able to focus and do other things and be able to do better for your community when you see leadership here and you see... I mean, that's one of the things that we used to see with the Obamas. You know, going to the shelters and going to places where you were one-on-one helping people and people understood that. That really helps. It's necessary to teach our children how to be better citizens. You start there because you've got to care. Yeah, you know, I just recently decided to get active again with my sorority that's involved in community activities and chats. I think that's one way we help this process along because whereas the president and the vice president have a role to play, our role is, I believe, the talking, the listening, the hearing of what happened because sometimes just hearing how people feel and what they've been thinking and what they'd like to see as their future is gonna make a difference in the lives of many. So how else can I do that? Except to, I like to work through organizations that are involved in things that I can participate with because last night I heard that one organization had put together some black history books, et cetera, for groups and they couldn't get children to take them. I said, well, you've got to realize there are a lot of things that are happening to the parents right now. They don't want you to bring books and gifts to their children right now. We can't touch each other. But if you have the intent and the desire and the belief that there will be a time and you can do that, it's gonna happen. It'll happen. And we can be successful. So I told them that I'd like to be successful. And in the meantime, they can give me some of those books and things for my grandchildren. And that's a point that cannot be overvalued, Joyce, because if we break it down into the human connections, maybe it doesn't need to be a book, but maybe sharing stories like you and I did a few days ago, as Sandra and I have done in the Louise and I in the past. Stories connect people. They're personal, they're human, and they promote mutual respect and understanding. So maybe exactly as you point out, maybe our most valuable role here is to rebuild from the ground up our connections with each other, our human connection, our connections of respect and understanding and kindness. And I think that in some ways, I like to think of the silver linings that came out of 2020. And one is technology, more virtual meeting platform, but I think that has helped us maintain or keep a connection while during the times that we cannot keep physically connected. And I wanna give a shout out to Sandra. We just discussed this a little before this show started about her role in this multidisciplinary approach to just teaching about racial and social justice, which is this joint effort of the Judiciary, the Bar Association and the Judiciary History Center in January, February to educate about racial justice issues. I love the first session about Black Lives Matter and its impact in Hawaii and how the issues manifest themselves in Hawaii. And it reminded me actually of something I heard from my law school friend who's a law school professor and he had a book reception last night and most of his reading, writing, it's way above me. But there were three words he talked about that are sort of the purpose of his writing, which is that in America, we tend to have a willed forgetting of our history that prevents us from seeing the context. So we need to realize we have that and then kind of remember, go back to what the history is and learn from that and then prevention. We understand history, then we can prevent. And I see what you're doing, Sandra, with that Judiciary, the project is kind of reminding us of the historical roots of many of our biases and then what we need to do. How do you take that teaching to the next level, which goes into systemic and cultural change? The big questions. Oh, yeah. So how do we take that? How do we offer it in human, personal, connective faith to the people and the communities who have been marginalized, excluded, underserved? We know who they are, we know where they are. We need to get them vaccinations, but we need to get them shared humanity. We need to bring them, not just to the table, but into the living room, into the dining room, to sit down and to be human connections that have meaning and value in our lives. How do we do that? One of the things that please mention about the program, I can't take credit for doing that, I've just been involved in the process, but what it also takes is leadership in those institutions that we value. Leadership in those institutions has to kind of set the tone and set the pace for how we address those issues. And one of the great things about the program that we've gotten involved with is the Judiciary and the Bar Association and the History Center. It's a leadership within the judiciary, our Chief Justice. We've kind of really just taken the lead and we need to see that coming out in our institutions. We're seeing it now on the national level where someone has to step forward and say, this is the standard. This is what we're going to be pursuing, whether it's in the area of science, paying attention to the science for COVID, paying attention to the racial disparities when it comes to the distribution of health procedures for disadvantaged communities. When it comes to racial equity, then there has to be this leadership that takes us to that place where our communities feel engaged, feel that what they're doing is going to be effective. And that they can connect with one another. So, I mean, at least when a part of that program is well, we're going to be coming up in a few weeks talking about implicit bias and what that looks like and how we do that and how we can get people to recognize that and how that then impacts how we interact. So, it's important to have leadership that understands the importance and the necessities of these states as well as the community input that's going in. And it also includes involving our young people and making certain that they see us and understand what's taking place so they can step up as well. Elise talked about the Black Lives Matter and white experience. The beauty of that was that it was done by young people. And it was just a step. They took the lead in that and that was just, it was very hard. And I apologize. We have a fewer question and I don't want to get off this track. I want to come back to it. The viewer question on a different track is, historically, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon saying that he felt it was necessary in order to try to unite the country at a divisive time. There are people now who are claiming that impeaching former President Trump will only divide the country. What are those people need to hear and understand? I don't know if there's anything we can say to help them understand. I feel like it's maybe or maybe we're speaking to the rest of the populace who is open, but I just think that there needs, what I've heard from the impeachment team is there needs to be accountability before you can unite. Exactly. Exactly. We know that in our families, don't we? Is that people have to take responsibility for the acts that they've done and it helps you to feel respected and appreciated once they acknowledge what they've done. That's how you move forward with individuals, I believe. And what you've just pointed out is absolutely critically important to both personal and civic responsibility. How can we claim to be models or to have a leadership model for our children, for those who follow? If those in power can abuse it in that way, that destructive with that divisibility, that harmfully. We've now seen how close they came to Vice President Pence, how close they came to Speaker of the House Pelosi, how vicious and dangerous the stated, yelled intentions of those people were, how many months they put into it, how much money had gone into it, how much work and communications and how aware of it, the forces that might have been able to thwart them were and the leadership of those forces essentially blocked them from acting. They were not prepared, they did not respond and they called for help and they didn't get it until it was too late. I think that those principles that, you know, Eric had talked about, go feed in right there on the will to forgetting, remembering prevention. If we just let it pass, people are not going to remember it and they're going to, not only that, we won't learn all the details. We need to come have a reckoning of what actually happened, how dangerous it is and then figure out where we go from there in terms of not just security prevention, but how do you bring people along? I have a sense that there've been some studies done on what the profile of the insurrectionists were. Seems to be a lot of sense of, you know, maybe if not entitlement, that they didn't get what they expected, economic dislocation. And it seems to me that much of that has, you know, the remedy, part of that needs to be improving, people feeling like they've improved their place in life. You know, that's true. Yeah, it reminded me of, let me talk about, you know, whether accountability, I think you can't have the unity until you've got the accountability. You just don't get to do this and walk away. You know, when I was on the bench and I did criminal cases, and oftentimes you get a situation where, you know, I depended on saying, you know, I'm, you know, at the time of sentencing, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for my, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I did this. That's it. Well, no, there's a consequence. Your apology is accepted, but if you understand now what you've done, that it is wrong, but there is a consequence. And that has to be addressed as equally as well as your acknowledgement. So now you can take your, you know, your apology and the consequence, the sentence that goes along with it. And when that is completed, then you begin this new life, this new perspective. You've got to serve jail time. You do the jail time when you come out and then you be jailed. But there has to be, you know, we don't let criminals just walk in and say, oh, I'm sorry, I need to do that. And we go, oh, that's okay, then just go away. No, no, you know. So is what we're talking about here, not just accountability, but prevention, protection? Absolutely, yeah, back to that. We know, we know this person and this group of supporters has told us they will be back. They're coming back, Mark Stick, they're coming back in 2024, they're coming back in 2022, and they will be more organized. They will be more strategic with plan. They will be more funded and resourced and they'll be more dangerous because they'll be more committed. But we also know, we also know more about some of the issues that affect what run in that place. I mean, no one person. But at the same time, we also have as a society need to maybe understand and address the issues that are raised by this interaction as well. I mean, we certainly, we're beginning to address our marginalized communities. We're beginning to address the diversity that needs to be addressed. Inclusion, we're needing to address that. And that is happening. But we need to also maybe look and see, what are we saying to this group as well that makes them feel that there's nothing to accept burning down? And that's just, that's not it either. So let me ask you folks a question. If the leadership and the dominant factors in that attack group, the invasion group were black, they wouldn't be dead. They wouldn't be in the capital. Our history says that Sandra is correct. You know what has happened? When any group of African-Americans raised up, they were hung, all kinds of things happened to them. But these were establishment people in many, many ways. They served in our military. They served also in law enforcement in some ways. There's an attorney that was there. These were people who were part of the society. But I just have to tell you one thing. I just wish I could figure out a way how to send them down to Mar-a-Lago to stay for a while. I think that, I don't think they would be very welcome there because their leader did not see them. I believe as real individuals that we would respect. That's what I find. It's his lack of respect. I heard he was a germaphobe, but I'm also mindful of the fact that he didn't think very much of the people who followed him. Okay, so as we go to our last couple of minutes here, let me ask a harder question. If Trump were not an old, purportedly rich, white American with the evangelical, rural, undereducated support that he had, how would he be treated differently? Is there a racial and class component to this? Is he getting protected because he is the member of a sector that has been protected by the intentionally unequal advocates in this country for hundreds of years? Is that where the protection is really coming from? Look at who it is. But he's not, I'm not sure, you know, because he's not them either, not really. He's not. He's not the people who he leads on the one hand. And on the other hand, I think our Congress persons, and if I'm hearing what you, I think some of the senators are afraid of the violence that those people will do again to him. That's what I'm thinking here. I think when Sandra talked about how you have to bring people to some kind of first restitution or recognition and getting them to move on through education, I'm not sure it's all because he's a white male. He raised up some of that. But there are lots of facets to this right now. And we have to figure it out. Yeah, not just one facet. So we're out of time for today, but that's a great place to leave off. Let's come back. And in the meantime, the next two weeks, let's think about what do we most need to learn from this for ourselves, for our children, for their protection, for their welfare, for their humanity. Thank you all. Thank you. It's been a really, really good. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. And goodbye to those who listened in, yes. Yeah, come back in two weeks.