 Welcome, viewers, to thinktechhawaii.com. Our show today is The Will of the People, and I am Ian Ross, sitting in as host for Martha E. Randolph. My guest today is an educator, former secretary-treasurer of HSTA, an active participant in Hawaii's labor movement, and recently elected state representative. Representative Amy Peruso, welcome and thank you for joining me today. Thanks for having me. Before we go any further, what else would you like our viewers to know about you? I think being an educator has definitely been an important part of who I've become, but I think it's also important to know maybe that I am a mother, and I take that very seriously, and I enjoy surfing and working with the community. So I understand you also taught social studies at Milani High School for 14 years. Now that you're a legislator, are there some sort of lesson or fact that you've learned that you'd want to add to the social studies curriculum? So that's a good question. I think that it's not necessarily true that I'd want to add anything to the curriculum, but I definitely think that I'd want to go deeper with work that I was already doing or starting to do. So I was doing a lot of work, and throughout my career I've been kind of developing this approach to civic education that's very place-based and very culturally grounded, and I think that if I was still in the classroom, I think having this experience of the legislature, I would definitely be doing that work more aggressively with more intention and more kind of understanding of its importance. Interesting. Well, thank you for sharing that. Though I understand you may be a new legislator, as I was kind of mentioning for some of your background, you've been involved in the political process for some time. So my question for you is beyond just teaching, what can you tell me about experiences that you've had in the past that prepared you for your current job? Well, I'm not sure if anything really prepared me, but I think that being involved in movement politics for most of my adult life, starting in Los Angeles around environmental racism and just social justice movements, labor movement, I think that that work really prepared me for thinking about the relationship between elected officials and the people and thinking about the importance of organizing. So that's been really pivotal for me, and I think back on the kinds of strategies I developed in helping to organize movements and what I learned from the people leading those movements and how they still inspire me, I think that I take to work with me every day. So you're mentioning different types of tactics you learned in movements. Can you give any examples? I think it sounds very basic, but I think listening to people and engaging in the one on one conversation and really trying to hear the sources of people's frustration and cynicism and alienation and trying to work with them to tap back into the causes of that frustration. So what are the shared obstacles, right? And how can we address those together? I think that's why organizing is so powerful because you're working collectively to make change. Sounds like a skill that probably has been aiding you well as a legislator then. Well, I'm still working on it, but yeah, I think that it's a skill I want to continue to develop. So I can see now looking back where there's somewhat of a clear path towards where you are now. When did you first know that you wanted to run for office? So I think that I had, you know, I never actually intended to run for office. It was never part of my life plan. I never saw myself in elected office and I was very comfortable being an educator and being involved in movement politics, especially the labor movement. I felt like I was doing good work there. And I think it was the evening of the 2016 general election when, so I might get a little emotional, but I have two younger daughters. So at the time one was 12 and one was 10 and they had been very involved in the whole political discussion. We'd let them watch everything surrounding the election because I thought it would be a good instruction about how ultimately the people will make the right decision. And even though from my perspective we had a misogynist racist running, there was no possibility that for me, from my perspective, that we would elect that person to be president. And I think my daughters shared that perspective and I think they were really inspired by the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. And while I was not an original Clinton supporter, I supported them in that. We had conversations about politics all the time, which was not normal for them. They're not political young women or they weren't at the time. And the evening of that election and watching their faces, they had made signs that said Hillary for the win and drawings and like posted them around the house and watching their faces, watching the results come in, I just decided whatever I was doing, it wasn't enough. So it was at that moment that I knew I wasn't sure that I would be running for office, but it seemed clear to me like that night I signed up to go to the women's march. I realized that I was going to have to level up. So and that's what it looks like now. But yeah. Well, obviously you're part of it. But what does it mean to you then in your daughters? See in 2018, so many more women elected, including here in the state legislature here in Hawaii and nationally, and all the women now jumping into the 2020 presidential election. Yeah, I think that it's frankly really fabulous. And I've been thinking about what the legislature would look like and what our legislative agenda would look like if it was a legislature dominated by women. I've been thinking about that. Because you get this real sense that there's a shift already happening. And you know, outcomes are never clear. But when I was running for office and so I would teach all day and then I'd go home and I take a short nap and then I'd go canvas every day. And my daughters watch me do this. And at first they were very hesitant to be involved. And they were not sure they supported me because I think for them it seemed like a stretch. And they were a little bit nervous for me. Probably after the 2016 experience here. And they knew that this was not part of my life plan. And they knew how much I love doing the work with HCA and they knew how much I love being in my classroom. So they were not convinced that this was going to be the right path for me. But I think that as they started to see people's response to me and to the vision and to those conversations, my daughters actually started supporting me. An important endorsement to be sure. Right. But I mean started to think positively about the possibility of women being in office. So that for me was a major win. Clearly your family and what was going on nationally were motivators and drove you towards this. But when you were first starting out, did you also have any particular advisors and mentors? And if so, how did they affect you? I think that over the course of the past decade, I think I've really changed. I've become much more political. I think that that is a result of what's happened in public education nationally and locally. And I think my main mentors, I think around organizing with the Chicago teachers like the UCOR teachers and Eric Gill locally, I think around education politics, the people who have inspired me or mentored me have been Daryl Ballera, Katherine Payne. And I think that those folks have really had a powerful impact on how I think about politics. In electropolitics, it's been mostly Gary Hoosier locally and surprisingly our national NEA leader, Lily Eskelson Garcia, encouraged me to get involved in electropolitics when I wasn't sure. Sounds like a lot of mentors in a lot of different places at the time. Yeah, different kinds of mentoring. That's great. So how has becoming a state representative changed how you push for those issues that you care about? So it has changed who I am publicly. So I have the same passions, the same drive, and I think I express them differently. I think I am much more prone or I hope that I am able or willing to see the whole. I think as an advocate or an activist, it was easy for me to identify the right solution and just fight for it. And I think having to listen to multiple sides makes you be more reflective. And I feel more responsible for hearing and listening to hear. So talking about like the opportunities to listen and hear people, you of course sit in a lot of hearings, especially where you vice chair, higher and lower education, one of the two vice chairs. So do you have any specific examples of some issues that you found very informative to be hearing more sides about? I think, well, in those hearings, I think that I'm very comfortable in those hearings. I've spent, I feel like I've spent a lot of my life in those hearings. But on the other side, so what was interesting about that process was being able to ask questions that came from a different perspective, that came from a teacher perspective. And I know that the hearings felt different to me. So I hope that teachers, like just in the way that our questions are now in that space in a different way, that we might be heard in a different way. It's odd because I have this kind of schizophrenic identity. I still see myself as a teacher, you know? So oftentimes it's hard for me to separate the two. OK, well, kind of transitioning from that. So you now have experience teaching people about policy, advocating for policy and now voting and crafting policy. If someone came to you and they said they wanted to get involved and make a difference in their community, where would you tell them to start? So I think it would depend on the the age of that person and the social context within which they live and work. But I think that I would ask them to start where they're at, right? To look around their workplace or their school and to start talking to folks about issues that are of common concern and then to start talking to people about acting to address those issues. And I think that in my experience as a teacher, activating people and engaging them and politicizing them. Sometimes it doesn't matter so much the specific issue. It what matters is that feeling of empowerment that happens as a result when you're working with other people. So because that's transferable. And so you can take that to other issue areas. And and as and even if you think that a person like you might be having conversation or I might be having conversation with the young person and I might think that they've chosen a trivial issue, you know. But as I asked them to go talk to other people and see if other people share that concern, they will discover that for themselves, whether or not this is a burning issue for others and if they can organize around that issue. So I really think the workplace is the most important place, but also the school site, because that's where young people are working. Well, as you know, we're just about to start the new round of neighborhood board elections. Yes, I know that for representatives, a big part of constituent outreach is attending these board meetings and working with them. What have you seen that role between you and the board as so far in your tenure? I think that, well, I had attended board meetings for a long time. And actually, the board meetings were a reason that I considered running for office because I when we first did the research that laid the foundation for our schools, our KK Deserve campaign, we created that campaign. And then I took it out to the neighborhood boards. So I went to the neighborhood boards. I don't think I hit all of them, but myself and some of my HSC colleagues went to most of the neighborhood boards, shared our campaign, asked for the board support and we would go back multiple times. And for me, it was a really interesting process because it was a little bit heartbreaking because it led me to the realization that our neighborhood boards are so generally speaking, divested from the public schools because the city and county don't fund those schools. So they don't feel responsible for the schools. There's very little to no conversation at the neighborhood boards around public education. It's mostly about municipal issues, right? Being a board member, I definitely noticed that, right? And so for me, I had known that kind of on a conceptual level, but then experienced board members, not disinterest, but they could not see the connection between what I was talking about and what they were interested in. So it really brought home to me the importance of having multiple levels of government engaged in this discussion on public education because it cannot just be the state's responsibility. It has to come down to the local level. And there are very few parents involved in school community council meetings. If that's our level of local accountability, then our system won't be successful. So I'm really hoping that the neighborhood board and the city and county can somehow get engaged in the conversation on public education. I think it's a really important insight, especially because as you mentioned, your mother, your legislator, former educator, work with HSTA. So hearing the need for more and kind of structural conversations about education is definitely an important insight. So you were mentioning HSTA's campaign and that you were involved with it. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that campaign was? Sure. So in 2015, when we were elected, we did a listening tour. So we went to all of the chapters, all of the islands, and we talked to teachers about what they thought were the most pressing concerns facing teachers and what we could do together to solve them. So basically what sucked the joy out of their lives and what we could do to change that. And based on their responses, that we created something called the Speakers Bureau in HSTA. And our job was to look at what the teachers had said, look at the evidence, the academic scholarship, supporting kind of what the teachers were saying and then create really materials that would help the public understand where teachers were coming from and the foundation of what they were arguing for. So it's like a really insightful experience to be able to bring all those resources together. Yeah. And I feel really grateful because NEA gave us a grant so that we could do that work. And it really created a different structure within HSTA. So it was really teacher driven and teacher voice. So it was really beautiful. And then the teachers took those materials to neighborhood boards and to any community organizations that they could talk to. So that was like the beginnings of the School Art Cake user campaign. Well, thank you for that history lesson on that campaign. Well, we're going to take a short break and be back in just a little bit with representative Amy Perusa. Hi, my boo. Hi. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power, Hawaii. We think tech Hawaii. We come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich and lighten, educate, entertain and we hope to empower. Again, Maraming, Salamat Bo, Mabuhay and Aloha. Aloha, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktechhawaii.com, one PM on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. And we're back with a Will of the People. I'm your host, Ian Ross, and I'm sitting down right now with Representative Amy Perusa. So we were before the break, we were talking about how you might encourage someone to get involved and you were talking about your experience as an educator and a legislator and just generally working with neighborhood board systems and stuff like that. One complaint I hear a lot is that attempts to affect change as a resident, especially on the legislative level, run into many barriers and difficulties. Should it be easier for regular people to affect policy? And if yes, how should we change the process to make it easier? I think that there, you know, I think that's a complex question because I come from California and we have an initiative and referendum system there that has made wrongheaded policy possible. So in fact, the public school system was partially defunded by Proposition 13, which limited property taxes in California. And so I think that I have a more complicated view of direct democracy and the creation of legislation. I personally think that we should have a longer legislative session. I think that our legislative session is so short and I think that it truncates the articulation of really important arguments and voices. And I think part of what I think should happen is that well, there are a lot of things that need to change to make it more responsive to citizens. But I think that it's a matter of maybe I can make this a little more specific. So I hear some complaints about a few different things. So one is not so much getting in touch with legislators. I think the community and the neighborhood board system, a lot of people say those are pretty good. You go to those about 50, 50 on each legislator being in any given month. But what I hear a lot about is, you know, the attending of hearings notices being very potentially not being long enough for people to be able to get something together. Another one I often hear about is just not knowing the right jargon to talk about. It can be difficult to talk about a bill, as you know. There's the bill, then there's the house draft version and the Senate draft version. So it's sort of on those levels of someone looking at it and just having a hard time to understand the process or being able to move quick enough and talk to them. I know you're talking about extending the legislative session, but is there any other thoughts on that sort of the difficulty it can exist when you're looking from the outside in? Yeah, I think that... So we have a really fabulous public access room, but I think that their work isn't brought into the community that often. And I think that they can work with neighborhood boards to really educate the folks who want to be involved or even to community organizations and educate them as to how to attend hearings. I think that with an extended session, you would have, I would hope, longer hearing notices because that's also always been an obstacle for me, that it's hard to be able to take off work if you don't have much time. And in terms of the jargon, I do think that it's just a matter of immersing yourself in the process and I think you have to learn the language and maybe there can be, that's one role the public access room can play and those folks can help you understand different versions and honestly, like first lateral and crossover and it's hard to keep track of what's happening and where you can be most effective, like which access point is going to be the most effective? We'll take a step back there. She talked about first lateral and crossover. I don't think we're going to get everyone to know all the terms today, but can you talk about the importance of what these deadlines mean for most? So what those deadlines mean is, well, for first lateral, if your bill has not made it through its committees by first lateral, then it's not going to, it didn't survive and especially if it's not coming, if the same bill is not coming from the Senate side. So it's really important that you understand that if you're going to make a push for it to be heard or to successfully make it through committee, that that push has to happen within a certain time frame before first lateral. And then, you know, once the bill comes back over, you have to understand the timing too before it goes to conference. And I think that, you know, it's there are so many ways a bill can die. I think that's really the frustrating thing for people is they don't understand really the point in the process where the conversation ended around the legislation they thought was important. And that's why I think that it's the organizing with other people and really developing strategies for contacting who the main players are around your legislation. So those committee members, right, on the relevant committee. So knowing how to identify which committees it's going to go to. So request them to either introduce the bill or hear the bill. Correct. Yeah. And I think, and even the work has to start far before session, like to work with legislators on coming up with language that they're going to be amenable to, right? So you probably need to know, like, what are going to be the obstacles to the kind of language you're interested in and how you can work with legislators to overcome those obstacles because it's really impossible to just shove things through the legislature. Yeah. Well, let's shift back the discussion back to you personally. This year, you had the experience of introducing bills under your own name for the first time. There's a limit to how many bills representatives can introduce, right? Right. So how did you go about deciding which bills you would introduce? Oh, OK, so I basically divided. I took first, I stepped back and when I was drafting legislation. So this was in November. It kind of fell into four buckets pretty easily. And the legislation was based on all the canvassing I had done. And so all the concerns that constituents had articulated to me and they really fell into economic justice. My district is pretty impoverished, health and human rights. So we really lack access to public health. And we have a real serious crisis around houses, this in my district, education and then aloha aina, because my district is where Kukani Loko is situated, and then we also have the state Aglands that surround Whitmore Village. So. So people who aren't familiar with your district, could you tell us a little bit? Oh, yeah. So. Yeah. So it's a. Well, it's a plant from some people's perspective. It's old plantation town, older plantation town, but it's also deeply connected to the originally it's the site of Kukani Loko, which is the birthing place for the elite. So and that has become much more important in recent years. And there's been a lot of conversation. The Kukani Loko plan was just developed by Oha, and it's a beautiful plan. So kind of looking at that and what that means for my district and our community, I think it will be really important. So I think that kind of brings us around to our next question. In which ways are you engaging with your community on the bills you introduced and support? So I have been using social media a lot. But before before the session even started, I had a pre-legislative pre-session legislative update. And I basically outlined my bills and we had a potluck dinner and we all sat around and talked about what which ones the community members saw were the priorities and their positions on it. And we had some like interesting discussions and debates. But it was it was really good. I mean, I felt like I wasn't a politician talking to people. We were having a group conversation. So I enjoyed that. So that seems to be really interesting as sort of the way you first picked out the priorities. But now that you're a legislator, is there any type of community engagement similar to when you were an organizer to get them remind them to show up to any bills or is there anything related to perhaps to working with certain groups to support the bills? So I've been involved like prior to being elected, I was involved in a few movements of the labor movement, the environmental movement. And I have been using my access and helping like informing my networks of when bills are going to be heard and what bills have not yet been heard and should be heard. So just using my communication networks mostly. And I do something called Second Saturdays in Wahia. And people are welcome to come and talk about politics. And I use that as an opportunity to to talk about like the issues that are pending. And yeah. So basically just like the and and neighborhood board meetings to talk about what's happening at the legislature. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story, former educator or as you continue to see yourself current educator, legislator, mother, someone who didn't expect to see themselves in politics. I really appreciate your sharing your story of how this all came together for you and how you continue to take those experiences forward. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. So we've reached the end of the show. I appreciate you joining me today, representative and Mahalo to everyone who watched this episode of the will of the people. This is Ian Ross signing out.