 To Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii, my name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting and I am your host for this program. Think Tech Hawaii is a platform that encourages civic engagement through conversations that educate, enlighten, and inspire. We are currently live streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com as well as on Think Tech Hawaii's Facebook page and viewers like you have the opportunity to ask those questions by sending them to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Now that I've gotten all that out of the way, I am very pleased to introduce our guest for today. He will be talking about civic engagement and business and the why of citizen participation. So we have on the show Chris Edwards, the new host of Making Democracy Work on Olelo. Hey Chris. Hi Kathleen, thank you for having me today. Of course, thank you for being on the show. So you are actually our last guest for Connecting Hawaii Business for 2020. So thank you so much for being on the show, but let's get into it. So tell us about yourself, your background, personal information, or anything you want to share with the viewers that will lead up to how you got to be the host of Making Democracy Work. Sure. So I'm Chris Edwards. I'm the recently elected president of the League of Women Voters here in Honolulu. So we have three different chapters in our state. There's the Honolulu chapter, the Big Island of Hawaii chapter, and then our state League of Women Voters. And the League of Women Voters is a 100-year-old organization that was born out of women's suffrage and making sure that all women in our nation had the right to vote. And even once on paper, it said that women had the right to vote. It still took another 56 or so years to make sure every woman in our nation had that right to vote. And so we continue to fight for democracy and fight for the right for folks to be represented and have that one vote that they deserve. And so that's kind of our continuing mission to this day. And so my background, I was a professional recruiter, and I think that's in part why I was tapped to become the president of the League, is because bringing in members is something that I really do enjoy doing. And so getting to know people, getting to know what direction they'd like to move in their civic engagement journey. Are they a beginner? Are they interested in finding new members like me? Are they interested in legislation and the opportunities at the City Council and learning more about that? Are they interested in neighborhood board meetings or boards and commissions around the county? Helping people navigate the democracy in our county is kind of my role. And being an advocate and an ambassador is something that I very much enjoy helping them get registered, helping them get to know the different levers of government. Because if we don't play a role in our government and voice ourselves, then we lose out on the opportunity to guide it in the direction that helps our families and our communities the best. Great. Let's pull up that logo for the League of Women Voters of Honolulu, just so people are able to identify which League you're chairing currently. And you talk about civic engagement and the importance of involvement. So let's go into how you ended up being the new host of making democracy work. Yeah. I was on the show making democracy work on Alelo about three months ago to discuss the charter amendments that we had going on during the general election. And it was a great joy of mine to appear on a show that, you know, has a long legacy and great host. We had Cowie Lucas was the current host until January. And then before that, we had Pearl Chang, who was formerly a president of the League of Women Voters of Honolulu as well in the 1990s. And so the show has been on air for six years or so. And they really liked my style and thought that I might be able to bring some advocacy and kind of link the show and the membership and our chapter together and move forward and bring on some really interesting guests to talk more about what they're doing to stay civically engaged and to assist our community. And so I have a really cool lineup for next year. And I hope that your guests can, you know, your viewers can also become my viewers, maybe. Okay. And so you kind of tapped into that already about, you know, your lineup, which I'm excited to learn more about. So tell us about the premise of the show, like why is it there? You know, why should people tune in? And then we can go into why people should get involved. Yeah. People should tune in to the show because it's really important that we have these long format opportunities to hear from guests. We hear a lot of news clips in local news that, you know, three, four, five minutes stories. But when you give someone the opportunity to speak for minutes on minutes, you can really learn more about what their organization is doing and really tap into an understanding, a better understanding of what they're doing and why you should play a part. You know, we want people to come in and say this is what we're working on. Politics isn't just at city council. It's not just at the state capital. It's not, it's, you know, in your community, it's in your family, it's on your block. And it's in your school and the classrooms. And so it's important that you play a role in shaping that. And so we want to bring in those folks that are a part of that process. So whether it's like a school principal type or a neighborhood board chair, a church leader that might be working on a cool project or a nonprofit leader, we want them to be able to talk about those cool projects that are helping with civic engagement and that folks can tap into and really make their own. Because no organization exists without its members. And there's so many pivotal organizations that are doing really big things to, you know, in our case at the League of Women Voters defend democracy, but in other cases, you know, feed people, work on homelessness and affordable housing, and so many other things that are gigantic parts of our community. I know we had a talk yesterday and I kind of want to reverse it. Can you speak on what would, because I talk about like why people should get involved and we can delve into that further, but like in your experience and in your opinion, what do you think happens when people don't? When we don't get involved in our democracy, it kind of gets away from us. Folks will, our representatives will go in a direction that may not help your particular community and your particular block, your cul-de-sac, your business. And when they get too far out of line with what the people need, then people get kind of upset and then they get apathetic about the whole process. But what we cannot forget is that there is no, we should not be too shy about telling our representatives what we want and when we want it and asking them to research a problem, solve a problem on our behalf, reach out to the organizations inside the public government that can help solve that problem. They might say, you need to reach out to this person at that organization and to solve the problem. Or they might say, oh, I don't know anything about that. Can you inform me more about it? And so then we have to do some research, we have to ask them for some research, but when they're not delivering what the public needs, then we can talk to our friends and get together in more of a coalition and say, we really want this and need you to do it and be able to hold folks more accountable to the needs of a neighborhood. If we don't take part in democracy, democracy won't do what we want. That's a very great point. What do you think stops people from going out there or reaching out to their representatives or their local legislators or whoever else is out there that may be able to help them in advance something that affects their lives? Sure. Folks like me like to know our representatives on a first name basis and I absolutely encourage everyone to be on first name basis with your city council member so that when you call them they kind of know who you are and go to their events and say hi and introduce yourself, but what holds people back oftentimes is the two very simple things and very natural human things, shyness and not really knowing the whole picture and then feeling like, oh, well, I don't understand the whole picture and it'll get taken care of for me so I'll just stay out of it. So those two particular very natural human features are kind of why folks don't get involved, but what I would encourage is do some research on the topic, then call and ask more questions of that representative and see what their knowledge can bring to you and then decide if you have more questions to return with those maybe in writing or in a next phone call and then take it from there. There's no reason why you should feel uncomfortable calling your elected representatives, whether it's your city council member, folks on the neighborhood board or even your state representatives and even the governor if need be. It's really cool because you can oftentimes write these people in emails if you're uncomfortable calling them on the phone, that's a really great strategy that I suggest for folks who are really looking for the answer, but maybe may not feel like they'll be able to ask all the questions concisely on the phone. Proceed in writing, proceed in the manner that helps you. If it weren't COVID, I would say proceed by knocking on their door or ringing their bell at their office and coming in and chatting with them or setting up an appointment on the phone. There's 100 different ways and now with social media you can reach them on their different social media platforms as that's really more comfortable. We have a lot of young people that want to get very involved. You don't have to go through the old formal channels necessarily. Sometimes you can use the opportunity to use social media to get into their direct messages and get your problem solved. I think we have time for one or two more questions. I think one before we go into break and then after you can connect us to why civic engagement and business tied together. Before we go on break, my question for you is what is your why and how when it comes to civic engagement and civic participation? I take part in civic engagement because I know how hard it was for the folks that came before me to take part in democracy. Whether it's the women of the League of Women Voters who had to fight like heck to get the right to vote and they couldn't give it to themselves, they had to use every power in their being to make men give them the right to vote that they heartily deserve all along. You think about African Americans who had to fight those poll taxes after they had been in prison for hundreds of years by people, by other people who felt like they were subhuman who had to fight those poll taxes and fight to get their educations and fight to get the best school books. Nothing was given. You look at our history here in Hawaii and the way that people had to fight in order to get the rights to vote when they were keeping the children of foreign-born persons from voting, when they were keeping poor people from voting, when they were keeping non-white people from voting. They're every nasty trick in the book that was used on the mainland to keep African Americans from voting and Native Americans and Chinese folks on the mainland from voting, they used here in our state in order to prevent folks from voting and it was a pretty nasty time, but we've come a long way, we've changed laws and we've made it so that those things are unacceptable to most of us and the League of Women Voters wants it to be unacceptable for any constituency to suppress votes and prevent folks from taking part in democracy and fair representation. So that's why. Those are all actually really great points and I thank you for bringing that up. I know that when we were talking yesterday you also want to expand on that when you do begin to your hosting duties for next year. So I'm very excited and looking forward to see you know what the show is going to come up with. But we are about to go on break and when we come back we'll talk about how civic engagement ties into business and even down to people receiving their paychecks. So stay tuned. Welcome back to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee, your host for this afternoon and our guest today is Chris Edwards who is the new host of making democracy work as well as the president of League of Women Voters of Honolulu. So right before we went on break we were talking about tying in how civic engagement or participation ties in with business. So let's go with that. Chris I know when we had our conversation yesterday you made a really great point about how business affects not only business owners but even people that are receiving paychecks. So let's go over that. How does civic engagement affect our businesses down to our paychecks? Yeah so when we look at the when we look at how let me start over the most important thing in our government are the laws that really are part of our government and when we when we look at our paychecks we know that it's paying for government and that government is a critical function that makes sure that the interests of everyone are taking care of and so when we pay our let's say payroll taxes we're paying for so many of the resources that we kind of need and we're also paying for the staff that help us write better laws. But sometimes there are very much times when laws do not align with the needs of the people and people need to better understand how that they can impact those laws and get things changed so that so that they're more in line with the needs of a particular family. Maybe the school has a bad software program or maybe a road needs to exist where it didn't exist before because there's communities that need to get attached together. Government may not necessarily figure that out on its own and civic engagement is that function and that role that put things in place that changes things. So we take a look at when there was bad software in the in the educational system here. When we had COVID-19 come in and everyone had to go to school from home we didn't necessarily love the software that a lot of students were given in the public school system and it was very much civic engagement in the thousands and thousands of letters and calls that went into the in this case the state house to make sure that folks knew there that it wasn't acceptable to have software that was a subpart of the standards that the parents desired and that the community desired. And we oftentimes forget that some of the things that we very much take for granted today in 2020 were were built on the functions of civic engagement of the past and making sure that things were changed to better fit the community as needed. And so it's a constant ongoing process of one topic or another where we need to improve improve improve and occasionally we need to remove laws that we find to no longer be necessary and that's great too. And the ones that are really bad for the function of for business or bad for the function of people in the community. And so it really can go both ways. You can support a law or or not like a law and you need to be able to use civic engagement on both directions. Okay and on that note let's go over what your plans are for the League of Women voters. What are you folks up to for 2021? Yeah we have big plans so we are always recruiting new members to join the organization and we always say that you don't need to come in knowing everything. We're open to everybody. We have a very inclusive diversity and inclusion policy. We're open we're a nonpartisan organization and I shouldn't have waited 15 minutes to say it. That's really at our core. One of the most probably the most important part is that we don't pick politicians. We do pick policies that we think are in the best interest of democracy but we don't pick politicians and it's very important that we maintain that that legacy and that openness and inclusion as to ideas from all sides as well as folks who have different various backgrounds. And so we are open to having new members from all different backgrounds. We're open to different projects and plans. One of the biggest things that we're doing this year is a video guidebook of the boards and commissions that we have here in the city in the county of Honolulu. And so there are all these different boards and commissions that are oftentimes appointed. The people on them are appointed by the city council or the mayor and so they range from the high profile ones like the police commission and the ethics commission to very low profile ones like the fire department commission and the parks department and a bunch of things in between. There's also a commission on the status of women here in the county and we want folks to be on these committees. We don't want it to feel like a closed group. We want it to be as big a group as the community would like to take part. We want them to know that there are these opportunities to serve the community and to serve very much in what would feel like a nonprofit type of environment but it's for our city's government and for its citizens and for its visitors because that's a very big role in so many of our so many of our parks are visitors are in them and so much of our city is really open to tourists. And so having more viewpoints on these boards and commissions will help them function better and oftentimes what they're doing is reviewing salaries and budgets personnel. The big decisions of that those directors come to them with are what they're deciding on. They're kind of like the board of directors for each board and commission and we'd like that board and commission pool to be a little bit bigger and so we want to make it really easy for people to see when do these organizations meet what time do they meet do they meet on weekdays do they meet on weekends. We want to do interviews with the directors to tell us what does your organization do why should somebody want to be on your board and commission and it's it's it's very important that these positions that are not elected but appointed are are representative of the entire community and the folks that want to be on them have the opportunity to know about them at the time when they'd like to join them and then play a role. I love how you're able to tie in your chair position with the League of Women Voters of Honolulu as well as you hosting for making democracy work I think that's great and it's it's it's really clever to do that since you know the resources are already there we just have to connect the dots right on that note and I think you've already touched upon it when you were talking about the League of Women Voters what can we expect from making democracy work for 2021 what are your tentative plans what what would you like to do with the show. Sure so we expect to have 12 episodes so one for each month we air on the third Tuesday each month and so our first upcoming episode was actually recently shot and so we're really excited to get that up let me think I've never teased a show before without giving it all away it's about helping how how private money is helping different schools across the state fund reconstruction and fund the replacement of equipment the modernization of equipment and how we can do more of that and how we can play a role as a public in encouraging more private funds to assist our schools when they're in need and so really excited about that we also have we're using a lot of theme months so we have African American History Month in February we have Asian American in Pacific Islander Month in May we are very excited about the opportunities to talk about how African Americans and Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians have contributed to our democracy here in our county and and these routes go very very deep deeper than we may initially imagine and so it's important that we sometimes bring up this old history so so young people middle-aged people and seniors can see all the different ways that folks have contributed and then they can pick out like oh that's really cool I really like what that person did you know in the 70s to change and that change has lasted all these 50 years or I really love what that person did in the 40s I didn't know that story that's super cool I'm glad that you know folks can vote from one community or another and are no longer hindered by by bad laws of the past right yeah absolutely although there are some that still exist and this is why we are talking about the importance of you know civic participation and on that note is there anything that you would like to add that we haven't covered to close out our show for today yeah please look us up online the League of Women Voters Honolulu and please join if it's something that you're passionate about please watch the show starting next month or Tuesday of the month every month we're also in reruns on Allelo you can watch our back catalog online by going to Allelo's website and looking up making democracy work we would be happy to entertain any questions you have that's kind of our big role as advocates is we field a lot of questions from the public to assist them with mundane things and very challenging questions and we we do a lot of work as a state organization at the state legislature we'd like to have volunteers that would like to help us the League of Women Voters Honolulu down at at Honolulu Halle so that we can have a closer eye on what the city council is up to so if you'd like to be that volunteer that really likes watching the city council meetings or wants to learn or if you would like to get involved with state legislation oh please give me a call let me know so that we can connect you to the right folks and you can play a major role in in shaping the democracy and making democracy work better so I hope you'll join me in 2021 yeah and how do people get in contact with you I think you sort of mentioned that already but to repeat it so it's um I'll give my personal email it's chris-edwards-hevae-edgmail.com and then I'll get you connected to whichever direction you'd like you'd like to go whether it's a research question a county question or a state question we'd love to have you we also easily search us online at League of Women Voters Honolulu or the League of Women Voters main website is lwv.org and then you can just search for our chapters out here well thank you so much chris for joining us today I am looking forward to seeing you continue your community work and seeing you host making democracy work next year as well so thank you for joining us absolutely we do want to thank jfidel and the entire staff at think tech hawaii and Eric has helped us out today for making this program possible and on that note chris and I wish everyone a happy holidays merry holidays and aloha