 Good afternoon to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Kim-Hunter. So okay, when Donald Trump got elected last year, last November, there was a huge movement created certainly by women's march and a lot of other groups as well. What we've talked about on the show, we've named them before, women's resistance, people power, J-20, there's many, many, many groups that are involved in the resistance. Now the thing is, anybody who was opposed to Trump, to Trump, to Trump or to Trump, whatever you want to call him, anyone opposed to him is welcome to the resistance. You've got your reason for that. But the interesting thing though is that's been a national movement, it was a national movement to oppose Trump because he's the president of the national country here. The fascinating and interesting thing though is, as a result of that, there's been so much energy, so much political energy that is being created by that, that it is starting to turn itself locally much more. The mirror is being shown more and more on what's going on and the ugliness that's going on locally. And it's not just in Hawaii, it's everywhere, but that's the fascinating thing is it's starting to become a local phenomenon that we're starting to challenge the powers that be in a way that maybe we haven't really done in a way maybe that we haven't done before. There have been challenges to the power structure before in various different ways here in Hawaii. Going back 30 years, there have been challenges to the power structure and how it works. However, now it's being done in a way because of social media, because of our phones that we have, cameras, ready cameras, and I guess live, going Facebook live and stuff like that. Today is that we can actually capture things and it's getting put out there and more and more people are becoming aware of it. So again, we are at a time right now where we have the opportunity to capture all of this and focus this energy. And I'm going on and on about this because it's really important. What we're going to talk about today is a couple of things. We're going to talk about, I'm going to dive in a little bit more with our guest today about some of the rule changes to the Democratic Party that was presented a couple of weeks ago. But then we're going to talk about some of the things that are being done locally to challenge some of the local, I guess, establishment. So with that, I will welcome to the show Mr. Will Corone. And so thank you. Thank you for coming. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Will does a lot of different things from what I can see. He's involved in a number of areas. He's secretary of the Young Progressive Demanding Action. So what I'll say is, first of all, again, welcome to the show. But please, Will, tell us a bit about yourself and what has brought you to this point with what you do. OK, sure. I was born on Oahu, born and raised here. I'm a UH Manoa graduate. And what's your degree? Oh, actually, I was in a studio art, very interesting. While I was at UH Manoa, though, I got involved with Kaleo O'Hoa'i, the school newspaper there. Started getting a little bit into journalism. After I graduated, I went to work for Honolulu Magazine. I mean, sorry, not Honolulu Magazine, Honolulu Weekly, which no longer exists, unfortunately. And while I was there, I started getting a little bit into investigative journalism and covering politics at the capitol, specifically. City council a little bit too, but really at the legislature. Some of the early bills that I remember tracking at the weekly included, I think it was SB 1179 in 2013, which was a bill introduced by Clayton He to strip the journalism shield law. So that was sort of kind of a close to home bill as a journalist. What was that trying to do? Well, Hawaii has a strong shield law that protects journalists in the course of their investigating, specifically politicians and people in power. It allows journalists to refuse to divulge their sources in the cases of whistleblower cases and things like that. And so they can't be forced to divulge what their sources are. They can't be really harangued into divulging that sort of information. At the time, Senator He was not happy with some of the coverage that was happening through civil beat and other investigative sources. And so he was championing a bill that would have really would have stripped some of the power out of the shield law that Hawaii currently has. And so that was basically that was Senator Clayton He trying to change the rules when it comes to media before fake news became a thing. Yeah, well, I mean, I guess in his mind, maybe it was at the advent of that. But anyway, after that, I covered politics at the legislature for another four years up to recently. With the weekly or with? No, with the Hawaii independent. Yeah, after the weekly closed, I went to work at the Hawaii independent. And through that experience, covering the 2014 special session marriage equality, the Carlton Chang hearing, big sort of like real issues like that where I saw a lot of people come out, both for and against that nominee, as well as the bill that would have allowed marriage quality to go forward, other issues like that. Days of testimony, days of testimony, just tons of energy, like more involvement from average people than I'd ever seen really. That sort of set the groundwork for me coming into my role now as a community organizer with the young progressives demanding action. And as you mentioned in the intro, that really the catalyst for that was Donald Trump getting elected. All throughout the primary season, I was a big diehard Bernie supporter, a number of my friends that helped start the young progressives demanding action were campaigning actively for Bernie in Hawaii. Cameron Sato, Sami Kobayashi, those guys, really, really leading the way for millennials to get involved. And at the time, I went to caucus for Bernie. I knew I was going to vote for him. And that was kind of it for me at that point, other than just sort of trying to sift through all the nonsense on the internet that you're getting bombarded with daily at that time, starting around that time. Which we now know much was driven by Russia. A lot of it was driven by our teenagers in Eastern Europe making phenomenal amounts of money off of fake news blogs. So that was kind of it for me. And when Bernie didn't get the nominee, I was like, OK, well, Hillary Clinton should be able to beat Donald Trump. So she's going to get my vote because I can't allow Donald Trump to get into power. Then he does anyway. And I realized that what I had been doing was just not enough. It just wasn't enough. Simply caucusing, simply voting just wasn't going to cut it. That it required something more from me and from everyone, really, to make sure that something that egregious doesn't happen again. And so what's more that we are doing everything we can to resist and prevent the damage that's to mitigate that promising. Absolutely. And actually, that's the one silver lining in the whole scenario is, again, as you mentioned, that people like me and a whole host of other people, especially young people, have suddenly gotten involved in the political process in a way that is unheard of prior to that, except maybe going back to the Democratic Revolution or something. The Democratic Revolution of the 50s, of the 50s here. So there was a lot then, yes. But I like to refer to it as the last time this many people nationally were as involved, or as civically engaged, was the American Revolution. Yeah, probably. When you look at it per capita, certainly. Probably, yeah. Because it's this huge amount of people that are suddenly interested, that are suddenly engaging. Some of us have been engaged for a little while. Going back before Trump, some of us were inspired by Obama. Sure, yeah. But now, here we are. Now, here we are. So yeah, getting into the young progressives demanding action. Like a week after Donald Trump was elected, the young progressives did the Love Trump's Hate march through Wiki Key. 1,100 people showed up for that, me being one of them. I was one. And that was the day that I signed up. That was the day that I put my email down. A month later, they had officer elections, and I told them that I wanted to be secretary. And so now, here I am helping to organize events, helping to organize testimony from millennials. So let's understand before we get lost in all of this other stuff. The young progressives demanding action. It's an official group. It's an unofficial group. How would you describe what that is as an entity and how it relates to the political landscape? Sure. So during the primary season, there were chapters of what was called Students for Bernie set up at college universities across the nation, UH Manoa being one of them. After the primary season ended, and we transitioned into the Hillary versus Trump, the momentum that had been built up was just too valuable to squander. So there was a national level decision to pivot all those Student for Bernie chapters into young progressives demanding action. So it's a national organization. I think there are 15 to 20 large scale organizations on major campuses. And there may even be smaller ones popping up. I'm not exactly familiar with the national structure. My focus is pretty much locally, entirely. But that's basically where it came from. Using different mechanisms, depending on what the university that is hosting the group has available. So for example, the Young Progressives Hawaii chapters and official RIO registered independent organization at UH Manoa. But we include members from Shamanah at HPU. We're working on getting out to West Oahu and even to UH Hilo and to Maui Community College and Kauai Community College. So is it an independent nonpartisan? Yes, it's nonpartisan. We don't say that members have to be registered Democrats, although most of our members are. Or have become so. Or have become so recently. Or either that or probably vote Democratic, even if they're not registered. But it's not a requirement. Certainly it's certainly not a requirement. I've had conversations with some really interesting Republican identified or registered Republican young people who we don't see eye-to-eye on everything. But on a fair amount of social issues, especially, they're right there with us being progressive on those things. That actually could be a show unto itself to understand the millennial perspective and whether or not you lean liberal or lean conservative and where there's a crossover. Definitely. I think that would be fascinating to understand better. Definitely, absolutely. OK. All right, so now go back as far as the things that you're doing. Young progressives are doing a lot of things. Progressives demanding action. You have a Facebook page? You have a website? We do. Facebook page and a website. The Facebook page is at YPDAHauai. At YPDAHauai and the website. And the website is ypdahauai.org. There you go. Excellent, excellent. OK, so you guys are actively engaged in resisting Trump. But that's not all. That's not all, yeah. What are you doing locally? And I'm taking more time on this area because I'm finding it interesting. There's a lot of good stuff coming up. What are some of the things you're focusing on locally? Just a little snippet, and then we're going to dive more into that in the next segment. So just more locally, maybe how are you trying to engage locally? Yeah. One of the big things that we've been working on the past few months was the legislative session, the 2017 session. We really made an effort to identify bills that were being introduced at the beginning of the session that lined up with our core values as progressives. We have three action committees, social justice, environmental justice, and economic justice. And so those committees sort of put together short lists of 15 to 20 bills that they really cared about, wanted to champion. And we did our best to organize millennials, young people, our friends, to come down to the legislature in person if possible, but at a very least to submit written testimony on those bills, to really lobby and to show that millennials have a voice and they do care about these issues and that we are paying attention locally. You mentioned that there's a lot of energy on resisting Trump nationally, and we totally think that that is incredibly important, especially along certain avenues like immigration and things like that in Hawaii specifically. But strengthening the community really starts at the local level. It's really about grassroots strength. It really is. And here, that means neighborhood boards. Neighborhood boards, yeah. That means working at the legislature if you have that ability and interest as well. Being engaged in the process at every level, whether it's just as an activist, as an advocate, as a lobbyist, as an interested party, knowing how to participate. And that's one of the things that I think really needs to be done a lot more. Now that there's so many more people who are paying attention, their eyes are being opened or they're being just directed, we need to provide them with the tools now to say, this is how you get engaged. And here's some groups and organizations you might agree with or not. But here's how you get engaged. Absolutely. So that your voice is being heard. So all right, we didn't get to jump into the rule thing that I wanted to jump in. So maybe we'll do a briefing on that. But we are about ready to take our first break. So that goes really quickly. Awesome. Thank you again for joining us, Mr. Will Corone, Secretary of Young Progressive Demanding Action. Thank you again for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Kempani. I'll see you in one minute. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. And I'm the host of Shrink Rap 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 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Kempani. Welcome once again, Mr. Will Corone, Secretary of Young Progressive Demanding Action here in Hawaii, Honolulu chapter, Hawaii chapter. So OK, briefly, before we jump into the big event that's coming up and what we're trying to accomplish or what it's being really worked on, let's jump back real quick to the rules. So a couple of weeks ago, I had the fortune of being able to be the co-chair of the rules committee for the convention. So we got to go through some rule changes. And one thing that came up that there were a number of people yourself included who were part of was the rule change having to do with the eligibility for a member of the Democratic Party to run for and become chair of the county. And the eligibility piece that was being looked at, and it was trying to be pulled out, was that that chair should not be or become a paid registered lobbyist. Tell me briefly, because I gave everybody last week my thought on some of this stuff, tell me in a couple minutes your thought on what it was, what happened, and then what you want to do from here. Sure. The impetus for that rule change really was just a separation of power in some ways, of having the focus at the head of the county party be on the county party, rather than whatever outside interests a registered lobbyist might be beholden to, whether they're good or bad. And that was one of the things that came up at the convention as you remember is that there were a lot of lobbyists there in person who are good people who do good work who were worried that this was sort of targeting them. And it wasn't meant to target lobbyists at all. We recognize that there are tons of lobbyists that do really good work for us, including environmental groups, including labor groups. But as the chair of the party at the county level, you're representing the county party. And the idea that you might have to go testify on a bill as the county chair on something that has to do with the Democratic platform, for example, and you're testifying in favor of a bill because it is in line with the platform. And then you come back and testify in the capacity as a lobbyist against that same bill because that's what you're hired to do. It's rare. I think that that might happen, but it's not unheard of. And so all we were really asking was just for that one position, that one officer position at the top of the party to be free from any even appearance of conflicts of interest. Right. And one of the comments that was made, I think one of the more important comments that was made by Kim Coco Iwamoto, where she said, it's how that position gets monetized. Absolutely. So if that chair happens to be a registered lobbyist and all of the other special interests are aware of that, those special interests will start pouring money at that lobbyist company with that understanding that, oh, by the way, the chair of this particular is part of that. And therefore, we can get that influence. And it isn't the influence necessarily that that person does as much as it is the conversation that happens optically that, hey, you know what? The chair is a member of this and is a lobbyist and therefore, it is an agreement with this. Absolutely. And that is the greater challenge because, yeah, we're talking about accountability, talking about transparency, and credibility. So OK. So that was the thing that was addressed and it didn't pass. It did not. It lost by one vote. So that shows a lot, though. It says a lot. It lost by one vote. And that vote was like a last second vote. It was. And anyway, so OK. So what's next with that? So with that, I mean, we also introduced a resolution that was along similar lines that also did not pass. And I think that we're going to try again. I don't see any reason not to try again. But I think that one of the things that we really learned is articulating our message better is really important because a lot of the people that spoke out against it, like I said, are good people that do good work for the party and for the people of Hawaii. And I think that with a little bit more reaching out, a little more of our own lobbying, lobbying the lobbyists ahead of time, we could have swung some of those people onto our side. And that's true. And that actually goes back to the earlier point of how you get engaged and how you actually make some of this stuff happen within the system, good and bad. So yeah, so OK. And by the way, you lost by one vote on the amendment. Yes. Yes. We actually, we proposed an amendment that would actually make it more palatable to those lobbyists, which would have excluded lobbyists for union. Well, it wasn't excluding lobbyists. What it was was you would have to disclose. Right. So that was really the primary aspect of that. You just knew as you would have to disclose that you were a lobbyist. There was also, was it the same amendment now that where it was saying that union and environmental lobbyists were OK, but corporate lobbyists? Those were, those, that was a different thing. There were five, there were five different amendments. And that was problematic, too, because how do you differentiate? Exactly. And it ends up being, yeah, you can't do that. Right. So to be fair, it has to be all of them or none of them. So the last amendment that we thought would pass was the one that said, OK, just disclose, and people can make their choice. Right, and that's the one that lost by one vote. That's the one that lost by one vote. And as a result of that, we had to go back to the original language, which was much harsher and it got crushed. And that got crushed, yeah. Anyway, OK. So that's that. So we're going to continue on because it's about credibility. We need to make sure we have that, especially on the grassroots level, because that's what it's about. Now, tell me about, as you said earlier, you spent this session looking at bills. You said maybe three different groups, 20 bills each, so about 60 bills give or take. What are you doing with that? Well, unfortunately, a lot of those bills that we were hoping for to see pass through the legislature and sign into law did not make it. And that's not unusual, but I think this session, from my experience covering previous sessions, this was a particularly harsh one. This was a rough ride for a lot of us. There's tons of good environmental bills that died, lots of social bills on domestic violence, on in vitro fertilization discrimination, on payday loans. Payday loans, all these bills that really would have gone a long way to help people that did not make it. Some of them that seemed to be no-brainers, like, well, why wouldn't you do that? And they just didn't happen. Yeah, and there's all kinds of reasons for that. It could be horse trading. It could be special interest lobbying. It could be personal opinion, just the way that legislators, their own personal beliefs. But the problem comes when you have a bill like GSO unionization, graduate student unionization, which is heavily favored by graduate students when they did their own internal survey. I think it was like 70% of them were on board with it. They're the only government employees that work for a state entity, the University of Hawaii. They cannot unionize, cannot collectively bargain. They don't have any representation. They have no representation. In a state as blue as ours, it's really amazing that the governor refuses. He refused to sign it last year, and this year it didn't even get to him. And you say as blue as we are. I like to put quotes around blue. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I know you should. I mean, we're technically blue, but it doesn't. We appear to be blue. We appear to be blue, yeah. We are much more purple. Much more so, yeah. All right, so you've collected this, and there's a lot of bills, and you based it. What did you base it on? You came up with your own progressive agenda, or it was based on the progressive agenda nationally. Some of that crosses over and carries over into the Democratic Party platform as well. There's some similarities there. So you collected all of these bills that you were tracking and were hoping that would pass. And some of them, so again, every legislative session begins with an excess of 3,000 bills. And maybe by the time you get to the end of it, a few hundred of them pass and get to the governor, and the governor doesn't even sign all of them. So, okay. And that excludes the resolutions. That's the whole other set. So as it gets whittled down, some of them don't even get heard. That's true, that's true. There was a couple of good bills regarding healthcare, universal healthcare, which is a huge thing in terms of the, like you said, the platform, in terms of what people really need as a human right, in my opinion anyway. And that's a debatable thing, which I can't, myself, I don't see how it's a debatable issue, but it's a debatable thing. Apparently it is, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that bill didn't even get a hearing. And then there's certain legislators do good work. Certain legislators won't even give good bills the time of day. And that's one of the things that happened. Now, I will take this much credit in that SB 1199, the universal healthcare bill, was my bill. I actually had, I wrote that bill, actually with a friend of mine, with a Imula Alliance. We wrote that bill and Senator Glenn McKay introduced it for us. And there were 12 co-sponsors. Co-sponsors, yeah. It was extraordinary in the Senate to have already almost half of the senators saying, yes, we think that they should go forward. And that was introduced in the Senate and it was introduced in the House. It didn't even get heard by either of the committees. So there's the health committees in the Senate and it didn't even get heard. So the question is, how? So I don't wanna go about my bill only. There's a lot of other things. So that's just an example. Didn't even get heard. And the purpose of it was, you know what? We're about to lose Obamacare. Hawaii didn't really need Obamacare, but we're about to lose it anyway. At least it's impending and they're trying to. What are we gonna do and how should we proceed and isn't this the best way? So that was the whole thing. Let's do that. And then there was the HHA. How do we fund the HHA? Which is supposed to be creating this pathway for that. So tell us about some of the other bills and then tell us about what you're doing. Okay, gotcha. I mean, some of the other bills that I was paying a lot of attention to included pesticide disclosure bill. Which would have- That had its own controversy. Oh yeah, I mean, it was really interesting to see what happened. Basically the chair of the former chair of the Consumer Protection Committee in the House. Used a really roundabout strategy to basically effectively kill the bill. What he did was he actually strengthened the bill so much that it made it impassable. Well impassable based on the controversy, but the controversy is only because what appears to be the special interests that don't want to have to disclose this. You're absolutely right. So there's that one. There's definitely that one. So the maneuver that was done was we're just gonna pull it out so that none of our members have to vote on this. Yeah. So that no one has to go on record for or against it. Yeah. So, I mean, that was a really interesting one. There's so many. I mean, there's the constitutional amendment to fund public schools. There was a constitutional proposed bill that would have allowed for a constitutional amendment that would have made things like clean drinking water and healthcare human rights that would have designated that. That died too. All kinds of bills. One other thing that happened, and I'll do this real quick and then I want you to tell us what you're doing. And then we're gonna close the show on it. Okay. There was a class action lawsuit last year. My wife and I are licensed foster parents and there was a class action lawsuit to change and to affect, to change and to provide more revenues for the foster families. I wasn't looking for the additional revenues. I was looking for the fact that there are a number of families who can actually utilize this account on this money to help take care of these children better. These foster children need more care and this helps take care of them. There hasn't been an increase in that for 24 years. So class action lawsuit last year was successful. So it was determined you must, as a legislature, figure out how to pay this amount based on the class action lawsuit. The finance committee, and I believe the finance committee chair, line itemed that out so that wasn't going to happen. So that class action lawsuit just got booted like that. And why? And instead, the money's being put towards the attorney general to make cases against foster families. I'm very curious about that and it's one of the things that I forgot to say. Why would that possibly be, it's okay. So there are kinds of things like that, though. So what are you doing? Things that are so frustrating. What are you doing? What can we do? What we're gonna do, and this is a very organic community-based thing. That's really important that this is not even about any of the great groups that are organizing. This is about frustration at the grassroots level. We're going to show up tomorrow outside the Capitol building along Miller Street, which is the lane that goes down into the Capitol parking garage. At what time? At seven o'clock. Seven o'clock a.m. Seven o'clock a.m. And it's called what? It's called Feel the Fourth. Okay. And the hashtag is high ledge fail. And really all it is is showing up to demonstrate, to show the legislators that people are paying attention and that we are justifiably upset about the lack of progress that came out of this session. Yes, there were a few good things here and there, but by and large, this, like I mentioned, was one of the roughest ones that I've seen. And by the way, this type of effort, I certainly haven't seen in years, and I'm not sure if it's ever been done this way. So this is an amazing thing. Once again, how we take this national anti-Trump and start looking locally and how that impacts us because we need to take it locally. So we are unfortunately done with our show. There's far too much to talk about. So thank you again, Mr. Wilkelron, Secretary of the Young Progressive Demanding Action. Thank you for joining our show. Thank you to the staff and crew here at Think Tech Hawaii. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Mover Shakers and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. I'm your host, Carl Campania. See you next week.