 Aloha awinola, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is My Mainland, keeping it on the bright side and off the grid. Today, we're talking with Hawaii's only full-time Washington, D.C. based journalist employed by a Hawaii media organization, Civil Beats Kirsten Downey. Hawaii is so fortunate to have an acclaimed, including contributing to a Pulitzer Prize winning series at the Washington Post, investigative reporter with local sensibilities. Kirsten went to Kailua High School and will now be bringing us the news from Washington. Kirsten is also the author of the best book I read in 2016, The Woman Behind the New Deal, the Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and his Moral Conscious. Welcome Kirsten Downey. Thank you, I'm delighted to be here. So you have Hawaii ties and you've sort of drifted out with the tide and sailed back like your sea captain father. Well, I think a lot of us here in Hawaii are like that, aren't we? Yeah. But you know, I've always concerned Hawaii to be home. And I, you know, launched my career, I went to Penn State after being at Kailua High and went to Penn State, got a degree in journalism and worked at a series of small paper, bigger paper, bigger, bigger, bigger paper. And I ended up at the Washington Post for 20 years. So it was sort of like I often felt like I got off at the wrong bus stop that I'm supposed to be in Honolulu, but instead I found myself in Washington, D.C. and the work was so interesting that I found myself staying a year after year. So I left the Washington Post in 2008 to finish my book about Frances Perkins and then to write another book, but I really intended to come back. And so what I did is about two years ago now, my husband and I sold our home in Alexandra, Virginia, and we bought two condos, one in D.C. and one in Honolulu, and now we're splitting our time. And of course I became aware of Civil Beat and very interested, reading them with a great deal of interest. And then last year the Pew Foundation came out with a study which I had found really interesting. And they said that Hawaii was one of 21 states in the country that has no reporter in the nation's capital right now. And so of course I felt bad for all the 20 states, but I felt particularly bad for our state because we're so dependent on federal spending and so tied in so many ways to the federal government that it's really essential for Hustak keep an eye on what's happening there to look out for our people here on the islands. So I started to do some writing for Civil Beat and I was very fortunate that Patty Epler, the editor of Civil Beat, decided to make it a full-time position. And I'm shocked given how much really exceptional writing you've done over covering so many areas here, homelessness and the shipping and oh gosh, all kinds of things, that it's only full-time as of this month. Oh my. Yeah, that's right. I started to write from time to time and I am also a busy book writer. But as we became aware of the magnitude of the transformation that's happening in Washington right now, it's more essential than ever that we have somebody keeping an eye out for Hawaii's interests. Definitely. So I felt that this was the morally right thing to do too. So when you were in Washington before or at the Washington Post, you had a big institution behind you. Yes. Now you're going to be flying solo more of us. Yes. More like people saying Civil Beat, Civil Beat, at least as the people on the mainland. Civil Beat has established a really excellent reputation here in Hawaii. But yes, it is true. When I would say, what I would identify myself working for the Washington Post, no one ever had to ask me where I worked. So what is your strategy moving forward and what do you think is most germane as for us back here to have that? Right. Well, this has been the most contentious and bitter election I've ever seen in my life. I first moved to Washington, D.C. in 1988. So I've seen several presidential transitions occur. And it was hotly contested for so very many reasons. But part of it is the growth of social media. People are reacting very emotionally, often very aggressively, using tweets to do so. And it's made the tone of the discourse so aggressive. And then now that we need to move into the fact that we're out of the election season, this is in fact the presidency that we have, we've got to start to cover this in a more thoughtful way than the heated rhetoric of the election campaign process. This is really challenging because every single day there's a fight over a tweet that Donald Trump wrote, the reaction to it, the counter reaction to it, the counter reaction. And then by the end of the day, some sort of semblance of, okay, here's what happened. But if you've spent your day chasing down these tweets, you're going to have missed the substantial things that actually occurred. I'm so grateful to hear you say that. The red herring. Yeah. Emotional results. That's right. So what I really view my job is to try to get some of the static away, to try to separate and to let everybody's voices be heard. And hopefully to keep it on task. Keep on task. Of the actual issues. Of the actual issues. The actual issues. What does this mean to Hawaii? What does this mean for the American people? Asking clear questions. And Civil Beat itself, itself has undergone a big transition this year. It is now a non-profit organization. Yes, that's right. And I don't know, have you felt that difference? Has it changed anything? Well, I don't know because I don't have a long tenure, of course, with Civil Beat. I'm newly on the staff. But you know, it's just people who are very public service oriented journalists. And I think that being a non-profit is going to make it even more freeing when you're not so worried about doing all the things that are going to create incremental income. One of the problems that's happening right now in the media is Fox News created a really successful business model by delivering a certain kind of news to a certain kind of audience. Clickbait. And they made clickbait. They made money doing it. Unfortunately, other people now are following that same pattern and sort of delivering predictable kinds of news to the base, to their existing base. So you said something about some kind of income, it was a term, not so worried about... Well, I mean, basically journalism, the journalism industry is a broken economic model right now and the industry is in so many ways in free fall. And everyone's trying to innovate to find a way to make the business model work. But our department stores, which used to be our big full page ads, are having a harder time surviving. They've consolidated. If they're not competing against each other, they don't need to buy full page ads anymore. There's a lot of economic changes that fundamentally have affected the news media, not just the growth of the internet. And so what you've got is across the board, all the news organizations are feverishly trying to innovate to create a business model that's sustainable and that will let them do good work. Some are finding that the most outrageous thing you can say will draw the most attention. It's another example of what I see is that fundamental disconnect between capitalism and democracy. So how, now that Sybil beat is somewhat relieved of that burden, do you think that will play into the discourse? I mean, are you... I don't know how much you are limited, but... As far as I can tell, they've been doing courageous business from the day they opened their doors and they will continue to do so. We will continue to do so. And I don't think anything will change. It's just what we're just dealing with the same issue that all the news organizations in the world really are facing with. What do you do when your business model is fundamentally changed? And then when you're in Washington, D.C., not right here and there's always that disconnect too a little bit, but thank God you are used to that. That kind of... We all do that when we're on the continent or when we're here. It's like, okay, who am I talking to? Right, right. Can I wear a flower in my hair on the mainland? I'm not sure. I really like it here, but will I have to be... Will I have to be consciously thinking about the different identities that I'm presenting? Yeah, those are some of the questions that I'm going to be thinking about. I'll be following the congressional delegations closely. And that will be an interesting challenge for someone coming from a purely democratic congressional team in this new White House. Do you have any sense yet of how that's going to play out? Well, no one really knows what's going to happen in Washington at all. Trump has been a wild card from the beginning. He has been Republican. He's been Democrat. He's been independent. He's been Democrat. He's been Republican. And he says things from different perspectives almost at different times of the day. So no one exactly knows how he's going to play out as a leader. We do have a much better sense of what's going to happen with the Republican-controlled Congress. We know that they're very ideologically different than us here in Hawaii and that there will be many efforts to try to push through kinds of legislation that are popular to very conservative constituents but are not going to be so popular here in Hawaii. Have you, because it's a special interest of mine, have you gotten into the Department of the Interior's ruling with regard to Native Hawaiians at all? I haven't at all. It's a huge topic. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens next. I think the thing that's the biggest challenge right now is everything's on the table. Everything's on the table. Healthcare, employment law, the environment. President-elect Trump has said different things about his beliefs about climate change. I just wanted to bring that up because I saw somebody made a comment about an article that you wrote and said, well, actually, and it was Anthony Alto who has also been on my show. Why didn't she mention climate change? Well, actually you did. Well, in the podcast you mentioned it, so that is really not something that we can ignore here. It's not something we can ignore. It's impossible to ignore. It affects us every day. Anyway, but then one of the things that's going to be really interesting is that when we pose these questions in Washington, we will be able to pose the question differently than a reporter that's from the mainland could. So we'll be able to say, for example, President Trump, we have a lot of Micronesians moving to Hawaii because their islands are submerging due to global warming. What do we do? What help are you going to give us to deal with the Micronesians and help house them and educate them as they come here? That's a very different question than do you believe in climate change? And they're Micronesians, but they have a special status. They are protected, so he can't lump them in with the immigrants since we bombed the heck out of their homeland. That's right. They're still generations later dealing with the effects of nuclear radiation. And it's one of those populations that's gone ignored in the political conversation that we had during the election. And that's wrong. So just to come back for just a little minute, I wonder if you can give us the, as you're leaving here, well, sort of leaving here. Kind of what your perspective is on the way we are dealing with homelessness? Because you've spent a lot of time looking at it from different ways. I have, and I think the thing that was the most shocking were the statistics that came out of the... They opened the window for the Section 8 housing voucher, which is rental assistance that's given to low-income people who qualify. And they opened it up for three days. They hadn't had this available for 10 years. And they opened it up for three days. People could apply and then the door closed again, the window closed again. We got 10,600 applicants in three days. And the housing department said that almost all of them appeared to be qualified for assistance. In other words, we have more than 10,000 people here who are having a desperate time affording housing. About half of them are homeless. About half of them are employed. Many were veterans. About 1,000 said that they were victims of domestic abuse. There is a very great need for secure housing for people. And we have to find a way to try to do it in what is going to be a difficult economic climate. Okay. And we're going to break in a minute and then come back and talk about the book that I just so loved, The Woman Behind the New Deal. My book club chose this this year. I can't remember who, but thank you, thank you. This is, how long did it take you to write this? I worked on that book for 10 years. I believe it. It's so amazingly researched. Thank you. I was relieved to hear that you took time off from work to write this book. Because as I'm reading, I'm like, how can she be a reporter? How can she have five kids? How can she have a husband and write like this? Right. Well, I think in lots of ways I found solace in Francis Perkins life. Me too. We all did. So we'll come back and talk about that. That's great. Aloha. My name is Justine Espiritu and I co-host Hawaii Farmers Series with Matthew Johnson of Oahu Fresh. We talk about Hawaii's local farmers and their supporters. In order to have a vibrant and sustainable local food system, farmers are always the foundation, but there's so many other people involved in the community that help support those farmers. So we bring those folks onto our show every Thursday at 4 p.m. We get their backstory, their history, find out a little more about them, and we find out why they love what they do and their perspective and their advice on how we can continue to have a dynamic and vibrant and sustainable local food system. So we, again, we broadcast live every Thursday at 4 p.m. And you can also catch us on ThinkText's YouTube channel as well as Alelo54. So we hope you tune in and join us. Thank you. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kauai Lucas and with me here today is Kirsten Downey from Civil Beat, who is going to be moving back to Washington, but definitely still advocating for us, at least on the information side of things. From Washington, D.C. And actually, Kirsten, you came on my radar because of reading this book. And it was like, wait a minute. In 1934, there was a female cabinet member? Yes. Wow. Please tell me how did this happen? Well, Francis Perkins is one of the most interesting people in my opinion in American history. And when I started out, I knew that she was probably one of the most important women in history, just like you said, the first female cabinet member. But by the time I was done researching the book, I realized she was probably the most important progressive male or female in American history. Just the range of things she accomplished, not just what she did in the FDR administration, but what she did even before the FDR administration in terms of establishing the fire safety and workplace safety code. The fire safety. I think we have a picture of the triangle. Here we go. The, this is the funeral. Right. Well, Francis Perkins was a young social worker living in New York City at the time of that terrible fire. And it happened in Greenwich Village in a 10-story building that was right on the edge of an affluent area. So when the fire broke out in the factory on a Saturday afternoon, lots of people came running and people of all classes came running. And Francis Perkins was actually having tea with someone on that Saturday afternoon right nearby. They heard the, the shouting. They ran outside and she later recalled that she got to the bottom of the building just as the first body hit the ground. So unable to exit the buildings. There were no safe fire escapes. There were inadequate exits. There were, there were too many people. It was too many people in the building. She realized that something really needed to be done to change the laws. And she stayed there and watched the whole fire. And afterwards she went to work creating a committee on safety that worked to establish what are the rules that we know now? That will save lives if there's a workplace fire or any kind of a fire. Well, you need to know where the exits are. You need to know what your way out is going to be. You need to do fire drills so that everybody knows how to get out. You need to have sprinklers overhead. All the things that we take for granted, but that people forgot even most recently with that terrible Oakland fire. These were rules and lessons learned from the Triangle Shirt Waste Fire. And out of that, Frances Perkins and her friends drafted the fire safety code that has been duplicated all over the country since and all over the world. So this is when she was just in her early 30s. She was in her early 30s and she had, she had, she was just so unusual to have, she did get married. She did. But that wasn't the kind of supportive marriage one might think. I mean, she was sort of a, she was sort of an albatross. Well, he had very serious bipolar disorder and then they had a child together and their daughter had bipolar disorder as well. And this was a time that there was no medication for it. So the tragedy of Frances Perkins life is this sad family life with a difficult husband and then a difficult daughter. But the victory of it is for us, if she'd had an easier life, who knows if she would have stayed working the way she did. It meant that she had to work her entire life. She worked until she died at age 85. She not only supported herself, she supported her child and her husband in those sanatoriums. And then when she went to Washington and she, she was the same age I am now when she started in, in FDR's cabinet. I mean, that is, that is so worth reading the book. I just have to say that because, you know, we, we think we have a tough time now as women. But wow, I just don't know how she did it. Well, she had to invent everything. Okay, if you're going to be a woman cabinet officer, how do you dress? How do you look? How do you talk? How much do you talk? Anything that you say is going to seem like too much to the men. And this was a big problem that Francis Perkins had. The men thought she talked too much. She, so her, there's a picture with Roosevelt. And she's kind of looking off to the side there. And I love, I love this picture because it's, she seems both protective of FDR. And I got a great sense of that in reading your book. But also that, that she had to be very careful because she was in a, in a precarious position in many ways, although she, she lasted the whole time, right? Yes, she was in many ways FDR's best friend. And she stayed with him through the entire administration. She only left after he died and, and Truman became president. And she did that in, in ways that we were not used to hearing about. When I was reading about how she would go and stay at the house with Eleanor. And she was just, when she was there, she would just stay there and was sort of a regular house guest. Wow. And it all worked out. And even, even meeting FDR's affairs and, and she didn't approve of by the way. But she didn't think that Eleanor was as good a wife as she might have been to. But, but just like someone who's very close to a family and loves the members of the family, she saw all their strengths and weaknesses. And, and was keeping her eye on the prize, which was this really important social agenda. This is so fascinating. And it's one of the things that's just so remarkable about her is that she was a social worker. So she'd seen the ways that the working poor, that there's systematic problems that affect the working poor. And what she tried to do is create a new safety net. And she did it. She felt like in the United States it would never be appropriate for it just to be like what they call a dole, not like a simple welfare kind of program that benefits would be more appreciated and more accepted if they were earned benefits. So, for example, when she crafted Social Security, the whole idea was that you pay in from your earnings during the course of a lifetime. And then when you get to a retirement age, if you're lucky and live that long, but you reach the point where you can no longer work, you get money back from the system for what you've contributed during your years of work. That's part of the secret of the great success of Social Security, is that people have it because they earned it. And you just kind of rolled that out because you're used to talking about her. It really is a huge deal that Social Security really was invented by this woman. Yes. And then she had to go and fight for years and years and years to get it. And it was attacked for years. And I guess this is one of the challenges that we face now. A lot of people fear that the Republicans are in control. Congress would like to privatize Social Security. That's a proposal they've made in the past. Donald Trump has said he doesn't want that. But that's one of the things that we'll be watching. Yeah. So, there's a picture of Francis and Eleanor after FDR had died that I also think I love this picture because it shows that intimacy, that how well they knew each other and that appreciation of each other. But Francis, it seemed in reading the book, is that's kind of how she survived was she was able to have these remarkable relationships with women in Washington that allowed her without the old boy's network. Right. Well, she was loved by both men and women. And she had some kind of uncanny sense, almost like some sort of sixth sense, to be able to recognize people who had enormous potential and work with them to develop that potential and then give them positions of power and authority, then support them and help them to go forward to get important things done. Again and again, she plucked people from obscurity, who later went on and did really remarkable things. At the beginning of the Roosevelt administration, FDR had never heard of Harry Hopkins. Francis Perkins introduced them. And so, of course, we saw many things came as a result of that friendship. But of course, the thing that I think is so remarkable about her is she came into office with FDR, she'd known him a long time, and she'd worked as his industrial commissioner in New York. So she sort of already knew what he was like to work with, but she had this a vision for what she wanted to get done. And they were Social Security, a ban on child labor, limitations on work hours, which is our 40-hour work week, and unemployment insurance. Wow, wine woman. On a piece of paper. Here's my list, FDR. You want me to be your secretary of labor? Yes, take it or not. And if he had said no, that he wouldn't let her try. She had said she wouldn't take the job. And I actually believe that. I loved the subtitle here of being his conscience. His moral conscience. His moral conscience. She definitely was. We probably can't say that phrase often enough. Moral conscience in Washington. Well, I think every politician needs a moral conscience. Either they were lucky enough to have one internally, or they need someone to play that role. Thank you so much, Kirsten, for coming down and spending a little time with us before you take off for Washington and Bon Voyage. Thank you. I'll do my best. I'll do my best.