 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Bingo! We're back at 2 p.m. rock on a given Wednesday. Okay, and to my left, Lisa Gibson. I know her for about 100 years. We were in the Technology Trade Association. Hawaii Science and Technology Council. Science and Technology Council. And there were other things. Oh, Enterprise Honolulu. Enterprise Honolulu. She's a firebrand. And she's a firebrand and a new thing we're going to talk about today, which is Indivisible Hawaii. Welcome to Indivisible Hawaii. Okay, and her left is Laurence Basha. Laurence is a retired army general. Yes, army. Who is dedicating himself these days to Indivisible Hawaii. He's one of the leaders of Indivisible Hawaii. And so I want to talk to you guys about that organization, how it came together, what it's doing. Okay, let's talk about the origin of the organization, Lisa. Okay. We all were there on that night in November 2016 when President Trump was elected. Within about 10 days after the election, a group of former staffers, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, had produced a document, a Google document called The Indivisible Guide for Fighting the Trump's Agenda of Racism, Authoritarianism. The list goes on and on. That Google Doc was shared around the country. I got a copy of it in the first 10 days in December. I promptly said, I'm in. I'm signing up. I'd say by January they had 3,000 chapters across the country. They were on Rachel Maddow one night and they went from 3,000 chapters to 6,000 chapters. That was like in January or February of 2017. So their model was based on their observation of the Tea Party that a few constituents can show up with their members of Congress, whether it was the House or Senate, and say, you know, we want to hold you accountable on this particular issue. And as we know, the Tea Party did that with regard to Obamacare in that day. And so Indivisible had chapters all over the country doing the same thing with members of the House and members of the Senate. In Hawaii, we have a pretty blue state, but that isn't true across the country. I would say that Indivisible... It isn't completely true in Hawaii, either. Correct. But I would say that Indivisible, for example, the town hall meetings where you saw people standing up about the Affordable Care Act, you know, talking to their senators who were going to vote against it, telling their stories about health care. Maisie Hirono played a significant role in that. They... I believe that Indivisible, along with lots of other groups, were responsible. Citizen activism was responsible. Indivisible, what an interesting word, you know? Because it harkens back to... It's the Pledge of Allegiance. Indivisible with liberty and justice for all. It's a core that is patriotism, don't you think? Correct. That's correct. And so what are the principles? Because it's a moving target. Things are changing. They've been changing since the inauguration back in January 2017. And the new normal seems to slide up on us and hit us from behind all the time. So the question is, you know, what are the central, ideal, central mission of the organization, at least as you see it now? I think it's the same now as it was then, and that is getting back to the line of the citizens. What did Thomas Jefferson say? Democracy is great if you can keep it. It was Ben Franklin. Was it Ben Franklin? I thought it was Thomas Jefferson. So sorry. Anyway, the point is, if citizens are not involved, then democracy doesn't work. The word democracy, institutions of democracy, the vote, it is the core, it's the heart and soul of it. So if we aren't involved to hold and we elect to represent us, then they don't answer to us. So it started, and I'm really getting an interesting thought here, it started out as most of us, or the people I know and live with, as sort of an objection to Trump, not my president, this boorish guy who ran a boorish campaign, and we were still learning how boorish it was. So the original reaction of the country, at least the blue part of the country, was let's fight with this agenda. His agenda's bad. But it seems to me, and you can answer this, Morris, it seems to me that it goes now beyond. We have found a truth, a mission, and I say we because I've sort of aligned the way you feel. We have found a way of coming together that covers more than just Trump. And the notion I'm getting from you is that it covers trying to hold our democracy together in difficult times. If Trump is not the only difficult person, there are others behind him and around him who are also difficult and who are undermining our democracy. And so it started out as an anti-Trump maneuver, but it's really much more than that. Am I right? I think you hit the nail on the head, Jay. Again, it started in opposition to Trump. Now that opposition has proven to have paid off in the midterm elections by gaining the House back for the Democrats, the indivisible and I think a lot of the progressive groups have realized that it's time to go on the offense. And so two things that are a little bit different is, one, since we have the House, it's pushing for progressive ideals or progressive legislation to come out of that. And then the second is focusing on, again, the local representatives at the state level and then also at the state government level, the House and Senate representatives there. And part of this is, you know, and maybe it's a positive fall out of a bad time is a renewed consciousness and a renewed awareness of the elements of our democracy. Democracy 101. We forgot about it. We forgot about it. We've all been asleep. He and his Misha Goss, as the units were, have reminded us. That's correct. Now, so reminded, we've become more aware and we have to step up. I think that's what I hear you say. That is absolutely correct. The consequences of citizens not holding themselves accountable is that our government will not be accountable. So what do I have to do as a citizen or even better, as a member or a leader of Indivisible Hawaii? What do I have to do to be accountable? What do I have to do to be part of the organization or to conduct myself in accordance with its principles? Well, we started off by visiting our members of Congress. Every single... And that effort was launched by a group called Resist Trump Tuesday. So that was one group. We were part of another group. We showed up every single Tuesday. Shots, Hirono, Hanabusa, and Gabbard's offices. And I don't know... Here or Washington? Here. Here. And I don't know if you remember what it was like that first year. You had the Attacks on the Affordable Care Act. You had Attacks on DACA. You had... And now we've got babies being taken away from there. I mean, the horrors upon horrors keep piling up. So that's what we did. We showed up. And that was happening across the country. So one of the things that happened in the midterms was that Indivisible groups had retirement parties for guys that they didn't want to run again. So many guys in the House, Republicans in the House, decided not to run again, that they had a huge impact on opening up seats, which has resulted in the largest flip of the House ever, I think, in history, possibly 41 people. So they had retirement parties for these guys, and they decided they'd never had their constituents show up. They just never experienced them. So it's not just us. It's really a magnificent thing to watch unfold. Well, you know what strikes me. You say across the country that one of the troubling things here is that there's a sort of geographical diversity, a geographical polarity here, a polarization to go further. I mean, so you have red states and you have blue states. And if you took, I'm just a question I'm coming to, if you took Indivisible Hawaii and you put it smack in the middle of a completely red state, what would happen? Would there be retirement parties? Would you find support there? Because most of the blue people are on the coasts. They're in the cities. They're urban. They're not rural. But if I went to Idaho, I might not find the same reception. Can you do Indivisible Idaho? Yeah. I think there are Indivisible chapters in all 50 states. Obviously, deep red states face certain challenges. Just look at Georgia, look at Florida, look at, you know, the Beto, the Stacey Abrams and Gillom. Beto is fabulous. Beto is fabulous, but none of them won. And that, I believe, gets back to the vote in particular. So all this stuff with voting has been going on for years, but what's happening is the light is being shown on how important the vote is. That awareness thing. That's right. It's about awareness. So how do you expand the notion? I mean, it's an ideal. It's important. It couldn't really be more important to the future of our democracy that groups like you come up from grassroots and do things. But how do you expand its influence? How do you refine its policies? How do you, you know, organize its actions, its activities? Because that's not easy. And, you know, you have tools. You have social media and email and whatnot on websites. You have electronics, but it's so easy to get fragmented. How do you conduct the organization so that it grows, becomes stronger, and so forth? So the big point, as you just mentioned, is really social media. And again, through the use of technology and the new applications and things that are being developed, specifically for communications with elected representatives, with other people in different regions, is a huge way to influence not only your own constituents, but other people, you know, as well in other areas. So for example, we, and here in Hawaii, wrote postcards for candidates in other areas. And additionally, we texted, right? So there's a couple of great programs, like Hustle is one that the Indivisible team has been using. And so that just automatically loads somebody's phone number and a message to them about getting out and voting. And we, we in Indivisible Hawaii, had texted to seven or eight different states. And, you know, again, all this is very distributed and very decentralized. So the nice thing is that if somebody is in Idaho and they are isolated in one little blue community and surrounded by red, they no longer have to rely on just their human interaction. They can use their interest and their energy to influence either people in their community or other communities nationwide. It's just a national network we're talking about. Totally. It reinforces itself. But there's a personal part of it. So we have folks, we have to get together. We talk to each other. We sit face to face and we become friends. So we're building a, we're not a huge group. We're a small group of people who become friends around a shared set of goals and a need to participate and do something, because we're from a blue state, hey, we can help people in Florida, in California. Where else did we help? Nevada. Montana. We had, so Lawrence and his wife went to Montana where there was a request that they were low on poll watchers in Montana. Hawaii sent, Indivisible Hawaii sent four people. To be poll watchers. To be poll watchers in Montana. President of Montana. How are you good to be a poll watcher? Just through the acceptance and support of the, in Montana's case, the Montana Democratic Party. They were low on people. The party would advance your name. Right. And they were low on people in rural area. I mean, you know, Montana's a great big state, right? Physically, yeah. Physically, right. So I think for us, yes, we're doing all this technology, but we're also working hard with the folks in our group to provide opportunities to bring people together. So here I am in my computer. And I want to help you guys. And I want to send social media messages or I want to send email or something. Who do I address that to? And what do I say? So the first thing to do would be to go to our website, which is IndusibleHawaii.org, and look for the donate button. That's going to be the key critical thing to hit and way to support. So on the website, there's various information. And what we ask people is pay attention. When we need support on an issue, they can either email, call, write, make contact with their elected representative to get that influence, that elected representative to do one. What's the name of the person you're writing to? Say it's in Idaho. Tell that story. How did we get the names from Florida? This is a great story. Another innovative app that everybody else probably knows really well, but I was just recently introduced to is Slack. And so Indusible has a group with a Slack channel that's called middle tier. And again, this is for not the national level organizers, but the intermediate level organizers throughout to share information, ideas, et cetera. So we had decided that we were going to help send postcards. And basically the physical postcards, right? They're wonderful. We're through the mail. So actually like in the day of the first iteration when we were going to get together and write, I had posted to the Slack channel, does anybody have addresses for candidates that they want to have, not for candidates, but voters, that they want to send either letters or postcards to? And within an hour, I had a response from a group in Florida that said, hey, we're in this big postcard writing campaign. Here's a way to help us. So we got the names from them, negotiated, if you will, on what the postcard was going to say. And then within the day, we had sent out about 500 postcards with specific wording and then support to this group in Florida. So again, through the worldwide interweb, we were able to make contact and to physically support in a way that they really were very thankful of later. They loved it. Because people would get the postcards from Hawaii and they would be thrilled. It made the newspapers in Englewood, Florida. Okay, we're going to take a short break, but when we come back, I'd like to ask you in two areas. One is, would you ever be involved in a physical street protest or demonstration? There are risks to that these days. I'll tell you about an article this morning's times to that effect. And the second thing I'd like to cover when we come back is specifically what issues you talk about in the postcards, the social media, the email, your website, and, you know, in the confederation of chapters, so to speak, of indivisible around the country. And how do you coordinate that? Take a short break. Lisa Gibson and Lawrence Basha for Indivisible Hawaii. When you come back, I can hardly wait, right? Perfect. This is Stink Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Choose to treat it with the help of a physical therapist. Physical therapists treat pain through movement and exercise. No warning labels required. And you get to actively participate in your care. Choose to improve your health without the risks of opioids. Choose physical therapy. Hey, Aloha, Stan, Energyman here on Stink Tech Hawaii where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy in transportation, energy in maritime, energy in aviation. We have all kinds of things on our show, but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii. Because it's my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. But we talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. And we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Stan and Energyman. And take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. We're back. We're live with Lisa Gibson and Lawrence Basha. And we're talking about Indivisible Hawaii. So there was an article in the paper this morning. I think it was at times about a remarkable phenomenon over protests with extreme right-wing skinheads and the like. And the question was, who's getting prosecuted? The California police are arresting people and they're recommending prosecution. And in some of these protests, there were counter protesters. And the article, which is disturbing actually to me, is that most of the prosecutions were against the counter protesters. That is what you call it, the green protesters, not the red protesters. And that struck me funny. The other thing is that in these protests, there were stabbings. The stabbings were universally done by the skinheads against the counter protesters. And there were no prosecutions of anyone for stabbing. Stabbing is a pretty threatening thing to do. So it seems like this isn't going to stop. And it depends on who you're engaging with. But some of these engagements can be dangerous. And I suggest to you that in the future, we'll see more of that. And you can't necessarily rely on the law enforcement sector or protect you in a case like that. So query, in developing your national grassroots organization, which I think is so important, how do you enter into the realm of appearing on the street in protest, counter protest, demonstration, what have you? It's not like it was in the 60s. Don't you remember the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago? Jay, you were probably in college. That was violent. Exactly. And the mayor there, he was a pretty bad guy. Daily, yeah. So to answer your question in Hawaii, I think it's a more benign environment than certain other places on the mainland. So for example, many of the groups in Hawaii were ready. We've been ready for months for President Trump to fire Jeff Sessions or Rod Rosenstein. So we had all alerted everybody on our list that this happens. We're going to meet at the federal building at 4 p.m. Hawaii time and there were rules about that. So when it happened, when Sessions got fired, we had 250, 300 people standing on the corner in front of the federal building. Did I feel safe there? Absolutely. If I had been someplace else in another state, would I have felt safe? I don't know. All I know is my experience. I did go to the Women's March in D.C., which was, I'm thrilled that I made the effort. It was a lifetime experience or nearly a million people. I did not ever feel not safe. I'm not sure if that's how it's going to be. Truth is, the strength of numbers. Yeah, I don't know. A lot of people turn out and give an issue they're stronger. They're safer. So one of the things about marching that's kind of peculiar to Indivisible Hawaii is that we have participated in the marches. We haven't organized any of this. And the reason being is that there are a lot of other great organizations out there, specifically like J20, that has worked to set up the organization. So in a way, it is a plug-and-play kind of setup. They have set up the march route. They've gotten the permits. They've done all the internal organizing. We just show up and they say, all right, this is the route we're going to take. This is the things we're going to say. It's great. And so again, we have a, seems to be a pretty good fluid sense of communication throughout social media and then support, face-to-face support groups with these other groups. So it takes the burden off of setting things up for us. So there are various groups around. It's a good thing. It's a positive thing. It's grassroots from all over the place. They're doing things that are similar to what you're doing. They're raising public awareness about these issues and about the government in general and the accountability of citizens and so. But I wonder, do you think as time goes by, you've seen this in Enterprise Honolulu, whether it gravitates toward a consolidation, whether these groups will learn to cooperate, collaborate with each other and ultimately form larger groups and so forth. I don't know how that works yet. Maybe it's early to ask this question, but I'm wondering what do you think is going to happen? I think over time that could happen, but there is a lot of work to do and it can be overwhelming if you're a volunteer doing this. And so you have to pick that particular thing where you're comfortable, you have time and just do what you can do and get other people to join you. And if everybody's doing that pretty soon, you have a voice. And I think we have succeeded with our group and we've collaborated with other groups here and there are other groups doing great things, Sister District, Flippable, J-20. I mean, there's a bunch of them. There are a bunch of them. And that's true nationally as well. This is a fertile ground. Totally. Totally. But let me ask you this though. This is my big question. We have a few minutes left for it. So you define for me, you define what a person in Indivisible who I should do to be accountable. But the slogan is accountable citizens for accountable government. What does the government have to do to be accountable in your view? What do you want the government to do? What are your favorite issues, your favorite changes, say, in this Trump government that you want to elicit, evoke, require? And I guess that, you know, I'm really asking what are your favorite issues and what positions do you take on them? So I'd say that we focus on the progressive agenda and, again, just like we talked about with these other groups, there's a lot of work being done by other groups on other issues. What we at Indivisible who I have thought is looking at where we fit in, what is our niche going to be, what unique capabilities do we bring so that we're not just duplicating efforts. And so we've focused on election security. And through that, you know, at the federal level, I would say that being accountable is ensuring that the states and local administrations have the resources and the ability to improve their election security. And, you know, quite frankly, here in Hawaii, it's the state government, the county, the election commission. Those groups and individuals that are government employees and that we're basically paying salary for, their form of accountability is actually improving our election system either through the process or the equipment and helping to increase voter access as well. Have you done anything affirmative to hold their feet to the fire on this issue? Yes. So, myself and a couple other folks from Indivisible, there's something called the CAP Report, which is basically an assessment of all 50 states. And there are best practices. You check them out. How are you doing on this? And Hawaii has a grade of D or a C minus or a D. That's really discouraging. It's discouraging. No state has an A, not one state in the U.S. and lots of states have Fs. So election systems across the country are in bad shape. They showed the state of Maryland purchased an election system and found out that the Russians had bought the company two years before. Oops. So the biggest challenges for election systems are yes, the technology, yes, the hacking, but most importantly, is they have been underfunded. So in Florida, the recent election, the biggest problem was their machines were breaking down. I saw that in 1990. So what we can do is become advocates for the importance of Hawaii, ensuring that it meets all the criteria for having best practices in election systems and become an advocate to make sure it gets funded appropriately. We are working with states across the country. So states like Georgia, what they're doing in election systems is it is a huge job. There hasn't been a fair election in Georgia probably since 2000, since the year 2000. There's gerrymandering issues. Correct. There's suppression of voting. Georgia seems to be the center. They have it all. We don't have some of those issues. Are you doing anything about that? Is your correspondent an indivisible organization in Georgia doing? What is the organization doing about Georgia? Georgia is a travesty. It's got to be fixed. We're trying to form a network, a flat network. We want to find champions within each state to share best practices, understand and communicate. It's an arcane complex topic that puts a lot of people to sleep. And most states, election officials, don't have their citizens coming in and say, hey, you need to get rid of that air gap technology in your ballot counting machines. Those are the kinds of technical issues that can make a difference in how elections. So you have to develop a cadre of people who have the technical expertise to hold folks accountable and also advocate to make sure they have the resources they need. Am I right to say that? Invisible Hawaii is focused. It has other issues, primarily focused right now on voting issues, secure voting. So what about the other issues? How much time can you put in? How much effort is your organization willing to spend on immigration policy? On the Russia investigation, the funny business going on, obstruction of justice in Washington. I could go on. Education, climate change, environment in general. I could go on. There's so many things that are happening in a screwball. And the new normal, you know, like we get to accept what they're doing. And the press doesn't remember that two weeks ago there was an outrage because they were busy with tomorrow's outrage and so somebody, some grassroots organization or combination of grassroots organization has to get out there and be our institutional memory and remember that we're being screwed and we have to watch this and we can't forget and we have to always be aware, always be active. I mean, is Indivisible Hawaii, does it undertake that mantle of responsibility? Can it do that? We can't do everything. What we can do is we can maintain our communications and network with other groups so that if somebody needs subject matter expertise, if they need some support, we can surge our members or ask throughout our network of who can support those others. So again, it's very much trying to bring national support here locally or trying to figure out where we can get Hawaii support to either work with other groups in Hawaii or support other groups nationally. So for example, J20 has a particular expertise in immigration. I would never presume to be an expert on immigration. I would promptly call J20 because J20 and Doug Chen worked with them. I mean, they really do know what they're doing and we would support them. Hawaii should be very proud of its performance in the whole immigration. Very, very proud of it. I think it's very proud of Doug Chen. We're giving him an award as a matter of fact. Excellent. Good for you. He deserves it. We're very small so we have to figure out how can we best add value to the national conversation and we have landed on this issue of secure elections. You might also expand or migrate to other issues. And if I was a member of Indivisible Hawaii, would I be able to draw your attention to other issues and have you listen to me and take those issues alongside the ones you're working on right now? In any volunteer group it's great to come in and say I'm very interested in this. Can you do this? No. If you're interested in it, you drive it and we'll be there to help you. So if you're interested and you lead on it, God bless you. We'll support you. How can I learn more about this? How can I join? How can I communicate with you? What's the website or the email? IndivisibleHawaii at gmail.com And the way that people find their Indivisible chapters is you go into the nationals website, you put in your zip code and down comes a list of all the Indivisible chapters in that zip code. So that's how we got our members of Hawaii at gmail.com Right. Now I want to offer you both of you a closing. Lisa, why don't you go first? There's camera one. There are all the people out there. Tell them the message you want to leave with them. The one thing you want them to take away for sure from this discussion. I guess my request is to understand the power you have as a citizen to hold your members of Congress locally and nationally accountable. We pay their salaries. That's what democracy is all about. She's also saying that if you don't do that we'll all pay a terrible price. That should be clear to everyone these days. Lawrence, what would you say to them? I would say that people think that they have limited time or no interest in politics and nowadays nothing can be further from the truth with the communications technology and really the information that is out there either at any level of government or through private groups people can find out about anything from which roads are getting paved to where money is going to. Again, it's not like they have to go from where they live down to the county courthouse or city hall or things like that. All that information and participation is right there on your phone. Again, you can pull information and also you can push information. There's a lot of great apps and a lot of great devices now that will enable somebody to take a day to do something. You're not alone. We're all empowered and we're all obligated to. We have a responsibility. Lawrence Basha and Lisa Gibson, thank you so much for coming down. Thank you.