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By the Rev. Alan Mark and the Rev. Bob Nakata

We grew up in the post war boom years, back when the promise of statehood was shining like the midday sun, and when anything and everything seemed possible.

This was the Heroic age of Hawaii politics – John Burns was our George Washington, and around him were young men like Dan Inouye, George Arioyshi, and Frank Fasi all freshly back from the war – the veterans every Hawaii kid admired and idolized. Back in the state they set about creating a banking system that would serve all of Hawaii’s people. Meanwhile fiery Tom Gill, and later Patsy Mink were in Congress challenging JFK and Johnson to do more on civil rights. And old man Art Rutledge was reinventing labor unions, developing a model blending social services and union power. Behind them all Jack Hall, Robert and Ah Quon McElrath and the grassroots leaders of the ILWU maintained a muscular progressive vision, pulling all of Hawaii’s body politic in their direction.

Everyone idealizes their own childhood, but to those of us who grew up then it seemed that we were living in a special time in our islands’ history.

As the memory of those days fades it is easy to gloss over the disagreements and feuds of the leadership, back then — easy to forget the many fights they had with each other. As time passes their differences fall away because despite their clashes they were united by a single vision — the vision of Hawaii’s revolution.

Perhaps the best way to describe it is that there was a determination to assure both prosperity and equal opportunity for all the people of our state. Their generation’s practical progressive vision did assure prosperity, and did create equality of opportunity. And while we modified their vision a little over the years, tinkering with it to help small businesses or paying more attention to the environment that vision worked very well for us and our children.

But it is an open question as to whether it will work as well for our grandchildren as they grow to adulthood, or for future generations.

The tension between equal opportunity and prosperity — equity in education, work, health care, and the freedom to cherish and practice our many different cultures balanced with the chance to do well and live large in the abundance that our creator has made for us – remains a challenge for our generation just as it was for the generation that built our state.

Yet if we are honest we must confess that we are not talking, thinking or acting on these issues nearly enough.

This first annual FACE Equity Summit is a chance to take a day and a half out before the hustle and bustle of the Legislature and examine again these two fundamental values.

It launches a new effort for FACE – a commitment to identify the obstacles to prosperity and equal opportunity, and a resolution to identify some ways to overcome those obstacles.

We are humble enough to know we can hardly do this by ourselves, so we’ve invited some of the best, smartest good-hearted people we know to try and think about this with us. They don’t all agree on what we need to do, but they all are thinking about equal opportunity and prosperity in their work.

We hope you appreciate and are inspired by their words and thoughts as much as we were, and we invite you to join us at UH on Friday night and all day Saturday.

Related articles:

• We Need to Sacrifice for the Collective Good
• How to Keep America Moving
• Pursuing Health Equity in Hawaii
• Opportunities and Challenges of Population Change
• Hawaii Needs to Do More to Help Families Facing Foreclosure
• Education for Citizenship, Education for Opportunity
• Housing Status Quo Needs to Change

About the authors:

Rev. Alan Mark – Educated in the Presbyterian church, and ordained a United Methodist, Rev. Mark has served as a Pastor in Hawaii for 37 years. Currently he serves as senior Pastor for Kilohana UMC in Niu Valley. In the past, he served as a pastor in Waianae, Waimanalo, and Kahalu’u. He is currently director of the Hawaii District United Methodist Board of Ordained Ministry. Rev. Mark is one of the founders of FACE as well as a card carrying member of the Waiahole-Waikane Association (where he and Bob Nakata became friends).

Rev. Bob Nakata – Currently serves as the Senior Pastor for Kahalu’u United Methodist Church. He has been a community organizer, a State Representative, and a State Senator from the windward side. He is a recent past President of FACE, a past chair of Defend Oahu Coalition, a chair of the Stop H3 coalition, and one of the original members of the State Water Resources Commission, former Director of the Key Project, and one of the organizers of the Waiahole-Waikane Association ( where he and Alan Mark became friends).

To learn more about the summit:

The two-day Equity summit will be held Friday and Saturday at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Registration begins at 6 p.m. Friday at the School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene. The event is free. The opening session begins at 6:30 p.m., a speech by James Koshiba, executive director of KANU Hawaii. Saturday runs from 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., with three sessions running concurrently throughout the day. Topics include Housing, Transportation, Agriculture, Jobs and the Economy, Health Care, Education, Banking and Finance, Religion and Immigration. To learn more, call 522-1304, e-mail face.office@facehawaii.org or visit the group’s .