Making Waves Archives - ��Ƶ

Victor Geminiani Takes on One Social Cause After Another

Anita Hofschneider — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 10:15:50 +0000

Two decades ago, a career that started with the civil rights movement led him to Oahu, where he directs the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice.

Making Waves: Danielle Conway — Not One of the Good Old Boys

Nathan Eagle — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 01:27:39 +0000

Editor’s Note: There’s a feeling in Hawaii that people here don’t like to rock the boat, to speak up or publicly raise concerns about important issues and possible wrongdoing. But public debate and discussion are vital if we are going to make Hawaii a better place for residents and businesses. This series spotlights people (and organizations) in Hawaii who aren’t afraid to make waves.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stood in the courtyard of the University of Hawaii’s law school building, fielding questions after giving a talk to students.

But not every eye was on the honored guest.

“That’s Danielle,” a lady murmured to the guy sitting next to her.

They looked up as a confident professor leaned slightly over the railing on the second floor, smiling in the afternoon drizzle.

What question would Danielle Conway ask?

Scalia’s status did not intimidate the procurement law expert. She doesn’t play softball like the others who were lobbing some pitches to the justice.

This was a rare opportunity to ask a substantive question of someone who commands awesome power over the lives of millions of people through his legal opinions on cases ranging from abortion to gay rights.

Conway has been working with indigenous communities on valuing tradition and culture and believes the legal language is being stretched when it comes to “original invention.” She wanted his thoughts. But Scalia shot down her premise and sidestepped her real issue.

Conway has been seizing moments like this, big and small, for decades now. She considers it an obligation, a moral responsibility even. It’s who she was raised to be.

Her mother, by Conway’s account, was a rebellious, salt-of-the-earth type who went on to become a municipal court judge after raising four kids. She was one part of a trifecta that shaped who Conway is today.

“She really showed me perseverance, she showed me integrity and really gave me all the qualities I needed to succeed,” Conway told Civil Beat in an interview at her office.

Conway also draws on her military service and her law school education at a historically black college in Washington, D.C.

A lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, she graduated cum laude from Howard University in 1992. She said those experiences and obligations, along with her upbringing, taught her she has something worthwhile to offer the world.

“I see myself as that kind of asset to this law school and ultimately to this community,” she said.

It was her desire to take advantage of opportunities in life that her mother didn’t have that ultimately led her to Hawaii. She saw the job opening at UH and went after it.

That was 14 years ago. She’s become one of the foremost experts in procurement law in Hawaii.

‘The Ultimate Form of Integrity’

Sitting at her functionally chaotic desk, framed by two vases overflowing with calla lilies behind her, the professor explained why procurement is so much more than a set of rules.

Simply put, procurement is at the heart of how a government does business. It’s a complex web of rules and procedures to make sure the public is getting services for a good value while treating vendors fairly.

“I’ve seen injustice,” Conway said. “I’ve seen businesses fail because decision-makers weren’t acting properly. I’ve seen immigrants with strong business models fail because they did not have the opportunity of fair competition.”

She looks at public procurement as a way to respond to those failures.

“It’s not just rules,” she said. “It’s the ultimate form of integrity. To represent citizens, to represent their interests, to represent contractors who also have integrity and to make it possible for people to succeed.

“It’s how we cultivate success in our community.”

Implementing her ideas to reform the beleaguered public procurement system in Hawaii has proven challenging.

She sharply criticized Gov. Neil Abercrombie‘s administration for letting politics trump common sense when it came to the timeline for rolling out the Hawaii Health Connector website. She also underscored the importance of strong oversight in the implementation of a contract, as opposed to just focusing on the solicitation phase and then dropping the ball.

But a new door may have opened last year with to head the State Procurement Office.

Allen met with Conway soon after taking the job and shares her vision for procurement in Hawaii.

“She has some really innovative ideas in how we can streamline and improve procurement,” Allen said. “I’m looking forward to a really long-term relationship with her in how we can improve procurement for the state.”

Allen replaced longtime administrator Aaron Fujioka, who unexpectedly quit in October right after signing orders to freeze the state’s ability to secure goods, services and construction contracts. It was an ugly exit.

Conway wants more people — both the general public and state employees — to stop thinking about procurement as a rote career. It’s a cultural shift Allen has embarked on in her office.

“When you get entrusted with someone’s dollars — the manifestation of their livelihood — you have a great responsibility,” Conway said.

Quashing the Status Quo

Even with an ally in the state procurement office, it’s not going to be easy for Conway to effect the kind of change she believes is necessary.

Hawaii’s shortcoming is in failing to ensure the competency of the contracting professionals and their inability to ensure accountability in contract performance, Conway wrote in a Nov. 20 column for Civil Beat.

But speaking out in Hawaii is hard. Conway sees herself up against a culture where criticism is hardly welcomed and the good old boy system still reigns.

“There is a very pervasive catch-what-you-kill mentality in Hawaii. You could even call it an ingrained status quo,” she said.

But that hasn’t stopped her from speaking out, sometimes to her detriment.

“If you have wealth, if you have security, if you have an intellectual power, that brings responsibility — and that’s the responsibility to stand up,” she said. “I stand up for what I believe and I say what I believe. Because if you don’t do that, how are you then going to show people who do have something to lose that they should do the same?”

Conway has been particularly critical of the State Procurement Office. She sees the extra money that is often spent modifying contracts due to insufficient planning on the front end as dollars taken out of a pot for other public services.

“I am gravely concerned about how we waste money on poor public procurement procedures and that then takes away from where we could be investing that money in public education,” she said.

As a mother, Conway fears her son’s future may be dependent on what private school he can get into because of the lackluster performance of many public schools in Hawaii.

“I want my son to be able to navigate the world and you can only do that with a solid education,” she said. “We should not have to hang our hopes on private education to offer that.”

Conway blames leaders who are content just doing things the way they’ve always been done.

“We really need policy-makers, decision-makers to think in a visionary way, to take risks — reasonable and measurable risks — but to take risks,” she said.

“As a citizen, I’d much rather see my taxpayer dollars be lost on a risk than to be lost because of mismanagement or to be lost because someone was just doing something the same old way.”

‘Procurement Is Really Cool’

Conway has spent much of her career using her background in procurement and intellectual property law to try to bolster minority groups and indigenous communities.

Avi Soifer, dean of the UH law school, said Conway is making significant contributions behind the scenes. He described her as an “opportunity guarantor.”

“People don’t realize how important procurement is in their daily lives; it’s this esoteric area,” he said.

Conway’s latest project involves working with a team to write procurement preference laws for Iraq. It’s part of the United Nations Women in Iraq program.

The group is trying to write legislation that promotes women contractors in Iraq.

“There’s a lot of Western money going into Iraq and by pushing small business preferences geared to women we diversify the contractor pool and invariably hope to diversify the ultimate leadership in those places,” Conway said.

She’s written similar procurement preference policies for small businesses in Hawaii.

If you get women intertwined into the contractor base, she said, they become very powerful in their own right and employ other women and become self-sustaining.

“Then you have just elevated a new cadre of independent citizen within that state,” she said. “Procurement is really cool, the things you can do with it.”

Conway also works with Native Hawaiians, Maori in New Zealand and other indigenous groups around the world on what she calls “social entrepreneurism.”

She teaches them how to properly value their intangible assets and negotiate for optimal revenue streams to help make those communities sustainable.

Soifer said he sees Conway’s constant fight for minority rights, particularly in a place as diverse as Hawaii, as a motivating force for both her and her students.

By diversifying the power structure, Conway said Hawaii leaders could take the state beyond its status quo norms.

“We are a much richer place by including people — really including people — and not putting people in their prescribed places,” she said.

Without change, Conway fears Hawaii could become irrelevant.

“I would love if everyone thought of Hawaii as a microcosm of as perfect a society as we could achieve around this globe,” she said.

“We could really be that microcosm. But that takes planning and vision and it takes an introspective community, and a community that is not just open to change but seeks it out.”

That’s Danielle.

Contact Nathan Eagle via email at neagle@civilbeat.com or Twitter at .

The post Making Waves: Danielle Conway — Not One of the Good Old Boys appeared first on ��Ƶ.

Making Waves: Tommy Russo Is ‘Fighting for Change’ on Maui

Nathan Eagle — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 23:43:51 +0000

WAILUKU, MAUI — Tommy Russo has a nose for bullshit.

Political malfeasance? Animal cruelty? Police corruption? Environmental hazards?

The publisher and his shoestring staff routinely sniff out stuff people in power don’t want discovered — and then air it out in the alternative weekly Russo founded in 1997.

“I want to challenge the status quo,” Russo said over spring rolls last month at a Vietnamese restaurant a short walk from Maui Time’s office.

“I just didn’t realize that putting myself out there would be such a lonely place.”

Russo isn’t looking for pity. He’s just frustrated by the dishonesty and depravity he sees at the highest levels of government and business.

“We’re not in a sustainable society right now and I think we all know this,” he said. “If I’m not going to fight for change, then how can I expect anyone else in this community to do the same?”

You Down with MPD?

Russo is a fast-talker with dark eyes and a bright smile. There’s a kindness in his demeanor that might surprise some people who only know him from the first-person of his confrontations with Maui police.

As part of “Operation Recon,” the Maui Police Department set up a traffic stop along Haleakala Highway in November 2012. Officers were cracking down on oversized trucks and tinted windows.

Social media was blowing up about the traffic backing up for miles, so Russo drove over to check it out. He approached the police along the side of the road while capturing the action with his phone’s camera.

Police told him to back away, but Russo continued asking questions and filming the scene. He was for obstruction of government operations, resisting arrest and harassment. A year later, he’s still fighting the case in court.

That wasn’t Russo’s first run-in with MPD.

In April 2011, Russo by a police officer and a security guard after using his phone to film reality TV star Duane “Dog” Chapman and his entourage in a Wailuku parking lot. A civil case is pending in federal court.

“It’s not just my duty; it’s all of our duty to demand a police force we can be proud of,” Russo said, adding that it’s a shame these negative incidents put a dark cloud over the work of the many great cops.

“We have a right to travel unmolested in this country.”

Russo launched Maui Time 17 days after he landed on the Valley Isle, armed with street smarts, a communications degree from Chico State and a few thousand dollars in graduation money — just enough to print the first two editions.

“It’s almost ridiculous how difficult it’s always been financially,” he said. “But it’s important work, man. We’ll run this thing as long as we can — hopefully forever.”

Living for the Hunt

Russo thrives off a good challenge — financial or otherwise. It’s why he started the paper and several other small businesses.

His latest endeavor is Cheqbook.com, which he co-founded as a competitor to QuickBooks.

The online startup is no surprise. Russo said he consumes 40 hours of audio content a week, mostly in the form of technology podcasts like TWiT and Tech News Today.

Maui Time’s website may not reflect his tech obsession, but that’s because he doesn’t want to invest the paper’s limited resources into a “failed experiment.”

Russo envisions a “big data” site that culls posts, tweets and government data and dishes it out in relevant clusters of information that eliminates readers’ needs to follow hundreds of feeds. He thinks Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos will do Big Data with the .

Nathan Eagle/��Ƶ

The Maui Time office in Wailuku, Oct. 4, 2013.

News should be extremely personal, full of context and curated by pros, he said.

Russo expounds on one idea after another without skipping a beat or missing a bite during our long lunch conversation. He’s like an interactive podcast. You could just press play and listen as he riffs on topics, but he also welcomes your interjections and exchanges of thought.

He’s not all business though. When asked, he’ll gladly explain the Mark Mahoney tattoo on his arm of an old lowrider he built with his dad in the Bay Area. Or the Freddie Negrete piece of his daughter, who’s now 7 years old. Or how he’s into kiteboarding now and juicing (the non-steroidal type, you know, with fresh produce).

Russo met his wife Jen — “a tattooed, mohawked, bad-ass chick” — at a newspaper launch party in 2000. She’s the Maui Time general manager, but has picked up extra duties over the past few years as the staff has shrunk.

Maui Time Editor Anthony Pignataro has watched Russo’s primary focus change over the past decade from businessman to devoted family man.

“He loves his young daughter dearly and she’s turning out to be the same kind of creative, full-of-energy type of person that he is,” he said.

Russo gives Pignataro total editorial control over the paper.

“Tommy is the first one to say that when he intervenes, bad things happen, so his preference is to just let us be,” Pignataro said.

“I take his mission very seriously,” he said. “I wish we had more people, more budget. But it’s something we all have to live with as journalists.”

Poking People in Power

The one area in the paper Russo does like to get more hands-on with is the cover, which often generates controversy.

Pignataro described Russo as someone who deftly directs his seemingly endless energy at specific targets. Everyone’s generally in the clear when his focus is a new mobile startup. But when it’s a police officer, politician or even an advertiser, look out.

Maui Time has had to rely on mom-and-pop shops for advertising because Russo won’t play games or look the other way.

“We’ve done a fairly decent job of pissing off major corporations in the market, so we haven’t gotten any of their money basically ever,” he said. “We’ve always told our clients that, ‘You’re not No. 1. You advertise with us because we have an audience. And if I do anything for you that doesn’t feel on the up and up, my readers are going to see it and we’re not going to have readership.’”

Russo called it a constant “tightrope act,” not just with advertisers but government officials and business leaders.

“It’s just a bunch of games, a bunch of bullshit,” he said.

Courtesy of Maui Time

The cover of the Oct. 29, 2009, edition of Maui Time.

Take, for example, the Oct. 29, 2009, edition of Maui Time about “The Seven Scariest County & State Elected Officials.” The cover depicted then-Mayor Charmaine Tavares, who had canceled the popular Lahaina Halloween party, as a cartoon with guts coming out of her mouth and bloody wounds on her cheeks.

Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa, who considers Russo a friend and plays poker with him, recounted the fallout.

“It was not a pretty portrayal,” he said in an interview at his office last month.

“He felt that she was being … too much of a dictator trying to direct what’s allowable and what’s not allowable, and she had crossed the line with Tommy,” Arakawa said.

“So, Tommy now goes on a rant and because he’s a prima donna with a paper, he starts building this thing up. Well, now she starts getting scared and she gets the police involved because she wants to make sure there’s no physical threat to her because she’s starting to feel he’s a little bit wacky and it kind of escalates.”

“It’s not that Tommy is a bad person,” Arakawa said. “And I don’t think Tommy ever intended to do her any physical harm. But from the police side, they have to react when the mayor says, ‘I feel threatened.’

“That guy doesn’t have it in his soul to hurt mosquitoes. He’s a wuss when it comes to physical threatening.”

Pignataro said Russo likes “poking people in power,” adding that this likely goes back to when he was a kid growing up in a middle-class family in California.

The ‘Anti-normal’ Nudge

Arakawa and his communications director, Rod Antone, chalk Russo’s antics up to the business that he’s in.

“He has to do things that are anti-normal,” Arakawa said.

“Tommy is in the newspaper business, and he’s been very successful in what he’s doing,” he said. “People who are in that business are very temperamental and sometimes very imaginative. You sort of have to be imaginative to be in that business. And they’re also prima donnas, for the most part.”

Still, Antone, a former reporter, said the Valley Isle may be better off because of the competition Maui Time gives Maui News, the county’s daily paper. (Maui News actually prints Maui Time, despite the public chastising it receives for doing things like putting up a paywall on the paper’s website.)

Speaking from personal experience, Antone said Oahu was better served before the merger of the Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

“The competition made us better,” he said.

Arakawa says you have to admire a guy like Russo, who’s been “a rock” at the paper, but he doesn’t blame the police or former mayor for their reactions to his aggressive style.

As for Russo, he said it’s getting harder to keep up the pace but he has no plans to give up fighting corruption at all levels.

“The more I see it, the more frustrated I get,” he said. “But I’m also realistic. I don’t know if I’ll effect change.”

Russo has always thought “Nudge” would be a good name for the paper.

“Just nudge things in a better direction,” he said. “Shining a light for a better outcome. It’s been a very dark place.”

Looking five years ahead, Russo said he hopes to see more people at the table engaged in broader community discussions on how to bring about positive change.

“A lot of people hate me, but if they saw the bigger picture, they might feel different,” he said.

The post Making Waves: Tommy Russo Is ‘Fighting for Change’ on Maui appeared first on ��Ƶ.

Making Waves: Corey Rosenlee Is Shaking Up Hawaii Education

Alia Wong — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 01:34:31 +0000

Editor’s Note: There’s a feeling in Hawaii that people here don’t like to rock the boat, to speak up or publicly raise concerns about important issues and possible wrongdoing. How many times have we heard that the nail that sticks up gets pounded down? But public debate and discussion are vital if we are going to make Hawaii a better place for residents and businesses. This series spotlights people (and organizations) in Hawaii who aren’t afraid to make waves.

Campbell High School teacher Corey Rosenlee encourages his students to break the rules.

A social studies teacher, Rosenlee has his 11th and 12th graders playing “crazy robot.” Basically, robots only do what you tell them to do, he explains, so how would you instruct a robot to eat ice cream? The students split up into groups and then write commands for the robot: Grab a spoon. Scoop up the ice cream. Put it in your mouth. Swallow.

But Rosenlee, in a display that garners chuckles from the roughly 35 students in the Sociology class, shows that such commands are insufficient. The students’ rules, he demonstrates, don’t restrict the robot from sitting on the seat backwards, from eating with its mouth open, from holding the spoon in a fist.

“We need to become aware of those rules so we decide independently if those rules are incorrect,” he explained in an interview with Civil Beat. “And if we decide those rules are incorrect we can do something about it.”

To the students, the teacher notes, “You are filled with rules — crazy ��ܱ��.”

Rosenlee wants his lessons to strike a chord in his students. He wants them to go against the grain, think outside the box, question the status quo. He hopes the students adapt what they learn from the activity — which involves actual cookies and cream ice cream — into the real world.

Alia Wong/Civil Beat

Rosenlee teaches about social norms in a sociology class.

Sociology is without question Rosenlee’s favorite class to teach, he said after the class. And, the way he sees it, “Part of sociology is activism.”

He, too, takes the lessons he teaches to heart. He believes public education in Hawaii is stifled by a plethora of incorrect rules, and he is trying to break them for the greater good.

Rosenlee, with the help of several other Campbell High teachers, was the mastermind behind a grassroots — or, as a recent described it, “rogue” — teachers movement that erupted at their Ewa Beach school in 2011.

The so-called movement started out as a play off of work-to-rule, a type of union protest in which employees do no more than the minimum work required in their contract in an effort to show that they’re being underpaid. Rosenlee saw work-to-rule as a productive alternative to a strike; teachers would still get paid, but by working strictly according to the minimum rules of their contract they’d show the state what it’d be missing out on if they only showed up for work between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Rosenlee had long been frustrated with the state over what he felt was an egregious lack of regard for teachers and students. He had always wanted to organize teachers but never felt it was the right time. At least not until Gov. Neil Abercrombie rejected the Hawaii State Teachers Association contract. That is when drawn-out tensions over pay came to a head.

The social studies teacher rummaged up a few teachers through casual exchanges on Facebook, but that was all he could mobilize. That didn’t stop him. He wrote up his work-to-rule manifesto and sent it out to all of Campbell’s teachers. He invited them to a lunch meeting in late October, uncertain about how many would show up.

He was in for a surprise. Sixty of the school’s roughly 160 teachers came to that first meeting where they overwhelmingly agreed to take part in work-to-rule protests. In the following weeks, the campaign spread to more than 100 schools across the state.

Campbell teachers began to meet weekly to organize protests and push their message out to the media.

Participating teachers “worked to the rules” every Thursday during the 2011-12 school year, but eventually the movement shifted gears. The “work-to-rule” message, he said, was too negative.

The next phase was to rally teachers into action.

Rosenlee described the organization as a vessel through which people can now network and collaborate, and foster a sense of activism that he said was largely absent among educators.

“It made our teachers more willing to be activists,” he said. “If we want big education change in our society, teachers are going to have to be activists.”

Rosenlee and his sidekicks engaged in other advocacy efforts, too. They drafted a — the Penny for Education Act — that proposed raising the general excise tax by 1 percent to generate revenue for public education. They organized email campaigns and teach-ins at the governor’s residence. They called on teachers to rally at the Capitol. (Despite the mobilization, the measure was unsuccessful.)

They also had to contend with another force: the teachers’ union, which . The HSTA even testified against the Penny for Education Act — a decision that union President Wil Okabe told Civil Beat was made because the bill wasn’t vetted through the HSTA’s government relations committee.

“(Rosenlee) was informed about the process,” Okabe said. “He decided that he wanted to do it on his own, outside the governance structure.”

Still, Okabe emphasized that although bureaucratic protocol barred the union from supporting Rosenlee’s bill, the HSTA believes all teachers should be able to voice their opinions. The union did, after all, provide Hawaii Teachers Work to the Rules with signs and buses to transport participants to and from the Capitol.

Meantime, Rosenlee says it’s crucial that the work-to-rule movement and the union collaborate as they continue to advocate in favor of education reform. That’s largely why he agreed to serve in the union, as a faculty representative for Leeward area schools.

The activist-teacher chose his words carefully when talking about the HSTA, an indication of his belief that cooperation between the union and movement is critical to achieving teachers’ goals.

“We need to make HSTA an organization of change,” he said.

Education as a Civil Right

Rosenlee, who grew up in Hawaii Kai and graduated from Kaiser High School, always wanted to be a teacher.

He developed his activist streak early, too, he said. The social studies teacher laughs as he recalls his first foray into activism at a protest against Kaiser’s dress code.

Two decades later, his voice grows louder as he talks about teacher pay and the way that it handicaps student learning and social equality.

Courtesy of Hawaii Teachers Work to the Rules

Rosenlee signwaves with other teachers

Insufficient salaries, he said, make it hard for schools to retain teachers — 56 percent of new teachers leave their job every five years — and that forces the department to place inexperienced, often poor-quality, teachers in the most disadvantaged schools. In some extreme cases, they have to teach subjects in which they have little or no expertise.

And then there are the abysmal classroom conditions — an issue that Rosenlee has made his top priority this semester. Roughly nine out of every 10 public schools in the state, including Campbell, lack air conditioning. Classrooms can heat up to 95 degrees, a problem that he says takes a great toll on student concentration and learning.

“We’re not asking for champagne and caviar,” he said. “There’s never enough money for the basics.”

Hawaii Teachers Work to the Rules are hosting a rally at the Capitol in late September .

“Driving Vision”

When Civil Beat first approached Rosenlee for this article, he hesitated. Hawaii Teachers Work to the Rules is very much a team effort, he insisted. He didn’t think it was fair to put himself in the spotlight.

But other teachers who’ve been involved in the movement since its inception doubted that the movement would have had the impact that it has had if it weren’t for Rosenlee.

“We needed someone to take the initiative,” said Tammy Jones, a literacy specialist at Campbell. She said that Rosenlee delegated tasks, spoke out at faculty meetings and sent out press releases.

When he first decided to launch the campaign, Rosenlee tapped Jones to help him get the word out, so she set up a Facebook page. Until then, teachers lacked an unfiltered forum where they could network and discuss issues. The movement spread like wildfire.

“We started realizing that teachers who really never spoke out were coming out and screaming and raising their signs and wearing their shirts,” Jones said.

Another key player was Oscar Ramiscal, a tech specialist at Campbell who designs graphics for the group’s Facebook page and other handouts.

He said that Hawaii Teachers Work to the Rules wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far if it weren’t for Rosenlee’s willingness to talk to the press and lawmakers and his capacity to galvanize teachers. Ramiscal acknowledged that Rosenlee’s tenacity hasn’t always sat well among some teachers. He has even, on occasion, sided with faculty who called on the social studies teacher to tone down his criticisms.

“But at least he’s persistent in the way that he thinks it can be done,” Ramiscal said. “He has a driving vision.”

The post Making Waves: Corey Rosenlee Is Shaking Up Hawaii Education appeared first on ��Ƶ.

Making Waves: Kelii Akina and The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

Chad Blair — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:28:54 +0000

Editor’s Note: There’s a feeling in Hawaii that people here don’t like to rock the boat, to speak up or publicly raise concerns about important issues and possible wrongdoing. How many times have we heard that the nail that sticks up gets pounded down? But public debate and discussion are vital if we are going to make Hawaii a better place for residents and businesses. Today we launch a new series that spotlights people and organizations in Hawaii who aren’t afraid to make waves.

The new leader of the , a nonprofit hui focused on public policy, has a rallying cry.

“E Hana Kakou — let’s work together,” says Kelii Akina. “That’s what Grassroot wants to do — let’s not be partisan, let’s not tend to a left side or a right side. Let’s identify some central issues around which all people can come and work together. We want to unite Hawaii’s people for a better economy, government and society.”

Akina, who was named president and CEO of the institute March 1, has already identified two policy areas as priorities: the cabotage laws that govern maritime rules in U.S. waters (the Jones Act) and the formation of a race-based government (the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission).

Akina and the Grassroot Institute — yes, it’s singular; more on that later — want to amend or repeal the century-old Jones Act because they believe it limits competition and raises the price of consumer goods. They also want to prevent federal recognition of a Native Hawaiian governing entity that they argue would discriminate against non-Hawaiians.

Both issues are embraced by a large swath of the Hawaii political and business status quo, making change an uphill battle.

But Akina, a 55-year-old educator, is not deterred.

“Ideas are very important to us — we’re a think tank,” he said. “We do the research work to educate the public and policy makers. But we also do advocacy work. We’re not lobbyists. We are not partisan — we don’t promote candidates or fund them. But we do stand for bringing our values to bear on society.”

OHA Candidate

Akina, an expert in East-West philosophy, is an adjunct instructor at University of Hawaii Manoa and Hawaii Pacific University. His publications, like one on , are for the academic-inclined.

But Akina has an interest in politics and government, too. Last year, he ran for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs at-large seat, losing to longtime Trustee Haunani Apoliona.

Akina, a graduate of Kamehameha Schools, is critical of OHA, whose mission is to help Native Hawaiians. His views are detailed in both his and two Community Voice commentaries published by Civil Beat.

One, titled Native Hawaiian Roll Commission Is Racial Discrimination, takes issue with the commission’s five-member panel that is “charged with disqualifying any Native Hawaiians, even those with proof of Hawaiian blood ancestry, who do not pass a specified test.”

The other article, Why The Public Must Hold OHA Accountable, argues that OHA is in need of a leadership change: “Regardless of the exchange of personal insults, the fact remains that one trustee, Rowena Akana, has publicly charged another trustee, Haunani Apoliona, and the entire board with self-dealing in OHA’s recent purchase of the Gentry Pacific Design Center.”

(Read Civil Beat’s OHA Trustee Says $21M Property Deal Was Shady.)

Asked about his 2012 campaign, Akina said his “broader concern was to create a more collaborative space in Hawaii for people to do politics and serve the public good.”

“I’m very concerned about the fragmentation, the polarization, how you are either for or against,” Akina said. “And we saw that in many issues in the 2012 election. What I want to do is help people come and work together in the area where their concerns and needs overlap, and find solutions.”

Those areas include advocating for Hawaiians.

Akina thinks the original goals of institutions like OHA or the roll commission have fallen short and may hinder Hawaiians’ advancement.

As head of the Grassroot Institute, Akina says he will continue to oppose a Hawaiian government separate from the United States.

“My great concern is that Native Hawaiians as well as all people need to have the fullness of the Bill of Rights protecting them,” he said. “And whenever we create tribal leaders, and create a tribe of people, we limit and sometimes work against their rights. We have seen this take place throughout the nation in the Native American Indian reservation system.”

Three Values

The Grassroot Institute, a 501(c)3, was founded in 2001 by Dick Rowland. A graduate of Texas A&M University and Columbia University, he came to Hawaii in 1971 to serve as a key officer on the U.S. Pacific Command staff.

After retiring at the rank of colonel in 1975, Rowland worked as a financial representative with Northwestern Mutual for 26 years.

Rowland, now 83, has a passion for politics: He twice ran for the U.S. Senate as a Libertarian, and once for the nonpartisan Honolulu City Council. He also has a passion for the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, which inform the core of the institute’s philosophy.

Civil Beat

Dick Rowland.

Rowland’s institute advocates for a better economy, government and society in Hawaii by promoting three broad goals: individual liberty, free markets and limited, accountable government. The institute is a member of the , a sort of national think tank umbrella group.

Why Grassroot instead of Grassroots?

Rowland has a detailed explanation involving the Declaration of Independence and the importance of individual rights. It’s people working together who create government, he says.

“Frankly, we wanted to remind us and our staff every day of this phenomenon of the individual,” he said.

Rowland and Akina insist that the institute is nonpartisan, though Rowland acknowledges that it continues to work with the conservative-leaning and Republican state Sen. Sam Slom. Akina said the institute is supported primarily by local donations, though it does accept grants for projects from nongovernmental organizations.

Since its formation, Rowland and the institute (its offices are on South King Street) have been consulted frequently by the media, and have issued positions and papers on various issues. It was particular outspoken on the Akaka bill, U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka‘s legislation calling for federal recognition of Hawaiians.

“I think we had a lot to do with the fact that the Akaka bill never passed,” said Rowland, who helped form a “vast network” of national contacts to persuade Republican senators to kill the legislation.

OHA, which lobbied heavily for the Akaka bill’s passage, did not respond to Civil Beat’s inquiry Tuesday concerning Rowland’s statement and Akina’s views on OHA.

‘Cheerfully Obstinate’

Despite some policy successes, Rowland believes Akina will have greater success than he did in doing the Grassroot Institute’s work.

“And he does this with so much confidence because he’s rooted in principle,” said Rowland, describing Akina’s ability to bring people together on issues. “You can just tell when you reach the principle area — all of a sudden he becomes cheerfully obstinate. Whereas I would be obstinate in a less cheerful manner.”

Akina welcomes at the description.

“I’m very hopeful of the capacity of Hawaii’s people to work together, when we step out of party labels, step out of partisan sides and focus on practical solutions around values that we share,” he said.

Akina embraces the institute’s three goals, which include a robust free market economy that promotes small businesses and free enterprise, limited, accountable government and the defense of the Bill of Rights.

Opposition to the Jones Act is high on Akina’s priorities.

He says Hawaii ranks low when it comes to competitive market economies. Part of the problem is the Jones Act, he says, which requires that shipping between U.S. ports be done on U.S.-owned and U.S.-built ships that are manned largely by U.S. crews.

Akina said the Jones Act may increase consumer prices in Hawaii by as much as 30 percent. He believes support is growing locally and nationally to change the law.

I reminded Akina that the late U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye was a strong supporter of the Jones Act. Akina offered a careful response.

“Since the passing away of the Honorable Sen. Inouye, who did so much to build the framework for politics in Hawaii, there are new opportunities for leaders on all sides of party lines to come together around centers of concern,” he said. “Grassroot wants to work in those centers of concern.”

The post Making Waves: Kelii Akina and The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii appeared first on ��Ƶ.

Making Waves Archives - ������Ƶ