Yesterday’s post about “corruption” in Hawaii drew a number of good responses, with a lively exchange of viewpoints.
This one caught my eye, as it raises a new issue.
Somehow, I don’t think Jack Hall or Bob Oshiro would think the obstacles progressives face in Hawaii are anything compared to the barriers that they faced.
The question: How do political conditions in Hawaii in 2012 compare what was faced by previous generations of activists? Choose your period for comparison–the 1930s? 1950s? 1970s?
Thinking back to the plantation era and the domination of the Big Five sugar factors, I think it would be hard to make the case that political power in Hawaii is more concentrated today than it was during much of the 20th century.
In terms of the legislature, again there seems to be clear progress in opening up the legislative process, when viewed over several decades or more.
Your thoughts, with some specific examples or references where possible, please! Let’s keep focused on Hawaii. The national mess is perhaps a whole different story.
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Concentration of political power? Nah… we have vibrant and well-balanced two party system here: the Democrats and the Endangered Species.
The Big Five may be gone but the concentration of political power now lies in bureaucrats.
Beware the uniform. Fire Chief Kenneth Silva is opening up a can of worms. CB brought up a good point – the HFD is screwing around with peanuts here. But HFD handles millions of dollars in contracts.
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/18961603/ethics-commission-investigates-fire-ems-merger-consultant-selection?clienttype=printable
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/07/20/16531-city-purchasing-boss-fire-department-wrong-on-merger-contract-tie/
I think that Gov. Burns said something like, once an ethnic group reaches 51%, what makes Hawaii unique will come to an end. At the time he was looking at the influx of mainland Haoles, but now I am told that it will be the Filipinos in a few decades.
Once that 50% mark is breached, all the goodwill between the various ethnic groups that really makes the word “Aloha” work will evaporate was Burns’ thought at the time. I see that worries some, but most people really don’t care because it is a concept that will take place long after we are dead.
Politics changes by each generation, my father was called a communist because he helped his brother-in-law who was an organizer with the ILWU in the 1950s. It didn’t seem to bother him as he still was the scout master for the Boy Scouts for our church and the President of the Japanese Community Association in Manoa. His later years were devoted to Aikido and he obtained the rank of 6th Dan from the main dojo in Japan. This was his generation’s attitude, life goes on and you do your best. When you read the recent stories of the remaining 442/100 veterans, they say nearly the same thing, life goes on and the guys who didn’t come back were the real heroes.
So what does that have to do about politics, well that generation that came off the plantation and out of WWII made up the so called “Burns Machine” that many folks would like to paint as corrupt in some manner. To those who do, all I can say is to take their biased and racist thoughts, ideas and comments and put it where the sun don’t shine.
The so called Democratic Party folks who now want to throw out people or sanction politicians should have the experience of the barb wire fence my relatives in California experienced during the war, or have the FBI serve them subpoenas for the House Unamerican Activities Committee. Then they can complain that they have had their “rights” trampled on and can then go around beating their righteous breasts and tell everyone how to act in “their” Democratic Party.
It goes without saying that there are several major differences between the politics of 1954 and the politics of 2012.
1. The political environment. They had the Big 5, we have the Small 500. They had 52 years of Republican control, we had 48 years of Democratic control (with the obvious exception of Lingle.)
More importantly, they had the big issues of the day. After all, abolishing the death penalty in 1957 is a black and white issue compared to asking voters if the constitution should be amended to permit criminal charges for felonies to be initiated by a legal prosecuting officer through the filing of signed, written information setting forth the charge in accordance with procedures and conditions to be provided by the state legislature.
2. The economic environment. One example: there were less than 200,000 tourists who came to Hawaii in 1954. That has jumped more than 35 fold today. We are clearly far more a part of the global economy than in the past.
3. The demographic environment. Since the emphasis on the 1954 Revolution was on the role that AJAs played, it’s clear that this has changed dramatically. AJAs comprised 37% of the population in 1954, around 15% today. And this 15% as we all know is far more affluent in real terms than their grandparents.
There are other changes that we could talk about such as the rise of money in politics, the role of the media and its emphasis on “gotcha” journalism and sound bites as opposed to being the means for thoughtful community dialogue, the increase in one-issue politics and one-issue advocacy groups, the demise of organized labor, and the growing disparity between the haves and the have nots both in Hawaii and in this country.
The issues are not all that different, in my opinion, but it’s a tougher environment today, I would think.
Why do you think it is tougher than before the ILWU strike or the 1954 elections? The degree of control the Big 5 had over politics in those days is not matched by anything I am aware of today.
You raise an important question Ian. How would we start to think about and evaluate this- maybe identify the different elements of an engaged and informed electorate within a transparent system?
Once the elements were defined, different evaluators could respond with their observations.
I can start…some of the elements, from my perspective:
Ability of the people to engage politically:
Literacy level of the population
Access to political information
Number of testifiers during the legislative session
Percent of population within 20% of poverty level
Reporting:
Number of full time journalists (first define ‘journalist’ 😉
Column inches per week of reporting on
Weekly air time on TV reporting on the Legislature’s activities, votes
Civic Participation:
Number of grassroots organizations
Membership of those organizations
Number of district meetings held by legislators in their own neighborhoods yearly
How do you consider social interaction with people in the real world? Time talking with neighbors about community concerns outside of formal meetings?
Definitely food for thought, mahalo Ian.
Sorry, but just because you built it, people do not necessarily come in droves. If most people in Hawaii put their jobs and close families above everything else, including politics, then you can have all of those suggested elements, and more, but little will change. You cannot force people to participate, and simply offering more options does not necessarily encourage people who have a disdain for politics.
In essence, you need to reestablish a more fundamental belief in the political system, pre-Watergate. And that takes decades of actual CULTURAL change, not just more public investment in public events. Going by the list above is tantamount to believing the horse can be forced to drink water. If the horse in Hawaii prefers beer over water, the horse is gonna drink the beer, no matter how much water is out there.
Someone told me once that “at the end of the day the developer always wins”. Do the majority of us want these short sighted projects? NO! Does the DPP continue to rubber stamp every single development project and golf resort that comes in front of them? Unfortunately yes. Call it corruption , influence peddling or whateva name you like its still going strong and we are left with very feel unspoiled areas and tons of concrete.
Unfortunately, people keep having babies, who grow up and need to live someplace.
Nobody who has children can say he/she is against development — it’s self-contradictory.
I have no children, and will not have children other than dogs and cats, but I am generally – generally – pro-development. (Not a fan of Koa Ridge, however.)
Catch-22?
How many more golf, hotel and mansion developments can we possibly build? The politicians and their developer cronies who ram these through on our ag. lands and beaches are not thinking of your kids or the greater good that is for certain.
Nancy, I have children and I can say I’m against development.
Runaway development with no general plan can only go on so long before there is no more land left.
Not all children want to stay on the island. There are always people moving in and in. There are plenty homes on the market for sale.
Most of the development are geared for the affluent tier which only raise our property taxes —– and more taxes for more infrastructure to support more development. It’s not sustainable.
Although Gov Burns concept of a diverse base made sense n the 1960s, we have become so much more diverse there should no longer be concerns over a dominant ethnic group.
Intermarriage over last 40 years has risen so fast hyphenated origins are more typical than not. I few Hawaiians who are not also Filipino or black or Japanese or Chinese.
As I reflected yesterday on Russell Yamashita’s comments I thought of my own closer friends. Few are full anything — Hawaiian-mainland haole, Chinese-Hawaiian, Filipino-Haole, Japanese-Portguese, etc.
My daughter who is voting for the second time this summer has almost no close friends who come from a single ethnic origin. Her closer friends are Chinese-Japanese, haole (Boston)-Borneo, Filipino-mainland haole, mainland haole – Hawaiian. It goes on. Nor could my East Indian wife from Fiji think of a couple we know well who was of the same ethnic group other than a refugee Chinese couple via Taiwan whose four grandchildren are basically haole-Chinese. We are now a polyglot.
I doubt Hilo is anymore diverse than say Maui or much of Oahu. The bigger challenge of 2012 is not ethnic voting voting patterns but engaging folks to show up at the polls in the first place.
I think history has proven that any group or political philosophy will suffer moral erosion over time when left in power too long. This speaks well for term limits and election of judges. It’s human nature to feather your own bed and abuse authority to retain power.
I think political organizing may be easier today for minor things, but not for making larger changes. In the 40s and 50s, Hawaii’s society was split in fewer ways. But those divisions were profound.
The majority of people had grown up on the plantation, which shaped their views of the fundamental conflict in society. It was CLASS. And the class divisions were unambiguous and reinforced by ethnic cohesion, as the main ethnic groups were largely situated in the two fundamental classes as blocs.
Once the ILWU was able to convince the Japanese and Filipino unions to stop breaking each other’s strikes and unite into One Big Union, the broad outlines of the grand strategy for social change was in place.
With the return of AJA veterans from the battlefields of Europe unwilling to return to second class citizenship under haole, Big Five Republican domination, we can understand where the vision and the motivation came to unite a strong, multi-ethnic majority, which led to the so-called Democratic Revolution of 1954.
Society in Hawaii today is not so easily organized along fundamental fault lines capable of shaping a future which will serve the interests of a broad majority of Hawaii’s people. No longer does a majority share a common life experience, as occurred under the plantation/ Big Five period. Most employees work for small businesses, scattered across the state rather than concentrated in a few, massive spots. The conditions are not facorable for union organization, except in tourism, some trades and government employment. There are a lot more self-employed people.
And the “enemy” for the people to rally against is more diffused, less easy to pinpoint. Where the Big Five families were very distinct, and largely separate from the rest of society, who can we target asholding the power and calling the shots, who is benefiting at the cost of the rest of us?
The politicians are overwhelmingly Democratic and as the entrenched party of governance, they are coopted into long term relationships of patronage from the people with the real power, the corporations who own most things worth owning. To some extent, it is a condition of “dual power.” The politicians, with their entrenched hold on the state government, are in a position to leverage concessions from the corporations. How much of these concessions goes to buy off the public versus how much goes more immediately to the politicians, their careers and their friends, is a point of contention. The unions and other groups within the broader Democratic network, want a share of the action. The petty individualistic entrepreneurs who serve as (most of our) elected officials, are generally willing to go along with the wishes of the moneyed interests and rebuff the demands of those within the Democratic coalition, provided enough campaign contributions, and sometimes jobs, are given to them and their buddies in exchange for their cooperation.
So not only has the social base of the Democratic Revolution eroded, with the AJA vets dying off, their children no longer seeing the need for solidarity with the Democrats or the unions, with the unions eroding as players, outside of the public sector and hotels, but the individualism of consumerist society has replaced the consciousness of our people. With the decline of the unions and the direct competition with low wage countries brought about by “globalization,” the standard of living for the majority of our people has been in decline for decades, disguised ( perhaps “dampened”) by cheap imports from China. You know, the place where our jobs went.
So at a time when the declining living standard of the American people –and of Hawaii residents– would benefit from a “solidarity” consciousness, the underlying objective conditions which had earlier given rise to such a consciousness, have been torn to shreds.
And in the place of Jack Hall and Bob Oshiro, where are the key strategists for resistance? The Democrats are, in the main, either serving as uncritical cheerleaders for APEC, or are narrowly focused on social issues like gay marriage and reproductive rights. Issues which, while important, tend to erode rather than reinforce the kind of broad, multi-ethnic and class conscious alliance we need.
There is some resistance to environmental degradation. That is an issue which can easily co-exist with the influx of affluent snow birds from America and, in broad terms, with the banks which now own our hotels and much of our real estate.
And the environmental threats are real, are important. Yet the top priority for many environmentalists for the past couple of years has been a largely symbolic bill to limit plastic bags. While Rome burns. And with the enviros and Labor unable to work together on almost anything, what hope is there for the broad anti-corporate, pro-People alliance we need to sweep out the uninspired, co-opted politicians of both parties and replace them with the kind of people MakikiBarb would want?
As a student of Hawaii’s political, economic and social history, I think organizing for sweeping change is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT today than in was in the period which gave rise to the ILWU and the Democratic Revolution. And I say that with a great deal of respect for Jack Hall, Russell’s uncle and all the other “communists” who sacrificed and struggled to transform Hawaii from a feudal oligarchy to what seemed for awhile to be an optimistic democracy. Where is the source for optimism today? Heck, where are the “communists” when we need them?
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
I wonder if expansive Kolea has given much thought to the career of Thomas Ponce Gill, who was said to be incorruptible and proved, in his gubernatorial bid, to be unelectable. Would we be better off today if Gill had won?