MOVING FROM TOP-DOWN

TO CITIZEN-BASED DEMOCRACY

February 15, 1994

Article for THE HONOLULU ADVERTISER.

Ira Rohter

Let me share my dream of Hawaii's future. Imagine it's 1999. It's Town Meeting night. By 6:30 people begin arriving at dozens of meeting halls throughout the islands, such as Wai`alua's restored Old Courthouse, or Kapolei's new Town Hall in the village center, or the Kau- Community Center in Na`alehu on Hawaii Island. These Town Meetings, where thousands of engaged people come together to discuss and decide on big and big issues affecting their communities, show how political decision-making in 1999 is radically different from the way it used to be.

In the Hawaii of the 80s and early 90s, politics mostly involved people acting primarily on the basis of narrow self-interest, with well-organized interest groups, developers and other insiders using their superior resources and power to influence outcomes. Remote experts and bureaucrats also determined what and how government services were supplied.

Apathy and cynicism prevailed. Half of Hawaii's ordinary citizens did not even vote. The other half voted with hope every two years for candidates who always promised, if elected, to solve our state's pressing problems. Campaigns became expensive exercises in mass marketing, slick image-making, and media manipulation.

Average citizens had little control over what was decided, unless, with enormous efforts and personal sacrifices, grassroots groups banded together to fight some especially heinous projects (such as golf courses and resort enclaves or industrial geothermal plants and rocket launching facilities taking over rural areas, an housing development right next to Sandy Beach) or environmental pollution. Other advocacy groups struggled to get more resource to solve injustices, such as spouse abuse, homelessness, the lack of affordable housing, or work for Hawaiian rights.

But, by 1999 political life had radically changed. A "Citizen-politics" evolved as ordinary people participated in what used to be top-down made decisions. Nowadays an amazing number of people turn out for community meetings, and belong to taskforces, where all the stakeholders propose, talk, argue, reach decisions, and take actions jointly. In 1999 it is a partnership of "ordinary" citizens and elected leaders and government staff and businesspeople - and not remote experts and influential insiders - who together decide which community projects should have highest priority, where a new park should be placed, how best to run their local schools, and so on. Informed citizens regularly participate at the "front end" design stage with developers and planners in shaping major projects.

Power is no longer concentrated in the hands of the State Legislature, the governor, the mayors, county councils, and distant bureaucracies. Issues that affect several communities are decided upon in regional councils. In 1999, the great bulk of former State spending programs - education, human services, police, roads, housing, etc. - have been decentralized to citizen-controlled city or community councils.

"Citizen politics" empowered us, and that's why you see so many positive changes in the islands. That's why you see housing that is affordable, landscaped cities and parks, a cleaned-up environment, jobs being created in locally-owned enterprises that are satisfying and pay a decent wage, Green markets that sell locally-grown fruits and vegetables, family farms sprouting up on all the islands, schools run by teachers and parents, and all that stuff we had to fight for before.

Is this parable of a citizen-based democracy just an unattainable ideal? Perhaps, but many example of this kind of citizen self-governance are happening already.

Last year over 600 concerned citizens, businesspeople, government staff, and university people participated in the Environment and Energy Summit hosted by Representative Duke Bainum and other State legislators. Dozens of consensually arrived at bills related to energy, education, transportation, waste management, and environmental protection were jointly written and introduced in the 1994 Legislative session.

Residents of Kau- on Hawaii Island, anticipating the closure of their sugar plantation, have come together with the aid of their Green Councilwomen, Keiko Bonk-Abramson, to form the Kau- Economic Development Corporation. Ordinary citizens in conjunction with expert advisors are creating a regional plan to rebuild their sugar-dependent communities. Members of the community are exploring economic options more feasible and less destructive to Kau-'s rural lifestyle than mass tourism, large-scale corporate businesses and the ill-conceived Big Island Spaceport. Many locally-owned business opportunities are possible for Kau-'s citizens in a post-sugar era: sustainable agriculture and processing cooperatives; a plantation village based on a refurbished Kau- Sugar Plantation; educationally-oriented Hawaiian cultural sites based on old villages, temples, trails, and agriculture sites found in the Kau- and South Point areas.

Renewable energy is readily available, using Big Island's own resources of wind, biomass conversion, ethanol production, and solar thermal conversion systems, that would keep local dollars on-island. Eco-tourists can stay in locally-owned small inns and Bed & Breakfasts, and support crafts, woodworking, Hawaiian hand art, and many kinds of small businesses.

Grassroot groups on Oahu's North Shore are already attempting to organize a similar Wai`alua Economic Development Corporation to deal with the immanent closure of Wai`alua Sugar. They too do not want the plantation to be replaced with resorts, golf courses and expensive housing, but instead to preserve green space and develop agriculture, eco and cultural tourism, and small-scale businesses. They want to keep the country as country, not overdeveloped.

What to do with the closing down of the Barber's Point Navel Air Station is being analyzed and debated by a great many people on the BPNAS Reuse Committee, which includes representatives from government, labor unions, community associations, business, Neighborhood Boards, etc. In Manoa, hundreds of citizens are working together with the Malama O Manoa community group to revise zoning and design regulations so as to preserve the valley's greenness and sense of place, and have the City designate it a Special Design District. School Community-Based Management is rapidly spreading to hundreds of island schools, involving thousands of citizens in running the schools their children attend.

These are the seeds of greater citizen involvement that are educating Hawaii's citizens in the skills that will allow them to make more and more of the vital decisions that affect them. If we have the will to follow through on these efforts, and fight bureaucratic inertia and powerful special interests, Hawaii can become a genuinely democratic society.

Ira Rohter is Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, and author of the recent book A Green Hawaii: Sourcebook for Development Alternatives. He is also co-chair of the Hawaii Green Party.