TAMPERING WITH POWER
THE GRASSROOTS VERSUS THE DEVELOPERS

by Ira Rohter

Political Science Department

University of Hawaii

Conference on Community Politics and Social Economic Issues in Hawaii
Honolulu, Hawaii May 21, 1995

This paper analyses political and economic power relationships in modern day Hawaii. Although Hawaii fate is largely determined by a Golden Triangle of Power, I propose that effective political protest movements in combination with the creation of community-based economic development corporations, can disrupt Hawaii's usual nexus of domination, and empower local communities to take greater control of their future.

Let me give you some context for the analysis that follows.

MAUNAWILI VALLEY. About 3 years ago I attended a day-long rally in a semi-rural part of Oahu. It was designed to "Show Support for the Maunawili Farmers." Hundreds of people were drawn to this lushly green valley, lying at the base of the Ko`olau Mountains, to show their support for a group of tenant farmers who were being evicted by a powerful Japanese corporation. These 40 farmers and their families went back 50 years living in this breathtakingly-beautiful windward-side valley. But new owners bought the land and set about to build two upscale golf courses. The new owners were selling memberships in this golf course for $120,000 each in Japan. Over $200 million in potential profits were at stake. And the farmers who had tilled this land for two generations stood in the way.

At the rally, as the day drew to the end, after much speechifying, music, and hula presentations, a large circle was formed. We all stood hand-in-hand as a prayer was offered in support of these poor Hawaiian and Filipino farmers who were desperately fighting to save their homes and land. Auntie Jenny, a wrinkled 70 years old pure Hawaiian who had lived in Maunawili Valley for 30 years, prayed for God's compassionate justice to preserve her family and friends and their way of life. Tears openly flowed. For most of us knew this rally was a futile gesture, that the farmers' fate was sealed because the powerful and insensitive foreign corporation that now owned this valley was in league with sympathetic local politicians who jointly were determined to get on with this project, even if it meant tossing these "little people" off the land.

A few months later, after more skirmishes between lawyers, and despite support from some sympathetic City Council members, the police finally arrived to evict the remaining families. The developer's bulldozers knocked down the farmers' old homes, pig-pens, and storage shacks, and the massive re-grading of once jungled hillsides into two 18 hole golf courses and a luxury clubhouse continued. Proper erosion controls were not put into place, red muddied waters flowed into nearby streams whenever it rained - which was often - and still the city administration choose to ignore permit conditions.

Jenny, this once proud native Hawaiian who supported her family by growing bananas and flowers, and selling lei, now has no home and no farm to work. She lives in a single room, somewhere. And the golf courses have been named, in an act of absolute cultural sacrilege, the "King Kamehameha" and "Queen Lil'uokalani" golf courses. These were two Hawaiian monarchs identified with a deep concern for their people. For many citizens, the morale of the story is clear: public officials, our precious lands and natural resources, our indigenous people and their traditional lifestyles, all are up "For Sale to the Highest Bidder."

This story about the evicted Maunawili farmers is a prime example of the war that is being fought in these islands today. And all around the world, actually. Battles between developers, government policy makers, and angry citizens are being waged today from the northern tip of Kauai to the Big Island's South Point area.

NEW LANDS FOR DEVELOPMENT. Thousands of acres of former sugar and pineapple lands are becoming available for non-agriculture uses. Off-shore developers and their Island-allies are lusting to convert this land into even more hotels and resorts, golf courses, luxury land projects, time share condominiums, housing developments, shopping malls and office buildings, etc. These plans are simply a continuation of what has been taking place in Hawaii since the mid-fifties, when the Democratic Party ascended to power: The Islands were opened to the minions of global capitalism. While great riches have flowed into (and out of) Hawaii, the aftereffects are a greatly degraded environment, and an economic structure that creates mostly low-paying jobs servicing tourism, while burdening our average residents with low wages, inordinately expensive housing, and a cost-of-living 40 percent higher than on the Mainland. Our one-party dominated political process is characterized more by personalities, party loyalty, and personal connections than by ideological clarity or vision. Our politics is marked by low participation rates, a muddling through mentality which at best promotes band-aid remedies and trivial reforms, and at its heart, corrupt links between developers and politicians.

A NEW POLITICS EMERGING? All is not bleak however. Pockets of dissent exist today. Angry anti-geothermal, Spaceport and golf course opponents, Hawaiian sovereignty activists, those deeply concerned about the homeless and the environment, have protested and organized to change decisions made by bureaucrats and officeholders. There have been some victories, and I would like to suggest some strategies that might allow an occasional exception to the usual domination of Hawaii's power elite. I hope that these rare events might become more frequent, and who knows, over time, might turn into a different paradigm for decision-making in these islands.

We need to examine the arena for this political contest: the nature of the existing power structure, and the characteristics of the ordinary citizens who are striving to have their needs better represented. As is the tradition of ideal-types, I will state my argument in perhaps over-simplified terms.

HAWAII HAS ALWAYS HAD A POWER ELITE

In old Hawaii the ali`i class held sway over the common people, the maka`âinana. The ali`i allocated land tenure, and set taxes and work obligations, with little challenge to their authority. After Captain Cook's arrival in 1778, Hawaii's destiny has been largely set by foreigners working comfortably with local allies. This power dominance began in 1791 with the sandalwood trade industry, when the maka`âinana were conscripted to harvest the forests to payoff their ali`i's loans. This domination reached its zenith in the era of giant sugar and pineapple plantations under the control of the Big Five enterprises, and continues nowadays under the reign of Mass Tourism.

HAWAII'S GOLDEN TRIANGLE OF POWER. For the last 175 years, then, major decisions that vitally affect Hawaii have been made on the basis of making maximum profits for owner corporations, rather than for the welfare of Hawaii's ordinary citizens. Today's political economy connects powerful transnational hotel chains, banks, real estate developers, and airlines, to Island developers, construction companies, lawyers, accountants, brokers, financial institutions, businesses, labor union leaders and local political allies. I call this Hawaii's Golden Triangle of Power. Today's major players are:

(1) Land owners, the descendants of Big Five corporations, and large estates, who work intimately with;

(2) Outside capital, from the Mainland, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere;

(3) Local allies, including businesspeople who profit directly from expansive growth; political leaders, including elected politicians and public agencies (DBEDT, DLNR, planning commissions); and labor union officials.

CHANGING FROM TOP-DOWN DOMINATION TO CITIZEN-BASED DEMOCRACY. Stopping over-development, creating a more equitable distribution of income and lower cost-of-living, and re-establishing some form of Hawaiian sovereignty, requires that the old system of top-down political-economic domination be replaced by a more citizen-based democracy. While oppositional political activism can sometimes stop an occasional development project or lead to small reforms, significant and lasting change will require (1) the empowerment of ordinary citizens to more directly control the daily decisions that affect them, and (2) the establishment of alternative economic institutions that allow a decoupling of Hawaii's economy from global capitalism.

Any strategy for change must address three major impediments:

(1) Hawaii's political structure, in which authority is centralized largely in the agencies of State government, with county governments playing a secondary role and the absence of any kind of Home Rule in cities or communities.

(2) Hawaii's Golden Triangle of power, which is an expression of the political economy of global capital, which seeks to swallow up Hawaii in its never ceasing quest for profit-making opportunities.

(3) the consciousness of colonization, the mentality which permeates the attitudes of many Hawaiians and the descendants of Asian immigrants. Most of the immigrants brought to Hawaii to work on the plantations were used to obediently submitting to power, a situation recreated in the Hawaii dominated by the Big Five haole plantation owners and businessmen. This willingness to defer to power exists today in many areas.

OPPOSITIONAL POLITICS.

At the beginning I told you the sad tale of Manawilil Valley, and the victory of the Japanese developer and his highly connected political friends. The farmers didn't really get their act together.

A host of methods must be employed by community activists to stop developers. Successful campaigns include multiple demonstrations, turning out a large number of residents to give testimony before planning agencies and County Councils and other government policy-making bodies, a communications network that gets letters-to-the editor and op-ed pieces printed, and arranges appearances on radio and TV and Neighborhood Boards by opponents, finding professionals to criticize Environmental Impact Statements and other legalisms, sometimes mounting legal challenges, and getting involved in political campaigns.

Winners build a coalition of citizens from neighboring communities, environmental organizations, and sympathetic professionals who offer pro bona help in critiquing EISs and mounting an effective media campaign. Increasingly Hawaiian groups are being drawn into the fray, which adds both emotional energy and new legal and political dimensions.

The classic successful example of a grassroots victory occurred in the fight over Wai`ahole Valley on Oahu's Windward side, in the 1970s. There, residents were also being evicted to allow the building of a golf course and other tourism-related developments. After an extraordinary series of demonstrations and the employment of all the tactics described above, the Ariyoshi administration stepped in and bought the land from the private land owner.

PRESENT AN ALTERNATIVE. Besides fierce opposition, however, there is another element that I think is critical in winning these battles. Namely the presentation of an alternative model for developing the area. In this case, the people of Wai`ahole Valley, along with their allies on the Windward side and elsewhere, wanted to preserve people living on family farms. While the notion of self-reliant farming and diversified agriculture was not well articulated then, enough people understood the issue as keeping the country rural and maintaining some segment of Old Hawaii alive.

On the Island of Hawaii, the citizens of Ka`û employed a multiplicity of tactics in stopping the development of a huge rocket launching site in their rural area. They bitterly and competently contested the Environmental Impact Statement; they held rallies in Ka`û and in Hilo, convened press conferences and flooded the newspapers and TV detailing their reasons for resisting the proposed huge industrial project.

One rally, for example, drew together an anti-Spaceport alliance made up of the Hawaii Green Party, Life of the Land, Informational Network for the Spaceport, Common Cause Hawaii, Ka Lahui Hawaii, Big Island Sierra Club, and many other community groups. In a press conference, with segments broadcast on Oahu's TV stations and reported in the two major newspapers, the Green Party demanded that a special Legislative Committee investigate the Office of Space Industries and its parent, the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, for their continued promotion of a useless and environmentally damaging rocket-launching facility on Hawaii Island. 14 specific questions were asked to be investigated. Bills were later introduced into the State Legislative to push these accusations highly embarrassing to the Waihee administration.

But also highly important to the successful blocking of the Spaceport project were proposals for alternative development. Ka`û's citizens argued that their future lies in its clean air, productive diversified agriculture, fertile fishing grounds, and a tourism based on an unspoiled environment and cultural history. They wanted the State to support small-scale community-based economic development, not mega-projects. The residents of Pahala, Na`alehu, and Ocean View communities came together to form a Ka`û Economic Development Committee. With the help of Hawaii's first elected Green Party Councilwomen, Keiko Bonk-Abramson, they started creating a regional plan to deal with agricultural land use "after sugar." They envisioned a post-sugar economy based on sustainable agriculture and processing cooperatives; a plantation village based on a refurbished Ka`û Sugar Plantation; educationally-oriented Hawaiian cultural sites based on old villages, temples, trails, and agriculture sites found in the Ka`û and South Point areas. They argued that renewable energy is readily available, using indigenous resources such as wind, biomass conversion, ethanol production, and solar thermal conversion systems. 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.

A similar story can be told about Molokai, and the repeated successes of its citizens to stop mass tourism resort developments. Critical to their ability to succeed in saying "NO," is their track-record in establish community-base economic development projects. People know there is an option that expresses their own values, not those of outside developers.

WE MUST ESTABLISH A NEW TRIANGLE

We must build on the oppositional successes, and especially the positive alternatives. We must alter the power structure by electing officeholders who will establish a new political economy - a new Triangle that promotes sustainable development, economic equality, and justice for native Hawaiians.

(1) For LAND owned by trans-national corporations, or Estates that seek to maximize their money by development, we need to substitute publicly owned and managed "Community Land Trusts," that will keep land permanently in agriculture and reasonably priced housing. Give long-term leases (99 years) to farmers and home owners and renters.

(2) We must find in- and out-of-state replacements for outside CAPITAL that is drawn into Hawaii. These present sources seek only to earn maximum profits - that's why they strive to develop office buildings, resorts and golf courses, expensive condominiums, etc. Our own land-owning estates and capital play the same profit-maximizing game.

In truth Hawaii has vast amount of internal capital. Establish community banks and credit unions, insurance and retirement funds, can be invested in building a local more self-reliant economy. Take our "Food industry" for example. We import 75% of produce and fruit and fish and meat and poultry. By Growing our own food, and processing it ourselves, and even retailing it, we could capture $2 billion now flowing out-of-state. We export more than a $1 billion a year on imported oil and coal, to run our vehicles and light our homes and businesses.

(3) We must alter Hawaii's highly centralized POLITICAL STRUCTURE, in which authority is centralized largely in the agencies of State government, with county governments playing a secondary role. We have the absence of any kind of Home Rule in cities or communities. One of the first steps we must take is to decentralize power to cities - give them authority to plan and raise taxes - and Neighborhood Boards and Community Associations.

Not only should the power of State government be dramatically shifted to lower units of government, but the State Legislature should be more accessible to ordinary citizens, not just the agents of political insiders and lobbyists. We should shift to a Unicameral form, so that average citizens don't have to attend multiple committees on House and Senate sides, making the same arguments again and again, losing time from work. We should extend the length of the Legislative sessions so that Hearings can be held during evenings and on weekends, when working class citizens can attend. We must enact Publicly Financed Campaign funding, so that public officials aren't beholding to wealthy contributors, but to average citizens.

In sum, we must be clear about the nature of today's present power hierarchy, and change it, otherwise our efforts will be overturned. We must find ways to transfer decision-making to local communities and ordinary citizens. Institution must be redesigned so as to alter the essential form of economic activities, social relations, and the distribution of power so that ordinary citizens are maximally involved in making decisions that affect them.