As the legislature approaches the unofficial halfway point of “1st Crossover,” they’re some good stuff moving. Sadly though, there’s even more good stuff that has died unceremoniously in committees.
This is the way of the legislature and there’s absolutely reason for frustration. Even anger. Despite my fairly unvarnished and realistic view of the legislature, the timidity of the Democratic supermajority, and even the timidity of allies, I don’t go stomping around pointing fingers and decrying the process, whether I like it or not.
Friends and allies may disagree with my somewhat pragmatic view of Hawaii’s Legislature and its processes, but it works for me. It allows me to more quickly move on from defeats (which are numerous and often).
I get the anger among progressives when good bills die without a vote, but I also recognize that not only is that part of the process. What’s more, nearly every progressive ally and organization I know has, at one time or another, asked for a bad bill to be “held” or deferred.
But what really rankles me is when progressives cry fowl when that happens to “good” bills they like and applaud when “bad” bills suffer an identical fate.
An Ally Goes Rogue
No one can deny that Gary Hooser is a good progressive. As someone who used to work closely with him, his values are almost always spot on. Almost.
But since he’s left the realm of elected politics to become a full-time advocate, I believe he’s lost an objective balance that is necessary for productive advocacy. As an ally, he’s become a mixed bag and increasingly dogmatic. Often with the loud stomping of feet.
He and I were partners for years and co-founders of Pono Hawaii Initiative. But I departed the organization and distanced myself from him in 2018 (if I recall correctly) because we had fundamental disagreements that seemed unreconcilable.
At the time, I believed his allegiance to “friends” over “the movement” was both a betrayal and strategically shortsighted. From where I sit now, he’s only solidified in that approach. He’s a fine partner when he agrees with a particular strategy. But when he doesn’t, he goes rogue. Choosing to “agree to disagree.” It’s hard to work with allies like that.
In the last month, he’s sent an email blast and shared a blog post decrying the ability of a Committee Chair to unilaterally defer bills. I ignored the email blast, choosing to avoid a public confrontation. But after he posted and shared widely the blog post, my aggravation finally boiled over. And so here we are.
Rather than contemplate the potential consequences of his attempts at public shaming, he doubles down for the cheers and accolades of followers.
What Gary conveniently leaves out of his diatribes against democratic obstructionism, is that on several occasions over the years, both he and the organization of which he is the President, have testified to have bills “held” or “deferred” in committee.
Hypocrisy Isn’t Helpful
When I write things like this, I like to be able to point to real examples. I like evidence; something Gary seems less and less interested in.
So before I sat down to call him a hypocrite, I spent a couple of hours scouring testimony to find examples. And I did.
Testifying on behalf of Pono Hawaii Initiative (PHI), in the last four years, he has submitted opposition testimony asking for bills to be “held” or “deferred.”
And Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action (HAPA) has similarly asked:
There may be others. Also, though I didn’t make a list, I came across other allies who made similar requests for “bad” bills. In these cases, not only did Gary not wail about the lack of democracy or transparency. Or the “unfair” power of the Chairs, he was counting on them for the sake of his own agenda.
Given this, I’m not sure how he honestly expects anyone to take him seriously. Maybe he’s forgotten those previous testimonies? Or maybe he didn’t think anyone else would remember?
Or… maybe his loud feet stomping plays dishonestly to an audience that isn’t interested in truth, transparency, or consistency. By George they’re angry and they’re gonna stay angry!
Politics Abhors a Vacuum
On its own, maybe none of this really matters. If he wants to support term limits (despite any evidence they’re useful), fine. If he wants to support a bill with minimal statewide impact to support a friend, fine.
But his recent blog post, foot-stomping about the demise of HB955 isn’t helping. Anything. It won’t help revive the bill. Worse yet, it sucks up oxygen for any number of issues that would actually benefit virtually everyone in Hawaii, like Paid Sick Leave and Paid Family Leave. Or legalizing recreational cannabis. Or how about protecting reproductive rights in the wake of Dobbs?
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against HB955. But were it not introduced by one of his close personal friends, would he be blasting the Committee Chair who refused to hear it? I’m betting not.
In the meantime, untold energies and distractions are keeping the House (at least) from potentially debating any of those more immediate and substantive issues.
Not only that, but those that know the legislature well know that public shaming almost never has the effect desired by those doing the shaming. More often than not, it has the opposite effect. So not only is Gary, with his anti-Chair rants, damaging what little credibility he has left in the building, but he’s causing potential harm to efforts to make advances on those other, more critical and impactful issues.
Disappointing
I used to think Gary’s strategic sense was spot on. But those days are long past. It’s unclear to me whether I’ve grown wiser, or if he’s grown more dogmatic. I’ll leave that judgment to others.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to publicly counter Gary’s ravings. And while I hope it will be the last, my pragmatic brain suspects I’ll be back at the keyboard at some point in the future doing it again.
So much to unpack here.
When things get bumpy and activists come out in force to demand to be heard by their elected officials, if you are part of the crowd circling the wagons to defend the status quo, telling the activists to just give up, get over it and move on, you’re not being “pragmatic”. You’re admitting that you’ve given up on real change. You’re just another brick in the wall supporting the do-nothing, conservative establishment.
I think it’s revealing of your privilege to claim that the midwifery issue is somehow of “minimal statewide impact”. You are a man; you’ll never experience being denied your preferred choice in giving birth. You live in Honolulu, with close access to healthcare. If nothing is done, an entire class of healthcare providers will become illegal in a few months, disproportionately harming women of color in underserved communities on the non-Oahu islands who rely on their services. This is NOT some minor, fringe issue. This is freedom of choice, bodily autonomy, and access to healthcare that’s on the line.
You assume Gary Hooser is supporting the issue because it’s an important issue to his close friends. Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s because he lives on an island that’s not named Oahu. Perhaps it’s because several of his grandchildren have been born with the help of midwives. Perhaps it was the groundswell of support that came pouring out for HB955 during committee hearings. Or perhaps it’s all of the above.
Regardless, it’s weird to complain that Gary is helping his friends and not the issues you care about (which if you were paying attention, you’d see he actually IS supporting) and then in the very next breath talk about how you’ve intentionally distanced yourself from him. If you want help from someone, you ought to be working on building a relationship with that someone, not taking swipes at them on the internet.
And from what I know about Gary from the interactions I’ve had with him, he WOULD go out of his way to help, even with all the shade you’ve been throwing at him. Gary is the goddamn Giving Tree. Whether it’s relating to politics, work, or just personal stuff, Gary is always willing to lend a sympathetic ear and his advice. You just have to ask.
As for his supposed hypocrisy, the testimony you’ve shared is of him and others asking the chairs AND their committees to oppose bills in the course of a public hearing process. What I have not seen him do is to ask the Speaker to assign a bill to a committee that has NOTHING to do with the bill in question, ask the chair to deny the bill a hearing without giving any reason or explanation as to why, and to completely stonewall and ignore the public when they demand to speak to their elected representatives. If he had done that, THEN I might be willing to entertain your charge of hypocrisy.
A more pragmatic progressive might see this for what it is; an opportunity to tap into an incredibly popular issue with overwhelming grassroot support that exposes leadership for the stupid, cruel, and ham-fisted political operators that they are. It’s an easy win, if the progressives in the legislature only had the guts to back up the activists instead of the Democratic establishment.
I am focused on two bills this session. One I want to get heard and am actively working to address concerns from legislators in advance.
The second bill I am trying to defeat and I think the best chance of blocking it will be if a chair refuses to hear it. I am counting on that.
A majority of lawmakers probably would support the second bill, but it is a majoritarian abuse of minority rights. The problem with an overly simplified notion of “democracy” is that it can have a blind spot when in comes to the power of legislative leadership to use carrots and sticks to forge a majority they control.
This article reads deeply personal to me and an effort to distance yourself from said ‘offender of the status quo’ of politics in Hawaii. Having worked with both of you, I get it, and as we learned, ‘politics is personal’. I even understand how it can be considered hypocritical to decry the system in one moment and use it to your advantage in the other. It’s why public interaction, participation, and belief in the democratic process is so abysmally low, especially in Hawaii. Most non-insiders don’t trust a single politician, former politician, or anyone connected to them. They don’t even know all the details and they still have a sense that something is amiss. The public thinks it’s only about where the money flows but has no idea about the very private, personal dramas and power plays in which everyone in that building has to navigate, perpetrate, or play the victim in. These are the games of politics for which I have both contempt and empathy in equal measure. The public also has no idea how truly ruinous it can be to one individuals life and livelihood to learn to do it all well. It’s devastating to witness the erosion of friendships and civility that occur. I think the job and all the supporting jobs should come with mandatory therapy, but that’s a subject for another day.
The subject for today, is HB955. The claim that this bill is of ‘minimal statewide impact’ is absurd. It has received more pages of testimony than any bill this term and more than most in recent history. It shows a very limited and narrow understanding of birth, the history of birth work (please Google) and women’s reproductive rights, and a narrow understanding of impact. I imagine you’re basing this on the number of home birth workers or home births that occur in the state. I am a birth worker and have attended births in hospitals, birth centers, homes, and that had transfers. Birth is a sacred process that ushers a life into this world and transforms a woman into a mother, and her partner, if there is one, ideally into a protector. It is galvanizing and strengthening. It is an intimate act. It is as intimate as the process of creating that life. There are numerous documentaries on the medicalization of birth, which most people choose out of a combination of fear and propaganda, and the detrimental impacts it has had on society.
Worried about the growing Fentanyl problem? Did you know it’s commonly used in epidurals (the analgesic injected into a woman’s spine during labor).
Worried about paid sick leave and family medical leave? What about the leave people are taking to participate in this process and being completely ignored?! What about the fact that midwives and birth attendants set up networks of support for families after birth so they have community care, regardless of what government or business entity decides to do their work or not.
What about the statistics on maternal and infant mortality rates, that few legislators read or make time to read?
What about the barrier to entry that NOT supporting this bill creates for more birth workers? What about the impact to doctors and hospitals that don’t have the capacity or resources to support those already here in rural areas, nevermind the growing numbers moving here?
I think this bill impacts more than you know and if we want to stick to the ‘way things have always been done’, we should start with birth and listening to the counsel of the women and give them a proper hearing. Perhaps then, someone wouldn’t have to stomp their feet.
Lana, I appreciate you not only taking the time to read my post, but also for your thoughtful comment. I knew I’d upset some people, but felt it needed to be said.
A couple of points….
First, I wouldn’t equate the volume to testimony for a particular bill to it being statewide issue. Clearly there are lots of people who feel very passionate about this issue and I commend them for engaging in the process. But I measure a bill’s impact by the number of people it will impact. In this case, though I’m happy to be proven wrong, I just don’t see it. My understanding is last year there were approximately 360 home births in the state. That, to me, doesn’t rise to the level of “statewide impact.” There’s also this from Lea Minton, the board president of Midwives Alliance of Hawaii: https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/03/midwifery-should-be-regulated-for-safety-of-consumers-and-community/. Good, well-meaning people can disagree about which issues are more or less important, but in terms of the number of lives affected, I’m hard pressed to see how HB955 would have a greater impact than something like paid family or paid sick leave. Or any of the reproductive rights bills, in the wake of Dobbs, that never received a single hearing. That’s not me trying to minimize the importance of the bill for those who care about or are impacted by it.
Second, though I may have missed it since I wasn’t tracking this bill until it “blew up,” but I’m not aware of any organizing or lobbying effort that took place prior to FIN not scheduling the bill for a hearing. Honestly, at that point its almost always too late. And the dramatic actions some of the advocates took at that point weren’t helpful. I know the idea of a “sit-in” is attractive, but I’ve never seen it work in this building. In fact, such provocative action, for better or worse, often has the opposite of the intended effect.
Finally, my biggest gripe is that Gary’s approach of “black and white,” all or nothing, in my opinion, doesn’t serve the public or even the progressive movement well. Like it or not, the Capitol is a strange place that operates by its own rules and its own interpersonal and political dynamics. Blaming one guy for the death of a bill may well fire-up people, but it doesn’t accurately tell the whole story. I don’t think anyone would deny the way the legislature operates is disfunctional, but I think it’s important for our people to have a real and unvarnished understanding of how it works. Without judgement. And as a leader and driver of policy and action, Gary more and more misses the mark. He could have sounded the alarm with out laying blame with Yamashita. He could have supported the bill and pushed for its passage without being quite so provocative. And therein lies my biggest concern and disappointment in Gary. I know he has it in him to be and do better, but I fear the love of the audience and being seen as “feisty” and “audatious” conflicts with his ability to genuinely lead. For the better of everyone. Maybe my post here was too pointed, too mean-spirited. Though it wasn’t necessarily my intention, I’m angry too, and definitely let my anger lead me maybe more than I should have. Ultimately though, I don’t believe anything I said was false or inaccurate.
I really do appreciate you taking the time to read this and share your thoughts. Don’t hesitate to give me a call if you’d like to talk about it.