District 21, 22, 23 Meeting reminder (Diamond Head to Kakaako, Waikiki to Moiliili-Pawaa)

District caucus on Thursday, January 26, 2006, 6pm, at Hawaiian Republican Headquarters, 725 Kapiolani Blvd. This is the big annual organizational meeting for the districts at which we elect officers for the coming year and certify delegates for the State Convention to be held May 26-28, 2006, at the Waikiki Sheraton. It's particularly exciting this year because of the Governor's race -- and also because there seems to be a lot change and movement on the Democratic side, that are a response to what the Republicans are thinking and doing.

So for those who have been involved in the past, we want to reinvite your involvement in today's totally different political game -- in which literally everybody can play -- as principals and not just as foot soldiers. That's the reality of the political scene now because they killed off the old one -- until nobody came anymore. We soon forget and some want you to forget, that in 1998, Hawaii was in the depths of despair and hopelessness. It was then that I returned myself after being on the Mainland for 30 years because I was actually cheaper to live in Hawaii then it was to live in just any other place which was booming. Hawaii was the exception -- and didn't have a clue.

But even on the Mainland, there was word that a young upstart from Maui was going to change things -- as Maui was the exception to the general statewide malaise. A lot of ex-Islanders were on the Mainland waiting for change because the status quo would never let them get ahead in the Islands. They had to wait their turn and pay their dues -- with the slim hope that one day, somebody would die and everybody else could inch up. That mentality took the fight out of everybody -- until they no longer cared; it just wears you down. That was the only game in town.

It wasn't a model of anything that was working anywhere else in the world -- but actually a sure prescription for cultural and societal genocide -- that it drove out its best and its brightest, so that the entrenched status quo would never be threatened. But once there is a disruption to that line of succession, a remarkable thing happens: there really is no serious challenge to return to those failing old ways. But along the way, many who were active in bringing about those changes, are no longer around -- many because they've dropped out and said, "There is no hope; things will never change."

One of the things that has changed, the Republican meetings have become a lot more interesting than meetings used to be -- with the sense that we're no longer the outsiders but have become the prime movers. Nationally, as well s locally, the other guys just didn't have any new ideas to offer -- except the ones that seem to work in the days of their success in the '60s and '70s -- but they did not evolve beyond that and insisted instead that we should all remain content with that status quo. But time, culture, consciousness does march on -- with a great advantage to those who embrace those changes and even lead the way in them. All those who show up and participate, have appointed themselves leaders in the community. It's that easy.