Action for Kaua'i Rising

Today I had planned to go to the beach, up until 10:30pm last night that is when a friend here forwarded me email about a Kaua'i Rising action to petition the county council at a public meeting this morning to adopt a Kaua'i Food Bill of Rights. Clearly this was the place to go. And then, on the way there, who should I see at a Kapa'a bus stop but my friend (who does not have a car) it turned out that we went to the event together and he kindly introduced me around.

On Kaua'i because it is small and isolated and so many people come here for such different reasons it seems that modern challenges with food, energy, economics, and so forth come to a head quickly and in more extreme ways than on the mainland. This is, of course, also an enormous opportunity.

Gathering at 8am ahead of a county council hearing where a large number of signed petitions were to be presented I met a lot of the people attending the action. The diverse gathering was about half what would be characterized as counter-culture people, a number of retired persons, and a few locals. I met numerous good people who quickly made me feel welcome and had some good conversations about these difficult issues. Some council members came out and met with people individually ahead of the formalities, and even the chief of police made an appearance.

The action began with music - drums and singing; and included petition collecting, signs like "GMO Free Hawaii!", and a lot of impromptu talk story. At around 9am a contingent went in to present the petitions and address the council while the signs and music continued outside.

I met a young lady who left her career in marketing to come here and run a small business and now describes herself as an orchestrator. I met a massage therapist who told me that Kaua'i is a remnant of the lost continent of Lemuria. I met the web site administrator for the Kaua'i Rising web site.

Afterwards, a lady who had gone in described the proceedings. She spoke softly and with such a loving tone about the disparity between the very human energy of this action and the petition and the people behind it against the calculated complexity of county council procedures and rules. "They spent twenty minutes deciding how we could use the eighteen minutes we were allotted to speak." It was a striking example of modern government inefficiency and how they become entangled in their own rules. By contrast, she offered that what was needed was more "speaking from the heart" which was exactly what all those people were there doing in their own way, myself included.

Next steps: there is a meeting tomorrow (6:30pm, May 2, in Kapa'a at The Children of the Land) to present a draft of the Kaua'i Food Bill of Rights for public input that I intend to attend to learn more about what specifically it entails. I will postpone touching on the issue and this strategy here, focusing instead on the gathering and that experience.

Update: read the Kaua'i Rising post following today's event here with details of Thursday meeting.

Update: Garden Island story on this event is here. I happened to be standing behind the "PETITIONS DROP OFF" sign in the 3rd photo labeled "collect FOOD BILL.jpg" and unrecognizable.

Update: Interesting critique of the action - I did not have a chance to go inside and observe the actual meeting as the room filled up - from Joan Conrow, my favorite local investigative blogger.