basis and campaigns to close them. I'm just proud to be with distinguished guests tonight, Christine Ahn of Women Cross DMZ, David Vine, author, professor, activist, as well as Robert Kiddadara. I'm going to make sure I pronounce that correctly. Hold on. Sorry. Robert Kedwar, excuse me, with the Okinawa Peace Coalition, who will be talking to us about the construction of a new marine base there is if they need another military base, right? A couple of things I wanted to just update us on before we get started, and that is that I'm sure by now many of us have read that Biden has pledged to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by September 11th. It's still not entirely clear to me whether that means military contractors as well because we know there are thousands of US military contractors there, and there are NATO troops as well, about anywhere from 25 to 100 to 1,000 US troops. CodePink did put out a press release applauding the commitment to be out completely by September 11th. So that's that. We were very disappointed to learn that President Biden has proposed a budget increase for the military by 1.6%, $753 billion, and that budget includes new nuclear weapons. I have urged some of the members of Congress to form a bloc and say we're not going to vote for this. You know, the members of the House of Defense spending reduction caucus and when Mary gets a chance she can post that in the chat. I think about 22 members. They could form a bloc and say we're not going to vote for this. We're not going to support this. And that might steer the direction of the budget process, I would think. In addition to that, there's some concerning news about Iran. I'm sure we know that Israel went in. There was an explosion a couple days ago inside a nuclear plant in Iran and a nuclear enrichment plant. The United States said we didn't plan this. We didn't approve this. It's not clear if Biden knew it was going to happen before it happened. Lloyd Austin, our Secretary of Defense, he was in Israel at the time. And the Iranian lawmakers are saying that they should suspend the talks. So this was an effort to sabotage Iran's clear deal. And before I forget, Medea Benchman is not co-hosting tonight and neither is Hania Jodad Barnes. Hania has a birthday in the family, happy birthday. So she's busy with that. And Medea, she went to Ecuador as an observer, an electoral observer, and she was on her way back passing through the airport in Miami and she's being detained there. It's not clear why. She asked why and they told her, if you want to know why, file a Freedom of Information Act request. So if you're on Twitter, check out her feed and please retweet the fact that she's being held. We wish her speedy release. Okay. I believe Mary has posted the agenda in the chat and we're going to get started. It's 5.03. We want plenty of time for our speakers. Please keep your comments to eight minutes or less. And then we'll open it up for Q&A for our three guests tonight. So first I want to introduce Christine On. My pleasure. Christine On is the founder and international coordinator of Women Cross DMZ. That's a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War, to reunite families divided during that war and to ensure women's leadership and peace building. In 2015, on the 70th anniversary of Korea's division by Cold War Power, she led 30 international peacemakers across the demilitarized zone. That's the world's most weaponized border from North Korea to South Korea. Christine On is also the co-founder of the Korea Policy Institute, global campaign to save Jeju Island, the national campaign to end the Korean War, and the Korea Peace Network. Welcome, Christine. Thank you so much, Marcy. And it's a great pleasure to be with everybody, including David and Robert, who I learned from so much. I don't know if I have time at the end of my little thing, but I kind of did a hack job on a little video. I just think it's so important to bring in the images of the people that are resisting U.S. bases. So if there's time, you may have to disable the share function so that I could share at the end. But if I have time, so let's just get to it. We're at historic moment where people are making a connection between our situation at home and our policies abroad. And I think clearly this Code Pink Congress with over 100 people meeting weekly is testament to how we need to correct the endless U.S. wars. And it's so clear that we can no longer forward to invest most of our taxpayer dollars in the Pentagon at a time when we face existential crises that cannot be solved militarily, whether it's COVID, whether it's systemic racism or climate change. And so this is an opportunity for us to fundamentally reorient what makes us secure. And I think this is a very tangible issue that affects people all around the world and the 800 bases around the 800 bases in 80 countries, but also our ability and safety at home. So let me just preface by saying that I've had the fortune of working with communities resisting U.S. bases in South Korea, in Okinawa, in Guam, and here on occupied Hawaiian land. And I've seen firsthand how U.S. bases destroyed local communities and environments. As my great friend Kyle Kajahiro, who is a renowned demilitarization activist here in Hawaii, he says military bases are where the violence of U.S. militarism manifests before a war. And that is in the violence and the destruction of coral reefs and forests in farmland, in sacred sites, ancestral sites, and women's bodies around camp towns. And so in 2006, I witnessed one of the most heartbreaking struggles that forever challenged my notion of security. I traveled to Pyeongtaek, South Korea to support Korean farmers. Actually, Medea Benjen was on that delegation. We went to resist the expansion of Camp Humphreys. It's the world's largest military base. It occupies 3,500 acres, just 50 miles south of Seoul, which is the capital of South Korea. These farmers used every tactic to save their rice fields, which had been cultivated for three generations. This included grandmothers tying themselves to the roofs of their home, similar to what people do in Palestine to prevent their homes from being bulldozed. If there's time, again, I want to share this video that I made. But since then, Camp Humphreys has become a little America. It has shopping malls, golf courses, waterslides, and an 8,000-foot runway making it the, quote, busiest airfield in Asia. The threat of North Korea or Chinese aggression is always used, right, to justify more militarization, whether it's now the naval base on Jeju Island or the THAAD missile defense system that has been installed in Seongju, also in South Korea. And almost always, communities are shattered, livelihoods are destroyed, and ecosystems are completely devastated. So as we call for sunsetting U.S. military bases, especially the 300 in the Asia-Pacific region in circling China, I want to make three critical points. Number one, we need to fundamentally challenge the premise that a massive U.S. military presence abroad makes it safer. In South Korea, U.S. bases are the sites where the U.S. conducts provocative war drills, like the ones that took place last month that involve B2 bombers, nuclear aircraft submarines. These are that fly perlessly close to the North Korean border. And a recent study found that the joint war drills actually don't deter North Korea, but instead incites provocative rhetoric and actions. And that's why 400 organizations, many of your organizations, probably signed on to this call, calling for an end to the U.S. ROK war drills in order to restart diplomacy with North Korea. So if we want to avoid a war with North Korea, we must address the root cause of the problem, and that includes officially ending the 70-year Korean War with the peace agreement. In fact, our transnational feminist campaign, Korea Peace Now, released a major report that outlines how a peace-first approach can actually lead to denuclearization and improved human rights. Number two, the U.S. violence in the Asia-Pacific stemming from its 150-year history of gunboat diplomacy, colonization, wars, and now its archipelago of bases around China has had devastating consequences for Asians and Pacific Islanders there, but also here. And this is weird because I am in Hawaii, which is, you know, considered like occupied, a sovereign nation that has been occupied by the U.S. Anyway, this is critical to understand in the wake of rising anti-Asian violence, and I really want to bring in this perspective. Of the 3,800 hate incidents reported against Asian-Americans in the past year, almost 70% were directed at women. And the 20th century wars that the U.S. have has waged against Japan, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos. Those are just the overt wars. We know many covert wars as well, killed and displaced millions, but it's also triggered violence against Asian-Americans at home. During World War II, we know the U.S. government deemed Japanese-Americans a national security threat and forced 120,000 of them into concentration camps, and later dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, incinerating more than 200,000 Japanese lives. When China entered the Korean War in 1950, Chinese-Americans faced anti-communist, McCarthyist attacks that made their communities vulnerable to violence, including many Chinese-American businesses. So today, the anti-China rhetoric is adversely impacting all Asians in the U.S., because frankly, most Americans, most non-Asians, view Asians as a monolithic group. This famous case in 1982, when during the trade wars between the U.S. and Japan, two white Detroit auto workers from Mistook, a guy named Vincent Chin, as Japanese, and beat him to death. As my friend Terry Park who teaches Asian-American studies at the University of Maryland says, quote, we are constantly seen as perpetual foreigners, as never quite belonging to the U.S., as always being suspicious, and that bullseye gets larger when hawkish rhetoric ensues by U.S. administrations, end quote. So if we are to stop anti-Asian hatred here, we must recognize how U.S. foreign policy perpetuates it and end U.S. militarism and wars throughout the Asia-Pacific region. And shutting down U.S. bases in the Asian Pacific will be an important and symbolic first step. So lastly, U.S. bases across Asia and the Pacific are also sites of resistance. And that's what's, I think, really exciting right now is that we need to connect with this global movement and especially this regional movement that is protesting and calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. So Koreans, to Chamorros, to Okinawans, to hear the people of Hawaii are daring us to radically imagine what makes us secure. They don't want to be caught in the crossfire between the U.S. and China, nor do they subscribe to the vision laid out by either superpower. I think they want, we want, our humanity, our dignity, and our sovereignty. So I'm going to close with a quote. The sentiment was captured beautifully. And for those of you that were on the Quincy Institute webinar, I just really love this quote so much because I think it captures the spirit of what we're all trying and striving for. So the village leader of Pyeongtaek, that U.S. military base that was expanded, he was in prison for resisting the U.S. base expansion. And so when he was asked by the South Korean Defense Ministry for the price of his land, he replied, quote, the price will be unimaginably high. The price must include every grain of rice grown and harvested here. It must include all of our efforts to grow them as well as our whole life here, including our size, our tears, and laughter. The price must include the stars which have witnessed our grief and joy and the wind which has dried our tears. If all of these could be added, I would tell you the price, end quote. So I, I don't know, Marcy, do we have a second to show? I don't. Sure. Well, how long is the film? It's like one minute. For sure. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, but I have to, you have to disable, you have to allow me to share. Mary, can we make her a co-host? I'm in. Okay, good. Okay. It's really short, it's a minute and a half, Max. After crossing two checkpoints in South Korea, we arrived at the barn. It was dark and cold, but we were instantly warmed by the candles to villagers held in their palms. They had transformed come tech into a peace village and met there every night for a candlelight vigil to remember why, to save their community, to save their livelihoods, and to save their history. The US was expanding its military base onto their land, and they were resisting. Standing in front of the villagers, I introduced myself in my broken Korean. I told them I was very sorry that their community would be destroyed in the name of a different kind of security. Okay, that's it. Thank you, Kristina, for showing us the film that you made for being an ambassador for peace. It's hard not to cry, right? Hearing these stories, the poetry. Kristina, founder of Women Cross, DMZ, and co-founder of Korea Peace Now. Our next presenter will be David Vine. He's a professor of political anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. David's newest book, The United States of War, a global history of America's endless conflicts from Columbus to the Islamic State, was published by the University of California Press. The United States of War is the third in a trilogy of books about war and peace that David has written. The other books include Base Nation, how US military bases abroad harm America and the world, and Island of Shame, the secret history of the United States military base on Diego Garcia. David Vine is also a board member of the Cost of War Project and a co-founder of the Overseas-Based Realignment and Closure Coalition. It's a great honor to have David with us tonight. Welcome, David. Thank you so much, Marcy, and thank you, everyone, for being here tonight. Thank you, Christine, for the beautiful and moving words, indeed. As always, I feel just so lucky to be here and really want to thank CodePank, Marcy, Medea, Mary, everyone who played a role in organizing tonight. This is a moment, a really unprecedented and historic moment, to close US military bases abroad, and we must seize this moment. So, CodePank has been working on this issue for so many years. Medea has been working on this issue for so many years. Christine has, I've been working on it for a few years, and I don't think any of us have seen a moment like this, and we really need to take advantage of it, and CodePank is leading the way. I want to also just thank members of the Overseas-Based Realignment and Closure Coalition. I'll be talking about that coalition and a letter that we put together to the Biden administration, calling on the Biden administration to close bases abroad, to both save billions of dollars a year, and to improve security in the process in ways that Christine talked about. Let me, I'll actually share my screen to show a few images real quickly. And while you're doing that, I just want to mention that we did post in the chat an article that David Byn recently co-authored with Andrew Basavich of the Quincy Institute, so check it out. I just want to make this a little larger. I had an image queued up, but you saw some beautiful images from Christine's video of the struggle in Pyong Tech. Again, let me just explain a bit why I see this as such an important moment. This is a map depicting the current collection of around 800 U.S. military bases outside the 50 states and Washington, D.C., around 800 bases in around 80 countries and colonies. The Biden administration recently announced that it would be undertaking a global posture review to review the U.S. footprint, as they call it, around the world. This is an encouraging sign, but we have to take advantage of this review to call for and ensure that bases are closed and troops are returned home. A few other encouraging signs. The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mike Milley, recently said publicly, I think we have too much infrastructure overseas. I think we have too much infrastructure overseas. Is every one of those bases absolutely, positively necessary for the defense of the United States? He was clearly questioning the need for every single base abroad, and that's the kind of careful review we need, review of every single base abroad, because any base that doesn't need to be there, I think the vast majority of them do not, at very least, is money that is not being spent to improve the security and well-being of people here in the United States and around the world, and is, of course, distracting the United States from actually the U.S. military from actually defending the United States. So the Overseas-Based Relignment Enclosure Coalition itself, I see as another encouraging sign, a sign of growing momentum across the political spectrum. This is a transpartisan group. At times, it's been radically, although increasingly common coalition spanning Code Pink and the Koch Brothers, or the Koch Foundation, Cato Institute, People of the Right, the Left, Libertarians are increasingly questioning the need to have hundreds of military bases and hundreds of thousands of troops outside the United States. This is an 80-year-old plus policy that dates to World War II and the earliest days of the Cold War, a policy that has really gone unquestioned by mainstream foreign policy experts and pundits in the media for far too long. But there are many signs of growing questioning of this status quo. Just to pick up on what Christine described, you know, this map shows how China as well as Russia, North Korea, and Iran are surrounded currently by U.S. bases. And I think we should encourage people to imagine how it would feel if the United States, if people in the 48 states or the 50 states were surrounded by Russian and Chinese bases, which of course these do not exist. David, we can't see your slides anymore. It's still stuck on the first slide. Very frustrating. I'm glad you said that. You could tell that I was advancing. Thank you. Thank you. Now it's better. Now you can. Okay. Thank you for drawing my attention to that. I apologize. I'll come back to, I think it does help to see what some of these bases look like. I'll come back to the global map of the 800 bases in 80 countries and colonies. This is a map that's pretty, excuse me, an image of a base that's pretty representative. The base is a broad range in size from city-sized bases with tens of thousands of troops and family members to lily pad bases, much smaller bases. This is, you might be surprised to know, this is Guantanamo Bay. This is, most people think of the prison. The vast majority of the base that is Guantanamo Bay looks like a small or not so small U.S. American town plopped down in Cuba. And that's indeed what many, many U.S. bases abroad look like. Little Americas, as they're often referred to, complete with suburban housing developments, fast food, playing fields, and much more. Again, 800 bases in 80 countries and colonies. It's important to point out again that this policy dates to World War II and the earliest days of the Cold War, although of course the first U.S. bases abroad were those bases on Native American people's lands. Bases across North America that helped conquer Native American peoples and nations across the continent as part of the colonization and conquest of the continent as the United States expanded in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Got a series of maps that show the expansion of bases abroad and how they have helped enable war. One of the reasons I think it's so important to seize this moment is that along with the importance of dramatically shrinking the size of the U.S. military budget, we need to close bases abroad because they have been such a pillar of war and not just in enabling war, but actually in making war more likely. Sorry, here's the World War II and you'll see the evolution of the collection of bases abroad over time throughout the Cold War. The collection shrunk after the end of the Cold War, but the actual spread of bases expanded. At the end of the Cold War, there were U.S. bases in around 40 countries and colonies today, around 80. So the total number of bases shrunk since the end of the Cold War, but the breadth of those bases has roughly doubled. Let me quickly, in my remaining couple of minutes, explain why members of our coalition are calling for the closure of bases abroad. This comes from, these are nine central reasons that, again, people in our coalition across the political spectrum have agreed upon are reasons we should close bases abroad. First and foremost, the finances. Overseas bases cost around $51.5 billion annually. That's just to maintain and frequently expand the bases. This does not include the cost of the personnel who are stationed on the bases and that would bring the total to around $150 billion a year. That's a larger budget than any government agency with the exception of the Pentagon and maybe the Veterans Administration right now. Second, again, as I mentioned, overseas bases have not just enabled war. They've made it far too easy to go to war. This has been true in the post-911 period, but it's been true throughout U.S. history. They enable and make it easier to launch all too easy for elite foreign policymakers to launch offensive interventionist wars. Third, overseas bases are increasingly obsolete thanks to technological advancements. The U.S. military can deploy its forces over large swaths of the planet with incredible speed thanks to the developments in airlift and sea lift capabilities. There's just not the reason to have troops and bases and weaponry stationed around the world as there might have once been, although I would question that assumption as well. Fourth, overseas bases, as Christine talked about this, increased military tensions. How would U.S. policymakers, how would U.S. citizens respond if China or Russia were to build even a single base near U.S. borders? There would be a call for a massive military response. And similarly, we shouldn't be surprised if Russia, China, North Korea, Iran respond to being encircled by U.S. bases by building up their military forces. Fifth, overseas bases support at least 40 dictatorial and other repressive undemocratic regimes. Far from spreading democracy, as sometimes was claimed about U.S. bases abroad, U.S. bases abroad are frequently propping up undemocratic regimes and blocking the spread of democracy. Sixth, overseas bases cause blowback. The presence of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim holy lands, one of the central justifications for Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda's attacks of 9-11, and research has shown since then that the presence of U.S. bases and troops in the Middle East in particular has actually increased the recruitment by militant groups. Seventh, overseas bases damage the environment. Military bases are not good for the environment period. Domestic, foreign, but especially bases abroad, the military frequently flaunts U.S. environmental laws or enjoys, so to speak, the ability to host bases in countries where environmental restrictions are less stringent than in the United States and takes advantage of those less stringent regulations. And there's a long track record and documented track record of U.S. bases abroad damaging the environment from South Korea to Okinawa and far, far beyond. Eighth, overseas bases damage the international reputation of the United States and generate protests. Again, Christine referred to the protests in South Korea. This is a phenomenon we see virtually everywhere there are U.S. bases abroad, protest movements pop up. And again, we shouldn't be surprised. How would we feel if we were living next to foreign troops, foreign weaponry, even the weaponry and troops of a close ally as frequently happens? And ninth, overseas bases are bad for families. They separate families. They cause family members to interrupt their schooling, their careers for a whole range of reasons. Deploying troops and families abroad or troops alone is harmful to U.S. military families. Let me just say quick, this is a whole list. I'll make these slides available as well as the letter itself, which is available on the website of the Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition overseasbases.net. It's important to point out that our call, the call of this coalition, is not one for isolationism. Instead, we're calling for building up diplomatic presence, diplomatic tools, diplomatic engagement, other forms of international engagement while we draw down abroad. This is the congressional call that I think Marcy has made available, but I will, I think, leave it there because I've probably exceeded my time already and I don't want to do that. So thank you and I look forward to the conversation discussion that will follow. Thank you so much, David. And we do look forward to accessing that on overseasbases.net. Also, if you want to post anything in the chat, I encourage you to do so. Excellent tools and resources. And yes, we are incorporating your calls to action in our capital calling party section of this Zoom tonight. And we urge everyone to stay with us. We have 154 people on this Zoom and we would love to have all of you join us in taking action and writing and calling our congressmembers and writing in White House and urging base closures. Thank you, David. Our next guest is Robert Casuar. He is both native Okinawan and native Hawaiian. He is the founder and president of the Peace for Okinawa Coalition, headquartered in Okinawa City, Okinawa. The coalition is calling for the US government to immediately halt construction of a new marine base in Hanoko on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Robert is also a musician or writer, a human rights activist who has been a regular speaker at the United Nations. Robert, welcome to Code Pink Congress and Mary if we can, there we go. Robert, maybe we can send to Robert. Hi, I'm Robert Fijo Kajiwara, native Luchuan, also known as Okinawan or Ushinanchu. I'm also native Hawaiian. Thank you so much to Medea, Jody, Marcy, Madison and all of Code Pink for inviting me today. Thank you also to Christine and David, as well as to everyone tuning in. It's an honor to be here. Before we continue, I must say that this video contains images of graphic violence and warfare. Viewer discretion is advised. I am president of Uchina Wadan Nushinka or Peace for Okinawa Coalition, a nonprofit organization founded and led by millennial Luchuans in order to promote Luchuan culture, history, languages and identity. We are based in Uchinashi or Okinawa City and we work with many other groups in Luchu, such as the Luchu Independence Action Network founded by Mr. Shigenori Yamahara, as well as overseas, particularly with native Hawaiians in our shared struggle against U.S. militarism and imperialism. Luchuans are the indigenous peoples of the Luchu Islands as recognized by UNESCO, CERD, the UN Human Rights Committee and many other scholars and organizations. Anthropologists believe we have inhabited the Luchu Islands for at least 32,000 years. We have our own unique history, culture, languages, values and identity. Luchu historically had close, friendly, mutually beneficial relations with China, Korea and Southeast Asia. Luchu was a center of international trade, finance, cross-cultural exchange and diplomacy. During the mid-19th century, the Western nations recognized Luchu as an independent country via the signing of treaties with the United States, France and the Netherlands. In 1879, Japan used its new modern Western-style military to illegally annex Luchu against the will of Luchuans. During World War II, Japan placed an inordinate amount of military presence onto Uchina, or Okinawa Island, the largest island of Luchu, with the deliberate intent of sacrificing Uchinanchu, or indigenous Okinawans, in order to protect Japan. This resulted in the battle of Okinawa in 1945, in which more than one-fourth of the Uchinanchu population was killed during a time span of just around three months. It is said that every Uchinanchu lost someone during the battle. After the war, most of Japan's other colonies regained their independence, except for Luchu, because the United States decided to keep Luchu for itself to use for military bases. The U.S. military forcefully relocated thousands of Uchinanchu from their ancestral homes in order to build military bases. Luchuans strongly opposed living under direct U.S. military rule and had no form of democracy or self-government. So in 1972, the U.S. gave Luchu to Japan without a vote from Luchuans, which is illegal under international law, and to this day Luchu remains under de facto joint occupation by both the U.S. and Japan, both of whom commit numerous human rights violations against Luchuans. There are around 30,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Uchina, plus U.S. civilian employees and their families making for a total of around 80,000. Many of these Americans commit crime, including violent crime against women and children. U.S. military aircraft are frequently having accidents, endangering the lives of civilians as well as the soldiers themselves. The military takes up around 15 percent of Uchina's land and around 30 percent of the arable land. It contributes just around 5 percent to the economy, running at a huge economic deficit. Uchina contains less than 1 percent of Japan's land area. It contains over 70 percent of the military presence. The military causes numerous major environmental problems, including the poisoning of drinking water. Now the U.S. and Japan are destroying this ancient coral reef filled with hundreds of rare and endangered species, including the Okinawa dugong, in order to build a massive new base at a place called Hinoko, located on the northern part of the island. Ms. Fumiko Shimabuku survived the Battle of Okinawa and has dedicated her life to helping ensure that the horrors of the war are never again repeated and that future generations of Uchinanchu can live in peace. At 92 years young, she has literally taken a stand against the military base construction. She and many other Uchinanchu regularly do sit in demonstrations against the military. However, they are forcefully removed by Japanese riot police. The overwhelming majority of Luchuans or Uchinanchu strongly opposed the military presence and are calling for demilitarization. We would like to once again make Luchu a center of peace and prosperity. I'm just about out of time for today, so I'll end here. If you would like more information, please check out our website, peaceforokinawa.org. Thank you again to everyone and I'll see you next time. Thank you, Robert. Don't leave us yet. I really appreciate the slides and learning the history of the island. Right now, I'm going to ask Mary if you can, please put all of the three, our three guests in the gallery so then we can take some questions from the chat. I'm going to encourage people if you have a question to post your question in the chat. We have three guests and Christine is also with us. There we go. Great. I have a question for Robert. Robert, to what extent have you organized opposition to this new marine base on Hinoko? I read about a petition that was delivered as well. Yeah, so the U.S. and Japan have been planning on building this base for around two decades. So it's been going on for a long, long time, even since I was a little kid. But Uchi Nanshu have always strongly protested this. So there's always been a lot of organization. I personally, in December 2018, I started a petition against the construction of this base. It has over 212,000 signatures on it. So there's massive resistance, around 80%, if not more, of the population the military presence. Thank you. I really appreciate hearing about all that. We don't get a lot of news about the resistance or the base in general over here, mainstream corporate media. Question for David. Tell us about the coalition you're involved in. Who's involved and have you met with the Biden administration? Where are we at with all that? So we haven't met with the Biden administration yet. We would love to have that opportunity. We do need more friends in Congress. And specifically, as you might have seen on the slide of the congressional calls or asks, we're hoping that Congress will hold hearings investigating the collection of US bases abroad and troops abroad in the interest of closing them. But we believe we have a greater chance of closing bases now than in quite a while. And I should just mention real quickly that bases have been closed, often thanks to local movements like that in Okinawa. The US presence in Okinawa has shrunk in size over the past roughly two decades, thanks to the protest movement. And under the George HW Bush administration, the Clinton administration, and the George W. Bush administration, hundreds of bases were closed in both Europe and Asia. And we have to build on that example to have it happen again. Absolutely. There's precedence. Christine, can you tell us about the impact of US military bases on South Koreans and their desire for peace with North Korea? Where are we at with local grassroots drives for peace between South Korea and North Korea and South Korea? It's a great question. And South Korea is kind of going through a really, I would say, some political complications because of COVID and domestic politics. But during the period of fire and fury, as most Americans remember, when the Trump administration was preparing a bloody no-strike on North Korea, that's when we saw a historic engagement between the North and South Korean leaders, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in. And Moon Jae-in was, in fact, ushered into power because of a candlelight revolution, which is kind of an Arab spring that sprung up in South Korea to protest the corruption of the previous neo-conservative administration of Kalkunhae. And so there was a historic agreement that was signed, the Panmunjom Declaration. It was a commitment by the Korean leaders representing the interests. Eight out of 10 South Koreans wanted a peace agreement with North Korea. They want an end to the Korean War. And unfortunately, the US has been the obstacle to that progress. The US, which is under the guise of the UN command, which is really the US forces in Korea, for example, blocked the train being linked that had not run in 70 years. And they wanted to link it at the place actually that we crossed the DMZ in 2015. They blocked South Korean businesses from restarting economic cooperation. So that's a really important point, I think, to bring to this audience is, yes, we have to make a push. And I think the pushback we will get from our congresspeople is, well, our bases are needed because of provocative actions like from North Korea or from China. And I think we have to push back and say, actually, that is the will of the Korean people. They want an end to the Korean War. They want an end to this kind of division that has made South Korea, essentially, an island. And that every country that has been involved in the Korean War has almost normalized relations. South Korea has normalized relations with China. And the US has normalized relations with China. And China supports a peace agreement. And so it's actually the US is the lone wolf here in not supporting peace. And I think the division of the DMZ is so symbolic. We're coming upon the sixth year anniversary of our historic crossing of that DMZ. But it's also that Cold War division that is or that division of the DMZ that is further intensifying the Cold War divisions that exist. And I think we have, as the peace movement, as the anti-militarism movement, we really have to be building this archipelago that exists around US bases.  But it's like we really, you know, yes, Biden is agreeing to close down bases in Afghanistan. But that's because there's a long trajectory that started with Obama, with Hillary Clinton, you know, with the pivot to Asia, right? So they want to move most of the bases from the Middle East, and they want to move them to the Asia Pacific region. And that is all because they want to go to war with China. I mean, you know, that's a very blatant and maybe bold thing to say. But that is all the US military economic political apparatus is basically shifting towards that outcome. That Biden was clear about that when he proposed his $753 billion budget that all eyes are on China. That's something we think back on very strongly at CodePink. Totally. Madison Tang, China is not our enemy campaign. Check it out. I think David wants to see something. Yeah. Just real quickly to pick up on what Christine was saying, Catherine Lutz, a fantastic scholar and activist on bases cost of war project director, has said that US bases abroad are foreign policy written into concrete. The base that Christine described before at Pyong Tech is an $11 billion base. What sort of commitment does the United States, does the US government have to peace when we build an $11 billion base on South Korean soil? It suggests that the military has no intention of leaving anytime soon. We have to change that. Absolutely. Here's a question from Rachel Bronke. What outreach has any one of your groups had with US global environmental groups? How can we help with that effort? Who would like to take that first, Robert? Any relationships with US global environmental groups? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the, you know, the issue of Hinoko has long been drawing alarms from international environmental groups. But unfortunately, the US and Japan, the governments, they just completely ignore it. So America, especially, they love talking about the environment. You got saving the environment that the Democrats love, giving nice lip service about the environment. But that's all it is. It's all lip service. We've personally met with dozens of members of the US Congress multiple times. They've completely ignored the issue. Well, I think as we approach Earth Day, we have to urge our allies in the climate movement to make this a centerpiece of their conversations, right? That military bases pollute our land, our air, our water. I mean, in the United States alone, I looked up on Wikipedia, there are 143 superfund sites related to the military. I can imagine what it is abroad, right? Okay, let's see. David, do you want to add something? I did once already. So we should get to more questions. I can fold it in. Sorry. I'm sorry. I do want to quickly respond because there was, sorry, I'm having a midlife brain problem here. But maybe David or Robert remembers, but there was the International Environmental Conference. I forgot what it's called, but it's like the hugest one. And it was actually taking like five miles away from Kang Jung, which is the base, the naval base that was established. I mean, you know, South Korea says it's theirs. But when I was organizing against it, several of us, including Bruce Gagnan, we had called the South Korean Embassy in Washington, and they said, don't call us, call the State Department, because they're pressuring us to build the base. And so it was incredible to me how the environmental movement was willing to have this base or willing to have this conference five miles away from this place that was the source of the water supply for the southern part of Jeju Island, where they were endangered species, where there was like contiguous lava rock that was basically being blasted to build this massive military base. And I just think we have to engage with the environmental movement, because as we know, the US military is one of the worst climate polluters. And this is the violence that is wreaked on the environment through these bases. Yes. And I just wanted to add, I've been working with a great group of veterans, veterans for peace, and they have a climate working group, check it out on their website. I believe some of them will be meeting with Clive and Envoy John Kerry coming up to talk about centering militarism in the climate talks, but it's not just with the John Kerry, right? We need our allies and the environmental movement to do that as well. One last question, and then we're going to move to our action-oriented segment of the Zoom tonight. And the question is, who are the beneficiaries? What's at stake in maintaining a military security system? Who's profiting from all of this? Who wants to go for that one? Name names, companies? Yeah. Yeah, I can do that and something I've written about. But yeah, then part of the reason the status quo has been the status quo for so long is that there are people benefiting. There are major corporations, military contractors who make money, maintaining bases on a daily basis, building the bases, and the bases entrench themselves in the local political economy. So often while there are large protest movements, there are also people who are effectively bought off by the bases. They have jobs on the bases, local companies get the contracts, not just U.S. corporations. So they do become difficult to uproot. But one more important point about the politics of all this, unlike domestic bases where there is the BRAC process, the base relignment and closure process that involves Congress and base closures, the Biden administration can close bases abroad today or tomorrow. They don't need Congress's approval. Now, Congress can be helpful in putting pressure on the Biden administration to, for example, freeze the construction at Hanoko and freeze all new military construction funding in the next fiscal year budget. But the Biden administration can do it alone. Thank you. That's very important. And we will be sending that message tonight when we send our emails to the White House. We really do have to close because we want to get on the phone and take action. We've heard a lot and I appreciate the guests, all of you being with us tonight, Christine Ahn of Women Cross, DMZ, David Vine, author of Base Nation, and Robert Kajawara, Peace for Okinawa Coalition. And I encourage our guests, if you want people to know anything else or contact information, please post that in the chat. Okay. So now we're going to unmute and I would like everybody to thank our guests and express your gratitude. Thank you very much. It was great, everyone.


I'm training to get my first dunk. Let's go. Starting off hot. Did I get dunked on? Did I want immediate retaliation? Yes, of course. And did I get it? You're gonna have to find out and here's the thing. This vlog will be about my progress from jumping to getting dunks off drop steps in games. I'm excited to bring you my workouts that I do. I'm excited to show you every jump that I do in this training.  Let's go. So today I have another similar thought as the last vlog today. It's like why not go dunk? I don't just want to dunk. I want to dunk on people and end their lives. So I want to go around the country and I want to dunk on people so badly in a game that they can't play anymore and not because they're injured just because they're integrity and they're self-worth is through the floor. But honestly I'm super pumped to see what I can do today just taking the easy easy easy. And now since I know my hamstring is not worse from aggravating it, it can handle the function. I can push through that pain and not be worried. So that's a huge shift. Again don't push through pain. I've gone through two years of training with physical therapist to get to this point. So do what you have to do. Heal your injuries. Number one thing. Number one key. I talked about in my last video. The number one key is staying injury-free. So think very long-term. Don't rush the process. I'm still staying patient. Let's go. I miss this one's crazy. Nine nine and a half. Rusty as can be but amazing. You dunking yet? Why not? That's what this channel is about. That's why I make these videos so you go dunk. All right so for those that don't know quick hamstring tear and I've been working with trainers and physical therapists for almost two years finally found the cause or the root or how to find the path forward. So I want to give you this hamstring update because I'm pushing through pain and you will see me say that a lot and it's just because of the way the injury is laying right now. I have full function. I've gotten multiple opinions. I've gotten ultrasounds. I've done a lot of research on the actual injury I have. So pushing through the pain to help realign the tissue is what's needed for me. I don't recommend any. I'm not a doctor. I want you guys to figure out what you need if you have any type of injuries but you do have to push your body and tell it what to do at some point in certain ways. So that's where I'm at and that's why I'm back to training. That's why I'm pushing through it and that's why I'm excited to dunk and I still have a lot to go in the mind category. What does that even mean?  It's all my right leg hamstring so off a run. I don't think about it. I use my quads. I overuse my quads. That's why it's so imbalanced. So I'm going to be focusing on standstill jumping vert jumping. I'm going to tell you more about the goals later but that's where I'm at now. I'm doing single leg deadlifts. I'm doing that stretch that I said in my last vlog about really stretching the hamstring. It's getting better quick. Still a ton of pain. So I want you guys to know I'm pushing through pain daily. So it's like putting yourself it's like breathing.  You can do it but it sucks every day. Well you can't do it. What am I saying? My point is is the pain. I have to push myself through this pain push through it re-carve these patterns day in day out and stay consistent with it because my body wants to compensate. My body wants to protect itself and I have to unlearn that and I've carved it for so long. So whatever you're going through right now I really advise that you work on the foundation and the details now. Take the long journey because in the end it'll breed the best possible results and you can't shortcut it. So I'm at a high level. I've pushed myself over 12 inches of vertical and now I'm trying to squeeze out more. So let's go. Putting in the work. What are my goals?  Love that word. And I want to dunk off the dribble. I want to focus on the dribble and I want to fly. I'm not too worried about the 43 inch goal surpassing because I feel like if I just run full speed I'll be freaking flying but I'm really focused on staying disciplined. I'm excited for this channel to see every step of me. I feel like I'm at ground zero with a ground zero with a freaking 35 inch vert and I want to jump off a drop step and dunk with two hands off both plants left right right left even my one foot was feeling good. So I want to get really elite legit dunker right. I've never felt like that. I'm getting vulnerable here.  I don't want that.  I want to dunk with any lane I got other news ball is life is coming to Miami where your boy happens to live and I want to get in those runs. So underdog status bro. I'm on injuries if nobody knows I want to catch somebody. I'm quick got no handles but I'm quick and I can throw lobs. I got that. I got that IQ. I got that pat. I got the dime.  So back to my goals drop step stand still just get legit and I just want you guys to know every step of the way. I'm not going to tell you my long term goals. You know them just jump higher dunking games but I want to go step by step and make this vlog a follow along so week in week out whatever whatever I post you will see the progress and I'll give you insight just like this so you guys can see the details how I'm working because I got to this point and then you have a huge setback or everything's a learning curve. So now I'm ready to surpass it and those are my goals right now and I'm so freaking pumped so going forward now did I get dunked on honestly it's a light body look at this check this out so I'm helping the weeks okay I go to jump I'm actually more disappointed that off my left right plant I didn't even get rim level maybe right there I should have been at least rim level so on a serious note I would want to get up really high off a drop set that's the main thing I'm concerned about on the positive note I'm glad I went for it do you have to get dunked on to be able to dunk on other people yeah now check the eyes check the eyes a little retaliation here if the ball bounce off the backboard a couple more inches and not in I'm about wrist level I'm punching that thing on my own teammate it would have been the best put back of my life for the fact that there was in traffic it was the angle I got it on footage I've had put backs in my life where I've missed the footage because my phone fell ah point being first day back playing pick up since quarantine I haven't played a competitive minute of basketball since quarantine and this is how the first day goes I'm so pumped for the potential I feel like I have no bounce starting from ground zero and I'm cool with it you tell me did I use it as click bait of course do I need to even say that no but I'm showing you the full clip I could hide it forever just say I dunked on somebody the picture looks real but I mean I could have lived with myself you get it okay


This time, we're going to be building a program that can read an integer from the console. So, as always, I'll begin with the main label to tell QtSpin where I'd like my program to start. To read an integer, I need to use system call number 5. So, I'll put 5 into v0, and then I can run my system call operation. System call number 5 doesn't take any other arguments, so I can just run it as is. But when it's done, it will put the integer that it read from the console into v0. So, now I'm going to go ahead and copy that value someplace safe, so that if I try to make another system call, I don't accidentally overwrite my value. So, I'll copy that value into t0, and now I can just go ahead and end my program. So, if I run my program, it just pops up a blank console, waits for me to enter an integer, and then quits. So, over in the registers, you can see that v0 has the value of 10, because that was the last thing I did before my program quit. I put 10 into v0. But before I did that, I copied the value that the system read from the console into t0. So, over in t0, I see the value of 76, which matches what's in my console. But chances are I'd like to do something a little nicer with this. So, instead of just expecting my user to know to enter an integer, I'm actually going to prompt them for one. Then I'm going to make this program a little more complex by actually parroting the number back to the user. So, now I'll go ahead and add all the extra code that I need to first print the prompt string. So, there's the code to print a prompt out. Now, my response is going to take three parts. The first part is another string to open the response to the user.  Next, I'm going to actually print out the integer that the user entered. Here, I'm using system call number one again, and I'm copying that integer from t0 back into a0, so it can be used as the parameter for the system call. And lastly, I'm just going to print out a period and my end line character just to clean up my syntax. Now, when I run this code, it actually prompts the user to enter an integer, say 45, and then it tells me that I indeed entered 45. So, the thing that we added this time was the ability to read integers from the console. This allows us to request some data from a user and have them actually enter it on the console. We can then do stuff with that data. In this case, I just printed it back to the user. But we can do arithmetic with it or use it to control how our program runs in some other way.


Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. Navigating the journey. And I am Marcia Joyner. Navigating the journey is dedicated to exploring the options and choices in life and to assist people to talk about their wishes. It's time to transform our culture so we shift from not talking about what we want to talking about it. It's time to share the way we want to live our lives and to communicate about the kind of care we want and what we don't want. This is especially important when you are a member of the military family and living in Hawaii and having moved year after year and saying goodbye to old friends from a million places and meeting new people, new customs, new cultures. One cannot envision what it's like being in constant state of flux. Move after move after move. In fact, we moved four times in my last pregnancy which was in the dark ages. Now in Hawaii, you're going to stay put for about three years or more. Can you imagine attempting to find a house when the street names you can't pronounce and the highways all begin with K? Soldier to soldier, real estate firm. As this is the name implies comforting soldier to soldier. It's like someone who knows what your life is like. All the moves you've made all the misgivings saying goodbye to your children's classmates. And our guest today is Celeste Thomas and veteran of 20 years of service who truly understands military relocation. His company is soldier to soldier. A Hawaii realty company. Full service real estate company on the island Oahu. And I love his motto. If you're not happy with me and my service is fire me. Isn't that wonderful? Hello Celeste. It is so wonderful to meet you at last. I see you on the television all the time. If you don't like me just fire me. That is a great idea. The thing about it is that line almost got taken out at the very last minute when I ran my first TV commercial. And the TV station at that time they kind of ran it before their crew and they were like no, no tell them don't take it out. So I kept it in. And now that has become something bigger than I ever thought it would be. I think people who don't like to be held hostages if I may use that term loosely to a contract or something. So I'm glad I kept it in. So tell me about Celeste. Where are you from? How long have you been in the military? Tell us about you and how you came to be soldier to soldier. Well I'm a veteran of 20 years as you did during the intro. I'm originally from South Carolina but I haven't been to South Carolina. Where? In South Carolina. Florence, South Carolina is really Lake City but nobody knows Lake City so I always use the term Florence. But it's just about 20 miles west of Florence. I'm about 60 miles east of Columbia. A lot of people are familiar with Columbia. That's inland. Inland, South Carolina. We know a lot of the sea islands but nothing about inland. So you were in the military, you said for 20 years? I was in the military for 20 years. I joined originally in the National Guard. Got out, went to college, said you know what, behind us we didn't feel like looking for a job. Said, you know what, I'm already doing this military thing. Just keep it going and see how long it takes me. 20 years later it's like, I guess it's time to move on to something different. Got out, retired, only 3 years ago. So my company is very, very new. You have to be in real estate for 3 years in order to open your own firm. So Lurie, the day I was testing, my TV commercial was coming out the very next day. So I had no options but to pass that test. So I burned all bridges saying, hey, you will pass that test. You must pass that test. So that's how I ended up with the company. The name in itself, I was looking for something to attract the military client because I knew the military. 20 years, joined when I was 17, retired, did all the moves. I knew the military. So there was a comfort level making them comfortable with me and my service. That's what it implies, that comfort level of, like I said, we have moved, my husband retired a long time ago, before you were born. But the idea of moving and moving and moving and just when the children make friends in school it's time to move again and so what I got from just watching the commercial and your name was at comfort level, I would have been really comfortable if we had a realtor that understood all of the issues that military people go through in all of these moves and what you're looking for. It's a difference. Somebody is showing up one time. Everybody knows the traffic. To me there's no excuse to show up late. You know the traffic's bad. So if you've got to leave an hour and go sit in a coffee shop to get to a point where that's what you do. One, because the military ingrains it into you. And I'm very respectful of people's time. If I say six o'clock and we agree on six, then guess what? I should be there at six o'clock. No later than six o'clock for sure. So that's just my life and the way I live it and the company values. So now you've been in business for how long? I've been in business on my own with soldiers and soldiers for a little over a year and a half now. But I've been in real estate on this island for about three years. I did a lot of flipping houses in Oklahoma when I was stationed in Oklahoma and I still have a lot of rentals back there. What do you mean by flipping a house? Well, buying a foreclosure, fixing it up and then selling it for a profit. Oh, okay. Now you are in this market, which is crazy. Yeah, tell me about it. How do you take a notice active duty which we know don't get paid a lot and we look at the cost of these houses? How do you wrap your head around that, taking this person into that? I mean my first home when I first got here, man, I'm not going to age myself here. I think it was 1998, 2000 maybe. It was a little three bedroom, two and a half bath condo in Mililani, Navio, matter of fact. And I'm like 146,000 for a condo. You know, the house I can get in South Carolina Oklahoma for the whole day. So I'm like, man, that's expensive. But you know, I made the jump and bought the house and I was literally sitting in Iraq and one of my lieutenants at the time came through with the Hawaii magazine and said, hey, let me take a look at that magazine you had done and I'm opening it. Man, the house was in my neighborhood. $300,000, no. So I called home and said, hey, call our realtor. So I called the realtor and said, hey, how much can you get for our house? She told me, I said sell it. I'll be going to PCS when I get back anyway. And from then on out, I stopped looking at price and started looking at the market. So that's the biggest thing. It's not necessarily about the price. And a lot of people when they come here, especially people that are used to coming to Alabama or the mainland, they're not used to come from New York or a high expensive state. These prices are like, whoa, what? $2,500 for rent? For two bedroom condo? I mean, so if you look at value versus price, then I think it makes a huge difference. I was just, now tell me about this military and the VA loan. Is it VA loan? What is a VA loan? A VA loan is offered to a veteran that is a no money down. You can put money down if you want to. Loan is offered them in order to purchase a home. So if you're doing no money down, that's a big monthly note. Yes, it does raise your payments, of course, if you're not putting any money down. But what I found out in Hawaii is with the appreciation rate being where you're getting your money from, you know, it's well worth that appreciation. And I've had clients that literally bought last year and are selling this year and they're walking away with $40,000, $50,000 in a year with no money down. That's not a bad deal. Now, that's not everywhere, but here in Hawaii, it's very, of course if you buy in the right place, there's still places in Hawaii that, you know, can put $20,000 down and still be in a bad position. So like they always say in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. Well, so now we look at people that are, I hate to say homeless. Yeah, that's the right word. Where we have three and four families in one place because everybody's working, but they can't pay $2,500 a month. So how do you handle those people? Or do you? Or are you exclusively with soldiers or soldiers? Nope, we help everybody. I get calls all the time, hey, are you only military? No, no, we help everybody. Now, again, that was the gamble when I came up with that name. When I put that name out there, most people are going to think it's exclusive military. But we've had tons of local families that are not military. And sometimes they try to even justify like, hey, you don't have to justify, you don't have to be military. Hey, you know my great, great, great, great, great, great granddaddy's cousin was in the army. So like, no, you don't have to justify. We help more than military. But military is our focus. Like I said, you got to have a niche in something. And military is our niche. So applying for the military for the VA. Now, if you, say I bought a house 10 years ago on a VA loan, now, and I still have it, and now I want to buy something else, can I use the VA loan again? Or is it only for one property? No, you can use it again. But of course there's a higher percentage you would pay. So in other words, say if you bought a home in Alabama for 100 and some thousand dollars on your VA loan, then you moved to Hawaii. And your VA eligibility here is $721,050. So you literally subtract that $100,000 from that $721,050 and that's what you have allotted to buy a home. Ah, okay. So you still have your eligibility.  Even if you're still paying for that other house? Yes. I have a client right now. Matter of fact, he just talked to the lender and that's what he's doing. He's had the house in Texas. We're buying another house here in Pearl City. And it's, what's the top number? $721,050 is the limit, but there's something called a VA jumble loan. So anything over $721,050 all the way up to a million dollars you can buy, but you pay, you pay the difference of 25%. In other words, say if the limit was, the limit is $721,050, right? Say if it's $800,000. So the difference between $800,000 and $721,050 you pay that 25% difference, which is still great, which is still way less than paying 20% down for a conventional loan. Yup, quite a bit. Right. Now what we mentioned about soldier to soldier and a comfort level and understanding what the military goes through, tell us I do know, you know I'm one of those that goes back to the Civil War, had every generation in the military and having moved a lot of my life but a lot of people don't understand and so I can't take it for granted that everybody does. So what we should do is go to break and when we come back, tell us about the comfort, what we're talking about in reaching out to the military and offering a comfort level. Okay? This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Aloha, I'm Carol Mon Lee, Think Tech Hawaii's Volunteer Chief Operating Officer and occasional host and this is Minky. For the first time, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Dear thanks, Think Tech will run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can so Think Tech Hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming. I've already made my donation and look forward to yours. Please send in your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website, www.thanksforthinktech.cozvox.com On behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii's 30-plus shows, thank you Mahalo and Sheshe for your generosity. Aloha, and we're back. Our guest today is Celester Thomas and he is the principal broker and owner of the real estate company Soldier to Soldier. And we're talking about the vast moves and upsets and adjustments that the military makes in the course of their kids. So tell us when we talk about your company providing the comfort level what does that mean exactly to people coming to Hawaii for the first time and looking for a home? What is it that one soldier provides to another? That means understanding the little things that most people may take for granted. As we kind of mentioned earlier, just showing up on time is like a great first step and not being on what they so-called Hawaii time. Showing up on time, understanding the sometimes discomforts of moving with kids or moving over without a spouse and needing assistance maybe a car ride from the airport or showing different restaurants and stuff like that. All of my agents are prior military. I do have one or two that are not but they're married to military. So they're quickly learning. Hey, this military life is a little different than civilian life. So it's just understanding. Understanding the why, understanding the moves and being able to talk a language. When I can talk your language then it provides a certain level of comfort. So when people are transferred into Hawaii, do they still have TLA benefits? Yes. I know when all the wars were going on. Well, we came during Vietnam. So we had all of those. But now, well, this is still a war. Afghanistan is still a war. But it's not declared a war, is it? I guess that's what we want to call it. I'm going to wave them home as a war. It's a war. Now before, and they changed the requirements. There used to be six days when you fly on island, your TLA benefit will last you six days. So you already had six days to go find a house. Now they've brought that all the way down to 30 days. So when families fly in, they don't have a lot of time to mess around. It's a little different here than finding a place. You go on the mainland, you go to one place, say, can I see all these houses? And they show them to you. Here, you may have to call Craigslist, you may have to call this individual company, that individual company. So it's an adjustment that military people have to have. So a lot of times people contact me on my website and say, hey, can you help me find a house? And I do it, not for profit or anything, just because I understand that they're not going to understand where to go, just because it's different. Of course. When you can't pronounce the street name. Yeah, exactly. Of course. Yes. You look at the word lique, lique. That doesn't sound like what that looks like. Yeah. And a word like ha-a-ula. It's like all those A's, you know. So just reading the street names becomes an issue. Exactly. If they tell you where they found a house, where you found a house and you try to get them to see it, and they can't find it. Well, at least Google Maps is good. Yeah. Yes, sometimes. I get Iwa beach all the time. I'm looking for a house in Iwa beach at Kapole. I got in Kapole a lot and I'm like, Kapole, where is that at? And they started describing things. I was like, oh, Kapole, you already got it. I had to think about that one. Yeah, exactly. I'll move you all. Yes. Well, these are actually men's at Kapole, Iwa. Iwa, I figured that one out, but Kapole, I had to think about it. Yeah. I'm looking for a house in Kapole. Okay. You're right, Alan. Okay. Yeah. I guess that's to me that would be the biggest issue was just the language. And what about the food? All the different foods and restaurants that they're new to, they're on TLA. Do they have a special place for TLA or can you stay anywhere? There's a few places and you got to actually apply to have your places considered a TLA place. It's normally a couple of apartment buildings downtown. And then a couple of hotels, you have to literally apply because I tried to apply for a couple of single family homes and they're like, no, we don't do single family homes. It has to be apartment building and you have to own at least a couple of units in it so it can't just be one. And of course you have your hotels and stuff there on Schofield Barracks and on bases and stuff like that. But there's a few places. Yeah. When we came, it was in Waipahu and it was a whole apartment building and everybody in the building was on TLA. And this was of course the Dark Ages when we got yesterday's news the next morning. I'll tell you how long ago that was. But that's like I said during Vietnam. And every day you had to say where you looked for a house, where you had to every day account for what you were doing in terms of looking for a place to stay. And because it was during the war and active duty, I was pretty much on my own and, yes, Ewa Beach. Ewa Beach little more places. Yeah, because that was close to where we were in Waipahu. So those are the kinds of things that I remember about those early days. That home search. That home search, yes. I know I initially came over without my family and of course, so he gave me 60 days. Me and the front of mind that I stayed with, I actually met at the house and we're like, man, we got 60 days. You know, we're going down to the beach every day. We don't even look for no house. We were about that later. Little did we know 59 days came for like we don't have a place to stay. We need to find somewhere. So that's my first Hawaii experience as looking for housing. So now you help them with, do they contact you before they arrive? You know, the fun thing, a lot of parents contact me. They worry about the young son or daughter, hey, you know, I saw your website, you know, my son is flying to Hawaii next month. You know, can you help him find a place? I've gotten, I make it 10 or 15 calls a month just from parents. Do you do rentals as well as selling? Yes, we do. We do property management. I do have a property management division that works out of Cal Poly also that does property management. So that if, like you said, the parent calls, finds your webpage and they call from the mainland and my young ones are moving to Hawaii. So you can have something ready by the time they get there. Yes. You meet them at the airport and say, hey... Exactly, because I know the air and I know parents don't want to put their kids in, you know, that location. This is paradise, but paradise has some areas that, you know, not so paradise. Okay, all right. Okay, we'll deal with that. So you meet them at the airport, do you? Or do they have the families that, they used to have a family that was dedicated to meeting you at the airport and kind of... Like USO? Yeah, a lot of times... Well, that was, like I said, this was the Air Force and... But they still do that. They still do that. When I first flew over, they called a sponsor, I guess it was the same thing. And the sponsor would pick you up from the airport, help you with your bags and stuff and then kind of get you settled in to find a place. Yeah. Do they still do that? Yes, they still do it. What? And that's on the individual unit to do it. Oh, okay. So now what branch of service were you in? I was in the army for 20 years. Oh my... The army. The army, yeah. What did you do? I started off as a few large women and then I became an L&O officer for Auscray my last couple years. What's that? It's like the... I linked the US military with the Auscray army. Oh. So I traveled back and forth from Auscray my last year but... So those are kind of my ties to some of my friends that I have in Auscray. Oh, that's wonderful. Do they... Do you still maintain those relationships? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I have some Auscray friends down there now that own a gym. And Capole and Kailua call any town fitness. Capole. Capole. And Kailua that own a gym call any town fitness. I mean, so... I go to still the Auscray at some time and getting invited to their house for dinner and Christmas and stuff like that. I'm very good friends with their mom and dad also. Well, that's wonderful. So that you still... And that was by... Wait a minute. You said you linked the American army with the Auscray army. Yes. How does that... How do you do that? How do you make that connection? What's the link? So in other words, without you know, talking to detail because of course there's some... Of course. Some level of security to it. Larry the middle man between two different countries military on training and educational stuff. Oh. So when we're writing plans and stuff, you know, what is Auscray and army doing? What do they think about this? I'm the guy that answers all those questions for the American army. Oh. Okay. So you're not bang bang and shoot them up? No, but I was at first as a young pop, but I moved away from there as I moved up in the race. No, that's dangerous. You don't want somebody shooting at you. No, no, no. There's a better thing to do. No, you don't get to be this age when people are shooting at you. I don't want to gamble. Were you ever in the war zone? Yes. Deployed three times. Oh my. Deployed to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. It's amazing how your mind and your mentality changes. Your alert has become very, very alert. I was very fortunate that I didn't have any issues with PTSD or anything like that. You know, so you had to find a place where you could go and think normal in a sense. I mean, think about it. If you've got to constantly be on the alert for possibly, I mean anybody that goes to combat zone and don't think of death is something wrong with them before they went over. Yeah, no death is real. We walk out here, outside of the screen, we don't think about death in that sense, but there, I mean, every time you get in the vehicle or just walking from your sleeping quarters to the tiny facility, I mean, it crosses your mind. But like anything that's beautiful in humans, we're just, we're a doubt. It's amazing that you did twice in Iraq and once in... And once in Afghanistan. Is it very different from Iraq to Afghanistan? Yes and no, only because I was in a different capacity. So when I was a captain, I commanded I was more out on the screen going through the neighborhoods, down doors versus when I made major that I was more in a protected environment. You know, so only because of the job.  Yeah, you can say that. And the poor private is paid less and that's the one up front. When and how that works.  And chess, if you captured the king, you win. Now it's the other way around. Well, it was out front, but you know... Sure they are. We have run out of time. You will promise to come back and visit with us again. It's been a real pleasure getting to know you. We look forward to seeing you again. Aloha.


What is it that the youth needs to concentrate on, but they have not yet? In India, the mango farmers have some wisdom in them like this. I have been a mango farmer in the past. Just after twelve, fourteen months after planting, if it's a well-grafted plant, within fourteen months flowers will come when the season comes. First thing we do is we'll pluck off the flowers. If you leave it, a few mangoes will come, but we will take it off.  We will wait for the plant to grow because we know if the fruit comes out of that plant, that plant will never grow into a full-fledged tree. It will not bear as much fruit as it could if it bears too early. So this is something youth must remember, don't try to live too early. This is the time where you build yourself. In body, in mind, in competence, in capability, you build yourself. Time to live will come. If you live too early, then you will see you will not live a full-fledged life. So right now we have imported this from western societies. By the time you're fourteen you must have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. By the time you're eighteen you have had three heartbreaks.  These things are taking so much time and energy. Build yourself up well if you want to live well. So there is a certain time to grow and there's a certain time to live. If you live too early you will not grow and if you don't grow, the scale and scope of your life will be very limited. That should not happen to you.


okay this is the entrance to La Fortaleza now I'm gonna enter the place a lot of parties here and this was all full before the illuminated Aztec symbol I guess that's the flame the famous blue demon Fortaleza and departing the Fortaleza and here we go and that's it it's pizza mania and gelato mania one of my favorite places to get pizza I'm at our Jeff Zanbello I am departing on Midland Avenue headed back to Lodi there is the new illuminated village at the Fortaleza Mexican restaurant on Midland Avenue in Garfield, New Jersey beautiful illuminated traditional village


All right, good afternoon everybody. Welcome to the USC showcase. I'm just gonna share my screen to get my slides up now. Okay, welcome everybody. Well, my name is Belinda Berea. I am the student partnerships officer at the University of the Sunshine Coast. This afternoon in our showcase, myself and my co-presenters are gonna be speaking to you about our sustainable approach to student governance at USC. So I've got two students who I'm co-presenting with this afternoon. So I'll invite them to introduce themselves as well. So you wanna say hello, Melissa. Hello, my name is Melissa. I am a law student at USC and I am an elected student member to USC council and co-chair of our Student Senate. Thanks, Melissa, and we've got Alex. Hi, everybody, I'm Alex. I'm a masters of business administration student at USC and I'm also a representative for the Postgrad Student Association. Thanks, Alex. So before we get started, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians on the land on which we live, work and study and pay my respects to local indigenous elders past, present, emerging and recognize the strength, resilience and capacity of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Okay, so in this afternoon session, we're going to be speaking to you about sustainable approach to the design of the student governance framework here at USC. We're also going to speak to you about some changes we made along the way and the flexibility in the students and partners approach we needed to take in that implementation stage. We're going to cover also barriers to engagement, overcoming challenges and areas of improvement that we're still working on. And we'd love to have time at the end. We've got 25 minutes, but we'd love to have time to get everyone's input in the room through reflection and sharing some comments and suggestions as well. So I'll share with you how we can do that via Padlet at the end, but please feel free to put any comments or questions in chat throughout and then we'll just address them in our reflection component at the end. So this gives you a bit of a timeline that displays where we're at and where we've come from in the development of the student governance framework at USC. So the main thing I wanted to highlight here is the time it's taken to get to the stage that we're at. So the project really started at the end of 2017. In a consultation process, the framework was designed by students for students and we consulted with over 85 students who led that process. So in 2019, the framework was endorsed by council and the last 18 months, we've really been in the recruitment stage and the implementation stage of our student representative framework and fine-tuning and adjusting things along the way that Melissa will speak to you more about later. So this gives you a bit of a summary of what it is I'm talking about when I say governance framework. So we have 18 student-led representative groups that make up our framework at USC and the designers really mirrored, designed to mirror the USC staff-led governance framework as well. So there's 18 groups in this framework of which 14 are active at the moment. So it's a bottom-up three-tiered approach. In tier one, you'll see representatives from our schools. We've also in tier two, then got representatives from each of our campus, our postgraduate students, as well as Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and international students as well. And they all are elected up to the Student Senate. So the Student Senate then reports through to our USC council, of which Melissa is one of those members. And our council is the highest governing body of the university. So it's really got endorsement from the most senior executives of the university. So in our design process, sustainability was really front of mind, which is what I wanted to highlight in our presentation this afternoon. So ensuring we had that transfer of knowledge between staff and representatives was really important and closing the feedback loop. So some of the key things that were featured in the design was there was a budget approval that was endorsed that supported the framework that included admin support. So that admin support is provided by students at work. So most of the students were previous representatives or volunteers that transitioned into a paid role. We also have co-chairs of the group. So we never have one co-chair, there's always two. And those terms are always staggered. So that's to ensure the transfer of that really important knowledge. We have rather than two chairs leaving and handing over to new people at one time. In terms of how students can contact their representatives, we have a contacted student rep form on a website in one central place that the admin team manages. And that's so we can always keep a track of concerns and make sure those feedback loops are closed. And then the final thing I wanted to highlight in terms of sustainability was the importance of the endorsement by council of the framework and the key role of the executive champions in that process. So having support from the most senior members of the university has really impacted the success of the framework. So when I hand you over to Melissa, she's going to chat about the flexibility in implementation. Thank you, Belinda. Oh, not showcased first, improvements, sorry. Can you hear me, Belinda? Yeah. Sorry, is it improvements first, not showcased? Yeah, I can go to that one. Sorry, okay. That's okay. This is just showcases what we have done so far and from 2020 to current, our student government framework has made a significant impact on ensuring that student voices is heard at USC and we've fostered a productive partnership between our executives, staff and students. And there's just a couple of things that I'd really like to highlight which really showcase the partnership that we've been able to develop, particularly with executives. At the beginning of 2021, we had a student senate planning day in which we invited all of our executive staff to come and participate and speak to members of the student senate and all but to attended that day. And it was more like a conversational rather than them speaking to us. They were really interested in how we're progressing, what we're planning on what we're doing. Then our improvements with sustainability in mind, another important factor in our implementation stage was the flexible students as partners approach. And as groups started to get up and running, listening to students on what was working and what wasn't, improvements were made along the way and have been implemented and all of the improvements that we've made have been student led. One of the highlights throughout the implementation stage was the introduction of a student senate report being accepted to our council meetings. And we've really seen the momentum of that report being received by council and improving our relationship with executives and our council members and their buy-in and interest in the student voice being represented through the student senate has been built through that. Throughout consultation with members of student senate, it was decided that we began the student senate with the rotating co-chairs for each meeting. And we felt that we needed to have a fixed co-chair to maintain sustainability and that kind of someone leading and being that conduit between the student senate and our executives. So it was through consultation with the student senate that it was decided and agreed that the logical people to co-chair it were the council members as they already have that relationship direct with the council. So we've implemented that and made the necessary changes in policy for that. And then finally, some of our key outcomes over the implementation of our student senate. Yeah, so you can, there's a three there that we've highlighted but I would like to particularly speak to the trying time of COVID which we really saw the relationship that has been built with our executives and staff in listening to the student voice. COVID was a period where the diversity of our student senate in representing all student voices was really heard in our collaboration with executives in developing an equitable COVID grading system that rather than just having one grading system we negotiated to have an opt in or opt out which provided equitable for all of our students during that time. And we also through the student senate having our international students we were able to bring the plight of our student international students to the executives and we had a bursaries that were implemented particularly for the trying times we had food delivered and food hampers in that time. Also additionally, one of the things that we really felt during COVID with our executives rather than having a formal communication of an email coming from executives we really urged them to be more personal and we saw the executives doing video addresses to our students during COVID which really kind of made our students feel that their voices were heard. And that was all that I had, thank you. Thanks for the introduction to today's discussion. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what's been working well at USC some areas for improvement and then we're gonna end off with a little group discussion. So some areas that have been working well for USC partnerships, skills development opportunities, fostering community and belonging and good governance and you can see as well we've got some testimony from students here. I'll speak a little about my own experience here so I'm fairly new to the university I'm about halfway through my program and like I mentioned I'm a representative for the Postgrad Student Association. So I got involved with that because I wanted to get a little bit more involved with the university and it seemed like a good place to start but what I wasn't aware of was how much I was going to learn about student governance and how much it makes up of the university and how students can get involved, how staff are involved and the opportunity for collaboration between the two groups. I've also used it as a means to expand my own network and like I said, I think it's just a great platform for being able to speak with lecturers, with staff about opportunities or concerns that we as students recognize and the PSA as well as all the other groups we saw in one of Belinda's original slides there for our framework, they all provide that great opportunity for students to engage with the university with staff, with lecturers and most importantly, I think with each other as well. Can you take me to the next slide? Thank you. So we do have some areas for improvement however, everywhere can be successful but you'll never be 100% successful. So some areas we've identified between ourselves, between students, between staff, streamlined communication between admin support and representatives, ensuring commitment as a representative is sustainable and that we avoid burnout. Additional support and training needed for students to build capacity and confidence and a lack of engagement from peers and this new dual mode delivery with less on-campus opportunity. I'm going to speak to that last one for a moment. I came into the program in October and that was my first time really engaging with fully online learning. Obviously we had to do what we had to do during times of COVID. I think the university has done a great job offering this dual mode of study now, especially from a post-grad representation. I know a lot of people who have other responsibilities, family work, they can't make it to a class in the middle of the day and we now have that option for a night Zoom class. I think that's fantastic. Obviously though, there are some concerns and it's something that we have to keep an eye on and moving forward because I feel that it's probably here to stay. And I think of a lot of other people are thinking about that too. And we have some comments from students on the side there. I'll leave that up for a moment. But yes, the engagement for peers and this new dual mode, how do we engage with students at on-campus events or do we also have to have an online component as well? Thanks, Belinda. So some areas that we've addressed or some areas we've improved to address those concerns for communication, Microsoft Teams, that's been a pretty big trial that's still ongoing. I as part of the Postgrad Student Association have been using Teams. It was my first time using it. I think it's a fantastic choice for the university. I think that when it gets rolled out for other students to use, they're going to find a lot of value in using that. And I think that especially ties back to the dual learning mode. You're going to have students who may be in the same class, but maybe taking an in-class and an online version. So to have this software where we can all share a document, more streamlined than say Google Docs, we have something we can sign into with our university account, having that so that you can engage with your online classmates or in-class classmates. I think that's doing a great step for improving communication for USC. For training and support, we're collating resources improvements to the induction process. So this is about helping to build a capacity to prepare students and representative for their roles, especially in these groups that are new. There was, we've seen examples of other groups that have fallen to the wayside due to burnout, for example, so now there's some more structure and some more support for these groups to succeed. And finally, authentic peer connection online, we're connecting and networking with the on-campus or without, sorry, the on-campus casual conversation. So this is about providing a chance for representatives to connect with their peers as we notice some students aren't spending as much time on campus because of COVID restrictions. So that does it for the areas of improvement, what's been working well, what we've improved on. So now I wanna invite everybody to share in a padlet exercise. Belinda will put the link in the chat. So there's a couple of areas, a couple of questions, you can leave a comment on, you can like other people's comments, we'll go through it at the end. There's, we wanna hear about some of your success stories, some of your improvements that you've made to concerns that you've faced in the last year or the last few years. And we wanna look at areas of improvement that you've gone through, so your communication, your training and support. But most importantly, in my opinion, and I'm sure my teammates share this as well, and I think a lot of other people would be interested in hearing about how have you dealt with engaging online and on campus due to these COVID restrictions, where do you see it going in the next couple of years? And how has it affected you? So you can find the link in the chat box now, and we'll spend a few minutes on that. Thanks, Alex. Sorry, it took me a while to find it, but I just put it in there. So grab it up and have a read through. So you can do that by just pressing add comment at the bottom of each box. If you haven't used padlet before, and you can probably just refresh your browser along the way to see other people's comments coming through. And then as we do that, we're happy to take any questions as well, if anyone had any questions about the content we walked through today. I have more of a comment. When you say areas for improvement around engagement on campus and online, how are we engaging with students post COVID? We're still in COVID. So I think it's post-emergency online teaching. Just being aware that, yeah, Melbourne's has gone into another lockdown. That's very true. Yeah. In the new COVID world. In the new COVID, in the new world, yes. But yeah, thanks, great presentation. And there's a question about the slides. Do you guys know if they'll be available on the SVA website for other people to have a look at? I call if Piper's here. We're happy to share them. Yes, yep. Happy to share. So Piper's here, yes. I think what we were more not post COVID, we were kind of that engagement with the on-campus. We've noticed a change even with the ability to come on campus, that students are not socializing as much or talking, you know, waiting outside tutorials or after as much as they were prior to, you know, before all these restrictions. So you're right, it's not post COVID yet. There is a question there from Adrian in the chat. Oh, sorry, Aidan, my apologies. You've developed a really phenomenal structure and framework for opening governance up to student voices. What was the pathway to getting initial buy-in from University Council who initiated those conversations? It was Student Council representatives, I believe that's right, Linda. I think, sorry, yeah. Yes, yeah, and having that good, utilizing those positions and those opportunities that we have as students and, you know, utilizing those opportunities and really engaging in the space, the opportunities that were given to then develop further. Yeah, and I believe we've had our two Council student representatives for quite a few years, but what we were finding was the voices we were hearing were from a really small group of Uber students who were amazing, but we wanted to develop a framework that really reflected a wider voice to make sure that every group across the university was heard. Yeah, and having the opportunity to present a Student Senate report to Council and then having it received and really respected and valued because they know that the information we're giving because we've got the framework is representative of students. Absolutely. Well, I think we are almost out of time, but I also want to highlight, we're going to leave this padlet open. So if you'd like to keep a, keep the link if you want to keep making comments or chatting, we'd love to hear your feedback on areas that we're all trying to improve on. We answered all of the questions in the chat or did anyone else add anything? Thank you, everybody. I think we need to wrap it up ready for the next President's decision. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Yes, thank you. Thank you.