Here's the fact. Everything works. Social media works. Open houses work. Direct mail works. Zillow works. It all works. Everything works. All I'm saying is is what's the most effective? What's the most productive? How can I get to the people that I really need to get to? People have already decided when they want to buy or sell a property. They don't need us as a real estate agent to tell them or try to get them to buy or sell something. They're already doing it. Whether they've got it in their mind to do it now, next week, next month, next year, whatever it is, for whatever reason, they've already decided when that's going to be. So our job is not to try to get people to buy or sell. Our job is to create a friendship with that person and with as many people as we can in our market so that we are their first choice when they decide it's time for them to buy or sell. That's the name of the game right there. If you really want to build a massive business, NAR did a survey and the survey showed within consumers that the number one reason why people choose a real estate agent, 31% of consumers, the reason was the reputation of the real estate agent and the friendship that they have with that agent. That was a 31% overwhelming, largest reason why people choose a real estate agent. Now whatever vehicle you use to create friendships, whatever vehicle you use to get yourself in front of people, whatever vehicle you use to find people in your market to communicate with and to create these great first impressions, that's up for debate. And then on the back end, once you create that first great impression, what's the vehicle that we're going to use to stay in front of them on a very consistent basis to build your personal brand with them that way they never forget about that great first impression you had with them. That's up for debate. So the vehicles we use to A, create the relationships and meet the people and then B, to never let those people that we meet ever forget who we are. Those two vehicles, what we're going to use is debatable but the philosophy behind creating friends in the market at a very high frequency, staying in front of them, building your personal brand is not up for debate. If you want to build an incredibly, incredibly large, massive business that I want to know something better than what I do because I'm on this search like I really want to find a debate because I really want to hear a different side and you guys are welcome to speak up. I would love to hear the other side of this but no one has spoken up. I've asked people on Zoom calls from the last year. I've asked people on social media. I've asked people at the speeches. No one has spoken up. Okay. When I tell them this simple strategy, no one can tell me something better. As soon as I hear something better and I realize it's better, then I'll start doing that and I'll start preaching that. But until then, this is it. This is the top. There's not a close second place. All right. Instead of, you know, all the things that you guys do to create leads like social media, open houses, direct mail, I'm not saying don't do all these things. I'm just saying instead of all those things, buying leads, Zillow, you know, all the things that you guys do. All those things come right back to the same action, which is a real conversation with someone. Conversation is the common denominator of all closings. Without a real live conversation, no deal is going to happen. All right. So we know that. So if that's the case, and there's a there's a program, there's software out there, there's a way that I can grab the exact property owners I want to do business with contact information for two cents a piece. And I know conversations are the key to all closings, right? And again, I can grab the exact property owners I want to do business with contact information.  And I'll just have the conversations right here and there. If you notice successful people keep things real simple. And people that don't succeed, they're making everything complicated. Right? Everything's complicated.  Now they're trying everything. Listen, here's the fact. Everything works. Social media works, open houses work, direct mail works, Zillow works, it all works. Everything works. All I'm saying is is what's the most effective? What's the most productive? How can I get to the people that I really need to get to? And if conversation is going to be the end result of any of those things anyway, right? So that's my entire strategy, right? It's real simple. I just want to talk to every single property owner I can. I want to let them know I'm here for them. I want to talk to them like I'm like they're a real human, not just a number.  Here's a new development coming in town. Here's what I think about it. When you start giving your opinions on stuff. That's when people really start tuning into you. All the automation stuff, and all the generic content stuff, and all the national stats stuff, and all the recipes that you're sending clients and all that stuff. Here's what I want you to do if you're sending recipes, send out a recipe and say, I made this last week. And it was amazing. And here's a little here's a little secret that they didn't put in the recipe. I think you should try this. Boom.  I don't need my real estate agent to tell me a recipe on how to cook shrimp etouffee. All right, or what color to paint my walls in the fall, because that's what's popping right now. Like, what they want is local real estate stats and your opinions on stuff. And they want to feel like to have an insight connection, you know, great deals in the market. A lot of the people that tell you that will ghost you. So why? Because they're just telling you what they need to tell you to get you off the phone, A, and B, maybe they are kind of think teeter about selling, but they're not they're on a scale of one to 10, they're probably like a one in terms of motivation actually sell. And what we're doing is put we're putting people in category of they're either 100% motivated or they're not at all. And so they tell you that if they tell you that they might be a little bit, then you're thinking for sure this is a deal when really chances are it's probably not. But the advice for me to you is is once they do tell you what they want to do selling six months or whatever our next move is cool, tell me tell me what's going on in six months. You know, let me give me the backstory. I love to hear what's going on so I can, you know, kind of put together a game plan and really be in position to help you right you got to think of yourself as like a politician who's just canvassing the market, banging the phones, letting everybody know who you are what you do and you're here to help think of it as like you're a volunteer worker doing community outreach to provide your services, right to the community. Okay, and you want to go as hard as you can. Right because there's a people out there that need our help. There's people that need our help. Closings are happening every day with real estate agents.  And we're just sitting around, you know, certainly not doing what we need to do to reach as many people as we need to reach to see what we can do to help them, you know. Hey, this is Ricky Crew that whatever real estate company right here and whatever market how you doing today cool me to him and join the days in a gorgeous look, I don't want to take it too much of your time today but I saw your house was on the market a few years ago, whatever happened with that. Bam. They tell you the whole story. You know, I just want to deal with property owners for the most part as a new agent. Am I going to take on internet leads? Yep. Am I going to do for self owners? Yep. Am I going to, you know, do open houses? Yep. Direct mail? Yep.   No matter what vehicle you're using, it's all going to come back to conversation. So whatever you're doing, you know, you've got here's the four pillars here. All right. The hierarchy of activities for real estate agents. Here it is. The four most important activities is showing property, going to listing appointments, negotiating and writing offers, writing showing property, negotiating deals, showing, negotiating, listing appointments, writing offers. Okay. Those four at the top. Right below that number two, those are all number one, nothing trumps those.  Nothing's more important. That's why we do everything to show property, to negotiate, to write offers and go to listing appointments. Okay. Those are all number one. Number two is phone calls. And then number three is everything else. So you got into the business, right, that's predicated on talking to people you don't know to help them buy and sell real estate. That you like this is real estate. It's a business predicated on you talking to people you don't know to help them buy and sell real estate. That's the whole premise of real estate, being a real estate agent. Right. And so you're telling me that you spend all this time and money and energy to take a test, to get into an industry that's predicated on you talking to people you don't know to help them buy and sell real estate.  So you basically spend all this time and money and energy to get into an industry that you're scared to actually do. It doesn't make any sense. I'm sorry. I can't make sense out of this.


Hello everyone, welcome to Facebook Live. As you all know, roommate selection begins tomorrow. My name is Sophie and we're going to go over some questions that a lot of you guys have had. We're here today with two housing officials, Alicia and Tia. And I'm going to let them introduce themselves, but we're also here to answer any of your guys' questions. Thanks so much for hopping on to join us. We know that finding a roommate is really important. As Sophie said, my name is Alicia Gilbride. I'm an Associate Director for Administrative Services. And so I oversee our contracting and room assignment process, and part of that is roommate selection. Hi, I'm Tia King. Awesome. And right now we have five people live with us. So to start off, can you guys just tell us a little bit about the roommate selection process and what we should expect? Sure. So the very first thing that I would recommend is that you watch the roommate selection video that we posted last week. That can be found in a couple of places. You can find it on our website. It's the phase three video, and then you can also find it in the housing portal at the end of phase two. So before you log on, watch that video just so you know what to expect. When you're ready, and you're ready to go in and start looking at roommate options, you can log into the portal. There are a few different ways that you can search, but you log into the portal where you've done everything else, completing a contract, filling out phase two, and you'll just go to the same spot. The last thing that we want you to know is that this really isn't time sensitive. You can do it tomorrow. You can do it next week. Maybe you plan to live with somebody that hasn't completed their housing contract yet, and so it really isn't time sensitive. As long as it's done before your roommate selection time, you'll be just fine. Great. And how do I search for my friend or roommate? So there are three different ways that you can select. You can go in by detail. You can go in by profile, by matching page, and you'll see the three different ways. We have about 19 people joining us right now, and so if anybody wants to tell us where they're from, we're always excited to hear that as well. That's good information. Yeah, and what if I don't want to have a roommate? Do I have to find a roommate? So you don't have to find a roommate. In fact, if where you live is more important to you than who you live with, it's possible that you'll have more options if you're by yourself going through room selection. But what happens if I don't take a roommate? So what would end up happening is that you would go in and choose a room later in the spring, like normal, rather than having two or three or four people that you would assign with you. You would just go in, select your room, and then what will most likely happen is that somebody else will come along and choose the other space in that room, or another roommate group would come in and take the spaces in that room with us. So you're likely going to end up with a roommate. It just will not be somebody that you've selected. Okay, great. And we're actually joined by Julia from Texas and Allison from Illinois. Hello guys. Hi. And so here's another question. I'm planning on being in a living learning community. Is there anything I should know? In the living learning community, the room selection process is exactly the same as it is. The only thing is you will only see if you do one of the searches, people who are in your LLC. Great. And how many roommates can be in my group? You can have up to four people in a roommate group. So yourself and up to three other people. You don't have to have four. You can only have, I mean, if there's only one other person that you really want to work with, you, you are a roommate and then a couple of other people. Or you can have four people. And we have Raisha from Florida with us and Trina from Arkansas. We actually have a question from Julia. She said freshmen are allowed to live in a dopey, correct? That's correct. Yes. Great. And one small report about us being sounded muffled, so we're just going to speak up a little bit. We'll speak a little louder. And what is a group leader? Do they pick the room too? They do not necessarily pick the room. They are just the first person who goes out and searches and you and your group. Let's say you and three other friends know that you want to live together. Any of you can be the first person to send out a friend request. That is the group leader. The person within that group who has the earliest contact date will be the one who actually selects the group. Gotcha. And what are some common reasons that I might not be able to find the roommate that I'm requesting? So when students call us in there, they're having trouble finding the person that they're looking for. We typically ask a series of questions that we start trying to find information on our own. The very first thing that we're going to do is make sure that that other person has a housing contract. If they don't have a housing contract, then they're not going to show up as an option for roommate. The second thing that we're going to do is we're going to look to see if either one of the two students are in a living learning community. If one of them is and the other one isn't, they're not going to be able to find each other. And then one of the other things that's actually more common than you would think is that at the end of phase two, there's a roommate agreement search. And so there's a little box. And if that box is left unchecked, that student will not show up in the roommate search process. So basically they opt out. Great. What happens if my roommate decides to go to school somewhere else? If your bonded roommate decides to go to school somewhere else, there's a couple of things that you can do. So if you're the group leader and it's just you and your friends, you can click on with this group. Or the person who's not going to be in the group any longer and goes to school at the university can click leave this group and then you can search for that. And we have 27 people live with us right now. And just remember guys, you can submit any questions you have along the way. But what happens, or I'm sorry, how do I remove myself from a group if I decide I want to live with someone else?  What that is going to do is it's going to dissolve that whole group. So I would give your friends a courtesy and let them know that you've done that so they can go back to school or left at one stage together. If you are not a group leader, you can just hit, like, give that a little button that says leave group and then you'll be on your own. Great. And we're also joined by Blair from Dallas. Hi, Blair. Yeah, Christine's question. I'm trying to, the way we have it structured, I can't quite see all the words, but basically asking. So the roommate selection process is only really for people that know someone going through, not for students that are kind of going, I guess, solo. Is that true? That's not true. Tia, jump in. Sorry, I didn't mean to kick over. So there are three different ways that you can search for a potential roommate. If you know somebody, if you go to high school with somebody or you have a friend that's also coming here and you know a very specific person that you want to live with, you can search by details. And so you'll put in their student ID number or the very first part of their UR email address and that person should pop up. You can also search by those profile questions. And so back in November, most likely you filled out that personal profile and just kind of noted your preferences. How clean you like your room, you can search for a potential roommate based on what is most important to you. And then if you just want to skip all of that, there is an option to search by suggested roommates. And so those suggested roommates are, they're ordered by percentage. And so how high did you, or how compatible are you basically with a potential person? Cool. And Arianna asks, can freshmen live in Yocum? Yes, they can. And Julia asks, what is the order for roommate selection like income returning or LLCs? There isn't really an order to roommate selection. So when the gates open tomorrow at 10 o'clock, everybody can go in and start looking at potential roommate options. When we get into room selection, priority does shift a little bit. And so current students who are planning to stay on campus again next year will have priority. And then students in the Honors College will follow that group and the members of the living community and then all incoming students. Room selection for returning students will start mid-March, March 17th. And then for first year students, honor students will go through the week of April 7th through the 10th. This calendar is located on our website. Then you can find those rounds of room selection on our website. Awesome. Thank you for that question. And Hilary asks, how can you pick a roommate before knowing which dorm you'll get into? Because you can go in and if you are in an LLC, that's the only one that's going to limit you. So what you can do is you can go to the search and you can check with someone who would say matches you. Our system has matched and you can talk to that person through email. You are given their email address and you can contact that person and get to know that person if they may or may not have a particular place that they want to live. It's just you're getting to know them. Awesome. Thank you. And Suzanne asks, what is the deadline for prospective roommates to make arrangements to room together? At what point does a student get assigned a roommate if they haven't coordinated with someone they know? So again, we'll open this up tomorrow at 10 o'clock and it will remain open for most of the room selection process. So well into the screen. We typically don't turn it off until about May. And so as long as you choose your roommate before your room selection time, when you go into select a room, the two or three or four of you will be attached together. And once one is assigned, whoever assigns rooms will be able to assign all roommates together. Thank you. It's not very confusing and a lot of difficult as it sounds, I promise.  Should he pick a compatible person or just bypass all the options as far as roommate selection? If where he lives is what is most important to him, he is better off not to select a room. He can let's say he wants the maple and there's not a whole lot of space left, but there is one space left in like three rooms. He can just pick himself in that one space whereas if he's bonded to a roommate, it's not going to let him go into that one. That being said, there's no way for you to see what type of profile and things. If a student is tall, it's what's most important he has to do with a thing that just stays unbothered. It's also really important to note that a student can go through their roommate matching process and select a room. And then if in this case your son finds a compatible roommate, they get to room selection, they can assign themselves to wherever they want to live. And then he gets the best to get the best of the world to get where he wants to live and who he wants to live with. But like he has said, if location becomes a priority, he can go into room selection. They can decide, you know what, there's not a room for both of us, so let's just split up now. Hopefully he's contracted early enough that that won't be a problem and he will be able to get one of his top choices of all. And not really have to make that decision between who he wants to live with and who he wants to live with. Awesome. And Gabby asks, where will single rooms be available? So, again, that's all of these for taking over. Right now in our system, we have a number of single rooms at the Northwest Quad area. Morgan, Gatewood, Clark, Party. We have single rooms for returning students at Walton Hall. This year we're able to offer some single rooms at Humphrey, Yocum, and Pumper. We have system 8 being able to do that again for the 2021 year. And we have just a limited number of single displaces like Holcomb and Futral. But for the most part, all of our locations are on double occupations. Gotcha. And Julia asks, what can we have inside the door room electronic-wise? Because I know at some schools you can't have coffee makers and such. Curious or great, you can have those. You can't have anything with an open plane. You can't have a hot plate, I think. If you'll go to our handbook that's on our website. Housing.urdu.com. And then we have a move-in website that comes out every June 1st. And a lot of that detail is there also. And the website that Christopher was referring to has what to bring and what not to bring. So it's very helpful. Yes. And Ariana asks, is it mandatory for a freshman to have a roommate? We actually answered that earlier. It is not. And Blair asks, we have four boys who would like to be together. What are the odds that that will or won't happen? The answer is it really depends. It depends on how early those students contract and where they want to live. I'll quickly kind of go over the room selection process. So again, on our calendar we have the rounds of room selection outlined. Students are ordered based on when they contract. And so the earlier a student contracts is the earlier they get to go select their room. Now the benefit is that they get to pull in all of their bonded roommates. So if somebody contracted in mid-September when we opened the process, and maybe one of their roommates didn't contract until yesterday, he is going to get to pull in that group of roommates. So in that situation, the student contracts in September, they have a pretty good chance of all four of them getting together. The longer we go through the year and into the spring semester, probably the less likely all four are going to be able to live together. But once we reach that point, we have some flexibility in our system. And so students can start kind of assigning themselves a couple of rooms side by side. They maybe aren't in the same suite together, but they can be next door to each other. Great. Gabby asks, if we have a specific person all ready to room with, what do we need for selection? And then separate questions, student ID number. So they will search by detail. And in that, you can either put in your student ID number or their U of A user name. And you won't need to add U of A or a candidate. You want to be room with so-and-so and know who it is. Awesome. Thank you. And a different Gabby asks, whenever phase three opens up, do all of my roommates have to fill it out or just one person? Everyone will have to take some kind of action. So if I want to live with Tia, I will go in and start a group in order to be my roommate. She's going to get an email and she'll be asked to confirm whether or not she wants to do that. So everybody is going to have to either send something or respond to something. It's really important that you kind of make those plans up front. So if I get really excited and I go in and start a group and then Tia does the same thing, we're not going to be able to find each other because we're both group leaders. So again, somebody's going to go in and start the group, invite other people, and then they can respond and say, yes, I want to be in this group. And remember that the group leader is not necessarily the person that we'll be doing with the selection. That is the person within the group that has done their contract. And Tia could also go in and search, if I've started a group, Tia could go in and search for me and request to join. Awesome. Thank you. And we actually don't have any more questions from students at the moment. We have any more questions on our question sheet? I don't think so. Oh, great. Fantastic. The big thing is, do the video, if you have any questions about the video, I would, for all the parents out there trying to help their students out, I would let the students do this part. The roommates are a pretty important person, so I would let them. Since it's not time-sensitive and they can do it on a Saturday, I would let the students do this part. I'm not saying that as a housing staff member or as a mother. Both. And I will add, as a student who went through roommate selection here, you really do want to find someone that you're compatible with, so sharing up with those similar interests is important. Do you want to show the website? Yeah. Yeah, okay. We'll just show the portal off a little bit first and then we'll sign off. We've got one more. Julia asks, how are the pod bathrooms split up? Like how many per each bathroom? It is up to 12, I believe. In a dohy? Yeah, 12 people. And pod bathrooms are just bathrooms that are sort of located close to those pod-style places in a dohy. They're not in-suite bathrooms. Right, right. I think they're great because someone else brings them, someone else buys them to look at them. And you get to know more people around you. Yes, definitely. So should we pan over here and take a look at the portal here? So again, you're going to log into the portal where you've done everything else. You're going to click on the residential contract, live with parent form. It should automatically take you to wherever you left off. And so you should end up on the roommate selection portion. You'll see this video. You can watch the video again. You can do that again. You can do that tonight. You can do that now. It's on our housing stage, so it should be easy to find. And then again, we've talked about the different ways that you can search for a roommate so you can search by details, which is that university ID or the front part of a university email. You can search by profile. You can search by suggested roommate. So this is just kind of what our system thought would make a compatible roommate. You can see that I'm the group leader. I'm classified as a returning student. You can see that Tia is my roommate and she is a new student. So she has already gone in and accepted my invitation to join my group. We can communicate by sending messages. We know typically what happens is that students will exchange social media information. So they'll start following one another on Instagram or whatever media they use.  Tia could log in and she could leave this group. I'll hit save and continue. Oh, and then I got logged out. But I think those are kind of the nuts and bolts of it. And again, it will be up at 10 o'clock in the morning. It is not. We're going to save it a lot. It's one of the only things we're going to save it about. It is not time-sensitive. So there's no reason to rush to your computer at 10 o'clock tomorrow. There's no reason to jump out of your English class to go select your roommate. This can wait. You just want to make sure that it's done before you go into the selection. Any other questions? I don't think so. Okay, we'll let us know if this was helpful. And if you want to see a similar video for a room selection or any other process moving forward. Great. Well, thank you guys all for being here today. And thank you to our two housing officials for answering everyone's questions. And good luck tomorrow when the room selection process starts.


Good afternoon, viewers, and welcome to the Will of the People on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Martha Randolph, and I am your host. Our topic today will be the recent passage of Senate Bill 3095. It is a historic bill, which is supporting the fight against the abuse of use of toxic chemicals by agribusinesses in Hawaii. My guest today is Gary Hooser, who I love to call a political progressive, who has represented the state of Hawaii—represented Kauai and Nihao in the state Senate, and he was the director for environmental quality control for the state of Hawaii during the Abacame administration. He is currently president of the board of directors for the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action, and he is also executive director for Pono Hawaii Initiative, P.H.I., was recently erected as the vice chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii, and he and Hapa were very instrumental in getting SB 3095 passed and signed into law. So welcome, Gary, and thank you so much for appearing on this show. Thank you, Martha. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Now, I am going to just turn right over to you and say, can you tell us a little bit about what SB 3095 actually is and why its passage has been so important for Hawaii and as something that may help other states in our country? Why is it necessary to support these regulations, which supposedly are passed down by the federal government? Well, thank you for asking. You know, SB 3095 was a first in the nation, first in Hawaii, not first of all, Hawaii has never passed anything meaningful regulating restricted-use pesticides or the agrochemical companies. This started for me and for a lot of other people about five years ago on Kaua'i. We did a bill called Bill 2491, a similar type of measure requiring disclosure and buffer zones, and we fought against the five of the largest chemical companies in the world. Disclosure and buffer zones for what, particularly? We should use pesticides and the growing of genetically modified organisms. We fought against Sanjenta, Dow Chemical, Dupont, BASF, Monsanto was not on Kaua'i at the time. It was a long, hard-fought battle. There were more people that showed up at those meetings in any time in history for Kaua'i and we won. But then they took us to court and they won. And so the court said the state has to be the one to regulate our pesticides. So we then moved that battle to the state legislature. People from all over, from Maui, from Hawai'i County, from here, lots of organizations, the Center for Food Safety, Hawai'i Seed, the Sierra Club, lots of organizations lined up, the Hawai'i teachers, to say that the state of Hawai'i needs to protect the health and environment of its community. First of all, the children, because chlorpyrophose is a chemical that was banned. It's a four-year phasing ban. It's proven to damage the brains of developing children in the fetus. And this evidence, the evidence for that, has been with the federal government for some time, I believe, long before the protests for use on this island existed. Isn't that correct? It's absolutely correct. This chemical was banned for the use inside homes for residential use a number of years ago. It was proven. They knew then that it harms the brains of children. But the chemical industry and big business and big government pushed back against banning it for outdoor use. Hawai'i was the first in the nation. It's a phased-in ban, but it's the first state in the nation to do this. Isn't it interesting enough just a couple of weeks ago, a U.S. federal court ruled that the EPA now must ban it statewide. The Trump administration, zoo director, has been fighting that. Absolutely. Absolutely. They're just directed, and they have 60 days to ban it nationwide. Nationwide. OK. And I think if you can please explain to our viewers what you mean when you say phased in, because if you read the actual law, it does give corporations the option of requesting, from the federal government, permission to continue using this dangerous chemical until 2022. Now are they—if they do, are they still required to limit where they use it in terms of the distance from schools and other such things and not using it as a spray? The bill had about five major components. The four-year ban of chlorpyrifos was one of the most important ones. And that means after four years you can't use it in the state of Hawai'i at all. But initially farmers or people that are using it now can't continue using it. They have to apply for a special permit and that permits public information and they cannot use it within—it's only 100 feet of schools during school hours or yes. And there's also full disclosure of all restricted use pesticide use, not just this one chemical, but all. There is probably 90 different restricted use pesticides used in the state of Hawai'i. For the first time, every user will have to publicly disclose their use, how much they use, what they use, and where they use it. OK. And do you, as an organization or an individual, do you approach these companies or their boards of directors and try to speak to them, person to person, as an individual, basically saying, you know what this does. And you are using it anyway, recognizing that you have concerns and profits and this is what your purpose is. Do you feel OK about this? Do you fear any kind of comeback at you when the general public discovers what you've been doing? Why would you continue to do this? I know this may sound terribly naive, but I feel it necessary to ask the question because presumably the people who run these organizations are people and they have children and they should certainly they don't have their own children living in these areas. So do you guys try that? Do you get the chance? It's interesting that you ask that question. Yes, we try it. Yes, I personally tried it. Most people they think, well, let's just get everybody at the table and we can work this out. And I did try that. Unfortunately, the people that manage these businesses are not the ones making the decisions. The decisions are made in Chicago or in Zurich or in some other place in the world. And when I tried, the first thing I did when I started down this path five years ago, I met with the heads of the local heads of these companies and asked them for the basic information. Just tell me what you're doing so I can make my decisions. And they refused to do that.  So it was a very frustrating experience trying to work with them. And then you realize at some point I realize that these are people, but the corporations aren't people. The corporations are driven by profits and profits alone. And they believe that is most important. But they'll lie. They'll say things like we need this to feed the world. They will say that we have to grow all these crops and use all these chemicals and do all this GMO to feed the world. And then you say, what are you growing? And the truth is they're growing corn for ethanol or for cattle feed or for high fructose corn syrup. And you don't feed the world with sugar and meat and ethanol. Very little of what they do. They're designing crops that withstand pesticides. And then they're selling these people more pesticides. So it's a profit motive. And you're dealing with corporations who are thugs and criminals on an international scale. They are doing major harm to the environment and the health of people in countries all over the world. And they justify it on the basis of their profits and their right to pursue what I have to refer to as a capitalist agenda. I actually went to Basel, Switzerland, which is the corporate headquarters of Singenta, which is now Kim China. They're based in Basel, Switzerland. And I spoke to the board of directors and 900 members of the board. I was invited to speak from an activist group who got me on the agenda. And I spoke to the members and I asked them, I said, don't do in my community what you're not allowed by law to do in your own town. Exactly. You know, they're not allowed to use atrazine orchlorperifos in Switzerland. They can't even grow GMO crops in Switzerland. But the companies in my town and your town in our community are doing this very same thing. Exactly. I think this is ironic, because as you probably remember, those of us of a certain age do, when DDT was banned in the United States, the companies that made it and used it went to third-world countries. India appeased to mind immediately and freely and happily used these substances, which were banned in America. And they were allowed to get away with it. And the people living in those countries had no recourse to legal action. And in many cases, when they tried to sue, even if they won their case, it did not apply to the corporation, which was based in the United States. So in a way, this is karma. This, this turnabout, is fair play. The problem is it's our people being affected, and which shows you why you have to be a conscious voter. And they treat the state of Hawaii the same way they treated those other countries in the past. They come in and they employ people. And then they enroll those people to be on their team because they want to keep their jobs. And then they spread money around the community. They fund football teams and baseball teams and the Chamber of Commerce and all these organizations. They put a lot of money in the community. So it keeps the community quiet. People don't want to complain. They don't want to rock the boat because of the money that these companies are bringing in. But we're winning. You know, Senate Bill 3095, the first in the nation, other states are going to follow our lead. There was a major court case last week that Monsanto was fined $289 million for glyphosate and causing this man's cancer. And there's 8,000 people lined up behind him. They're going to appeal it. It's going to take years. Of course. But that judge raked Monsanto over the coals for withholding information, for providing false information. They do what they call research shopping. They'll do research and they won't tell them what they want to hear. So then they'll keep looking for studies until they find some studies that support what they're doing. And they don't tell the public about those other studies. No, of course not. The other thing is I wanted to start on a topic. You mentioned some of the early efforts you had on the island of Kauai. I remember that incident, by the way. But in the process of getting this bill through the legislature, you must have faced some interesting objections because, unfortunately, many of our representatives have dual agendas. Many of which are related to the funding they get from these organizations. So how long did it actually take, from the time of being told by the courts that you have to present it to the state and go through the state, to actually getting this through the legislature and on the desk of the governor, who I have to give him credit, signed it, and seems to be supporting these entire actions? It's probably four years from the time the courts ruled until we pass this into law. And it's good news and bad news. I'm thrilled. I'm very happy that we passed it. But that's three years of more people being exposed and more health and environmental harms that were caused that didn't need to be caused. And what were the barriers that presented? Were there individuals who actually put a block on it? Or did they keep throwing it back to the courts or asking for more information? What seemed to be the biggest problem? I spent eight years in the Hawaii State Senate representing Kauai and the majority leader for four years. So I understand how things work. And the system set up where certain committee chairs, certain individuals have inordinate power. And what happened is our bill got blocked over and over again in the Senate and then got blocked in the House. It never got anywhere. And the name of the show is Will of the People. Is that what you call it? OK, that's why we passed this into law. It passed unanimous at the end of the day. Unanimous in the House and the Senate because people showed up and knocked on doors. People called. People sent emails. We overwhelmed that building and those legislators with testimony, science-based testimony, real reality based from children, from teachers. And it was just this relentless.  When they fill out that testimony, I'd get calls from people saying, you want me to do this again? You know, they've been doing it for three or four years. And I'd say, yes, please. And they did it again. And we won. And I played a role in Hoppe did. But it really was thousands of people. I had legislators tell me, stop already.  They have too many emails. And the Hawaii State Teachers Association, the nurses came in to support us. We had the pediatricians, American Academy of Pediatrics stepping up to the plate. But there was roadblock after roadblock. After we won, the industry put up two of their lobbyists and an employee to run for state senate in the same house this past election. They both lost in the primary. But that was their reaction. An employee of DEL Chemical on Kauai ran against a state house member who was supporting our bill. And another person ran for the senate, former lobbyist, former senator. So this is something very important to pay attention to, that these corporations do not give up when a law is passed against them. They will put through their candidate. And unfortunately, this sounds very similar to some of the stuff we've been seeing in the federal government, which is someone with a personal interest or a corporate interest basically takes their money and tries to put someone in a position to battle against and prevent any further laws being passed. So we are going to be moving to a little break in a short time. And then after that, Gary, I hope we can come back and talk a little more about HAPPA and your other organizations, what they do, how you put them together, and how people can participate more aggressively. By the way, thank you for your recommendations for the primary. I really enjoyed that. Thank you. And so this is Martha Randolph. The show is The Will of the People. And we have been talking about The Will of the People with SB 3095 to limit and control the spread of pesticide use by GMOs and agribusiness in Hawaii. Thank you. Aloha. I am Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Cold Green for Think Tech Hawaii. I appear every other Monday at 3. And I have really, really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency. Hope to see you there. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to The Will of the People. Today, my guest is Gary Hauser. And we're talking about Senate Bill 3095, which limits the use and control and regulates pesticide usage in the state of Hawaii by agribusiness and GMOs. But Gary has a wide-ranging access. And he has wonderful organizations which we'd like to talk more about. So, Gary, can you tell me about HAPPA, which is the Hawaiian Alliance for Progressive Action? How did it get formed? What are your agendas? And I believe you have a training program for first-time politicians or candidates. I'd like you to tell us all about it. Great. I'd be happy to. HAPPAHI.org, if someone wants to find out more about us. The Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action was formed about three years ago. And it came from conversations we have with people. You sit around and you talk about how we're going to make the world a better place. And I realized, and the people I was talking with realized there really isn't any overarching or broad-based progressive groups. There are mostly been silos. There'll be gay rights groups. There'll be environmental groups. There'll be labor groups. But there aren't any that really cover the spectrum of progressive values, Port of View. So we thought that we should start this. And it's a statewide organization. We have a broad base of board members on every island, people in the environmental community, in the native Hawaiian community, in the environmental community. And we raise money and have programs that we do. And one of the main programs we do is a program called the Kuliana Academy. Kuliana Academy identifies trains and new emerging leaders, political leaders. And the reason this came about is it's an interesting story because it ties to the GMO pesticide action. On Maui, they put a ballot initiative to ban Monsanto, basically. It was a moratorium on Monsanto's GMO crops. But they put it on the ballot. And over half the people, over half the voters on Maui said, yes, we want to do this. And then they launched in court also, Monsanto sued them. But it got me thinking, half the voters on Maui, half of those people want to support something that's pretty radical, that's pretty progressive, regulating Monsanto. How come they're not electing more progressive candidates? And we came to the conclusion was we didn't have good candidates. We had good people, but not good candidates. We had people with sometimes a single issue. They have purple mohawks. They don't know how to run a campaign. So we started this campaign leadership training program. We've done three of them so far. This last election, out of that training program, two people were elected to the state house. Two new house members, solid progressives, came out of this program. That's fantastic. Another two or three came very close. Many are still in the running now. And they're all, I hate generalities, but they're all looking at 2020 also. The people they lost are saying, we're in this for the long term. And we feel really good about that. HAPA is a 501c3. We don't actually support the candidates. We train them. We're an education. So we teach them how to run a campaign, how to raise money, how to public speaking, how to knock on doors and talk about issues.  They choose to run or not. That's what HAPA does. We also do other community work, but that's our main program right now. And is that a program which is supported financially or do they have to pay a fee to be a part of it? And are there any connections to that fee payment? They're, each, it's a competitive process. So we take applications from around the state. People apply. They tell us why they should be accepted into the program. Because we limit it to 15 people. We usually have about 30 or 40 people that might apply. And if they're accepted, part of their agreement is to attend these classes. And they're five or six weekend retreats over three months. We actually fly everybody in. And we all stay at the hotel. And it's really. You fly them, you pay for that? Yes, we pay for that. We pay for the trainers. And we ask them to commit to raising $1,000, not just take out of their pocket, not to spend, not to take, but to use their fundraising skills because we teach them how to raise money. So teach them how to go ask 10 people for $100 or 20 people for $50 to help them pay for this program. The actual cost is closer to $6,000 per student. And that's raised out in the broader community. So that's one of the main programs is a Cullian Academy. We've done three cohorts. We have about 60 graduates. This last election cycle, about 17 of them ran for public office. Yeah, and I saw a large list of people. And they're good, solid people. They're not only just progressive, but they're bold. They've got their people of character. They're articulate. They're thoughtful. They're really solid group. And Hawaii will be blessed by any of them getting elected, in my opinion. And two of them were successful. OK, now I have a quandary here, which is part of me. I would like to discuss with you the significance of the recent primaries and the lack of participation by voters, which has been chronic here in Hawaii. And I'd like to talk as well about the reality of trying to run for office in this state when you are new, if you don't have massive funding so you can put out massive commercials and such things. But at the same time, I'd like to know about your other organization. So if you can briefly tell us about that, and then hopefully we have time to talk about the actual election process. Because for years now, it has been clear that whether it's local office or national office, it is difficult to run and be successful without a whole bunch of money behind you, which is one of the things that we are discovering. Our democracy, or so-called democracy, is being purchased right out of pocket by people with big, good bucks. And our focus is on local elections, council, and state legislative offices. The bar is a little bit lower in terms of money. If people are interested in our next Kuliana Academy program, they can go to our website. And put their name on a list too. And we'll talk more about the realities of running and winning. But first, I'll talk about the Pono Hawaii Initiative. So the Pono Hawaii Initiative, I'm the executive director. I run the day-to-day business of that. That is a political organization in the sense that it's actively lobbies for bills and it actively supports candidates. It's totally separate from HAPA. There's no redundancy in the board or the staff or the budgets. That kind of thing's totally separate. And we've been trying to help candidates actually run. And by endorsing them, providing funds for mailers, that kind of thing, to support the candidate. My philosophy on elections is that it ultimately belongs to the candidate. The candidate's responsible. Nobody can be blamed other than the candidate. And if a candidate is willing to knock on doors, and this is one of the lessons, recurring themes for the Kuliana Academy. We have governors, former governors, we have all these people come in and talk, say house members to the class. And the question is, what does it take to win? And universally, it's about knocking on doors. It's about hard work. And it's not so much about money. You have to have some money on the local level. But it's really about working. And if you have less money, you have to work harder. You have to have roots in the community. You can't just parachute into a community and live there for a year and expect people to embrace you. So the ideal candidate is somebody with roots. Ideally, they'd been to school there, but at least they've been involved in various organizations. They have some track record of leadership. And they're willing to knock on those doors and raise the money. The two that were elected to the State House from our Academy, it was the first time for both of them. First time for both of them. That's fantastic. Now, so just let me to repeat. Basically, the Pono Action, the Pono Hawaii Initiative, I'm sorry, all these letters. That is a lobbying group. That is a group that puts forward political actions. And it is separate. It is not a nonprofit organization. It is separate from HAPA, which is more of an educational situation. But HAPA was very much more involved in the passage of SB 3095, which any action by the other group would have been separate. Absolutely. The 501c3s are allowed a certain percentage of their budget to be used for lobbying. HAPA is a 501c3. Donations to HAPA are tax-deductible. For sure, you cannot actively support candidates. But you can do a little bit of lobbying. Pono Hawaii Initiative can do 51% lobbying and 49% candidates. So it's more purely political. And the contributions are not tax-deductible. OK, so just to review, is there more that is going to be done similar to 3095 that will continue to advance and make more aggressive the limitations on what these huge agribusinesses are doing? Since, as you say, they are corporation mentality. Now, the fact that the Supreme Court has indicated that a corporation is an individual, which is very disturbing to me, means that they have rights, which before that decision was made, they did not have. So how are you going to battle, or how many other battles are out there maybe right now that the public should know about? When I say we, it's a collective we. It's HAPA, Pono Hawaii Initiative to a certain extent, and other organizations. So it's not just me. I want to be clear on that. We're looking at an agenda, 2019 agenda, that's going to encompass raising a minimum wage to at least $15 an hour, publicly funded elections, the legalization of cannabis, recreational use by responsible adults, and bail reform. Those are my personal priorities. And I believe they're going to emerge among a broader group as being privateers. We're going to fight for those really hard. And with the pesticides and the GMOs, we're going to go to the Department of Education. We're going to the Department of Education and say, you know, there's a plenty of evidence. You don't need more science on glyphosate and these chemicals to say they shouldn't be used on school grounds. So they could do that without a law. And I don't think they should be used on school grounds whether the kids are in the school or not. Because clearly, if they're not in school, they're not going to catch it the next day when it's on the ground. So I think that little thing that you added is something that has to be looked at. Because it doesn't have to be a law. We don't need five years to pass a law. The Department of Education and the Board of Education Department could say, you know, there's plenty of evidence. We're going to at least temporarily for a year or two till we figure this out, stop using herbicides and insecticides, pesticides on school grounds. So that's what we're hopeful that the administration of the schools will recognize the value of this and voluntarily do it. And we're confident that parents and teachers are going to line up behind us and demand this as well. That's fantastic. So we are getting ready to wind up. So we will have to get to other subjects on another day. This is Martha Randolph. The program has been the will of the people. And we have talked with Gary Hauser about the passage of SB 3095, which is the first in this state that is putting limitations on the use of pesticides by GMOs and agribusiness. And I have so many more questions. So Gary, I hope you will join me again, and we will pick this up. I hope you have the two. Run with it, especially before the elections if I can manage it. All right, ladies and gentlemen, please come and join me again in two weeks when we will be speaking with a surprise guest. I will let you know as soon as I've got it confirmed. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.