Kaniela Ing said Lahaina’s pre-colonial history is particularly important for people to know—not just for the sake of Lahaina’s Native residents, but because it reveals the deeply unnatural roots of this so-called “natural” disaster.
It was only because of colonization and climate change that it became a tinderbox.
“Lahaina wasn’t always a dry, fire-prone region. It was very wet and lush, historically. Boats would circle the famous Waiola Church. Lahaina was also the breeding place of aquaculture. It had some of the world’s first and most innovative systems of fish ponds.
”But at the dawn of the 18th century, sugar barons arrived and illicitly diverted the water to irrigate the lands they had stolen. (Note: 18th century European sugar and pineapple barons also brought invasive grasses, Wired reports, which now cover 26 percent of Hawaii and become “explosive” fuel for wildfires.)
“Today, descendants from those same barons amass fast profits from controlling our irrigation, our land use, and political influence. Alexander and Baldwin are two big missionary families of the original oligarchs, and they’re currently the largest landowners on Maui. That’s the name of their corporation and they’re one of the top political donors here today.
“So on one hand, the climate emergency caused this. On the other, it’s also that history of colonial greed that made Lahaina the dry place that it is.“
“I think this is an opportunity to build community in a way that it’s harder to do normally. Like normally, there will be organizations doing political stuff, asking folks “do you support 100% renewable energy?” And the only people you you activate are already activists.
“But we really need to do both. We need to be doing wellness checks for disaster survivors, not just for the first month, but even for years out. We need to be helping them through insurance claims, advocating legislatures and the federal government for more assistance down the line when the cameras are gone and people stop paying attention. That’s when the real work begins.
“If you look at the far right, they’re doing this. Proud Boys are out doing disaster relief. So we need to be the ones doing it. Stop talking, stop navel gazing, and mobilizing people who already care about climate, and start asking people what they need.”-Kaniela Ing
August 18, 2023: You can personalize the template message included in the above link, or simply just add your name & email. Seems like it’s US only; please boost if you can’t sign yourself.
“More than 100 days into our strike, as we continue to fight for the sustainability of our profession, events in Washington, D.C. provide an opportunity for writers to shine a light on one of the root causes of the strike: media consolidation.
For decades, the WGA has advocated for stronger antitrust oversight, bringing attention to the ways that mergers and vertical integration in our industry – from AT&T-Time Warner to Warner Bros.-Discovery to Amazon-MGM to Disney-Fox – have consolidated the power of our employers and harmed writers as well as the diversity of content.
In numerous reports and policy filings – including a new report called The New Gatekeepers: How Disney, Amazon and Netflix Will Take Over Media, released yesterday – the WGA has documented the threat to our industry from past and future consolidation and called for more aggressive antitrust enforcement.
Our current strike highlights the urgency of the issue; studios gained power through anti-competitive consolidation and vertical integration and then used that power to push down wages and impose more precarious working conditions for writers while profiting off of their work, and currently – together – refuse to bargain a fair contract for writers to mitigate those harms.
Last month, the FTC and DOJ jointly released proposed revisions to their Merger Guidelines, a policy document designed to guide law enforcement around consolidation. These new Draft Guidelines are part of an effort by these agencies to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement. Compared with prior versions of Merger Guidelines, they give significantly more weight to the ways that mergers can be harmful and, for the first time, explicitly direct agencies and courts to consider how mergers can hurt workers.
The Draft Guidelines have been released for public comment, and the FTC and DOJ want to hear from people who have been affected by consolidation – people like you.”
The FTC and DOJ are accepting comments on their revisions of the Merger Guidelines until September 18.
