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Malu 'Aina is committed to nonviolence as a way of life rather than simply a useful tactic in positive social change. We honor and respect the traditions of nonviolent action carried out by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., women, labor, human rights and peace movements. We have been supportive of many progressive causes: Hale Mohalu Ohana, Protect Kaho'olawe Ohana, Big Island Nuclear-free Zone, Big Island Rainforest Action Group, Pele Defense Fund, Free Association, Ohana Ho'opakele, Hawaiian sovereignty organizations.

Issues we have been involved in:  anti-war, Nuclear-free and Independent Pacific, justice for Hawaiians, saving rainforests, alternative energy, sustainable organic agriculture, opposition to genetically engineered food and wood chip plantations, support for alternatives to prisons and public trail access.  

HOW THESE FIGURES WERE DETERMINED

ar Resisters League creates this leaflet each year after the President releases a proposed budget. The figures here are from a line-by-line analysis of projected figures in the “Analytical Perspectives” book of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2003. The percentages are federal funds, which do not include trust funds such as Social Security that are raised and spent separately from income taxes. What you pay (or don’t pay) by April 15, 2002, goes only to the federal funds portion of the budget. The government practice of combining trust and federal funds (the so-called “Unified Budget”) began in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. The government presentation makes the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller.

     “Current military” spending adds together money allocated for the Dept. of Defense ($362 billion) plus the military portion from other parts of the budget. Spending on nuclear weapons (without their delivery systems) amounts to about 1% of the total budget. “Past military” represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt. Analysts differ on how much of the debt stems from the military; other groups estimate 50% to 60%. We use 80% because we believe if there had been no military spending most (if not all) of the national debt would have been eliminated. The government willingly borrows for war, but finds nothing extra for crises in human needs.

Veteran peace activist Jim Albertini said he is “appealing to Native Hawaiians to join in protest May 9th against the Asian Development Bank (ADB) meeting in Honolulu despite efforts by Hawaii business and political leaders to divide the protest movement.” Albertini said, “I trust the good judgment of the Hawaiian people to see through the divide and conquer tactics of Walter Heen, Seiji Naya, Paula Helfrich, Bob Fishman and others.”

In the 4/27/01 Hawaii Tribune Herald (HTH), former Hawaii democratic party chairman Walter Heen was quoted as saying: “We think we’ve succeeded in keeping the Native Hawaiian groups in a state of quiescence, if you will.” Heen also was quoted as saying, “The important thing ...is that they have stood away from the protest.”

In the same HTH article Seiji Naya, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, told a Hilo business luncheon that “Paula Helfrich, (Hawaii Island Economic Development Board president) asked Walter Heen to convince the Native Hawaiian population that they shouldn’t get involved in protests against the ADB meeting.”

Albertini urged people in Hawaii “to stand united in nonviolent protest of the ADB and what it represents.” He urged people “not to be misled or scared away from protesting the ADB by threats of violence in the streets. The threat of violent protest is an organized distraction by political and business leaders to divert attention away from the actual violence being done to local cultures, environments an economies throughout the world by the global corporate economy.”

Bob Reese, commenting in the Honolulu Weekly (April 25, 2001) on ADB’s concerns over demonstrators, gives more evidence of high level attempts to defuse potential opposition by the Hawaiian community. He points to Hawaii Tourism Authority head Bob Fishman’s attempt to minimize the strength of Hawaiian protest. By Fishman’s estimate, Hawaiian rights groups have never been able to mobilize more than 250 people and are capable of being “manipulated and diverted.”

-pau-        back to top

Ecology: The science of the relationships between organisms and their environments.

I would like to begin by stating a few standpoints of my life in the hope that they will help clarify my viewpoint.

1. I was born and raised a Catholic Christian in the State of Pennsylvania of the U.S.A. --The most violent, destructive nation the world has ever known.

2. For the past 31 years I have lived in Hawaii, an independent nation illegally occupied by the U.S.A. for 108 years.

3. For the past 20 years my base for non-violent activism has been Malu ‘Aina, which means Land of Peace in Hawaiian. Malu ‘Aina is a small-scale spiritually based rural activist community where we do organic farming and political activism around environmental, justice and peace issues. Although our founding core members, including myself, are Catholic/Christians who draw strength from the tradition of the radical Catholic Worker and Gandhian non-violent movements, we are an ecumenical community that respects a very wide range of spiritual paths.

4. I have spent nearly 2 years in jail and prison for nonviolent activism over the last few decades, and for 11 consecutive years I had to obtain a court order to travel from my home island. That order is no longer in effect, hence my presence here with you.

To give you a better sense of the flavor of Christianity from which I come, I would like to briefly describe the aims and means of the Catholic Worker movement. The Catholic Worker has quite a different taste than the imperial flavor of Christianity, which legitimizes war, injustice, and a ravaging of the planet.

The aim of the Catholic Worker (CW) movement is to live in accordance with the justice and love of Jesus. Our spiritual sources are the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures and the inspiration of the saints --men and women whose lives are living witnesses to love, justice, peace and ecology. The aim requires us to live in a radically different way; to build a society where as Catholic Worker founder Peter Maurin said; "it is easier for people to be good," and Dorothy Day who said, "God meant things to be much easier than we have made them."

The CW has a radical critique of society which says that capitalism and the global economy are far from God’s justice.

In economics, capitalism brings about an unjust distribution of wealth, for the profit motive guides decisions.

In labor, human need is no longer the reason for human work;

In politics, military, scientific and corporate interests get the highest priority;

In morals, relations between people are corrupted. Class, race, and sex often determine personal worth and position within society, leading to structures that foster oppression.

Militarism to back up an unjust global order stands as a clear sign of the direction and spirit of our age.

In contrast to what we see stands St. Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of the Common Good, a vision of a society where the good of each member is bound to the good of the whole in the service of God. The concept of the Common Good extends to all of creation.

The CW advocates the following:

--Personalism-- a move away from self-centered individualism toward the good of the other. This is to be done by taking personal responsibility for changing conditions.

--A decentralized society --a move away from bigness toward rural and urban land trusts, worker ownership and management of small factories, food, housing and other cooperatives-- any effort in which money can once more become merely a medium of exchange, and human beings are no longer commodities.

--A "green revolution," so that it is possible to rediscover the proper meaning of our labor and our true bonds with the land; a distributist communitarianism, self-sufficient through farming, crafting and appropriate technology; a radically new society, where people will rely on the fruits of their own toil and labor, associations of mutuality, and a sense of fairness to resolve conflicts.

The CW believes that the means to personal and social transformation should be that of non-violence --sacrificial love.

The CW believes that Christianity at its core is non-violent: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." (Matthew 5:9) The CW believes that only through non-violent action can a personalist revolution come about, one in which one evil will not simply be replaced by another. Jesus, Gandhi and others have taught us to take suffering upon ourselves rather than inflict it upon others.

--The Works of Mercy (as found in Matthew 25:31-46) to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick and imprisoned, etc. are at the heart of the Gospel. So too is care for the earth. In Hawaiian the word for land (`aina) means "that which feeds us." So to feed ourselves and all who are hungry requires us to take proper care of the land. When people go hungry there is injustice and misuse of land. The CW believes in establishing houses of hospitality to shelter the homeless and feed the hungry. These houses are really learning centers to do acts of love, so that the poor can receive what is justly theirs. Anything beyond what we immediately need belongs to those who go without. That is an especially difficult lesson to learn in the west where acquisition of wealth has been turned into a virtue.

--Manual Labor needs to be restored to a place of dignity. It helps to overcome barriers, establish cooperation, and create a sense of sisterhood and brotherhood.

--Voluntary Poverty. By embracing voluntary poverty we cast our lot freely with those whose impoverishment is not a choice. Through voluntary poverty we are asking for the grace to abandon ourselves to the love of God. This is not a path to "success" as the world defines it, but I believe that sacrifice and suffering are part of a true spiritual life of non-violence.

June 2001 marks 20 years for my life and work at Malu Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action. (see www.malu-aina.org) It is a place where we try and integrate our spiritual life in the service of others: to share food and farm plantings freely with the poor; to carry on work for justice, peace and restoring right relationships with our environment; to stand for non-violent alternatives to war and prisons as solutions to problems; to stand in solidarity for an end to the illegal occupation of the nation of Hawaii.

No one receives wages or salaries at Malu Aina We live very simply by western standards: choosing small scale solar electric power, rainwater roof catchment systems, and a composting toilet over the conventional western utilities of convenience, unconscious consumption, and waste of resources. At Malu Aina we try to learn to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. It is a place where workers become scholars and scholars become workers in a grassroots agronomic university. We learn from each other: how to collect, store, and transport water; how to grow our own food organically; take care of our own waste; how to organize and go to jail for justice, and be part of the rich tradition of non-violent action for a better world. We work to provide understanding for misunderstood kids and to offer them positive role models. At Malu ‘Aina we grow about 70 varieties of fruit such as bananas, papayas, avocados, pineapples, oranges, and also a wide variety of vegetables including taro, sweet potatoes, cassava, corn, beans, salad greens, etc.

An example of ecology and constructive action: where I live it is wet-- 200 inches or over 500 centimeters of rain a year. Some consider it a real liability. We see it as an opportunity for creative action. Fish like water. So we have constructed a series of 4 meter diameter tanks/ponds to raise fresh water fish using catchment systems of rainwater. Rainwater is also used for our household purposes. We have designed our aquaculture system to function without any pumps, just by moving water by gravity flow. In our tanks/ponds we raise Chinese catfish and two varieties of tilapia. The fish are fairly hardy and require no added oxygen provided the densities are keep at a healthy level. We use water hyacinths to both help in removing fish waste and for feed. The tilapia eat the hyacinth roots. The hyacinths multiply rapidly and can be used as mulch around vegetables and fruit trees. We feed the fish pest fruit flies by setting up fruit fly attracting devices at the edge of the tanks and ponds. The over flow of the tanks and ponds irrigate and fertilize field crops. Annual tank/pond clean outs supply extra nutrients for food crops. We are also experimenting with using algae as a source of organic fertilizer for growing hydroponics vegetables, since many people near us live on lava land with little or no soil.

I believe our experiments and efforts have a Biblical base. As near as Bible scholars can figure, the oldest act of faith in the Bible is in Deuteronomy 26 where the author reflects on events that have happened in the past and sees God’s hand in those events:

This way of thinking reflects our approach to faith. It is very different from the conventional western form of Christianity, which tends to separate body and soul and concentrate on only one aspect of the totality. The West tends to take that approach to nearly everything, compartmentalizing problems instead of taking a more ecological approach.

Most Pacific and Asian groups have no concept of "accident" --everything has a purpose and it is important to determine causes and meanings of events that happen, rather than dismiss them as accidents.

In June of 1981 two friends and I came with machetes and tents to what is now Malu ‘Aina. In 1981, it was abandoned sugar cane fields on the edge of a native forest. Expressing it in words was not yet fully ripe, but there was something deep moving me closer to the earth. Like the wandering Aramean we cried out to the God of our fathers and he heard our cry.

Gradually, deep rooted values that were never lost but lay dormant emerged: values such as love for the land (Aloha Aina), a deeply felt spiritual significance to the relationship of people to land and to each other, and the need to communicate and to listen and to be united together as a people. Over the years, a number of struggles have made these values more than speculative: issues such as communities evicted by powerful political and economic interests; military bombing, weapon storage and military occupation of sacred lands; destruction of rainforests for energy development projects; anti-war, anti-nuclear, and pro Hawaiian independence are but a few examples. Formal structures and organizations have their place but ordinary people continue to meet, work and talk in the context of their lives --as their ancestors before them have done. It is in the context of planting, nurturing and harvesting our food that land issues, prisons, militarism, and independence are discussed. Alliances are made, people and groups promise to support each other in specific ways on specific issues. This was and continues to be the traditional way, the Hawaiian way, the Pacific way, and although cultures vary, it is generally the way of common people throughout the world. This is not to say that there is no room for large formal organizations, but my contention is that an even more important need is for grassroots informal leaders to talk and listen to one another in the context of their lives.

This is the direction my life has been moving for more than 20 years. It is a direction that is grounded in my spiritual tradition of a preferential option for the poor; seeking to live a life of service for justice, peace and the process of rediscovering basic ecological truths of nature. For many years now, every Tuesday evening at Malu Aina is a time for collective spiritual reflection. Our simple model is this: we read a text from sacred scripture, then we all share and discuss on three different focal points. 1. What jumps out at us from the reading? 2. What experiences in our own lives relate to the reading? 3. What is God calling us to do?

The Biblical creation story tells of darkness, water, light, the sky, the earth, vegetation, living creatures, including people. Humans come late in the story but we have put ourselves first. In the native Hawaiian creation mythology, the people came from the taro (kalo) plant. The stem of the Taro is called the "Ha" or breath. The corm/root is the oha where the ohana or family originates. Basic to native people is the concept that the earth is our mother whom we need to respect. We are born of our mother. The earth grants us life. If we take care of the earth, the earth will take care of us. And of course the reverse is also true. If we poison the earth, we are poisoning ourselves. Nature and the earth will survive, but humans may not if we don’t face the reality of our actions and the consequences that will inevitably result from our abusive behavior.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, in the Hawaiian spiritual tradition, and I’m sure in many other spiritual traditions, there is clearly a spirit of life which comes from the land. The Hawaiian "Ha" breath of life represents this spirit. To be without "Ha" or breath of life is to be dead.

In the West, our arrogance has distanced us from the land and has cut ourselves off from this spirit which comes from the land. We have broken the basic connections that sustain and renew each generation. We have abandoned basic ecological principles and replaced them with the false god of technique. Hence we continue to produce more and more toxins like nuclear waste, believing that technology will find solutions to the problems of technology. Ananda Coomaraswamy has written that "the West is economically determined to keep on going it knows not where, and calls the rudderless voyage ‘Progress.’" The West, especially the U.S., has created an enormous military machine, itself one of the world’s biggest polluters, to lead the voyage toward unparalleled catastrophe.

Allow me to make a brief analogy about the need to keep our hearts close to the land.

People who malama the land (take care of the land) have their hearts close to the land. They spend a great deal of their lives bent over, humbling themselves. In this position the spirit of the land can readily enter their hearts. Contrast this humble image with that of powerful, and often arrogant, Chief Executive Officers of the Fortune 500 corporations in their penthouse offices and board rooms 50-75-100 stories above the earth. High above the earth, their hearts are much less accessible to the spirit of the land. There is a lot of concrete between the earth and most corporate board rooms. In my Biblical upbringing separation from God and one another is sin. We might add that separating ourselves from the land and the spirit which comes from the land is also sin.

We all can recite a litany of environmental horrors: The World Resources Institute’s (WRI) World Resources 2000-2001 "The Fraying Web of Life" report cite a few: half the world’s wetlands lost in one century, half the world’s forests chopped down, 70 percent of the world’s major marine fisheries depleted, the worlds reefs at risk. My island home, Hawaii, is in much the same boat: All but two of the major ecological zones of Earth are represented in Hawaii, from coral reef systems through rain forests to high alpine deserts --in less than 6,500 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) of land. There are more unique species in Hawaii than any place of similar size on Earth. Hawaii is home to over 10,000 life forms found nowhere else on the globe. Today half of Hawaii’s native bird species are extinct and nearly half of the remaining species are endangered. In addition, 42% of Hawaii’s wet native ecosystems are estimated to be lost, 61 % of the mesic (moist) and 90% of dry native ecosystems are estimated to be lost. On top of all this we are facing the entrance to Hawaii of big multinational timber companies that want to plant monocrop eucalyptus plantations. They also have their eyes on Hawaii’s remaining public forest lands.

Basic to my Christian upbringing is the need to repent of wrongdoing, seek forgiveness, and take corrective action. In Hawaii, we call this process of making right Ho’oponopono. I would assume that everyone here has a word or expression that fits the concept. The core of the concept is to heal, to repair the damage, and to renew and strengthen bonds which have been broken. This is the challenge before us --the challenge of personal and social transformation. It begins with the recognition so well stated by Siddhartha in his Earth Spirituality paper that "the pain of another human being is therefore each ones pain and the destruction of the earth is our own destruction."

Jesus put it this way: "whatever you do to the least you do to me." Among the least we should include not only people but the world’s tiniest and most vulnerable island nations and endangered species --flora and fauna. The essence of earth spirituality is that there can be no more separations, no more divisions. We are all part of one totality. All organisms and their environments are interrelated. An injury to one is truly an injury to all.

Our global crisis of sustainability requires a new level of personal and global action. Global market missionaries are on a collision course with the earth. Their corporation articles of faith include privatization of public services, downsizing, structural adjustments, debt servicing, embracing the cash export economy, attracting foreign investments, genetically engineered and patented life, and integration into the global economy.

The negative effects of the global economy are everywhere. The effects are especially visible on labor, human rights, and environmental standards. Those who have eyes to see can see. The negative effects of the global economy extend beyond national and international controls. Global corporations travel the earth like rogue elephants trampling people and anything in their path.

SOLUTIONS:

We need more experiments in truth occurring simultaneously on several levels: personal, community, national and international experiments and all involving the dynamic of non-violent direct action.

1. On a personal level we need a new realization that whatever harm we do to the least among us we do to ourselves.

2. On a personal and community level we need to assist others with basic human needs for our own and their own dignity.

3. We need to create a wide variety of small-scale community models that can serve as a place of shade and shelter for people in need and a base of resistance to the global economy. We need to provide both shelter and a base of resistance while at the same time experimenting to create a new society within the shell of the old.

4. We need to create constructive programs in each locale geared to specific local conditions. Constructive programs that will reduce divisions, build unity, self-reliance, vision and hope.

5. We need to strengthen alliances between natural allies as a way of building a movement.

6. We need to organize decentralized non-violent resistance campaigns around nerve centers of the global economy and our planet’s life support systems --issues as basic as air, water, and food.

Following the money of the global economy is a good trail on which to start. Ask the question: who is financing and profiting off of this or that scheme. Get the names of the banks, corporations, and their corporate officers.

Personally, I take great hope from the wisdom and traditions of native peoples. It’s mission in reverse. I am also impressed by the vigor and enthusiasm of the new generation of young activists rising up to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other such tools of global capital. Recently in Honolulu we had a very energizing protest of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). New alliances were made between native peoples, labor, students, farmers, fishers, religious groups, environmentalists and community activists throughout the Pacific and Asia region. I look forward to broadening and strengthening those alliances. There is no doubt that in the struggle ahead there will be suffering and afflictions to endure. By enduring them together, we give encouragement to each other to not give up.

On the evening of June 5th we ended our weekly collective spiritual reflection at Malu ‘Aina with the words of St. Paul written 2000 years ago to a struggling community suffering terrible persecution under the Roman Empire. Paul wrote: "We know that affliction makes for endurance, and endurance for tested virtue, and tested virtue for hope that will not disappoint us..." (Romans 5: 3-5) These words are a good place for me to end and a good place for us to begin the struggle ahead. Let’s just say we owe it to our mother. Blessings of aloha to each and every one of you.

Jim Albertini

Malu ‘Aina Center For Non-violent Education & Action

Information on Hawaiian Sovereignty

Hawaiian Alternatives to prisons

Campaign to label Genetically Engineered Food

Dangers of Genetically Engineered Food

Campaign to ban Genetically Engineered Food

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