Aloha Chair Tokuda, Vice Chair Dela Cruz, and Members of the Committee,

My name is Lisa Grandinetti. I am a third year student at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa
studying Ethnic Studies and Womens Studies. I also work for UNITE HERE! Local 5, and have
been involved with our political organizing group called the AiKea Movement since my senior
year at Mililani High School. I would like to express my serious concern about HB 2501.
One of the first hearings I ever went to was for the proposed development Koa Ridge, which is
adjacent to Mililani. The development included three to five thousand expensive homes, a nonunion hotel, and a mall. I strongly opposed this bill, along with many others, for several
important reasons. First of all, there were no plans for where the children of families that were
supposedly going to live there would go to school, and the surrounding public schools
including my alma matter were already over-crowded. Second, the development would be on
prime agricultural land where food was actually already being grown this kind of land is
needed for Hawaii to achieve food sovereignty. Third, the houses built would be unaffordable to
a large majority of people in Hawaii who desperately need housing, while the service jobs
provided by the development would provide the community with only very low wages. And
finally, there were no plans for meeting the communitys water needs.
Koa Ridge may seem irrelevant to the issue at hand, but I see a direct parallel between it and HB
2501. You see, the Koa Ridge development was proposed by Castle and Cooke. HB 2501 is
being advocated for by, and really actually exists solely for the benefit of Alexander and
Baldwin. These two companies origins in Hawaii go all the way back to the plantation era, in
which a few very powerful missionary-turned-businessmen ruled Hawaiis economy and people
with an oligarchy coined the Big Five. Alexander and Baldwin and Castle and Cooke, part of
the Big Five, controlled Hawaii political economy in order to exploit ordinary working people
for the purpose of maximizing their profits without interference by the government. In fact, they
went as far as controlling the government itself to ensure their interests were the only priority.
Today, it seems as though nothing has changed. Just like Castle and Cooke with Koa Ridge,
Alexander and Baldwin have used individual local workers to create the illusion that the
community is behind HB 2501. In actually, thousands of individuals both in the community
directly affected by the bill and others outside East Maui, in addition to countless organizations
across the islands have publically come out in opposition to the bill, and many of them have
driven and flown far to testify at hearings. HB 2501 and Alexander and Baldwins diverting of
water away from small local kalo farmers is not only a part of decades of Native Hawaiians
fighting for their rights to their own resources on East Maui, but it represents a continuation of
the Big Fives history assault on and exploitation of the Native Hawaiian community and
Hawaiis people all together.
In solidarity with the kalo farmers in East Maui and the Native Hawaiian community in general,
I strongly urge you to hold Alexander and Baldwin accountable, break the pattern of government
support of the corporate elite, and oppose HB 2501.
Mahalo,
Lisa Grandinetti