Indivisible Honolulu
Indivisible Hawai’i in Honolulu, launched in December 2016 when Lisa Gibson received an e-mail copy of the Indivisible National document: “The Indivisible Guide to Defeating Trump’s Agenda of Racism, Misogeny and Authoritarianism”. She volunteered to be the contact person for building Indivisible Hawaii. As Indivisible National gained momentum names of Hawai’i residents interested in joining the movement were shared. This group began meeting at Coffee Talk on Waialae Avenue in early 2017 with an initial group of 20 attendees. The initial Coffee Talk meetings, other social events and activities served to keep the group going in the early, scary and lonely days when the going was rough.
Beginning in spring 2017 Indivisible began going EVERY week, on Tuesdays, to visit Representative Gabbard and Senators Schatz and Hirono. By March of 2017, our Representatives began expecting us and knew we meant business!
Indivisible Hawai’i launched its first Blue Wave program to register and get out the vote for the 2018 midterm elections. Since then, Indivisible Hawai’i’s Blue Wave effort has sent over 175,000 letters and postcards supported by 720 volunteers to support key elections in 2020, 2022 and again for the upcoming 2024. Blue Wave also sent voter registration letters and postcards to support critical state races as well as critical state elections such as the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin.
Since 2017, members of Indivisible have been visiting the Capitol and talking with legislators about issues of interest, including healthcare, criminal justice reform, transparency and accountability in all branches of local government, voting and elections, gun safety, and environment. We partner with other organizations in each of these areas to amplify our voices and impact. For example, Indivisible Hawaii supported Common Cause Hawai’i’s successful effort to prevent the local legislature from passing a resolution calling for a National Constitutional Convention to amend the US Constitution. We believe that such a Convention in these times would be chaotic and would cause much more harm than good. It is on the table again this year in 2024.
Prior to the 2020 Presidential election when Covid threatened to impact voter turnout, Indivisible Hawai’i partnered with the Secure Election Network on Defending Cities with Virus Free Voting, a data driven project which identified the 7 cities where voter turnout was the highest priority for a 2020 win. We began to look at national data. The data and outreach helped deliver grant funding to Philadelphia to purchase drop boxes which helped deliver Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania.
In 2019 Indivisible’s request that Senator Schatz focus on proposed Trump administration cuts to the Census budget resulted in his taking the Senate lead on protecting the Census and the accuracy of the data it collected as a foundational component to accurate representation for states.
Let’s Talk Politics with Ray Markey launched on May 1, 2020 with the topic “176 Days to Election Day” and continued every other week focusing on a range of key issues for preserving democracy.
In 2021, we launched our first Indivisible website and continued our advocacy work in Honolulu including penning several op-eds.
In 2022, we were working with other groups across all of our islands and focused on the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Since its inception, Indivisible Hawai’i has reached out to Neighbor Island chapters to partner on national, state and local elections and issues. This effort evolved into the April 2023 inaugural Indivisible Hawai’i Statewide Network workshop to strengthen our impact and the issues we focus on statewide and locally. Today we are hundreds of people on all of our islands fighting for our democracy and for a healthy, strong Hawai’i.
| HONOLULU CONTACT INFORMATION | |
|---|---|
| Leads: | Alice |
| Email: | indivisiblehonolulu@gmail.com |
| Social Media: |