Inside the Amala Place Credibility Gap

In the worst days of the Vietnam War, a phrase arose: “The Credibility Gap.” It referred to the serious disconnect between what civilians, soldiers and journalists were seeing on the ground in Vietnam, and what the government was saying (or not saying) about the war. I thought about the Credibility Gap this week as I watched the county-initiated cleansing of Amala Place, near Kanaha Beach Park.

In a series of news releases, Mayor Michael Victorino announced, promoted, then claimed unabashed victory for actions he ordered in response to the undeniably dreadful conditions along Amala Place. There was copious trash, abandoned cars and damage to fences surrounding the Kanaha Pond Wildlife Sanctuary, which according to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, had allowed predators and invasive plants to rampage in an area designed to protect various species of endangered Hawaiian birds. (I wonder how wildlife copes with the dead-aired stench that permeates the area from the nearby Wailuku-Kahului Wastewater Treatment Plant, but I digress..).

And then there was the necessary eradication of the homeless/houseless population, which had been forced out of Kanaha Beach Park and onto Amala Place when the park was closed early in the pandemic. Homeless advocates such as Share Your Mana founder Lisa Darcy (full disclosure: I donate to her organization) fought a continuous uphill battle to get toilets, showers and water for the approximately 85 individuals shoved to the weedy street after the park closure, an effort masterfully chronicled by writer Axel Beers in April, 2020, shortly after the pandemic began to rage.

I do not mention this vulnerable population—who have been described by community advocates as being 90% native Hawaiian and 60% female—as a careless afterthought to the aforementioned litany of Amala Place problems. However, they sure seemed to rank low on the county’s priority list, considering how they were treated this past week. That’s when the Credibility Gap really reared its dis-informative head.

Maui County’s  Sept. 1^st news release announced the planned cleanup and efforts to “assist 53 individuals living in the homeless encampment in the area.” The county, the release promised, would start the clean-up “once the unsheltered residents have settled into new accommodations.” [emphasis mine].

Apparently, Michael Victorino forgot his promise, because on Tuesday, Sept. 21, bulldozers, trucks, cleanup crews and cops descended on Amala Place with many residents still in place and unhoused. How many? Who knows? The county’s first new release said 53 people. Its next one, on Sept. 17^th, changed the number to 64, with 25 of them now in shelters and “one in permanent housing.” The Sept. 21 release quoted an initial encampment figure of 80, with only “eight to 10 individuals” remaining that morning. The next day the story changed again. The Sept. 22 release now stated that 11 people had “moved out of the area” (whatever that means), eight had been moved to shelters, and five remained. Sorry, but those numbers don’t add up, nor do the confusing statements instill any confidence that the county had a good handle on the situation.

Weren’t our most vulnerable community members supposed to have been housed before the clean-up started? And by “housed,” I mean that they and their belongings would be far away and secure when the dump trucks and clean-up crews arrived? When Darcy realized what was coming, she called for community help.

“’Sweeps,’ ‘Clean-ups’ and ‘Compassionate Relocations’ have continued throughout the COVID pandemic as Maui County Mayor Michael Victorino has disregarded the CDC guidelines which foster health and safety to unhoused local residents,” Darcy wrote in an emergency communique. “With median home prices over $1 million dollars, rentals in short supply, and shelters continually filled, unknown amounts of local residents reside in makeshift shelters and vehicles without access to clean water or hygiene facilities. Pu`uhonua O Kanahā, which has remained intact and healthy for the past year-and-a-half, is now being ‘cleaned-up’ and all residents forced to leave the encampment.” Darcy added, “It has not been made clear there are even enough shelter beds available or ADA-compliant facilities. While there has been an effort to reach out by Family Life Center, it is unclear what options have been made available which also support pets or the ability to keep any personal items or vehicles.”

Darcy scrambled to legally file delays to the county action until the residents in the Amala Place encampments could be fully rehoused. On September 15, she delivered to Victorino’s office 30 requests for a “contested hearing,” contending that the mayor’s actions violated CDC guidelines and was “an illegal attempt to remove residents without alternative housing being available in Maui County.”

There was no response or delay initiated, but the mayor did find time to issue another news release two days later, proclaiming, “We’ve made all the necessary provisions to offer them a safe place with proper sanitation facilities.”

Navigating Chaos

If that had been accurate, then the county-launched clean-up on September 21 wouldn’t have been such a shitshow. Encampment residents had many of their belongings ripped away and put in trucks bound for the county dump, while advocates tried unsuccessfully to find them housing—because there are, in fact, not enough beds on island right now. Friends and families tried to move cars (some of them de facto homes) out of the way before they were towed, but some wouldn’t start. Many female residents kept dogs for protection from the tweakers who plague the community at night, but there was no housing for their pets. Many of their belongings had to be discarded as well, because there wasn’t enough room for those either. Community advocates, including staff from the office of County Councilmember Gabe Johnson, who heads the Affordable Housing Committee, tried to make sense of the situation and help the remaining, now-besieged residents to navigate in the chaos, with limited success.

“Because there was no one point of communication from the mayor’s office or any agency, everything was incredibly truncated,” said community activist Autumn Ness.

According to one observer, the mayor showed up on Tuesday with coffee and doughnuts to meet with a group of camp occupants (who should have been rehoused by now, just to harp on this again). Victorino said in his statement later that day that he explained to encampment residents “the need for the State and County to take action.” The release proudly added, “No occupants were arrested today.”

That was a clever choice of words, but, again, not the whole story. Somebody had been arrested. Community advocate Summer Starr, who had previously served as a designated “legal observer,” was cuffed and dragged away to a police car for reasons that remain a mystery to me, even after reviewing videos posted on social media. Here’s Summer’s account from a Facebook post:

Yes. I was volunteering as an advocate yesterday, Tuesday. I had given my Legal Observer gear to another wonderful LO so that I could serve in other ways. Earlier in the morning, I had ushered a young man to a safer place outside the ‘Amala Place containment area because an officer was harassing and agitating the young resident and I did not want that young man to go to jail. This was very upsetting to the officer, which led to his first assault of me, where he grabbed on to the upper portion of my arm and tried to pull me off the young man I was with. I retrieved my arm from the officer and kept my attention on the young man to get him outside of the area to safety successfully.

 Once I returned from connecting the young man with someone he knew, I returned to the staging area to sit down and rest. The same officer then crossed from the pond side of the road over to where I was sitting, in a plastic child’s chair. He asked, with a group of officers now surrounding us, if I wanted to talk here or (gestured) over there.

 I told him we can talk here. I looked around and saw there were no other chairs available for him to sit in. So, being the gracious Maui girl I am, I got off the chair and sat on the ground on my knees, expecting he would do the same (or squat or get a chair, etc.) so that we could talk our ways to a solution. I was setting a space for quiet conversation and solutions in the midst of the chaos.

 While I was on my knees, silently looking into the agitating officer’s eyes, someone else I didn’t see grabbed my body and put handcuffs on me from behind. I was completely unaware of what was happening. Because they were so disorganized, they had pinched a nerve in my shoulder that kept collapsing my legs when one of the officers would yank my arm, which is why I kept collapsing. It wasn’t the pain, it was physiology. I tried to tell them but they insisted I was resisting arrest. Such was not the case.

 I am grateful that if any arrests had to happen due to the fever pitch of energy, confusion, and frustration within certain officers at MPD — that it was someone such as me with the great privilege to have bail money donated, a safe home, and secure network of support to return to. Thank you everyone for all the work you do. I will continue to be of assistance in ways that are needed and safe for all involved.

 Mahalo piha to the families at ‘Amala that demonstrate such organization, kindness, and resilience in the face of unfair judgment and misunderstanding.

 I will not be discussing more details nor defending myself. It is not necessary nor healthy for me to engage in that way. Just know that I was on my knees looking up at the officer in his eyes, smiling under my mask, at the time they decided to put my arms in handcuffs. May all beings be free from suffering.

Starr was driven away and later released. It’s unclear if she was ever charged with anything.

Stop Removing People

Meanwhile, the Hawaii Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union weighed in Tuesday with a five-page letter to Victorino from its legal director, Jongwook “Wookie” Kim. It cited numerous “constitutional concerns” about the county’s actions and called on him to “immediately stop” removing people from Amala Place.” Kim said in an interview that the organization had received no response to its letter and “was currently evaluating our next steps.”

Tuesday night, as if to underscore a larger issue at hand—one that won’t be solved by clearing out encampment residents—someone dumped a refrigerator beside the newly cleaned street.

While most media outlets just reprinted the steady stream of news releases issued by the county, Maui News editor Colleen Uechi wrote a story published Wednesday that offered more than just a one-sided account of the “clean-up.” She quoted homeless advocates like Noelani Ahia, who criticized the county for initiating the action “before they had the opportunity to house everybody.” That morning, at 7:45 a.m., Ahia was videoed as she patiently pleaded with police to let her move one last car before they again locked down the area. Ahia was tearful as she walked away. “This is just a shameful day for Maui County,” she said. “This is not how human beings should be treated.”

Of course, none of these issues were reflected in the county’s subsequent annoucement, in which Victorino declared, “Area occupants were able to get a new start in clean, safe accommodations with services to help them move ahead.”

He went on to thank the police, DOCARE officers, and “the many dedicated County and State employees and contractors,” with not an appreciative word given to the homeless advocates, community volunteers and observers who tried to clean up the county’s unnecessary mess. Ignoring inconvenient facts doesn’t work as well as it did in the ‘60s, not with mobile phones and the many, many people willing to use them. They are online; they will be seen. It will further damage this administration’s credibility, which is already wobbly with the crazy quilt of pandemic mandates and rules that seem to change by the week.

So, 58 tons of waste and 54 cars are gone from Amala Place, and the birds will soon be safe. But once again, members of Maui’s homeless population seem to reside at the bottom of the list of what seems to matter to this mayor and his administration, at least when it comes to his promise to look after their needs in a compassionate and humane manner.