The horror unfolding on the Hawaiian island of Maui is incredibly painful to watch as more and more people’s bodies are recovered and a way of life for native Hawaiians and others is reduced to ashes. Reverberations are being keenly felt across all the other islands of Hawai’i. Many visitors from the U.S. and other countries have come to know and appreciate Hawai’i for its beauty and the culture of its native people and they too feel stunned.

This disaster echoes Hurricane Katrina when the levees broke—all levels of government failed miserably to provide needed assistance while Black people in particular were left to die on the rooftops and in the streets of New Orleans, while that city’s unique cultural heritage born of slavery, Jim Crow and the resistance to those, was also being drowned. 

In Maui it is estimated that more than 1,000 people are still unaccounted for, 99 are dead and many, possibly many times that are feared dead—burned alive or swept out to sea as they fled the inferno. This will undoubtedly include vulnerable elderly and children. The recent letter from a reader on the fires in Maui grieving the loss and angry at the system is very much to the point. While there is undoubtedly more to learn, this letter outlines some of the contributing factors. More on these continue to come to light:

• ignoring experts’ warnings of the implications of climate change creating drought-like conditions and recent wildfires in Maui in what was once a lush tropical paradise;
• ceasing of production by large corporate owners of agricultural operations (such as pineapple plantations) creating openings for invasive (non-native) grasses to grow and spread unimpeded, thus creating a tinderbox;
• the lack of resources devoted to infrastructure, such that the water system collapsed during firefighting efforts and the extensive outdoor siren system that didn’t make a peep, lulling people into a false sense of safety until it was too late.

Lahaina is a former royal capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. It burned almost totally to the ground. Local people are anticipating and fending off a further land grab by major luxury developers who are feasting like vultures on tragedy. Desperate people who have nowhere to turn could be coerced into selling land that has remained in families for generations. Some of these are homes that have passed down with no insurance coverage. Hawai’i was already the most expensive place in the U.S. to live. Native Hawaiians have been forced to relocate to what is nicknamed the “ninth island of Hawai’i”—Las Vegas—in search of an affordable place to live! Las Vegas is a fucking gaudy, neon city in a desert. While native Hawaiians live in the desert on the U.S. mainland, luxury developments comb the islands with multimillion-dollar resorts and estates.

The grief and sadness, the angst and anger that people feel as they experience or watch what has happened in Maui needs to be transformed—WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM. We need a revolution, nothing less. Think about what the U.S. constitution, the legal framework for capitalism-imperialism has done to Hawai’i. The islands were seized from the native people. Hawai’i has been used as a major military base area for U.S. imperialism in the Pacific. And with everything it touches this system turned “the natural beauty and wonder of Hawai'i, into capitalist commodities.”¹

Contrast this with the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America and the transformations it would give backing to. This is something beautiful that could come out of the ugly, sordid history of imperialist domination of Hawai’i if we seize this rare time.

From the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America authored by Bob Avakian:

F. Hawai'i, and Other Formerly Occupied Territories.

1. Hawai'i, too, was seized from the indigenous people there by an expanding U.S. imperialism through force as well as deception. In over 100 years of domination, the USA incorporated Hawai'i into its imperialist state while maintaining it as a major military basing area, continually suppressing the native people and degrading aspects of their culture, and the natural beauty and wonder of Hawai'i, into capitalist commodities. As a result, the indigenous people became a minority of the population on the Hawaiian islands while, because of these same factors—and in particular the large presence of the imperialist military in Hawai'i—there has been a close interconnection between the revolutionary struggle in Hawai'i and in the continental U.S. against the same imperialist system. With the victory of the revolution leading to the defeat and dismantling of the imperialist state of the USA, the New Socialist Republic in North America recognizes and supports the right of the indigenous people of Hawai'i to self-rule and to play a decisive role in determining the direction of the society in Hawai'i, while at the same time encouraging and supporting those forces which are striving to take the road of socialism in Hawai'i and to develop the closest possible unity with the New Socialist Republic in North America, including the possibility of being part of this Republic, on the basis of the principles set forth in this Constitution.