AF3IRM Hawai’i breaks open the conversation about gender and fights for transnational feminist transformation in the following context: We are located at the headquarters of United States Pacific Command, the largest political theater of the U.S. military. We are also the NSA regional headquarters for intelligence intercepts from Asia and, famously, Edward Snowden’s last place of employment. We are the staging grounds of the biennial RIMPAC, the world’s largest maritime military exercise. Nearly 25% of land on our island is exclusively occupied by the U.S. military.

We are also the site of a historical and ongoing wrong against Native Hawaiians, whose independent nation state was unlawfully annexed by the United States the same year as the Philippines. Once the most literate nation in the world, Hawai’i was transformed into a plantation system modeled after the North American slave trade where Natives and newcomers were systematically divided and marginalized along ethnocultural lines.

Hawai’i is not the playground of the new gilded age. We are a battleground for indigenous, immigrant, and women’s self-determination. We focus on fighting for improvements to women’s daily lives on all fronts including the legislature, the city council, the courtroom, the boardroom, and the classroom.