Combustion (non-agreement)

“For a short while I had to carry a gun for my own protection. They had to teach me to load it and everything because I’d never used a gun before. One day I left my purse at Zippy’s, and the gun was inside, wrapped in a diaper. When I came back to get my purse, the police were waiting for me…”

Aunty Pua spoke of non-agreement.

She told us that we can agree, and we can disagree, but there is another potent place in the middle that often gets overlooked. Non-agreement is not giving up. It is not pretending that differences do not matter. It is a place where people who do not agree can still come close enough to negotiate, to listen, to move, to make something possible.

But if you are fighting and cannot see the other person’s side at all, if there is no path to the middle, then it becomes winner takes all. And that is difficult, because people will fight tooth and nail for what they believe in, which is right and important. But if there is no middle, then you fight to the death. Folks in power often have many resources to fund their fight, while communities end up juicing themselves just to survive.

If we are talking about combustion, non-agreement is the space between the logs where air can move. It is the opening that keeps things from getting stuck or stagnant. It is not empty space. It is ea.

Aunty often spoke of the fight for West Beach, and how they had to negotiate with the Japanese landowner. She talked about how they were seen by some as traitors on the West Side for coming to the bargaining table on behalf of their community. They received death threats. She even carried a gun for a short time for protection.

There’s that funny story she would sometimes tell about the Zippy’s special—the diaper-wrapped gun in her purse. That was the end of her gun carrying.

West Beach was one of her seminal lessons on non-agreement.

She told me why she didn’t want to go to the mauna during the fight to protect Mauna Kea. As I understood it, she wasn’t sure whether there was room for non-agreement, for listening to the other side. At the same time, she deeply respected the kūpuna of Hawai‘i Island and how everything was organized and held. She didn’t need to go. I thought she might appreciate it there, for so many reasons, but it wasn’t my job to convince her.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about coalition building and networks. When I used to be part of a national network, I noticed a lot of language around us versus them, a polarization that can sometimes come from being a minority, from fighting for recognition, for resources, for a place at the table. That looks different in Hawai‘i, and as a professional I was fascinated to learn about national dynamics, pan-Asian American identity, AANHPI identity, and coalition building across places and histories. I saw the strength but also the contrast. And I also saw how the issues play out in Hawai‘i, though the shades are slightly different.

I also went to high school and college in Washington State, so I have some understanding of what it feels like to feel different, and to be “othered” by peers and by society. I am grateful for the grounding I gained through my early childhood and adolescence, to be from a place and to know it so intimately by living there—a privilege. That is ultimately why I came home. I wanted the kind of belonging that comes from being home.

I think it is important for us to create spaces of belonging for ourselves and each other. As the pressures of the economy, politics, and stress grow, it is a huge commitment to continually make room for people who are different from us. Even in Hawai‘i, I think we struggle with this sometimes, though it is often hard to admit or see.

But that is what makes us strong.

Sometimes belonging means making room for conflict, friction, combustion, non-agreement. Not as failure, but as practice. As a breathing space. As the place where the flame can find its way.

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

Judy Brown, from The Sea Accepts All Rivers

Photo taken 3/22/18 at Kīlauea