ARAM ARMSTRONG – Wise Guy !!

[Music] aloha out there in television radio and internet land i am jason schwartz your host of the neutral zone maui neutral zone dot com on akaku maui community tv and 88.5 fm the voice of maui youtube and on our webpage maui neutral zone dot com we are in campaign 2022 and i just came out with uh with the notion that these conversations are really like dates very candid dates and so we’re going to be putting that out oh there’s a little heart guy you have one next to me here this side

00:53

Aram armstrong now you see his name and his website and up there because these are just a token into the richness of some of these candidates i’ve spoken to Aram before and i don’t think he hit the go button do i still have the recording i’ll get recording but our conversation was so rich i felt like i was flying off the ground because i could interplay with someone that not only understands me and what i’ve been trying to do for all these years and now with your vote i’ll do it

01:25

at council level but he also someone who is a compatriot in really important basic concept Aram a.r.a.m Aram armstrong welcome to our show aloha milo jason now you and i are sitting you’re in an inside outside space and i i can tell that you’d rather be outside outside with me and walking but i told you that i want to be doing the same my studio here with my sign i can’t bring with me i hope i’m in the box but uh the best part is that we are this is our moment in time to point them to the outside i’m hoping

02:06

that by being the same and giving this even place where we’re all coming from the same thing with me that the the world’s gonna see i am nothing without the people that have ideas but there are a lot of people that have been sitting next to me on screen including this one and you’ll see that and he takes a serious uh approach he decided to run Aram that’s a big deal when i look in the mirror i see an older man but i see you as someone that could be my son but i i imagine you’re in your

02:41

30s or 40s right somewhere in there i just turned 43. there you go do you know that i ran for the mayor of maui in 1994 and then switched to council and i was 43. so i get that age as a good age and that was i cut my teeth on running what made you decide you want to run and then give us an idea who you are what brings you to here well first of all i am i’m running i’m dancing i’m walking i’m also cycling for office uh why is a good question uh you know i found myself almost impulsively watching the hakkaku channel

03:21

54 uh the council meeting mem meetings and just like drawn into like the the minutia of like testimony and the process and uh i guess there’s two big reasons uh one i love maui i grew up here and i see the beauty that we are as a community the beauty that this land is and i see a lot of like weeds to pull uh i see some systemic issues that are at the root cause of the state of the state the world in the state of the island and uh i i love i love challenging challenges just systemic challenges so maui feels

04:01

like a little um just a view into the world and we have a lot of beautiful people here a lot of different forces commercial forces ag forces so it’s just like it’s a beautiful space to be involved in how do you do loamy or acupuncture in the system when i think of hawaii and i see someone like you i first thought is that you weren’t from here but you grew up here and you’ve been here uh man and you’re you’re a smart guy tell us some of your background and what you’ve

04:35

been doing because as we started talking it’s we started talking about issues and we just took off tell me a little bit and let our audience know a little more about you okay uh i’m a maui high graduate class of 97 and uh i was actually not a great student um i was part of the underachieving gifted and talented class um i was on academic decathlon so there was potential there but i was also the class clown as you might be able to tell um and uh i went into art and technology thanks to the

05:09

mhpcc and harold miller dr harold miller the what’s up doc series and uh my grandmother gave us a mac performa when i was a teenager and i learned how to type playing video games online video games called muds and i’m a self-taught graphic technical artist uh with computers and just naturally gravitate towards systems and uh my i guess my graduate degree i went to master bfa and interactive media and did a master’s degree in interaction design which is basically uh physical computing like how your uh

05:48

car dashboard screen works or if you even have a screen well you know as i’m hearing i’m first thinking of here’s a guy from maui he got so technically a bit able and then you came back if you were on maui you say uh now which waiter job or what hotel do i want to work for but you weren’t that you were a guy with techno you were on the mainland you applied these skills in some way before you came back to maui give us more of the richness because to me that’s what’s so exciting you came

06:20

back you’re here you’re that lifeblood that maui said we want our children to be knowledgeable and care and return let me shut up now but i think that’s that’s that’s the big solution so i uh went so i went to minneapolis for college i was freezing i like i had uh swimming shorts and soccer shorts and i slipped on the ice and i thought it was beautiful for like a week or two weeks during the winter then i was like oh my gosh i’m not just but the nice thing was i studied really hard

06:49

i became a really studious dedicated um person in the academic system filled with artists and designers and then i escaped the united states i did a woofing like a volunteer farming thing in italy i met a beautiful korean woman i moved to korea i got tired of teaching english i moved to move back to italy to go to grad school i did this technology design thing and i got hired by a company called ideo which is known for design thinking and human-centered design so that’s the main practice that i bring i’m a

07:24

human-centered systems thinker and i went from ideo being a consultant working for companies like att microsoft paypal like just the big companies also working for the singaporean government and the uh american intelligence communities so i had some really great exposure there with those organizations from singapore i learned some big lessons about governments one is um i learned this recently actually they pay their students to perform so that you get a lot of incentive to be in school but uh what i got from them as

07:57

the main lever of change libra change is they would give scholarships to the best and brightest to go to whatever school stanford oxford and then come back and work in governments this is like virtuous cycle of like you send out your kids they come back they have uh guaranteed housing guaranteed job and it just makes the system get better and better and singapore went from being a fishing village like not a backwater fishing village off the coast of malaysia to being like this the center of commerce of transport of logistics and

08:32

now it’s one of the best places to live and work and even the chinese government looks up to singaporean governments that’s so exciting and you know the singapore model about sending kids away and coming back i didn’t realize until i just said it that that is what to me is the key and how we can get people to to make maui better it’s such a pleasure um when you grew up here you saw a different maui it wasn’t that long ago you were gone for how long have you done you think i was here for 18 years then gone

09:02

for 18 years okay steven you’ve been bet you’ve seen lots of change and i imagine in your area paella makawao haiku lots of change i know you represent all of maui and all maui needs to remember that at the voting you vote for all nine people so if you like Aram armstrong and you live in molokai what’s up eat more vagina if you’ve been to molokai you know uh and lanai is actually my new favorite island sorry maui to retire and to just to hang out because of uh one the people there uh

09:38

two i want i want to get larry ellison to help us uh host the next triathlon and maybe called the resilience games which is the opposite of the hunger games and start uh this mission and movement towards uh taking what we have as uh resources like chiave i learned this on the ferry boat to lanai is my first time there for my birthday that chiave is a hardwood that can be used for furniture you can take you can eat the green pods and you can take the mature pods and ground them into flour which is

10:08

great for diabetics if you want to like make pancakes so there’s a whole economy around uh taking what is now on the land the deer the chiave and then transforming that into products and livelihoods for people you had mentioned something that i appreciated you were talking to pat boards down in the mckenna area yeah i think people need to hear that you see you’re um i like the fact that your dynamic in your ideas and you’re working with all kinds of people some of them well entrenched some of

10:38

them by the nature of your attitude and being out there and comfortable with who you are you’ve been meeting some very exciting people all kinds of people i did have a great experience um with my birthday i guess what is it your debut earth day debut i was a bit late to earth day because i was cycling to earth day from haiku and so by the time i got there all the seats at the candidate’s table were filled and i was given a table kind of off to the side and it turns out that’s where uncle

11:12

george kahomoku jr decided to sit down and so i met him and then he invited me to his farm and i got to meet uh with all the animals on the farm see how he does his like everything he’s doing just his way of being as a farmer as a host uh just constantly taking stuff out of his compost putting it into the nursery and planting it and uh like feeding everything like feeding like pulling weeds feeding the animals uh making stuff a lot of stuff by hand just for delivery and just just really impressed and awed by his presence and

11:44

his his heart and his aloha spirit that’s beautiful yeah and uh you know uh he’s been doing it for so long he is definitely uncle george you know believe it or not i don’t know if he even remembers we did a show together at akaku it must be 30 almost 30 years ago it’s amazing how the years fly by you know but good ideas don’t go away and a young man like yourself who is now in the prime of his life decided to come back to maui well how many techno jobs do you see here uh or do you work from a distance now as

12:22

a consultant more that’s a good question um because uh i i could work here and work with fines anywhere i’ve tried to weave as much of maui and hawaii into my work as possible i spent the last year year and a half working on a food system map in partnership with some academic folks uh hawaii west oahu dr abby miles has been our main convener of the work and uh we’re almost wrapped up with the project happy to share it uh very soon with all the other candidates uh for governor for mayor for whomever uh

13:00

because it’s looking at the entire state and what sort of policy interventions what kind of program funding uh is needed to make hawaii resilient in times of crisis and over the long term now this thing can be a written uh written document it’s a well what we’re doing is a visual map so i’m a visual thinker and uh visual facilitator and this is actually like a big overview of uh the history of the hawaiian food system various interventions how they fit together across the landscape

13:33

is a visual map basically like a website if you to me if i could take an idea and and put it out i need someone like you to visually map an idea and so that’s what you do maybe that’s why we got along so well when we were speaking because you know how to view things and put it out in a way to make it more understandable so like in your role on council where you would be able to explain things and bring them together in a way to take down the walls between things that seem like problems right yeah

14:08

actually right so jason would you mind if i share my screen with you oh i would love it let me make that available to you okay okay let me just find the button there we go i want to stop looking over to the side here multiple participants tell me when you can okay coming in coming in coming up with a new framework so visual frameworks are a big way that i help uh facilitate conversations and i share my screen now okay here we go we’re gonna go to google chrome this is what you’re seeing is my mirror

14:44

board which is basically a big white board uh they’ve got to put post-its into so there’s like text and post-its and shapes and icons and this framework right here i’m calling it the me in the middle framework uh talks about uh how we as a community think holistically uh so there’s the top-down things that are happening in the government mandates policies incentives things to do things not to do then there’s the middle out uh marketplace so what are all the businesses doing what are all the non-profits doing uh

15:23

how are they supporting and working with the top-down policies to serve a marketplace for people and then there’s the stuff that we see on twitter facebook instagram snap whatever all the things tick tock uh the movement the people in the streets and so uh these are two kind of uh convening or two intersecting triangles the top-down force the bottom-up force and then that’s kind of like a swirl of middle outs and uh if we’re not cooperating uh then we’re in like bare minimum survival mode

15:58

if we are somewhat aligned and able to kind of uh work together as the people the government and the business community then we can sustain our way of being and if we’re really good at this then we get to stay on this planet for a long long time uh mutual flourishing and so that’s the kind of um visual framework that i like to like these types of frameworks and who who evaluates value of pieces on the board who makes the value of the pieces on the board so as you when you say surviving versus

16:32

coping versus someone’s looking at the pieces and evaluating they’re financially evaluated socially evaluated how do you know how do you evaluate so i’m going to call in uh one of our interviews from the food system his name is hunter himalan and he shared with us the perspective of having uh metrics that are not just one metric but sort of holistic multi-dimensional metrics and so uh it could be financial like how we’re doing financially could be also how happy are we that’s like the bhutan

17:06

uh what is it uh gross happiness product or you know they measure people based on happiness not based on how much money they make yeah and so i mean i you know so we just in the news today wrote versus wade was cancelled uh you know huge news and uh so i was thinking about where is this coming from and uh another framework i’d like to i come is light and dark or balanced male and female energy can mean heaven earth and the people and so i kind of like this as a as an overview of how we work together

17:52

and if i were to look at the issue right now around roe versus wade i would say it’s like what does holistic health look like in personal sovereignty if we look at those two uh dynamics those two elements uh we would be very we’d be able to answer a lot of big questions just by centering the conversation around holistic health what does that mean uh is it my health is it your health is it our health as a family as a community is it just my mental health or is it also my emotional and physical health

18:22

and so when we start to look at these problems from multiple layers uh we can have a holistic approach together that’s that’s the main that’s my main message is how do things bigger together now as i’m listening to you the thing that immediately grabs me if i was a viewer and i am i’m a candidate but i’m i’m a participant in this process is you’re someone who’s looking at all the pieces and not pre-judging and putting all the pieces in a way that it all complements for the greatest

18:57

survival and recognizing we’re as an entity we’re an island community we’re not a mainland we are a unique breathing uh breathing we’re a thing i i catch that about you do you do you find that young people get you quickly and old people don’t or what do you see when you’re out there i don’t know i get people i like i like that when we get each other uh i i like i like being uh i’ve been an uncle for a long time i like like when i’m with kids it’s just like all play time and like let’s just

19:32

like let’s just have fun um adults we tend to talk more so i think it’s really like being more embodied and like into uh like just like being creative and playful uh when you’re around that energy and also not being a bystander not being an observer not being like oh kids are over there in the playground playing like how do you be a part of the fun uh and also how do you be part of the conversation so well i’m not talking about the kids as much although i respect and appreciate that playful side

20:01

is really important and into the policies that you would be creating um i think we spoke about that there’s a candidate running for another office who has his own he has his own slant on um learning processes but you come from a very holistic uh inclusive model again you you come out of a model that i’ve been trying to live not judgmental not not being perceived i don’t know how i’m perceived but i’ve stayed away from being too polar so that everyone realizes i’m a neutral zone that’s how

20:38

this neutral zone came about i’m anything but neutral i see that about you um i wonder i like i was teaching in 1994 as a substitute teacher and now one of those guys is like coming to me at the airport hello mr schwartz there’s not a 45 50 year old guy coming to me and remembering me or my pono guy that runs all their operations that knows when he knows me by name and this one so i but the people under that the internet age like when that’s suddenly who how to get the message out and what are

21:14

you i consider you a wizard i’m watching you you know how to move things on the net that make me struggle you know what a game online is you know the only thing i know about game is you know when i go out hunting but uh well this is this is where we’re where i’m at in my other venture which is bootstrapping and uh becoming maui mind academy great great great i have an intern on on the big island of all places luke uh which is like i think is a great name luke so that makes me hopefully

21:46

obi-wan not i don’t know maybe you’re yoda i’m not sure um and so uh what i’ve been doing with luke is just creating a space for us to work together and say hey luke here’s the interviews compass which is a way of looking at the world like what’s happening now and why why is it what happens next what can we do in the future and showing luke the templates that i have the ways of thinking that i have and then engaging with him to be a co-creator and that’s terrific it’s really exciting

22:18

so um can you just if you can easily go to your website just so we can when i the thing to me is these interviews are like an open door and now please people go to the website go to my website go to aram’s website you know to find out more about it the stuff that you’re doing is very powerful and very much part of our community and our future there it says right there our future definitely depends yes on the conversation that we have now what’s the page address uh armstrong for maui.net it’s a net

23:02

because i’m trying to you know throw out a big net and cast and catch people an for spelled out armstrong the number four oh okay i decided to go with the number four even though i know in some cultures it’s like uh it has some negative connotation but uh well you you stand in good company only reason i say that is because i did something like that but i have three ways to get to mine and i can’t miss may the schwartz be with you not us because that’s so much fun and dreamhowie.com because dream

23:35

maui has always been my thing dot com it’s been for 30 years but being serious mac for do you know the website sorry to interrupt that sorry i’m just talking away generativity.us is the main website that shows the process that i use so great human-centered systems thinking important this top-down bottom-up approach to becoming a more regenerative society i wrote this up uh immediately shared this with uh mike malina and some of the other council members like come on let’s do this guys

24:09

so uh this is the kind of map that i’m talking about it’s like uh we do collective sense making and we come together in the middle and then like somewhere you could probably see the county building right there and then we have orchestrated action working together and there’s so many problems and solutions like the deer the deer are a big problem solution like we could be eating a lot of venison burgers they could be chaotic grilled venison burgers that would be delicious well you know when i look at things like

24:35

this i think is how different presentation and who’s listening who’s watching who understands there’s so many solutions at hand you’re a great example of it i feel like i’ve been an example like the rodney dangerfield for 30 years on maui to get no respect but we’re coming out now and the fact that there’s you that you hear my and you can put it in here and young people hope young people i want to get us back on screen let’s do that yeah let’s go i’m going to stop

25:05

streaming uh how do i stop screen sharing i don’t know stop sure there we go we’re back we’re back i think of you as young people please excuse me but 71 everyone looks young to me which is good but i want when i’m care i’ve not given up because i’m not giving up but i can’t do this alone never been able to do it the time when things get traction when there’s enough people aligned people aligned in a positive action you are that i i see you on council i say to myself now you’re in a race with

25:43

someone that many people will say well this guy’s been here forever yeah okay so who is that and what is that and how does that compare to now and you’ve been here forever too in those same periods i’ve been hearing back and uh i think it’s important for all of us to go go here and back you can’t really understand how beautiful maui is until you leave maui i went to minneapolis which is cold and flat and i was like where’s the ocean where’s the mountain i’m beyond dying out here send

26:11

me back um but and i went to asia too i went to the big cities i lived in shanghai for years hong kong for years and uh it’s like maui’s such a sanctuary it’s so special when you were watching those meetings what grabbed you where you said hey my knowledge can really help now you talked a couple of people you feel you’re on council you’d have much more traction with implementing your ideas into the immediate system to be able to come out with more exciting product that everyone

26:44

would be comfortable with how’s that i’m a big believer in the the medium is the message and this the process is what actually uh dictates what happens and so uh there are core things like um so here’s my understanding of what the role the council is the role of the council is to inform the mayor pretty much the council can do a lot of things but basically they’re like r d for the county uh that’s how i view them and the council has all these sub councils that are staffed by volunteers

27:15

and so my my gifts could be helped to are supporting uh shifting how those sub councils inform the council and how we become smarter uh and more effective at implementing all the great ideas because there’s a lot of great ideas it’s just the process this is so painful like i don’t want to read through 100 pages of whatever show me the picture what’s the what’s the what’s the leverage point what’s the what’s the blockage how do we get in there and just activate and learn from small prototypes

27:46

that’s why i’m about prototyping small and learning from doing many times in the past you just talked about that being a support for the mayor and the research for the mayor there’s been some distance between a mayor who is headstrong and he’s got the answers and he generally came from council and and the council um your process is basically putting it all out there on the table and working better together to where the direction of the pieces of the government have the help of the council

28:20

and i mean council-like advice from the council rather than the mayor running these departments and the council feeling like they can’t do anything they can’t go to these different departments to make changes or they have needs and housing and they go in that not their place to be able to instruct people so your systems do you think you can um i don’t want to say inside it’s like inside the system be able to make some of those there’s a really good metaphor for this it’s a book called um

28:52

orbiting the giant hairball so imagine the system as the hairball and you have to kind of get like orbit you have to get close to it feel the stickiness the ickiness be inside of it a little bit and then kind of pull out and see so why is it like this and then you can detangle the hairball you can put it in a nice little bath um yeah it’s a process i love that title i mean i think we should all buy that book how many people see a book called what was it undoing the hairball orbiting the giant hairball

29:22

i love that i mean there’s a name for it it’s almost like may the schwartz be with you if you put that as your sight orbiting the giant hairball you’d get some views yeah i mean the other book that i’d recommend that i want to send as a gift to all the council members and the mayors is transformative scenario planning uh is that a concept that is new no it’s a concept that is awakening right transformative scenario yeah i’m sorry i’ll let you explain it it was applied in south africa during

29:58

the apartheid transition so they all collected at some place called mount floor and basically you had the most opposing sides come together in one room and think about what’s what is what is the potential future of south africa do they all like like does you know do they all go to war with each other do they does the business interests take over and they played through all this the different stories and collectively they were like okay well we don’t want to like destroy each other and this maybe it doesn’t feel

30:29

right so they were able to come together towards a common story and it’s been applied to colombian drug hordes and the coleman government having them come together it’s a very robust process that’s been applied to really complex challenges and i think uh if you know storytelling is so important big part of hawaiian culture oral culture that we just need to have a better way of listening to each other uh and integrating what those stories are and telling like creating a bigger myth of the future that we want to be a

30:58

part of my as you’re talking i’m thinking okay that’s like me here at the neutral zone coming up with ideas like we do with a dream maker and we together all have our parts and so i can always hear the same message that people of like mind come together we’re looking to work together to take and create no enemies create an inclusive model at this council so that the votes are 9-0 we don’t have a polarized supreme court type of maybe we’re different issues but it’s the same thing we should come up with

31:38

one truth could that be one truth i don’t know i mean there is there’s value in dissent there’s value in having a chorus and not everyone being coming the same no but here we are in the neutral zone here we are i mean at some point on an island you say okay what’s going to do with our problems we’re going to throw them all in the ocean we’re going to a pile of garbage next to us or are we going to this and really integrate everything isn’t that really our goal right i think we look back in history um each

32:07

island was self-governing each valley probably had its own way of being doing if you look even way way back so i was talking to an uncle uh who’s from taiwan but lives in hawaii works with the dod conservation corps and he was saying that you can actually trace the hala plants the genetics all the way back to taiwan which means that possibly people from hawaii actually brought this plant with them and so were they from taiwan we don’t know but what i learned from him about taiwanese indigenous

32:37

culture is that in each valley it was a different culture they spoke a different language it was it was very very small and in hawaii we had you know there’s different ways of doing things what what that gives us as a maybe a lesson to take forward into the future is we can try things on the west side on the south side what solutions work for you guys that we can learn from lanai has the the cat sanctuary why doesn’t every island have a cat center multiple cat sanctuaries because it brings in

33:06

tourists it manages this feral cat problem because cats they’re cute but they also kill off birds they introduce parasites disease to our water system the ocean so cats are a problem but they’re also a cuddly like place to like just hang out with a bunch of cats it’s pretty cool you know that here on maui we have smaller private versions of that but nothing to the scale of lanai that’s great right well this is the bigger thing so the county and the state are chronically underfunded and understaffed

33:37

wow this is why this is the dlnr has like a fraction of the budget that it should have uh comparing the budget that the state of hawaii has for conservation uh we we’re probably uh like at the level of like arizona or someplace or or like think of a midwestern state that doesn’t have the amount of diversity and different biomes not to project anything before i love the midwest no but you’re saying there’s a lot here to preserve and it takes a lot more money and time than it has resources

34:08

yeah yeah so the budget doesn’t reflect it uh why why why always ask me why why don’t we have a budget that reflects uh the things that bring people here to the islands uh because it is the clean water the mountains the the nature that is the foundation for your postcard vacation and uh if we don’t protect that we’re we’re making slow progress we really we’re making progress but there’s things like you know the limes all the limes the lemons in central valley like that’s not a food that’s not a food

34:40

security food sovereignty play and so conversation about that as well is important well those are great conversations but we’re talking about we see limes and all that stuff growing and we know that’s not going to sustain anything we also talked about the this that that’s stage one you know i i’m slow to cl those guys have so much area to cover i’m just amazed but it’s be uh mahipono i watch and i say between the rows you know we talk about having not only a mono crop and lots of

35:14

good discussions but they’ve taken the heavy lifting and getting the water out and doing the things now that the sugar cane has gone over setting up systems that can stay a while rather than be ground up and all the things it’s a major but they need that i think they know it too i i don’t want to for even mo for a second presume they don’t know that because i would be foolish they got this isn’t their first rodeo besides but we are unique in that we’re an island i would have liked the scene things i

35:46

really think that maybe these are the barriers because we have a windy center of the island if they become the barriers that then between the rows we can do other things maybe they know that maybe they don’t but it sure seems like they should they’re making enough room to be able to do things between their lemon and lime trees i and again we’ll see that’s why someone like you or me being around and opening our mouths without being this you know if we’re sierra club or maui tomorrow uh the world perceives us

36:22

as attacking to try to stop something when in fact we’re not we’re looking to make all of us want to make things better it’s a perception of the good guys and bad guys your model that showed yin yang and a third piece humanity creates that plan that i don’t know if i’m talking too wild to most people but i’m sure you understand me there’s there’s two points of light i would say that we can shine a focus on so there’s the just just around the maui tropical plantation there’s hawaiian terra farm

36:56

in la cage and they’re doing a pilot on regenerative indigenous tarot cultivation like they’re doing agriculture uh with a lot of smallholder farmers and there’s a lot of great models there they’re building soil uh the seeking root farm is like there it’s basically two humans and a small army of animals uh and then like a larger army of uh worms that is a great luck again winston williams great group and bobby what they’re doing is the fact they’re going to keep it going when they

37:31

build a housing meeting next door that’s fantastic yeah uh so that is that is like just like just focus on that and scale that up please that that’s that’s becoming a model uh and then at uh for earth day for um uh there was that my hijab shared their their tree portfolio and i just want to i want to see if that like they have like one site that has got the ulu got the new the new coconut the great food various things that are like we can eat this we should we should do more coconut

38:04

plantings and just diversify that like interes so there’s there’s a lot of stuff that we could do more of more cover cropping i’m not a farmer i’ve applied to be part of the fam program but i’m just like a small time chaos gardener so i try to be a part of the solution and support folks who are actually good at that job well i you know i can tell just speaking with you you’re someone that listens if someone’s coming to you they surely have an open door with Aram armstrong um

38:33

open text what’s if i was going to say okay you’re running in this race what things do you want to talk about that i don’t want to miss that you really want to share with a voter uh that’s that’s a big question i think uh so one of my more controversial stances is uh about being pro-cyclists i’m anti-mosquito and i’m pro-cyclist uh i know uh so up country mountain has a big issue uh the the downhill cyclists uh they’re coming off the mountain who knows when the last time they rode a

39:08

bike was they’re getting lost uh they are stopping uh in makawao town and creating commerce there but there’s always like do not park your bike signs i’m like there’s a problem here how do the all the bike operators like huli up and understand what the challenges are and come to some sort of rules and guidelines with the county and the state because if someone uh gets injured on a state highway and then they want to sue the state or sue the county like who’s liable for people getting injured

39:36

and uh i just wanna be able to ride my bike from maklaw uh to pukalani uh to drop my kids a hunk at school like that there’s so much traffic between mak von popolani uh that’s car traffic and so we have the baldwins with the the horses and the polo and all this great heritage uh can we get the riders the horse riders the bike riders the the surfers whoever wants to join the school of writers uh to to make cycling safe on maui and just form like reinforce what we already have so um dave deleon uh was actually critical

40:12

to getting this this north shore bikeway and i’ve enjoyed it i take it uh when i go i usually actually take my mountain bike i just go straight down the hill uh through whatever roads i can find and then take the bus back up and so i want to work with ukila around multi-modal multi-modal like different modes of transportation um improving the way the way that we have real-world connectivity how do you get out to hana do we all need to drive to hana no we don’t all need to drive to hana uh i i

40:41

really i felt just you know personal reflection the covid thing for early coping was like the road to hana’s open why didn’t i take my bike around the island then i would just like to see like one day a month one day a quarter that it’s like a bike day that we all just like like there’s some roads that are just like more bikes more horses and we learn how to be less reliant on cars because the gas is going more and more expensive and we don’t need to all be in our own cars i like your idea i wonder how practical

41:16

if our roads were wider i’d feel good but it’s for the rogue drivers it’s the rogue drive i’m worried about rogue drivers oh yes i stay off the road as much as possible i’ve had unsadly more than five friends die on bicycles on maui and that i say very sadly beautiful people obviously up country uh you probably knew andy janssen with you three daughters and a wife crazy stuff down in key hey they know where these spaces are and we don’t fix them because it’s not it is a priority

41:55

and i mean apple fields all the cane fields what are we doing can we talk to mahikono about managed access for cyclists to go from up country to kihei uh away from all the cars wow i like that how about one giant tube where you get in at the top i always remember the shoots i want to be on the zipline shoot some ladders i mean now it’s maui zipline yeah if we if we advertise the world’s longest zip line we’re going to get more folks we’re showing up now we can do a virtual zip line show

42:29

them maui from the comfort of their own home in minnesota yeah yeah i mean the future of transportation is big um also the ferry system between the ferry between nine low night there’s some push i think larry ellison is offering to buy it uh but the ferry is one of the really well worker owned cooperative and i think the yeah the ferries the buses the bikes if you want to hop on it like is there county canoes uh county bikes i don’t know what the solutions but i want to open up and widen the conversation about how we move

43:02

around the island mobility is really important because we spend a lot of time on and money i think it’s great um anything about uh i mean i can just go on subjects but you know it’s like from the outside looking in when we’re there the issues at hand we’ll deal with there’s so many issues i like the expression that’s sort of funny sometimes it’s difficult to remember your original intention was to come in and drain this swamp when you’re up to your eyes and alligators and

43:33

there’s so many alligators and there’s one dollar and it’s got to go five places everybody wants their priority and um i see ways to make those multiples happen through involving people in new programs and i see that in you i want to protect the wetlands i’m not draining the swamp there you go restore the wetlands don’t drink the swamp uh acknowledge that the the alligators and the crocodiles have a purpose that’s a very funny line but you know in politics the only how many people have

44:06

said drain the swamp drain the swamp and they didn’t follow through they didn’t they didn’t understand that they’re part of an ecosystem they began it was madness but anyway you know i actually i am so thankful i’m so far from washington but even that long arm of washington reaches us it does it does and actually i so i did a yoga teacher training uh so a while ago two years ago before covet i went to this south america did some workshops there and then i kind of got stuck in

44:33

ecuador did a yoga teacher training there was amazing and i came back to the us after this transformational experience and went straight to dc right into the belly of the beast i’m like oh my goodness oh what am i doing here uh but there’s so much arts in in dc there’s so much free art it’s like amazing and i found a fantastic community of people ecstatic dance i love ecstatic dance uh just like it’s it’s uh for me it’s just sort of uh it’s therapy uh and through that i even met uh netra

45:02

i don’t know if you met you know you’re probably on that track she’ll be on having a show with her monday yeah yeah so i met metra out there and she’s like she’s there as a as a lobbyist or whatever i mean that was she’s got her views she actually she cornered me at my earth things like um what do you believe about the vaccine mandates i’m switzerland i like neutral territory right here this body neutral territory i i like to say i like to have you make your own decision that’s how i approach

45:31

it personal sovereignty and i i leave it at that people know their choices if that’s a discussion that’s another day i want to give you the choice and see that that’s why i think i i watch a lot of people now running republican because the democrats are somehow perceived as the vaccine people in there the freedom people the republicans the freedom people what what bizarro planet are we living on now what is that yeah yeah it labels labels you’ve been here and i i don’t know i

46:07

think we’re probably at an hour you are an interesting candidate where i could come and talk with you because you’re a person i’m bringing this book up i want people to see g-a-v-i-o-t-a-s gaviotas this started me in thinking about self-sustainability when i was on maui this amazing can you imagine in 1976 the highest award of self-sustainability went to a a thing that was right next to the sandinistas in colombia they took a barren waste and turned into a fully biodiverse rain and they created a community and brought

46:43

up the health of everything it’s a gigantic story why don’t we have it here are they still around and why is that that model propagates yes that model is not only still around it’s thriving and it’s an example to the world in the middle of next to the sandinistas in colombia so the objective is where to do it so when i met paoligari and we talked about and he’s spanish so we had translator but doing it in hawaii refar station of hawaii the people here are those people that are in office a lot of them they are

47:16

asleep they’re not listening that’s why we need to be there because the only listen i believe when you’re in a seat when you’re in the seat and they hear you doctor managing the mat so a4 station reforcing bringing the rain back to the mauna that begins with us managing the deer population so the first thing that we do is that we have a managed harvest of the deer as a resource respectfully safely and that is a great protein so we’re right on we’re right on target you see

47:50

it’s not exciting that this idea that we’ve had can now be integrated with the things happening now and move us up and do things in a way that are a great example anyway i know i get off the top i get excited about possibility more than actuality it’s like someone always has ideals only in the story books it’s been hard for me to get through this you know thing where people are pummeling you for 30 years and talking about you like some radical one now it’s on everybody’s lips

48:26

but they didn’t do it and integrate it they do it for their own self-interest they do it and they split it up instead of we’re on an island people as an example look how we can everything all the solutions all the solutions are here yeah well so benign self-interest self-interest is definitely like the motivation of like being here staying here protecting your family we all have this internal drive to protect ourselves protect our family and that’s just a universal and the more that we can open up that sphere of care

48:57

of who we consider family whether it’s the people in a community or the plants and the animals and everything around us that that’ll help us uh feel more protective and more connected to uh solutions that we can work on together so that’s why i say and i say it loudly to everyone listening social skills social value helping someone when you see they need help will help the system because it is the system it’s us take away the burden by being part of the solution it sounds like you look here’s some but here’s my

49:33

bumper sticker series it’s you are the system no first the first talk with everything that everyone knows the system is broken number one the system is broken you are the system you reboot the system or loan me the system or hooli the system like what do you now that you know you are the system and your neighbors and system your parents your children we are all the system how are we going to change and shift this system dynamic do you feel um sitting in the council seat you can hit the job uh come running i’m sure there’s a lot

50:05

of studying and getting used to it but i’ve been curious about that i’ve been curious about what’s the training i’m qualified in that i’m of a certain age and i have a certain residency but there’s no actual training i applied for the cooleon academy and they said oh you don’t need us you’re overqualified like really because no one i didn’t what test did i take so i’m curious about the what’s the playbook what’s the what’s the how does it actually work uh this is why i’m

50:30

creating this uh my campaign is also material for ap applied civics and so you have an experience running for council a lot of folks have learned different things about how the system works i want to bring us all together to teach the next generation all the high school graduates you can you can vote if you if you are 18 you can vote here’s here’s my last radical idea if you can have a baby you should be able to vote it’s the natural law of voting if you create a life you should have the

50:59

right to vote that’s just that’s where i’m going to put it thank you jason for the time uh and make creating this platform for us to come and uh and i um i appreciate having you you’re the kind of a guest you know election or no election you’re a good guest because you are rich in ideas and you are the fabric that is the future i very much whatever happens this election i hope you will stay plugged in and if the seat be yours i hope you’ll listen to me when i come to you unless i’m on counseling you come

51:30

to me or we both do it together i’m taking notes i’ve got the record right here otter oh you have to make we have to make the council legible accessible and legible so that’s like simplifying the interface the conversation so you’re not waiting for hours to say you’re not or you’re just like here’s what i feel about this one thing and then we can consolidate it and then act on it because the way things are going now we’re going to be way too late so we have to shift the way to shift the

51:58

process well so i can see where immediately as you get there you’d streamline the system and make it better i love working with the whole team so you’ve been a really terrific you’ve been a terrific guest Aram for people in iron island of maui or molokai or lanai are aware that Aram armstrong no matter if you’re in any of those islands you can vote for him even though he’s he represents that’s so funny your district of residency you represent me as much as i represent you we’re all together in

52:38

this and if they ever change it to district voting i think my heart might stop we’ve been trying to talk about that forever used to we used to be there was just one big island and another way big turtles like a lot of big turtles down there uh well i don’t know what the land was like back there but we we’re now up on the ridge of an old old maui nui it’s maui new united and that’s the kind of mindset that we need to have because molokai lanai maui county we’re all one maui west side east side south side

53:20

north shore um it’s it’s a big system and we have different perspectives different problems we get a lot of water from you know but i’m gonna get in the water everyone knows about the water thing i hope please well you know there’s there’s so many subjects to cover that’s why i say you know just because we didn’t cover your favorite subject out there people doesn’t mean right here temporary housing so there’s so many issues that like i say so many issues we could get lost but

53:47

if you have the aptitude like you my friend you take the issues like they say in karate in in judo you may have seven people against you deal with one to the next one the next one what is that the eight ways yeah we’re going to do bagua on the county council floor taichi well that would be a great thing Aram thank you for joining us i appreciate you very much jason i appreciate you and all you people out on radio tv and internet land you can watch this again at mauineutralzone.com or you can put the name armstrong and

54:24

schwartz and maui in youtube or google and boy will you see the show come up and know that everything in your life is dependent upon you and you are in fact the greatest gift that you have and look how independent you can be in looking at these candidates like Aram’ss son deciding i like him i can vote for him let every group give you their opinion and come to your own heart and see what feels like for you that was my phone i put pig panther as my phone i thought if someone saw me interrupting

55:04

there he goes Aram come back to say goodbye there we go thank you everyone aloha take care [Music] you