By Yiming Fu, Report for America corps member

A Maui hearing about a proposal to limit Airbnb’s opened with a motion to ban testifiers from using specific words.

Opponents of the proposal by Housing and Land Use committee chair and councilmember Tasha Kama accused her of censorship at Wednesday’s meeting.

“I will not permit language and actions in this meeting which may contribute to the breakdown of our social decorum,” Kama said.

The words she proposed banning included “occupiers,” “illegal invaders,” “transplants,” “extractors,” “colonists,” “settlers,” “terrorists,” “foreigners,” and more.

Maui residents watching in the council chambers disapproved.

“This is the people’s chambers,” residents said. “How are you gonna ban a bad word?”

Over 200 people signed up to testify on Bill 9, which could transition up to 6,000 Airbnb’s into long-term housing for locals.

Since the August 2023 Lahaina Fires, Mayor Richard Bissen pushed for the bill alongside activists including Lahaina Strong and Maui Housing Hui. The bill aims to provide a quick housing solution on an island where the average West Maui home sells for 20x more than the average kamaʻāina can afford.

The county held the first hearing on the bill June 9 where 52 people testified.

A group of predominantly White vacation rental owners flooded the June 9 meeting. They said their units bring middle-class visitors to the island and boost the economy. Many vacation rental owners shed tears about potentially losing their business and moving off Maui.

For locals, the issue is about housing their own — not visitors.

Narrative control

At Wednesday’s meeting, councilmember Keani Rawlins-Fernandez resisted Kama’s rule. She said it feels like censorship and a First Amendment rights violation

Rawlins-Fernandez said testifiers should be free to choose the words to describe how they feel.  

The county council recessed for ten minutes to decide. After recess, the county council’s legal advisor Andrew Nelson said testifiers should testify according to what they want to say.

“Other than things like profanity or things that are obviously inciting violence, I think that a blanket ban on certain words would not be advisable,” Nelson said.

Not respecting Hawai’i

Kamanao’i’o Gomes said he’s tired of watching his friends move away. Kānaka from Lahaina, he no longer recognizes the people he runs into. He feels like an outsider in his own home.

“You guys don’t respect Lahaina though, you don’t respect that people lost their homes, you don’t respect that you drive down the road and you see a homeless guy on the side of the road and you guys got three, four, five, six houses.”

Gomes said he was homeless as a child, young adult and adult.

He said most Hawaiian people dream to own a home.

Noelani Ahia works for the Maui Medics Healers Hui, which provides free care for Lahaina fire survivors.

Ahia testified against Kama’s censorship and explained why it’s dangerous.

“Language like colonizer, foreigner, settler are not violent words,” Ahia said. “It’s language that is used to describe the violence that Kānaka Maoli have been resisting and surviving for 130 years.”

In the 1993 apology bill, the United States admits to illegally overthrowing the Hawaiian Kingdom. The apology bill acknowledges that Native Hawaiians lived in a “highly organized and self-sufficient subsistent social system” and acknowledges the overthrow resulted in “the suppression of the inherent sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people.”

The impacts continue today. One in four Native Hawaiians have moved away, and there are more Native Hawaiians living in the continent than at home. Hawaiians only earn $0.84 for every $1 earned by everyone else in Hawaiʻi, and they face disproportionately high rates of homelessness and incarceration.

“They took our entire country,” Ahia said. “So when people stand up here and talk about a taking, hello, they took our whole country. Our people are dying on the streets because they took our country.”

West Maui resident Katie Austin said she’s a settler, a transplant, and she’s not afraid of those words.

“When opposition feel offended by hearing the truth of history or lived experience as told by kānaka, I believe that that is their conscience reacting. They are offended because they are continuing to perpetuate injustice.”

Austin strongly supports Bill 9, and she said the state is watching Maui County’s decision.

At stake, Austin said, is whether the next generation will believe their rights are worth fighting for. This bill will test whether community can come before investors and profit.

“Our keiki have watched their aunties, their uncles, their kupuna, their parents, everyone they look up to, fight for something so massive while going through the most traumatic time of their lives,” Austin said. “They will be watching your decision.”

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