Thread. The pandemic exposed tourism as Hawaii's new plantation—a monoculture with smaller, dependent industries. The recent reopening of transpacific travel is worrisome for two reasons: virus spreaders and predatory investors.

With tourism shut down since March, so many businesses have closed for good. Business owners and employees have closed shop, vacated property, and left for elsewhere. We've seen this happen with the collapse of monocultural agriculture with sugar.

With the collapse of sugar in the late 70s-early 80s, land was bought up by Japanese and West Coast investors in Hawaii, contributing to the housing shortage, high cost of living, and a workforce that was less adaptive—hence the proliferation of retail.

Hawaii is not the only example. Sugar's demise in Latin America led to the flood of Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and English investors that bought land that should have returned to indigenous peoples, paving the way for their continued indenture to a new breed of Euro latifundia.

The same is happening today in the Congo, where one of the poorest African countries is sitting on an estimated $24 trillion in natural resources, only to have its people toil for its former French and Belgian captors.

And now comes Gov. Ige with a secret covid economic recovery committee. Will Hawaii be sold out again? Via @stewartyerton and @CivilBeat https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/10/secrecy-shrouds-iges-new-high-level-coronavirus-panel/

Conditions are ripe for a new era of neocolonialism in Hawaii. There are so many intersections between the pandemic, the climate crisis, commerce and more. The first way to effect change is vote in November.