Located in Kurtistown for over forty years is Malu ‘Aina (Land of Peace) the Hawaiian name given to the Center for Non-Violent Education and Action. Malu ‘Aina is a spiritual community based on peace, justice, and sustainable organic farming. Situated on 22 acres it was founded as a non-profit organization by Puna Warrior Jim Albertini as a place to work cooperatively practicing Aloha ‘ Aina and non-violence as a way of life. Among the many activists who live on the Big Island of Hawaii, Jim’s reputation and experience are incomparable.
This longtime warrior for social justice and peace has earned the respect of every other activist and many politicians. He’s participated in most, if not all, of the wide range of social actions that have taken place in Hawaii over the last forty years.
Jim is an avid believer in Gandhian principles and with great humility, he has also tirelessly organized innumerable campaigns, protests, and direct actions including: Nuclear-Free Pacific! Restore the Hawaii Nation! End U.S. Terrorism! Military Clean-Up NOT Build-Up! Stop all the Wars! End all Occupations! No Geothermal! GMO-free Hawaii! Protect Sacred sites!
Jim was born and raised in the small coal-mining town of Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania. Both his immigrant grandfathers worked in the mines and one died there in an accident. As a child of the nuclear age, one of his earliest recollections from the 1950s was his whole town being blacked out at night for air raid drills. Even at that tender age, he realized war didn’t make any sense. He went to daily mass as an altar boy and choir boy, attended a small parish school from kindergarten through high school, and graduated from a Catholic university.
While there he was impacted by the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and Pope John XXIII’s encyclical called Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth). It was the first time he heard nonviolence expressed as a way of hope for a world on the brink of being consumed by nuclear holocaust violence. When the Vietnam War kicked in he decided he’d make a stand and filed for conscientious objector status. For Jim war was in direct conflict with the New Testament and the biblical command to love your enemies.
On Veterans Day 1968, with two other teachers, he picketed his local draft board and discovered how controversial dissent can be. In the process, he lost friends but made other friends and gained clarity regarding his real values in life, war and peace, and where he stood on nonviolence and violence. He chose to move from dissent to resistance, willing to risk imprisonment and make peace and justice his primary concern and way of life. It was a teaching job in Hawaii’s Catholic schools that lured him to the islands in 1970.
As director of Catholic Action near the UH Manoa campus Jim and organization members took the message of peace, justice, and a nuclear-free Hawaii into elementary, high school, and university classrooms and also into the streets. Hawai’i was the command center and deployment area for the Vietnam war and it felt very close, especially with the ear-shattering roar of the jets from the Kaneohe Marine base on their way to practice bombing the island of Kaho’olawe.
In early 1972, after years of ineffective appeals to Congress and nonviolent dissent, he participated in direct action pouring his own blood on top secret files at Hickam Base, the Pacific headquarters of the U.S. Air Force.
For this he was fired from his teaching job and imprisoned. It was not unexpected but part of the price for acting upon one’s beliefs. Since then he’s been self- employed, living simply and moving deeper into serving others. It’s been a life on the edge without wages or salary and with frequent periods spent in jail and prison for taking nonviolent stands for justice and peace.
An early island experience that moved Jim deeply was his involvement with farmers being evicted from Kalama Valley on O’ahu to make way for golf courses in 1971. Thirty-two people were arrested on their rooftops in this pivotal and potent Hawaiian land struggle. Jim saw how important it is to be rooted in the land in the struggle for justice and peace and began planting Kalo (taro) as a personal discipline and connection to the Aina (land).
He’s been a lifelong avid researcher and with a group of friends co-authored ‘The Dark Side of Paradise: Hawaii in a Nuclear World’ which details the extent of U.S. military presence in the islands. The 1980 book noted that since Captain James Cook’s arrival in 1778, Hawaii has been a target for colonization by outside interests. Originally exploited for its sandalwood and whales the colonizers then found sugar and pineapples to have a more stable and profitable future.
But Pearl Harbour became recognized as the biggest asset and the U.S. government was determined to grab it and began its present occupation in 1893. According to Jim Hawaii has become the most densely militarized state in the U.S. with the highest percentage of land controlled for military purposes.
The home of aloha has been transformed into the U.S. nuclear war command center covering more than 60% of the earth’s surface. The Hawaiian Islands have more than 100 military installations for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines including major bases with more than 3,000 nuclear weapons. After receiving a donation of land Jim moved to the Big Island in 1981 and founded the Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-violent Education and Action.
The sustainable living community grows a wide variety of organic fruits and vegetables to share freely, often through the regional food bank emergency pantry. Volunteers and residents work cooperatively learning useful skills and seeking a deeper understanding of non-violence as a way of life. Local and international peacemakers often visit Malu ‘Aina for reflection, discussion, and action planning on problems facing Hawaii and the world.
Having dedicated himself to managing and caring for the center for over forty years Jim is inviting others to share and take over the responsibility to ensure it will continue serving as a grassroots justice and peace center for future generations.
Malu ‘Aina has served as a base for the Big Island Rainforest Action Group (BIRAG), a group that has worked in solidarity with the Pele Defense Fund. In the struggle to stop geothermal development in Hawai’i, BIRAG recognizes that justice for Native Hawaiians and environmental concerns are strongly connected.
Many years of struggle over geothermal energy have resulted in hundreds of arrests for nonviolent direct action. One of the largest arrest actions in Hawai’i’s history was an effort to save the Wao Kele O Puna rain forest from destruction for geothermal energy production. Being arrested myself in that protest gave me a personal taste of what Jim has experienced over and over – and it very nearly got me deported!
The label ‘activist’ is inseparable from Jim’s name whenever it appears in the media but he is recognized as a man of great integrity and mostly treated courteously. He continues to be an effective educator invited to give talks in schools, on campuses, to church groups, and in his pursuit of justice for all people Jim works alongside numerous groups and activists.
In recent years Jim has researched the use of depleted uranium at the Pohakuloa Military Training Area on the Big Island. His appeal has reached thousands and continues today, “We ask that you stand in solidarity with us on Moku O Keawe in resistance to major U.S. military expansion at the 133,000- acre Pohakuloa Training Area, and now helicopter assault training on our sacred mountains –Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.
We want an end to the U.S. occupation of Hawaii and the restoration of the Hawaii nation. We want the U.S. to stop bombing Hawaii and clean up its opala (mess). We want to put an end to U.S. desecration and contamination of all sacred cultural sites. We don’t want the U.S. military training anywhere to do to others what it has already done to Hawaii: overthrow and occupy its government and nation, desecrate its sacred sites, and contaminate its air, land, water, people, plants, and animals with military toxins.”
In 2001 Jim contributed to the book ‘Hawaii Journeys in Non-violence’ which contains reflections on ways out of the political, military, economic, social, and cultural violence that plagues our times. As a fitting acknowledgment of his lifetime contributions, Pax Christi, a national Catholic Peace organization, named Jim as its Teacher of Peace for 2010, and in 2012 the Interfaith Alliance Hawaii presented Jim and Malu ‘Aina with their award for encouraging non- violent civic participation.
Symptomatic of Jim’s consistency and persistence is the Friday afternoon peace vigil at Hilo’s federal building which has now been held for more than 1110 weeks. He started the vigil on September 12, 2001, to urge ‘restraint not
vengeance’ sensing there would be a lashing out in retaliation for the deaths on that awful day. He was proved correct as the U.S. lashed out and attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan, killing, injuring, and displacing more than 37 million people and causing widespread destruction. As he says, “No wonder the U.S. empire is considered the greatest threat to world peace on the planet.”
Each week a new peace leaflet is prepared for distribution via the internet and paper copies are handed out at the vigil with at least 250,000 leaflets handed out to passing motorists.
Despite being a very low key event with people greeted with “Aloha” and thanked for taking a leaflet Jim was still threatened by the police with ‘Jaywalking.’ How sick and ironic that peace activists are menaced for just stepping off the curb to offer peace leaflets to drivers of cars stopped at a traffic light while casual ‘Jaywalkers’ are ignored.
It’s not a just or fair world and as Jim laments, “War is the most unsustainable thing that human beings do, and we do it a lot. If you look underneath the surface, you’ll find that without our current, exploitative, growth-imperative global economy, war would be obsolete. We must end this madness”
As a man of great principles Jim has graciously dedicated his life to serving others while humbly articulating, “My greatest hope is that perhaps I have helped a few others along the way to deepen their own commitments for peace and justice, to live more by faith and less by the fear of consequences for acting with faith. To inspire others as we have been inspired is perhaps the greatest gift to pass along.”
Back home at Malu ’Aina the work continues and support is always appreciated: volunteers are needed more than ever for planting, weeding, harvesting, carpentry, painting, and other projects. Donations are tax- deductible and can be sent to the Center for Non-violent Education & Action at P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawaii 96760 or given online at the website. www.malu-aina.org
