From the President: A World That Never Was

     In 1893, Hawaiian Queen Lili'uokalani surrendered the sovereignty of her country in a bloodless coups led by white landowners backed by the US Navy. For decades, American investors bought up land, imported laborers from East Asia, and disenfranchised Native Hawaiians across the kingdom devastated by disease and displaced by cash crop agriculture. With no hope of regaining their independence, only a small band of fiercely loyal Hawaiians- including the young princess Kaiulani- resisted the inevitable course of history.

     There is today a plummeting belief in hope. As a convicted felon is set to become president of the United States, brutal violence grips much of sub-Saharan Africa, invasion and genocide threaten countless lives in the Middle East, and war involving two nuclear powers grows in Eastern Europe; there has never been a more compelling case for surrendering to despair.

     When Lili'uokalani surrendered Hawaii, the composer-turned-monarch gave a final farewell with a song she wrote advertising her steadfast belief in hope for her people even when it was clear there was none. We often find in our lives that the things we need to believe in the most are the very things least likely to be true- that people are basically good, that money and power are meaningless, that honor and integrity mean everything, and that there is always hope. And as we move closer to a new year, let us all move towards a new world not defined by the cynicism of the world we see which makes us ask why; but illustrated by the dreams we have of a better world that never was which make us ask why not.