Maui County Council Chair Alice Lee has boldly tabled Bill 92 to begin a community conversation on President Donald Trump’s definition of terrorism and safeguarding our free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and peaceful dissent.

Maui Indivisible had urged the Council to pause approving a signed contract between the FBI and Maui Police Department to allow the FBI to deputize and directly supervise Maui taxpayer funded Maui police officers under Trump’s dictates on terrorism. The agreement would also require deputized officers to use Trump Administration equipment to surveil Maui residents. Before these officers join the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, the contract needs to be renegotiated at a minimum.

On Sept. 26, the Council voted to initially approve Bill 92. We believe they did so without fully understanding the implications given President Trump’s recent declaration of war on “the enemy from within.” We are concerned that the MPD is advocating for the agreement as a “business as usual” formality. While we understand the Council’s trust in MPD, that trust may have obscured the need for more critical questioning on Council’s part.

The day before the first Council approval, Trump ordered NSPM-7 which redefines domestic terrorism and dictates an aggressive action plan to the FBI JTTF. This plan targets people and organizations based on ideas and speech, especially focused on dissent that “include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; … extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

In support of Trump’s NSPM-7 and FBI JTTF work, the Trump administration issued a “Fact Sheet” that draws an illogical and unsubstantiated line from peaceful protesters and people exercising their constitutional rights, to the violent acts of unstable individuals, then somehow, to left-leaning groups, and dub the violence “domestic terrorism.” We know this slippery slope all too well. It hearkens back to shameful moments in history, replete with instances of violent government overreach.

Maui has a long tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and other free speech activity and thought. This tradition informs current movements led by local people and groups struggling for Lahaina fire recovery justice, many forms of Hawaiian sovereignty, the protection of sacred sites and ‘iwi, the halt of telescope construction on sacred sites, immigrant rights, as well as groups and individuals who publicly oppose Trump and his billionaire oligarchs’ escalating attack on the citizenry and our Constitutional rights. Trump’s NSPM-7 dictates to the FBI JTTF to disrupt and dismantle activist groups.

There is no denying that Hawai’i — one of the “bluest” states — lies squarely in the Trump Administration’s crosshairs. Any threat to our Constitutional rights is a threat to every one of us, regardless of political party or ideology.

It’s important to note that President Trump and Elon Musk have specifically named our own organization, Indivisible, as a potential “criminal” organization. We are anything but that. Maui Indivisible is an organization devoted to preserving democracy, justice, free speech, and peace.

As anyone who has attended one of our Maui protests will attest, Indivisible protests and organizing campaigns are unifying, upbeat, and unfailingly peaceful. Indivisible has never incited, condoned, or celebrated violence of any kind, nor would we ever. We firmly believe there is no excuse for violent action. We also firmly believe democracy dies when citizens are too afraid to assemble and to speak truth to power.

Since the FBI-MPD contract has ill-defined financial implications for the County and deploys the MPD outside its normal scope, it requires Council approval. Had the Council passed a final vote for the FBI-MPD contract and made it law, Maui would move one step closer to the same brand of J. Edgar Hoover-era FBI oppression that necessitated serious government reform in the 1970s. The very foundations of our democracy are under attack: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press.

Maui Indivisible is a local, grassroots group that is part of the larger Indivisible Hawaiʻi Statewide Network and the nationwide Indivisible movement. For more, search for Maui Indivisible on Facebook