Community Mourns Death Of Hawaiian Activist And Homeless Advocate Twinkle Borge:
For years, the Native Hawaiian activist had worked tirelessly to forge a tight-knit sense of community among the several hundred people living in makeshift shelters near the Waianae Boat Harbor, turning what could have been a miserable and lawless encampment into the kind of place where people could think of themselves not as homeless but simply houseless.
Then, nearly a decade ago, she launched a movement to make her community houseless no more, leading efforts to buy a 20-acre plot of fallow land in Waianae that she hoped to transform into a vibrant village surrounded by fruit-bearing avocado, papaya and banana trees.
Borge, known by countless people as “Aunty Twinkle” or simply “Mama,” was still working on that effort when she died this week at the age of 54.
I never got a chance to meet her, but Aunty Twinkle is an inspiration. Rest in Power.