Episode 2 – Autumn Ness
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Autumn Ness is the Executive Director of the Lahaina Community Land Trust. She previously served as a Senior Affordable Housing Policy Advisor to the Maui County Council and is the founder of the Maui Food Hub. Her work focuses on community land ownership, affordable housing, and long-term local resilience in Hawaiʻi.
In this episode of Pilali, cohosts Ashley and Wren sit down with community organizer Autumn Ness to talk about activism, crisis response, and the power of grassroots organizing in Hawaiʻi. Autumn shares how her experiences living through the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan shaped her understanding of community resilience and corporate power. After moving to Maui, she began recognizing similar patterns in the fight over GMO crops and pesticide use, which led her into organizing and policy advocacy alongside local communities.
The conversation follows Autumn’s work from grassroots campaigns to building solutions such as the Maui Food Hub and the Lahaina Community Land Trust. Ashley and Wren explore how crises can expose systemic vulnerabilities but also create opportunities to strengthen community ownership and trust. Autumn reflects on the importance of long term relationship building, protecting land from speculation, and supporting community driven leadership so that local people can shape the future of the places they call home.