Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 23, Number 9, 1 September 2006 — Community mourns Alu Like co-founder Alvin Shim [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Community mourns Alu Like co-founder Alvin Shim

On July 19, several hundred people gathered at the Blaisdell Center to celebrate the life of Alvin Tong Shim, a prominent Native Hawaiian labor attorney and cofounder of the Hawaiian service agency Alu Like, as well as a participant in the early discussions that led to the establishment of OHA. Friends and colleagues remember Shim as a big-heart-ed man who onee lobbied to have the concept of aloha spirit enshrined in state law. Winona Rubin, who worked with Shim and others to found Alu Like in the early 1970s, said that he was "a visionary who was never satisfied to just talk about things, but actively made them happen. He was a real change agent." Known as a behind-the-scenes mediator and a major player in both Democratic politics and the labor movement following statehood, Shim was onee named by a Honolulu newspaper as one of the most influential people in the islands. Russell Okata, executive director of the Hawai'i Government Employees Association told The Honolulu Advertiser that Shim "probably could be called the father of our benefits. Today unionized workers enjoy that protection because Alvin felt that wages were important, but also heahh benefits and a pension when you retire." Shim passed away on June 24 at the age of 82. ^

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