Break-in reported at Maui Rapid Response community space

Grassroots mutual-aid organization, Maui Rapid Response, is recovering from a break-in reported Thursday night at its community space in Kahului.

The space is located around the corner from Bounty Music and next to the Smoke Shop at 111 Hāna Highway. Video of the aftermath shows damage to a large window at Maui Rapid Response (Unit 109A). and to the door, building and siding at the Smoke Shop (Unit 109B).

The incident reportedly occurred while MRR workers were attending a benefit concert in their honor at the Pāʻia Bay Cafe.

Volunteer, Patty Lee said the space is intended for “communing, an outlet for frustrations, a place to heal, a place to create, to brainstorm, to have fun.”

She said she’s been renovating and prepping the space for an inaugural event that was supposed to happen early next month.

Feeling personally defeated Lee said, “The space we’ve been working on for so long has been destroyed.” She said the perpetrator allegedly drove a vehicle into the exterior, pillaged through the space, cutting bars at MRR in an apparent effort to break into the Smoke Shop next door, where various products were stolen.

Maui Rapid Response is an ahupuaʻa inspired response team, fiscally sponsored and organized by the nonprofit Maui Grassroots Collective, along with the Maui Housing Hui, Maui Medic Healers Hui, and Holomua Outreach.

The decentralized citizen collective is driven by community values and needs, with a commitment to prioritizing support for Native Hawaiians and the vulnerable members of the community, linking them to a larger network of care. Their latest efforts involved helping to meet the needs of unhoused individuals in response to the kona low storms in April. Other MRR initiatives include the following:

• Continued fire response
• Holo Holo I Ka Wai (a project providing accessible drinking water)
• Holomua Outreach (created to uplift the houseless community in the Hamakua ahupua’a),
• Ice Cream Aunties
• Kahua Card Program
• Loving Our Lāhui
• Relief Compass (providing access to goods and services for fire-impacted families)
• Nā Mea Manuahi (a mutual aid project that encourages collective responsibility and a circular exchange of material goods, money and skills)

Lee said MRR is now looking to get the space back on track. “We are a mutual aid organization. We do not have money for such costly repairs,” she said.

MRR has a donation page on its website, accessible online at: https://www.mauirapidresponse.org/donate-mrr