The Commonwealth December 2014/January 2015

MARISSA MAYER & MARC BENIOFF page 8

FERGUSON PANEL page 17

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND & SHERYL SANDBERG

page 44

GLORIA DUFFY page 50

Commonwealth The

THE MAGAZINE OF THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA

THE

tech

AREA $5.00; free for members | commonwealthclub.org

DEC 2014/JAN 2015

Cuba

Art, culture, music, history and politics in Commonwealth Club style. Meet experts, writers, artists and musicians and witness the vibrant intellectual and artistic talent for which Cuba is known.

Havana, Trinidad, Cienfuegos & the Viñales Valley February 2–11, 2015 (9 nights) $5,045 per person, based on double occupancy (includes round-trip air from Miami to Havana) Havana & the Viñales Valley April 10–17, 2015 (7 nights) 7 nights in Havana $4,669 per person, based on double occupancy (includes round-trip air from Miami to Havana) Explore old Havana’s history and architecture. Meet with tobacco farmers and enjoy a private flamenco performance by some of Cuba’s best dancers. Discuss U.S. foreign policy during a visit to the U.S. Interests Section. In the Viñales Valley, take in views of the dramatic limestone mogotes. Through a series of discussions and guest speakers, learn about art, history, education, religion and the economy. The February departure includes two nights to visit the site of the Bay of Pigs, Cienfuegos and the colonial city of Trinidad.

All participants must agree in writing to take part in the activities of the tour and abide by the license requirements set by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

“The speakers were all great.” – Larry Friedman “You

completely undersold our recent trip to Cuba. I was completely blown away by all the things we were able to do and see in a short time.”

– Nikki Young

“Don’t change a thing.” – Joyce Turley Nicholas

Commonwealth Club Travel CST: 2096889-40

Detailed brochure available at: commonwealthclub.org/travel Contact: (415) 597-6720 • travel@commonwealthclub.org Photos: PRDH/flickr

INSIDE The Commonwealth VO LU M E 109, N O . 01 | D E C E M B E R 2014/ J A N UA RY 2015

10 Photo by Sonya Abrams

FEATURES 8 MARISSA MAYER

19 Photo by John Zipperer

17 FERGUSON, THE BAY

& MARC BENIOFF A VISIONARY AWARD EVENT

AREA & BEYOND A CONVERSATION ABOUT RACE AND JUSTICE

On her vision for Yahoo and the tech industry as a whole

The community discusses why Michael Brown’s killing led to such outrage when young black men are shot every day

10 THE TECH BOOM

GOOD OR BAD FOR SAN FRANCISCO?

44

Advocates from both sides look at ways the tech industry and the city can invest in one another

Photo by Russell Edwards

DEPARTMENTS 5 EDITOR’S DESK The Meaning of the Bus

6 THE COMMONS More details on plans for the Club’s new headquarters and an update on the project’s progress

50 INSIGHT

14 STEVEN PINKER

Says language is always changing, but good writing techniques remain the same

16 TAVIS SMILEY

Would Martin Luther King Jr. have voted for President Obama? Would he have been disappointed?

19 CHARLES BLOW

On embracing the freedom that came from letting go of his hatred for the relative who preyed on him when he was a child

44 KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND & SHERYL SANDBERG

The Senator explains what doing it all (not having it all) has meant for her and for the rest of the women in politics

Dr. Gloria C. Duffy, President and CEO

Photo by Ed Ritger

8 EVENTS 22 PROGRAM INFORMATION 23 TWO MONTH CALENDAR 30 PROGRAM LISTINGS Events from December 1 to February 4

33 LANGUAGE CLASSES About Our Cover: For better or worse, the tech industry has become an integral part of the Bay Area, so it makes sense that its VIPs have been at the Club a lot lately (Yahoo, Facebook and Zendesk in this issue) with more to come. Original photo

by NASA; design by Tyler Swofford. (All logos are registered trademarks of their respective companies)

“You can actually pull engineering, information and artistry all together to create something that’s really beautiful and isn’t just useful [but] also has an emotional experience.” – Marissa Mayer J U N E/J U LY 2013

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Strictly

Business.

Strictly

Local.

Connecting Bay Area Business Leaders

in Print, Online, & at Events Subscribe to the San Francisco Business Times

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EDITOR’S DESK

J O H N Z I P PE R E R V P, M E D I A & E D I TO R I A L

Photo by Marc Ryckaert (MJJR)

The Meaning of the Bus

A

fter a recent trip to 24th Street in San Francisco’s Noe with the San Francisco Chronicle on a special program in October Valley neighborhood, I waited at 24th and Church streets called “The Tech Boom: Good or Bad for San Francisco?” (See for a bus to take me up the hill. Many buses came, but the page 10.) first four of them were corporate buses – the much-maligned tech City leaders have made efforts to reign in some of the problems buses operated by LinkedIn, Google and other internet companies. associated with rapid growth in a city with very little available The tech buses have generated a lot housing inventory and crowded streets. of news-friendly protest coverage in the They worked out a deal to get a fee for media, but they are of course nothing he tech buses and the Ellis the use of city bus stops by the tech buses new. At the subway stop I use every morn(a deal that critics quickly said was too ing, I have seen corporate buses picking Ac t evic tions have together friendly to the tech companies); they are up biotech employees for as long as I’ve ramping up construction of housing at become the poster children of all price levels (but at a volume that the lived here.

But the tech buses, popularly called city’s chief economist said was still 70,000 the current tech-fueled boom. units too few to put downward pressure Google buses, have generated waves of protests from activists who accuse them on housing costs). of being the harbingers – or perhaps the enablers – of an influx of If you think this is just a San Francisco controversy, however, you well-paid tech workers blamed for pushing up housing, food and might think again. San Jose is also competing aggressively for those transportation prices in the city. tech jobs, and Oakland is undergoing its own real estate inflation The buses are symbols, of course. The protestors who have tried as a result of an influx of residents and companies. to stop the buses aren’t arguing that we’d be better off if the bus riders We’ll be interested in your response to this article. Are the drove their cars to work. The buses have been paired with Ellis Act speakers addressing your concerns about current growth? What else evictions to become the poster children of the current tech-fueled should they tackle? Is public policy being made wisely or hastily? boom in the Bay Area’s never-ending boom-to-bust cycle.

Send your comments to us at feedback@commonwealthclub.

To delve into these issues, The Commonwealth Club teamed up org, and we’ll keep the conversation going in these pages.

T

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BUSINESS OFFICES The Commonwealth, 595 Market St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 | feedback@commonwealthclub.org VP, MEDIA & EDITORIAL John Zipperer | DESIGNER Tyler R. Swofford | STAFF EDITORS Amelia Cass, Ellen Cohan INTERNS Zoë Byrne, Laura Nguyen, Christopher Wendt | PHOTOGRAPHERS Sonya Abrams, Russell Edwards, Ed Ritger, Rikki Ward ADVERTISING INFORMATION: Tara Crain, Development Manager, Corporate and Foundation Partnerships, (415) 869-5919, tcrain@commonwealthclub.org The Commonwealth ISSN 00103349 is published bimonthly (6 times a year) by The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-2805. | PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID at San Francisco, CA. Subscription rate $34 per year included in annual membership dues. | POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Commonwealth, The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-2805. | Printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink. Copyright © 2014 The Commonwealth Club of California. Tel: (415) 597-6700 Fax: (415) 597-6729 E-mail: feedback@commonwealthclub.org | EDITORIAL TRANSCRIPT POLICY: The Commonwealth magazine covers a range of programs in each issue. Program transcripts and question and answer sessions are routinely condensed due to space limitations. Hear full-length recordings online at commonwealthclub.org/media, podcasts on Apple iTunes, or contact Club offices to buy a compact disc.

D E C E M B E R 2014/J A N UA RY 2015

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COMMONS THE

Talk of the Club

Building Our Future Commonwealth Club highlights environmental, public, historical aspects of new home

N

ow well into its project of acquiring, designing and building its first permanent home, The Commonwealth Club recognizes that talk is one thing, but pictures are worth thousands of words.

The Club has been sharing its building plans with more and more people as it continues with the process of fine-tuning the design and getting the standard approvals from city development agencies. One milestone occurred at a September hearing of the city’s Planning Commission, which gave the Club’s project a unanimous thumbs-up. A November program at the Club explained the design and its goals.

The proposed design features state-ofthe-art materials and methods of ensuring an environmentally friendly building that can effectively serve the community far into the future with large and small gatherings. For example, windows on the Embarcadero will allow fresh air to circulate and cool the building, reducing its carbon footprint; in the main auditorium, reclaimed wood will enhance

Top of page, clockwise: The proposed Embarcadero façade features windows that open to allow cooling and air flow, reducing the building’s carbon footprint; the bright and welcoming lobby; a reception and socials room features beautiful views of the Bay Bridge; the main auditorium is designed for optimum sound quality and ease of viewing.

both the acoustics and aesthetics of the room.

The Club also will be preserving and highlighting the important history at its new location. The site of our new home was the longshore workers’ union hall at the time of the 1934 longshoremen’s strike, which included a tragic clash between police and picketers in which two strike supporters were killed and hundreds were wounded. This year is the 80th anniversary of that epochal strike, which led to national legislation establishing collective bargaining rights and the National Labor Relations Board. The Club’s new building will feature a plaque and multimedia displays showing the historical events, and on December 3 the Club is holding a special program on

Left to right: The SF Planning Commission voted 7–0 in favor of the Club’s design; architect Marsha Maytum explained the design to commissioners; a city environmental planning representative addressed the commission regarding the proposed building.

Renderings by LMS Architects; video screenshots by SFGovTV

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the history and the lasting impact of those events.

For program details, see page 32.

As more people see our building plans and learn about the care that has gone into them, the voices of community support continue to grow. The Club’s design is supported by our future neighbors, including local residents, the Jewish Federation next door, the Embarcadero YMCA, and the restaurants, hotels and other businesses along the Embarcadero. Our plans are also supported by historians, preservationists, labor unions, environmentalists and many others in San Francisco.

You can find more images, updates, video and more online at commonwealthclub.org/ about/new-home.

LEADERSHIP OF THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB CLUB OFFICERS Board Chair Anna W.M. Mok Vice Chair John R. Farmer Secretary Frank Meerkamp Treasurer Lee J. Dutra President & CEO Dr. Gloria C. Duffy

Maryles Casto** Mary B. Cranston** Susie Cranston Dr. Kerry P. Curtis Dr. Jaleh Daie Alecia DeCoudreaux Dorian Daley Evelyn S. Dilsaver Joseph I. Epstein* Jeffrey A. Farber Carol A. Fleming, Ph.D. Leslie Saul Garvin Dr. Charles Geschke Paul M. Ginsburg Edie G. Heilman Hon. James C. Hormel Mary Huss John Leckrone Dr. Mary Marcy Frank C. Meerkamp Kevin P. O’Brien Rev. Stephen A. Privett, S.J.

BOARD OF GOVERNORS Carlo Almendral Courtland Alves Dan Ashley Massey J. Bambara Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman** John L. Boland Michael R. Bracco Thomas H. Burkhart Helen A. Burt

Dr. Mohammad H. Qayoumi Frederick W. Reid Skip Rhodes* Brian D. Riley Richard A. Rubin George M. Scalise Lata Krishnan Shah Dr. Ruth Shapiro Charlotte Mailliard Shultz George D. Smith, Jr. James Strother Hon. Tad Taube Charles Travers Dr. Colleen B. Wilcox Russell M. Yarrow Jed York * Past President ** Past Chair ADVISORY BOARD Karin Helene Bauer Hon. William Bradley Dennise M. Carter

Rolando Esteverena Steven Falk Amy Gershoni Jacquelyn Hadley Heather Kitchen Amy McCombs Don J. McGrath Hon. William J. Perry Hon. Barbara Pivnicka Hon. Richard Pivnicka Ray Taliaferro Nancy Thompson

Hon. Ming Chin (Past President) Mary B. Cranston (Past Chair) Joseph I. Epstein (Past President) Dr. Joseph R. Fink (Past President) William German (Past President) Rose Guilbault (Past Chair) Claude B. Hutchison Jr. (Past President) Dr. Julius Krevans (Past President) Richard Otter (Past President) Joseph Perrelli (Past President) Toni Rembe (Past President) PAST BOARD CHAIRS Victor J. Revenko (Past President) ANDPRESIDENTS Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman Skip Rhodes (Past President) (Past Chair) Renée Rubin (Past President) Hon. Shirley Temple Black Robert Saldich (Past Chair) (Past President) Connie Shapiro (Past President) deceased (1928-2014) J. Dennis Bonney (Past President) Nelson Weller (Past President) Judith Wilbur (Past President) John Busterud (Past President) Maryles Casto (Past Chair) Dennis Wu (Past President)

THE WALTER E. HOADLEY ECONOMIC FORECAST PRESENTED BY: Date Friday, January 23, 2015 Time 10:30 a.m. private program 11:45 a.m. luncheon 12:30 p.m. program Location InterContinental Mark Hopkins 999 California St., San Francisco

BANK OF AMERICA MERRILL LYNCH

Often imitated but never duplicated, The Commonwealth Club’s acclaimed Annual Economic Forecast is the Bay Area’s premier economic event, an unparalleled opportunity to learn what’s on the economic horizon in the new year.

Program Featuring

Now in its 85th year, the 2015 event will feature the legendary Steve Forbes with Professor Alan Auerbach in conversation about economic trends on the local and national stage.

Gold or Platinum level tables also have access to the exclusive, offthe-record private panel about the impacts of real estate development on the Bay Area economy.

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Platinum Table $3,500 ($4,000 after 12/31/14) • Premium seating for 10 at private panel • Premier table for 10 at luncheon & public program • Logo recognition on event collateral (program, table signage, web) • Inclusion in event press release

Gold Table $2,500 ($3,000 after 12/31/14) • Seating for 10 at private panel • Table for 10 at luncheon & public program • Logo recognition on event collateral (program, table signage, web)

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D E C E M B E R 2014/J A N UA RY 2015

To purchase tables, please contact: Tara Crain at (415) 869.5919 or tcrain@commonwealthclub.org or Kimberly Maas at (415) 597.6726 or kmaas@commonwealthclub.org

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A VISIONARY AWARD EVENT

MARISSA MA

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The Yahoo exec discusses her style of product and brand development. Excerpted from Inforum’s “Marissa Mayer in Conversation with Marc Benioff - A Visionary Award Event”, October 30, 2014.

MARISSA MAYER President & CEO, Yahoo In conversation with

MARC BENIOFF

AYER

Photo by Ed Ritger

Chairman & CEO, salesforce.com MARC BENIOFF: You somehow took that concept, that idea that the Internet would be pervasive; it could go everywhere, impact everyone in the world, and you coupled it with something you also had an intuitive sense for. I remember when I first met you at the San Francisco Symphony and you were wearing this incredible ball gown and I think you were maybe in your mid-twenties and I was like, “Um, she has a sense of design as well.”

Then I noticed that you also then joined, I think, the board of [SF] MOMA. I had an opportunity to see the inside of your house, your apartment, and you probably have one of the most incredible collections of art that I’ve ever seen. And in my mind I put all that together and I said, “This focus on design is something that’s really coming through her just innately and intuitively.”And so you coupled design with the power of the Internet and that’s obviously what made Google [successful]. We all know that. You were able to bring that together in a way that none of us had ever seen that before.

So when did that open up for you? When did those two things integrate so nicely?

MARISSA MAYER: I wish I could say that it was me, but it wasn’t. There are two people that deserve a lot more credit than that. my mother is an art teacher and my father is an engineer. And the cross product of that is someone who really loves technology. I wasn’t as good an artist as my mother. So she taught me a lot about art history and a lot about respect for art and design by

really [looking at] how engineering and art aren’t all that different and that there’s a lot of symmetry between the two disciplines.

Engineering that isn’t beautiful has its drawbacks and art that isn’t engineered also is, in some ways, less interesting. And so, for me, [both diciplines] were always part of my life growing up. The two always just coexisted in my family and in my role models.

BENIOFF: I don’t think I ever heard anyone say that before. Engineering and art aren’t that different. Tell me about that.

MAYER: That’s my view, anyway. I mean, I love bright, happy, shiny things. So the artists that I really admire are like Anish Kapoor or Jeff Koons. When you look at some of the most interesting art of the day, you look at what it takes to craft these incredibly enormous, heavy sculptures. [It takes a lot of practical thinking] to figure out how you have to polish them and the processes you need to go through to get that visual effect.

You know, it’s really engineering.

And at the same time, when you [see] a really amazing piece of technology that’s well-engineered you know people will have thought a lot about how technology needs to be used to really bring that to the forefront.

And that was something that we always tried to do at Google and that we try to do today at Yahoo. [We] basically say, “OK, well wait – all this technology can be incredibly complicated, but doesn’t necessarily need to present itself as being incredibly complicated and incredibly engineered.”

There is an element of simplicity, of just being able to say, “Yes, I’m sure it’s very complicated behind-the-scenes, but to me, it’s just a search box; or to me, it’s just a digest of today’s news; to me, it’s just the weather, but however technical the weather is, it can also be [conveyed through] a beautiful photograph from Flickr. Really pulling together that notion that you can actually pull engineering, information and artistry all together to create something that’s really beautiful and isn’t just useful [but] also has an emotional experience.

BENIOFF: Are you looking for that emotional experience when you’re looking at these new products these engineers are bringing in to review with you? Is that what you’re looking for? The emotional experience inside yourself? Or how are you bringing that forward?

Continued on page 40

D E C E M B E R 2014/J A N UA RY 2015

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THE

TECH Representatives from the tech industry and city government discuss changing neighborhoods, affordable housing and integrating tech into our community. Excerpted from “The Tech Boom: Good or Bad for San Francisco?” October 15, 2014.

JANE KIM

MIKKEL SVANE

San Francisco Supervisor

CEO and Founder, Zendesk

ART AGNOS

JOHN DIAZ

Former Mayor, San Francisco

Editorial Page Editor, San Francisco Chronicle – Moderator

JOHN DIAZ: Why do you think this phenomenal tech boom has happened here in San Francisco? There are so many areas of the world where it could have happened.

Why San Francisco?

MIKKEL SVANE: There’s a great tradition for building technology here, there’s a great talent mass, and there’s a great ecosystem

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here for building tech startups. Over the last five years, we’ve seen the user experience, the user design – how we interact with things – become more and more important in how we think about technology. So we have seen more and more this center of technology move to the city, where you have the millennials who are seeking inspiration outside of their comfort zone. They’re seeking inspiration from the arts, and from culture, and from nature, to build a new way of interacting with things. I think that’s one of the reasons that you’re seeing this technology boom move from further down the peninsula to San Francisco.

DIAZ: But it’s all happened so rapidly.

Jane Kim, you and I were talking before the program about [how] it was only a few

BOOM years ago when you were first elected that the big watchword was jobs: How do we create jobs? How do we get this knowledge economy going in San Francisco?

JANE KIM: [Compared to] campaigning four years ago, campaigning this year is a tremendous switch in terms of what we hear from our residents about their top priorities and top concerns. In 2010, absolutely, it was jobs. Four years later, it’s that there’s too much tech in our city now, there’s too much construction.

In fact, one of the top complaints I get in my emails is of construction noise throughout my district and of the congestion [construction] causes. And you know, it’s been a tremendous switch. I represent District 6 [neighborhoods including the

Tenderloin, SoMa, Civic Center and South Beach] – I represent the poorest residents of San Francisco. But as of this year, I now also represent the wealthiest zip code, so there’s a tremendous spectrum in the district, and it’s incredibly dynamic.

The first legislation that my office authored was the Mid-Market tax exclusion, [under] which Zendesk was the first company to move to Mid-Market. It was a tremendously narrowly tailored tax exclusion that really only impacted three buildings on Market Street. As much as I’d like to credit that legislation with all of our economic success, I think it’s really hard to say that that legislation alone did that. We were already in an upswing; it was a nice bookmark.

DIAZ: Mikkel, how much did that tax

break influence Zendesk’s decision to move to Mid-Market?

SVANE: It was definitely part of our decision process. It definitely sweetened the deal.

But we never would have moved anywhere just because of a tax deal. I think more importantly it triggered a process in our company where we became much more aware of our responsibility to be a part of the neighborhood we were in, because you can’t live and work in the Tenderloin without relating to the people right outside of your door. It triggered a process for us where we started to think much more about our responsibility as a neighbor, in the neighborhood and in San Francisco, and how we could be good neighbors, and have open doors and have a policy for having our employees participate

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PhotosDby EC Andreas E M BPraefcke E R 2014/J (skyline);AU.S. N UA Army/Navy RY 2015 (mushroom cloud); THEDmitry COMMO G, Matthew N WE Woitunski AL TH(homeless)

and be a part of the neighborhood.

And I think that’s good for the neighborhood, but I think it’s first and foremost very, very good for us, because it makes our employees smarter, it makes us think more holistically about what we do, and it gives us context for our work and for the kind of change we try to build.

KIM: It’s not just that Mikkel is sitting next to me, but Zendesk is the poster child for the tech industry and what they should be doing in San Francisco. When we did the Mid-Market tax exclusion, at the last minute we inserted a small piece of legislation that mandates a community benefits agreement if your payroll tax is over a million dollars.

And when we put it in, we knew that it didn’t have a lot of teeth. We weren’t sure how much we were going to get out of it.

But we knew we were forcing companies to engage in real dialogue with our actual residents in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market and South of Market. And we were so lucky that Zendesk went first.

They were a smaller company, granted, when they started, but they went straight into the community. When you develop real, meaningful relationships with our residents, they can tell – you cannot fake that. So when I’m at Tenderloin Elementary School and I’m looking at their reading partners program, their director tells me, “Well, we have Zendesk volunteers here every week, tutoring our kids.” I go to St. Anthony’s, Zendesk is there every week; I go to Glide, Zendesk is there every week.

That’s the type of leadership I want to see from this growing economy.

I don’t blame tech for the evictions and growing prices. They aren’t necessarily the property owners; they aren’t evicting our senior citizens out of San Francisco. That being said, though, tech does pay their workers more, and those workers are out in the market and they’re competing with all the rest of our residents. Without laying blame, you can say that tech can be accountable for being good neighbors. And frankly I’ve seen a lack of leadership from a lot of our other companies that are here. It’s the authentic, meaningful relationships [that matter]. You cannot fake that and being in the community on a weekly basis matters.

The one thing I will say about San Franciscans, and the district that I represent, – when you talk to people, they actually

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largely want the same things. They want more parks to recreate in; people actually support more affordable housing – that is a value that San Franciscans support. They want better schools; they want their neighborhoods to be safer; and I think progressive politics is going to continue to have a future in San Francisco.

DIAZ: Art Agnos, it was not all that long ago, in the early 1990s, when you were mayor of San Francisco. Could you ever have envisioned that this kind of change would happen as dramatically? We had a taste of it in the late 1990s with the dot-com boom, but that quickly vaporized – what do you make of all of this?

ART AGNOS: You’re absolutely right: we

“T ech can be accountable for being good neighbors… being in the community on a week ly basis matters. ” –Jane Kim did have a taste of it in the dot-com boom, and it quickly faded. And we realized then that we need balance in this city.

Clearly the tech boom has been extremely important to our city. I support it, but I think the stampede that you are seeing today has to be managed in a much different way than five years ago, when Mikkel’s organization came here. That was really the low-hanging fruit. We needed it; it made a difference.

But today, we’re seeing the impact, of this high-tech stampede in a lot of parts of the city that we worry about, not only residential [concerns], with the high costs of housing and the impact on people who have been living here a while. [This influx also affects] our diversity and our commercial [life.] Small business is feeling the same kind of threat that this extremely expensive, high-powered, well-connected industry is pursuing in neighborhoods we never dreamed would ever be the subject or the target of that kind of development.

DIAZ: Jane Kim, how does this play out in your district? Do you think City Hall is doing enough to respond to the concerns

DEC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

that some of your constituents have?

KIM: I think we as policy makers are accountable for any outcomes that our policies have, and so with the success of the city we’ve also seen evictions go up 177 percent in San Francisco. The vast majority of those evictions are of senior citizens who have lived in their homes for over 10 years, and we’ve also found that the vast majority of these evictors are actually just a small handful of companies, 7 to 10 companies, that are buying up real estate from old time property owners and are evicting tenants within 9 months of ownership.

Housing affordability is absolutely the issue of the year. If you make $81,550 a year or less, you qualify for affordable housing under federal guidelines here in San Francisco. Sixty percent of our residents are eligible for affordable housing. In a city where the median housing selling price is now becoming a million dollars, we as policy makers do have to think about what it means to build affordability.

How can we build more affordable housing? I do think that supply is part of the answer; I don’t think it’s the only answer. I think if we just let supply go the way we see in San Francisco, we’re just going to build luxury housing because that demand is really large. And so what can we do to build more affordable housing in a city where now affordable housing can cost up to $500,000 a unit to build? We have to build more revenue. It’s either going to be a bond [or] it’s looking at luxury tax on first sale. It’s looking at both greater commitments from our private developers that are doing very well in our city and of course from our city too.

DIAZ: Art Agnos, what do you think can be done? It really does come to a basic issue of supply and demand in this city.

AGNOS: No, it doesn’t. Because you see, supply in this city means one thing: highpriced, expensive, luxury condominiums for rich people. It doesn’t mean anything for working-class people, for middle-class people, much less poor people who are almost forgotten in all these discussions.

Because this land – the land that creates the supply – is so limited, that the suppliers can just focus on one end of the market, the high end, and forget the rest of it.

The city makes a paltry effort in saying 12 percent on site has to be for affordable housing. But most of them, because of a

Photo by Sonya Abrams

loophole, have the option of paying to get out of that. They make a contribution to the mayor’s affordable housing fund in lieu of building on site, because they can make so much more money on site. So what we’re going to have to do is to be more aggressive in demanding [that] a larger share of the housing that’s proposed in this city be for affordable housing. We’re going to have to manage this city like a precious place, every square inch.

KIM: I’ll give a quick example. We have a development on 181 Fremont [on which] we required 35 percent affordable housing on site. They had to do 11 units, below market rate units, on site. When they first came to me they agreed to it and then, of course, they sold it to another developer, and [the new developer] came to me and said, “We don’t want to do these 11 units on site. Those 11 units are way too valuable for us and are going to have amazing views.”

And so I [told them] we always prefer on site. And they responded [that their] home owner association fees were probably going to be around $4,000 a month. And that wasn’t an extraordinary retort to make, because we have seen extraordinary HOA fees for our below market rate home owners throughout SOMA, and it’s a challenge because [affordable housing residents] can afford their mortgage, but they can’t afford their mortgage and their HOA fees. If they had done their off site [contribution] in

lieu of the fee that Art had mentioned, they would have paid the city only $5.4 million for those 11 units, but because they were required by the state to build on site, we were able to negotiate $13.85 million for those 11 units.

DIAZ: What can be done to develop local talent in San Francisco so that young people here get some of these jobs? Can some of the things that Jane’s been talking about that Zendesk’s been doing, can it be brought to a scale that can really make a difference for residents who are here in San Francisco schools?

SVANE: The Tenderloin has [a very] dense population of families, and schools in the neighborhood are really, really good. A lot of us tech companies work with different programs that can help people learn to code quickly and we’re working with the schools and kids to bring them in. That’s how I got inspiration when I started to work on my little computer. It’s from the neighborhood around you, from the people you meet, and so on. And I think we can be part of the neighborhood, we can really influence a lot of people, by giving them access.

DIAZ: We’ve seen the articles recently on the lack of diversity in these companies. And I particularly would like to address the issue of girls and women in the tech pipeline.

SVANE: I think that’s one of the best things about San Francisco: it has so much diversity, and so bringing that into your company,

building a diverse culture with very different people makes a smarter company, makes a greater company. Companies realize that you cannot serve a diverse market without being a diverse company yourself.

KIM: We absolutely need to retool how we teach science and math in our classrooms.

The way it’s taught right now, a lot of our students don’t get how it’s relevant or even remotely interesting and what it leads to in the end. So we have to revamp how we teach math and science.

We have to have more employment training programs, and I think that tech companies really need to do more internships. One of the things that I think is most frustrating is that we haven’t been seeing enough hiring in our neighborhoods and communities, whether it’s entry-level jobs, admin or even doing things like running a training program just to teach people systems administration. Every engineer needs someone to plug in their computer and get it to start, and that’s the kind of entry-level work [for which] we can develop employment training programs and hire folks in our neighborhoods.

SVANE: Sitting here I feel great comfort in that there are a lot of people that take great care of San Francisco. There [are] a lot of people who really want the best for San Francisco. But I also think that we have to embrace change. San Francisco has seen so much change over the years.

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and be a part of the neighborhood.

And I think that’s good for the neighborhood, but I think it’s first and foremost very, very good for us, because it makes our employees smarter, it makes us think more holistically about what we do, and it gives us context for our work and for the kind of change we try to build.

KIM: It’s not just that Mikkel is sitting next to me, but Zendesk is the poster child for the tech industry and what they should be doing in San Francisco. When we did the Mid-Market tax exclusion, at the last minute we inserted a small piece of legislation that mandates a community benefits agreement if your payroll tax is over a million dollars.

And when we put it in, we knew that it didn’t have a lot of teeth. We weren’t sure how much we were going to get out of it.

But we knew we were forcing companies to engage in real dialogue with our actual residents in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market and South of Market. And we were so lucky that Zendesk went first.

They were a smaller company, granted, when they started, but they went straight into the community. When you develop real, meaningful relationships with our residents, they can tell – you cannot fake that. So when I’m at Tenderloin Elementary School and I’m looking at their reading partners program, their director tells me, “Well, we have Zendesk volunteers here every week, tutoring our kids.” I go to St. Anthony’s, Zendesk is there every week; I go to Glide, Zendesk is there every week.

That’s the type of leadership I want to see from this growing economy.

I don’t blame tech for the evictions and growing prices. They aren’t necessarily the property owners; they aren’t evicting our senior citizens out of San Francisco. That being said, though, tech does pay their workers more, and those workers are out in the market and they’re competing with all the rest of our residents. Without laying blame, you can say that tech can be accountable for being good neighbors. And frankly I’ve seen a lack of leadership from a lot of our other companies that are here. It’s the authentic, meaningful relationships [that matter]. You cannot fake that and being in the community on a weekly basis matters.

The one thing I will say about San Franciscans, and the district that I represent, – when you talk to people, they actually

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largely want the same things. They want more parks to recreate in; people actually support more affordable housing – that is a value that San Franciscans support. They want better schools; they want their neighborhoods to be safer; and I think progressive politics is going to continue to have a future in San Francisco.

DIAZ: Art Agnos, it was not all that long ago, in the early 1990s, when you were mayor of San Francisco. Could you ever have envisioned that this kind of change would happen as dramatically? We had a taste of it in the late 1990s with the dot-com boom, but that quickly vaporized – what do you make of all of this?

ART AGNOS: You’re absolutely right: we

“T ech can be accountable for being good neighbors… being in the community on a week ly basis matters. ” –Jane Kim did have a taste of it in the dot-com boom, and it quickly faded. And we realized then that we need balance in this city.

Clearly the tech boom has been extremely important to our city. I support it, but I think the stampede that you are seeing today has to be managed in a much different way than five years ago, when Mikkel’s organization came here. That was really the low-hanging fruit. We needed it; it made a difference.

But today, we’re seeing the impact, of this high-tech stampede in a lot of parts of the city that we worry about, not only residential [concerns], with the high costs of housing and the impact on people who have been living here a while. [This influx also affects] our diversity and our commercial [life.] Small business is feeling the same kind of threat that this extremely expensive, high-powered, well-connected industry is pursuing in neighborhoods we never dreamed would ever be the subject or the target of that kind of development.

DIAZ: Jane Kim, how does this play out in your district? Do you think City Hall is doing enough to respond to the concerns

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that some of your constituents have?

KIM: I think we as policy makers are accountable for any outcomes that our policies have, and so with the success of the city we’ve also seen evictions go up 177 percent in San Francisco. The vast majority of those evictions are of senior citizens who have lived in their homes for over 10 years, and we’ve also found that the vast majority of these evictors are actually just a small handful of companies, 7 to 10 companies, that are buying up real estate from old time property owners and are evicting tenants within 9 months of ownership.

Housing affordability is absolutely the issue of the year. If you make $81,550 a year or less, you qualify for affordable housing under federal guidelines here in San Francisco. Sixty percent of our residents are eligible for affordable housing. In a city where the median housing selling price is now becoming a million dollars, we as policy makers do have to think about what it means to build affordability.

How can we build more affordable housing? I do think that supply is part of the answer; I don’t think it’s the only answer. I think if we just let supply go the way we see in San Francisco, we’re just going to build luxury housing because that demand is really large. And so what can we do to build more affordable housing in a city where now affordable housing can cost up to $500,000 a unit to build? We have to build more revenue. It’s either going to be a bond [or] it’s looking at luxury tax on first sale. It’s looking at both greater commitments from our private developers that are doing very well in our city and of course from our city too.

DIAZ: Art Agnos, what do you think can be done? It really does come to a basic issue of supply and demand in this city.

AGNOS: No, it doesn’t. Because you see, supply in this city means one thing: highpriced, expensive, luxury condominiums for rich people. It doesn’t mean anything for working-class people, for middle-class people, much less poor people who are almost forgotten in all these discussions.

Because this land – the land that creates the supply – is so limited, that the suppliers can just focus on one end of the market, the high end, and forget the rest of it.

The city makes a paltry effort in saying 12 percent on site has to be for affordable housing. But most of them, because of a

Photo by Sonya Abrams

loophole, have the option of paying to get out of that. They make a contribution to the mayor’s affordable housing fund in lieu of building on site, because they can make so much more money on site. So what we’re going to have to do is to be more aggressive in demanding [that] a larger share of the housing that’s proposed in this city be for affordable housing. We’re going to have to manage this city like a precious place, every square inch.

KIM: I’ll give a quick example. We have a development on 181 Fremont [on which] we required 35 percent affordable housing on site. They had to do 11 units, below market rate units, on site. When they first came to me they agreed to it and then, of course, they sold it to another developer, and [the new developer] came to me and said, “We don’t want to do these 11 units on site. Those 11 units are way too valuable for us and are going to have amazing views.”

And so I [told them] we always prefer on site. And they responded [that their] home owner association fees were probably going to be around $4,000 a month. And that wasn’t an extraordinary retort to make, because we have seen extraordinary HOA fees for our below market rate home owners throughout SOMA, and it’s a challenge because [affordable housing residents] can afford their mortgage, but they can’t afford their mortgage and their HOA fees. If they had done their off site [contribution] in

lieu of the fee that Art had mentioned, they would have paid the city only $5.4 million for those 11 units, but because they were required by the state to build on site, we were able to negotiate $13.85 million for those 11 units.

DIAZ: What can be done to develop local talent in San Francisco so that young people here get some of these jobs? Can some of the things that Jane’s been talking about that Zendesk’s been doing, can it be brought to a scale that can really make a difference for residents who are here in San Francisco schools?

SVANE: The Tenderloin has [a very] dense population of families, and schools in the neighborhood are really, really good. A lot of us tech companies work with different programs that can help people learn to code quickly and we’re working with the schools and kids to bring them in. That’s how I got inspiration when I started to work on my little computer. It’s from the neighborhood around you, from the people you meet, and so on. And I think we can be part of the neighborhood, we can really influence a lot of people, by giving them access.

DIAZ: We’ve seen the articles recently on the lack of diversity in these companies. And I particularly would like to address the issue of girls and women in the tech pipeline.

SVANE: I think that’s one of the best things about San Francisco: it has so much diversity, and so bringing that into your company,

building a diverse culture with very different people makes a smarter company, makes a greater company. Companies realize that you cannot serve a diverse market without being a diverse company yourself.

KIM: We absolutely need to retool how we teach science and math in our classrooms.

The way it’s taught right now, a lot of our students don’t get how it’s relevant or even remotely interesting and what it leads to in the end. So we have to revamp how we teach math and science.

We have to have more employment training programs, and I think that tech companies really need to do more internships. One of the things that I think is most frustrating is that we haven’t been seeing enough hiring in our neighborhoods and communities, whether it’s entry-level jobs, admin or even doing things like running a training program just to teach people systems administration. Every engineer needs someone to plug in their computer and get it to start, and that’s the kind of entry-level work [for which] we can develop employment training programs and hire folks in our neighborhoods.

SVANE: Sitting here I feel great comfort in that there are a lot of people that take great care of San Francisco. There [are] a lot of people who really want the best for San Francisco. But I also think that we have to embrace change. San Francisco has seen so much change over the years.

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The science writer applies evolutionar y psychology to the question of why so much writing is so bad and how we might make it better.

Excerpted from “Steven Pinker,” October 8, 2014.

STEVEN PINKER Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; Author, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

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Photo by Russell Edwards

ad writing is a deliberate choice. Bureaucrats insist on gibberish to evade responsibility; pseudointellectuals try to bamboozle their readers with highfalutin gobbledygook, making up for the fact that they have nothing to say. Well, I don’t doubt that the bamboozlement theory is true for some writers some of the time, but in my experience it doesn’t ring true. Good people can write bad prose. I know many scientists and scholars who do groundbreaking research on important topics, who have nothing to hide and no reason to impress. Still, their writing stinks.

The second most popular theory is that it is digital media that is ruining language.

Google is making us stupid. The digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future. Well, if the “dumbest generation” theory were true, then that would have an obvious implication, namely that it was all better before the digital age, before the rise of smart phones and Twitter and emailing, say, in the 1980s. Now, many of you remember what life was like back in the 1980s. Wasn’t it great back then, when teenagers spoke in articulate paragraphs?

And bureaucrats wrote in plain language?

And every academic article was a masterpiece in the art of the essay?

Of course, bad writing has burdened people in every generation, and my favorite theory comes from an observation from Charles Darwin, who wrote, “man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; while no

child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew or write.” Speech is instinctive, but writing is, and always has been, hard. The readers are unknown, invisible, inscrutable.

They exist only in the writer’s imagination.

They can’t react if the prose is unclear, or break in and ask for clarification. And so writing, above all, is an act of pretense, and writing is an act of craftsmanship.

Writing is an unnatural act, and good style, above all, requires a coherent mental model of the communication scenario: how does the writer imagine his relation to the reader, and what is the writer trying to accomplish? My favorite theory of this understanding of the writing situation comes from a book called Clear and Simple as the Truth by a pair of English scholars, Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner. They call this model classic style.

In classic style, prose is a window onto the world. The writer has seen something in the world and he positions the reader so she can see it with her own eyes. The reader and writer are equals; the goal is to help the reader see objective reality, and the style is conversation.

Classic prose keeps up the illusion that the reader is seeing the world rather than just listening to verbiage. The problem with the kind of writer who just slings around one cliché after another is that he either forces the reader to turn off her visual brain, or if she goes through the effort of treating his words seriously, she will inevitably trip over the ludicrous imagery that a writer of clichés will get himself into.

Classic prose narrates ongoing events; we see agents performing actions that affect objects. Non-classic prose “thingifys” events and then refers to the thing using a dangerous tool of English grammar called nominalization, making something into a noun. Nominalization will take a perfectly spry verb and entomb it with a suffix to turn it into a noun, so instead of competing, you engage in competition; instead of organizing something, you bring about the organization of it.

For many years, portable generators would carry the following warning language: “Mild exposure to CO2 can result in accumulated damage over time. Extreme exposure to CO 2 may rapidly be fatal without producing significant warning symptoms.” And as a result, hundreds of

Americans would asphyxiate themselves and their families by running portable generators indoors, until they changed the wording to read: “Using a generator indoors can kill you in minutes.” So classic prose can be a matter of life and death.

Literally.

Why is it so hard for writers to use the resources of English to convey ideas effectively? The best explanation, I think, is a psychological phenomenon called the curse of knowledge: the fact that when you know something, it is extraordinarily hard to imagine what it is like for someone not to know it. If an adult knows a word, they assume that everyone knows it. If they know a fact, they assume that everyone else knows it. I believe that the curse of knowledge is the chief contributor to opaque writing. It simply doesn’t occur to

“S peech is instinctive, but writing is, and always has been, hard...an act of craftsmanship.” the writer that the readers haven’t learned the jargon, haven’t learned the intermediate steps [that] seemed too obvious to mention and can’t visualize a scene currently in the writer’s mind’s eye that seems as clear as day. The writer doesn’t bother to explain the jargon or spell out the logic or supply the concrete details, even when writing for professional peers.

Finally, how should we think about correct usage—about what is correct, incorrect, right, wrong? It’s a set of issues that arouses more interest than all of the other components of writing put together.

Some usages are clearly wrong. When Cookie Monster says, “Me want cookie,” the reason that even a four-year-old child will laugh is that the child knows that Cookie Monster has made a grammatical error. But other alleged errors of grammar are not so clear. Here we see a Democratic president, Bill Clinton who, when he was running for office in 1992, had as one of his campaign slogans “Give Al Gore and I a chance to bring America back.” Many purists would claim that this is a grammatical error—it should be “Al Gore and

me.” “To boldly go where no man has gone before”—there are English teachers who would say that Captain Kirk made an error, the so-called split infinitive.

These contested usages have given rise to what journalists sometimes call the “language war” between the “prescriptivists” and the “descriptivists.” According to this story, prescriptivists are those who prescribe to how people ought to speak and write, according to whom the rules of usage are objectively correct. To obey them is to uphold standards of excellence; to flout them is to dumb down literate culture, degrade the language and hasten the decline of civilization. On the other side, we have the descriptivists, who describe how people do speak, according to whom rules of usage are just the secret handshake of the ruling class. Although the language war is a perennial favorite of journalists looking for a column in a can, I think there are reasons to believe that it is a pseudo-controversy.

Language changes; new words come in; they are inevitably perceived as jargon, slang, neologisms. Some of them earn their keep and get a toehold in the language – the speakers who objected to them die; they’re replaced by their children, who wonder what all the fuss was about.

So how do you distinguish the legitimate rules of usage from the bogus ones?

The answer is unbelievably simple: look them up. If you go to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, what it will say is, “it’s all right to split an infinitive in the interest of clarity.” Since clarity is the usual reason for splitting, this advice means merely that you can split them whenever you want to! Modern dictionaries and style manuals do not ratify pet peeves, or grammatical folklore, or bogus rules, because their advice is based on evidence and on English as it is actually used by careful and exemplary writers. I do think it is important for a writer to know what the rules are and to follow them, but they’re the least important part of good writing. They pale in significance behind classic style, coherent ordering of ideals and overcoming the curse of knowledge, to say nothing of factual diligence and coherent content, ideas and arguments. And even the most irksome errors are not signs of the decline of language, to say nothing of civilization.

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Photo by Kevin Foley, The Smiley Group Inc.

TAVIS SMILEY Rating President Obama on the MLK scale. Excerpted from “Tavis Smiley,” September 24, 2014.

TAVIS SMILEY Public TV and Radio Host; Author, Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year In conversation with

JUDGE LADORIS H. CORDELL RET Independent Police Auditor, City of San Jose LADORIS H. CORDELL: If Dr. King were an advisor to President Obama, what would he advise Obama to do about the Middle East, immigration reform, gay rights and policing in America?

TAVIS SMILEY: I think I can answer all with one broad response, which is to say that if King were here, he would be continually talking about the same triple threat he was talking about when he died: racism, poverty and militarism. If King were here during the Obama era, he would have campaigned for Barack Obama. He would have voted for Barack Obama. Then, after the celebration, he would have become his chief critic.

Why do I say this? The closest that King got to seeing a black president in his lifetime was seeing the first black mayor of a major American city elected: Carl Stokes in Cleveland. King went to Cleveland many times, and he campaigned hard for Stokes, and Stokes ended up winning.

The night that Carl Stokes won, he was at that same Sheraton where King stayed

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in Cleveland. Results were coming in and he went down the hallway to say hello to Dr. King. He said to Dr. King, “Thank you for doing everything you’ve done. I couldn’t have done this tonight without you. Please stay close, because if I get on the podium tonight and I win, I want to bring you on the podium with me to publicly acknowledge you and to thank you. I want you to stand on that podium with me.”

Dr. King is still waiting for that call. Carl Stokes won that night, but when he got on that podium, like everybody else, he had no interest in being anywhere near Dr. King.

King was so disregarded in the last year of his life that nobody wanted to stand next to him. King was crushed. Carl Stokes didn’t even want to stand next to Dr. King.

So King would have campaigned for Obama, voted for him and then become his chief critic, just like he was with Carl Stokes.

I’ve often wondered what that bust of Dr. King in the Oval Office must be whispering to President Obama late at night when he’s making his war plans. Barack Obama

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has a drone program on steroids. He has killed more innocent women and children than George [W.] Bush did. [King would] have a strong critique of Barack Obama and [of ] the American empire and its growing military-industrial complex, which had been growing long before Obama got to the White House.

On poverty, it took Barack Obama six years as president to give a major address on poverty and income inequality. When he got there, he said the right thing: Income equality and poverty are the defining issues of our time. Now he’s right about that, but did it take him six years to figure that out?

You think Dr. King would have stayed silent for six years?

And on race, I understand the constraints the president has; he’s had a headwind of obstructionism since day one. I’m very sensitive to that. But on the issue of race, Ferguson for him was an epic fail. He missed a major moment. He was advised not to go there so as not to polarize – this is not about polarizing; he is the president of the United States! You have an American city on fire.

You have an American city that is being militarized, and you are afraid to speak out?

You are afraid to show up? My greatest fear for Obama seven years ago is starting to be realized. I didn’t want him to end up being a garden-variety politician; I wanted him to be a statesman. I didn’t want him to just be a transactional president; I wanted him to be a transformational president. And I think most of us who supported him and voted for him are just starting to feel like he hasn’t measured up.

A selection of voices responds to the Michael Brown case in Ferguson. Excerpted from “Ferguson, the Bay Area and Beyond: A Conversation About Race and Justice,” October 20, 2014.

MICHAEL MCBRIDE (Lead Pastor of The Way Christian Center in Berkeley, and Director of Urban Strategies for PICO National Network): What was most profound to me, when I got [to Ferguson], was that I saw young people outside, I saw elderly people outside, I saw folks in wheelchairs, and they were being brutalized by the police. They were crying out for help, and nobody was helping.

We have some relationships through our work with a number of folks at the federal level, and after a number of our team got tear-gassed, I said, “Surely if we call the White House, if we call the attorney general, if we call all our homies, they would answer.” Nobody helped.

What’s the point of being progressive if you’re not going to help people when they need you at their deepest, deepest moment?

A lot of people may not know a whole lot about the context of what Ferguson and St. Louis [are]. What is the context, the background? Why do you think the history of Ferguson and St. Louis caused such a reaction at the death of Mike Brown?

TOREY RUSSELL (Ferguson Activist and Organizer for Millennial Activists United): It’s the same place where Dred Scott had to figure out – or the country had to figure out – Was he a citizen? Was he property? Did he have rights, and could the system uphold them? We’re 150 years past that and we still don’t have an answer.

MCBRIDE: Brother Tef, you got there on the ground real quick. Tell us all the kinds of things that led and fed the outrage from the community. They left Brother Mike’s body out there – tell us the kind of things that you saw with your own eyes: the response from the police, the way people were agitated by what had just happened.

TEF POE (Ferguson Activist and Organizer for Hands Up United, and Hip Hop Artist): When I got to the scene, I saw every police jurisdiction in the city of St. Louis in the area – and it’s not that big of an area. On TV it looks like a massive area, but it’s really only a few

blocks. I mean, I had never seen anything like it. [There were] cop cars blocking traffic. We couldn’t enter the community in the normal route; you had to know the back routes to get in. When I got there, people were crowded around the area where Mike Brown had just been murdered and they didn’t know what to do. They were yelling, crying. I saw his blood in the middle of the street with my own eyes; I saw a puddle of his own blood. And I think about that every day. That’s the very moment that dictated what I would do after that.

MCBRIDE: You’re from St. Louis, you’ve engaged in a lot of different campaigns and organizing. What is making you so engaged and involved in the people of Ferguson? Why do you think people won’t, as some folks say, “just go back in the house?”

POE: Because it’s time. It’s year after year of oppression, and you get put into a corner; eventually you just snap and you fight back.

You don’t know how you’re going to fight back, but you know you have to fight back or it’s the end of the world as you know it. And I think for the young people in St. Louis, we’re delivering a message to the world that says, “No more normal.”

VAN JONES (CNN Contributor): So Michelle, I have to ask the tough questions of you.

There are people who are listening on the radio right now, and they’re saying, “Look – this is a big overreaction. Most police are good. Something bad may have happened; something bad may not have happened. I just don’t get it. Why do people jump to the conclusion that something is wrong with the system? The system works. We have a process we’re going through.

These allegations that there is something racist about America’s system just seem overblown.”

What would you say to them?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER (Civil Rights Attorney and Social Justice Advocate, and Author of The New Jim Crow): I’d say, “You haven’t been paying attention.”

We’re all gathered here tonight not so much because Michael Brown was shot dead, shot

down, but because the people of Ferguson stood up, and because young people decided that they had had enough and took to the streets and stayed there, day after day after day, and organized a movement out of nothing. It’s critical that we recognize that, because police killings of black men [are] nothing new. It has been happening for a long, long time in this country, and the roots of police violence, of course, can be traced back to the days of slavery.

Today in the era of Obama, the rate of police killings of black Americans is nearly the same as the rate of lynchings in the Jim Crow era. About twice a week, or every three or four days, an African-American man has been killed by a white police officer. There are many differences between the violence of today and the violence of the past, but we ignore the parallels at our own peril. The killing of Michael Brown is symbolic and reflective of a much larger system of racial and social control in America, just as the lynchings of the Jim Crow era were not some isolated problem to be solved, but reflective of a much larger attitude about whose life mattered and whose life didn’t.

JONES: [John Burris], you are someone who has sued police departments; you’ve testified in cases; you’re someone who knows your way around these issues. What strikes you about this particular case? And why do you think it struck such a chord?

JOHN BURRIS (Civil Rights Attorney): I think this case struck a major, major chord because of the sense of hopelessness and frustration that that community was feeling toward the police, [because] they were being stopped, detained, arrested [and] put in the criminal justice system with no real sense of fairness about it. This case was sort of symbolic and [an] explosion took place in the community.

To be truthful, there’s an implicit racial bias that exists within the criminal justice system.

JONES: Well, how can you say that? You say that as if it’s self-evident.

BURRIS: Look at the enforcement of the drug laws in this state, in this country. When

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blacks, Hispanics and whites use marijuana at the same rate – it’s been proven through all the data that’s out there – blacks are six times more likely to be arrested for those offenses. The implication of that is that they’re again placed in the criminal justice system, with all of the negative ramifications that go with that. [It] essentially means, going back to what Michelle wrote in The New Jim Crow, that people have these badges of slavery that they cannot in fact overcome. That is at the root of the frustration that people [exhibit], not only in Ferguson, but in other cities.

This case is symbolic and representative of what goes on throughout the United States.

We have had three police shootings of unarmed men in the Bay Area since Ferguson. Only one of those [has] received any attention.

JONES: Let me push back on some of this stuff. That all sounds great, but what do you say to the person who says, “What about the killings that are happening where young black men are killing young black men?” Help me understand, if I’m listening to you, John Burris, if I’m listening to you, Michelle Alexander.

Why are you so exercised by these kinds of killings, and yet we are not having the conversation, at least tonight, about the other killings?

BURRIS: We’re not having it tonight, but we should be having it. There’s no doubt that we should all be upset about what has happened to young African-American men, we should obviously be upset about it.

JONES: And in your mind, should that trump our concern about the police?

BURRIS: Absolutely not. One is the state, one is the government, and its impact on our lives is far more reaching than anything else because it determines how we are going to be treated, the kind of benefits we’re going to get or lack thereof and whether or not a police officer is going to be held accountable in the same way anyone else is when they in fact take a person’s life unjustifiably.

ALEXANDER: Absolutely. I think it’s reasonable for us to hold police officers to a higher standard than a gang member who is finding it difficult to control his rage after something has happened to his crew. We should hold law enforcement to a higher standard, but beyond that, I think what so many people fail to grasp is that it is the same punitive mindset and the casual disregard for the well-being and lives of poor people of color that is manifested by

“I shouldn’t have to validate my existence by letting people k n ow t h a t I ’m e d u c a t e d, because no piece of paper given to me ... will save my life.”

–Brittany Ferrell Michael Brown’s killing [that] is the reason why we have jobless, segregated communities with high crime rates. It is the same mentality that has allowed us to quintuple the nation’s prison population in a 30-year period while divesting from education, pulling out of inner-city communities, moving jobs overseas and leaving islands of poverty surrounded by great wealth and opportunity; it’s the same mentality that says those people, those lives don’t matter, can be left behind, locked up and thrown away.

It’s that same mentality that allows a police officer to say, “What the hell, I’m going to pull the trigger.”

BURRIS: One thing that is most disturbing is the demonization of a black person’s life. In your everyday lives, in every community, when a young black person is killed by the cops, the cop does not know that person’s record. But the media immediately gives the record, because

the police [did] it, and that’s because they do not want you to care about this black life. They do not want you to have any empathy for that person, and at the end of the day, it allows for the cover up to take place.

JONES: Michelle, the local prosecutor doesn’t seem to be taking [the case] seriously. The Obama administration has at least made some noises. There’s a democratic [Missouri] governor, Governor Nixon, who could appoint a special prosecutor tomorrow morning. What do you think a civil rights movement approach would dictate that we do when we have a sitting Democratic governor who seems to be disinterested in this injustice?

ALEXANDER: We need to organize. We need to put a tremendous amount of pressure on all levels of the political system to acknowledge the dignity and humanity of Michael Brown and all those who have faced this kind of lethal, unjustified action by the police.

JONES: You’re a mother. Why are you doing this?

BRITTANY FERRELL (Ferguson Activist and Organizer for Millennial Activists United): I’m a single parent of a beautiful, little black girl. I do all of this because one day I was driving in the car with my daughter, and she asked me, “Mommy, what if the police shoot and kill me like they did Mike Brown?” That’s why I do what I do.

JONES: I don’t get it. Why don’t young black people just get jobs? You could just stay away from the police and get a job. Why not?

FERRELL: It’s more like: Why can’t young black people be themselves without uniformed thugs coming into their neighborhoods to harass them? We shouldn’t have to work so hard to have people see the humanity in us. I shouldn’t have to validate my existence by letting people know that I’m educated, because at the end of the day, no piece of paper given to me by a predominantly white institution will save my life.

Photo by Ed Ritger

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DEC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

Charles Blow Photo by Beowulf Sheehan

A New York Times columnist traces the effects of bullying, abuse and the growth of self.

Excerpted from “Charles Blow,” September 29, 2014.

CHARLES BLOW Visual Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times; Author, Fire Shut Up in My Bones In conversation with

IAN F. HANEYLÓPEZ Professor, UC Berkeley; Author, Dog Whistle Politics IAN HANEY-LÓPEZ: The narrative of [your] book starts with a traumatic event, a tragic event that happened to you when you were seven. Can you tell us about that?

CHARLES BLOW: The event is an instance of childhood sexual abuse, and it happened when I was seven years old. The abuser was an older cousin of mine – he would’ve been a young teenager at the time. This was during the summer and back then, in the rural South, people used to come visit all the time; you’d send your kids and I’d send my kids.

So he came to visit, and I was feeling very alone at the time. My parents had recently separated.

When they were together, we lived in

one neighborhood. That neighborhood, I found incredibly nurturing. I didn’t spend my days in daycare; I spent my days with elderly people and my great uncle was my babysitter. We would visit all his friends, and old people have a way of slowing time to a crawl. They were just beautiful, beautiful days. They called me Charles Baby because I wasn’t just my mom’s baby, I was everyone’s baby. Then, all of a sudden, my parents separated, and we moved not very far away at all, but it took me away from my village.

Now, I felt incredibly alone. I was already a quiet kid and I could feel myself becoming even more quiet. Then this cousin showed up and he made it clear that he wanted to play with me, which was strange to me because he was the age of my older brothers.

But also I was so starved for attention that I was like, “Anyone play with me.”

One night, I woke up in the middle of an abusive episode. I didn’t even call it abuse, which is what it was. I just called it an incredible betrayal, because I just could not fathom what it meant. At seven years old, you’re a pre-sexual being. You don’t even know what intimacy looks like other than a kind of hetero-normative idea of intimacy, which is that parents pair up and men and women kiss and hug. That’s about as much as I knew. What would make someone do this? Another sort of thing that kids do is ask, “Did I do something that would make this happen?”

It spiraled from there. Once I made clear that I didn’t like this and I didn’t want to

do this, he became my biggest bully. I think that it was designed to keep me from ever telling, and to destroy my credibility if I ever did tell. And in fact, I wouldn’t tell until I was an adult.

HANEY-LÓPEZ: He bullied you in a particular way.

BLOW: Yeah. It was homophobic bullying, because he knew that that was the nature of what he had done and [he wanted] to shift the onus of responsibility from him being the actor to me being the lure; to say, this is your nature and, therefore, you’re responsible for me coming to you in this way. It’s such an assault on the spirit of a child. I can think of it now, as a 44-year-old man, and I can contextualize it and logically figure out the design of what was happening. As a kid, you can’t do that. You’re not emotionally equipped, you’re not spiritually equipped, you’re not intellectually equipped, and so it had currency.

HANEY-LÓPEZ: There’s the betrayal, there’s the bullying, but in addition in your book you narrate a series of self-doubts that are deeply tied to this episode.

BLOW: I think what often happens with children is they braid together abuse, attraction and identity, because it is their first introduction to anything that would be intimate, or any idea of identity on that level.

It is very likely that children who will eventually identify as different are more likely to be abused in the first place. Abusers are diabolically gifted at picking up the buds of what will eventually become different.

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They’re incredibly gifted at seeing the child who isolates – either self-isolates or is isolated by the society in which they live, and they target the isolated, because childhood sexual abuse depends on silence. It depends on shadow and darkness.

As an adult I started to unbraid those two things; this person doesn’t have that much agency over me, they don’t have that much power over my fate. It is most likely that we are all predetermined, or at least predisposed, to like whatever we’re going to like anyway. And that, though there are negative effects of childhood sexual abuse to be sure, that identity is not a negative. You can embrace that and it doesn’t have to be some willful acquiescence of acceptance. It can be a full-hearted embrace and love of self that you can experience when you separate the two things.

HANEY-LÓPEZ: There’s a moment in which you were very far from that moral clarity, or where you had clarity of a different sort when you were 20. Tell us about that.

BLOW: I thought I wanted to be a politician. Not just any politician: I wanted to be the governor of Louisiana, specifically. The CIA became very interested in having me be an intern. I thought that it would be great on the resume of a kid trying to go to law school who wanted to be a politician. They bring you to Virginia to do the last phases.

One of the things they have you do is a lie detector test. I think the idea is that they don’t want you to be able to be blackmailed.

Whatever the truth is, you need to be able to say it out loud and not have any guilt about it. I wasn’t thinking anything about this lie detector test because I wasn’t going to lie.

The second question came, which was, “Have you ever had sex with a man?” The childhood sexual abuse immediately pops into my head, and I’m like “How do you answer this question?” It wasn’t insertive, so was it sex? We were both kids, so he wasn’t a man. It wasn’t consensual. I literally didn’t know what to say. So I just said, “No.” I could hear the machine scratching before I even got it out of my mouth. Now I was a sweaty pool of anxiety. As soon as it was over, I knew I’d bombed this thing, so I turned to the guy behind me and I just spilled my guts: everything that I’d never told anyone. I begged him to let me take the test again, which he agreed to do. Then I said yes to the question. It still said that

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I was lying. I realized in that moment that there was so much anxiety built up around this that I actually didn’t know what it was. I didn’t even know how to describe it. I didn’t even know what the truth of it was.

The gun incident [took place] right after that. I was back at school and realizing, “Okay, I can’t be a politician, because the government thinks I’m a liar.”

I was thinking that this childhood episode had literally robbed me of all my dreams. It robbed me of being able to naturally come into being as who I most naturally would have been as a child – that’s how I was

“I

believe that race is

a completely construc ted weirdness suppress

meant and

to

deny. ”

thinking about it – and now, it had robbed me of the one dream I’d had in the world.

I was very depressed about it. I was in my apartment; my mom called and said, “I have somebody here who wants to speak with you.” There was a pause on the phone and I heard somebody get on the phone and say, “Oh, how’s it going, boy?” I immediately registered that it was him. In my depression and anxiety everything exploded. My mom – don’t ask me why this happened – had given me a gun to take to college, just in case. I wouldn’t even take it into my house.

I kept it underneath the seat in my car. I ran down – not even dressed, I had on pajama pants, no shoes – and I jumped in the car. I grabbed the gun and I slammed it onto the passenger seat and I rushed on the road to kill him. In that haze of craziness, madness, my only thought was that the only way for me to exist in the world was to remove him from it. The only way for me to have fullness of self was that he had to be gone.

I got there and I said [to myself,] Charles, you cannot do this. You cannot continue to live your life through the eyes of this hurt little seven-year-old little boy. You have a life, you have a future, and you have to make a choice. You have to release it. You have to stop hating him so that you can start loving yourself, because love and hate can’t exist in the same body. There’s not enough space so

DEC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

I had to let go of the hate so that I could start loving me.

HANEY-LÓPEZ: [Your] book encompasses a period of your childhood to very young adulthood during which you moved in spaces that were hyper-segregated and almost exclusively African American. Did that allow you to at once express the complicacy of people and at the same time not engage in the turmoil of the white gays?

BLOW: It’s really important to understand that [idea of ] not having to deal with the racial aspect very much at all, because the world that I inhabited was, like you say, for the most part all black. If you were not elected the class president, it wasn’t because you were black.

In addition to that, the school that I spent most of my time in, which was [in the] Gibson-Coleman school system – the Coleman part of that school system had started as the first African-American college in Louisiana – it was set up to educate the sons of freed slaves, and so they had this very long legacy, and you felt that. There was this sort of erudition in the way that people comported themselves and what they imbued in us about what it was to be a Coleman kid. I realized that my legacy sprang forth not from nothingness, but from something solid, and that it had a very long history in terms of education, and sense of self and sense of place.

HANEY-LÓPEZ: Six years ago, I think people talked about a post-racial America.

Were you one of those?

BLOW: I look askance at all those people. I don’t even know what that would mean. I do believe that race is a completely constructed weirdness meant to suppress and deny.

That said, because it has been an organizing principle, and in many cases, a negative one, cultures have built themselves up around those lines. There’s a cultural question about whether or not it is even reasonable to say, Do you want to eliminate that culture from the world? Or do you want to build a society that recognizes race and recognizes differences and recognizes culture, and appreciates it more than it does now, and doesn’t denigrate it, and doesn’t arrange it hierarchically so that there are some races that experience privilege and others races that experience oppression? That is a real question for us to grapple with as a society. I think difference is fantastic.

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D E C E M B E R 2014/J A N UA RY 2015

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Programs For up-to-date information on programs, and to subscribe to our weekly newsletter, go to commonwealthclub.org

OVERVIEW

TICKETS

The Commonwealth Club organizes more than 450 events every year – on politics, the arts, media, literature, business and sports.

Programs are held throughout the Bay Area.

Prepayment is required. Unless otherwise indicated, all Club programs – including “Members Free” events – require tickets.

Programs often sell out, so we strongly encourage you to purchase tickets in advance. Tickets are available at will call. Due to heavy call volume, we urge you to purchase tickets online at commonwealthclub.org; or call (415) 597-6705. Please note: All ticket sales are final. Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to any program. If a program is sold out and your tickets are not claimed at our box office by the program start time, they will be released to our stand-by list. Select events include premium seating; premium refers to the first several rows of seating.

STANDARD PROGRAMS Typically one hour long, these speeches cover a variety of topics and are followed by a question and answer session. Most evening programs include a networking reception with wine.

PROGRAM SERIES CLIMATE ONE programs are a conversation about America’s energy, economy and environment. To understand any of them, it helps to understand them all.

GOOD LIT features both established literary luminaries and upand-coming writers in conversation. Includes Food Lit. INFORUM is for and by people in their 20s to mid-30s, though events are open to people of all ages.

MEMBER–LED FORUMS (MLF) Volunteer-driven programs focus on particular fields. Most evening programs include a wine networking reception.

MEMBERLED FORUMS CHAIR Dr. Carol Fleming carol.fleming@speechtraining.com

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

FORUM CHAIRS ARTS Anne W. Smith asmith@ggu.edu Lynn Curtis lynnwcurtis@comcast.net ASIAPACIFIC AFFAIRS Cynthia Miyashita cmiyashita@hotmail.com BAY GOURMET Cathy Curtis ccurtis873@gmail SF BOOK DISCUSSION Barbara Massey b4massey@yahoo.com BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP Kevin O’Malley kevin@techtalkstudio.com ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES Ann Clark cbofcb@sbcglobal.net GROWNUPS John Milford Johnwmilford@gmail.com HEALTH & MEDICINE William B. Grant wbgrant@infionline.net Patty James patty@pattyjames.com

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HUMANITIES George C. Hammond george@pythpress.com INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Norma Walden norwalden@aol.com LGBT James Westly McGaughey jwes.mcgaughey@me.com MIDDLE EAST Celia Menczel celiamenczel@sbcglobal.net PERSONAL GROWTH: Stephanie Kriebel stephanie@sunspiritwellness.com PSYCHOLOGY Patrick O’Reilly oreillyphd@hotmail.com SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Chisako Ress chisakoress@gmail.com Gerald Harris, Gerald@ artofquantumplanning.com Beau Fernald bfernald@gmail.com

DEC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

RADIO, VIDEO AND PODCASTS Hear Club programs on about 200 public and commercial radio stations throughout the United States. For the latest schedule, visit commonwealthclub.org/broadcast.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, tune in to: KQED (88.5 FM) Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 a.m.

KRCB Radio (91.1 FM in Rohnert Park) Thursdays at 7 p.m.

KALW (91.7 FM) Inforum programs on select Tuesdays at 7 p.m.

KOIT (96.5 FM and 1260 AM) Sundays at 6 a.m.

KLIV (1590 AM) Thursdays at 7 p.m.

KSAN (107.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

KNBR (680 and 1050 AM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

KFOG (104.5 and 97.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

Watch Club programs on the California Channel Thursdays at 9 p.m. and on KRCB TV 22 on Comcast & DirecTV the last Sunday of each month at 11 a.m. Select Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley programs air on CreaTV in San Jose (Channel 30). View hundreds of streaming videos of Club programs at fora.tv and youtube.com/commonwealthclub

Subscribe to our free podcasting service to automatically download a new program recording to your personal computer each week: commonwealthclub.org/podcast.

HARD OF HEARING? To request an assistive listening device, please e-mail Valerie Castro at vcastro@commonwealthclub.org seven working days before the event.

DECEMBER

Eight Weeks Calendar MONDAY

1

5:30 p.m. Book Discussion: Lawrence in Arabia, by Scott Anderson FM

TUESDAY

2

6:30 p.m. Haiti Five Years Later: Women on the Ground

6:30 p.m. Week to Week Political Roundtable and Member Social

8 5:30 p.m. Middle East Discussion Group FE 6:00 p.m. The Ten Best Ethical Destination Awards FM 6:00 p.m The Grapes of Wrath at 75: Retracing the Joads’ Journey FM 7:00 p.m. An Evening with Kathleen Turner

15 6:30 p.m. Week to Week Political Roundtable and Members Holiday Social FM

9 6:30 p.m. An Evening with Jared Diamond 6:30 p.m. Tasting the New California Wines with John Bonné

16

WEDNESDAY

3

6:00 p.m. From Bloody Thursday to Now: 80 Years of Labor History in San Francisco FE 6:00 p.m. GlutenFree: Chinese Traditional Medicine’s 750-Year Perspective 7:00 p.m. Geo for Good

10 12:00 p.m. Transforming California’s State Parks: A Blueprint for the Future FM

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SAT/SUN

4

5

6/7

12

13/14

19

20/21

26

27/28

6 p.m. Ambassador Andrew Young

11 1:45 p.m Waterfront Walk

6:30 p.m. A Spirited Evening with Adam Rogers

17 6:00 p.m. Explore (and Taste!) the Essence of Wine

6:00 p.m. Dr Jane Lubchenco: The Stepehen Scheider Award

6:00 p.m. Socrates Café FM

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23

24

29

30

31

1:45 p.m. Russian Hill Walking Tour

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www.commonwealthclub.org/events www.commonwealthclub.org/events

5:15 p.m. The Rise and Fall of a Jewish American Princess

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Legend MONDAY

JANUARY San Francisco

FM

Free program for members

East Bay/North Bay

FE

Free program for everyone

Silicon Valley

MO

Members–only program

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

1

5

6

7

5:15 p.m. Silent Voices: People with Mental Disorders on the Street FM

13

12:00 p.m. Good Food, Great Business: How Food Startups Take Good Ideas from Concept to Success FM

14 6:00 p.m. Humanity in the Modern World

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

6:00 p.m. Machtinger on Mercy in Mozart’s Menuetto-Allegretto FM

19

20

21 6:00 p.m The UnQuantified Self: A New Era in Business and Tech 6:00 p.m. Socrates Café FM 6:30 p.m. Week to Week 7:00 p.m. Business Solution to Poverty

26 5:30 p.m. Middle East Discussion Group FE 6:00 p.m. Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden FM

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2

SAT/SUN

3/4

9

10/11

16

17/18

1:45 p.m. North Beach Walking Tour 5:15 p.m. The Home that Watches Over Your Parents (or You) 5:30 p.m. Explore the World from The Commonwealth Club Planning Meeting FE

5:30 p.m. Book Discussion of The Flamethrowers by Rachael Kushner FM

12

8

FRIDAY

27

28 6:00 p.m. Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death

15 1:45 p.m Waterfront Walk 6:00 p.m. Dr. Sylvia Earle and David de Rothschild: Two Generations, One Big Ocean 7 p.m. Cornel West

22 5:30 p.m. The Power of Nature to Restore the Human Spirit

29 1:45 p.m. San Francisco Architecture Walking Tour 6:00 p.m. NASA’s Kepler Mission: A Bounty of Planets Orbiting Distant Stars

D EC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

12:00 p.m. Roads of Arabia FM

23

24/25

12:30 p.m. Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Walter E. Hoadley Annual Economic Forecast MO

30

31/1

Perspectives of Iran May 7–21, 2015

Highlights • • •

Join our Study Leader, Stephen Kinzer, and Club travelers on a journey through Iran, where vast monuments serve as testament to the extraordinary history of this country.

Explore Tehran, the country’s capital, including a visit to the basement vault of the Bank Milli Iran to view the spectacular Crown Jewels, and learn about the thriving Iranian contemporary art scene.

Discover the gardens of Shah Goli, the amazing tile work of the Blue Mosque, and the town’s colorful bazaar in Tabriz.

•

Experience the country’s center of Zoroastrianism in Yazd, where the most traditional Persian architecture is found.

•

Visit Shiraz and take an excursion to the magnificent ruins of Persepolis – one of the most remarkable archaeological sites found in the Near East.

•

Take in the beauty of Isfahan where brilliant bluetiled buildings and majestic bridges are often recognized as the perfection of Islamic architecture.

Commonwealth Club Travel

U.S. to TEHRAN Thursday, May 7 Depart the U.S.

TEHRAN Friday, May 8 Upon arrival, transfer to the Espinas Hotel.

What to Expect Participants must be in very good health and able to keep up with an active group. In order to participate, one should be able to walk 1-2 miles comfortably, use steep stairs without handrails or assistance and walk and stand for periods of two hours at a time.

Spring is a lovely time to travel in Iran when temperatures range from 60-85 degrees Fahrenheit.

The infrastructure in Iran is quite good with modern roads and buses.

Hotels are comfortable with private bathrooms and air-conditioning.

Food is freshly prepared and healthy.

During the program, participants should be dressed modestly and women will be required to have their head covered while in public areas.

More details will be provided upon registering for the trip.

TEHRAN Saturday, May 9 Enjoy a full day of sightseeing in Tehran, concentrating on its excellent museums. Visit the Archaeological Museum with its fine collection including a stone capital of a winged lion from Susa. Explore the Glass and Ceramics Museum of Iran and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. (B,L,D)

TEHRAN Sunday, May 10 Visit to the Reza Abbasi Museum which is home to a superior collection of Persian miniatures. View the Iranian crown jewels. This spectacular collection of jewels, stored in the basement vault of the Bank Milli Iran, contains the world’s largest uncut diamond, as well as the Peacock Throne. (B,L,D)

TEHRAN Monday, May 11 Head to northern Tehran to visit Khomeini’s home, where one is allowed a glimpse of the dwelling.

Enjoy lunch in a lively neighborhood, then stop at the Zahir od Dowleh Cemetery, the resting spot for many of Iran’s writers and artists. Visit the Iranian film museum before returning to the hotel. (B,L,D)

TABRIZ Tuesday, May 12 Fly to Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan. Until recently, Tabriz was the second largest city in Iran. Visit the Blue Mosque of Tabriz, considered a masterpiece of Iranian decorative tile

work due to the quality of the work, the finesse of the design, and the harmony of the overall composition. Continue on to the gardens of the Shah Goli (the Royal Lake), a popular site for summer picnicking and musical performances, and learn about qanats, rather extraordinary systems of irrigation that can extend for miles. End the day at the bazaar of Tabriz. Overnight at Pars Hotel. (B,L,D)

TABRIZ Wednesday, May 13 Today begins with an excursion to the Saint Stepanos Monastery. Dating back to the 7th century, this church is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Situated on the south-eastern fringe of the main zone of the Armenian cultural space, the monastery once constituted a major center for the dissemination of Armenian culture in the region. This church, along with Saint Thaddeus Monastery, are the last regional remains of this culture that are still in a state of integrity and authenticity.

Return to Tabriz mid-afternoon. Dinner and overnight at the hotel. (B,L,D)

SHIRAZ Thursday, May 14 In the morning, enjoy a short excursion to the intriguing troglodyte village of Kandovan. The Kandovan people have carved their houses in the rocks and still live in them as in ancient times.

Return to Tabriz and connect with an afternoon flight to Shiraz. Upon arrival enjoy an orientation tour of this city known for its nightingales, poetry, and, at one time, wine. Transfer to the Homa Hotel for dinner and overnight. (B,L,D)

SHIRAZ Friday, May 15 Today we enjoy a full day excursion to Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire and one of the world’s most beautiful and spectacular archaeological sites. This palace city was built by craftsmen from across Darius’

For additional information or to make a reservation, contact Commonwealth Club Travel Telephone: (415) 597-6720 • Email: Travel@commonwealthclub.org

vast empire. Superb bas reliefs depict the flow of ritual processions. After a lunch sitting in the shade of grape vines, visit Naghsh-E Rostam, which contains the carved tombs of four Achaemenian kings. (B,L,D)

stucco carvings. After lunch, drive to Isfahan. Upon arrival transfer to the delightful Abbasi Hotel, a converted caravanserai. (B,L,D)

ISFAHAN

Saturday, May 16 This morning explore the city of Shiraz, stopping at the tomb of the celebrated poet Hafez. The marble tombstone is engraved with a long verse from the poet’s works. We then explore the colorful bazaar. After lunch, drive to Yazd, passing through many acres of pistachios. Dinner and overnight at the Moshir Garden Hotel. (B,L,D)

Tuesday, May 19 Isfahan is perhaps the most beautiful of all Iranian cities. The central focus of this fascinating city, which never failed to inspire and awe European merchants and ambassadors to the Safavid court, is the immense Meydan-e Shah, or Royal Square. After lunch, spend the afternoon exploring the bazaar of Isfahan and learning more about traditional crafts in Iran.

(B,L,D)

YAZD

ISFAHAN

YAZD

Sunday, May 17 In Yazd stop at the home of the former governor of the city to see and learn more about traditional Persian architecture and the badgers, windtowers ingeniously designed to catch a passing breeze. Enjoy a walking tour through the covered streets of the old quarter. Spend an afternoon concentrating on the Zoroastrian religion. Visit one of the two Zoroastrian abandoned Towers of Silence where, until forty years ago, the dead were left at the tops of the towers. (B,L,D)

ISFAHAN Monday, May 18 Drive in the morning to Na’in, an important trade center. It is well known for its carpet making and also for its mosque from the early Islamic period.

Continue on to a private house that has some superb 17th century

Wednesday, May 20 Admire some of the five bridges crossing the Zayendehrud River and wander through the city’s fascinating Armenian quarter. In the afternoon view the Friday Mosque and the Palace of Forty Columns, a charming pavilion used to receive dignitaries and ambassdors. (B,L,D)

ISFAHAN to U.S. Thursday, May 21 Depart Isfahan in the early morning, arriving back in the United States the same day.

*Itinerary is subject to change.

Tour Price Per Person: $6,395 Single Supplement: $1,200 Based on minimum of 15 travelers and a maximum of 25

Tour Price includes: • Accommodation as per itinerary • Meals as listed in the program • Bottled water on the bus • All sightseeing in an air-conditioned coach • Internal flights • All entrance fees and special events listed • Full educational program & Study Leader • Pre-departure materials and reading list • The services of a local Iranian guide • The services of a professional tour manager who will accompany the group • Gratuities

Does not include:

• International airfare into and out of Tehran (approximately $1,500) • Visa fees for Iran ($128 at time of printing) • Excess luggage charges • Medical Expenses • Trip Insurance • Items of a purely personal nature

STUDY LEADER

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.” Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for The New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air.

In 1996 Kinzer was named chief of the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent four years there, traveling widely in Iran, Turkey and in the new nations of Central Asia and

the Caucasus. After completing this assignment, Kinzer published Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds. He is the author of All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, published in 2003. This book is based on documents about the coup in Iran (including some lengthy internal CIA reports) that have now been declassified. In 2010 his book Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future was published. His most recent book is The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War. Before joining The New York Times, Kinzer was Latin America correspondent for the The Boston Globe. He is now a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where he teaches international relations. He contributes to The Guardian and The New York Review of Books, and writes a world affairs column for The Boston Globe.

Please note the State Department has had a Travel Warning for Iran since 1979. You can read this Travel Warning at http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_920.html. Our tour operator has operated many trips to Iran, including several fall departures in 2014. The Commonwealth Club and our tour operator are closely monitoring the situation in Iran and will not operate the trip if the situation within the country becomes hostile or unsafe.

Perspectives of Iran

Commonwealth Club Travel

Phone: 415.597.6720 Fax: 415.597.6729

RESERVATION FORM May 7–21, 2015 NAME 1 NAME 2 ADDRESS

CITY/STATE/ZIP

HOME PHONE

CELL

E-MAIL ADDRESS

I would like to reserve _______ space(s) Enclosed is a deposit of $500 per person, in the total amount of $ _________________.

Please make checks payable to “Distant Horizons.” Your deposit is fully refundable up until 14 days after receipt of your reservation form. A confirmation letter, full terms and conditions, reading list and a travel insurance application will be mailed to you upon receipt of your deposit.

Room Arrangements

Air Travel Arrangements

Single Supplement

I/we wish to be booked on the group flight from SFO.

Double Occupancy I will be sharing a room with:________________________

I/we wish to be booked on a flight departing from:_________________________________________

I would prefer a roommate, but will pay the single supplement if one is not available.

I/we will make my own arrangements to arrive in Tehran.

PLEASE RETURN THIS FORM ALONG WITH YOUR DEPOSIT TO: Commonwealth Club Travel 595 Market St., 2nd floor San Francisco, CA 94105 You may also fax the form to 415.597.6729 Distant Horizons, CST: 2046776-13; Commonwealth Club Travel, CST: 2096889-40

Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

Over the decades, the Club has hosted speakers for such programs as: 1936: “Our State’s Finances,” with Arlin E. Stockburger 1958: “The Role of Women in the Armed Forces,” with Mary Louise Milligan 1961: “Federal Aid to Education,” with Abraham Ribicoff 1977: “What China Policy?” with Shirley Temple Black 1984: “Venture Capital,” with William R. Hambrecht 1993: “Labor Unions at a Crossroads,” with Owen Bieber 2010: “The Ethical Imperative of America’s Involvement on the World Stage,” with James A. Baker III

All of these topics are still being discussed today around the world. Can you think of another organization that has been addressing these important topics for more than all of those years?

The Club continues to have hundreds of programs and speakers each year exploring differing philosophies of government and life, and differing solutions offered by experts. We can do that because of the commitment of our members.

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

You may know that membership dues and event program fees only cover about 45 percent of the expenses of the Club. In this time of rapid change, your support is more important than ever – your gift will help us to continue to host timely, provocative debates from a variety of viewpoints here in Northern California heard around the world.

To make a contribution, go online to support.commonwealthclub.org/donate. or call 415-597-6714.

Every gift, no matter what amount, helps the Club to shine the light on the truth.

Thank you for your continuing generosity. We can’t continue without you.

The Commonwealth Club

putting you face-to-face with today’s thought leaders D E C E M B E R 2014/J A N UA RY 2015

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December 1 – 3

SEP 22 - JAN 09

M O N 01 | San Francisco

M O N 01 | San Francisco

Coastal Reflections - An Exhibition of Paintings by Laurie Chase

Book Discussion: Lawrence in Arabia, by Scott Anderson

Week to Week Political Roundtable and Member Social

Laurie Regan Chase paints the coastline communities of her worldwide travels with oil and watercolor. She captures each distinct character in color, light and movement, bringing alive the richness of her journeys. She is an award-winning, signature member of the American Society of Marine Artists and has sailed the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black seas, coastal United States, Mexico, South America and the Caribbean, paying special attention to “the peaceful serenity which many coastal and harbor scenes afford.”

MLF: THE ARTS Location: SF Club Office Time: Regular Club business hours Cost: FREE Program Organizer: Conchita Applegate

The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, “a sideshow of a sideshow” – a conflict shaped by a small handful of adventurers far removed from the corridors of power. At the center of it all was Lawrence himself. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist excavating ruins in Syria; by 1917 he was riding into legend at the head of an Arab army. Based on four years of extensive primary document research, Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns the received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed.

MLF: SF BOOK DISCUSSION Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program Cost: $5 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, students free (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Barbara Massey

Bill Whalen, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Political Blogger Additional Panelists TBA

At Week to Week, we explore the biggest, most controversial, and sometimes the oddest political issues with expert commentary by panelists who are smart, are civil, and have a good sense of humor. Join our panelists for informative and engaging commentary on political and other major news, audience discussion of the week’s events and our news quiz!

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. wine-and-snacks social, 6:30 p.m. program Cost: $15 non-members, $5 members, students free (with valid ID)

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

T U E 02 | San Francisco

W E D 0 3 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

Haiti Five Years Later: Women on the Ground

Geo for Good

Malya Villard-Appolon, Founder of KOFAVIV Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, Ph.D., Former Prime Minster of Haiti Nicole Phillips, Esq., Attorney, The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti Megan Coffee, M.D., Ph.D., Founder of Ti Kay Haiti Anne-Christine d’Adesky, Journalist & Activist – Moderator

Rebecca Moore, Lead, Google Earth Outreach Program, Google Earth Engine

“Gason konn bouke, men pa fanm.” – in Kreyòl “Women’s work never ends.”

On January 12, 2010, Haiti was hit by a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed approximately 150,000 people and crippled the nation. The earthquake and its 52 aftershocks exacerbated long-standing challenges of housing, sanitation, health care and gender violence. Five years later, Haiti is still picking up the pieces, often with women leading the charge. Hear the incredible stories of women on the ground, from Dr. Megan Coffee who went to Haiti to treat earthquake victims and never left, establishing and running a tuberculosis clinic in Port-au-Prince, to Malya Villard, a victim of rape in Haiti who boldly founded and now runs KOFAVIV, an organization to uplift victims of sexual violence, despite threats against her own life.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. reception Cost: See website

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Moore created and now leads the Google Earth Outreach program. The program supports nonprofits, communities and indigenous peoples around the world in applying Google’s mapping tools to the world’s challenges such as environmental conservation, human rights and cultural preservation. Moore also initiated the development of Google Earth Engine, a new technology platform that supports global-scale monitoring and protection of the earth’s environment. Moore will discuss the company’s latest projects to help preserve our planet.

Location: Schultz Cultural Hall, Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID)

W E D 03 | San Francisco

Gluten-Free: Chinese Traditional Medicine’s 750-Year Perspective

From Bloody Thursday to Now: 80 Years of Labor History in San Francisco

John Nieters, L.Ac. DAOM, Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine; President, Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the 1934 Pacific Coast maritime strike to protest miserable hiring practices and poor working conditions. The strike shut down the entire west coast from Bellingham to San Diego. It is also the 80th anniversary of Bloody Thursday, on July 5, 1934, when a clash between San Francisco police and picketers resulted in two strike supporters being killed and hundreds wounded. In the aftermath of Bloody Thursday, 127,000 workers representing 160 unions walked off their jobs in protest. During a landmark general strike, they shut down San Francisco for three days before arbitration granted most of the longshoremen’s demands. These events helped bring about national legislation in 1935 that established collective bargaining and set up the National Labor Relations Board. The Commonwealth Club will soon occupy the building that was the longshore workers’ union hall at the time of the 1934 strike.

Gluten problems might seem like the latest fad, but 750 years ago Chinese doctors were writing about how to treat conditions resulting from too much gluten: leaky gut, IBS, autoimmune disorders, obesity and diabetes. Dr. Nieters will explain how Chinese medicine sees gluten and grains. He’ll also share his insights on using diets to address common disorders.

MLF: ASIA PACIFIC AFFAIRS Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: Sylvie Grillet-Rivera

Panelists TBA

This fall, San Francisco’s $100 million new cruise ship terminal, named for veteran labor leader James Herman, one-time port commissioner and head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, opened for business. This portends a new era for economic activity and jobs on the waterfront and throughout the city. What is the legacy of 1934 and what are the lasting contributions of legendary union leaders such as Harry Bridges?

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. check-in, 6 p.m. program Cost: FREE

M O N 08 | San Francisco

M O N 08 | San Francisco

Ambassador Andrew Young

Middle East Discussion Group

The Ten Best Ethical Destinations Awards: Voting with Our Wings

Ambassador Young is one of the iconic figures of the civil rights movement. After serving as a key strategist to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, he was elected to Congress in 1972, becoming the first African American representative from the South since Reconstruction. Five years later he was appointed as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He later served as mayor of Atlanta, where he proved instrumental in bringing the Olympic Games to the city in 1996.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5 p.m. check-in, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID); Premium: $35 nonmembers, $25 members

Make your voice heard in an enriching, provocative and fun discussion with Club members as you weigh in on events shaping the face of the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan. Each month, the Middle East Member-Led Forum hosts an informal roundtable discussion on a topic frequently suggested by recent headlines. After a brief introduction, the floor will be open for discussion. All interested members are encouraged to attend. There will also be a brief planning session.

MLF: MIDDLE EAST Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program Cost: FREE Program Organizer: Celia Menczel

Jeff Greenwald, Executive Director, Ethical Traveler Malia Everette, Founder, Altruvistas

Every December, Bay Area-based Ethical Traveler, a project of the Earth Island Institute, lists “The World’s Best Ethical Destinations.” The independent nonprofit honors 10 countries – all in the developing world – that are protecting their environments and promoting a socially just, sustainable tourism economy. Join the architects of this list and representatives from the award-winning countries for a discussion about the 2015 list.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. check-in, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. reception Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, $7 stu.

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www.commonwealthclub.org/events

T H U 04 | San Francisco

Andrew Young, Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN; Former Atlanta Mayor; Strategist to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

December 3 – 8

W E D 03 | San Francisco

December 8 – 10

M O N 08 | San Francisco

M O N 08 | San Francisco

T U E 09 | San Francisco

Grapes of Wrath at 75: Retracing the Joads’ Journey

An Evening with Kathleen Turner

An Evening with Jared Diamond

Kathleen Turner, Actress

Jared Diamond, Professor, UCLA; Author, Guns, Germs and Steel, Collapse and The World Until Yesterday

P.J. Palmer, Filmmaker; Videographer Octavio Solis, Playwright; Director Patricia Wakida, Writer; Linoleum Block-Print Artist

Monday Night Philosophy celebrates the 75th anniversary of the publication of John Steinbeck’s seminal novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Its central themes of struggle and hope are still relevant today.

Hear the three artists who were commissioned by The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas to retrace the Joad family’s journey from Oklahoma to California.

Kathleen Turner has garnered critical acclaim for her performances in films like Romancing the Stone, Peggy Sue Got Married and War of the Roses. On Broadway, Turner starred in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” for which she received a Tony nomination. She now appears at The Berkeley Rep, portraying legendary journalist Molly Ivins in “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.”

Meet the real Kathleen Turner and hear the stories, causes and lessons that have shaped this iconic performer.

Diamond draws from a variety of fields, from anthropology to evolutionary biology. His conclusions are critical and provocative, exploring concepts like how we humans evolved to be so different from animals, despite sharing over 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, and why Eurasian peoples conquered Native Americans and Africans instead of vice versa. Join us for a night of intellectual stimulation with one of the world’s most celebrated polymaths.

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: George Hammond

Location: Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, Peacock Court, 999 California St. Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program Cost: $25 non-members, $15 members, $10 students (with valid ID); Premium (includes priority seating): $45 non-members, $30 members

TUE 09 | East Bay

W E D 10 | San Francisco

Tasting the New California Wines with Jon Bonné

Transforming California’s State Parks: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Future

Location: Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St. SF Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in & premium reception, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. book signing Cost: See website

Christine Kehoe, Co-Chair, California Parks Forward Commission Jon Bonné, Wine Editor, San Francisco Chronicle; Author, The New California Wine

James Beard Award-winning wine editor Bonné takes us to the front lines of the California wine revolution and reveals the continuing battle to move the state away from the overly technocratic, reactionary practices of the recent past.

Join us as he shares the fascinating stories, philosophies and techniques of the iconoclastic young winemakers who are changing the face of California viticulture.

Location: Lafayette Library, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. wine tasting and book signing Cost: $25 non-members, $15 members Note: All attendees must be 21 years or older.

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California’s magnificent 280-unit park system faces significant challenges. Declining budgets have led to scaled-back services and a long list of maintenance needs, while outdated administrative systems, technology and procedures impede park staff’s ability to effectively manage and protect the parks’ natural and cultural resources. Join us to review a justreleased report by the Parks Forward Commission, which recommends sweeping changes to tackle these issues and ensure the sustainability of our state parks for future generations.

Kehoe is the executive director of the California Plug-in Electric Vehicle Collaborative.

During 25 years of public service, including 19 years in elected office, Kehoe has focused on developing policies and programs over a range of issues at the city and state level.

From 2000 to 2012, Ms. Kehoe served in the California state legislature as a member of the state Assembly and Senate, where she distinguished herself as a consensus-minded leader and an advocate for strong energy and environmental policy.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, students free (with valid ID)

D EC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

T H U 11 | San Francisco

A Spirited Evening with Adam Rogers

Waterfront Walk

Adam Rogers , Articles Editor, Wired; Author, Proof: The Science of Booze

In a spirited tour across continents and cultures, Rogers puts our alcoholic history under the microscope. From our ancestors’ accidental discovery of fermented drinks to the cutting-edge laboratory research, Rogers offers a unique glimpse inside the barrels, stills and casks that produce some of our most iconic beverages. He uncovers the subtle mixture of psychology and neurobiology that fuels our taste for such drinks.

Location: Schultz Cultural Hall, Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. book signing and reception Cost: TBA Note: All attendees must be 21 years or older

Join Rick Evans for his new walking tour exploring the historic sites of the waterfront neighborhood that surrounds the location of the future Commonwealth Club headquarters. Hear the dynamic stories of the entrepreneurs, controversial artists and labor organizers who have shaped this recently revitalized neighborhood. This two-hour tour will give you a lively overview of the historic significance of this neighborhood and a close look at the ongoing development.

Location: Meet in front of Boulevard Restaurant, 1 Mission (corner of Mission at Steuart) Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4:30 p.m. tour Cost: $45 non-members, $35 members Notes: Limited to 20. Must pre-register. Tour operates rain or shine.

LANGUAGE GROUPS

FOREIGN LANGUAGE GROUPS

Free for members Location: SF Club Office FRENCH, Intermediate Class Thursdays, noon Pierrette Spetz, Graziella Danieli, Beatrice Hallier danieli@sfsu.edu, hallierb@usfca.edu FRENCH, Advanced Conversation Tuesdays, noon Gary Lawrence garylawrence508@gmail.com GERMAN, Int./Adv. Conversation Wednesdays, noon Sara Shahin sarah_biomexx@yahoo.com ITALIAN, Intermediate Class Mondays, noon Daria Siciliano (415) 839-5077 SPANISH, Advanced Conversation (fluent only) Fridays, noon Luis Salvago-Toledo, lsalvago@comcast.net

T U E 16 | San Francisco

Week to Week Political Roundtable and Members Holiday Social

The Rise and Fall of a Jewish American Princess

At Week to Week, we explore the biggest, most controversial, and sometimes the oddest political issues with expert commentary by panelists who are smart, are civil, and have a good sense of humor. Join our panelists for informative and engaging commentary on political and other major news, audience discussion of the week’s events and our news quiz!

Come early before the program to meet other smart and engaged individuals and discuss the news over snacks and wine at our member social (open to all attendees).

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. holiday social with wine and hors d’oeuvres, 6:30 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, students free (with valid ID) Note: Ornament image by Kris de Curtis

Barbara Rose Brooker, Author; Columnist; Performer; Teacher

Brooker’s novel, dealing in deception and redemption, is about Dianne Roseman, a woman programmed to be a “Jewish American Princess” and to define herself by a successful marriage. The reader is invited into the brutal art world through Roseman’s disastrous affair with a famous dealer of contemporary art and her persevering effort to become a known artist.

The novel explores women of all cultures who are inhibited by older generations.

MLF: GROWNUPS Location: SF Club Office Time: 4:45 p.m. networking reception, 5:15 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: John Milford

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www.commonwealthclub.org/events

M O N 15 | San Francisco

Joe Garofoli, Political Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle Melissa Griffin Caen, Contributor to CBS SF’s “Mornings with Melissa” and San Francisco Magazine; Attorney Bill Whalen, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Political Blogger

December 10 – 16

W E D 1 0 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

December 16 – January 5

T U E 16 | San Francisco

W E D 17 | San Francisco

W E D 17 | San Francisco

Dr. Jane Lubchenco: The Stephen Schneider Award

Explore (and Taste!) the Essence of Wine

Socrates Café

Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D.; Fmr. NOAA Admin.; Fmr. President, AAAS

As droughts, fires and rising temperatures continue to make headlines, 2014 is on track to be another record year for extreme weather. No one has had a better look at the weather than Jane Lubchenco, who ran the country’s top weather agency during Superstorm Sandy.

Dr. Lubchenco will receive the $15,000 Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. program Cost: $35 non-member, $25 members, $20 stu.; Premium: $65 non-member, $45 members Note: In association with the Science & Tech.

Member-Led Forum. Generously underwritten

by Tom Burns, Nora Machado & Michael Haas.

Alder Yarrow, Writer, Vinography.com; Author, The Essence of Wine

Wine’s mystery and magic comes, in part, from its ability to capture so many different aromas and flavors in a glass.

Local San Francisco writer Yarrow has just published a unique volume highlighting and celebrating the many essences of wine that make it so special. Join Yarrow for a wine tasting and discussion about the wonderful essence of wine.

MLF: BAY GOURMET Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $22 non-members, $10 members, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Cathy Curtis Note: There will be a wine tasting.

The Humanities Forum brings Socrates Café to The Commonwealth Club. It will be held every third Wednesday evening for the discussion of philosophical issues.

At each monthly meeting the group’s facilitator, Bob Enteen, will invite participants to suggest topics, which are then voted on. The person who proposed the most popular topic will briefly explain why she or he considers the subject interesting and important. An open discussion will follow, ending with a summary.

Everyone is welcome to attend.

MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. program Cost: $5 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, students free Program Organizer: George Hammond

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

T H U 18 | San Francisco

M O N 05 | San Francisco

M O N 05 | San Francisco

Russian Hill Walking Tour

Silent Voices: People with Mental Disorders on the Street

Book Discussion of The Flamethrowers

by Rachel Kushner

Join a more active Commonwealth Club Neighborhood Adventure! Russian Hill is a magical area with secret gardens and amazing views. Join Rick Evans for a two-hour hike up hills and staircases and learn about the history of this neighborhood. See where great artists and architects lived and worked, and stroll down residential streets past some of the most historically significant houses in the Bay.

Robert Okin, M.D.; Chief of Service, SF General Hospital Psychiatry Department

Location: Meet in front of Swensen’s Ice Cream Store located at 1999 Hyde Street at Union. Tour ends at the corner of Vallejo and Jones.

Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4 p.m. tour Cost: $45 non-members, $35 members Notes: Steep hills and staircases, recommended for good walkers. Parking difficult.

Limited to 20. Must pre-register. Tour operates rain or shine.

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We avert our eyes when we meet them on the street: homeless, mentally ill people with hand-scrawled signs, shopping carts and cardboard boxes. Still, we ask: How did they end up on the street?

How do they survive the privations of such a life? Seeking answers, Okin spent two years speaking with and photographing mentally ill homeless men and women. Casting a light on their humanity, he brings these people to life.

MLF: PSYCHOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 4:45 p.m. reception, 5:15 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: Patrick O’Reilly

D EC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

In The Flamethrowers, Kushner skillfully navigates huge swaths of politics and history, intimately intersecting the vivid lives of her characters with the external reality in which they move. At the novel’s fulcrum is Reno, a young Nevadan who moves to New York with the vague idea of making it in the art world and finds herself jarred between the chaos of 1970s New York and Italy.

All the while, Kushner fearlessly tackles the larger questions, asking what society can afford of its individuals – and where art fits in with everything else. Join us for what promises to be a lively discussion of this dynamic novel.

MLF: SF BOOK DISCUSSION Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program Cost: $5 non-members, MEMBERS FREE Program Organizer: Barbara Massey

T H U 08 | San Francisco

T H U 08 | San Francisco

North Beach Walking Tour

The Home that Watches Over Your Parents (or You)

Explore the World from The Commonwealth Club Planning Meeting

Join another Commonwealth Club Neighborhood Adventure! Explore vibrant North Beach with Rick Evans during a two-hour walk through this neighborhood with a colorful past, where food, culture, history and unexpected views all intersect in an Italian “urban village.” In addition to learning about Beat generation hangouts, you’ll discover authentic Italian cathedrals and coffee shops.

Richard Caro, D.Phil., Scientist; Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Mary Hulme, Gerontologist; Care Manager

Location: Washington Square Park at Saints Peter and Paul Church (Filbert & Powell). Our guide will be on the steps. The official address is 666 Filbert, between Columbus and Stockton.

Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2-4 p.m. tour Cost: $45 non-members, $35 members Notes: Limited to 20 people. Must preregister. Tours operate rain or shine. Photo by Flickr user Clemson.

With the emergence of low-cost sensors and ubiquitous wireless communications, it’s now possible to embed sensors around the house that track whether or not a person is getting up, eating or leaving when they normally do. These trackers observe activity unobtrusively, sending alerts to other family members only if something is different than usual.

All interested Club members are welcome to attend our bimonthly, one-hour planning meetings of the International Relations Member-Led Forum. We focus on Europe, Latin America, Africa and worldwide topics. Join us to discuss current international issues and plan programs for the New Year.

January 8 – 12

T H U 08 | San Francisco

MLF: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program Cost: FREE Program Organizer: Norma Walden

MLFS: GROWNUPS/SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 4:45 p.m. reception, 5:15 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: John Milford Notes: In assoc. with the Longevity Collective

M O N 12 | San Francisco

Good Food, Great Business: How Food Startups Take Good Ideas from Concept to Success

Machtinger on Mercy in Mozart’s Menuetto-Allegretto

Susie Wyshak, Author, Good Food, Great Business Kathryn Lukas, CEO, Farmhouse Culture Lisa Murphy, Co-founder and Chief Sauce Maker, Sosu Sauces Jill Litwin, Founder and CEO, Peas of Mind Grace Erickson, General Manager, Ocho Candy Elizabeth Ü, Author, Raising Dough: The Complete Guide to Financing a Socially Responsible Food Business

Ready to turn your creative expertise with artisan foods into a thriving good food business? Join Susie Wyshak and a panel of smart, innovative women entrepreneurs who have done just that. Learn how these foodie forerunners put their ideas in motion, funded their ventures, kept going through the inevitable highs and lows of running a business and how they continue to balance “good” with growth.

MLF: BAY GOURMET Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Cathy Curtis

Steven Machtinger, Attorney; Violist; Independent Mozart Scholar

Monday Night Philosophy returns to the exploration of the philosophical concepts that are encoded into Mozart’s chamber music. In this lecture-performance, we will hear how Mozart, through the use of symbolic motifs, touches on themes of judgment and mercy in the MenuettoAllegretto movement of his String Quintet in G minor, K. 516.

MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: George Hammond

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www.commonwealthclub.org/events

M O N 12 | San Francisco

January 14 – 21

W E D 14 | San Francisco

T H U 15 | San Francisco

T H U 15 | San Francisco

Humanity in the Modern World

Waterfront Walk

Week to Week

Join Rick Evans for his new walking tour exploring the historic sites of the waterfront neighborhood that surrounds the location of the future Commonwealth Club headquarters. Hear the dynamic stories of the entrepreneurs, controversial artists and labor organizers who have shaped this recently revitalized neighborhood. This two-hour tour will give you a lively overview of the historic significance of this neighborhood and a close look at the ongoing development

Panelists TBA

Robert G. Aptekar, M.D., Orthopedic Surgeon Susan Weiss, Photographer

Dr. Robert Aptekar is an orthopedic surgeon who provides essential services annually to a charity hospital in Cambodia. He performs surgeries, trains the medical staff and works to bring awareness of health problems in the area. Susan Weiss accompanied Aptekar to document his work and the community in which he works. Aptekar will discuss his experiences, accompanied by the photographs of Weiss.

MLF: THE ARTS Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. program Cost:: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: Lynn Curtis

Location: Meet in front of Boulevard Restaurant, 1 Mission (corner of Mission at Steuart Street) Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4:30 p.m. tour Cost: $45 non-members, $35 members Notes: Limited to 20. Must pre-register. Tour operates rain or shine.

It’s a new year at Week to Week, and we’ll explore the biggest, most controversial, and sometimes the oddest political issues with expert commentary by panelists who are smart, are civil, and have a good sense of humor. Join our panelists for informative and engaging commentary on political and other major news, audience discussion of the week’s events, and our news quiz! And come early before the program to meet other smart and engaged individuals and discuss the news over snacks and wine at our member social (open to all attendees).

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. social, 6:30 p.m. program Cost: $15 non-members, $5 members, students free (with valid ID)

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

THU 15 | TBA

F R I 16 | San Francisco

W E D 21 | San Francisco

Cornel West

Roads of Arabia

Praised by The New York Times for his “ferocious moral vision” and hailed by Newsweek as “an elegant prophet with attitude,” Dr. Cornel West tries to bridge the gap between black opinion and white opinion about the country’s problems. As a leading voice in societal commentary, Dr. West has marched in civil rights demonstrations, taught at Yale, Harvard and Princeton and is currently a professor at Union Theological Seminary. He draws from traditions of Christianity, the black church, Marxism, and neopragmatism.

Hear his fiery oration on the past, present and future of race and injustice in the United States, in conjunction with the release of his latest book, The Radical King.

Dany Chan, Assistant Curator for Exhibition Projects, Asian Art Museum

Dr Sylvia Earle and David de Rothschild: Two Generations, One Big Ocean

Location: TBA Time: 7 p.m. program Cost: See website

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Chan will give a presentation about the fascinating exhibit “Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” which is at the Asian Art Museum until January 18.

The San Francisco Chronicle described the exhibit as a “mesmerizing and astonishing journey to the Arabian Peninsula.”

Some of these ancient objects were only discovered as recently as 40 years ago.

MLF: MIDDLE EAST/THE ARTS Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, $8 Asian Art Museum members, students free Program Organizer: Celia Menczel Note: In association with the Asian Art Museum

D EC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

Sylvia Earle, Ph.D., Ocean Explorer; Founder, Mission Blue and SEAlliance David de Rothschild, National Geographic Explorer; Environmentalist Greg Dalton, Founder, Climate One – Moderator

Earle has played a leading role as researcher and educator capable of crossing any barrier. In the same vein, de Rothschild is an ocean adventurer and activist.

Join us for a conversation between these two adventurers devoted to saving the oceans.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5 p.m. check-in, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, $12 members, $7 stu.

Also know: Program co-organized by Climate One

W E D 21 | San Francisco

W E D 2 1 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

Socrates Café

The Un-Quantified Self: A New Era in Business and Tech

Business Solution to Poverty

Tim Leberecht, Chief Marketing Officer, NBBJ; Former CMO, Frog Design; Author, The Business Romantic

Mal Warwick, Co-Author, The Business Solution to Poverty

In an age in which hyper-connectivity, big data and quantification increasingly define everyday life, many people would agree that business life is divorced from the sensitive side of humanity. Instead, Leberecht makes a big-hearted case for the intrinsic connection between romance and business, all the while urging us to search for more intuition, inconsistency and mystery at our workplaces and in our customer interactions.

More than 60 years after the rich nations of the world began acting to end poverty,Warwick argues that traditional methods have failed and that only the private sector possesses the resources to do the job. This lively presentation will explain how entrepreneurs and existing businesses can design, produce and market income-generating products.

The Humanities Forum brings Socrates Café to The Commonwealth Club. It will be held every third Wednesday evening for the discussion of philosophical issues. At each monthly meeting the group’s facilitator, Bob Enteen, will invite participants to suggest topics, which are then voted on. The person who proposed the most popular topic will briefly explain why she or he considers the subject interesting and important.

An open discussion will follow, ending with a summary. Everyone is welcome to attend.

MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. program Cost: $5 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, students free (with valid ID) Program Organizer: George Hammond

MLF: BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: Kevin O’Malley

MLFS: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS/BUSI NESS AND LEADERSHIP Location: Schultz Cultural Hall, Oshman Family JCC 3921 Fabian Way Palo Alto Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8:15 p.m. book signing Cost: $15 non-members, $8 members, $6 stu.

Program Organizer: Karen Keefer Note: Assisting Org. NorCal Peace Corps Asso.

F R I 23 | San Francisco

M O N 26 | San Francisco

The Power of Nature to Restore the Human Spirit

Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Walter E. Hoadley Annual Economic Forecast

Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

Stop! Breathe! Relax! Listen! Storyteller, explorer and photographer Daniel Fox brings you along on his journey into the wild. From grizzly bears in Alaska to crocodile-like caimans in Argentina, the images of his journeys bring the contours of the wilderness into stark relief and make clear the inherent connection between humans and the natural world.

Join us as his stories of the depths of wildlife provide an opportunity for all of us to come feel the power of nature through the eyes of Daniel Fox. MLF: ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: Ann Clark

Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-inChief, Forbes Media Alan Auerbach, Professor of Economics and Law and Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance Director, UC Berkeley

Dayna Goldfine & Dan Geller, Filmmakers; Cocreators, Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

With the midterm elections over and with more domestic gridlock and external dangers such as terrorism and Ebola looming large, will the economy continue to improve? Don’t miss this lively discussion with two top economic analysts from different sides of the aisle

Goldfine and Geller’s documentary presents a cache of home movies made by settlers who go off to live on a remote Galapagos Island in search of Eden.

Their search for paradise turns dark when one of their own is killed. Come hear how Goldfine and Geller became interested in producing this engaging, Hitchcock-meets-Darwin mystery.

Location: Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, Peacock Court, 999 California Street Time: 11:45 a.m. luncheon, 12:30 p.m. program Cost: $90 non-members, $80 members Note: Underwritten by Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. Members only & one paying guest.

MLF: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS/THE ARTS Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Karen Keefer Notes: In assoc. with NorCal Peace Corps Association. Photo taken by Chris Hardy.

D E C E M B E R 2014/J A N UA RY 2015

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www.commonwealthclub.org/events

T H U 22 | San Francisco

Daniel Fox, Explorer; Wildlife Photographer

January 21 – 26

W E D 21 | San Francisco

January 26 – February 4

M O N 26 | San Francisco

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP

Middle East Discussion Group Make your voice heard in an enriching, provocative and fun discussion with Club members as you weigh in on events shaping the face of the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan. Each month, the Middle East Member-Led Forum hosts an informal roundtable discussion on a topic frequently suggested by recent headlines. After a brief introduction, the floor will be open for discussion. All interested members are encouraged to attend. There will also be a brief planning session.

MLF: MIDDLE EAST Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program Cost: FREE Program Organizer: Celia Menczel

Publication title: The Commonwealth. ISSN: 0010-3349.

Filing date: September 30, 2014. Issue Frequency: Bimonthly. Number of issues published annually: 6. Annual subscription price: $34. Location of office of publication: 595 Market St., 2nd floor, San Francisco, CA 94105. Location of office of general business office: 595 Market St., 2nd floor, San Francisco, CA 94105. Name and address of Publisher: The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market St., 2nd floor, San Francisco, CA 94105. Editor: John Zipperer, Commonwealth Club, 595 Market St., 2nd floor, San Francisco, CA 94105. Managing Editor: Sonya Abrams, Commonwealth Club, 595 Market St., 2nd floor, San Francisco, CA 94105. Owner: The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market St., 2nd floor, San Francisco, CA 94105. Known bondholders, mortgages and other security holders: None.

EXTENT AND NATURE OF CIRCULATION Avg. No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: Total number of copies (net press run): 12,790. Paid/ Requested Outside County Subscriptions: 12,140. Paid In-County Subscriptions: None. Sales Through Dealers & Carriers: None. Other Classes Mailed Through USPS: None. Total Paid Distribution: 12,140. Free Distribution

by Mail: None. Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail: 600. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: 600. Total Distribution: 12,740. Copies not Distributed: 50. Total: 12,790. Percent paid and/or requested circulation: 95.29 percent. No. Copies Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date (October/November 2011): Total number of copies (net press run): 12,160. Paid/Requested Outside County Subscriptions: 11,560. Paid In-County Subscriptions: None. Sales Through Dealers and Carriers: None. Other Classes Mailed Through USPS: None. Total Paid Distribution: 11,560. Free Distribution by Mail: None Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail: 550.

Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: 550. Total Distribution: 12,110. Copies not Distributed: 50. Total: 12,160.

Percent paid and/or requested circulation: 95.46 percent. I certify that the statements above are correct and complete.

John Zipperer, Vice President of Media & Editorial, September 30, 2014.

W E D 28 | San Francisco

Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death Katy Butler, Author, Knocking on Heaven’s Door

When does death cease to be a curse and start to become a blessing? Where is the line between saving a life and prolonging death? When is the right time to say to a doctor, “Let my loved one go”? Butler explores these questions through a blend of investigative reporting and memoir.

When doctors refused to disable her aged, very ill father’s pacemaker, sentencing him to a protracted and agonizing death, Butler set out to understand why.

MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing.

Cost: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: George Hammond

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

T H U 29 | San Francisco

T H U 29 | San Francisco

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

San Francisco Architecture Walking Tour

NASA’s Kepler Mission: Planets Orbiting Distant Stars

see website for more details

Explore San Francisco’s Financial District with historian Rick Evans and learn the history and stories behind some of our city’s remarkable structures, streets, and public squares.

Hear about the famous architects that influenced the building of San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake. Discover hard-to-find rooftop gardens, Art Deco lobbies, unique open spaces, and historic landmarks. This is a tour for locals, with hidden gems you can only find on foot!

Jack J. Lissauer, Research Scientist, NASA; Co-Investigator, Kepler Mission

Location: Lobby of Galleria Park Hotel, 191 Sutter St. Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4:30 p.m. tour Cost: $45 non-members, $35 members Notes: Tour operates rain or shine. Limited to 20 people. Participants must pre-register. The tour covers less than one mile of walking in the Financial District. Note: This tour involves walking up and down stairs.

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Astronomers first detected planets around other stars – known as exoplanets – in the 1990s, but initially they were only able to discover giant planets that are hotter than a pizza oven. NASA launched the Kepler spacecraft in 2009 to search for more Earth-like worlds. Kepler has found more than 4,000 planet candidates, 1,000 of which have been verified as true exoplanets. Most are not suitable for life, but two have been identified as similar to Earth in size and temperature.

MLF: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 stu.

Program Organizer: Bill Grant

D EC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

Humanities West Book Discussion: Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and the Monk of St. Gall This work is believed to be the most accurate portrayal of Charlemagne and the finest biography of its time.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program

Dodging Extinction: Power, Food, Money and the Future of Life on Earth Location: SF Club Office Paleobiologist Barnosky weaves together evidence from the deep past and the present to offer a practical, hopeful plan for avoiding yet another mass extinction.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing

Month ## – ##

There’s a revolution occurring in the world of social entrepreneurship.

The Real Problem Solvers brings together leading entrepreneurs, funders, investors, thinkers and champions in the field of social entrepreneurship.

Contributors include marquee figures such as Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, Ashoka founder Bill Drayton, Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz and Skoll Foundation CEO Sally Osberg. The chapters weave together the voices of various contributors in discussions and Q&As. In no other book are so many leaders presented side by side, making this the ideal accessible and personal introduction for students of – and newcomers to – social entrepreneurship.

“In the past 10 years, a rich ecosystem has developed around the idea, energy and success of social entrepreneurs. With years of experience, Ruth Shapiro captures the complexity and complementarity of the men and women whose innovation and drive are changing the way we solve social problems and should be required reading for all.”

www.commonwealthclub.org/events

—Bill Draper, Co-chair, the Draper, Richards, Kaplan Foundation; General Partner, Draper Richards LLC; and author, The Start-up Game

“Ingenuity, initiative and determination are valued traits in any enterprise. Social entrepreneurs apply these talents to solving difficult social problems. This book showcases a number of these commendable people and inspires the reader to think deeply about his or her own contributions to society.”

—George P. Shultz, Former U.S. Secretary of State

Order it from Stanford University D E CPress: E M B E R 2014/J sup.org/book.cgi?id=20715 A N UA RY 2015 THE COMMO N WE AL TH 39

MAYER continued from page 9 MAYER: I’ve always loved design, and I think that one of the most fun parts about [working at] Yahoo is that everything is a design problem in terms of how we hire the right people, how we pick the right acquisitions to pursue, how we approach in terms of pitching the right advertising or how we design [something].

It’s all part of the most intricate and amazing design problem that I’ve gotten to work on.

And when it comes to products, what you really want to do is instill values in the company. Yahoo has had this [approach] since the beginning, being a really approachable, friendly brand that has a personality. As a result, the people and the culture intuitively get that, and they bring products that have that personality, that emotional experience.

Even if it’s just taking something like the weather or your email and beautifying it with photographs and colors that really speak to you, Yahoo in particular is a lot about personalization. How can we take sports, news, weather, finance, email and make it feel that it is tailored to you, customized to you? It brings some of Yahoo’s personality through, but it’s really [about] what you need to know, when you need to know it with an element of serendipity.

BENIOFF: So are you trying to couple that serendipity with that emotional experience?

MAYER: Absolutely. The two are tied. There’s that element of surprise that causes people to have such an amazing emotional [reaction].

One of the most fun things that I did at Google over the years, which was very different than my day job, was working on the homepage logos. I fell into it in a really crazy way because I was working on our front-end web server.

[Let me] drive home how brutally difficult those first few years at Google were, I guess 15 years ago. It was a Sunday Halloween. We were literally all in the office on Saturday night, working on coding at two in the morning.

I remember Sergey Brin coming and running into my office, saying “Marissa, Marissa, I want to show you something.” And I said, “OK,” because I needed a break anyway. And he said, “Go to ‘tilde Sergey,’ [his internal folder] and click on Halloween.gif.” I clicked on it and it was the Google logo replaced with two pumpkins where the “O’s” were. And I said, “Oh, that’s cute, Sergey. You replaced the “O’s” with pumpkins.” And he said, “Yeah, isn’t it cute? Put it on the homepage.”

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And I said, “You want me to put that on the homepage?” And he said, “Yes! Why not?”

And I said, “Well, but Sergey, they’re just Clip Art pumpkins.” And he said, “Yes?” And I said, “And they’re pixelated around the edges and I can see how you just scaled them up.” And he’s like, “So?” And I said, “Also, you didn’t cover the red ‘O’ very well because I can see it peeking out here at the bottom.” And he said, “So?” And I said, “You want me to put this on the homepage?” And he said, “It will tell our users that yes, there are people here who are working and that we’re excited for Halloween.”

I said, “OK.” And I was skeptical and I put it up on the homepage.

At the time, the forum of the day was called Slashdot. I remember logging into Slashdot and there were just hundreds of comments. And the element of it was that piece of serendipity because even at the time, Google had become so much of a utility that you would use it every day. It was almost like your tube of toothpaste. All of the sudden, one day you logged in and there was something there about the people who worked there and what they were excited about, this little flare of personality.

I think that it was just that element of humanity that suddenly shone through that really drew people in. It was an important lesson for me because now I think about how you can pull in that little bit of serendipity on products because it creates this emotional connection that says something about the people who work on the product and what they love.

BENIOFF: So coupling that back to this serendipitous world, a world where these computers are learning; they’re mobile; they’re flying drones, what does this get connected to?

How do you see that moving forward?

MAYER: The drones piece is intriguing. I haven’t thought enough about it, but I do think that when you look at the transformations that have happened in technology, they always say that people tend to overestimate the short-term and underestimate the long-term. I always think back to when I was five, watching “The Jetsons.” I was like, “Oh, this will be awesome because when I’m 30, there will be flying cars.” And if you look at it, today I’m almost 40 and there are no flying cars – there’s nothing even close to a flying car.

But when you look at the way the Internet has just transformed and changed everything, from cloud computing to the way we all get information to the way we do research to

the way we all communicate with multiple like they weren’t good enough to do that. devices, it feels to me like it’s time for some And then even out of college, I saw a lot of of that innovation and some of that huge women find a different career rather than betransformation to move over into the trans- ing software developers, and move away from portation sector. I think that’s what you’re these technical fields. What do you think is starting to see with things like self-driving the problem – or one of the problems – and cars and hopefully eventually flying cars. how do you think we can solve it?

And drones [relate to] this notion of, MAYER: I think I’ll take [the question] in “Wait, can we get so good with information two parts. I think that there is potentially and mobility and processing it all that we an issue in terms of girls versus boys, but I can actually start to [tackle] the problem also think that there’s an issue just in terms of getting from here to there?” Having eyes of sheer scale. For me, I got into computers somewhere you can’t be, or having something late. I literally bought my first computer done for you where you can’t be, really be- when I was a freshman in college. I thought comes a profound possibility.

I would be a doctor.

BENIOFF: We’re in a real education crisis in I didn’t take my first programming course the United States, esuntil [my] freshman pecially in K through year spring. It was a 12 and especially in hat little bit of serendipity course at Stanford our public schools called CS 105. The and in pre-K. Do in produc ts...creates this lecturer opened the you think that these class by saying, “Rekinds of technolo- e m o t i o n a l c o n n e c t i o n lax everyone. There’s gies can help some 400 of you here and –Marissa Mayer of these issues? studies have shown MAYER: Well, eduthat only two of you cation hasn’t evolved enough, right? And will ever go on and take another computer when you look at how much everything science class.” True story. That was my first else has evolved, how do you actually get programming class and then I loved it so education to take a different tack? And Sal much, I went on to take more.

Khan was one of the former winners of I thought a lot about why I didn’t get this [Inforum Visionary] award – [I have into programming sooner. Part of it was that a] huge appreciation and respect for what it just wasn’t the thing to do, but part of it he’s done. I think this notion of flipping the was, for the folks from my generation and era classroom and having you watch the lecture at Stanford, there were a lot more boys [in and learning at night and then actually doing computer science classes] because they saw the problems with a teacher and your fellow things like video games and they would get classmates the next day is really interesting interested in how you make them. in [the case of ] these sort of shorter snippets I think that as we start to do more with of learning, in the form of shorter lectures. wearables, large formats and screens, mobile I think all of that is really thought- devices, and as technology starts to touch our provoking, but there’s still an element of lives more every day, I think intellectually conventionalism in [it]; it’s still a lecture. I curious girls are going to say, “Wait, how do think the question is, “Can we make learn- you make this? How does this work?” And I ing much more interesting and much more think it will naturally cause more to happen. engaging, much more adaptive.

I don’t think we really know right now if the BENIOFF: Much more serendipitous? girls who are 9, 12, 13 years old right now MAYER: Absolutely. are going to be more or less interested in AUDIENCE MEMBER: Like yours, my technology. I hope that the incredible things parents were in engineering and pushed me that have happened in technology in the last into that at a very young age, and throughout decade that have really shaped their lives are my time as a computer science student, even things that they’re interested in. [That they’ll in middle school and high school, I saw fewer say,] “Hey! How do I do that? How do I and fewer women being interested in these participate in that?” fields. Even in college, I saw a lot of very But I would also say that there’s an issue technical, extremely smart women feeling around scale. One of my great mentors, a

“T

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by Ed Ritger D E C E M B E R 2014/J A N UA RYPhotos 2015 THE COMMO N WE AL TH

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professor at Stanford named Eric Roberts, thinks a lot about computer science education at large. He got really involved with the advanced placement group in terms of preparing high school seniors. One of the things he found was: [that] there are over 200,000 graduating seniors from high school every year that take the AP Calculus test. There are 14,000 seniors who take the AP Computer Science test. Only 7 percent.

So you say, “OK, the people who are good at math will also be good at computer science.” But the truth is, when they go to graduate from high school, only 7 percent of those who are taking advanced calculus and taking the test to get credit in college are actually also taking the computer science test. The point is, if we can start driving that 14,000, that 7 percent, up closer to the 200,000, that growth will have to come from somewhere.

So I, for one, am less worried about women in computer science and girls in computer science. I think that will start to correct itself, but the real issue is we’re just not producing enough computer scientists period. Or enough people who, even if they don’t go on to become full-on computer scientists, are really comfortable with software engineering. So I think that part of it is how we take that discipline and start expanding

its participation at a much younger age, so it feels more like math. And as we do that, there will naturally be a lot more girls in absolute numbers, and I would guess even in relative numbers.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I wanted to ask you about your role in social media and your role as a public figure. A little less than a year ago, I wrote to you on Twitter and said, “You’ve inspired me to pursue computer science.” And you actually wrote back and said, “Good luck in CS!” That was deeply affirming to me, so thank you so much. What I wanted to ask you actually was, although you are so great at reaching out to people, a positive thing, as a public figure, you get a lot of criticism – some fair and a lot, frankly, not fair. And I wanted to know, from your perspective, how do you handle criticism from others about you, about Yahoo, about some shareholders and really anybody else, since you’re talking about a barrage of information, a barrage of comments? How do you handle criticism and restore your confidence?

MAYER: I think that as humans, we all respond better to praise sometimes than to criticism and I think that I once read a piece on Margaret Thatcher where she talked about the fact that she never read public criticism or public praise of herself

because she felt like it really pulled her off her center and made her think differently about things. It made her more likely to stay with a position or more likely to move away from a position because after she’d seen what someone else thought of her saying it, it just changed how she thought about it.

And so I would say about five years ago, I basically stopped reading criticism, praise, articles in general—I still read Twitter so I see the headlines. If I see a headline enough, I’ll ask my husband to read it and summarize it for me because it always sounds better coming from someone who loves you than it does actually reading it [yourself ].

In a less intellectual way, I remember Bradley Cooper once said, “If you ever want to really feel bad about yourself, go ahead and read about yourself online.” But I think that for all those reasons, for me, I think that it’s important to let the criticism in, but you want to do it in a way that is really constructive. So everyone will have a different way for dealing with it. You want to understand what those criticisms are because in all criticism, there are some elements of truth and that’s why it hurts and that’s why when you learn about it, you can actually improve yourself. But it’s also important not to let it in so much that it changes who you are or what you want to pursue.

Photo by Ed Ritger

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DEC EM BER 2014/JA N UA RY 2015

BEING NEIGHBORS IS MORE THAN JUST GEOGRAPHY.

We are proud to sponsor the Commonwealth Club of California.

At Bank of the West we’re committed to being active members of the communities we call home. We’re as dedicated to lending a helping hand around the neighborhood as we are to providing the personal banking, business banking and wealth management services that may be just right for you. Please visit us at a local branch or at bankofthewest.com for more information.

Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender.

© 2014 Bank of the West.

D E C E M B E R 2014/J A N UA RY 2015

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SENATOR KIRSTE New York Senator Gillibrand discusses the importance of having role models, the reality of sexism in schools and the Senate, and how Hillary Clinton mentored her in 90 minutes. Excerpted from “Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in Conversation w i t h Sh e r y l S a n d b e rg ,” October 8, 2014.

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND U.S. Senator; Author, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World In conversation with

SHERYL SANDBERG

Chief Operating Officer, Facebook; Author, Lean In SHERYL SANDBERG: You [talk] about the importance of women raising their voices, not just for themselves but for supporting each other. You start by talking about your mother and grandmother. How did their experiences as working mothers guide your career?

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: My mother and my grandmother were two of my greatest role models.

My mother was definitely a trailblazer.

She was only one of three women in her law school class [and she] loved being a very hands-on, present mom. She made all our clothes when we were little; she loved cooking and baking; she loved when my girlfriends came over. But my memories are of her always multi-tasking; on the phone with this very long phone cord stretched into the middle of the kitchen while she’s cooking dinner and dealing with some

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details of an adoption case while saying, “Honey, how was your day?” I remember how balanced her life was, that she really felt this was all part of her. Meanwhile, by the time she was my age, she was a second-degree black belt. She also made time for herself.

My grandmother was also very much a woman who was powerful in her own right.

She never went to college. She was a secretary in our state legislature. She worked every day in her life, but she recognized 75 years ago, when women had very little voice in public life, that in order to be heard, [she needed] to amplify her voice with other women’s voices and that together they would be heard. Those women formed grassroots advocacy networks where they did door-to-door work and envelope stuffing and campaigning for candidates they loved. She just struck me as someone who really owned her ambition. She was somebody who wanted to be heard. She made it happen, and over 50 years she became very powerful. In fact, you couldn’t get elected in Albany if you didn’t have the blessing of my grandmother and her lady friends, because they did all the work.

So I grew up with these great role models [for] being exactly yourself. You can be who you are, you can embrace what you want to be and you don’t have to make choices between being the mother you want to be and having the life you want to live at the same time.

SANDBERG: I loved the stories of your grandmother. She had breast cancer at a very young age and went on to raise millions of dollars for a clinic, which was a lot in those days and still is. I often wondered what her life would have been like if she had lived in our day and time. What would she have done with all of the opportunities?

GILLIBRAND: She would’ve been president of the hospital.

I loved that you [wrote] in your book about your parents and how smart your mother was, and how intelligent and opinionated she was, and how that formed

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you. All of us have role models in our lives, whether it’s our mothers, our grandmothers – whether it’s your favorite teacher, whether it’s the lady next door. All of us can benefit so greatly from having someone to look up to, to envision yourself doing what they’re doing.

It’s truly helpful to have mentors and sponsors, [people in]different roles that will help you in your career. All of us can help one another. I talk about how Hillary Clinton was a mentor of mine. By the time I was elected to Congress, that whole mentoring relationship had taken no more than 90 minutes over a decade, but that’s all it took. It was just these little snippets of advice and guidance when I needed them the most. I never had the benefit of a sponsor, but I knew enough to have a role model, to have these mentors to help me along the way. All of us can be that role model, that mentor – that’s the thing that all of us can do wherever we are in our lives.

That’s why I [share] these vignettes to show people that it can be right around you. It doesn’t have to be someone really powerful or important; it can be just someone who owns their ambition and wants to do the thing they do.

SANDBERG: The big, shocking news in this book [is] that there’s still sexism in the halls of the U.S. Congress. People were shocked and appalled, which is funny. A lot of those comments were about people making comments about your physical appearance. But there’s a story in here that has gotten less attention, that I think is equally or more important, which is about breastfeeding.

GILLIBRAND: So uncomfortable. OK, so when I was first appointed to the U.S. Senate, I was appointed because [Senator] Clinton was elevated to be secretary of state. At the time, I was nursing my second son, Henry. He was about six or seven months old. In the Senate, you’re given certain duties. One of the duties given to junior senators is to preside over the Senate, which means they sit at the big desk and

N GILLIBRAND look out to the chairs.

Normally if people are talking, it’s really interesting; you’re listening to the debate, and it’s very exciting. But sometimes no one’s there, so it can be terribly tedious.

I was given the slot of five to seven. Now, I could not do five to seven. As anybody [who’s] ever had a child who’s been nursing knows, there is a nursing schedule. Your nursing schedule is usually in the morning, some time around lunch, some time around dinner, and then some time before bed – that’s a normal nursing schedule. So five to seven is the nursing time, which means you either have to nurse that baby or you need to pump. I had to explain this to a young twenty-something, who never had kids and didn’t have a wife, and I couldn’t describe the feelings I would be going through if I had to be sitting there presiding over the U.S. Senate. I begged for another time slot, and he would not give it to me. So I eventually just called all the other junior senators and said, “Would you please change time slots with me?” and explained my predicament. Mark Udall was my white knight of presiding orders and switched time slots with me, so that I didn’t have to describe my uncomfortable feelings to that young twenty-something.

SANDBERG: How have you learned about what needs to change in how we approach work so that women don’t have to feel uncomfortable explaining to someone what a breastfeeding schedule is?

GILLIBRAND: We should talk about how we support women and families in doing it all. Because women are doing it all. Most women are working because they must feed their children. Eight out of ten moms are working. It is not the days of the “Mad Men” era, [when] Dad went to work and Mom waited at home.

Four out of ten moms are the sole or the primary breadwinner. So what we should really start talking about is how you make it possible to meet the needs of your family and meet the needs of your job and do it well. What we do need to talk about is Photo by Scrumshus/wikicommons

some of the unfairness, structurally. For example, equal pay for equal work – [the situation] is absurd. The fact that 8 out of 10 families aren’t earning their due because a woman happens to be doing [a particular] job is absolutely unacceptable. Some other structural supports would go a long way.

Something as simple as affordable day care or universal pre-kindergarten would help any parent who has young children in those first five years. Those are the kinds of things

“We’re the only industrialized country in the whole world that doesn’t have paid leave.

Countries that don’t educate t h e i r g i r l s – Afg h a n i s t a n and Pakistan – have more paid leave than America. ” we should all support.

I also believe it’s important to fight for something called paid leave. Right now, we have unpaid leave, which means you can take up to three months off work, anytime.

It’s not for any employee; you have to have at least 50 employees at your business and you have to work there for at least a year.

Only about half of the workforce can actually take unpaid leave. We’re the only industrialized country in the whole world that doesn’t have paid leave. Countries that don’t educate their girls – Afghanistan and Pakistan – have more paid leave than America.

The biggest concern I have is what we call a “sticky floor.” A lot of times great companies will have family leave, but they’re almost always for professionals, the highest earners at the highest echelons where law firms and businesses are desperate to keep their female talent. They figure it out and create the flexibility. That is not true

for low-wage workers. So the woman who is going to clean this auditorium tonight, she’s got fixed hours; she might not have sick days; she may not have vacation days.

She’s given what she gets and if her child is sick and she misses work, she may lose her job, which means she starts over again at the bottom rung at a minimum wage job and never rises above. We should all concern ourselves with this sticky floor, because two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women. It has a lot to do with the fact that there’s no support for their family emergencies.

SANDBERG: You’ve been a strong advocate for addressing these things. You’ve also been a very strong voice on what needs to be done legislatively and in a regulatory sense for women and sexual assault in the military. On these issues, I think it’s fair to say there’s not a lot of legislation happening these days. What is the real path right now and over the long term?

GILLIBRAND: The answer that relates to all of us right now is that our voices need to be heard, because I believe if our voices were heard, and we were heard in all states – red states, blue states, purple states – a lot of these issues would demand a reaction. We would be able to say, “We really should have equal pay in this country. We should really get rid of sexual assault on college campuses.” These would be consensus items. It doesn’t matter if you’re Democratic or Republican. There are things we all strongly believe in. I believe if women’s voices were heard across the board more loudly, a lot of this would be on the national agenda.

Longer term? Change the players list in Congress. I would like very much to have a Congress that reflects our population. I would like very much to have a Congress that shows the diversity of America, including having 51 percent of our members in Congress be women.

If we did have 51 percent of Congress be women, a couple of things would change.

First of all, we would not have wasted two

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congressional sessions debating whether women should have access to affordable contraception. If it was 51 percent women, it would not be on the agenda. The second thing that would change [relates to the fact that,] regardless of ideology, I think women are often – not always but often – very good at leaving the partisan politics at the door and trying to find common ground.

In the Senate, the women have taken the time to get to know each other first as women, as sisters, as daughters [and] as mothers, and we spend time together purposefully for that reason, and what it allows for is not only willingness [to cooperate] but [also] interest in each other succeeding. So every time I ever passed a bill, I had a strong Republican woman helping me. [For the] “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal, it was Susan Collins leading the charge among the Republicans, getting the few votes we needed. When it was the 9/11 health bill, it was Olympia Snowe and Lisa Murkowski going into the Republican caucus room and saying, “Why aren’t we standing with first responders? These are the men and women who raced up towers when everybody was racing down, and we should be standing by them at their hour of need.” When we finally passed that bill, we passed it unanimously.

SANDBERG: Along with having more women in the Senate, it might be nice to have a woman in the White House. The leading female contender for the presidency right now is Hillary Clinton, and you talk a lot about her in the book. Can you talk about that relationship, how you met her, why it mattered?

GILLIBRAND: I was just a young lawyer, sitting in New York City, working on big cases, and I looked up long enough to see that our First Lady was going to China.

I paid attention because I had studied in Beijing and had learned Mandarin. I thought, “Gosh, our First Lady is giving a speech about women’s rights being human rights from Beijing. What a message for the world.” I thought, What would it have taken to have been invited to that conference? I realized I wasn’t involved in politics. So that’s when I decided I needed to somehow get into politics in New York City.

So I called a girlfriend whose mom was involved, and said, “How do I get involved in New York City?” She said,

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“Join this women’s group. It’s called the Women’s Leadership Forum. They’re just starting out. They’re an arm of the DNC [Democratic National Committee].” I said, “Fine.” So I called the ladies in charge and said, “I want to join the WLF.” She said, “You can absolutely join. You just need to write me a check for $1,000.” I was just a twenty-something, and $1,000 was lot of money back then. I thought, “Wow. OK, I’ll do it, because it’s the only advice I’ve been given.”

I wrote the check and I went to my first big meeting, which was an event in New York City at the River Club and Hillary Clinton was our speaker, and it was a big room like this. I was standing way in the back and I was the youngest by at least 10 or 20 years. She gave this speech and she looked out into the audience and she said, “Decisions are being made every day in Washington, and if you’re not part of those decisions and you don’t like what they decide, you have no one to blame but yourself.” So I thought, “Oh my God! She’s talking to me! She’s telling me I have to run for office! I’m scared!”

I was really anxious about this and sweating in the back of this room. But it got me thinking that I really did care about politics. I learned all those lessons from my grandmother. I knew that women’s voices were important. I knew that this conversation happening around the world was something that I wanted to be part of.

So I started getting involved in campaigns, and I decided I wanted to leave my big law firm; I wanted to do public service. So I tried all different routes, and actually all of them failed. My first effort was to go work at the U.S. Attorney’s office and I didn’t get the job. My second effort was to apply to all the big foundations. I applied to the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation. I didn’t even get a response.

Then Hillary decided to run for the Senate. I said, “Oh, here’s my big chance. I’m going to go work for Hillary.” I applied for whatever I could get, and I had no relevant experience. I had no option. So I went to another event – and this was after a year and a half of trying – and our speaker was Andrew Cuomo, who is now our governor and was then secretary of housing and urban development, and he gave this big

speech about why public service matters and why you should be a Democrat, that you should be making a difference. By this point in my life, I was so frustrated that I walked up to him afterwards and said to him, “Secretary, I loved your speech, but I really think politics is an insider’s game and I don’t know how to get from A to B.” And Andrew is a very provocative person, so he said, “What do you do?” I said, “I’m a lawyer. I’m a seventh-year associate at Davis Polk.” He said, “Well, would you move to Washington?” Now that question to a young, single girl living in New York City – no one would ever leave New York for Washington. But I said, “Of course!”

So I got a call the next day and went down and I interviewed and got the job to be his special counsel. I went home that night and I talked to my then-boyfriend, nowhusband. An important lesson that Sheryl definitely shares in her book is that we all need a partner in our lives. We need someone who believes in us, supports us and encourages us, particularly at the right moments, and Jonathan has always been

that person for me. He just said, “Kirsten, Davis Polk doesn’t need you. All you’ve ever wanted to do was public service. I’ll see you on the weekends. Of course you should take the job.” So I called the next day. Two weeks later, I was in D.C. So this was the end of the Clinton administration. The Democrats lost in Bush v.

Gore. My job was finished in seven months, but it really set me in motion. I wanted to do public service. Hillary ran [for the U.S. Senate]; I started working on her campaign; I got really excited. She asked me to do a fundraiser. I was determined to do the best fundraiser in the history of ever. So I worked really hard and she got elected and I stayed in touch with her, and because I worked so hard for her she remembered me. She called me afterwards: “Oh, Kirsten, thank you for that lovely fundraiser.” I disclose in the book that the first time we finally had one conversation that wasn’t just a “Thank you, Kirsten, for working so hard,” was when my father met her at a cocktail party and he of course charmed her the whole time, and so I got a call the next day saying, “I met

your father. He’s so charming.” And I had this 10-minute conversation with Hillary because my father was so charming – [it was] slightly undermining.

So I continued with all my efforts to do my hard work, and I eventually decided I wanted to move to upstate New York and I wanted to run for Congress. In 2004, I was working at this district [where the population] was two-to-one Republican and I was pregnant – or maybe I had just had the baby. So I called Hillary and said, “I’m looking at the district.” She said, “What about the baby?” I said, “Well, you know…” “Well, what about Jonathan, what about …?” And she asked me all these tough questions I had no good answers to. She didn’t tell me, “don’t run,” but she didn’t tell me to run. So I realized that maybe I didn’t know enough.

I spent the next two years going to all these campaign training schools and really figuring out what [it’s] like to run for Congress. I really didn’t know the answers to her questions, but I [was determined to] get those answers. I did all this training, and

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before the next cycle, Jonathan and I decided to do a poll and we knew more about the district. I called Hillary again. This was my next mentoring moment; she had the poll and she said, “I’ve already looked at the poll,” and she had all these questions and I knew all the answers this time. She said at the end, “Kirsten, you just have to know in your heart – while you’re running – you have to know that whether you win or lose, it’s something that’s in your heart and you have to make a difference.” And she said, “I will do anything you need me to do and so will my husband.” And they did.

So they really helped me get elected. They did events; they did fundraisers; they came to the district. President Clinton came up the day before the election, so on election morning, every photo in every paper was of me and Bill Clinton. It was one of those miracle elections. We won by six points.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you believe that this normalized atmosphere of sexual harassment in high schools translates to places as prestigious as the U.S. Senate and if so, what can we do to prevent that?

GILLIBRAND: Yes, and we have to speak up and be heard. I’m really concerned about what’s happening at college campuses right now. They haven’t fully studied it, but the one study they do have showed that one out of five girls is raped during [her] college career and that it usually happens in the first few months. We know that a lot of

these rapes are targeted rapes by recidivists who are truly victimizing these young men and women. What we’re trying to do is to create a spotlight on it.

These are serious crimes. What does the college have to do with this, anyway? That’s a legitimate question. These are rapes that would result in jail time, but the reason why we have to hold our colleges accountable is because of Title IX. Title IX requires that universities create a safe environment for all students. They are obligated to have a process in place if a rape or assault takes place on a campus [that governs] how they respond. What I’m trying to do with my colleagues in the Senate is work on a bill to do that.

The reason why this has become such a national issue is because of some very brave young girls. Two women came to my office and said, “Kirsten’s been working on sexual assault in the military, but we have to tell her what’s happening in college campuses. We need a meeting.” My staff was smart enough to make that meeting happen. Their names are Adriana and Annie. They basically told me the story of how they were both brutally raped in North Carolina. They reported the rape. Their college administrators didn’t believe them; they blamed [these women] and then they retaliated against them for reporting it. [Adriana and Annie] have gone campus to campus, getting men and women to stand up, speaking truth to power, de-

manding action. The bill that we’ve written really was informed by their experiences.

We’re trying to flip the incentives to make sure it’s worth the while of these schools to get it right and to report [sexual assualt] as they’re supposed to and to put procedures in place to prevent this from happening. But it’s something we all have to talk about. It goes to a fundamental issue, which is far bigger than high school or college, and that’s whether we value women in society. [In] the NFL you have a known player who admits to beating his wife – you have a video of him dragging her out of an elevator in the most disrespectful way – and he’s given a slap on the wrist. It’s hugely problematic because what you’re [seeing] is [that] we don’t value women. [It happens] when the Department of Defense won’t reform itself because it doesn’t care that there were 26,000 rapes last year and only 1 in 10 reported because they want to put their arms institutionally around that favorite soldier, or [when] a school institutionally puts its arms around that favored quarterback. It happens over and over again; that institutional bias maintains a status quo because [those authorities] don’t want to be held accountable. All of us, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, we have to demand more from our leaders and from our institutions, to value women.

That’s really what it goes to every time.

Photo by Russell Edwards

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The trials and tribulations our ancestors faced, and overcame, he archives coming online come through loud and clear from the records they left behind. In today, through which one can discover family history, 1895, my great-grandparents left their comfortable home and farm are truly amazing. Well beyond in Pennsylvania, taking their younger children, including my ninethe commercialized services such year-old grandmother, west to Pasadena. They went out to join their as Ancestry.com, primary sources older son Camden, who had started a business as a citrus grower and including newspaper archives, wholesaler. No sooner had they arrived than the whole family became court records, military documents, ill with typhoid fever, probably from improper public sanitation in business records such as tax rolls what were then primitive conditions in Los Angeles. One of their and deeds and census reports are cherished younger sons died in the epidemic. now widely available on the InterOne of their challenges in LA that recently came to light from net. They provide an opportunity newspaper records was a complete surprise to me. In 1896, another to reconstruct family events as fruit distributor at the LA Central Market apparently appropriated Photo courtesy of Gloria Duffy never before. some of our family’s fruit crates. My great grandfather set out to It’s fascinating to delve into this material. From online sources, I rectify this situation with the ostensible thief. Harsh words followed, now know the ship on which my first ancestor sailed from Rotter- and the other fellow hit my great-grandfather over the head with dam to Philadelphia in 1750 to join William Penn’s colony. I learned a monkey wrench. The charge, perhaps a bit overblown, that my that, when he arrived, he was required to sign great-grandfather filed against the other guy, an oath of allegiance to the English King, for assault with a deadly weapon, was covered as many immigrant Germans were when he records provide a real by the Los Angeles Herald. the 18th Century German diaspora flooded Seen through our family’s experiences, into the English colonies in the new world. w i n d o w i n t o t h e l a r g e r Los Angeles in the 1890s was a rough-andHeinrich Redinger was so weak upon his artumble place. Now I understand why my rival, after a likely horrendous months-long social trends of which our great-grandparents fled back to their peaceful voyage where food and water ran short and farm in Pennsylvania a few years later, with disease plagued the passengers, that he was a n c e s t o r s w e r e a p a r t . my grandmother in tow. barely able to sign the oath.

Great-uncle Camden stayed on in the Skipping forward a few generations, I’ve West, though, expanding the citrus-growing learned from online sources where and when my great-grandfather business from Los Angeles to Puerto Rico. The conditions on this new mustered in and out of his Union Army regiment in the Civil War, frontier were as challenging as they had been in Los Angeles. In records what his duty consisted of, and the terrible conditions in which his of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court that have recently come online, brother was held at Andersonville Prison after being captured by I read about Camden’s 1912 case after a neighboring farmer’s cattle the South. and goats committed “depredations” against 40 of the orange trees It is especially interesting to discern patterns as a family evolves at his Puerto Rico farm. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court over time. The records show my family members moving further ruling that an owner of animals is responsible for damages they create, and further west over the generations, pursuing first agriculture, and affirmed Camden’s damage award of $400 from his neighbor. then business and professional opportunities. Starting in Germany, Redinger v. Crespo is still cited in cases regarding animal misbehavior. thence to Philadelphia, then to Berks County, Pennsylvania, from Reconstructing family history can be endlessly fascinating. It crethere to Armstrong County in Western Pennsylvania, to Pasadena ates new respect for what our ancestors endured – hardship during in California, to Puerto Rico, and finally to the Bay Area. immigration, war, imprisonment, illness, assault, death, and even Our family reflected a common pattern, accounting for much of animal “depredations.” the migration from Europe to the United States, and then westward The records left behind, such as legal and press reports, obviously across our nation. In particular, they responded in the 1890s when don’t tell the whole story about our family members. But one can cheap land in Southern California was offered to farmers in the learn enormously from these new online sources. The information East, part of the mass migration so colorfully documented by the contributes to an understanding not only of family history, but historian Carey McWilliams in Southern California Country: An provides a real window into the larger social trends of which our Island on the Land. ancestors were a part.

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O C TO BER/NO V EM BER 2014

Moroccan Discovery FROM THE IMPERIAL CITIES TO THE SAHARA March 7–20, 2015 Rabat

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Fez

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Erfoud

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Ouarzazate

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Marrakech

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Casablanca

Explore Morocco’s ancient ruins, sacred mosques, lush desert oases, imposing Kasbahs and colorful souks while learning about contemporary life, culture and politics. This Commonwealth Club caravan journeys from the imperial cities of Rabat, Fez, and Marrakech to the Atlas Mountains and vast Sahara.

• Imperial cities of Rabat, Meknes, Fez, Marrakech • U.S. Embassy briefing in Rabat • Ancient Roman ruins and exceptional mosaics of Volubilis • Private Arabic music concert in Fez • Medieval medina (market) in Fez with its maze of souks • Scenic “Route of a Thousand Kasbahs” • Sahara sunset excursion and camel ride on the dunes • Dramatic Todra Gorges and spectacular Atlas Mountains • Kasbah of Ait ben-Haddou • Marrakech’s medina and Djemaa el Fna Square • Visit with a local Imam and an optional cooking class • Storied Casablanca and Hassan II mosque Cost: $5,758 per person, based on double occupancy, including air from SFO. Limited to 24 people.

Commonwealth Club Travel CST: 2096889-40

Detailed brochure available at: commonwealthclub.org/travel Contact: (415) 597-6720 • travel@commonwealthclub.org Photos: Peter Adams, David Domingo/Flickr, danielduce/Flickr

The Commonwealth Club of California 595 Market Street, 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94105

Purchase event tickets at commonwealthclub.org or call (415) 597-6705

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PROGRAMS YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS Thursday, December 4

Monday, December 8

Andrew Young

Kathleen Turner

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Former Atlanta Mayor; Strategist to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Actress

Ambassador Young is one of the iconic figures of the civil rights movement. Today, Ambassador Young chairs the Andrew Young Foundation, an organization promoting his vision of peace, prosperity and inclusion through leadership development and documentary production. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to hear from one of America’s legendary civil rights and political leaders on the cultural and societal challenges facing the U.S. for event details, see page 31

Kathleen Turner has garnered critical acclaim for her performances in films like Romancing the Stone, Peggy Sue Got Married and War of the Roses. On Broadway, Turner starred in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” for which she received a Tony nomination.

She now appears at The Berkeley Rep, portraying legendary journalist Molly Ivins in “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.” Meet the real Kathleen Turner and hear the stories, causes, and lessons that have shaped this iconic performer.

for event details, see page 32

Tuesday, December 9

Friday, January 23

Jared Diamond

Economic Forecast

Professor, UCLA; Author, Guns, Germs and Steel and The World Until Yesterday

Steve Forbes, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media; Former Republican Presidential Candidate Alan Auerbach, Professor of Economics & Law and Director of the Center for Tax Policy & Public Finance, UC Berkeley; Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation during Clinton Administration

Jared Diamond is a scientist known for drawing from a variety of fields, from anthropology to evolutionary biology.

He has published several popular science books. Diamond’s conclusions are critical and provocative, exploring concepts like how humans evolved to be so different from animals, despite sharing over 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and why Eurasian peoples conquered Native Americans and Africans instead of vice versa. for event details, see page 32

This lively discussion with two top economic analysts from different sides of the aisle will forecast where the U.S. and global economies are headed in 2015, as well as what should be done to keep them on track. for event details, see page 37