Projects
Over the years a number of issues have been studied in depth by club leaders, member committees, or scholars commissioned by the Commonwealth Club. Among the topics studied have been direct democracy (the initiative process), air pollution, a statewide water plan, restrictions on child labor, automobile and industrial accident compensation, and legislative procedures. The long-standing mandate of many such studies has been "to investigate and discuss problems affecting the welfare of the Commonwealth and to aid in their solution." Many policy innovations in California—such as public defenders' offices and a printed voter explanation booklet to go with ballots—originated in studies and discussions at the Commonwealth Club.
One of the most extensive of these studies was commissioned in 1953 and lasted until 1956. It resulted in the book California Social Welfare: Legislation, Financing, Services, Statistics published by Prentice-Hall. Vaughn Davis Bornet, a recent Ph.D. recipient from Stanford University at the time, authored the book.
One current initiative is Climate One, which convenes leaders from business, government, and civil society to discuss a low-carbon, global economy. Climate One holds private leadership roundtables as well as public discussions. Recent Climate One guests include then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, Chair of the Nobel Prize winning IPCC Rajendra Pachauri, and General Motors Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner.
Another current project is the Club's Social Entrepreneurship series, interviews with American social entrepreneurs that form the basis of the book The Real Problem Solvers, by Ruth Shapiro, which is scheduled to be released by Stanford University Press in January 2013.
Because the club is strictly non-partisan and does not take positions on issues, when a project matures to the point that policy prescriptions are being considered, as in the case of Voices of Reform, which became the separate organization California Forward, the club assists the project to become a separate entity from the club itself.
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Famous quotes containing the word projects:
“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)