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From the Executive Director
Happy
New Year 2009!
Now I know that really, we are just now on the cusp of 2008, a year that
holds such enormous promise: finally, We the People will have a chance
to elect new leaders to represent us in Washington. The progressive
community is already bustling with activism, and many of you will be working
non-stop to promote your candidates and your issues over the next year.
But before we enter into this year of creative electoral chaos, take a moment
to imagine what life will be like when it's over, and we've won.
Envision success: the
country has elected leaders based on their progressive ideals and policy
positions. Now what? What will we do as a community, as a movement, to continue to promote our values and ideas to the
general public, making it possible for those leaders to pursue a bold
progressive agenda for our future? How will we work together to achieve
things we could never make happen on our own? After years of being in the
opposition, now is the time for progressives to plan for victory, so we can
greet 2009 with a clear plan for making progress happen. This is one of
the central topics that the Commonweal Institute will address in 2008, and I
look forward to thinking through these questions with you.
The New Year also affords an opportunity to look back, and the past two
months have been exciting ones here at the Commonweal Institute. You
can read all about our November and December programs and activities -- the
2007 Bay Area Progressive Roundtable featuring Rob Stein, my recent speech at
the Democratic Century Club of Santa Clara County, our participation in a
retreat for progressive think-tank leaders, and more. And as always,
this edition of "Uncommon Denominator" offers you first-rate
thinking on the art and science of movement building. Check out Senior
Fellow Ian Finseth's article about the role of psychological types in
political communication, plus links to a compelling BBC series and recent
posts from the Commonweal Institute blog.
Finally, a warm welcome to two new members of our Board of Directors, David
Burwen and Bill Salle. Their leadership will help us continue to serve
the progressive movement in the years ahead. I'm excited to work with
both of them, and I'm grateful for the support we have received from all of
you over the past year. See you in 2008 -- and here's to 2009!
Onwards and upwards,
Barry
Talking Points
The S/N Gap: Psychological Types and Political Communication
by Ian Finseth, CI Senior Fellow
Excerpt:
The fate of candidates, parties,
nations, seems to hinge on who best manages the alchemy of words and images;
finds the right blend of theme, gesture, and utterance; marries the power of
language with the aspirations of an audience; and, in today's fashionable
parlance, "frames" the issues in the most advantageous way.
(...) There seems to be much less
interest in how the concept of psychological type can and should influence
political communication. In particular, the Myers-Briggs model of different
personality types offers another way of thinking about how to define
constituencies and how to communicate with them effectively.
(...) In practical terms, the
difference between Sensors (Ss) and Intuiters (Ns) might help to explain why
progressives have lost ground to conservatives, over the last 30 years, when
it comes wearing to the "populist" mantle.
Click here to read the whole article.
Happenings
Bay
Area Progressive Roundtable
On December 3, the Commonweal
Institute hosted the 2007 Progressive Roundtable in San
Francisco, with CREDO Mobile
and the Tides Foundation as sponsors. The Commonweal Institute began
its Progressive Roundtable series last year in order to address a crucial
need: building and strengthening the network of organizations that
provide the intellectual infrastructure for the progressive movement.
Following on our inaugural
nationwide convening (see “2006 Roundtable Summary Report”),
this year’s Roundtable brought together Bay Area progressive leaders and
their supporters for two related purposes: (1) to hear the latest
presentation from Rob Stein, Democracy Alliance founder, on the structure and
activities of the Right Wing movement’s infrastructure, and (2) to discuss
what is being done by progressive organizations in the Bay Area and how we
can strengthen our own progressive infrastructure.
Over 100 representatives and
supporters from local organizations participated in roundtable discussions
after Mr. Stein’s presentation. The next round of conversation
dedicated to Bay Area progressive collaboration and cooperation will be a
Roundtable teleconference on January 14.
If you are interested in
participating in this call or learning more about the Roundtable, contact us
at info@commonwealinstitute.org or
650-854-9796.
“Ideas Sector” Leadership Retreat
The following week, Executive
Director Barry Kendall attended the Progressive Ideas Sector Leadership
Retreat at the Pocantico Conference Center
on the Rockefeller estate in Tarrytown,
NY. The two dozen
participants, representing think tanks, academia, and advocacy organizations,
engaged in wide-ranging discussions about how to increase the influence of
idea sector organizations within the progressive movement and the political
process. They unanimously agreed to pursue further development of the
ideas sector network during the coming year and to work on a joint project.
New Commonweal Institute Directors
David Burwen and William (Bill) Salle became
members the Commonweal Institute’s Board of Directors in December.
David is involved in new high tech company formation and early stage
investing as Managing Director of Venture Development Group. In
addition, through their family foundation, he and his wife provide college
scholarships to high potential high school students from economically disadvantaged
families and support “bottoms up” development in rural Nepal.
Bill is a personal injury attorney in the Los Angeles area. His law firm
concentrates on representation of clients in various tort claims ranging from
simple negligence actions to product liability claims. He also has
experience in the areas of insurance bad faith and real estate
litigation. Bill is the elder son of one of the Commonweal Institute
co-founders, Leonard Salle (now deceased), and shares his father’s passion
for politics.
2006
Progressive Roundtable Final Report Documents Successful Results
The initial Progressive
Roundtable, which the Commonweal Institute put on in March 2006, catalyzed
significant developments in progressives' marketing and communications
infrastructure. Long-term follow-up which we conducted a year after the event
documented the success of the convening. Click here to see the final conference
summary and recommendations (PDF file). The full final
report and an interim report can be seen here: http://www.progressiveroundtable.org/conferencereport
Kendall Speaks on Promoting Progressive
Values
Barry Kendall, the Commonweal
Institute's executive director, was the featured guest at the Century Club
luncheon in San Jose,
on November 9. He spoke engagingly on ways in which individuals can promote
their progressive values: manifesting them through their actions, such as
community volunteering; talking with others in their social networks and in
public; and through the media, both broadcast and online. Building on a
September presentation about political blogging, which had been given by
Commonweal Institute Fellow Dave Johnson, Barry suggested how even newcomers
to the online world can introduce values considerations into blog comments
and online discussion groups and bulletin boards.
Check it Out
The
Century of the Self
The Century of the Self is a
four-part video series from BBC-2 about propaganda, public relations, and
their effects on society.
"A new theory of human nature
was put forward by Sigmund Freud. He had discovered, he said, primitive
sexual and aggressive forces hidden deep inside the minds of all human beings
-- forces which, if not controlled, led individuals and societies to chaos
and destruction. This series is about how those in power have used Freud's
theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.
"At the heart of the story is
not just Sigmund Freud, but other members of the Freud family...Freud's
American nephew, Edward Bernays,...was the first person to take Freud's ideas
about human beings and use them to manipulate the masses...He showed American
corporations...how to make people want things they didn't need by linking
mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
"Out of this would come a new
political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying people's inner
selfish desires, it was possible to make them happy and thus docile. It was
the start of the all consuming Self which has come to dominate our world
today."
Click here to watch the series.
Next Steps
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