Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Join this important discussion to learn how the White House is forming critical partnerships across sectors to fight anti-Asian hate crimes, moving forward the administration's Build Back Better Agenda to rebuild the economy, and ensuring the advancement of the Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AA and NHPI) communities. Attendees will have the opportunity to identify issues the AA/NHPI communities may want to prioritize and ask questions.Erika Moritsugu was appointed in April by President Biden to serve as deputy assistant to the president and AA/NHPI senior liaison. She engages with AA and NHPI communities and leaders on issues such as advancing safety, justice, inclusion, and opportunity through a whole-of-government approach to racial justice.She previously served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental relations at the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Secretary Julián Castro and was the first-ever Senate deputy legislative director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On Capitol Hill, she served as senior representative of Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. She also worked for Senator Daniel K. Akaka of Hawai‘i and at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.In the nonprofit sector, Moritsugu managed two teams at the National Partnership for Women & Families for economic justice and congressional relations, advancing workforce and health policies through a gender equity and race equity lens. She also led the Government Relations, Advocacy and Community Engagement team at the Anti-Defamation League.Moritsugu attended Brandeis University, the College of William and Mary, and George Washington University Law School.She will be in conversation with Dion Lim, anchor/reporter for ABC 7 Television News in San Francisco.NOTESIn partnership with SFCAUSE (Community Alliance for Unity, Safety & Education) , San Francisco.SPEAKERSErika MoritsuguDeputy Assistant to the President and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander White House Senior LiaisonIn Conversation with Dion LimAnchor/Reporter, ABC 7 News in San FranciscoIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on September 24th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a virtual conversation with Fritjof Capra to discuss the evolution of his thought. In the late 1950s Capra read the work of Werner Heisenberg, a founder of quantum mechanics, and quickly intuited connections between the discoveries of quantum physics and the traditions of Eastern philosophy. The result was his bestselling book, The Tao of Physics. His synthesis, which dispensed with the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton in favor of a systemic, ecological one, has provided him with a different perspective on the life sciences, ecology and environmental policy.Six decades later, Fritjof Capra remains at the crossroads of physics, spirituality, environmentalism and systems theory. Organized thematically and chronologically, the essays in Patterns of Connection document his revolutionary and far-reaching intellectual journey.MLF ORGANIZERGeorge HammondNOTESMLF: HumanitiesSPEAKERSFritjof CapraAuthor, Patterns of ConnectionIn Conversation with George HammondAuthor, Conversations With SocratesIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 21st 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fully electrifying our homes, cars and industries could cut the amount of total energy we need by half, says Saul Griffith, an entrepreneur, inventor and author of Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. This electric revolution would mean significantly scaling up our solar, wind and battery storage and reorienting the electric grid – but could also mean “thousands of dollars in savings in every household, every year.” President Biden wants half the cars sold in the US to be electric by 2030. And automakers are increasingly putting money and marketing muscle behind EVs. When Ford announced its all-electric F-150, it sent a powerful jolt through the transportation industry. Pre-orders for the F-150 Lightning surpassed 100,000 within three days, signalling that EVs are no longer just for kale-eating coastal elites. Note: Ford Motor Co. is among Climate One’s sponsors. This program was underwritten in part by ClimateWorks Foundation.For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts Guests:Saul Griffith, author, Electrify: An Optimist Playbook for Our Clean Energy FutureCynthia Williams, Global Director, Sustainability, Homologation and Compliance, Ford Motor Co.Sara Baldwin, Director of Electrification Policy, Energy Innovation Josh Nassar, Legislative Director, United Auto Workers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our speakers, Rev. Norman Fong and Rev. James McCray, will discuss their direct hands-on experience in working to address the issue of equity and justice in community development, especially around building affordable housing, engaging community members for advocacy and support, and the broader issues of economic development connected to jobs and small business support. They will reflect on how these issue exist in San Francisco and in cities around the country.Join us for a timely discussion on equity and justice in the development of cities.About the SpeakersRev. Norman Fong has worked full-time in the nonprofit arena in San Francisco Chinatown for more than 3 decades. He has served as a pastor, the deputy director of programs at Chinatown Community Development Center, and now as executive director of Chinatown CDC. Besides being an ordained Presbyterian minister, Fong is the co-founder of the Jest Jammin Band, which has been playing classic soul/R&B/Motown music for 45 years.Dr. James McCray, Jr., is semi-retired after 38 years of service in local churches and to their surrounding community, and now joyously living as a son, husband, father and grandfather in his beloved San Francisco. He says he is joyful first for the blessing of being a “cancer survivor.” Joyful also, because of the marriage to Gail Jackson McCray, a practicing attorney in our city. In the last 10 years, a surprising new venture has come along—the development of affordable housing through the building of a locally based community development corporation, as executive director of Tabernacle Community Development Corporation (TCDC).MLF ORGANIZERGerald HarrisNOTESMLF: Technology & SocietySPEAKERSRev. Norman FongFormer Executive Director, Chinatown Community Development Center, focused on addressing the issues poverty, housing and small businesses in ChinatownRev. James McCrayExecutive Director, Tabernacle Community Development Corp., a developer of affordable housing in San Francisco with a focus on slowing the city's out-migration of African AmericansGerald HarrisPresident, Quantum Planning Group; Chair, Technology & Science Member-Led Forum, The Commonwealth Club—ModeratorIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 21st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brought to us by Fox News Chief Political Anchor Bret Baier, To Rescue the Republic is an epic history of Ulysses S. Grant—spanning from the battlefields of the Civil War to the violent turmoil of Reconstruction to the forgotten electoral crisis that nearly fractured a reunited nation.Desperate for bold leadership in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln turned to Ulysses S. Grant, appointing him lieutenant general of the Union Army, precipitating their victory within a year. Four years later, as president of the United States, Grant rose to the challenge of Reconstruction by advancing its agenda and aggressively countering the Klu Klux Klan.When the contested presidential election of 1876 produced no clear victory, it was Grant who forged the painful compromise that saved the fragile nation, but tragically pushed the Civil Rights movement even further down the road. In this book, Baier dramatically reveals Grant’s palpable and essential influence on the United States as it suffered through a severe period of internal division.Join us as Bret Baier brings contemporary resonance and fresh detail to the life of one of America’s most legendary leaders.NOTESThis program is part of The Commonwealth Club's Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.SPEAKERSBret BaierChief Political Anchor for Fox News Channel, Anchor and Executive Editor, "Special Report with Bret Baier"; Author, To Rescue the Republic: Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876Melissa CaenAttorney; Political Analyst—ModeratorIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 20th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a Silicon Valley entrepreneur developed a tax break intended as a way to incentivize the rich to invest in underserved communities, the idea was pushed into law with little scrutiny or fine-tuning and few safeguards against abuse. With an unbeatable pair of high-profile sponsors and deft political marketing, the Opportunity Zone became an unnoticed part of the 2017 Trump tax bill.In his new book Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age, bestselling author David Wessel follows the money—starting from this Opportunity Zone initiative—to see who profited from the plan that was supposed to spur development of blighted areas and help people out of poverty. His findings? The Las Vegas Strip, the Portland (Oregon) Ritz-Carlton, and the Mall of America. In other words, lucrative areas where the wealthy can place their money profitably and avoid capital gains taxes.Wessel provides vivid portraits of the proselytizers, political influencers, consultants, real estate dealmakers and individual money-seekers looking to take advantage of this opportunity. He looks at the cities in which the Opportunity Zone initiatives have failed, as well as a few where they have succeeded, and offers a lesson on how a better-designed program might have helped more left-behind places.Join us as David Wessel, offers an in-depth analysis of the bill he faults with keeping the rich richer—revealing the gritty reality of a system tilted in favor of a few while leaving many out in the cold.SPEAKERSDavid WesselSenior Fellow and Director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, Brookings Institution; Author, Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age; Twitter @davidmwesselIn Conversation with Lenny MendoncaFormer Chief Economic and Business Advisor, State of California; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of GovernorsIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 19th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mildred Harnack, born and raised in Milwaukee, was a Ph.D. candidate studying in Berlin in 1932 when the Nazis began their rise to power. Donner describes how her great-great-aunt Mildred began holding secret meetings in her apartment. Her small band of political activists grew into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin by 1940. Harnack recruited working-class Germans, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated on leaflets that denounced Adolf Hitler and called for revolution. At night her co-conspirators would slip those leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms and phone booths.When World War II began, Harnack became a spy, providing top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her planned escape to Sweden, she was arrested by the Gestapo. A Nazi military court sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler personally overruled that sentence and ordered her execution. On February 16, 1943, Mildred Harnack, the only known American member of the German resistance, was guillotined.Donner draws on extensive archival research in Germany, Russia, England, and the United States, as well as on newly uncovered documents in her family's archive, to tell Harnack's story. She has woven those letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors’ testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into an epic story of moral courage.SPEAKERSRebecca DonnerAuthor, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to HitlerIn Conversation With George HammondAuthor, Conversations With SocratesIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on September 7th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Violence against Black people—both physical and psychological—has seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests in the summer of 2020. “After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy,” Charles Blow writes, “ it seems to me that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.”A New York Times op-ed columnist, Blow felt compelled to write a new story for Black Americans, one that involves a succinct, counterintuitive and impassioned correction to the myths that have for too long governed our thinking about race and geography in America. The Devil You Know is a grand exhortation to generations of a people, proposing nothing short of the most audacious power play by Black people in the history of this country.Join us as Charles Blow offers a road map to true and lasting freedom.SPEAKERSCharles BlowOp-Ed Columnist, The New York Times; Author, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto; Twitter @CharlesMBlowIn Conversation with Melissa MurrayFrederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law; Co-host, "Strict Scrutiny" Podcast; Twitter @ProfMMurrayIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 19th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the devastating effects and tragic loss of life from COVID-19 persist 18 months after the global pandemic began, the world is desperate to end this public health crisis.As businesses across industries are rolling out varying degrees of vaccine, testing, and masking mandates, President Biden announced the requirement for federal workers, medium and large employers, and health-care staff to be vaccinated. Working together and partnering with government and community leaders, the private sector plays a role in helping to close the vaccination gap in our workforce and communities.What can the business community do to stop this pandemic? What is the private sector’s role in helping keep our communities safe? How are organizations responding to local, state and federal mandates? What processes are working and not working? What will it take to return to a strong and stable economy? Join a panel of business leaders across industries discussing opportunities to address this public health crisis and how we can work together to end it.NOTESThis program is generously supported by our partner Kaiser Permanente.SPEAKERSGreg A. AdamsChair and Chief Executive Officer, Kaiser PermanenteBrett HartPresident, United AirlinesMolly Moon NeitzelCEO, Molly Moon Homemade Ice CreamStephen ParodiExecutive Vice President, The Permanente Federation; National Infectious Disease Leader, Kaiser PermanenteJim WundermanPresident and CEO, Bay Area CouncilRaj MathaiNews Anchor, NBC Bay Area—ModeratorIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 18th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a conversation with Joe Weisberg, who makes the case in his new book, Russia Upside Down, that America's foreign policy toward Russia is failing, and we'll never fix it unless we rethink our entire relationship. Weisberg came of age in America in the 1970s and '80s as a Cold Warrior. He studied Russian in Leningrad, and then joined the CIA—just in time to watch the Soviet Union collapse.Less than a decade later, though, a new Cold War broke out. Russia had changed in many of the ways that America hoped it might. It had become more capitalist, more religious, more open to Western ideas. But U.S. sanctions crippled Russia's economy, and Russia's internet-based retaliations have exacerbated our own political problems. Weisberg says the old paradigm—America, the free capitalist good guys, fighting Russia, the repressive communist bad guys—simply doesn't apply anymore. But we've continued to act as if it does.Weisberg asks hard questions about our foreign policy and attempts to understand what Russia truly wants. He concludes that we are fighting an enemy with whom we have few if any serious conflicts of interest, we are fighting this unnecessary war with ineffective and dangerous tools, and our approach is not working anyway. With our own political system in peril, and continually being buffeted by Russian attacks, he argues that we need a new framework. Urgently. Weisberg makes it clear what the stakes are and lays out the foundation for a new American foreign policy for dealing with Russia.NOTESMLF: HumanitiesSPEAKERSJoe WeisbergTelevision Writer; Creator, "The Americans"; Former CIA Officer; Author, Russia Upside DownIn Conversation with George HammondAuthor, Conversations With SocratesIn response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on October 21st, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices