Climate Crisis: A Call to Action

What does it mean to be the first generation born into a planetary climate crisis? Let’s wrap our heads around this one with Jim Shultz from The Democracy Center. Continue talking with Shultz and others over lunch at the Convocation Talk-Backin the East Dining Room between 11:15-12:15 and 12:15-1:15. Meal tickets available for students who need them.

Jim Shultz, Executive Director of The Democracy Center, offers this self description. I was raised in Whittier California, President Richard Nixon’s hometown, while he was President, which has a lot to do with how I became a political activist at an early age. After college at UC Berkeley I spent two decades deeply involved in California politics, as staff to the California Legislature, and as an advocate with Common Cause and Consumers Union (and in the middle took a detour to Harvard to earn a master’s degree).

In 1991 my wife Lynn and I spent our first year of marriage as volunteers in an orphanage in Cochabamba and came home with a surprise daughter (today I am a father of three and soon to be a grandfather). In 1998 we returned to Bolivia for what was supposed to be a year and have stayed for almost twenty.

As executive director of the Democracy Center for 25 years, it has been my privilege to work with citizen activists on five continents, from indigenous communities in Bolivia to senior leaders in the United Nations. I’ve also written three books, many articles and all along the way have done my level best to make sure David beats Goliath as often as possible. I publish on Medium, and I Tweet.