Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Some might say that Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods were destined to meet. Poor, a professor of photography at CSU Sacramento, was volunteering with the Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison when she met Woods, who was serving a 31-year-to-life sentence. The two bonded over a love of storytelling and with no formal experience, began a podcast together where they showcase the realities of life in prison while detailing the path of their fateful friendship. Their upcoming book, This Is Ear Hustle, shares its name with their well-received podcast, which has gone on to become a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize and is in its seventh season. The book avoids the overtly political and instead delves into the richness of humanity found even behind the bars of the prison system. With candor, the authors showcase the unlikely inspiration found in stories of the incarcerated.

At INFORUM Earlonne Woods—whose sentence was commuted in 2018—and Nigel Poor will take our stage in downtown San Francisco to help our audiences become “ear hustlers'' themselves, eavesdropping on the tales of resilience, forgiveness and the lives that exist behind some of America’s most well-guarded doors.

This program will be moderated by Piper Kerman, author of The New York Times bestseller Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison.

Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language

SPEAKERS

Nigel Poor

Visual Artist; Co-Creator and Co-Host, "Ear Hustle" Podcast; Co-Author, This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life

Earlonne Woods

Co-Creator and Co-Host, "Ear Hustle" Podcast; Co-Author, This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life

Piper Kerman

Author, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison—Moderator

In 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 25th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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Many nations have a national poet, whose poetry helps carve out their own unique cultural niche in human civilization. Italy has enjoyed many literary geniuses for over two millennia, but still looks to one man the most: Dante. Like major poets in other cultures, Dante’s influence on the Italian language can hardly be overstated. The Divine Comedy was the first major work of literature to leave Latin behind in favor of Italian, and it remains the world standard of poetic excellence. Dante’s fertile imagination also inspired artists, writers and theologians, making him almost as influential about the afterlife as he is linguistically.

Join Humanities West in person at The Commonwealth Club, or via livestream, to celebrate the 700th Anniversary of Dante’s death—which ironically occurred not that many months after he completed his speculations about post-death possibilities—with a two-hour, three-lecture Dante feast:

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

Note: This program contains EXPLICIT language.

SPEAKERS

Kip Cranna

Dramaturg Emeritus, San Francisco Opera

Marisa Galvez

Professor of French and Italian, and by Courtesy, of German Studies and Comparative Literature; Faculty Director, Structured Liberal Education, Stanford University

Timothy Hampton

Aldo Scaglione and Marie M. Burns Distinguished Professor of French and Comparative Literature; Director, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley

George Hammond

—Moderator

In 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 22nd, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

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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.

NOTES

In partnership with SFCAUSE (Community Alliance for Unity, Safety & Education) , San Francisco.

SPEAKERS

Erika Moritsugu

Deputy Assistant to the President and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander White House Senior Liaison

In Conversation with Dion Lim

Anchor/Reporter, ABC 7 News in San Francisco

In 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.

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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 ORGANIZER

George Hammond

NOTES

MLF: Humanities

SPEAKERS

Fritjof Capra

Author, Patterns of Connection

In Conversation with George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates

In 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.

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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 Future

Cynthia 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

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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 Speakers

Rev. 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 ORGANIZER

Gerald Harris

NOTES

MLF: Technology & Society

SPEAKERS

Rev. Norman Fong

Former Executive Director, Chinatown Community Development Center, focused on addressing the issues poverty, housing and small businesses in Chinatown

Rev. James McCray

Executive 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 Americans

Gerald Harris

President, Quantum Planning Group; Chair, Technology & Science Member-Led Forum, The Commonwealth Club—Moderator

In 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.

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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.

NOTES

This program is part of The Commonwealth Club's Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

SPEAKERS

Bret Baier

Chief 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 1876

Melissa Caen

Attorney; Political Analyst—Moderator

In 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.

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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.

SPEAKERS

David Wessel

Senior 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 @davidmwessel

In Conversation with Lenny Mendonca

Former Chief Economic and Business Advisor, State of California; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors

In 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.

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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.

SPEAKERS

Rebecca Donner

Author, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler

In Conversation With George Hammond

Author, Conversations With Socrates

In 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.

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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.

SPEAKERS

Charles Blow

Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times; Author, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto; Twitter @CharlesMBlow

In Conversation with Melissa Murray

Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law; Co-host, "Strict Scrutiny" Podcast; Twitter @ProfMMurray

In 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.

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