Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world

Past Event
Seminar

The Art of Advocacy

Open to the Public

How can the power of citizen action make a real impact on public policy, from the local level to the global? Jim Shultz (Mid-Career MPA 1985) has been leading citizen action campaigns across the world for four decades and leads advocacy support projects on five continents. He has worked with indigenous communities in Bolivia, immigrant activists in California, health workers in South Africa and the global leadership of UNICEF.

Using two wildly different case studies – Resistance to Facial Recognition Surveillance Cameras in public schools in Lockport NY and the Water Revolt in Cochabamba, Bolivia – Jim will focus on how local citizen action can have a far wider impact.

Lunch will be served.

Date: Time: - Location: Suite 470
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Speaker

Jim Shultz (@JimShultz)
Founder and Executive Director of the Democracy Center

Meet Jim:
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.

Jim is also the author of three books: Dignity and Defiance, Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization, The Democracy Owners’ Manual, and The Initiative Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from California’s Ballot Wars.