Press Release
Announcing our Progressive Op-Ed Program
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Commonweal Institute Announces Progressive Op-Ed Program
Summary: Commonweal Institute, a Northern California-based think tank, will produce and distribute weekly progressive op-ed columns, available for publication in print and online news outlets.
Menlo Park, California (June 16, 2009) – With the goal of providing an opportunity for local and national news outlets to publish opinion and commentary from a progressive political perspective, Commonweal Institute – a Northern California-based think tank – announced today it will produce and distribute weekly op-ed columns starting July 1, 2009.
Commonweal Institute Fellows, public intellectuals who have organically developed large audiences and authority in their field through their blogs, publications and academic work, will write the columns on a rotating basis.
Perhaps one of the reasons newspapers are seeing declining readership is that opinion pages often carry conservative and libertarian viewpoints that don't reflect the values of an increasingly progressive public.
Mike Lux Event in San Francisco
On February 15, 2009, Mike Lux energized an audience of some 75 progressives at the Mercury Lounge in San Francisco. Referring to his new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, Lux put events of the tumultuous recent past in historical context. He spoke about the conflict taking place since the time of the nation’s founding between progressive advances for the common good and conservative retrenchments that favor the wealthy.
The Progressive Ideas Leadership Retreat
Summary
Leaders of 25 major progressive ideas institutions responded to a call from four peer institutions and met from December 10-12, 2007 in Tarrytown, NY. The retreat revealed much common ground, and participants recognized that they constitute an “ideas
sector” for the cause of progressive politics and social justice.
Participants have chosen to move together, beyond the
organization-logic that necessarily guides each of their institutions
individually, into a series of commitments and actions guided by
movement-logic aimed at bringing shared progressive values and policies
to the fore in American society.
Through three days of intense
dialog, the ideas sector leaders realized that they could strengthen
their combined effectiveness by forming a network capable of
considering the Progressive movement and the ideas that animate it as a
whole. The key commitments to come out of the retreat process were
1. To form a Progressive Ideas Network (PIN) whose first priority will be to facilitate
Talking Politics with People Unlike Ourselves
MENLO PARK, August 21, 2004. The Commonweal Institute, a moderate-to-progressive think tank, is offering a workshop, "Talking Politics with People Unlike Ourselves", at the First Unitarian Universalist Center in San Francisco, on Sunday, August 22. The workshop provides those who want to influence others with new tools for reaching the politically uncommitted, the wavering, and people unlike themselves in other ways, such as style, interests, party affiliation or level of interest in politics.
