Upcoming Events

Speak Up CA - Berkeley

Friday, April 29, 12 – 1:30 PM
Tan Oak Room
Martin Luther King Student Union
UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

Lunch will be provided so RSVP today! http://www.cafwd.org/UCBerkeley

Are you tired of hearing a never-ending cycle of bickering over the California budget in Sacramento? Do you want to see a path forward to fix California, and end the ongoing California budget problems that mean constant cuts for public education?

Come participate in Speak Up CA! Learn about what problems California faces and solutions that can allow this state to move forward again. Then share your own ideas about fixing California with us!

Speak Up CA is an important dialog about our state and its future. We’ll talk about changing the relationship between state and local governments to move California in the right direction – closer to its people.

The event will include an introductory speech from an expert at California Forward, and then breakout discussion groups where you can discuss your own ideas for fixing the budget.

Speak Up CA - Berkeley is hosted by Berkeley Common Cause, a student group dedicated to making government more accountable and responsive, and California Forward, a nonpartisan nonprofit working to fix state government and restore the California Dream.

Past Events

Ten Years Later, Are Our Elections Safer?

Time: Friday, October 29, 2:30pm - 3:30pm
Place: Goldman School of Public Policy, Room 105

Veteran radio host and political media consultant Peter B. Collins will discuss changes to our election system since the disputed 2000 presidential election, focusing on the many improprieties in the Ohio 2004 presidential election process, including voter suppression, the proven manipulation of paper ballots and reported anomalies in electronic tabulation. Based on the detailed forensic analysis of Richard Hayes Phillips and others, Collins believes that the 2004 presidential election was stolen in Ohio. He will then discuss the widely divergent results between paper ballots and electronic machines in the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic primary and the 2010 special Senate election in Massachusetts, and he will urge a new way forward to ensure the integrity of our elections.

California is Broken: How we got here. How we fix it.

Time: October 21, 2010, 12:30-1:30 pm
Place: Goldman School of Public Policy, Room 250

Featuring Prof. Henry Brady, Dean of the Goldman School

California Constitutional Convention Panel & Town Hall

Go to the YouTube link to view the next parts of the video.

Time: November 17, 4-6 PM
Place: Booth Auditorium at Boalt Hall
Facebook page

Listen, by now everyone nationwide knows: California is screwed up. But what they don't know is that it's not just because of inept politicians or bad decisions (though this state has had both). It's because of structural problems that set our great state up to fail.

Proposition 13 denies the state property taxes that are necessary to fund public education and creates a tax system overly reliant on the income tax. Constitutional amendments can be passed with the support of 51% of the electorate, but a two-thirds majority is needed in the statehouse to pass a simple budget. Districts have been gerrymandered to the point where only extreme liberals and extreme conservatives can get elected, exacerbating the two-thirds problem. It's a real mess.

A number of scholars in the Bay Area, including some at Cal, are calling for a constitutional convention to rewrite the California constitution. Activists are getting a convention on the 2010 ballot. Common Cause of Berkeley, along with several other student groups, is bringing a handful of the folks who work on the issue (or support a convention outright) to campus for a panel discussion, followed by a student town hall. We don't support it or oppose it; we just want students to get informed.

The event is November 17 from 4-6 pm, in Booth Auditorium at Boalt Hall. Come learn about the solution that could finally fix California!

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