Golden Gate Objectivists - Meeting Debrief

At our last meeting, on August 23rd, with about a dozen people at Cordair Gallery, we discussed ongoing activities, with a focus on promoting a wider discussion of Objectivist ideas in the culture.

• Book project. We are happy to report that we are 50% along towards meeting our goal of raising $11,000: we have raised $2,800 in contributions; with the matching funds, that puts us at $5,600, or halfway there. We would like to encourage you to consider contributing - every dollar helps.
  
• Hot Topic. The Middle East and How to Fight Islamic Terrorism is our 'Hot Topic' for the next several months. We will join on this topic to get Objectivist voices heard in the Bay Area
  
• Letter-to-the-Editor activism. By joining forces and targeting local newspapers with well-written letters from an Objectivist perspective, we hope to get our voices heard. To get started, we agreed on these priorities:
  
  • SF Chronicle: Several people are regular readers. They will monitor the paper and alert us to any LTE opportunities.
  • Middle East focus: In line with the Hot Topic, we will focus our letter writing on the Middle East situation.
  • Google Groups: We have started a thread on our Google Group (groups.google.com/group/goldengateobjectivist) on the LTE effort. We will communicate our LTE efforts through this forum. If you are interested in participating, please join the group. (To post, you need to join the group. Follow the instructions on the Google Groups site.)
  • Other newspapers: We would like to expand beyond the Chronicle. If you regularly read another Bay Area newspaper - online or offline - and are willing to monitor it, please let us know. You can then post any LTE-worthy article links on the Google Group forum.
  • Other media: We agreed to explore opportunities to have our voices heard on other media - including radio and local TV stations.
• ARI liaison. We are currently working with ARI to schedule a 'State of ARI' talk for early November. Stay tuned for updates.
• Other speaker efforts. As part of our outreach focus, we want to bring Objectivist speakers to other forums - from universities to community groups. We discussed two opportunities at this meeting:
  
  • The Commonwealth Club. A great local forum for discussion of ideas, the Commonwealth Club welcomes speaker suggestions from members. We are currently working on scheduling Dr. Yaron Brook for a talk on the Middle East for January or February, and will post more once we can firm things up.
  • If you enjoy discussing ideas, and think you might want to help bring Objectivist speakers to a local public venue, consider joining The Commonwealth Club. Their web site (www.commonwealthclub.org) not only has a calendar of events, but also a list of member-led forums which organize presentations on topics from International Relations to Business, from Psychology to Art. They seem to welcome different perspectives - in fact, when we suggested Dr. Yaron Brook's talk on the Middle East crisis, they were intrigued by the prospect of "hearing the Ayn Rand perspective" on the subject.
  • Universities & Campus Clubs. We hope to organize a campus club talk by Dr. Brook as well, concurrent with his 'State of ARI' talk. If you are interested in helping (or hosting) a potential talk, please let us know, so that we can work with ARI to make it happen.
  • Other forums. If you know of, or are a member of, any other local forums - professional associations, community groups, political organizations - which might welcome a fresh perspective, please let us know, so that we can work together to bring Objectivist speakers to these venues.

We will post updates on our web sites on these projects. If you would like to participate, please e-mail us at goldengateobjectivists@yahoo.com.
We will try to meet every other month - our tentative next meeting date will be October 18, so please mark your calendars and join us.