Attendees at the Santa Cruz Branch Fall Gathering, Sept. 23, 2017. Photo by WILPF member Paula LeRoy.

By Marcia Heath, Santa Cruz Branch Co-chair

The well-attended WILPF Fall Gathering was an opportunity for new and old members to meet each other and hear reports from Randa Solick who attended the 2017 Democracy Convention, and from the three members, Cappy Israel, D Nunns, and Nancy Glock-Gruenich, who attended the WILPF Congress. We heard Congress presenter, Nancy G-G, give a summarized version of her workshops and explain how she is developing them into a 7-part TV series titled, “The Future We Need … And How to Get It.” The Community TV series will be accessible on YouTube. For more information email wilpfsantacruz@gmail.com

Starting in December and going through June, our branch will hold monthly Strategic Action Study Circles at which we will invite members and the public to view and discuss the TV programs. Nancy describes the series as “From breakdown to breakthrough, connecting citizens here at home to systems transformations worldwide.” Each program will address CHANGE, from Change the Story, to Change Our Ways, the Market, the Rules, the Politics, the Game, and eventually to ‘Shaping the Systems that Shape Us’. Dr. Nancy Glock-Gruenich (nglock@post.harvard.edu) will co-host the TV series with Leanne Nurse, Environmental Protection Specialist from Washington D.C.

Our Branch is sponsoring the TV series with the Santa Cruz Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and the Center for Applied Community Engagement.

Besides supporting the TV programming and sponsoring the monthly Strategic Action Study Circles, our branch is taking the lead in working with the Peoples Democratic Club and SC4Bernie on Public Banking, an idea for which consensus is growing around the state of California and across the country.

Santa Cruz has many activist organizations. The WILPF branch is continuing to step up its coalition work with these partners, as it has been doing over the past couple of years. For the first time, our holiday party will be titled, “WILPF and Partners Holiday Party.”

Happy holidays all.