Golden Gate Objectivists

Yaron Brook at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club

2007-03-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Golden Gate Objectivists,

We have great news to report: Yaron Brook, Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, has been invited to speak at the Commonwealth Club. Here are the details from the Commonwealth Club event announcement:

YARON BROOK | TUESDAY APRIL 17
President and Executive Director, Ayn Rand Institute

JUST WAR THEORY VS. AMERICAN SELF-DEFENSE

Brook argues that America is still under attack because it is morally unwilling to defeat its enemies, despite its great material superiority. A prominent advocate for Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism, Brook will outline a new morality of war based on a moral code of rational self-interest.

5:30 p.m., Reception | 6:00 p.m., Program | Club office, 595 Market St., 2nd
Floor, San Francisco | $12 for Members, $18 for Non-Members | Directions to The Club
This program is part of the Taube American Values Series.

The program is open to members and non-members. Advanced reservations are accepted and strongly recommended - Commonwealth Club presentations like this have a tendency to sell out.

Please follow this link to reserve your seat:

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/featured/#brook

One of our goals when we started GGO was to get ARI speakers invited to public forums - this is our first success! We hope many of you can make it to this talk - looking forward to seeing you there.

Cheers!

Heike & Quent

"State of ARI" Presentation, Wednesday, 11/15, 7:30 p.m. -- Hyatt Regency

2006-10-30T10:03:00.000-08:00

Dr. Yaron Brook's "State of ARI" presentation is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on
Wednesday, November 15, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport.

Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport
1333 Bayshore Highway
Burlingame, California, USA
Tel: 650 347 1234

Directions to the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport are here:
http://tinyurl.com/ycgwnc

Join us for an inspiring update on the plans, programs and successes of ARI,
the institute dedicated to promoting the ideas and philosophy of philosopher
and novelist Ayn Rand, creator of the philosophy of Objectivism.

If you have any questions, please contact Heike Larson at
goldengateobjectivists@yahoo.com, or call Linda Zimmerman at (650) 344-1134.

State of ARI Talk, November 15; meeting report

2006-10-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Yaron Brook will be giving a "State of ARI" talk on November 15, 7-9 p.m., here in the Bay Area. We don't have the exact location set yet, but it will most likely be on Airport Blvd. in Burlingame, in one of the hotel conference rooms near the airport. Stay tuned for details. Everyone is invited. Mark your calendars.

We had a nice, casual get together Wednesday night. After chatting for awhile at QCFA, we moved down the street to the Zeyno Mediterranean Grill for appetizers, drinks and desserts. Topics discussed included Dr. Brook's upcoming visit, the efforts to encourage the Commonwealth Club to host an Objectivist speaker, and a toast to Heike's having the group's first LTE published.

Thanks to all who attended -- and we missed those who weren't able to make it. We hope to see you at the 11/15 event.

Meeting Wednesday night

2006-10-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the late notice, but we would like to go ahead with the meeting that had been tentatively scheduled for this coming Wednesday evening, Oct 18, 7:30 p.m., at the gallery. We'll keep this one relatively light, mostly for socializing, as we won't have much additional business to cover. If anyone who plans to join us can please drop me an email at "ggo <at> cordair.com", or contact us at the gallery (contact info at http://www.cordair.com) -- we'll know how many to plan for. Thanks! -- Quent

"Books For Teachers" Program update

2006-09-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

For the ARI Books for Teachers program, GGO has raised, to date,
approximately $3600 ($7200 matched) of the $5500 ($11000 matched) total
we need to reach our goal of fully funding the program in our six Bay
Area counties. If you haven't yet donated, please do consider doing so.
There could hardly be a better investment in America's future than
putting Ayn Rand's books in the hands of eager, bright-minded students.

With GGO's matching-funds donor, and then with ARI's matching funds
donor, each dollar you can contribute is currently *quadrupled* in
value towards the purchase of books in our area -- every dollar donated
is currently worth *four dollars* towards the purchase of books! To
donate and to have your donation matched and matched again, please
follow the easy instructions here: http://goldengateobjectivists.com/news.htm

For "10 Selfish Reasons to Contribute..." see this page --
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=support_reasons

Golden Gate Objectivists - Meeting Debrief

2006-08-31T12:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Next Meeting; Hot Topic; Book Project; Larger Events

2006-08-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Golden Gate Objectivists,

Our long awaited next meeting will take place soon - here are the details:

Wednesday, August 23rd, 7:30 pm
Quent Cordair Fine Art
346 Lorton Avenue
Burlingame, CA 94010
Phone 866-267-3247

Please RSVP to this e-mail - goldengateobjectivists@yahoo.com - if you plan to attend, so we can plan refreshments and seating accordingly.

Our preliminary agenda:

Agree on a 'hot topic' to work on for about the next 2 months (candidates include Immigration Reform, and the Middle East crisis.) This is the topic we want to jointly work on to get more awareness for the Objectivist perspectives in the Bay Area - for instance, by getting ARI speakers invited to speak at venues like the Commonwealth Club, or by coordinated letter-to-the-editor campaigns. Once we decide on the topic, we will also look for people interested in participating - whether through letter writing, helping organize events, or whatever you are interested in.
Find additional ways to fund the Golden Gate Book Project. As you know from prior announcements, we are in the process of funding ARI's Books for Teachers project in the Bay Area - with the help of a generous matching fund from a fellow Golden Gate Objectivist. We need just above $4,000 to achieve our goals, and will discuss how we can best get there. (If you want to contribute now, just go to our website, www.goldengateobjectivists.com/news.htm, for instructions on how to contribute online via credit card, or via check.)
Prepare for possible larger events - including a 'State of ARI' talk tentatively planned fro Mid-September, and (hopefully) a talk by an ARI speaker at the Commonwealth Club in late October/early November
Discuss any other initiatives. If you have ideas on what else we could undertake - and the energy to lead an initiative - feel free to bring your proposals (you can also submit then via e-mail prior to the meeting.)

Our goal is to conduct the business portion of the meeting between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm, and allow for time to get to know each other afterwards.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to e-mail us. Also, if you know other Objectivists in the Bay Area who might be interested in attending, please forward this e-mail to them, and ask them to contact us.

Looking forward to seeing many of you on August 23rd,

Heike Larson & Quent Cordair
goldengateobjectivists@yahoo.com

Next meeting; new GGO discussion forum; free-books donations

2006-06-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

In that we're progressing productively with the ARI free-books project and we're busy establishing the new GGO discussion forum on Google Groups (and due to our very full schedules over the next month), we've decided to hold off on hosting another physical meeting of GGO until sometime in August. We'll keep everyone posted on a date, as soon as we establish one.

The new GGO discussion forum is now up and running on Google Groups, at http://groups.google.com/group/goldengateobjectivists.
To participate, you'll need to establish a Google account and password, but this is a very simple and quick process. The interface is simple to follow, and there are some nice options for message alerts and/or for having messages delivered to you by email, as an alternative to having to visit the forum online to see if there's anything new. We very much look forward to your participation and your feedback.

Our GGO 'Free Books for Teachers' project is off to a great start! We have already received $1,400 in donations, which when doubled by the matching contribution of the sponsoring GGO member comes to a total of $2,800. To reach the goal of $11,000 necessary to fund the purchase of Ayn Rand's books for all six counties in the Bay Area, we need your help. Please visit the Activities and Events page for details on how to donate and how to make sure that your donation receives the GGO matching funds. There is little we could do to better promote Objectivism in the Bay Area, in the long run, than to fund the purchase of the Ayn Rand's books for area schools and to let her fiction speak for itself.

Thank you!

Quent Cordair

Golden Gate Objectivists 'Free Books for Teachers' Project -

2006-06-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Bring Ayn Rand's novels to high school students in the Bay Area

Since 2002, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) has helped introduce students across America to Ayn Rand's ideas by offering free copies of Anthem and The Fountainhead to high school English teachers. Individual donors can contribute general funds or sponsor a specific region.

Six counties in the Bay Area still require funding: San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Solano, Sonoma and Monterey. The total cost to fund the ARI book project in these counties is $11,000.

You can help bring Ayn Rand's books to students in the Bay Area - and benefit from an offer to double your contribution: a fellow Golden Gate Objectivist has generously offered to match, dollar for dollar, any funds contributed to the ARI book project for these six counties (up to the required $11,000).

For more details about this project and for information on submitting a contribution please check out the Activities and Events section on this web site. We will post regularly on our progress.

Golden Gate Objectivists Meeting Summary

2006-06-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all of you who attended our first Golden Gate Objectivists meeting last Thursday. It was great to meet about a dozen people from all over the Bay Area - from Palo Alto to San Francisco, Emeryville to Sacramento.

Our meeting goals were threefold: getting to know each other, understanding what each person would like to get out of GGO, and developing an agenda for our activities going forward. We had a lot of discussion on these topics, and agreed that it made sense to have a chance to reflect on all that was said, as we decide how to move forward.

We covered four broad areas around which we can structure our activities:

Community Outreach
Leveraging our local presence, our understanding of Objectivism, and our passion for ideas, we discussed several ways to get our message out. These include

Bringing ARI speakers to local non-Objectivist forums, for example, the Commonwealth Club. Leveraging established forums outside of Objectivism, we can get other honest people exposed to Objectivist ideas, provide them with moral ammunition to fight battles they care about, and, possibly, generate financial contributions to ARI from sympathizers who may not be Objectivists, but share key premises. We can leverage people's different backgrounds - from physicians to business people - to penetrate different groups on relevant topics.
Creating a local letter-to-the-editor group. With our differing locations and expertise, we can monitor key local publications - from the SF Chronicle to the Contra Costa Times - and generate letters to the editor on current topics where Objectivism can provide unique insight (see topic list below.) By doing this consistently, combined with other activities, we may manage to become go-to people for the press (similar to the success Quent had with his opposition to the local government imposed business association.)
Supporting campus clubs. As more experienced Objectivists outside of academia, we can lend support to campus clubs on important topics such as fund raising and getting publicity off campus.

Topics to rally around
For all of this outreach, we discussed the need to identify a few (1-2 topics) to rally around at any given point in time: by joining forces on a few areas, we are better able to support each other, and get critical mass and awareness. We discussed that topics we pick should ideally have several characteristics: they need to enable us to bring a unique Objectivist perspective; they need to be controversial -but have enough 'American Sense of Life' in favor of our position for us to be able to get heard (i.e., it will be less productive to get active on a case of eminent domain related to building a highway vs. one where private property is taken for private development); they need to be current, that is, a topic on people's minds now; ideally, they should allow us not just to dwell on an issue, but to support positive news and achievements, too.

Specific topics we discussed as candidates for our first round of activism include

Immigration - current topic, with unique Objectivist perspective, a local connection in the Bay Area where many immigrants live, and a component of celebrating achievement (think of recent stories of scholarship winners who were illegal, but managed to succeed)
Eminent domain and takings. A particular case of Walmart in Hercules was mentioned, showing that this broad topic has relevant local applications we could rally around.

Member education
Our discussions about possible topics highlighted another important point: the need to educate ourselves better on these topics, if we want to be effective intellectual activists. We discussed several possible elements to self-education:

Letter-to-Editor writing seminar. Robert Tracinski conducted a very effective persuasive writing course online several years ago. If enough of us were interested - and maybe in cooperation with another community group - we could engage Robert (or someone else) to conduct an online course for us, using our own LTE work as subject matter to learn to be better persuasive writers
Study group on focus topics. We could meet and leverage writings by Objectivist intellectuals on the topic of our choosing, and discuss and sharpen our arguments (for instance, we could discuss Harry's recent comments on immigration, if we chose that topic)
Online discussion forum. We could also potentially add an online discussion forum to our web page, where members who struggle with philosophical questions related to our theme topic can work together to clarify their thoughts.

Group infrastructure to support activities
To support these activities, we discussed putting in place several mechanisms:

Online discussion forum - see above
E-mail list/online group. This can be done via Google or Yahoo groups, to get a forum for online exchange, and prevent cluttering up people's inboxes
Regular meetings. We agreed to schedule a follow-on meeting for late June, to agree on which of the above topics and initiatives we want to take on first - and to hold meetings about once a quarter going forward.

To move forward, we need to decide, by our next meeting, which of these possible activities we want to pursue first. Please let us know your thoughts - especially if you would like to take a leadership role on any of this. Until we have an online forum set up, please e-mail us at goldengateobjectivists@yahoo.com.

Thanks again for coming: it was great meeting everybody, and we look forward to making GGO a recognizable voice in the Bay Area.