He has been one of my heroes for awhile now. He is able to gather a huge crowd whenever he's at an event. People line up and camp out for days just to spend five seconds of their time in his presence. He moves people and governments with his inspirational speeches and common-sense wisdom. I appreciate that he is able to be goofy and crack jokes that are actually funny instead of being serious all the time. He was able to set the country towards better a direction after a long period where people lost faith in our government. Much of what he says ring true to me:

"The new rage is to say that the government is the cause of all our problems, and if only we had no government, we'd have no problems. I can tell you that contradicts evidence, history, and common sense."
"Politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology."
"Sometimes when people are under stress, they hate to think, and it's the time when they most need to think."
"Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all."
"We need not just a new generation of leadership, but a new gender of leadership."
"It's one thing to have good intentions; it's another thing entirely to change people's lives."
"Sometimes I feel like a fire hydrant looking at a pack of dogs."

On June 13, he's going to be speaking at UCLA's commencement ceremony and that makes me incredibly joyous! It's the perfect end to my experience at UCLA and all the knowledge that I gained from such a fine institution. I managed to take some notes from a speech he made at Google about a year ago. I wasn't able to attend (of course) but thankfully someone Youtubed it so that people like me could still get something out of it. Here's some notes I took that may be helpful for those that might be interested.

What members in successfully integrated communities have in common:
1. Sense that opportunity to participate to fullest of abilities is there.
2. Sense of broadly shared responsibility for success of endeavor.
3. Sense of genuine belonging. How one thinks of oneself in relation to others. Intangible, but profoundly important. Identity conflicts, confusion, and destruction is extremely damaging. "Identity and Violence"

War more expensive than politics. Making more partners is more successful and we actually know how to do it. Proven paths to success. Empowers and enriches people instead of holding them back. Private citizens have more power to do public good than ever before.

Proven paths to success:
-Economics: reorganize the public goods markets. High volume, low margin, and certain payment versus low volume, high margin, and uncertain payment. Examples: medicine, farmers, climate friendly products, etc.
-Developing countries need better alternatives than how the U.S. got wealthy. Can't prescribe the same formula when the variables are different.
-Economically viable. Organize, expand markets <----> empower people.
-Denial and lack of synthesizing knowledge/understanding is biggest block for real change. Need to recognize systemic threats. Need to synthesize apparently disconnected events, problems, trends to be able to see future consequences.
-People don't normally support self-destruction.
-NGOs: Need commitment from governments to participate in systematic change. Provide tools and knowledge-base. Need to be confident that the country is marginally better off on a permanent basis.

A common scenario: A candidate promises A, B, and C during campaign time but when elected into office, he/she finds that D is the biggest problem. Not only is D the main problem but if it doesn't get dealt with then he/she can't get to A,B, and C. Hard to ignore D even though what they really want to do are the things they had promised and they care more about. People might assume that they aren't fulfilling A, B, and C promises, but people normally don't draw the connections for the overall complexity of the problem. Example, AIDs in developing countries.

Something to work on:
Need an information bank -connect partners, give information on philanthropic, intnl organizations, national governments, NGO umbrella groups to give opportunities to do something. Show people that it would make a difference.