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California’s Other Partner
A historian says the state’s political leaders have had significant grass-roots help.
To the Editor:
I was interested to read “What Makes California Politics So Special,” by Miriam Pawel (Sunday Review, Aug. 19), about California’s history of bipartisan cooperation among its politicians — a force known as the Party of California — and how it has led our state to its current economic success and its role in advocating for action on climate change.
Granted that we’ve often had excellent political leadership; this is not the only factor to take into account, however. We also have a long history of fostering social movements that have been a source of creativity, revitalization and political energy: John Muir and environmentalism; a powerful labor movement in the 1930s; the Free Speech Movement; the state’s organized L.G.B.T.Q. community; the Black Panther Party; Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and the farmworkers, and so on.
In short, grass-roots energy has been a key complement to our elected leaders.
Glenna Matthews
Sunnyvale, Calif.
The writer is the author of two books and a dozen scholarly articles on California history.
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