I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII

VII. Conclusion

The Time is Now

The Structure: Organizing Common Sense California

Table 1: Roles and Responsibilities of the Board and the Organizing Committee

Conclusion: The Time is Now

A Fuller Discussion Roadmap (PDF)

The very notion of "citizen action" in a state as large and populous as California sounds quaint and passé, if not downright impossible. What can possibly be done in the presence of well-financed interest groups and long-established government agencies?

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, provides a hopeful answer.¹ Sometimes ideas make a difference and can develop enormous power if they are spread through properly connected networks of people. Ideas can spread just as infectious diseases do.

There are important examples of social changes that began not with the blessings of existing institutions but as a result of powerful ideas whose time had come. Potent, established interests did not create the civil rights revolution. In California, it was grass-roots sentiment that led to Proposition 13. Cesar Chavez did not need a foundation grant before leading the grape strike in Delano. The Progressive Movement that changed the face of politics and government in California almost 100 years ago took root at a small dinner meeting of insurgent Republicans, none of them elected officials, in a forgotten Los Angeles café.

Change in California government can come from the commitment and resolve of "ordinary" people. What is required is a group of determined individuals who have the confidence of others, a powerful idea that sticks in the mind of the public, and a receptive environment built by frustration with the way things are.

We would be the first to admit the boldness, perhaps brashness, of any attempt to create a new statewide, citizens group, independent of political party, and focused on the major long-term challenges facing our state. But we deeply believe that the time to act is now.²

¹ Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Little, Brown & Co., 2000
² One criticism that might be fairly made is that "Only one in a thousand Californians will initially care about the work of Common Sense California. And, moreover, only one in ten thousand Californians will.