California’s Other Partner

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/22/opinion/letters/california-bipartisanship.html

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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 MatthewsSunnyvale, Calif. The writer is the author of two books and a dozen scholarly articles on California history.