founder and executive director
jim shultz
Born and raised in Whittier California, President Richard Nixon’s hometown, Jim reacted by becoming a progressive political activist as a teenager. After earning his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley, he spent two decades deeply involved in California politics, as staff to the California Legislature and as an advocate with Common Cause and Consumers Union (with a detour in the middle to earn a masters degree at Harvard University). In 1991, Jim and his wife Lynn spent their first year of marriage as volunteers in an orphanage in Cochabamba, Bolivia and returned there in 1998 for one more year – which turned out to be almost twenty. As executive director of the Democracy Center, Jim is a recognized leader in public advocacy. He has trained and supported activists on five continents, serves as a global advocacy advisor to UNICEF, and has led winning activist campaigns from the local level to the global. Jim has written four books and more articles than he can remember, taught university, and is a contributing writer to the New York Review of Books. He and Lynn have three children and now live in Lockport, New York across the street from their two granddaughters. He tweets here.
organization
My Other Country: Nineteen Years in Bolivia
Many people dream of living outside their country, to see the world through different eyes. Among those who do, many just move for a short time or transplant themselves to a place not so different than home. Then there is Bolivia. My Other Country is a family memoir, the story of a young couple from San Francisco who moved to a valley in the Andes and stayed for almost two decades. It is a story about a family coming together, about falling into the center of a South American revolution, and about a handcrafted life in a very different place.
Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization
Dignity and Defiance is a powerful, eyewitness account of Bolivia's decade-long rebellion against globalization imposed from abroad. Based on extensive interviews, this story comes alive with first-person accounts of a massive Enron/Shell oil spill from an elderly woman whose READ MORE
The Democracy Owners' Manual: A Practical Guide to Changing the World
For citizens seeking to take an active role in the affairs of their community—whether improving local schools, forcing clean-up of a polluted river, or weighing in on the debate over economic globalization — the challenge of activism can be daunting. Civic activists need to READ MORE