If I could pick our next President I would have no second thoughts about it being Jodie. She is a force of nature, who gets more done than you could imagine is possible coming from one human being, yet she’s girlfriend to all she touches and when you work with her in any of the many things she has a producing hand in you’d think it’s the only thing on her plate. She is warm, personal, on top of everything so you get your emails answered post-haste, and has a scope very different from mine on how to fix the world, where, were we to follow her directives, it would be doable and handled.
Combine all this with how adamant she is about not seeking power, where she recognizes the corruption that may be inevitable when you play that game, and you get that unstopableness she has about being a positive influence on the world. Because of how in-your-face this bunch is in speaking truth to political power you’d probably know her best as the co-founder and co-director of CODE PINK, but that’s just where she’s most visible. Coming from a very difficult childhood and starting her activism organizing the maids she worked with in hometown Las Vegas, and also motivated by an unthinkable tragedy losing her infant daughter, she founded an after-school writing program, that we talk about, that has had a huge positive influence on thousands of under-privileged kids. She was Jerry Brown's campaign manager running for Senate in 1992 (when I first met Jodie when I had two breakfasts for him), where she joined him in early-on preaching environmental awareness and campaign finance reform and recently got his appointment to the California Arts Commission that she helped him found from her advocacy for art as what ennobles the human being. And, following her lights about how starting small and closer to home with what you actually can accomplish, you’ll find out how her putting one step after another actually led to the success of the massively important genome project!
