Annual Meeting 2024

The annual meeting for our general membership was held on June 1st, at the Poinsettia Pavilion in Ventura.  We discussed this year's accomplishments, elected officers and board members, and approved the budget and bylaws.

We also had an eye-opening, inspiring conversation with our keynote speaker, Professor Kathleen Bruhn, PhD, who spoke on "Democratic Backsliding and How to Fight It."    The slides from her presentation can be seen HERE.
Professor Bruhn has taught at UCSB for 31 years and is Chair of the Department of Political Science. She graduated from Stanford University (PhD 1993) and her areas of specialization are Comparative Politics, Identity, and Latin American Studies.  In her speech she described how democracies everywhere are experiencing slow erosion and many are sliding toward authoritarianism.  She gave many examples of this in Latin America, explaining how Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) of Mexico used their populist platforms to acquire power over the courts, military, regulatory agencies, media, and oil and gas industries.  To combat this erosion, she says citizens should engage in elections (vote, observe and work in; never boycott), engage in litigation which slows autocrats down (unless the courts have been taken over by the autocrat), and lobby (peaceful protests slow autocrats and buy time), support government institutions, and educate voters.