Dear Supporter

Just two weeks ago, we were overwhelmed and gratified to welcome almost 700 guests to our 10th anniversary event.  It was an inspiring, high-energy evening!  Thank you for your tremendous energy and support in helping celebrate CPI's first 10 years! 
 
The new CPI video shown that night and photos from the festivities are now available on the CPI web site.

The anniversary gave us a chance to savor our successes and honor some of our key partners who have worked alongside us over the years. We were proud to honor the San Diego Organizing Project, former state Senator Dede Alpert, and all City of San Diego workers.  The workers were represented onstage and in the audience by a cross-section including firefighters, librarians, trash collectors, laundry workers, engineers and many others whose work is so essential to daily life in our city.

We also renewed and strengthened our commitment to the struggle for economic fairness.  Along with a continuing focus on research and policy development, this gala -- our first major fundraising event -- marks an expanded effort to reach out to the San Diego community and build a progressive movement.  We asked everyone in attendance -- and we ask all of you -- to introduce 10 friends to CPI.  Whether you send them this e-mail or send us their e-mail addresses, you all know people who should know about the Center on Policy Initiatives.

In the coming years San Diego has real choices to make and real opportunities to seize.  We believe we have the beginning of a movement committed to progressive values, a vision of a more just world and the determination to start changing that world right here. Together we can make that happen.

Thank you!
 
Sincerely,
Donald Cohen

P.S.  The recent wildfire disaster is a tragic example of the need for greater investment in our critical local infrastructure, which CPI documented in a 2005 study.  In a commentary in The Nation online this week, I describe how San Diego's anti-tax politics left us underprepared to fight the fires, with too few firefighters and too little equipment.