Make a difference!
Our September Meeting
The Palos Verdes Democrats is honored to host Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson via Zoom for our September meeting. Col. Wilkerson is one of the most preeminent authorities on the US military, international affairs and domestic politics in the United States today. Wilkerson’s commentary and analysis has appeared in the New York Times, NPR, MSNBC, CNN, Newsweek, Associated Press, Democracy Now!, The Real News Network (Canada), CBC News (Canadian Broadcasting), Haaretz (Israel), New America Foundation, The New Republic, Guardian UK, The Forward, Al Jazeera and more. Recently, Colonel Wilkerson has been interviewed on a number of YouTube channels, including Judge Napolitano, TeleSur (a multi-state funded news television network for Latin America), Breaking Points, Dialogue Works, Glenn Diesen, Katie Halper, the Chris Hedges Show, and others. From 2005-22, Lawrence Wilkerson was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. During that time (2006-11), he also taught national security anffairs in the Honors Program at the George Washington University in the nation’s capital. Before these professorships he was a member of the Policy Planning staff in the U.S. Department of State and Associate Director of that staff (2001-02) responsible for East Asia and the Pacific as well as acting as Policy Planning's liaison to State Department's Congressional Affairs office. In 2002 he became chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell (2002-05). Prior to these positions, Wilkerson was General Powell's special assistant when he was chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93) and his private consultant from 1997-00. He served 31 years in the US Army, retiring in 1989. Colonel Wilkerson is a lifelong Republican.
Colonel Wilkerson will address the ongoing war on Iran, Ukraine and conflict flashpoints worldwide. He will discuss Trump’s presidency with respect to the military, international diplomacy and the economy. He will assess the damage Trump has done to the United States domestically, to our standing in the world and how history will judge us. He will share his strategic political advice on what the Democratic Party must do to win. Be ready for straight talk from the real deal.
ALSO, following Colonel Wilkerson --
Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School Board Candidate Presentations
Allyson Lehrer
Louis Harley
Paul Vidal
Our 2026 August Meeting
For our August 2026 meeting, Judge Tom Long returned to lead our annual discussion of the recently concluded 2025-26 Supreme Court term. Tom is a longtime PV Democrat, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge, and former two-term Mayor and City Councilmember of Palos Verdes Estates. Tom examined the Court's most significant opinions, explained the legal reasoning behind them, identified the philosophical divisions among the Justices, placed the decisions in historical context, and explored what they are likely to mean for our democracy, our institutions, and our daily lives.
As part of the program, Judge Long presented highlights from the 2026 UC Irvine School of Law Supreme Court Review, featuring Austin Parrish, Dean of the UC Irvine School of Law and Chancellor's Professor of Law, together with an outstanding panel of nationally respected legal scholars, including Mario Barnes, Chancellor's Professor of Law; Robert Chang, Chancellor's Professor of Law and Sylvia Mendez Presidential Chair for Civil Rights; Courtney Cahill, Professor of Law at the USC Gould School of Law; Ji Sion Song, Professor of Law at UC Irvine; and Paul Watford, former Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and now a partner at King & Spalding.
Watch our video by clicking on the image.
What’s Happening at the PV Democrats
The event celebrated the Palos Verdes Democrats' long history of civic engagement while emphasizing the importance of Democratic organizing and participation in the 2026 elections. The club's president described the organization as having served the Peninsula for 74 years and emphasized democracy, equality, justice, and civic engagement as its core values.