SACRAMENTO — After three years of praise and potshots, most notoriously from Garry Trudeau's satirical "Doonesbury" cartoons, the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility is about to drain its hot tubs and go home.
As mandated by law, Assemblyman John Vasconcellos' 25-member, $735,000 "scouting party" for the rest of California officially goes out of business on June 30.
But that won't be the last of this politicized incarnation of the human potential movement. Get ready for a new round of California-nurtured notions on self-esteem to break out across the state and country, if not throughout the world.
There are now local versions of the state task force in 49 of California's 58 counties. And the East Coast wants in on the act, too.
Maryland and Virginia have copied the California model, establishing their own, state-funded task forces. Continuing the work done here, they're expected to further study what to do about low self-esteem and explore its links to expensive social ills such as drug abuse and chronic welfare dependency.
In addition, governors or legislators in Arkansas, Hawaii, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington and Missouri are considering efforts to further the self-esteem movement.
And in August, Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) is scheduled to present his ideas on self-esteem and "the new politics"--in which he sees distinctions not between Republicans and Democrats nor liberals and conservatives but between cynics and idealists--at a meeting of the National Council of State Legislators in Nashville, Tenn. The powerful chairman of California's Ways and Means Committee is also expected to speak at an upcoming hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Children, Youth and Families.
California-born ideas for implementing inner fitness, as outlined in the task force's final report, are also spreading internationally. Vasconcellos recently discussed self-esteem on an Australian talk show. People from Spain, England and Canada have been inquiring about the task force's work. And, also in August, Vasconcellos may take his message to the first international self-esteem convention in Oslo.
"I can tell you, the rest of the world is looking at what the task force has done in California," enthused Danny Walker, a special assistant for drug education to Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, one of about 300 people attending the task force's final, two-day "summit conference" in Sacramento late last week. "I think the task force may be appreciated more out of the state than it is in California."
