JOHN VASCONCELLOS recently retired after 38 years representing the Heart of Silicon Valley in the California Legislature – there known as ‘The Conscience of the Legislature’ & ‘The Johnny Apple seed of Self Esteem.’ DURING his legislative career he became the leading California legislator in the fields of developing healthy self esteem and responsibility (both personal & social), K-12 education & higher education, holistic health, public safety, high technology & international trade, diversity & aging. His tenure was especially noteworthy by reason of his simultaneously engaging himself throughout all those years in an intensive personal growth self-actualization odyssey. He studied personally with Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Sidney Jourard, Virginia Satir, James Bugental, Stanley Keleman, John Heider, James Fadiman, Thomas Hanna, and more. Having become thus enabled to reinvent himself as a person, he has become the leading practitioner of a new politics which attempts to inform and fuse politics with the principles of humanistic psychology. There from he drew together the 16-point ‘Expanding Human Agenda’ and went on to co-found the Vasconcellos Legacy Project, a non-partisan educational 501(c) (3) non-profit. It is committed to translating the principles of humanistic psychology into the entirety of our political and social realms, and transforming the entirety of our social and political realms according to the principles of humanistic psychology. He has led in the creation of ‘The Politics of Trust’ – founded upon Rogers’ recognition, “That we human beings are innately inclined toward becoming life-affirming, constructive, responsibility and trustworthy” – altogether offering the most promising (both profound & pragmatic) pathway to that alternative politics of healing & hope for which we’ve all been so long yearning & searching.
