Monthly Archives: February 2014

Kettering Research Assistant Positions Now Open

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kfWe want to give a heads up to our NCDD members, especially student and researcher members: It’s the time of the year when our organizational partners at the Kettering Foundation are taking applications for full-time Research Assistants for the next year.  This is a great opportunity that some of you may certainly want to apply for.

Applications are due by March 15, so don’t make sure to get started soon!

Here’s a little snippet of how Kettering describes itself and the position:

Kettering is an operating research foundation that explores practical ways democracy can be strengthened through innovation in public practices. Its research, done in collaboration with people and organizations around the world, emphasizes the roles of citizens and the qualities of their interactions as decision-making actors in public life.

The primary responsibility of research assistants is to provide Kettering staff with reviews of relevant scholarly and professional literature. We seek candidates whose interests complement and will be strengthened by the foundation’s interdisciplinary research. The successful candidate will have strong communication and writing skills, especially the ability to understand and translate technical ideas and language into coherent written reports.

Minimum requirements for the position include a bachelors’ degree. We especially encourage applications from scholars who have interests in topics such as deliberative democracy, civic engagement, social capital, civic education, civil society, and social movements.

To apply, applicants should send an CV, letter of interest, writing sample, and 2-3 letters of recommendation to abd@kettering.org. You can find out more about the openings at Kettering by visiting www.kettering.org/how-we-work/research-positions.

Good luck to all the applicants!

2014 Public Participation Interviews: John Lewis on Outreach

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We recently started reading a terrific interview series from the talented team at Collaborative Services on public participation lessons they have learned in the last year, and we wanted to share their insights with the NCDD community. The third interview in the series features the reflections of John Lewis of Intelligent Futures, who shares insights gained from the award-winning ourWascana engagement endeavor in Canada last year. You can read the interview below, or find the original on Collaborative Services’ blog by clicking here.

Multiple Entry Points into the Conversation Create Multiple Opportunities for Successful Public Participation

collaborative services logoThe uncertainty of change coming to a city’s crown jewel can cause an outpouring of different opinions. So how do you capture all of this input and make sure every voice is heard?

That’s the challenge one firm was tasked with in the summer of 2012, when it came to proposed change for Wascana Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan. Just shy of the Centre’s 50th birthday, the ourWascana Visioning Project was launched to collect citizens’ hopes and dreams for the future of Wascana and its beloved Centre. More than 3,300 citizens shared their 8,000 unique ideas during “ourWascana.” Their input is being used to create a sustainable future for this civic gem for the next 50 years.

This week as we continue our look at public participation successes we hear from John Lewis, President and Founder of Intelligent Futures and native Reginan. By providing multiple entry points into the conversation, Intelligent Futures was able to accurately collect public input and foster an open and honest dialogue during the ourWascana Visioning Project. Unique tools for collecting input such as sounding boards set up in Wascana Centre, a social media campaign and creative graphic design all contributed to the project’s success. ourWascana’s success was then reaffirmed on an international scale when it won the 2013 International Association of Public Participation’s Core Values Award for Project of the Year in the Member at Large category.

Today, Lewis shares with us his firm’s experience working on ourWascana, how their approach to outreach is evolving and some of the other exciting projects Intelligent Futures you should know about. We welcome his insights.

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Given your client list, Intelligent Futures is clearly a veteran outreach firm. How has your approach to outreach campaigns changed or developed over the years?

I think we have become more creative in how we give the community an opportunity to provide input. We use the term “multiple entry points into the conversation” a lot. Whether it’s in-person or online, we are trying to create as many ways for people to find out and share their thoughts as possible. I think we’re also getting better at catching people’s attention (in a good way). We know people are really busy and there are millions directions you can take your attention. Through graphic design, plain language and surprising tactics, we try to make our projects interesting, relevant and if possible, fun!

What do you think is the most important act a host can do to foster constructive public dialogue?

Be honest. If you’re honest and clear – about the parameters of the dialogue, about what is being done with the feedback or your experience in a place – you’ll end up with a constructive conversation. I think the projects that get into trouble are the ones that aren’t honest in one way or another. Honesty is the only way to erode the skepticism that many of these projects face from the outset.

What tools, methods, and strategies were used in the ourWascana engagement process and which were the most effective?

We used the “multiple entry points into the conversation” approach extensively with ourWascana, but the three most effective were:

  1. Community “Sounding Boards.” This was a series of feedback boards installed within the park, allowing citizens to share their ideas within the space itself. It didn’t matter if you were attending a festival, having lunch or walking your dog at midnight, you could look around you and provide your ideas.
  2. An extensive social media campaign. ourWascana came out of a celebration of Wascana’s 50th birthday and was looking ahead 50 years. We collected a variety diverse, surprising facts about Wascana Centre and created a #50thingsaboutwascana campaign that generated a lot of interest in the community that translated to interest in the project. Overall, the project campaign was so successful that we ended up with more Twitter followers at that time than Wascana Centre Authority. An interesting, but good, problem to have.
  3. Use of extensive and creative graphic design. In order to generate interest as mentioned before, we took our visual identity and graphic design elements very seriously. We heard from a number of stakeholders that this was an important part of creating the project buzz, which obviously leads to more interest and responses. We especially heard good things about our “Wascana at a Glance” infographic that captured much of the diversity that makes Wascana Centre special.

A sounding board at the Wascana Centre (Credit: ourwascana.ca)

Were there any revisions to your campaign strategy once ourWascana was launched?

To be honest, not really. We took a great deal of time and care to plan the process, including extensive discussion and feedback from the Strategic Planning Committee of Wascana Centre Authority, and it really seemed to pay off.

Of the 8,000 ideas received during the community engagement process, more than 50% were submitted in person via Sounding Boards rather than through workshops or online. Were you expecting this type of response?

It is really difficult to predict the level of response. ourWascana represented our biggest opportunity to take all of our experiences and learn to date and apply them, so we certainly hoped we would receive great levels of feedback. Taking the time to understand the community and plan accordingly certainly helped.

Did any of the feedback surprise you?

Having grown up in Regina (and actually being married in Wascana Centre) I know the place fairly well. The only thing that really surprised me was how strongly the community feels about Wascana Centre. This masterpiece has been 100 years in the making and while any project gets excited about the change that can happen, it was really a validation of all the vision and hard work that created the place that exists today. People really want to ensure that is maintained and built upon in the future.

Credit: ourWascana.ca

Any time you propose a major design change to a civic jewel like the Wascana Centre, people are going to have very strong opinions. How did the ourWascana process ensure that every opinion was heard and considered?

ourWascana fed into the Comprehensive Review Project for Wascana Centre Authority, which will then lead to a review of the master plan for the space. Having said that, I have to give tremendous credit to the Strategic Planning Committee and Bernadette McIntyre, the Executive Director of Wascana Centre Authority. Throughout the process, they never wavered from our approach to have a completely honest, open conversation and to hold judgement and listen to what the community had to say. It was really remarkable to work with a group of people like that.

Do you know of any other communities that have used a model similar to ourWascana? Can you provide some of the best examples?

There are many communities that are shifting towards more creative and authentic community engagement. ourWascana was a hybrid of many approaches. Some of the folks we have drawn particular inspiration from are Candy Chang, Build a Better Block and Rebar Design Studio out of San Francisco. They are doing great things to make conversations about the future of our places more interesting, authentic and exciting.

Is Intelligent Futures still involved in the Wascana Centre Visioning Process today? 

Not formally. We are still in touch with how things are going, but hope to work there again soon!

What are some projects that your company is currently working on that the public should know about?

We are working on a number of interesting projects these days. Two in particular come to mind:

ReImagining: This is a developer-led engagement project to redevelop a former inner-city golf course. Through this project, we are trying to set the new standard for how developers engage with the community. This project is a three-phase process over six months that is all in advance of a formal application even being made to the local government.

Sustainability reporting: We have recently completed our third installment of Pathways to Progress: The Cochrane Sustainability Plan Progress Report. After working with the community to create this award-winning plan, we have been leading the monitoring of progress, which has been really interesting. We’re trying to make the information as user-friendly and graphically appealing as possible, so that the information is actually used.

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Thank you John. It is great to see the community of Regina come together to take ownership of Wascana Centre and create the vision that future generations will enjoy for years to come.

This interview is part of a blog series from Collaborative Services, Inc. - a public outreach firm in San Diego, California that brings people together from their individual spheres and disciplines to improve communities and help people adapt to an ever-changing world. The firm uses inter-disciplinary efforts to manage and provide services in stakeholder involvement, marketing and communications, and public affairs. The firm’s award-winning services have spanned the western region of the United States from Tacoma, Washington to the Mexico Port of Entry.

We thank Collaborative Services for allowing NCDD to learn along with them, and we encourage our members to visit their blog by clicking here. You can find the original version of the above article at www.collaborativeservicesinc.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/multiple-entry-points-into-the-conversation-create-multiple-opportunities-for-successful-public-participation.

Action in Non-Action

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Wu-wei, a central concept of Taoism, can be literally translated as non-action or non-doing.

Yet, wu-wei more fully is an embracing of action in non-action. As the Tao Te Ching reads:

The Tao is constant in non-action
Yet there is nothing it does not do

Wu-wei is a natural state of being. It is being a leaf on the river, carried by currents through tumultuous times and peaceful times.

With unattached action, there is nothing one cannot do

I’m not sure these ideas translate well into traditional Western thought. The leaf on the river metaphor helps, but it seems detached in a negative way.

Why should people be at the mercy of the elements around them? Shouldn’t they have power and voice and autonomy?

I don’t think Taoism would disagree. But just as stubborn bows break and supple bows bend, but survive – wu-wei encourages a certain flexibility, a willingness to let go, that ultimately leads to greater understanding, and therefore, to greater autonomy.

If your car spins out, you turn into the spin. (Or so I’m told, I don’t drive.)

If you try to fight the spin out, try to force your will on the physics carrying the car – physics will win every time. But if you turn into the spin, you can let it carry you while maintaining control.

There are so many things in life that are outside your control. And if you fight the spin on all of them you’ll end up frustrated at best and crashed at worst.

Perhaps the closest thing from Western thought is Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

But even this does not deeply do justice to the spirit of wu-wei. A more Taoist version would read, perhaps:

Grant me the serenity to accept
There is nothing I can change
Accepting this
There is nothing I cannot do

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The Principles of LiquidFeedback

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Several years ago some software programmers in Berlin came up with a new software platform to let diverse groups of people self-organize themselves to make democratic decisions online.  The program, LiquidFeedback, gives everyone a chance to participate without the need for physical assemblies or in-person voting. 

The program was first used by the German Pirate Party, but it has been also been used by citizen associations, cooperatives and even corporations to elicit the collective sentiment of groups of people, including for binding votes. The idea behind the program is to avoid the classic problems of representative democracy and hierarchies.  As we all know, elected leaders are often happy to ignore or misrepresent the will of the people if it helps them stay in power.  LiquidFeedback was intended as something of an antidote.

Now, the programmers behind LiquidFeedback, the Public Software Group of Berlin, have published a book, The Principles of LiquidFeedback, describing the philosophical, political and operational details of the software system. The authors – Jan Behrens, Axel Kistner, Andreas Nitsche and Bjorn Swierczek – bill their book as “a must-read for anybody planning to make online decisions or to build online decision platforms and is also interesting for anybody interested in the future of democracy in the digital age.”

At a time when elections, legislatures and other democratic processes do a poor job at representing the will of the people, LiquidFeedback is a welcome experiment in demonstrating a better way. It is not seen as a substitute for representative democracy, but more as a complement to it.  I blogged about the program in 2012 and concluded that it “clearly shows the potential for re-imagining more open, legitimate and responsive forms of governance.” 

LiquidFeedback empowers any accredited member of a group to propose a new initiative; make suggestions about it; create alternatives to the proposed initiative; and vote on a final proposal.  Discussion generally takes place on other platforms, however, outside of LiquidFeedback. But the authors warn that "in the real world it is not possible to implement a secret electronic voting system whose functionality can be verified by the voters." Liquid Feedback uses open ballots.

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Francis Bacon on confirmation bias

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Nowadays, we call it “confirmation bias:” our deep-seated tendency to prefer information that confirms our existing positions. A political controversy erupted in 2010 when the libertarian blogger Julian Sanchez accused conservatives of falling prey to “epistemic closure,” which was his preferred term for the same problem:

Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted.

Edward Glaesser and Cass Sunstein call this phenomenon “asymmetric Bayesianism” and give examples from the left as well as the right. I argued earlier this week that Amy Chua’s and Jed Rubenfeld’s book The Triple Package suffers from the same problem.

But–as is often the case–Francis Bacon got there first. In his remarkable compendium of human cognitive frailties (published in 1620), he included this problem:

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate. And therefore it was a good answer that was made by one who, when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods — “Aye,” asked he again, “but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?” And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by. But with far more subtlety does this mischief insinuate itself into philosophy and the sciences; in which the first conclusion colors and brings into conformity with itself all that come after, though far sounder and better. Besides, independently of that delight and vanity which I have described, it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives; whereas it ought properly to hold itself indifferently disposed toward both alike. Indeed, in the establishment of any true axiom, the negative instance is the more forcible of the two.

 (Novum Organon, XLVI) 

Of course, Bacon’s goal was not lament our tendency to err but to help us fix it. Evidence has accumulated to reinforce his concerns about our blinkers and biases. Yet, as the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom recently wrote in The Atlantic, even the accumulated evidence does not show that we are fundamentally irrational. We very often make wise and deliberate choices. It all depends on the context of choice and the methods we use to deliberate:

So, yes, if you want to see people at their worst, press them on the details of those complex political issues that correspond to political identity and that cleave the country almost perfectly in half. But if this sort of irrational dogmatism reflected how our minds generally work, we wouldn’t even make it out of bed each morning.

As the heirs of Bacon’s scientific revolution, we should relentlessly investigate all systematic forms of human error–not to shake our faith in reason but to help us to reason better.

The post Francis Bacon on confirmation bias appeared first on Peter Levine.

Is “Bowling Alone” Still Relevant?

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This post is shared from the blog of supporting NCDD supporting member and professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Boston, Dr. Peter Levine. Peter recently wrote a reflection on the debate inspired by the now classic Robert Putnam work Bowling Alone, and whether or not it is still relevant after nearly 20 years. We encourage you to read Peter’s thoughts below or find the original post at www.peterlevine.ws/?p=13329.

Bowling Alone after (almost) 20 years

Robert Putnam published “Bowling Alone” in the Journal of Democracy, vol. 6, no. 1, January 1995. By September 25 of the same year, he was in People Magazine (smoking a pipe, standing alone in bowling shoes on a New Hampshire bowling alley). “We’ve become disconnected,” he said in the article, and “I think it’s at the root of all other problems.”

“Bowling Alone” has altered my own trajectory. It led to the National Commission on Civic Renewal, of which I was deputy director. The Commission called for a research center on youth engagement–noting the evidence, cited in Putnam’s original article, that the decline in social connectedness had been generational. That center is CIRCLE; I still direct it nearly 20 years later.

The original article quickly provoked a debate, with empirical and theoretical contributions. At the time, I thought one of the strongest counterarguments was in Jean Cohen’s 1999 chapter “American Civil Society Talk.” I am teaching Cohen this week, along with Putnam’s “Community-Based Social Capital and Educational Performance” (2001), which I take to be a more advanced version of the “Bowling Alone” argument.

In essence, Putnam argued that membership generated trust and reciprocity, which had  good outcomes for individuals and societies. A bowling league was a good example of voluntary membership. Shrinking bowling leagues would be a sign of decline if that exemplified a broader trend.

Drawing on Habermas, Gramsci, and various liberal thinkers, Cohen argued that laws or norms of free speech, free association, and deliberation yield certain kinds of associations that generate politically relevant discourse. That discourse produces better and more legitimate government. Bowling leagues are poor examples of civil society for Cohen because they do not involve political discourse. Unions, social movements, and advocacy groups would be better examples.

Cohen objects to the whole “decline” narrative. For Putnam, Baby Boomers were responsible for decline because their levels of associational membership fell. For Cohen, they were impressive because “they created the first environmental movement since the turn of the century, public health movements, grassroots activism and community organizing, the most important feminist movement since the pre-World War II period, the civil rights movement, and innumerable transnational nongovernmental organizations and civic movements–all of which have led to unprecedented advances in rights and social justice.” She ends: “we must drop the rhetoric of civic and moral decline.”

The debate is partly about method. Putnam finds strong empirical links between composites of membership, trust, turnout, following the news, etc. He tweaks his empirical model until it provides the best prediction of desirable social outcomes. He calls the composite measure “social capital” and offers theoretical reasons for its benefits.

Cohen, however, wants to disaggregate the various components that Putnam combines because she sees some as good and others as bad, from the perspective of left-liberal political theory. She is not interested whether social trust correlates with membership, or whether membership predicts trust in government. She sees membership in discursive associations as desirable, but trust in government as problematic. She also claims that Putnam omits important measures from his explanatory model. He should consider variation in legal rights, for example. (This part of her critique seems a bit unfair considering the methodology of Making Democracy Work.)

I think Cohen scores some valid points, but nearly 20 years later, I find myself increasingly sympathetic to Putnam. The reason is our political situation now. Cohen recognizes that the model of a liberal public sphere is far from perfect, but her argument depends on its potential. We must have reason to hope that free speech and democracy will allow people to form associations that generate reasonable public discourse and hold the government and market to account. Her positive portrayal of the Boomers rests on their success. They achieved “unprecedented advances in rights and social justice.”

But those advances have thoroughly stalled since 1999. We still have the legal framework that permits free association and free speech, but people are not using it very effectively. There are many reasons for that, but I think one is a declining capacity to associate. It now looks  as if the great social upheavals of 1955-1975 rested on a general culture of joining associations and norms of social solidarity. Those have eroded–probably not because of the social movements of the 1960s, but for other reasons, including economic change. The result is a civil society that has great difficulty generating the kinds of political movements that Cohen rightly values. Putnam looks prescient in noting the decline in the groundwork of effective political action.

Saul Alinsky on video

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I am teaching about Saul Alinsky (with due consideration to both his strengths and his weaknesses). I enjoyed showing my class actual footage of the man at work–from a 1968 Canadian documentary.

In this excerpt:

[o:00 to 0:55] A Chicago woman complains about rats the size of cats in her apartment. This is not a “one-on-one” interview in which she tells her own story and displays her agency as a human being. It is a documentary filmmaker’s invasion of her apartment to demonstrate her poverty. However, it does reveal some of the problems that would emerge in a one-on-one.

[0:55-1:42]: Two Alinksy-trained organizers plan “direct actions,” including pickets and a rent strike. In the ideal model, they would choose the topic and target only after much consultation with residents in one-on-ones and house meetings. But sooner or later, they would have to deal, as they do here, with practical issues like babysitting the moms who picket. By the way, a rent strike is a classic collective action problem: an individual renter who fails to pay will be evicted, but a whole building can obtain relief from the landlord if they act together. Even a picket line works a lot better if everyone joins it. That’s why I enjoy this exchange between the organizers at 0:58:

How many tenants in the building?

Ah, the building has, I think something like 27-30 tenants.

Tell you what–why don”t we turn out all 30 of them?

[1:43-3:40] A dignified picket line and some interaction with police.

[3:40-5:15] A debate with a neighbor (a young White man) who doesn’t like to see picketing on his street. The resident seen earlier talking about rats in her bedroom expresses herself pretty effectively.

[5:15-6:41] Alinsky himself, trying to establish his credibility as an anti-racist organizer with a group, probably from Dayton, OH, that is considering hiring him.

[6:41-8:09 ] The committee deliberates on whether to employ him.

In the next segment, he argues with a Canadian hippie about building utopian alternatives. (Alinksy is against.)

The post Saul Alinsky on video appeared first on Peter Levine.

What is Community Organizing?

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I’ve been co-teaching a class this semester, Introduction to Civic Studies: Theories for a Better World. Today, we began discussing Saul Alinsky, and more broadly, community organizing.

But what is community organizing?

Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, describes community organizing as: “a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but I find that entirely unhelpful. So, let’s move past the dictionary definition. Stories are more effective anyway.

I wouldn’t consider myself a community organizer, but I have been organized as part of my community. In that process, I’ve attended one-on-one trainings, strategized about issues, organized and attended rallies, protests, and speak out events.

I am, it would be said, a “leader” with Somerville Community Corporation’s Jobs for Somerville. I don’t know that I’d call myself a leader – I’m not a big fan of that phraseology – but that’s what it’s called when I’ve been organized sufficiently to organize.

That is to say – we’re all leaders. Not in an annoying, everyone wins a prize for showing up kind of way. We’re leaders because we’ve been drawn to an issue we care about. We’ve been trained in some skills, but, more critically, we’ve realized the skills we already have.

We’ve discovered the power of our own stories as well as power of hearing others’ stories. We’ve learned that we have a voice. We’ve learned that when we speak up, others will listen – and if they don’t, we’ll just speak up louder. We’ve learned that power isn’t something intractably bestowed upon a few, but something that is ours for the taking. With our voices and our stories, we build power.

I remember the first time an organizer invited me for a one on one.

I was surprised to get her call asking me to coffee. I’d met up with friends for coffee, but I’d only met this woman once. I didn’t understand why she wanted to talk with me.

I wasn’t anybody special.

Perhaps more surprisingly, when we met…she seemed genuinely interested in learning about me. It wasn’t a brief bout of small talk followed by a here’s what you can do for me pitch. She asked where I was from. She asked about my family. She asked if it was hard being so far away. She asked what I was passionate about. She asked why I cared. She shared some of her own story, her travels and tribulations.

We talked for an hour. I don’t even think there was an ask at the end. Isn’t there always supposed to be an ask at the end?

She said it was really nice to get to know me and that she looked forward to talking with me more.

She made me feel special. To her, I was special.

And thus I was organized, as I so gracelessly put it. And since then, I’ve learned to ask others out for coffee. To ask them their stories and learn from their experience. To treat them as special – not because that’s what nice people do, but simply because…they are special.

So what is community organizing?

I guess I would say – it means recognizing that every single one of us has power. It’s spread unequally and leveraged unfairly, but every person has power. Community organizing means recognizing your own power, supporting others in recognizing their own power, and doing everything, everything, within your power to share that power equitably.

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Betty Knighton Interview from Kettering

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Our friends at the Kettering Foundation, a long-time NCDD organizational member, recently shared a great interview on their blog with Betty Knighton (also a member) that we found to be quite insightful. Betty is an accomplished public engagement professional in W. Virginia whose experience we can all learn from, so we encourage you to read the interview below, or find the original post at www.kettering.org/kfnews/betty-knighton.

kf You can learn a lot about an organization by who they learn from. One of the folks Kettering has learned the most from is Betty Knighton of Charleston, West Virginia. Betty is a master of citizen engagement, someone who’s figured out how to work with communities around her state. But unlike many folks with a supersized talent, she also has the even rarer ability of being able to tell you how she does what she does. If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Betty, either at one of Kettering’s many learning exchanges or in West Virginia, here are some of Betty’s unique insights into community engagement – in her own words.

Since 1998, Betty has run the West Virginia Center for Civic Life. The center, which functions as an impartial organization supporting public engagement on tough issues in West Virginia, believes in the motto of National Issues Forums: “Understand. Decide. Act.” Three simple words, yet many lament we rarely see this attention to public issues any more. The poor state of public discourse in many communities around the country makes her work all the more admirable and worthy of discussion. And like many people Kettering works with, Betty doesn’t fit the stereotypical public engagement personality: she isn’t an elected official, she’s not trained professionally in public administration, nor does she have a degree in political science. Betty is a former high school English teacher who was working at the West Virginia Humanities Council on a literature discussion program for teachers when she became interested in National Issues Forums. Through the council, she began to form a statewide coalition of partnering organizations to help West Virginians talk and work together on issues facing the state. Eventually, their work grew into the creation of a nonprofit, freestanding organization, the West Virginia Center for Civic Life.

Jack Becker: Can you talk about a current issue you’re working on?

Betty Knighton: We’re currently working on a project about the economic future of West Virginia. Like so many states in rapid economic change these days, West Virginia is struggling to find ways to move forward on many fronts. There are conflicting ideas in some of these areas, especially in how the state should use its natural resources. For us to be useful to the state and to communities, we’re focusing on identifying conflicting perspectives and helping community’s frame those perspectives into constructive conversations.

When we work with West Virginians to frame issues, we’re really engaging in a conversation with people about how they see the problem. The framing of the issue has to represent different points of view in order to help communities have a comprehensive discussion that leads to productive decisions. The framing of these discussions is integral to the integrity of the entire process. If the issue framework sidelines an entire group of people, it won’t help the state move forward in the way it needs.

We’ve also seen how important it is that the organizers of community discussions come from different sectors – nonprofits, faith groups, government agencies, educational groups, the private sector. Not only does this kind of coalition underscore the openness of the process, but also it allows working relationships to develop that will have a major impact as communities move from dialogue to action.

A big part of what you’re doing, then, is identifying when and where people come together, and sometimes catalyzing opportunities for that to happen. A lot of people are thinking about this as “civic infrastructure.” What are your thoughts on that?

While most communities don’t use the term “civic infrastructure,” those that are most intentional in building opportunities for people to talk and work together are actually thinking a great deal about what civic infrastructure entails. Recently, we’ve been working with several communities as they are identifying the existing connections and relationships in their areas.

They are asking themselves: Where do conversations occur naturally in our community? Or, what kind of informal relationships do we have that help our community move forward? People often have to think hard and dig deep to uncover what is happening in their communities since so much of it is outside formal processes and spaces. Everybody, from the mayor to any citizen, knows something about the civic infrastructure in his or her community. At the same time, nobody knows everything. The work community members are doing to “map” what is happening around them is increasing opportunities for connected work and for stronger relationships to carry that work forward.

Some communities have developed ongoing spaces for community conversations. Huntington has a weekly process they call Chat ‘n Chew – open to everyone – as a time Huntington residents can come together, talk about local needs, and often, to work to address the needs they’ve identified. During Chat ‘n Chews, they are also enjoying a social time together and building a more connected community in the process.

Many communities in our state are doing this, often at cafés or restaurants, over breakfast, lunch or dinner. What’s special here is that many people are intentionally building habits of coming together and to talk about issues. While these initiatives are all locally organized, we try to learn about what’s happening so we can share their practices with other communities in West Virginia.

So I’m hearing that there’s a bit of a tension between rapid response dialogue and the more long-term work of building civic infrastructure. Is that right?

In many cases, we’re seeing that communities that have been the most intentional about building – or surfacing – connections are the ones that are most equipped to respond to public issues. It won’t necessarily be done quickly; most of these issues are complex and difficult. But communities that have an informal infrastructure to support public framing of issues and productive dialogues are starting several steps ahead.

When we work with communities, we try to help them build on the capacity they already have. Sometimes, people think they have to have a great deal of professional expertise and training before they can bring the community together for a conversation. While certain skills are very helpful for these community moderators and conveners, most often, it’s a matter of redirecting the skills they already have into a new, more public purpose.

The language I hear you speaking is that of assets. Similar to what John McKnight and the Asset-Based Community Development Institute has worked on for years, you’re saying that focusing on a community’s assets rather than deficits can facilitate better problem solving?

Communities do have infrastructures and capacities; they just don’t always recognize them. In our work with communities, and especially in our current work on the economic future of the state, we are working with communities to build on existing assets rather than to develop a list of deficits. It’s important for people to understand the severity of problems, though. For example, many West Virginians’ eyes were opened to the severity of the state’s prescription drug abuse problem in the 120 community dialogues that have been held around the state. Fortunately, they also learned about much good work that was underway, and they were able to build on that and set directions for new work to fill the many gaps.

How does the infrastructure that supports dialogue impact the move to action?

We’ve seen that the strong community connections that support deep and broad public dialogue are the key indicator of whether community actions will evolve. No matter how good the discussion is, community actions don’t just spontaneously erupt afterward. The connections and relationships that create the dialogues, coupled with the new relationships that develop during the dialogue, provide a solid infrastructure to support the hard work of planning and implementing community actions. It’s been exciting to see communities work so intentionally and with such deep insight into the importance of these connections. We’re trying our best to learn along with these communities and to share their work with others.

Never Volunteer for Anything

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My father always told me to never volunteer for anything.

This was something of a joke from the man who constantly found himself volunteering to build set pieces and school desks. Who led class field trips to lay track and who poured hours of (often unpaid) effort into historical interpretation.

Never volunteer for anything.

When I say this to other people, they often look aghast. Sometimes just confused. “Why would your father tell you such a thing?” they ask, as if afraid of what other dark life lessons might spring out.

Well. The wording of this has always been very precise for me. It’s not like he told me to never do something to benefit some else. Simply, never volunteer for anything.

It’s actually pretty good advice.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch because you’ll always have to pay for that lunch one way or another. With time if not with money.

Volunteering is not so different. You can never really do something for free, because even if you don’t get paid for your trouble, at the end of the day, it’ll still be something of a trouble.

My father grew up in the world of theater, where volunteering for something meant being the rube to raise his hand when the magician asks for some one from the audience. You may think you want to be that person, but really…you don’t want to be that person. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into when you shoot that arm into the sky.

Never volunteer for anything.

Perhaps this is why I find the concept of “public work” so appealing. Because working in the community is work. It’s a whole lot more than stepping up to the stage for a moment in the spotlight. Though it’s just as likely once you get there you’ll discover you just agreed to get sawed in half.

Never volunteer for anything means to always accept the cost of everything. It’s no free ride you’re giving away, it’s time, energy, and whole lot of effort.

And that work is worth it. There’s so much wrong with our lives, our communities, and our world. Or perhaps, more optimistically, so much opportunity for improvement. There is unspeakable injustice and shocking events and entrenched idiocy. And all of us must dedicate real time, energy, and effort in tackling those deep issues.

So never volunteer for anything. You may not get paid, but at the end of the day – the work is worth it.

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