New National Budget Issues Guide from NIFI

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

We are pleased to announce that our organizational partners at the National Issues Forums Institute have released their latest issue guide. The newest guide is called America’s Future: What Should Our Budget Priorities Be?, and it is designed to help facilitate discussion on national budget issues.

As with other NIFI issue guides, the new guide encourages forum participants to weigh three different courses of action on a controversial issue. The guide lays out the choices on dealing with the national budget in this way:

Option One: Keep Tightening Our Belt

Though painful, the sequester showed that we can get by with less. We should continue cutting gradually to bring down the deficit, shrink the national debt, and let the private sector drive the recovery.

Option Two: Invest for the Future

We are making progress on the deficit. We need to make some adjustments to entitlements, but now is not the time to slash programs and hobble the recovery.

Option Three: Tame the Monsters

We need to control the unbridled growth of defense, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid, which are the main consumers of federal dollars.

You can read more about the new issue guide at by clicking here, and we encourage you to order or download the issue materials here.

Bees

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve heard the bees are dying. Or, at least, disappearing. In an effect dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, whole colonies of healthy bees have abandoned their hives. Never to be heard from again.

Or maybe that was Roanoke.

Bee keepers have been raising concern about the disappearance of bees for over a decade. Research into this mystery was inconclusive until a few years ago, when studies began pointing to a class of pesticides.

So the bees aren’t secretly tiny aliens who’ve been returning to their far off tiny alien planet, we’ve actually been killing them. Whoops.

The pesticides, ingested by bees through pesticide-laced pollen, damage bee’s otherwise impressive homing ability.

So, the bees are dying.

It seems, though, like there have been an extra lot of bees this year. Or maybe I just think that every spring. I wondered if something, perhaps, had changed. If the bees were making a comeback. Go bees!

I didn’t learn the answer to that question, but I did find that apparently 2012 was a great year for bees, 2013 was a terrible year for bees, and that in early 2014, a Vermont beekeeper found Zombie Bees.

Oh my, who knew that was a thing?

Apparently, it’s a thing.

Fortunately (unfortunately?) zombie bees are not actually undead, but are erratic, disoriented, and about to die. Not from the same pesticides which are killing the bees, but, you know, from other things that are killing the bees.

Poor bees.

Boston, recovering city

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Peter

(On the train to NYC) It’s my sense that the second half of the 20th century was hard on America’s oldest city, but Boston is recovering from the wounds it sustained then.

Boston entered the 1900s as the hub of the first region in the United States to industrialize. It had its own factories, but mainly it provided the harbor and the financial and managerial center for a ring of manufacturing cities from Lowell to Fall River. Founded early and always prosperous, Boston had assembled cultural resources that made it a claimant to being America’s intellectual capital. Politically, it was a battleground between WASP Republicans and Catholic European working-class Democrats–not a pleasant struggle but sometimes a dynamic one. People of color were largely marginalized, but their communities had impressive assets. The city was especially attractive thanks to its architecture and its location at the mouth of the Charles. It had its own distinctive businesses that were points of civic pride, from Filene’s Department Store to the Red Sox.

But the industrial base largely collapsed. The harbor lost most of its business and became notoriously polluted. That meant that the city lost its traditional face to the sea. I-93 was blasted through the central core, and a terrible brutalist City Hall also marred downtown. Because the city was relatively small, each bad large building was a blow to the whole. The department stores faltered and ultimately closed. As in other cities, white middle class residents moved out and left a declining post-industrial economy to African American migrants and new immigrants. In Boston, white resistance was especially explicit and violent. The rest of American grew two- or three-fold while Boston shrank as a proportion of the nation’s economy, cultural leadership, and population.

Although I liked Boston when I first encountered it in the mid-1980s, I think it was a wounded city then. Having lived in the metro area continuously since 2008, I would now describe it as recovering. The Big Dig buried I-93, and the city is stitching together over it. The harbor is clean and graced by some fine new buildings, private and public. Boston again has a face to the sea. Biotech is flourishing. Certain de-industrialized zones, such as east Cambridge, are now massive building sites. The metro area has become multiracial and multicultural. Racial injustice is certainly not resolved, but I sense positive momentum. Boston’s fifth century should be much better than its fourth (unless we sink under the seas because of polar melt).

The post Boston, recovering city appeared first on Peter Levine.

More on our next Tech Tuesday event on Ethelo

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Our upcoming Tech Tuesday, on May 27th from 1:00 to 2:30 pm EST, introduces Ethelo—a new tool committed to pioneering progress on how collaborative thinking and decision making can occur online.

Ethelo founder John Richardson and his team (which includes NCDD member Kathryn Thomson) will demonstrate how the Ethelo algorithm works and how it can enhance the work of D&D practitioners. Currently at Beta stage, Ethelo is offering NCDD members free access to the platform and asking for our input to help them refine its development as a powerful tool for dialogue and decision making.

Here is how they describe their work:

Ethelo (a Greek word which signifies deep intention) is designed to complement and support the power of deliberative dialogue. Traditional methods of getting to whole group support, such as consensus, are often exhaustive, time consuming, labor intensive processes. Other methods of gaining group support include some form of compromise–which leave many if not all members vaguely unsatisfied, or a majority vote rule which can leave nearly half of the members unhappy.

Ethelo’s online platform deepens and extends in-person public processes; it enables groups to think differently about the issue or decision at hand, and leads to a more thoughtful, more well supported outcome.

To preview how Ethelo works to identify the collective will of a group (whether that group is a family, an organization, or a whole community) here are some links to different examples:

The Condo Dispute—condo disputes can take up so much time and energy, even on minor issues. Click here to see how one contentious issue was resolved using Ethelo. This example will take about 5 minutes for you to work through.
Group Holiday Decision—this one is also fairly quick to work through.
Comfort Cove Community Center—this is a more complex decision, so you’ll want to set aside about 15 minutes to work through this one.

This webinar will be interactive, thanks to Ben Roberts and the Maestroconference platform, and you’ll have lots of opportunities to provide input and ask questions in large and small group settings. We hope you’ll join your Tech Tuesday hosts and the Ethelo team for this opportunity to learn about more about the potential of this innovative new tool for collaboration and decision making.

The world is my oyster

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I always thought that was a strange expression. The world is my oyster.

I imagine the saying as a truncated version of a longer thought. The world is my oyster, and I’m a tiny piece of dirt being digested into a pearl.

And, while, indeed, the saying as popularized is not complete, the original meaning is quite different from the one I inferred.

Why, then the world’s mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.

Pistol tells Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor. Falstaff had just declined the noble Pistol a loan.

The world is my oyster may indeed mean that anything is possible. But that valuable pearl doesn’t come effortlessly. It takes strength, effort, violence perhaps, to pry open and retrieve.

The world is my oyster, Pistol is saying, and I will do whatever it takes to get the pearl.

Call for Proposals for NCDD 2014!

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

NCDD’s 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation is coming up this October 17-19 in the DC metro area.

Table-group-600px-outlined NCDD conferences bring together hundreds of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people involved in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada. 400 people attended our last national conference (Seattle in 2012), and we hope to beat that number this year!

If your work involves dialogue and deliberation, you’ll love the conference. Imagine spending three days with some of the most amazing people in our field, constantly forming new relationships and reconnecting with old colleagues and friends, hearing about innovative new approaches to the challenges you’re facing, and exploring together how we can shape the future of this important movement, all while using innovative group techniques… there’s really nothing like it. (See quotes from past attendees.)

Today we’re announcing our call for proposals for our concurrent sessions for NCDD 2014. We’re interested in finding many creative ways to highlight the best of what’s happening in public engagement, group process, community problem-solving, and arts-based dialogue — and we know you have lots of ideas!

Check out the Application for Session Leaders now to see what we ask for, and start cooking up those great proposals we’ve come to expect from you! For ideas, look over the results of our March Codigital experiment, where we asked the NCDD community to share what they’d like to see happen at NCDD 2014, and peruse the fabulous sessions offered at the 2012 and 2008 NCDD conferences.

We look forward to seeing what you’d like to offer! Please note that the deadline for proposals is Monday, June 16th.

Here is some guidance for those thinking about presenting sessions at NCDD 2014…

Our theme for the 2014 conference, Democracy for the Next Generation, invites us to build on all the innovative practices and tools that have been invigorating the dialogue and deliberation community in recent years. Now more than ever, we have both opportunity—and the increasing imperative—to bring this work to a much larger stage in order to build a stronger democracy that is able to address society’s most pressing challenges.

YoungLadiesWithMug-NCDDSeattle What do we want the next generation of our work to look like, and how can we work together to get there? We’ll address these questions through the 2014 NCDD conference goals:

Create new pathways, new partnerships, and new ways of thinking about how we can expand the scope of our work and find new ways to embed our practices in governance.
Provide attendees with insights and know-how for harnessing the emerging technologies that support dialogue and deliberation.
Connect seasoned practitioners to newcomers, for the benefit of all generations.
Inspire and invigorate attendees’ current work through exposure to new ideas and innovations in the field, and by boldly addressing how to break down persistent barriers to participation.
Map out the future tools of democracy that enable a thriving culture of engaged citizens and communities everywhere.

This “next generation” of democracy is the future that embodies the best of what we have to offer the world. Session presenters are strongly encouraged to help us explore these critical elements in moving the work of our community forward. Your proposal will be evaluated, in part, by its relevance to our theme and goals.

Some advice from the NCDD 2014 planning team for potential session leaders:

Identify great co-presenters. Most workshops at NCDD conferences are collaborative efforts involving multiple presenters from different organizations and universities. Have you thought about who you can co-present with? Now’s the time to contact them to see if they’d like to offer a session with you! (Use the NCDD Discussion list and the comments below to put out feelers for potential co-presenters if you’d like.)
Look over past workshop descriptions. Peruse the list of workshops from NCDD Seattle to get a sense of the kinds of sessions the planning team selects. Sessions focused on innovative solutions to common challenges, ways to take this work to scale or to new audiences, and deep dives into great projects (and thoughtful explorations of failed projects!) are especially welcome. You can also scan the fabulous sessions offered at NCDD Austin.
Be innovative with your session. NCDD attendees are usually not too impressed with traditional panels or long speeches. Get them engaging with you and each other! Think about how you can get them out of their seats and moving around the room. And think about what you’d like to learn from them (not just what they can learn from you). Challenge yourself to run a session without relying on PowerPoint.
Share your stories. NCDDers prefer hearing your stories to getting a run-down of your organization or methodology. People are interested in learning about what you did, what you learned, and how they may be able to learn from your experience.
Share the latest. What’s the latest research? What are the latest innovations in the field? What new challenges are you facing? What are your latest accomplishments?

Not quite ready to draw up a proposal yet?
Use the comment field (and/or the NCDD listserv) to float your ideas by NCDDers and members of the planning team. We may be able to match you up with potential co-presenters who can address the same challenge or issue you’re interested in focusing on.

Look over the results of our March engagement project, where we used Codigital to get 122 members of the NCDD community contributing 95 ideas for the NCDD conference, editing the ideas 174 times, and ranking the ideas through 5290 votes. There is a wealth of ideas and insight in those results!

Deadline for submissions

Complete the session application at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2014/session-app by the end of the day on Monday, June 16th.

Members of the conference planning team will review the proposals and respond by email to the first contact listed in your proposal by the end of the day on July 9th.

Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Picketty

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Peter

In the earlier times of the colony, when lands were to be obtained for little or nothing, some provident individuals procured large grants; and, desirous of founding great families for themselves, settled them on their descendants in fee tail. The transmission of this property from generation to generation, in the same name, raised up a distinct set of families, who, being privileged by law in the perpetuation of their wealth, were thus formed into a Patrician order, distinguished by the splendor and luxury of their establishments. From this order, too, the king habitually selected his counsellors of State; the hope of which distinction devoted the whole corps to the interests and will of the crown. To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger, than benefit, to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic.

–Thomas Jefferson, recalling his own Bill for the Abolition of Entails, August 11, 1776

Thomas Picketty has become the world’s best-selling economist with a simple argument. Normally, he says, the people who own capital not only become richer (which would helpfully encourage investment), but their wealth grows consistently faster than the economy. Thus, even if they lounge around–even if they fall into comas–their share of GDP will grow, giving them disproportionate political as well as economic influence. That pattern was suspended for most of the 20th century but is now returning.

Picketty has been called Marxist and anti-American, but Thomas Jefferson shared his concerns. In colonial Virginia, capital took the form of land and slaves. Some of the earlier settlers had put their families on course to dominate the colony by writing wills that passed their estates to their first-born sons and prevented their land from being sold or divided. Since the British were blocking westward expansion, holding together a large estate meant gaining a growing share of the colony’s wealth as the population expanded. Jefferson thought this was a recipe for an “aristocracy of wealth” that was incompatible with republican government. He passed bills to abolish the “entails” that kept family estates from splitting.

Scholars seem to disagree about the economic and social consequences of his legislation. But he saw his own bills as radical efforts and as components of a multi-pronged strategy:

I considered 4 of these bills, passed or reported, as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican. The repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth in select families, and preserve the soil of the country from being daily more & more absorbed in Mortmain. The abolition of primogeniture, and equal partition of inheritances removed the feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of every family rich, and all the rest poor, substituting equal partition, the best of all Agrarian laws. The restoration of the rights of conscience relieved the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; for the establishment was truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people; and these, by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government: and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen. To these too might be added, as a further security, the introduction of the trial by jury, into the Chancery courts, which have already ingulfed and continue to ingulf, so great a proportion of the jurisdiction over our property.

Jefferson certainly should have favored (instead of opposed) the abolition of slavery. But note his explicit class theory; his concern with “future” as well as “antient” aristocracy; and his willingness to use a combination of economic, cultural, legal/governmental, and educational strategies to produce the “foundation … for a government truly republican.” I think the nation’s third president would view today’s proposals for combatting oligarchy as but weak and tentative.

The post Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Picketty appeared first on Peter Levine.

New Direction for GFSC in 2014

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

Our friends at Global Facilitators Serving Communities recently released a special update for NCDD on how their exciting work has been growing that we wanted to make sure our members saw. You can learn more below, and make sure to visit their newly remodeled website at www.globalfacilitators.org.

Reinvigorating and Refocusing are the GFSC directions for 2014

Reinvigorating: GFSC is expanding its Board as we transition to a more locally based post-disaster resource. Much of our activity has been in Latin America and Asia for the past few years and we want the Board to reflect that. We currently have one Board member from Latin America and are seeking at least one more from that region and two representatives from Asia.

Refocusing: One of our gifts is our volunteer force from Latin America. GFSC trainers Maria Francia Utard (Chile/Costa Rica), Michael Kane (New Orleans, USA) and Francisco Fernandez Colombia) have developed a complete virtual training module for applying the GFSC model for developing post-disaster community resilience. Our newest volunteers (see photo) successfully completed this online workshop and we welcome their continuing participation as trainers. Pictured are Livia Olvera Snyder, Nancy Acosta Castillo, Jorge Valdivieso Zapata and Mauricio Diaz Cruz (Mexico) and Lynda Rojas (Colombia).

The GFSC Board has been collaborating with the Chilean consulting firm Partners in Participation Latino America, on developing a relationship that can include the GFSC Psychosocial Recovery Process Workshop in its strategic objectives. This will provide the opportunity to offer the GFSC process to Chilean mining companies and other organizations interested in training their employees in a preventive model to support their communities in case of crises and natural disasters, common in some areas of Chile.

One of our Board members, Ximena Combariza, recently delivered a GFSC workshop in Spain at the request of a community there. GFSC is working with colleagues in the Philippines to incorporate its model in a school curriculum as well as in community centers.

As natural disasters seem to occur more frequently, are more devastating and affect many more people around the world, GFSC wants to partner with other organizations in local areas to collaborate and provide this kind of training. GFSC has provided its Psychosocial Recovery Process Workshop for communities in the Philippines, Taiwan, Columbia, Chile, and the United States.

We welcome suggestions on how we might best use and expand our global resources. Contact us at info@globalfacilitators.org.

This is the greatest moment of your life

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

He burns his hand with water and lye. The worst pain you’ll ever feel.

He imagines himself somewhere else. Detached. Guided meditation. His hand is burning, his mind is gone. Lost amid rolling green hills. Breathe.

This is the greatest moment of your life, he says, and you’re sleeping through it.

This is Tyler Durden. This is the unnamed narrator. This is Fight Club. A book by Chuck Palahniuk long before it was a movie. An insomniac’s tale. A copy of a copy of a copy.

And yes, this post contains spoilers.

You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake, Tyler says. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else.

Tyler Durden is tough. Tyler Durden lives by his own rules. Tyler Durden is everything the narrator wishes he could be.

Tyler Durden is not the hero of this story.

No one is a hero in this existentialist tale. The fractured ramblings of a psychotic man and his secondary personality. Everyone is broken and meaningless.

Tyler Durden starts a movement. The first rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club.

Palahniuk writes that Fight Club started as just a list of rules. The story came later. Just a list of rules.

Tyler Durden starts a movement. Tyler Durden breaks men out of their sorry, simple lives. Working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy shit they don’t really need. Tyler Durden sets them free.

The first rule of Project Mayhem is you don’t ask questions about Project Mayhem. The fifth rule of Project Mayhem is you have to trust Tyler Durden.

Don’t talk about. Don’t ask questions. Trust Tyler Durden.

You do the little job you’re trained to do.
Pull a lever.
Push a button.
You don’t understand any of it, and then you just die.

There’s no freedom there. The recruits of Project Mayhem are just as lost as ever.

But if Tyler’s no hero, why does his character hold such allure? Why are Durden quotes part of popular culture? How can he be so right and yet so wrong?

In the afterword, Palahniuk writes there is nothing a blue-collar nobody in Oregon with a public school education can imagine that a million-billion people haven’t already done.

Nothing is new in Fight Club. Waiters have always tainted food. Projectionists have always altered projections. People have always fought to blow off steam. Palahniuk got these stories from his friends. Blue-collar nobodys in Oregon.

We’re all Tyler Durden. Well, maybe not all of us, but you know what I mean. We’re all the narrator, and we’re all Tyler. Broken and scared and strong and tough.

We look away when we’re in pain. We try to protect ourselves from the trauma. But life only lasts so long, and perhaps, as Tyler says, we should embrace every moment of it.

This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.

No matter the pain.

This is the greatest moment of your life.

defining civic engagement, democracy, civic renewal, and related terms

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Peter

My post entitled “What is the definition of civic engagement?” gets lots of traffic. It does not actually present my definition but a compendium of alternative versions. I have volunteered to draft some new definitions for a particular purpose. This is what I am thinking:

Active citizenship: Working to improve a nation or other community, independent of whether you have legal status as a member of that community. (“You were an excellent active citizen in Massachusetts while you visited here from South Africa.”)

Civil society: The array of nongovernmental organizations and networks that address public issues. Sometimes the definition introduces a qualitative dimension, so that civil society is an array of associations and networks marked by peacefulness, mutual respect, trust, and other virtues. Civil society may include for-profit enterprises as well as nonprofits. (“The government worked with civil society groups to help victims of the storm.”)

Civic education: Any process that strengthens people’s capacity for civic engagement and political participation, at any age and in any setting. (“Newspapers traditionally provided some of the best civic education in America.”)

Civic engagement: Any act intended to improve or influence a community. Often, the phrase has positive connotations, so that engagement is viewed as “civic” to the extent that it meets such criteria as responsibility, thoughtfulness, respect for evidence, and concern for other people and the environment. (“Informed voting is an example of civic engagement.”)

Civic health: The degree to which a whole community involves its people and organizations in addressing its problems. (“Minneapolis/St Paul has the best civic health of large American cities, thanks to a long tradition of strong civic organizations and responsive local government.”)

Civic institutions: The organizations and associated norms and rules that people use for civic engagement. (“Political parties and volunteer groups are two examples of civic institutions.”)

Civic life: For an individual, a life in which civic engagement has an important place. For a community, all the acts of civic engagement and associated norms and values of its members. (“A service experience prepared her for civic life.” “The civic life of Somerville, MA is vibrant.”)

Civic renewal: Efforts to increase the prevalence, equity, quality, and impact of civic engagement. (“Attending a public meeting is civic engagement, but making such meetings work better for the whole community is civic renewal.”)

Democracy: Any system for making decisions in which all the members of the community or group have roughly equal influence, whether they exercise it directly or through representatives. Voting is common in democracies but is not definitive of it. Other means–such as reaching consensus or choosing representatives by lot–can also be democratic; and voting requires other elements to be satisfactory, such as free expression and civil peace. (“An elementary school is not a democracy, but it helps prepare students for democratic participation.”)

Democratic participation: Civic engagement that involves democratic political institutions. (“Petitioning Congress is a form of democratic participation.”)

Politics: Broadly, the means and processes by which people govern themselves and others, using power and influence. One important setting of politics is government, but politics also occurs in other institutions. Politics is not necessarily contentious or zero-sum. (“The Marshall Plan was politics at its finest.”)

Political engagement or political participation: Civic engagement that emphasizes governmental institutions and/or power. (“Voting is a touchstone of political participation in the United States.”)

The post defining civic engagement, democracy, civic renewal, and related terms appeared first on Peter Levine.

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Monthly Archives: May 2014