Monthly Archives: October 2018

Discover All the Great Offerings at #NCDD2018!

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#NCDD2018 is almost here! Just another day until our pre-conference sessions kick off on Thursday and we couldn’t be more excited to start seeing folks again! In order to really get the most out of #NCDD2018 we encourage you to check out the extra offerings at the conference, in addition to our inspiring speakers, over 60 workshops, and 30+ presenters at the D&D Showcase.

The full conference schedule is on the NCDD blog and make sure you check out the interactive, digital version hosted by Konveio! Share your thoughts here on the blog about the conference theme and how to amplify the work of D&D. Get started on the conference networking early by connecting with other attendees here. If you are looking for a room share at the Sheraton, folks are posting here. Finally, if you haven’t gotten your tickets and you’d like to join us, we have 3-day and single-day tickets still available here. That’s all, folks!

Can’t wait to see everyone at the conference!

Thursday, November 1st

Pre-conference sessions!
We are thrilled to offer five exciting day long and one half-day pre-conference sessions on Thursday, November 1, 2018, prior to the start of NCDD 2018! These sessions are great for people of various levels of experience, and offer a variety of topics. Read through these descriptions and go to ncdd2018-precon.eventbrite.com to register!

  • Standing Up for Social Justice in Times of Fear & Hatred
  • Tackling Wicked Problems in Local Communities: A Workshop for Local Governments, School Districts, and Community Leaders
  • What is Participatory Budgeting and how can it work for me?
  • A Taste of the Theory and Practice of Bohm Dialogue
  • Transforming Community Spaces: A Workshop for Community Facilitators
  • We the People Are More Powerful Than We Dare to Believe: First Steps in Dismantling Corporate Rule

5 – 7pm – Informal Meet & Greet
We welcome all folks participating in pre-conference activities and conference attendees who have arrived early to join NCDD’s Staff at Mix16 Lounge in the hotel lobby for an informal meet & greet!

6 – 7pm – Deliberation Bootcamp
This session, specifically designed for newcomers to the conference, will provide an overall introduction to NCDD and to many of the key concepts, organizations, and challenges related to the field. The session will be led by Martin Carcasson, NCDD Board member and Director of Colorado State University’s Center for Public Deliberation. Email Martín at mcarcas@colostate.edu to let him know you’ll be attending the Bootcamp.  (Governor’s Square 14)

6:30 – 8:30pm – Breaking the Partisan Trance: A dialogue think tank about this American moment
Similar to a couple in the middle of deep-set resentments, growing numbers of Americans today have become so enraged that they can hardly see or hear each other honestly anymore.  The kind of collective distortions that anger generates can be reminiscent at times of a “trance-like” state.  If that’s true, we’re curious about the ways in which dialogue practices can effectively break the almost hypnotic, reflexive reactions that currently paralyze politics. This evening will be dedicated to exploring these possibilities together, and trying them out for ourselves, utilizing various approaches we’ve been exploring, including a Living Room Conversation format and the Transpartisan Matrix to assist in the collective inquiry. Come join the brainstorm.. The fate of the republic depends on it! (Governor’s Square 15)

8 – 9:15pm – Emerging Leaders Mentoring Session
NCDD is hosting a pre-conference event for young people and students. This will be a time for attendees 35 and under to connect with the other younger conference attendees. We will also be kicking off our NCDD 2018 Mentoring Program, which will intentionally connect a cadre of experienced D&D leaders with students and youth attendees during the conference. (Governor’s Square 12)

Friday, November 2nd

 6pm – 8:30pm – White Privilege Symposium Community Event
We are sharing the Ballroom with the White Privilege Symposium for their community event, featuring performances and speakers. Event is open to NCDD attendees and the public.  (Plaza Ballroom)

7:30pm – 9:30pm – National Issues Forum: The Opiod Epidemic
What Should We Do About The Opioid Epidemic?  –  Virgina York will lead attendees in a National Issues Forum on the opioid epidemic. Join fellow attendees to experience the National Issues Forums model and deliberate on possible approaches to this complex national issue. (Governor’s Square 15)

8:30pm and on  – Building Bridges Salon
Join a late night discussion about dialogue and racial privilege after the WPS community kick-off event. Come upstairs around 8:30pm to the 15FIFTY Restaurant & Lounge for a loosely facilitated conversation to explore how WPS attendees & NCDDers can do better together.

Saturday, November 3rd

12:30 – 1:30 pm – Ben Franklin Circles Lunch

Ben Franklin Circles (BFC) use Franklin’s classic 13 virtues to spark discussion about how participants can improve themselves and their communities. Join BFC hosts from around the country for a relaxed lunch and Ben Franklin Circle in action. Get a feel for the BFC approach as we discuss Franklin’s virtue of “Resolution” in relation to our conference theme: connecting and strengthening civic innovators. The combination of Franklin’s original prompts and modern day topics generates a unique lens for civic dialogue and community building. Come eat, explore, and innovate with us. (Plaza Court 2)

For planning purposes it would assist the presenters to know if you will plan to attend this discussion circle.  Please fill out the brief form here.

This lunchtime breakout session is a circle in action. For general information about BFC please see our workshop on Friday Nov. 2nd , Session A.

Hosted by: Tracy Rogers-Tryba, Ben Franklin Circle Host, IL and Danyel Addes -Network and Program Manager, Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact, 92nd Street Y

5pm – on – Free Time & Civic Dinner Opportunity

Explore downtown Denver and go out to dinner with new or old friends… We’ll provide you with all you need to organize your evening out!

Conference sponsor Civic Dinners is offering to help people run their own Civic Dinners Saturday night. Civic Dinners helps people transform dinner tables into forums for positive social change. Our friends at Civic Dinners are happy to help anyone who wants to host on any of their three national topics: Bridging the Racial Divide, The Voice of Women, or Common Ground (just launched!).

Civic Dinners will be getting people to sign up during the Showcase/Reception on Friday afternoon. Those of you who’d like to host something at a restaurant or, even better, local folks who’d like to host a Civic Dinner in your home, can plan to do so! If this is of interest to you, email Jenn Graham at jenn@civicdinners.com so you two can connect on the details.

Make sure you check out the full conference schedule for the line-up of workshops, plenaries, and more!

On Monday, NCDD member David Campt will be holding one of his workshops, Dismantling Racism: One Conversation at a Time, on November 5th in Denver. Learn more and register here!

Help Shape Fantastic ‘The Constitution Annotated’ Resource!!!!

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CONAN

 

Are you familiar with CONAN, or the Constitution Annotated, provided by the Congressional Research Service? If not, why not? It is, in technical terms, simply a fantastic resource and we at FJCC cannot recommend it enough. It contains legal analysis and interpretation of the Constitution based primarily on US Supreme Court case law, and is consistently updated.
Folks at the Congressional Research Service are working with a group of graduate students on new tools and applications for CONAN, and they are looking for YOUR help. They would like to interview K-12 educators to get a better understanding of if or how they might like to use the Constitution Annotated in the classroom. This is a chance for YOU to help develop resources and tools that can help both your students and your colleagues in civics and government.
If you know a teacher who teaches civics or government, at any level, please contact Natalie Buda Smith at nsmith@loc.gov. She would love to hear from you and arrange a conversation and get your insight!

youth vote 2018: what to expect and how to interpret the data

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In The Washington Post, Amy Gardner reads some tea leaves that might foretell youth turnout in November.

On one hand, the good news: “In Pennsylvania, youth voters have made up nearly 60 percent of all new registrants, Target­Smart reported in September. The share of the electorate that is under age 30 has grown since 2017 in several key states, including Nevada, North Carolina and Florida, according to state voter registration data tracked by the firm L2. In Virginia, requests for student absentee ballots, at about 30,000, are about 50 percent higher than in last year’s gubernatorial election.”

We could add that CIRCLE’s youth polling finds much higher levels of intent to vote than we have seen recently. And these data from Texas look promising:

On the other hand, Gardner notes,

There are plenty of reasons for skepticism about an age group that typically performs dismally at the polls. In 2016, young Americans were expected to turn out heavily against Trump, but the actual share of voters under 30 who cast ballots was 43 percent of eligible voters — about the same as the previous presidential election in 2012 and lower than 2008. (Overall turnout in 2016 was 60 percent.)

Midterm performance is typically far worse: Just 16 percent of young Americans cast ballots in 2014. The highest midterm turnout among voters under 30 in the past three decades was a mere 21 percent in 1994.

And some of the tea leaves seem to foretell just a modest improvement:

In Nevada, young voters’ share of the electorate was 18.6 percent in August, up from 17.5 percent in September 2017, according to L2. In North Carolina, it was 18.3 percent in October, up from 16.7 percent in September 2017. And in Florida, it was 16.6 percent in September, up from 15.6 percent a year earlier.

Meanwhile, in Politico, Marc Caputo, Matt Dixon, and Isabel Dobrin write:

THE YOUNG PEOPLE WILL … STAY HOME? — Remember all that talk of how “the young people will win” and come out in force in Florida, especially after the Parkland massacre? So far, it’s not happening. Voters between the ages of 18-29 are 17 percent of the registered voters in Florida but have only cast 5 percent of the ballots so far. They tend to vote more Democratic. Meanwhile, voters 65 and older are 18.4 percent of the electorate but have cast 51.4 percent of the ballots. And older voters tend to vote more Republican.

Their analysis is based on Daniel Smith’s chart of the early votes so far in Florida, which shows all age groups rising but youth by the smallest amount:

A bunch of different statistics are being cited here: the number of voters or registrants in various age groups, the turnout (the percentage of eligible people in each category who actually voted), and the share of the electorate (what proportion of all voters fit in each category). These articles also cite statistics about registration, early voting, and total voting. It’s easy to get confused.

I expect turnout to rise for the population as a whole, in large part because of the actual and perceived high stakes of the 2018 election. I think youth turnout will also rise but youth will face a challenge keeping pace with the general increase. The difference between them and older voters will probably look better than in Dan Smith’s chart, because early voting seems to appeal especially to older people.

But we could still see various scenarios.

If youth turnout and share of the electorate both rise, it will be a great year for youth voting. Youth turnout could actually fall, but that would really surprise me. If youth turnout rises but no faster than–or not as fast as–the turnout of older people, then youth share will shrink. This will be reported by many news outlets as a decline. That interpretation will not be an outright error. If you want to exercise more influence on the outcome, you must increase your share of the vote. A flat or shrinking share means having no more influence. Also, if turnout rises but youth turnout rises less than average, it will pose questions about the impact of the nonpartisan and partisan efforts specifically to engage youth.

But it will also be true that more youth have voted, which will be worth celebrating if you care about youth engagement. And it will break a pattern, because historically youth turnout has been remarkably flat in midterm elections. Breaking that pattern might be a small positive step even if youth share shrinks slightly.

Apply for EvDem’s Institute for Community Change Leaders

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NCDD member, Everyday Democracy – a sponsor of #NCDD2018, recently announced they are seeking applications for their new Institute for Community Change Leaders program. The Institute will be a year-long experience to strengthen leadership and community building skills through a racial equity lens. The first part will be a five-day retreat in December to learn and build relationships with your fellow cohort; then design a plan over the following year to address an issue your community is facing.  Applications are due November 9th. You can read the announcement below and find the original on Everyday Democracy’s site here.

Now Accepting Applications: Institute for Community Change Leaders

EvDem LogoStrengthening democracy in our country and communities will depend on strong, diverse leaders – leaders from all backgrounds and ages who have the skills, knowledge and courage to help people engage with each other across difference, understand and embrace racial equity, and create equitable and sustainable community change.

The Everyday Democracy Institute for Community Change Leaders is a unique experience that will deepen your leadership in engaging your community, in using a racial equity lens, and in leveraging the power of voice and participation as a pathway to equitable change on the issues your community is facing.

Join peers from across the country and across sectors who want to take their leadership to the next level. You will have the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of democracy in this moment, consider ways to address racial equity in the current context, create plans for engaging your community for equitable change, and connect across generations in a community of learning and practice.

The Institute for Community Change is for you if…

  • You want to connect your community leadership to the broader challenges facing our democracy
  • You want to reflect deeply about the kind of leadership that creates opportunity for voice and participation for all and a powerful racial and intergenerational equity framework
  • You would appreciate learning with a community of leaders from all ethnic backgrounds, sectors, and ages
  • You want to improve your skills in engaging the community in dialogue to address tough public issues with a racial equity lens and sustained, people-driven impact.
  • You see the potential of Everyday Democracy’s Dialogue to Change approach for your community and want to learn more about how to apply it.

More about the Institute
The Institute begins with a five-day learning experience designed to help leaders from a variety of sectors deepen their knowledge, skills, and readiness for leading community change in inclusive, participatory and equitable ways.

There will be time for connection, reflection, and skill building in an environment that is supportive of deep learning and fun. Our curriculum will address these topics:

  • The theory and practice of democracy and what it means for today
  • Using a racial and intergenerational equity framework
  • Coaching for inclusive community organizing and community-level change
  • Facilitating intra- and inter-group dialogue
  • Communicating with clarity to various audiences to support inclusive, equitable engagement and change
  • Issue framing that helps people start where they are, talk productively about racial equity, and move to individual and community-level change
  • Using evaluation as a tool to model racial equity and build others’ capacity for leadership and community change
  • Using the arts to expand and deepen community change
  • Self-care in the context of authentic community as a leadership practice

The in-person retreat is the first phase of year-long learning opportunity, as part of a cohort of leaders. In the second phase, Everyday Democracy will support the group through personalized webinars and conference calls, to deepen the learning begun in the retreat and provide opportunities to exchange ideas and experiences. In phase three, we will support participants as they implement a community engagement strategy of their own choosing and design, on an issue of importance to their community. In the final phase, we will support leaders as they reflect on and assess their leadership experiences, share their lessons with each other, and apply their learning to planning their future leadership development.

Who should apply?
The Institute is designed for leaders in a variety of sectors and settings who care about engaging the community in dialogue and change with a racial and intergenerational equity lens. Whether you are a neighborhood problem solver, community organizer, faith leader, school leader, public official, non-profit leaders, or another kind of concerned resident who wants to improve your community’s ability to cross divides and work together in equitable ways, this is for you. We welcome folks from every stage of their leadership practice.

When and where
The practicum and retreat will take place December 10 – 14, 2018 in a hotel and conference center located in scenic south-west Connecticut in the vicinity of parks, museums, and gardens. The facility includes a spa, which participants can enjoy at their own cost. If you are flying into Connecticut, use either Bradley International or Tweed New Haven Airports.

Cost
Your payment of $500 that includes an entire year-long experience will cover your lodging (up to five nights), breakfast and lunch each day of the retreat, and all materials. Other meals and your travel will be your responsibility. If two people are able to attend from the same community, your combined cost will be discounted to $850. If cost is a barrier for your participation, please apply for a scholarship.

How to apply
The application period ends November 9, 2018. Individuals will be notified regarding acceptance by November 14, 2018. Click here to download the application.

A mini-review of Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education

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“It was not until years afterward that I came upon Tolstoy’s phrase “the snare of preparation,” which he insists we spread before the feet of young people, hopelessly entangling them in a curious inactivity at the very period of life when they are longing to construct the world anew and to conform it to their own ideals.” -Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House

Bryan Caplan has long inspired me. We don’t share a political ideology, but his writing on child-rearing has often come at exactly the right moment for me. (His Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids helped me overcome a brief antinatalism phase, for instance.) His work on borders and immigration is less groundbreaking, but no less true, and in his forthcoming fun comic on the topic he and Zach Weinersmith will bring scholarly rigor and friendly advocacy to new heights. He’s obviously right that immigration restrictions are immoral and self-defeating—but no one is listening in this new age of nationalism. His latest book has fewer concrete ethical consequences—but it deploys evidence from educational psychology that has long puzzled me in service of a policy argument that has almost no chance of uptake, and so cements my view of Bryan as a careful and provocative scholar doing his best to tell the truth even when no one will listen.

Mini-Review

The argument in The Case Against Education is simple: most people don’t learn much of value to employers in their college educations. This is possibly also true even for some parts of K-12 schooling. Education instead is largely a mix of experience high-ability people would seek out on their own and an opportunity to distinguish oneself from other applicants in the resume rat race. The bulk of the book is a response to the various objections that are now forming in your mind.

You’d have to be pretty nerdy to be reading this, so the first step for evaluating the argument is to use a bit of empathy: forget your own experience in school, except the bad parts. I hated high school, but I loved college so much I took it as a career. Even then, I don’t remember a good deal of what I studied outside of my chosen field. And many of my fellow students were much less enthusiastic. So ask yourself:

  1. How much high school Spanish do you remember?
  2. Do you remember the titles—let alone the plots—of all the books you read in 11th grade English?
  3. What is ionization energy?
  4. Remember calculus? Can you solve a parametric equation today?

Perhaps you can answer half of these questions today without Google. That’s not a lot of retention. Whenever I get stuck in conversations on planes with people about the one philosophy class they took in college, they tend not remember much of the content. (“The cave, right?! Brains in vats? Veil of ignorance…. I hated that class.”)

Caplan summarizes well-established but little-known work in educational psychology on learning transfer which seems to show that mostly students don’t learn or retain much. Instead, a lot of education seems to combine three things, in some combination: an accumulation of habits, skills, and knowledge that we can call “human capital,” a costly and difficult signal that distinguishes us to employers, and a kind of consumption that is distinctive of high ability and high-income people.

I won’t say much about signaling as such: for Caplan, education provides future workers with an opportunity to create truthful, hard to fake resumes that demonstrate intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity. On his view, the time you spent acing classes you’ll never need proves you’re willing to play the game better than any personal statement could ever do. Of course that’s part of it… but how much?

The human capital model is the one we’re all thinking about when we recommend education. Education, we want to believe, makes you smarter, more capable, more knowledgeable, and more effective. Caplan seems to think that this is a relatively small part of what is going on in education. In the book he sometimes says human capital is 20% of education’s contribution to income, though he’ll also say it is 11% of the effect of education.

That’s because education is also fun, and especially fun for people who tend to earn high incomes because they are intelligent, curious, and conscientious. In that sense, education is like other high-class consumption goods: eating good food or taking fancy vacations, for instance.  In fact, the “fun” part of education rivals the signaling element. (He estimates ‘ability bias’ accounts for 45%, and signaling for 44%.) I’ve known many smart, curious people who retire from a successful career and go back to school. They’re not in school to learn and become more effective workers, but rather because education can be an intrinsic good with no instrumental value.

This is likely the case my progressive friends would make: you don’t study philosophy to be a better nurse or accountant or medical doctors—though there are ways that the critical thinking skills you learn may help you—you study philosophy because you’ve got questions about the nature of the universe, existence, death, justice, beauty, and truth. And the smarter and more successful you’ve been, the more you can enjoy learning about philosophy and literature. It’s an end-in-itself. Caplan seems to think that education as a high-ability consumption like backpacking in Europe or kite-surfing in the Caribbean—for kids wealthy enough to afford it on their own or retired adults looking to reflect on it all, but not for that time in your life when you’re trying to figure out your place in the economy.

I think we progressives should take Caplan’s argument seriously. But in some ways we already do: we’ve all read and shared articles like these: “Why American Colleges are Becoming a Force of Inequality,” and “Schools that accept ‘no excuses’ from students are not helping them.” Progressives are coming around to the idea that higher education is not a great leveler, and the segregated K-12 schools are increasingly a pipeline to prison rather than jobs for the least advantaged.

Our counterarguments often play up underfunding of state flagship universities, and so progressives often seek to double down on higher education with Bernie Sanders-style free college guarantees and increased spending. But at the same, we are increasingly aware of efforts to make schooling more regimented, disciplinary, and prison-like. We see that African-American and poor students are being shuttled towards “no excuses” schools while white and wealthy students find get play-based curricula, experiential learning, and above all a kind of caring and loving environment. Those experiences should tell us something.

Look forward to some future posts (or maybe someone will ask me for a real review) using my favorite sources: Michel Foucault, Paolo Freire, Pierre Bourdieu, Elizabeth Anderson, and John Dewey. But I put Jane Addams there at the top for a reason: it’s not just libertarians but one of the founders of progressive pragmatism who holds this view.

A review wouldn’t be complete without some criticisms: Caplan quotes Richard Arum and Jospia Roksa only once, and ignores their findings that the right kind of liberal arts education can increase critical thinking, problem solving, and analytic writing skills. He believes that this can only work for eager students, which are in short supply, and that most of the results of the Collegiate Learning Assessment can be confounded with IQ. His emphasis on IQ means that he also hasn’t properly evaluated the Foucaultian argument that schools produce large amounts of social conformity and conscientiousness, rather than merely measuring it. Finally, there is plenty of evidence that education plays an important signaling role for historically oppressed groups (women, African-Americans, and the formerly incarcerated). In fact, Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce just published this study, which is being reported widely with headlines like this: “Women need one more degree than men to earn the same average salary.”

Still, these objections don’t overcome the overall problems with education as it is currently practiced. Very often we see policy justification switches like the following: when the evidence from Quebec and Tennesse on early childhood education began to countermand the Abecedarian Project’s consensus view that universal pre-K could benefit poor children, advocates switched their arguments from the benefits to children to benefits to mothers’ employment. This kind of motte and bailey argument doesn’t have to be a total fallacy, since after all a policy can have many possible promising effects, some of which end up being disproven. But it’s more evidence against schooling as the accumulation of individual human capital.

(previously: What are the ruling ideas today? Is ‘College For All’; among them?; Academically Adrift’s Methodological Shipwreck; For Education, Against Credentialism)

Resources for Addressing Anti-Semitism and Hate

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Good morning, friends. Today’s post comes to us from Dr. Michael Berson of the University of South Florida. Dr. Berson has long worked in educating pre-service teachers, and is a long time advocate for Holocaust education in Florida and beyond.
We hope, in this time after such a horrible event, that you find the resources in this post useful.
This weekend there was a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As we reflect on the news of this horrific tragedy, we also are faced with questions about the roles and responsibilities of educators and educational leaders in addressing the growing tide of hatred and discrimination across our nation. I wanted to share the following resources on how to confront antisemitism. 
The word antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews.
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1986)https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-acceptance_en.html
Addressing Anti-Semitism through Education (2018 Report)
USHMM
Educators play a powerful role in society, and the USHMM program Oath and Opposition: Education under the Third Reich examines the question- What role did teachers play during the Holocaust? https://www.ushmm.org/educators/teaching-about-the-holocaust/oath/overview/education-under-the-third-reich There are a number of case studies that you could use with a class https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20160229-Oath-and-Opposition.pdf
Yad Vashem
ADL
USC Shoah Foundation
USC Shoah Foundation Antisemitism and the Bystander Effect (Secondary Lesson Plan) http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/Activity/Detail.aspx?activityID=2613&retainFilter=true
USC Shoah Foundation 100 Days of Respect http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/Sites/100days/
 

We Are All Catalysts: Part One – How We Can Amplify and Broaden Dialogue and Deliberation Work

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“After all, the ordinary hero hiding in each of us is often the most powerful catalyst for change.” ~ Tate Taylor

We all have a spark within and we choose every day how we will or will not use our spark. In our NCDD community, we spark conversations–dialogues that change hearts and minds and steadily change the world. Our sparks can be small or big, but we must work intentionally to ensure that the sparks catch fire. What do I mean by this? I mean that it is up to us, as those working firsthand in the creations of spaces for dialogue and deliberation, that we do not work in isolation. Like the catalysts in science, we must interact with others to create the chemistry worth having in our world.

The upcoming 2018 NCDD conference in Denver seeks to “catalyze the catalysts” by asking how we can work together to broaden the use and amplify the impacts of dialogue and deliberation efforts locally and globally. We live in an interconnected world, but it is very easy in our everyday lives to cling to the familiar and agreeable. This includes the media we consume, company we keep, and in our own work. It is up to us to share our work in ways that amplify the benefits and accessibility of both dialogue and deliberation. This means we need to intentionally step up our efforts and in doing so, step out of our comfort zones to facilitate the connections we need most–such as those across ideological divides poisoning our discourse. As Jonathan Haidt shares in his book The Righteous Mind, “When I was a teenager I wished for world peace, but now I yearn for a world in which competing ideologies are kept in balance.”

We see incredible work by D&D innovators every day that are answering this call to bring together our communities in innovative ways that heal and strengthen our relationships. Here are just a few examples (among many) from some of our conference presenters…

Libraries Transforming Communities is a joint effort by the American Libraries Association and NCDD. The initiative is founded on the strengths of the library as a trusted public community space and a place ideal for D&D work and is intended for use by libraries around the world to facilitate healing and idea generation via D&D.

The Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University has the mission of enhancing the local civic culture through increased participation and know-how of how deliberation works. Through elevating conversation via civics education, the center celebrates how crowds conversing (rather than arguing) can create better ideas for the whole community. They also recently won a Civvys Award for Local Winner!

The David Mathews Center for Civic Life based in Alabama believes in public forums and have locals define the issues and come together to solve them. The center provides education, services in moderation, and setting up community engagement events.

Make America Dinner Again empowers everyone to act locally with dinners of 8 and 2 moderators that discuss tough issues with an emphasis on respectful conversation and delicious food.

We hope these examples evoke excitement for the D&D community (and for the upcoming conference)! In true NCDD form, we want to engage this community of innovators in discussing how we build capacity for D&D in more communities and design action steps to make this happen moving forward. How have you succeeded in building capacity for engagement in the communities you serve? What do you think the next innovations might look like for dialogue, deliberation, and engagement? What do we need to discuss and think about together as a field, in order to succeed in broadening the use of D&D?

We hope readers will share below their own stories of successes, ideas for new innovations, and even the challenges that we need to tackle collectively in order to achieve this goal of bringing dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement to more communities. Share your thoughts below and engage with others’ responses. NCDD’s staff will be sharing your input at the conference to help us jumpstart further conversations and collaborations we hope will help us all take our work to the next level. You can still join us at #NCDD2018 – get your tickets today!

Stay tuned for the follow-up post, “We Are All Catalysts: Part 2”, where we will shift from examples to best practices to help everyone begin or continue to strengthen and amplify their dialogue and deliberation initiatives!

CRF/FJCC Civic Action Project for Middle Schools Webinar

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CAP MS

We at FJCC have worked hard to implement a version of CRF’s Civic Action Project into middle schools, and it has, happily, gone very well!

We are always looking to support the needs of civic teachers not only in Florida but elsewhere, so we are happy to share with you that we will be collaborating with the Constitutional Rights Foundation to host a webinar on October 30th about the Civic Action Project and what it might look in middle school!

Civic Action Project (CAP) provides free lessons and tools for your students to address an issue that matters to them.
 
Service learning meets project-based
learning meets civic engagement . . . that’s CAP! 
 
Join us for an introductory webinar on
October 30, 2018, 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT

You can register for the webinar here , and it will occur at 7 Eastern, 4 Pacific. We look forward to your participation!

Center on Democracy and Organizing Summer Institute 2019

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I’m posting the following announcement with my enthusiastic recommendation. The Principal Investigators of the Center for Democracy and Organizing are the extraordinarily talented and engaged scholars Lisa Garcia Bedolla, Hahrie Han, and Taeku Lee. More information here.

The Center on Democracy and Organizing (CDO) seeks applications from advanced Ph.D. students and early career researchers and organizers for participation in a summer training institute in 2019 focused on the study of democracy and organizing. The institute will be held from July 31 to August 2 at the University of California, Berkeley. This summer institute will bring together faculty and practitioners interested in developing the capacity to do engaged research in partnership. This dynamic and interactive institute will give participants—10 researchers and 10 practitioners—the chance to learn to work together on research projects that help practitioners advance their strategic goals.

The institute will focus on articulating the benefits of building research partnerships between  academics

and organizers, developing the capacities needed among both academics and organizers to work together, and creating the opportunity for researcher-organizer pairs to work directly on a project of interest. The institute seeks to reframe how graduate students and early career scholars understand their role as researchers, focus on the ways engaging with practitioners can deepen and improve their theorizing about the socio-political world, and also help practitioners and scholars develop a common language in order to engage as equal partners in the research process.

Researchers and practitioners with similar interests and goals will either be paired by CDO, or can apply as a pair.

This institute is funded thanks to grants from the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations. Travel (U.S. domestic economy-class round-trip airfare), food, and lodging will be covered for accepted applicants. In addition, participants will be eligible to apply for seed funding of up to $5,000 from CDO to carry out research projects conceived and developed through the institute.

NCDD Discount on Dismantling Racism Workshop on 11/5

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In case you missed it, NCDD member David Campt will be holding one of his workshops, Dismantling Racism: One Conversation at a Time, on November 5th in Denver! The session will be a great opportunity for those folks looking to strengthen capacity for having anti-racist conversations and to learn skills around empathy, active listening, and more. He is offering NCDD2018 conference attendees a special discount, so we encourage you to utilize this fantastic offer! Learn more about the workshop below and register for the event on Eventbrite here.

Racism Skeptics and Empathy; An Innovative Approach White Allies Can Use to Change Hearts and Minds

This event is presented jointly by Coming to the Table and University of Denver Conflict Resolution Institute

Do you struggle as a white person to respond in social or work situations when someone makes a racist comment or questions the reality of racism? Many white people are at sea in these situations. We need tangible tools and skills to participate in healthy, productive, and effective dialogue with racism skeptics. Scientific evidence shows that empathy-based dialogues can change adults’ minds.

Participate in this vital conversation! Learn how to use empathy, active listening and relating skills in conversations about racism in a comfortable workshop setting.

Dismantling Racism: One Conversation at a Time

A Workshop with David Campt, PhD
Author of “The White Ally Toolkit”

Monday, November 5, 2018
6:30 pm – 9:15 pm

Craig Hall, University of Denver, 2148 High Street, Denver, CO 80208

Register here!

Registration Fees:
$75 Regular Admission
$45 Senior / Low Income
Special $45 discount rate for National Coalition for Deliberation and Dialogue conference attendees:
Enter code NCDD at checkout!

This workshop was developed and is facilitated by David Campt, PhD., nationally known African-American author and lecturer. David works in the areas of community engagement, conflict resolution, inclusion, and equity. His clients have included large corporations, the White House, the US Military, and nonprofits. He is known as The Dialogue Guy. You can learn more about him and this work at www.whiteallytoolkit.com.

Parking:

Paid parking is available in the lot next to the Sie International Relations Complex. $2/hr. The entrance is off of Iliff Ave. Street parking is also available, though extra walk-time is advised.

What people are saying about Dismantling Racism, One Conversation at a Time

David is a nationally recognized expert in race relations and civic engagement. A dynamic and engaging speaker, facilitator and trainer, he teaches strategies for changing attitudes, behavior and group culture through dialogue.