National Civic Review 2020 Winter Edition is Now Available!

Hot off the digital press! NCDD member org, The National Civic League, just announced the release of the 2020 Winter Edition of the National Civic Review. This esteemed quarterly journal offers insights and examples on civic engagement and deliberative governance from around the country. Friendly reminder that NCDD members receive the digital copy of the National Civic Review for free! (Find the access code below.) We strongly encourage our members to check out this great resource and there is an open invite for NCDD members to contribute to the NCR. You can read about NCR in the post below and find it on NCL’s site here.


National Civic Review: Winter 2020 – Code: NCDD19

The Winter 2020 issue of the National Civic Review is dedicated to journalist and author Neal R. Peirce, an indefatigable advocate for democratic governance, regionalism, civic engagement, and positive community change. A frequent contributor to this journal during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Neal served on the Board of Directors of the National Civic League from 1986 to 1995. He passed away on December 27, 2019.

To access this edition, go to the table of contents where you will be prompted to enter your unique access code: NCDD19

One of the Nation’s Oldest and Most Respected Journals of Civic Affairs
Its cases studies, reports, interviews and essays help communities learn about the latest developments in collaborative problem-solving, civic engagement, local government innovation and democratic governance. Some of the country’s leading doers and thinkers have contributed articles to this invaluable resource for elected officials, public managers, nonprofit leaders, grassroots activists, and public administration scholars seeking to make America’s communities more inclusive, participatory, innovative and successful.

du Bois: “Organization is sacrifice.”

A group can accomplish more than an individual can—whether for good or evil—as long as it holds together. To form and maintain a functioning group is an achievement, requiring individuals to coordinate their behaviors and often to sacrifice for the whole. Only once you have a group can you ask the citizen’s question, which is: “What should we do?”

Because groups have potential and are vulnerable, it can be wise to support less-than-ideal groups in order to maintain them for another day. In Talking to Strangers, Danielle Allen emphasizes that democracy always involves sacrifice, and the amount and type of sacrifice is usually unequal. Therefore, crucial democratic practices include recognizing, acknowledging, and trying to reciprocate sacrifices. This is true at the scale of a nation-state but at least as true at smaller scales.

I recently found a three-word sentence by W.E.B Du Bois that sums it up: “Organization is sacrifice.”

The context is an article in the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, that you can read in its original format online. Du Bois is responding to charges that the NAACP is too strongly influenced by Whites. He mentions the 8-to-1 predominance of Blacks in the NAACP’s membership as a whole and in its leading offices. He defends the value of “a few forward looking white Americans” to the organization. And then he suggests that the “real animus back of this veiled and half articulate criticism is the fact that a large organization must make enemies—must create dissatisfaction in many quarters , no matter what it does”

This is where he posits a general principle: “Organization is sacrifice.” And he elaborates:

You cannot have absolutely your own way–you cannot be a free lance; you cannot be strongly and fiercely individual if you belong to an organization. For this reason some folk hunt and work alone. It is their nature. But the world’s greatest work must be done by team work. This demands organization, and that is the sacrifice of some individual will and wish to the good of all.


W.E.B. DuBois, “White Co-Workers,” The Crisis, vol. 20, no 1 (May 1920), p. 8

For someone as fiercely principled and intellectually independent as Du Bois was, this realization must have come hard; but he was right. To be able to ask the question, “What should we do?” implies that all have given—and some may have given much more than others—to create the “we” that acts together. There comes a point when the sacrifice is too high (Du Bois ultimately resigned from the NAACP over a fairly subtle matter of principle), but some sacrifice is necessary to create the conditions for politics in the first place.

See also the question of sacrifice in politics; the kind of sacrifice required in nonviolence; and “Another Time for Freedom? Lessons from the Civil Rights Era for Today’s Campuses.”

Muhammad Ali as a Commoner?

Was Muhammad Ali a commoner?  He may not have used that term, but in a spontaneous moment at Harvard University in 1975, Ali certainly revealed his personal inclinations. 

Thirty-three-years old at the time, Ali was widely admired for mixing his flamboyant style with deeper truths, all of it leavened with witty wordplay and a generosity of spirit. He preened as “The Greatest,” but showed great humility as a humanitarian and civil rights activist.

Glenn Ligon, "Give Us a Poem," 2007.

After delivering a commencement address to 2,000 Harvard students, someone shouted out, “Give us a poem!” A hush descended and Ali thought for a moment. 

Out tumbled what has been called the shortest poem in the English language – “Me. We.”

That arguably encapsulates Ali’s philosophy of life – his struggle to align two poles of one’s life, individual and collective experience. Ali celebrated the joy of being totally himself, but he invariably saluted the larger reality of “the We” that enframes anyone's life.

One can make too much of an impulsive utterance, but Ali's poem does point to a complicated existential reality that American culture tends to ignore.

Ali’s poem came to my attention last weekend when I visited the Smith College Art Museum. In the lobby, a 2007 installation piece by the artist Glenn Ligon, “Give Us a Poem,” greets everyone.  Made of PVC and neon, the word “Me” lights up and goes dark just as the word “We” lights up. The piece was originally created for The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Dynamic Line-Up of D&D Webinars – Happening TODAY!

Today has an exciting line-up of D&D webinars that we strongly encourage folks to sign up for ASAP! FOUR great webinars starting with NCDD sponsor org The Courageous Leadership Project and their “Brave, Honest Conversations” webinar at 9 am Pacific, 12 pm Eastern. There are two webinars after that at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, one from NCDD member org National Civic League webinar on “Collaborations to Address Mental Health” and the other from NCDD member org MetroQuest, “How SCDOT Engaged 13,000+ Residents on a Tiny Budget”. Last though certainly not least, Zehr Institute‘s “Beyond Circles and Conferences: Everyday Restorative Justice Practices in PK-12” at 1:30 pm Pacific, 4:30 pm Eastern.

Additional upcoming D&D online events from NCDD member orgs National Issues Forums Institute and Living Room Conversations, as well as, from the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), and Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.

NCDD’s online D&D event roundup is a weekly compilation of the upcoming events happening in the digital world related to dialogue, deliberation, civic tech, engagement work, and more! Do you have a webinar or other digital event coming up that you’d like to share with the NCDD network? Please let us know in the comments section below or by emailing me at keiva[at]ncdd[dot]org, because we’d love to add it to the list!


– Upcoming Online D&D Events –

From Our Sponsors & Partners

The Courageous Leadership Project webinar – Brave, Honest Conversations™

Wednesday, January 22nd
9 am Pacific, 12 pm Eastern

Some conversations are hard to have. Fear and discomfort build in your body and you avoid and procrastinate or pretend everything is fine. Sometimes you rush in with urgency, wanting to smooth things over, fix them, and make them better. Sometimes you go to battle stations, positioning the conversation so you have a higher chance of being on the “winning” side. NONE OF THIS WORKS. Instead, it usually makes a hard conversation harder; more divided, polarized, and disconnected from others. The more people involved, the harder the conversation can be. I believe that brave, honest conversations are how we solve the problems we face in our world – together.

In this webinar, we will cover: What is a Brave, Honest Conversation™? Why have one? What can change because of a brave, honest conversation? How do you have one? What do you need to think about and do? How do you prepare yourself for a brave, honest conversation?

REGISTER: www.bravelylead.com/shop/freewebinarbhc

National Civic League AAC Promising Practices Webinar – Collaborations to Address Mental Health

Wednesday, January 22nd
11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This webinar will highlight two community programs that are addressing mental health issues through collaborations and unique partnerships. Registrants will hear about Somerville, MA’s Teen Empowerment Youth Mental Wellness Ambassador program and the Behavioral Health Consortium in El Paso, Texas.

REGISTER: www.nationalcivicleague.org/resource-center/promising-practices/

From Our Members

MetroQuest – click here

  • How SCDOT Engaged 13,000+ Residents on a Tiny Budget – Wednesday, January 22nd at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern

Living Room Conversations – click here

  • 2020 Election: Concerns and Aspirations – Thursday, January 23rd  at 4 pm Pacific, 7 pm Eastern
  • Empathy – Tuesday, February 4th  at 1:30 pm Pacific, 4:30 pm Eastern
  • Fellowships and Friendships, the Rotary 4-Way-Test – Wednesday, February 12th  at 4 pm Pacific, 7 pm Eastern
  • Gender – Monday, February 17th  at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern
  • Fake News – Thursday, February 27th  at 3 pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern

National Issues Forums Institute – click here

  • Hidden Common Ground Initiative: Health Care – How Can We Bring Costs Down While Getting the Care We Need?
    • Thursday, February 6th at 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern
    • Saturday, February 8th at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern
    • Saturday, February 15th at 4 pm Pacific, 7 pm Eastern
    • Friday, March 13th at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern

From the Network

Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice – click here

  • Beyond Circles and Conferences: Everyday Restorative Justice Practices in PK-12 – Wednesday, January 22nd at 1:30 pm Pacific, 4:30 pm Eastern

International Association for Facilitators – click here

  • Digital Tools to Spice Up Your Facilitation Session – Tuesday, January 28th at 8:30 am Pacific, 11:30 am Eastern

International Association for Public Participationclick here

  • IAP2 Taster Series: Embracing Emotion: Using The Socratic Circle© To Change The Conversation – Thursday, January 30th, time unlisted

Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) – click here

  • Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Exploring New Frontiers in West Africa – Friday, January 31st at 6 am Pacific, 9 am Eastern

some thoughts on natural law

Those RULES of old discover’d, not devis’d,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodis’d;
Nature, like liberty, is but restrain’d
By the same laws which first herself ordain’d.

– Pope, An Essay on Criticism (writing here of aesthetic laws)

… the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God  …

The Declaration of Independence

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

As I begin to teach a course on Martin Luther King–and while thinking about how to teach civics at all levels–I am giving renewed consideration to the idea of natural law. This is a matter for debate (and should be presented as such), but here are some personal thoughts:

A substantial part of any concept of natural law is a set of rights. Rights impose obligations. If I have a right to life, you have an obligation not to kill me. If I have a right to an education, someone has an obligation to pay for my schooling. These obligations fall on both individuals and institutions. For instance, my right to life implies not only that you may not kill me but that some kind of state must protect me.

To honor and protect others’ rights is obligatory. It is a moral and not merely a legal duty.

Governments do not create rights and obligations, because we can and must assess any given government by asking whether it protects the rights that people deserve.

Other animals have rights because people have obligations to treat them ethically. But non-human animals do not have rights in relation to each other. In that sense, rights are human, although they extend to humans’ treatment of other species.

Rights are linked to the organism’s characteristics as a natural species. For instance, we human beings are born helpless, remain interdependent, yet develop unique goals and desires that are rooted in our private mental lives. Our rights would be different if we had no need for each other, or no private lives at all–or if we differed in other fundamental ways from actual homo sapiens.

Rights are connected to happiness, which means–not the balance of pleasure over pain–but some deeper form of flourishing or self-realization. Flourishing for human beings is natural in the same way that a mouse or an apple tree has certain natural ways of flourishing.

At the same time, one of the unusual and fundamental features of human beings is our ability to flourish in many different ways, and so we have a right to choose our own paths or be the authors of our own lives. This right to choose is based on our ability and desire to choose, which is a natural characteristic.

I have suggested that fundamental interests, needs, and goods are rooted in nature. However, it is not a natural principle that anyone has an obligation to protect or provide for the needs of anyone else. An individual rabbit has a profound interest in not being eaten, yet a fox does not have an obligation to refrain from eating rabbits. Nature is red in tooth and claw.

We are obligated to honor everyone else’s rights, which are based in their natural interests, but this obligation is not natural. It comes from somewhere else. If you think it comes from God, that is fine, but the obligation is then divine and supra-natural, not (merely) natural.

Perhaps we have an instinct to universal beneficence that emerges from our everyday sympathy for other people and animals. That instinct could be seen as the natural (not divine) basis for our commitment to universal rights. Mengzi puts it very well:

Humans all have hearts that are not unfeeling toward others. Suppose someone suddenly saw a child about to fall into a well: everyone in such a situation would have a feeling of alarm and compassion—not because one sought to get in good with the child’s parents, not because one wanted fame among their neighbors and friends, and not because one would dislike the sounds of the child’s cries. [F]?rom this we can see that if one is without the heart of compassion, one is not a human. If one is without the heart of deference, one is not a human. The heart of compassion is the sprout of benevolence. The heart of disdain (shame/disgust) is the sprout of righteousness. The heart of deference is the sprout of propriety. The heart of approval and disapproval is the sprout of wisdom.” (2A6; see also 6A6)

Quoted in Owen Flanagan, The Geography of Morals (p. 57). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

However, we have many instincts, including warlike, competitive, and cruel ones. Universal beneficence seems a subtle and rare sprout in the wild garden of our instincts. To select and cultivate that particular sprout may be wise and right, but it is a choice that’s not itself directed by nature.

Nature can be understood as everything that science can explain (and science is any valid explanation of nature). So defined, “nature” offers no basis for obligations. A purely empirical study of nature would suggest that members of any species, including homo sapiens, are unequal in capacity, frequently selfish, and fully determined by physical processes rather than choice. We can broaden our understanding of nature to encompass things like obligations, purposes, and goods–for instance, happiness as the purpose of human beings, and non-domination is a good required for happiness. But then nature is not exhausted by positivist science.

Partly because positivist science does not comprehend things like rights, it is very hard for people to know the ideal list of rights and their correlative obligations. All of our ancestors were wrong about some rights–according to us–which means that we ought to be humble about our own ability to know the ideal list.

The best we can do is to decide, in reasonably fair and reflective forums, which rights and obligations ought to apply to whom. That means that although governments do not create rights, people must identify and determine rights through politics and in institutions such as governments. We should expect their outcomes to vary over time and space, not because rights are mere matters of opinion, but because the only way we can know real rights is to exchange and test our opinions.

In conclusion, I feel comfortable speaking of law that is importantly connected to nature, and especially to the nature of human beings. Understanding it requires reflection on our natural circumstances. But I wouldn’t call it “natural law” if that implies that it is part of, or determined by, nature, because it has sources other than nature itself.

See also: is science republican (with a little r)?; science, law, and microagressions; my self, your self, ourselves; the moral significance of instinct, with special reference to having a dog; is everyone religious?; is all truth scientific truth?; latest thoughts on animal rights and welfare; and Korsgaard on animals and ethics.

Ohlone Park, the Urban Space Created by Commoning

It’s worth remembering how acts of commoning can have lasting consequences, including legacies that we may not even remember. Bernard Marszalek, who has lived in Berkeley, California, since the 1980s, brought to my attention the near-forgotten history of Ohlone Park in his city. The park is a fairly large patch of greenery that a forgotten corps of enterprising commoners in effect gifted to later generations.

Photo by Søren Fuglede Jørgensen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikipedia

The time was 1969, and the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) authority had demolished 200 Berkeley homes in order to dig a trench for an underground portion of their rail system. As Marzalek tells it, “BART then filled in tons of dirt on top of the tube it built and in this way ‘reclaimed’ the land that it bulldozed. It strip-mined Berkeley to submerge the trains and above left four blocks along Hearst Avenue a barren, ugly field of dust in summer and mud in winter. An eyesore. BART officials said that they didn’t have funds (or mental bandwidth?) to develop it, that is, monetize it.”

A year later, writes Marzalek in his history of Ohlone Park, another unsightly mud pit emerged when the University of California razed a square block of homes with plans for building student housing. But it ran out of money, leaving another eyesore. “The south campus community believed that the university wanted to remove a dissident community of artists, lefties, and hippies that had lodged in the affordable housing on that site,” he wrote.

What happened next to this empty square block is quite remarkable, as Marszalek notes:

“….a rag-tag bunch of malcontents occupied the mud lot and began planting trees and shrubs and named their new area People’s Park. University officials had no opportunity to negotiate, as the Republican mayor of Berkeley, Ed Meese, the District Attorney of Alameda County, and the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan went ballistic. How outrageous to imagine a forsaken lot transformed into a site of communality and pride by a bunch of dope fiends and commies!

Governor Reagan, just elected to office, saw the garden as a direct affront to his Law and Order campaign promise. The mayor of Berkeley needed no excuse to unleash his racist police force. On May 15, 1969, DA Meese likewise sent in Sheriff deputies to viciously attack the park defenders.

A police riot ensued. Deputies with buckshot-loaded rifles shot indiscriminately into the crowds. In the battle that lasted into the night, one bystander on a roof nearby was killed, another blinded and over 100 wounded.

Several days later, after martial law was declared and several thousand National Guardsmen entered the city, another bit of assaulted landscape, not two miles from People’s Park, beckoned the imaginations of the outraged residents. It was hardly surprising that they tried to build their vision of communalism on this abandoned land. It was in the air, once the tear gas cleared.

The Hearst Strip was occupied and provocatively proclaimed People’s Park Annex, though the annex was a larger piece of real estate than the University’s mud lot. Shovels, pick-axes and rakes appeared. Wheelbarrows and makeshift carts transformed the barrenness. Rubble became little walls encircling plantings. Saplings took positions and promised a forest.

But more than gardening took place. What was an ugly sliver of dirt became a commons for partying, music and potlucks. But not without overcoming, several times, the devastation caused by assaults of the guardians of law and order.

On one occasion late at night, young tree trunks were snapped and broken and plants trampled by the armed Midnight Raiders (the police). And at another time, in broad daylight, the cops trundled armfuls of plants into paddy wagons. They arrested the bushes and flowers!

After each attack the people came back and replanted. The neighbors near the park and their allies were galvanized for the long haul. And they partied some more. The park over time became a place to drop off stuff for reuse. Car seats became garden furniture. Steel tubing was transformed into playground swings, a large jungle gym and other imaginative, playful structures.

A stone and mortar water fountain was installed after a permit was obtained from the water utility and when a period of drought ensued and the utility cut off the water, a well was dug to irrigate the plants and trees.

After ten years of various haggles over use of the land, a supportive state legislator was elected, and using a cleverly worded proposal written by park neighbors, managed to pass a law that forced the sale of BART land to the city.

In honor of the First People, the park was officially recognized in 1979 as Ohlone Park, the first and only park created by citizen initiative in Berkeley. The park stands today as a successful land occupation. A rarity anywhere.

The park today is mostly grass but also includes pedestrian and bicycle paths, a basketball court, and a baseball field. There is also a dog park, the first off-leash dog park in the US.

It is worth noting that the Berkeley commoners’ achievement, while unusual, is not unique. In the 1980s, New York City residents created dozens of community gardens on vacant lots throughout the city.  As the gardens began to make neighborhoods more attractive, raising property values in adjacent areas, then-Mayor Giuliani decided that the City should sell the formerly neglected lots to real estate developers. The commons must be enclosed!

In effect, the residents who had brought life, greenery, and social care to the neighborhood were now dismissed as mere squatters. The value they had generated would be captured by private real estate developers, with the City's active complicity. While many of the gardens were ultimately preserved -- thanks to community outrage, the Trust for Public Lands, and donations from folks like Bette Midler -- many were sold off, despite the city's budget surplus at the time.

Musing on the history of Ohlone Park in the 1960s and 1970s, Marszalek writes that “an argument could be made that the notion of the commons eclipses the communes of the counterculture. If the hippies and fellow travelers had explicitly recognized that their various collectives had an historic commonality, maybe a stronger political force of solidarity would have taken shape. A force, that is, to sustain a concerted fight to keep rents low and funding high for countercultural subversions.”

As always, history holds a lot of inspiration and guidance for contemporary struggles.

Apply for the Summer Institute of Civic Studies

The Summer Institute of Civic Studies is an intensive interdisciplinary seminar that brings together faculty, advanced graduate students, and practitioners from many countries and diverse fields of study. In 2020 it will take place from the evening of June 18 until June 26 at Tufts University in Medford, MA, and Boston.

To apply: Applications are now being received and should be submitted by March 31 for best consideration. The application consists of a resume, a cover letter about your interests, and an electronic copy of your graduate transcript (if applicable).

The Summer Institute was founded and co-taught from 2009 to 2018 by Peter Levine, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Tisch College, and Karol Soltan, Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. Since 2019, it has been led by Peter Levine. Each year, it features guest seminars by distinguished scholars and practitioners from various institutions and engages participants in challenging discussions such as:

  • How can people work together to improve the world? 
  • How can people reason together about what is right to do? 
  • What practices and institutional structures promote these kinds of citizenship? 
  • How should empirical evidence, ethics, and strategy relate? 

The 2019 syllabus can be found here. You can read more about the motivation for the Institute in the Civic Studies Framing Statement by Harry Boyte, University of Minnesota; Stephen Elkin, University of Maryland; Peter Levine, Tufts; Jane Mansbridge, Harvard; Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University; Karol Soltan, University of Maryland; and Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania.

The seminar discussions follow a public conference, Frontiers of Democracy, which will take place in downtown Boston from June 18 (evening) until June 20. Participants in the Summer Institute are expected to participate in the conference (free of charge) and then the Institute. 

Practicalities: Daily sessions take place on the Tufts campus in Medford, Massachusetts. Tuition for the Institute is free, but participants are responsible for their own housing and transportation. One option is renting a Tufts University dormitory room. Credit is not automatically offered, but special arrangements for graduate credit may be possible.

You can sign up here to receive occasional emails about the Summer Institute.

The Equal Rights Amendment: Is It Really Real?

a64df46b-4085-4ba9-b5db-b2f1b5e41dab-AP_ERA_Amendment-Virginia

Some civically interesting and exciting news out of Virginia yesterday. Virginia’s legislature voted to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, becoming the 38th state to do so and thus giving the amendment the number of states it needs to be added to the Constitution!

So what does this amendment say? Well, let’s take a look:

The Equal Rights Amendment

ERA+yes
Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Essentially, this amendment would ban through constitutional prerogative, discrimination against anyone based on sex. While this is certainly covered through various civil rights acts, supporters argue that this would enshrine in the Constitution the importance of equality between the sexes , as a law is a great deal easier to repeal than an amendment to the Constitution.

Arguments against the Equal Rights Amendment

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As with everything, there has historically been significant opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. Activist Phyllis Schlafly led much of the opposition to the amendment, and the argument is simple: sex-neutral treatment in law could potentially harm women. Schlafly argued that:

“What that amendment would do is to make all laws sex-neutral. Well, the typical, classic law that is not sex-neutral is the draft registration law. And we were still in the Vietnam War in 1972.

“I had sons and daughters about age 18. My daughters thought this was the craziest thing they ever heard. You’re going to have a new amendment for women? And the first thing is they’ll have to sign up for the draft like their brothers. Now, that was an unsalable proposition.”

Thanks to the efforts of activists and opponents like Schlafly, the amendment fell short of approval, gaining only 35 of the 38 it needed to by 1982, that year already a Congressionally approved extension of the limited time for ratification the amendment had already exceeded.

So What’s Next? 

What’s next? Good question. It’s unclear at this point whether or not Virginia ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment actually means it is ratified and in our Constitution, simply because of that expiration date. We can likely expect court challenges from both sides on this issue, without a doubt.An interesting paper from the Congressional Research Service is worth a read!  It explores questions around ratification in great detail.

This topic is certainly something that would be good fodder for discussion in the classroom, tying into civics, government, history, and current events!

Useful and Cool Resources for Exploring the ERA

DocsTeach: The Equal Rights Amendment

Arguments for and Against the ERA  

FJCC Lesson Plan on Amending the Constitution (compares 19th Amendment to ERA)

The National Women’s History Museum Lesson Plan on ERA

Video Overview

empathy boosts polarization

In a new article,* Elizabeth Simas, Scott Clifford, and Justin Kirkland provide evidence that empathy is not a solution to partisan polarization in the US. Quite the contrary: people who demonstrate more “empathic concern” are more likely to blame the opposite party for the suffering that they see in the world, hence more likely to decry the other party, to favor censoring it, and to exhibit Schadenfreude (pleasure at others’ pain) when members of the opposing party lose out.

Part of the article involves an experiment with undergraduate subjects. Students are shown a story in which “campus police had to shut down a group of partisan students who were protesting a speech to be given by an individual known for making inflammatory comments about that party. In both versions, a bystander who was attempting to hear the speech was struck by a protestor. And in both versions, the protestors succeeded in getting the speech canceled.” Students were assigned to see versions of the story that randomly varied the partisan identities of the speaker, the protesters, and the bystander.

Students who scored higher on a general measure of empathetic concern were more likely to favor censoring the inflammatory speaker, and more likely to be glad that the bystander was hurt. These results were the same for Democratic and Republican students.

It rings true for me that deep emotional concern is associated with anger and a distancing of intellectual and political opponents, a refusal to hear their arguments.

I’ve posted concerns about empathy several times before.** The main problem is its susceptibility to bias. Usually, empathy is felt for individuals (or concrete categories of people), and it can easily promote injustice against others. There is such a thing as universal, undifferentiated empathy, but it looks more like an ethical principle than a concrete emotion. The Buddhist objective is not empathy (as measured by questions from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, such as: “When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective toward them”). Instead, Buddhism prizes equanimity, which is calm and detached.

I do not take for granted that political polarization is bad. Sometimes it is right to blame political opponents for others’ suffering. And although Schadenfreude should always be avoided, it can be welcome news when a political enemy suffers defeat. These emotions of blame and satisfaction are appropriate if and when the opponent is actually at fault. To find out whether someone is actually wrong requires engagement with that person’s arguments and reasons. Censorship defeats such engagement and is almost always a mistake. It’s troubling that more empathy means more support for censorship, especially if that exemplifies a deeper problem with empathy. Perhaps empathy discourages us from hearing alternative views by fixing our attention on concrete suffering.

*Simas, Elizabeth N., Scott Clifford, and Justin H. Kirkland. “How Empathic Concern Fuels Political Polarization.” American Political Science Review 114.1 (2020): 258-269.

** Civility, humility, tolerance, empathy, or what?; Empathy and Justice; how to think about other people’s interests: Rawls, Buddhism, and empathy; “Empathy” is a new word. Do we need it?; empathy, sympathy, compassion, justice; empathy: good or bad?; empathy versus systematic thought

D&D Webinar Roundup Ft NCDD Sponsor, NCL, MetroQuest, and More!

Happy New Year to you all! Below is the first D&D webinar roundup of 2020 and we encourage you all to put these exciting opportunities on your calendars! NCDD sponsor org The Courageous Leadership Project will be holding their “Brave, Honest Conversations” webinar next Wednesday. On the same day, our friends at the National Civic League will be holding their webinar, “Collaborations to Address Mental Health” and NCDD member org MetroQuest’s webinar, “How SCDOT Engaged 13,000+ Residents on a Tiny Budget”.

Additional upcoming D&D online events from NCDD member orgs National Issues Forums Institute and Living Room Conversations, as well as, from the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice.

NCDD’s online D&D event roundup is a weekly compilation of the upcoming events happening in the digital world related to dialogue, deliberation, civic tech, engagement work, and more! Do you have a webinar or other digital event coming up that you’d like to share with the NCDD network? Please let us know in the comments section below or by emailing me at keiva[at]ncdd[dot]org, because we’d love to add it to the list!


– Upcoming Online D&D Events –

From Our Sponsors & Partners

The Courageous Leadership Project webinar – Brave, Honest Conversations™

Wednesday, January 22nd
9 am Pacific, 12 pm Eastern

Some conversations are hard to have. Fear and discomfort build in your body and you avoid and procrastinate or pretend everything is fine. Sometimes you rush in with urgency, wanting to smooth things over, fix them, and make them better. Sometimes you go to battle stations, positioning the conversation so you have a higher chance of being on the “winning” side. NONE OF THIS WORKS. Instead, it usually makes a hard conversation harder; more divided, polarized, and disconnected from others. The more people involved, the harder the conversation can be. I believe that brave, honest conversations are how we solve the problems we face in our world – together.

In this webinar, we will cover: What is a Brave, Honest Conversation™? Why have one? What can change because of a brave, honest conversation? How do you have one? What do you need to think about and do? How do you prepare yourself for a brave, honest conversation?

REGISTER: www.bravelylead.com/shop/freewebinarbhc

National Civic League AAC Promising Practices Webinar – Collaborations to Address Mental Health

Wednesday, January 22nd
10 am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This webinar will highlight two community programs that are addressing mental health issues through collaborations and unique partnerships. Registrants will hear about Somerville, MA’s Teen Empowerment Youth Mental Wellness Ambassador program and the Behavioral Health Consortium in El Paso, Texas.

REGISTER: www.nationalcivicleague.org/resource-center/promising-practices/

From Our Members

MetroQuest – click here

  • How SCDOT Engaged 13,000+ Residents on a Tiny Budget – Wednesday, January 22nd at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern

Living Room Conversations – click here

  • Lunch Hour Conversation: The America We Want to Be – Thursday, January 16th
  • Freedom – Monday, January 20th
  • 2020 Election: Concerns and Aspirations – Thursday, January 23rd
  • Gender – Monday, February 17th

National Issues Forums Institute – click here

  • Hidden Common Ground Initiative: Health Care – How Can We Bring Costs Down While Getting the Care We Need?
    • Thursday, February 6th at 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern
    • Saturday, February 8th at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern
    • Saturday, February 15th at 4 pm Pacific, 7 pm Eastern

From the Network

Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice – click here

  • Beyond Circles and Conferences: Everyday Restorative Justice Practices in PK-12 – Wednesday, January 22nd at 1:30 pm Pacific, 4:30 pm Eastern