Author Archives: Roshan Bliss

NCDD2016 Early Bird Registration Extended to Monday!

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IMG_8080This post is just a friendly reminder for all of our members that we’ve decided to extend the Early Bird registration deadline for NCDD2016 until THIS Monday, July 18th!

This is the last time that you’ll be able to take advantage of the lower registration rate of $375 and lock in your spot with 400+ leaders, innovators, and practitioners in dialogue and deliberation as we work, vision, and learn together about Bridging Our Divides this October 14th-16th in the Boston metro area. After Monday, it will be the regular registration rate of $450, and the late registration rate will kick in on October 1st.

Don’t miss your chance to save $75 on registering for one of the premier learning and networking events for our field! You can learn much more about this year’s national conference at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016, and register today at www.ncdd2016.eventbrite.com to take advantage of the Early Bird rate.

Want to get a better sense of what our conferences are like? Check out the Storify page the features great pictures and comments about our 2014 conference by clicking here.

Bridging Police-Community Divides through Truth & Reconciliation Processes?

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As the country continues to reel from a week of high profile killings of both people of color and police officers, many feel a sense of despair about what can be done to change the patterns of violence that plague our country. There are no easy answers. But we are grateful to NCDD member Harold Fields for sharing the powerful Yes! Magazine piece below by restorative justice practitioner Fania Davis. Harold and Fania are helping launch truth and reconciliation processes across the country that seek to address the patterns that have created such a deep divide between police and African American communities, and the piece shares examples of similar processes that are already bridging our divides. We encourage you to read Fania’s piece below or find the original here.

This Country Needs a Truth and Reconciliation Process on Violence Against African Americans – Right Now

I am among the millions who have experienced the shock, grief, and fury of losing someone to racial violence.

When I was 15, two close friends were killed in the Birmingham Sunday School bombing carried out by white supremacists trying to terrorize the rising civil rights movement. Only six years later, my husband was shot and nearly killed by police who broke into our home, all because of our activism at the time, especially in support of the Black Panthers.

As a civil rights trial lawyer, I’ve spent much of my professional life protecting people from racial discrimination. In my early twenties, I devoted myself to organizing an international movement to defend my sister, Angela Davis, from politically motivated capital murder charges aimed at silencing her calls for racial and social justice. Early childhood experiences in the South set me on a quest for social transformation, and I’ve been a community organizer ever since, from the civil rights to the black power, women’s, anti-racial violence, peace, anti-apartheid, anti-imperialist, economic justice, political prisoner movements, and others.

After more than three decades of all the fighting, I started to feel out of balance and intuitively knew I needed more healing energies in my life. I ended up enrolling in a Ph.D. program in Indigenous Studies that allowed me to study with African healers.

Today, my focus is on restorative justice, which I believe offers a way for us to collectively face this epidemic, expose its deep historical roots, and stop it.

The killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York have sparked a national outcry to end the epidemic killings of black men. Many note that even if indictments had been handed down, that wouldn’t have been enough to stop the carnage. The problem goes far beyond the actions of any police officer or department. The problem is hundreds of years old, and it is one we must take on as a nation. Truth and reconciliation processes offer the greatest hope.

Truth and reconciliation in Ferguson and beyond

A Ferguson Truth and Reconciliation process based on restorative justice (RJ) principles could not only stop the epidemic but also allow us as a nation to take a first “step on the road to reconciliation,” to borrow a phrase from the South African experience.

A restorative justice model means that youth, families, and communities directly affected by the killings—along with allies – would partner with the federal government to establish a commission. Imagine a commission that serves as a facilitator, community organizer, or Council of Elders to catalyze, guide, and support participatory, inclusive, and community-based processes.

We know from experience that a quasi-legal body of high-level experts who hold hearings, examine the evidence, and prepare findings and recommendations telling us as a nation what we need to do won’t work. We’ve had plenty of those.

To move toward a reconciled America, we have to do the work ourselves. Reconciliation is an ongoing and collective process. We must roll up our sleeves and do the messy, challenging, but hopeful work of creating transformed relationships and structures leading us into new futures. Someone like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed up South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, might come to Ferguson to inspire and guide us as we take the first steps on this journey.

And the impact wouldn’t be for Ferguson alone. Unfolding in hubs across the nation, a Truth and Reconciliation process could create safe public spaces for youth, families, neighbors, witnesses, and other survivors to share their stories.  Though this will happen in hubs, the truths learned and the knowledge gained would be broadly shared. Importantly, the process would also create skillfully facilitated dialogue where responsible parties engage in public truth-telling and take responsibility for wrongdoing.

Getting to the roots

Today, teenagers of color are coming of age in a culture that criminalizes and demonizes them, and all too often takes their lives.

I work with youth in Oakland, where it’s gut-wrenching to see the trauma and devastation up close. Black youth in the U.S. are fatally shot by police at 21 times the rate of white youth. Children of color are pushed through pipelines to prison instead of being put on pathways to opportunity. Some make it through this soul-crushing gauntlet against all odds. But too many do not.

Defining how long- and far-reaching a process like this would be is difficult because, sadly, the killing of Mike Brown is only one instance in a long and cyclical history of countless unhealed racial traumas that reaches all the way back to the birth of this nation. Changing form but not essence over four centuries, this history has morphed from slavery to the Black Codes, peonage and lynching, from Jim Crow to convict leasing, to mass incarceration and deadly police practices.

Bearing in mind its expansive historical context, the Truth and Reconciliation process would set us on a collective search for shared truths about the nature, extent, causes, and consequences of extrajudicial killings of black youth, say, for the last two decades. Through the process, those truths will be told, understood, and made known far and wide. Its task would also include facing and beginning to heal the massive historical harms that threaten us all as a nation but take the lives of black and brown children especially. We would utilize the latest insights and methodologies from the field of trauma healing.

This is urgent. Continued failure to deal with our country’s race-based historical traumas dooms us to perpetually re-enact them.

Though national in scope, the inquiry would zero in on the city of Ferguson and several other key cities across the country that have been the site of extrajudicial killings during the last decade. Specifics like this are best left to a collaborative, inclusive, and community-based planning process.

The process will create public spaces where we face together the epidemic of killings and its root causes, identify the needs and responsibilities of those affected, and also figure out what to do as a nation to heal harms and restore relationships and institutions to forge a new future.

Truth and reconciliation works

There are precedents for this approach: Some 40 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have been launched worldwide to transform historical and mass social harms such as those we are facing. Their experiences could help light a way forward.

The best-known example is the 1994 South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was charged with exposing and remedying apartheid’s human rights abuses. Under the guidance of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission elevated apartheid victims’ voices, allowing the nation to hear their stories. Perpetrators had a means to engage in public truth-telling about and take responsibility for the atrocities they committed. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission facilitated encounters between harmed and responsible parties, decided amnesty petitions, and ordered reparations, and it recommended official apologies, memorials, and institutional reform to prevent recurrence.

With near-constant live coverage by national television networks, the attention of the nation was riveted on the process. Although South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was far from perfect, it is internationally hailed for exposing apartheid’s atrocities and evoking a spirit of reconciliation that helped the country transcend decades of racial hatred and violence.

There are North American examples as well, including the 2004 Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission in North Carolina, the first in the United States. This effort focused on the “Greensboro massacre” of anti-racist activists by the Ku Klux Klan in 1979.

In 2012, Maine’s governor and indigenous tribal chiefs established a truth commission to address the harms resulting from the forced assimilation of Native children by Maine’s child welfare system. It is still in operation.

And Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, also still functioning, addresses legacies of Indian residential schools that forcibly removed Aboriginal children from their homes, punished them for honoring their language and traditions, and subjected them to physical and sexual abuse.

Get to the truth, get to healing

Like South Africa’s and others, the Ferguson Truth and Reconciliation process would draw on the principles of restorative justice. Rooted in indigenous teachings, for some 40 years the international RJ movement has been creating safe spaces for encounters between persons harmed and persons responsible for harm, including their families and communities. These encounters encourage participants to get to truth, address needs, responsibilities, and root causes, make amends, and forge different futures through restored relationships based upon mutual respect and recognition.

Restorative justice is founded on a worldview that affirms our participation in a vast web of interrelatedness. It sees crimes as acts that rupture the web, damaging the relationship not only between the individuals directly involved but also vibrating out to injure relationships with families and communities. The purpose of RJ is to repair the harm caused to the whole of the web, restoring relationships to move into a brighter future.

Applied to schools, communities, the justice system, and to redress mass social harm and create new futures, restorative justice is increasingly being recognized internationally. In Oakland, California, where I co-founded and direct Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY), school-based programs are eliminating violence, reducing racial disparity in discipline, slashing suspension rates, dramatically boosting academic outcomes, and creating pathways to opportunity instead of pipelines to incarceration. These outcomes are documented in a 2010 study by UC Berkeley Law School and a soon-to-be-released report by the school district. Oakland’s RJ youth diversion pilot is interrupting racialized mass incarceration strategies and reducing recidivism rates to 15 percent. (Based on discussions with folks who run the program – no studies as yet.)

Police and probation officers are being trained in RJ principles and practices. Youth and police are sitting together in healing circles, and creating new relationships based on increased trust and a mutual recognition of one another’s humanity.

It’s impossible to predict whether similar outcomes would emerge from a Truth and Reconciliation process in Ferguson – and the United States. But it’s our best chance. And, if history is any guide, it could result in restitution to those harmed, memorials to the fallen, including films, statues, museums, street renamings, public art, or theatrical re-enactments. It might also engender calls to use restorative and other practices to stop violence and interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration strategies. New curricula could emerge that teach both about historic injustices and movements resisting those injustices. Teach-ins, police trainings, restorative policing practices, and police review commissions are also among the universe of possibilities.

In the face of the immense terrain to be covered on the journey toward a more reconciled America, no single process will be enough. However, a Ferguson Truth and Reconciliation process could be a first step towards reconciliation. It could put us on the path of a new future based on more equitable structures and with relationships founded on mutual recognition and respect. It could also serve as a prototype to guide future truth and reconciliation efforts addressing related epidemics such as domestic violence, poverty, the school-to-prison pipeline, and mass incarceration. A Ferguson Truth and Reconciliation Commission could light the way into a new future.

You can find the original version of this Yes! Magazine piece at www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/this-country-needs-a-truth-and-reconciliation-process-on-violence-against-african-americans.

NCDD2016 Session Proposal Deadline Extended!

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As we hope you’ve heard, we announced that we were opening the call for NCDD2016 conference session proposals earlier last month. We’ve had lots of great proposals come in so far, and we thank everyone who has submitted session ideas so far!

bumper_sticker_600pxWe’ve also received quite a few requests this week for extensions as folks firm up ideas and finalize plans with collaborators, so in honor of all the hard work our members are doing to make the conference an amazing experience, we are extending the deadline for session proposals! We are now accepting submissions until the end of the day on Wednesday, July 13th! 

If you’re rushing to finish up a proposal, you’ve got a few more days now, but don’t delay! There is going to be some stiff competition for session spots this year.

If you’re still looking for collaborators on your sessions, you can review the calls for session partners that some of our members have put out on our NCDD discussion listserv checking out the discussion topics from the last few weeks in our listserv archives – you could also join the listserv and ask for collaborators yourself!

We recommend that you read over the initial call for proposals one more time before submitting, but once you’re ready, visit the Application Form and submit your proposal!

We look forward to seeing all of your great ideas!

A Story of Bridging Partisan Divides in the Legislature

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A major goal of NCDD2016 is to lift up stories of how people across the country are Bridging Our Divides through D&D work, despite pervasive narratives telling us we can’t. So we wanted to share just such a story that NCDD member Jessica Weaver of the Public Conversations Project recently wrote about. The piece tells the story of women legislators who are resisting the urge to focus on the negative and instead look to solutions. You can read the story below or find Jessica’s original post here.

Shining a Light Beyond Polarization

PCP new logoWe’ve all seen the headlines. Gridlock. Paralysis. Incivility. All the result of widening political polarization in the United States government, and also among its people. Like other aspects of identity, political ideology can be a dividing factor in our national conversation. We refuse to engage with the “other side” and reflect critically on our own views.

The science shows that polarization has indeed worsened – almost exponentially – over the last ten years. Pew Research also indicates that in addition to estrangement, this trend has seen increased venom and antipathy between liberals and conservatives. There’s evidence that this trend is worsening, and that it has had profoundly destructive effects on American governance and its public discourse. We know that story.

But at a women’s leadership conference a couple of weeks ago, I heard a very different story. Women from all levels of government – senators, state legislators, and city council members – came together to talk about their experiences, challenges, and lessons from careers spent proving they were worthy of hard-earned entry into a sector dominated by men. In addition to stressing the importance of building personal relationships across the aisle to operate effectively, several legislators had a surprising response to the inevitable question about the seemingly irreversible tides of polarization and incivility.

Image via Politico

Instead of bemoaning how partisan bickering had stymied their work, Senator Barbara Mikulski (pictured center above) was almost indignant. “That’s not the whole story,” she said, and argued that in fact this had been one of the most productive years for women in the Senate that she could remember. And she would know: Mikulski started a monthly bipartisan dinner group just for female senators that encourages relationships between women across the aisle, and creates mentorship opportunities between generations of politicians.

The exchange made me think about something we talk about often at Public Conversations: the danger of focusing solely on conflict, especially in binary terms. By rehearsing the narrative of polarization, we are at one level simply making reference to a political reality, but at another, are pushing a wheel over the same groove, in jeopardy of deepening the schism. The story is self-fulfilling, according to recent research out of University of California – Berkeley, titled “Self-Fulfilling Misperceptions of Public Polarization,” which concluded that citizens across the political spectrum perceive one another’s views as being more extreme than they really are:

“Thus, citizens appear to consider peers’ positions within public debate when forming their own opinions and adopt slightly more extreme positions as a consequence.” In other words, being inundated with information about polarization doesn’t make us more moderate, it makes us more extreme.

This is a difficult position: how can we acknowledge the realities of deep conflicts without reinforcing narratives that are devoid of anything else? The question isn’t just relevant for polarization or other identity-based conflicts; it’s a question about how to discuss humanity’s most destructive creations – hate, bigotry, fear – without letting negativity define the whole story. I think an important answer lies in choosing to “shine a light on the good and the beautiful,” in the elegant language of writer and Muslim thinker Omid Safi. He writes, “Why shine the spotlight on the hate? This is somehow part of our national discourse. Someone does something offensive and crazy, and we immediately advertise it. But I do wonder about the mindset of always being quick to rush to publicize bigotry against us — and forget about the many who rise to connect their humanity with ours.” He ends his reflection by naming specific people whose work he wants to “shine a light on.”

So, Senator Mikulski and your dinner companions, I want to shine a light on you. Perhaps more importantly, I want to shine more lights in this often black or white world. This isn’t a call to end conversations that are challenging, simply to make space for celebrating good work that is of equal importance in the stories we tell. As Safi concludes:

So, friends, let us stand next to one another, shoulder to shoulder, mirroring the good and the beautiful. Shine a light on the good. Applaud the good. Become an advocate of the good and the beautiful. Let us hang on to the faith that ultimately light overcomes darkness, and love conquers hate. It is the only thing that ever has, ever will, and does today.

You can find the original version of this Public Conversations Project piece at www.publicconversations.org/blog/shining-light-beyond-polarization

Two Opportunities to Learn about Civic Health in July

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As we get back into the swing after a weekend about expressing civic pride, we want to share an invitation to talk about strengthening national civic health efforts that comes from the Davenport Institute – an NCDD member organization. Check out their announcement below on two upcoming webinars on civic health and civic renewal that will feature NCDD supporting member Peter Levine, or read the original Davenport blog post by clicking here.

NCoC: Civic Health Webinar

DavenportInst-logoJoin the discussion! For the better part of a decade the Davenport Institute has been a proud partner of the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) as a California Civic Health partner.  We worked with them to publish the California Civic Health Index (2010), Golden Governance (2012), and several infographic pieces on the state of engagement in California.

NCoC is hosting an open webinar conversation to individuals and organizations interested in learning more about and getting more involved in Civic Health in their home state or community.  Next month NCoC will be hosting two webinar conversations: one on July 11 and one on July 14.

You can find out more and register online at the NCoC website here.

You can find the original version of this post from the Davenport Institute’s inCommon blog at http://incommon.pepperdine.edu/2016/07/ncoc-civic-health-webinar.

Recap of Our Tech Tuesday Event with Trusted Sharing

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We had another fantastic Tech Tuesday event earlier this week with the team from Trusted Sharing. The webinar featured NCDD member Duncan Work, founder and CEO of Trusting Sharing, and Ruth Backstrom, Director of Marketing and Outreach who walked participants through an in-depth demonstration of the features and capabilities of their asynchronous conversation platform.

The walk through was hugely informative, and it was clear to all of us how helpful a tool like Trusted Sharing can be to folks working not just on planning, engagement, and decision making processes, but also in classrooms, organizations, and all manner of other collaborative endeavors. We got to ask Duncan and Ruth specific questions about Trusted Sharing’s functionalities and the case studies we explored, and heard a bit more about their next steps in rolling the tool out. It was a wonderful call!

If you missed out on the call and still want to see and hear the presentation, then we encourage you to check out the recording of this Tech Tuesday call by clicking here.

The Trusted Sharing team is still developing and refining the tool, and since NCDD’s member network is such a rich repository of knowledge and expertise, they created a special Trusted Sharing conversation page where NCDDers are invited to offer input and suggestions to the TS team about templates for conversations based on method and process you use. So we encourage NCDDers to visit www.trustedsharing.com/ncdd to continue the conversation from the call, ask more questions, and offer your professional feedback on the Trusted Sharing tool.

Tech_Tuesday_BadgeThanks again to Duncan, Ruth, and everyone who participated in the call for an engaging and educational event!

To learn more about NCDD’s Tech Tuesday series and hear recordings of past calls, please visit www.ncdd.org/tech-tuesdays.

IF Library Dialogue Pilot Program Seeks Midwest Partners

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In case you missed it, we wanted to share an announcement that the Interactivity Foundation – an NCDD organizational member – shared last month about a program they’re piloting with local libraries to host community discussions on important issues. IF is looking for help connecting with more of these key infrastructures for supporting our field’s work, and we encourage NCDDers to help if you can. You can read more in the IF blog post below or find the original here.

Library Partnership Program

In partnership with a few, select local libraries in Wisconsin, the Interactivity Foundation is developing a pilot program to support community-based discussions. Under this initiative, the Foundation will work with participating libraries to:

  • Plan and facilitate an initial or demonstration discussion on a topic of local interest and/or concern,
  • Train interested staff, volunteers, or other community members to organize and facilitate future discussions, and
  • Provide on a continuing basis thereafter additional discussion materials and consultation to support partner libraries and local facilitators in organizing and facilitating ongoing discussion programs in their communities.

Based on the experience gained from this pilot program and its library partners, the Foundation will develop this initiative further and, if promising, may expand it to other regions.

The Foundation is now in the planning stages of this initiative and working to identify yet a few interested library programs and communities in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest that could be effective partners in this effort. If you would like more information about this pilot program, please contact IF Fellow & Projects Administrator Pete Shively.

You can find the original version of this Interactivity Foundation blog piece at www.interactivityfoundation.org/library-partnership-program.

First Comprehensive Analysis of PB in N. America Released

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We want to draw our NCDD members’ attention to some of the work done by the team at Public Agenda – one of our NCDD member organizations. PA recently completed the first-ever comprehensive analysis of participatory budgeting processes in N. America, and the report they released is a fabulous tool for understanding and promoting PB. It’s full of insightful findings and poses important questions for going forward. We encourage you to read their summary below or find more from PA’s website here.

Public Spending, By the People

PublicAgenda-logoFrom 2014 to 2015, more than 70,000 residents across the United States and Canada directly decided how their cities and districts should spend nearly $50 million in public funds through a process known as participatory budgeting (PB). PB is among the fastest growing forms of public engagement in local governance, having expanded to 46 communities in the U.S. and Canada in just 6 years.

PB is a young practice in the U.S. and Canada. Until now, there’s been no way for people to get a general understanding of how communities across the U.S. implement PB, who participates, and what sorts of projects get funded. Our report, “Public Spending, By the People” offers the first-ever comprehensive analysis of PB in the U.S. and Canada.

Here’s a summary of what we found:

Overall, communities using PB have invested substantially in the process and have seen diverse participation. But cities and districts vary widely in how they implemented their processes, who participated and what projects voters decided to fund. Officials vary in how much money they allocate to PB and some communities lag far behind in their representation of lower-income and less educated residents.

The data in this report came from 46 different PB processes across the U.S. and Canada. The report is a collaboration with local PB evaluators and practitioners. The work was funded by the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation, and completed through a research partnership with the Kettering Foundation.

You can read the findings in brief below, download a PDF of the executive summary,download the full report or scroll through charts and graphics from the report. This report is also part of an ongoing Public Agenda project on participatory budgeting – you can read about the project here.

 

Summary of Findings

Part 1: What Happened? Facts and Figures About How PB Was Implemented

How exactly did communities implement PB? How did communities differ from one another in their adaptation of PB to local needs and resources? And how successful were different council districts and cities in getting the word out and encouraging residents to take part?

Key findings:

  • More than half of the 2014–15 PB communities were undertaking PB for the first time.
  • Officials allocated on average $1 million to a PB process (nearly always capital funds only), ranging from $61,000 to over $3 million.
  • In all PB communities, residents under 18 years old were eligible to vote. The minimum voting age was most commonly 14 or 16.
  • More than 8,000 residents brainstormed community needs in more than 240 neighborhood idea collection assemblies. In communities that held more neighborhood idea collection assemblies, total participation across assemblies was higher.
  • Over 1,000 resident volunteers turned ideas into viable proposals as budget delegates. Some communities did not offer residents opportunities to become budget delegates, and one reported as many as 75 such volunteers.
  • Nearly all communities used online and digital tools to tell residents about PB. Far fewer did targeted person-to-person outreach. Person-to-person outreach was associated with greater participation of traditionally marginalized communities.
  • 140 partnerships between community-based organizations (CBOs) and government formed to increase participation in PB. CBO outreach was associated with higher representation of traditionally marginalized communities at the vote.
  • More than 70,000 residents cast ballots across nearly 400 voting sites and more than 300 voting days. Some communities brought out fewer than 200 voters, others more than 3,000.
  • A total of 360 projects won PB funding.

Part 2: Who Participated? The Demographic Profile of Voter Survey Respondents

What do we know about the demographics of PB voters? How representative were PB voters of their local communities? How successful were communities in engaging groups that are often marginalized from the political process?

Key findings:

  • AGE: Residents under 18 years old and seniors were overrepresented among survey respondents in many communities, while residents between 18 and 44 years of age were underrepresented. Overall, 11 percent of respondents were under 18 years of age. Click to view charts.
  • RACE/ETHNICITY: In nearly all communities, black residents were overrepresented or represented proportionally to the local census among voter survey respondents. Hispanics were underrepresented among survey respondents in most PB sites. Overall, blacks made up 21 percent of respondents and Hispanics made up 21 percent of respondents.Click to view charts.
  • INCOME: In most communities, residents from lower-income households were overrepresented or represented proportionally to the local census among voter survey respondents. Overall, 27 percent of respondents reported annual household incomes of less than $25,000 and 19 percent reported annual household incomes between $25,000 and $49,000. Click to view charts.
  • EDUCATION: Residents with less formal education were underrepresented among voter survey respondents in most communities. Just 39 percent of respondents overall reported not having a college degree. Click to view charts.
  • GENDER: Women were overrepresented among voter survey respondents in nearly all PB communities. Overall, 62 percent of respondents were women. Click to view charts.

Part 3: What Got Funded? Ballots and Winning Projects

What kinds of projects made it on the ballot? What types of projects received the largest amount of PB allocations? And what kinds of projects were most and least likely to win residents’ votes?

Key findings:

  • Parks and recreation projects were the most common ballot items overall, followed by school projects. But ballots varied substantially—some included no parks and recreation or no school projects.
  • Overall, schools received the largest share (33 percent) of PB-allocated funds.
  • Public safety projects were rare on ballots but had a high chance of winning.
  • Public housing projects were rare on ballots and had a low chance of winning.

Questions for National and Local Stakeholders

We hope this publication will stimulate national and local discussion about PB and its potential to positively impact individuals, communities and governments across the U.S. and Canada. The report therefore concludes with some important questions for national and local stakeholders who are debating PB’s current state and potential impacts, are working on refining its implementation or are conducting further research and evaluations. Following are these questions in brief.

Questions about PB’s potential to spread and scale:

  • With an average of $1 million allocated in each PB community, what can be achieved?
  • How do communities support and finance the implementation of PB, and how sustainable are these strategies?
  • What community conditions facilitate or hinder successful implementation of PB?

Questions about implementation:

  • What are the various goals local communities have for PB, and how are they communicated?
  • What is the quality of deliberation—when and how do residents consider the trade-offs of various community needs and projects?
  • How do online and digital tools for outreach and engagement affect who participates and what gets funded?
  • As communities vary in voting rules and ballot design, how does that impact voting patterns?

Questions about participation:

  • Why are some communities better than others at engaging traditionally marginalized populations?
  • What are the characteristics and motivations of residents who submit project ideas and volunteer as budget delegates?
  • How do PB participation rates and participant demographics compare with those in other types of local civic and political engagement?

Questions about ballot items and winning projects:

  • What do we know about the processes by which projects make it on the ballot?
  • How do money allocations in PB differ from those that are happening without PB?

Questions about long-term impacts:

  • What exactly may be PB’s key long-term impacts on the health of U.S. and Canadian communities?
  • Are there long-term impacts on the civic skills, attitudes and behaviors of participants?
  • Does PB lead to more equitable distribution of resources?
  • How does PB affect government decision making outside of the PB process?

Methodology in Brief

Findings in this report are based on data collected and shared with Public Agenda by local PB evaluation teams across the U.S. and Canada. Public Agenda has been collaborating with local evaluators since early 2015 to facilitate shared learning across communities and to collectively tell the story of PB across the U.S. and Canada.

Our data compilation was guided by a framework of 15 key metrics that Public Agenda developed based on the experiences of local evaluators and the advice of the North American PB Research Board—a group of local evaluators, public engagement practitioners and U.S.- and Canada-based academic researchers who have researched the effects of PB in other countries—along with input from the nonprofit organization the Participatory Budgeting Project.

These 15 key metrics specify data points about PB implementation, participation and winning projects that are important for a better understanding of the current state of PB, the tracking of its immediate outputs and the clarification of its potential long-term impacts. Click here to read more about the 15 key metrics for evaluating participatory budgeting.

You can find the original version of this Public Agenda summary and more about their report at www.publicagenda.org/pages/public-spending-by-the-people.

Don’t Miss the June Tech Tuesday Call with Trusted Sharing!

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We want remind our network that time is running out to register for NCDD’s June Tech Tuesday event this Tuesday, June 28th from 12-1pm Eastern/9-10am Pacific. This time, our webinar will the Trusted Sharing tech tool – a free, asynchronous platform for hosting online conversation using facilitation methods such as World Café, TOP, and Open Space – and you won’t want to miss it!

We will be joined on the call by NCDD member Duncan Work, founder and CEO of Trusting Sharing, as well as Ruth Backstrom, the Director of Marketing and Outreach. Duncan and Ruth will give participants an overview of the tool, walk us through how it can be used in a few case studies, and talk about their collaborations with thought leaders, educators, nonprofits, businesses, and more.

We’re confident that our members will find Trusted Sharing’s platform useful because there already are NCDDers using it! Here’s what NCDD member Rosa Zubizarreta of DiaPraxis had to say about her experience with Trusted Sharing:

I’ve been using Trusted Sharing for the last nine months, as part of a mastermind group I initiated to create a stronger community of practice among those drawn to Tom Atlee’s co-intelligence work. Our main intention with Trusted Sharing was to have a place for online conversation before and after each of our video conference sessions. This tool offered a space where we could prepare in advance for each session, as well as continue our conversations afterward. We now have a rich repository we can continue to harvest, as each person moves forward with their individual projects, enriched by the input and perspectives of our learning community.

For more info on this impressive tool, you can peruse this overview – or you can just register today for this Tech Tuesday event! It’s going to be a wonderful opportunity, and we look forward to hearing you all on the call.

NCDD Resources for Responding to the Orlando Shooting

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In the wake of the awful attacks in Orlando, it can be hard to know what to say or even how and when to begin a conversation. But as people who work in dialogue, many of us have been and will be called upon or feel compelled to help grieving, angry, and fearful communities talk with each other about what happened, about our differences, and about where we can go from here.

To try to help those wanting and needing to start these conversations, we wanted to share a few helpful links to items from our NCDD Resource Center that are relevant places to start. There is no resource we can link you to that tailored to a tragedy so visceral and complex, but we hope that reviewing this list will at least give you some direction.

Places to look

There are many layers to unpacking the Orlando shooting: sexual orientation, race, guns, religion, and more. So we suggest that you start by looking at the tags in our resource center that have to do with those topics. You can look at:

We also recommend you use the search feature in the resource center to query specific topics you want to find resources on. Especially since the Orlando shooter’s religion is a key point of friction for many, we recommend running a search for “Islam” and “Muslim” for those looking to discuss the role of religion and how to support the Muslim community in this trying time.

Specific Resources

We also want to highlight a few specific resources that may be helpful for talking about key dynamics present in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting. We recommend that you take a look at:

We know it’s not much, but we hope that these resources can help those NCDD members who are seeking to help their communities process and heal from this tragedy. Whatever you do, please take good care of yourselves and your loved ones in the coming weeks.