Category Archives: current issues

An opportunity like no other – the Great March for Climate Action

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This message and call to action was submitted by Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute via our Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have field news you want to share with the rest of us? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Summary: In March 2014, the giant 8-month cross-country Great March for Climate Action will be launched. I believe it has truly profound potential for personal and social change, and is worthy of our support and participation. Dialogue and deliberation practitioners, in particular, can make a significant difference.

Dear friends,

If all goes as planned, almost six months from now – in March 2014 – one thousand people will depart Santa Monica, California, on a cross-country Great March for Climate Action. It will take them eight months – walking about 15 miles a day – to reach Washington, D.C. They will speak in hundreds of communities and venues along the way and be joined by locals for days or weeks. Once they arrive in D.C., they will swarm-lobby their representatives. Equally importantly, the lives of every participant will be profoundly changed and their roles in the world will evolve in ways they (and we) can barely imagine before this adventure begins. Above all, I believe they will co-create new, far more effective forms of social change.

I want to see that happen. I want this march to succeed in boosting climate activism to an entirely new level. I want it to produce hundreds of more savvy activists and hot collaborations. And I want you to consider joining it, to think about it seriously, as I find myself doing. It is worthy of the participation and/or support of every one of us.

Why do I feel so strongly about this?

The first reason is that climate change is, as the organizers note, not an issue, but a crisis – a Very Big Crisis, with many side effects and repercussions. Along with peak oil and other resource limitations – and the wars, corruption, and social and economic disruption those limits could generate – the climate crisis may be the defining fact of life for people living through the coming decades. The time for addressing all this was yesterday, and now it is today. The longer we wait, the messier it will get. The earlier we take creative action on it, the more profound and positive the transformational impact of our efforts can be. And, as my friend John Abbe (who became Marcher #22) said, “The time to act is now before it is more too late than it already is.”

The second reason I feel strongly is that 27 years ago I spent 9 of the most intense and transformational months of my life on the 400-person LA-DC Great Peace March. As I describe in the Prologue to The Tao of Democracy, that experience gave rise to the vision of possibility that became my life’s work on co-intelligence, wise democracy, and our collective capacity to effectively self-organize our communities and societies. This leads me to believe that the potential impact of such a mobile activist community will be at least as big from the exciting things that happen in and among the marchers, themselves, as from the marchers’ engagements with the places they pass through.

Mobile Activism

Early during my life on the Great Peace March, I wrote an article entitled “Mobile Peace Activism”. I explored the interesting ways that peace marches, bike-a-thons, cruises, and caravans get attention and build community. I’ll share here some of what I wrote 27 years ago exploring the question of why someone would go to all the trouble to organize or join a complicated cross country march instead of engaging in traditional action right at home?

“Novelty plays a role in this. Travelling out-of-towners bring new life and flavor with them — the spirit of other places and a sense of connection to those other places. Stationary people seem fascinated with why mobile people are doing what they are doing….

“It is easy to get into ideological, psychological, spiritual, emotional, organizational or tactical ruts when you are always confronting a desk or a book [or a screen!] or the same faces at every meeting. There’s something about moving to another place each day or week that rubs off on your whole way of thinking and feeling. Perhaps a certain responsiveness or fluidity can develop, making it easier to break out of fixed conditions, to think in new ways…

“Many of us long for a way to transform ourselves while we transform society, to enjoy life while we are saving it from destruction. Mobile activism tends to have transformative and recreational effects on the participants while at the same time achieving external objectives.

“Most mobile activities demand a high level of cooperative living just to keep moving down the road. This stimulates the formation of tightly-knit mobile communities with strong feelings of being ‘family.’ This is both a backdrop to activism and an actively-created part of it, a laboratory for building effective, loving, non-violent lifestyles. And mobile activists, in their trips from town to town, can weave together a greater sense of community among the local activists with whom they work.”

Perhaps most significantly, when hundreds of climate activists walk down the road together every day and live in tents beside each other every night, they talk. Among the things they will talk about are climate change, activism, strategies, deeper causes, long term nuanced consequences, how their grandchildren will live, and what really needs to be done about all that. Their diverse perspectives and information will churn together in a thousand combinations and novel configurations. The march will be a hothouse of new ways of thinking, feeling, and taking action. We could even say that it will be “the other greenhouse effect” – a hundredfold concentration and enrichment of the energy, thinking, and conversations we already engage in together for a few hours or days at a time.

Carrying on such intensified interaction for eight months cannot help but generate breakthrough initiatives and collaborations, transformed lives and lifestyles, new directions for the whole climate movement and every other movement. That’s what happened to me on the Great Peace March. My life changed totally and my work on co-intelligence was born. As I noted in my “Mobile Peace Activism” article, some of the most profound effects of mobile activism are “the effects that all those activists create once they leave the mobile activity and return home or involve themselves in other forms of activism.”

During the last decade I have often wondered if and when there would be a resurgence of mobile activism — of people taking the road instead of taking to the streets. I see it happening now, with this climate action march being perhaps the most ambitious initiative among many others.

Disturbances Transformed by Dialogue

Ironically, the most important thing that happened on the 1986 Great Peace March was that it fell apart two weeks after it began. The founding organization, ProPeace, went bankrupt and told us all to go home. 800 of us did. 400 of us didn’t. Instead of going home the remaining 400 of us talked… and the March was reborn in the middle of the Mojave Desert as a self-organized mobile community that generated its own collective intelligence and collaborative functioning woven out of complex voluntary leaderful activity with nobody in charge. It was held together by purposeful determination and rudimentary but dedicated conversational processes, most especially “talking circles” (which I prefer to call “listening circles”).

Many of my readers and subscribers are practitioners of leading edge processes like Sacred Circles, Open Space, World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, Dynamic Facilitation, and dozens more. The Great March for Climate Action may not fall apart like the Great Peace March, but it will surely be filled with powerful, smart, assertive, value-driven people – exactly the kind of people who can make or break a giant collaborative enterprise, who can get in each other’s way or together generate highly functional activities, breakthrough insights, and innovative projects that change the world. This polarization of good and bad possibilities will become even more intense in the potent greenhouse of living and walking together day after day after day.

Perhaps the most significant factor in whether the best or worst occurs on this march is how much opportunity the marchers have for high quality conversations designed to support the emergence of breakthroughs, healing, effectiveness, and joy. That’s why I hope that dozens of practitioners who read this essay will join this march. Together they can convene and facilitate conversations that will vastly improve the march’s capacity to govern itself effectively, resolve its internal conflicts wisely, vibrantly engage the communities through which the march passes, and ensure the march positively affects the issue that may well impact more people and more issues – from water to democracy, from justice to war – more profoundly than anything else in this century.

That’s why I invite you – I urge you – to seriously consider what role you could play in support – or as part – of this remarkable effort. Depending on how we each engage with this opportunity, it could make all the difference in the world.  Find out more about how to get involved at www.climatemarch.org.

Blessings on the Journey we are all on together.

Coheartedly,
Tom

Gathering photos of public meetings for Legal Frameworks project

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NCDD is working with the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and National Civic League to “crowdsource” some great photos of public meetings.  What photos do you have that you feel depict what “bad” public meetings look like?  And do you have favorite photos that show what “good” public meetings can look like?

Send in your photos this week via email, to NCDD’s Creative Director Andy Fluke (andy@ncdd.org). Send in the highest-quality versions you have, and include a by-line (photographer name, where taken, etc.) and verifies that this is your photo to use/share.  We’ll ask more questions if we need them, and we’ll check with you before using the photos in print.

Your photo may be chosen to help promote an important project we want to bring your attention to. For the past year, Matt Leighninger (director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium) has been spearheading a Working Group on Legal Frameworks for Public Participation with representatives of the American Bar Association, International Municipal Lawyers Association, NCDD, National Civic League, National League of Cities, and International City/County Management Association, as well as leading practitioners and scholars of public participation.

The group has developed several new tools, including a model local ordinance and model amendment to state legislation, in order to help create a more supportive, productive, and equitable environment for public participation. These open source documents will soon be released as a publication of the National Civic League (where your photo could be featured!).

Why develop new legal frameworks for public participation?

Most people dislike official public meetings. This is true for both the public officials who preside over them and the citizens who attend them. Over the last two decades, a wide range of participatory meeting formats and dynamic online tools have emerged – so why do we continue conducting public business in such an outdated fashion?

There are a number of reasons, but one is the legal framework that governs public participation.

Most of these laws and ordinances are over thirty years old; they do not match the expectations and capacities of citizens today, they pre-date the Internet, and they do not reflect the lessons learned in the last two decades about how citizens and governments can work together.

We’re looking for photos from the field to help us illustrate the need for better laws to support better public meetings.  We also welcome your anecdotes and examples that help bolster the need for more a supportive legal framework for public participation.  How have existing laws made it harder for high-quality engagement to take place in your community?  How have you worked around those laws to make sure citizens can be informed by each other and heard by public officials?  Have you help upgrade your city’s legal framework already?  Please send your responses to Andy so he can collect them for the team.

If you want to continue this discussion face-to-face, please join us at the Brookings Institution on October 12 from 9:30 to 11:30 am for “Making Public Participation Legal Again,” a session that will launch the model ordinance and the NCL publication.  Brookings is located at 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC.

Next Coffee Hour Call is at 8pm this Thursday

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Last week’s coffee hour was great, with just a handful of people we compiled a great list of resources and notes (these useful notes are also pasted below).

Whether or not you have participated in past coffee hour calls, your feedback on improving the design is welcome through this survey.  If you are interested in participating on this week’s call, please add your name to the collaborative notes page for the September 19th call.

When: 8pm EST (new time) on Thursday, September 19, 2013

Dial-in number: 1-213-342-3000 Access code: 444839 (hasn’t changed since week 2)

Agenda:

5 min - Small talk as we wait for everyone to join the call.

5 min- Very brief intros (Name, organization, and location in one sentence.  The question/topic that you’d like to discuss on the call in one sentence, if any.)

50 min- Free form discussion.  I’ll provide very light facilitation to periodically bring up the questions that the group raised at the beginning of the call.  If there are late-comers, I’ll ask them to introduce themselves when the conversation comes to a natural break.

NOTES FROM SEPTEMBER 12 COFFEE HOUR (link)

Question: What form could an international online dialog event take in the future if it was at sufficient scale to affect the international political conversation about a situation like the present one in Syria?  I recognize that the moment for something like this has passed, now that the world is primarily talking about diplomacy and non-military options, thankfully. (Lucas Cioffi)

  • Answer: Perhaps these are some elements of a solution here: It would have to be large enough so that everyday citizens from various countries thought that the outcome is representative of their views.  It would have to have multiple ways for people to participate, because people are busy and are available at different times of the day; some people are very passionate about particular issues, so they might have lots of time to participate, however people with limited time should still be able to participate in a meaningful way– i.e. it shouldn’t be a “tyranny of the minority that has lots of time on their hands”. (Lucas Cioffi).
    • There are several online tools also working on other ways to mitigate the “tyranny of the minority that has lots of time on their hands”  (Bentley)
  • Answer: What about forming a community of interest that allows for sharing of data, questions, criteria for making decisions at data.gov? Communities of interest can be critical to the solution, and Data.gov is a great example of how these communities of interest are collaborating.  This helps get past they cynicism that people may have about government-initiated dialogue events.  Existing communities of interest generally have momentum and legitimacy.  Exploring the interrelationships between multiple communities is essential to solving inter-disciplinary problems.  (Sarah)
  • Answer: Look at what the World Bank did in getting a discussion started about poverty: http://blogs.worldbank.org/category/tags/poverty (perhaps this is a better link: https://strikingpoverty.worldbank.org/ which was shared by NCDD member Tiago Peixoto who organized this at the World Bank)  How to get one started about peace and security that is hosted by an entity also keyed into the formal decisionmaking process?
  • Answer: The online space should allow for digressions into many sub topics as necessary. One of the challenges is that issues like this are very complex and currently even threaded discussions get confusing after several levels and multiple threads can be on the same topic. This challenge is currently being tackled in several experimental online tools. (Bentley)
  • Comment: Having large numbers of people on an online tool quickly seems to get out of hand (i.e. newspaper comments).  Large numbers of people do need to participate for credibility/legitimacy but that brings up the problem of structure needed for better participation.  (Bentley)
  • Comment: Integration of in-person and online is necessary, because if something was filmed either live or recorded, it would seem much more “real” and can make it into mainstream TV news.  (Lucas)
  • Comment: Need the analogy of a mute button for online dialogue for moderating the discussion.  Also, http://join.me is a great tool for screen sharing with a free option.  The easier the platform, the better the participation.  (Steve)
  • Follow-up question: What organization(s) could host something like this?  How can Americans hear about something like this and believe that it is worth their time? (Lucas)
    • Answer: There needs to be a way for people to find out about public participation opportunities in general– in addition to this large-scale use case.  Once the data for public notices is made available by local governments (coming soon, it seems) then the app ecosystem can take over and app developers can take the initiative and create apps to notify citizens.  (Steve)
    • Answer: It helps if the government says officially “we want to hear from you” or if there is a process for taking the outcomes through an official channel for action in government.  That’s what I’ve noticed at the state and local level in MA.  Skepticism of the public is high, so it’s a barrier to overcome– people may not think that the process is worthwhile. (Courtney)
    • Answer: It can’t seem like a pre-determined outcome; there has to be an expectation that the conversations are open to new ideas.  (Steve)
    • The Manor Labs model which used Spigit was great both at allowing the public to raise issues and at informing the public of what others thought and fiscal or other data driven realities.  So a model with both dialogue, ways of weighting issues an concerns, and moving certain input on for public decision, or returning it to the public with an explanation of why it wasn’t advancing (by posted video after deliberations by dept heads) is a model that might be adaptable.
    • Some system of identifying an issue/question with the corresponding level on the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation would be one way of letting the public know the type of dialogue they were in.

Question: What are some of the alternatives to “town hall” meetings that are being effectively used to engage citizens in conjunction with more formal government decisionmaking processes? (Sarah Read)

  • Answer: Here’s an answer about what doesn’t work… Telephone townhalls (link to a Google search on the topic) seems to be a weak substitution for the in-person event for a few reasons: 1) they are quite expensive– around $3000 for a 90 minute call to auto-dial perhaps 10,000 residents of an area 2) they do not allow for dialogue; they are very similar to press conferences where residents get to ask the questions, however there’s a statistically low chance that any one individual would have an opportunity to get their question asked and 3) the format takes the form of leader at a podium rather than participants around small group tables having a discussion, however if MaestroConference was used, an organizer/facilitator can have a much more dialogic & participatory event.  (Lucas Cioffi)
  • Yet that is a format many seem comfortable with and suspicious of actual dialogue: http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=176:bridging-the-gap-between-public-officials-and-the-public&catid=47:contributions&Itemid=89  And that is a question – how to help elected officials become more comfortable with more productive dialogue models
  • Answer: I’ve seen some different formats used at the state and local level for public officials to engage the public around a project for which they need public input or engagement. Usually these meetings are heavily facilitated (by a third party) and the officials make it clear from the start the purpose of the meeting and what they will do with public input. Or, they take a different direction and allow for the public to primarily engage with one another, with the public officials present and listening. (Courtney)
  • I agree that facilitation, pre-planning, and a clear link to what comes next (even if its more dialogue) all help dialogue!

Question: What is the difference between buy-in and ownership? (David Plouffe) Clarification (Lucas Cioffi): what is the context for this question– are we talking about ownership of a solution that comes out of a dialogue event?

  • Answer: One can buy-in without owning, right? For instance, members of a working group can buy-in to a decided action/next step, but they don’t have to own it – perhaps there is a convenor who owns it (Courtney)
  • Answer: Buy-in can be translated as showing up with some belief that the process will make a difference; ownership means being willing to be responsible for keeping it productive, following through in some way, and showing up again
  • Answer: Buy in can mean will allow the result. Ownership implies a co-creator in the results.

Question: What are some effective ways to handle an unruly participant at a town hall meeting? (Lucas Cioffi)

  • Answer: A lot of this comes down to how the meeting is structured, and how the process and ground rules are outlined at the outset of the meeting. If participants are provided the ground rules and explained the process outright, then those who are not acting in accordance with the rules/process can be reminded of that and there is a bit of pressure from the group (If we can abide, you can abide). There are tools too that can help – taking comments in multiple formats, to allow for more collection of input (e.g. written and spoken input), or focusing the meeting on dialogue in smaller groups, rather than in the larger setting (where there is usually more observed posturing). I took part in a public meeting where following a presentation from state agency staff, the public was invited into small group dialogues to raise questions, concerns, and exchange information that would be shared with the agency. Agency staff also roamed the room and listened in, were available to answer questions. Following, at the request of some members of the public, a more traditional “listening” session was held, where members of the public had two minutes at the microphone. Many people left at that point, because they felt they had been heard. That also quieted the more disruptive people, who no longer had the audience they wanted. (Courtney)
  • Answer: Structuring the participation as small-group discussion rather than audience vs. podium increases peer-to-peer pressure for civil behavior by creating a sense that the space is shared and by communicating from the outset that this is a place for dialogue and solutions rather than just complaints.  (Lucas)
  • Reviewing at the outset “guidelines for discussion” and asking participants if they agree to follow or have proposed additions or concerns, makes it much easier to refer troublesome participants to more civil behaviors.  And something else that I find really helps – if someone is venting (sincerely, not just to disrupt) it can very steadying to say something like “that is clearly very upsetting to you, and makes it difficult to discuss calmly. [Value/concern] is very important to you”.  Once people feel accepted they can often listen and participate more effectively.

Question: Does anyone know of any measurement/assessment tools for classroom deliberations, particularly around STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) topics? (Sara Drury)

Question: What online tools are in use by NCDD member? (Bentley)

  • Answer: NCDD members compiled this list of four dozen tools in use by NCDD members in 2010, but there is certainly room for updating that list or improving it by displaying it in a new format.
  • Answer: ICMA.org has a knowledge network related to local gov and some dialogue (Sarah Read)
  • Answer: Two sites that publish useful studies about online platforms that government entities can use for collaboration include the IBM Business of Government site, and the Knight Commission site which focuses on the information needs of communities in a democracy.
  • Answer: ParticipateDB
  • Answer: http://commons.codeforamerica.org/apps has nearly 700 tools for public engagement, and they are categorized.
  • Comment from several folks: Know where you’re starting and what goals you want to achieve, because one can get misguided if they have a tool and are looking for ways to apply it.  The better way is to choose a tool after deciding on the session’s desired purpose (e.g., informational, discussional, etc.)..

Question: Is there anything like a recipe book that can help pretty much anyone become a good facilitator with online tools?  How does one know where to start? (Stephen)

Write-up on mental health dialogues in Sacramento and Albuquerque

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We hope you will take a moment to check out the following update on the Creating Community Solutions dialogue series from Carol Lukensmeyer of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, an NCDD organizational member.  This article was cross-posted with permission from Joe Goldman of the Democracy Fund. You can read the post in full below or find the original here: www.democracyfund.org/blog/entry/guest-post-creating-community-solutions.

NCDD is one of the main partners in this national dialogue effort, and we encourage you to get involved by hosting local dialogues or joining in our online dialogues at www.theciviccommons.com/mentalhealth.

Creating Community Solutions, part of the National Dialogue on Mental Health

creating solutionsBY CAROLYN LUKENSMEYER / AUGUST 13TH

On June 3rd, 2013, President Barack Obama hosted a National Conference on Mental Health at the White House as part of the Administration’s efforts to launch a national conversation to increase understanding and awareness about mental health.  At the event, President Obama directed Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Arne Duncan of the U.S. Department of Education to launch a National Dialogue on Mental Health.

An important component of the national dialogue is Creating Community Solutions, which is a series of events around the country that will allow people to engage in dialogue and action on mental health issues. The effort is being led by the National Institute for Civil Discourse and several other deliberative democracy groups [including NCDD]. The National Institute for Civil Discourse has joined in this initiative because we believe mental health is one of the most pressing issues facing our country, yet is one of the most difficult issues for Americans to talk about.  We hope to engage thousands of Americans in a range of setting: small-group discussions, large forums, online conversations and large-scale events. The dialogues are supported by an array of local officials, nonprofit organizations, professional associations, foundations, and health care providers.

In over 50 communities, planning has begun for the community conversations on mental health. The community conversations page at www.mentalhealth.gov describes the basic parameters of these events and the online map at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org shows the full range of places and organizations involved. Two large-scale events of several hundred people each have already been convened this summer in Sacramento, CA and Albuquerque, NM.

In Sacramento, local and state officials and community leaders were extremely supportive, including Mayor Kevin Johnson who attended the event along with members of his staff. Congresswoman Doris Matsui attended and talked about the State of Mental Health Matters. Sacramento aggressively used social media to recruit young people and it paid off. Thirty percent of the 350 people in the room were between the ages of 19-24. Local television and print media provided good coverage, including a segment on the local NBC affiliate KCRA.

A diverse group of three hundred people attended the forum in Albuquerque. Former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici addressed the crowd, along with Mayor Richard Barry who joined people in the discussions and committed to act on some of the suggestions that emerged from the day. Albuquerque also received local television and print media coverage of the event, including a segment on KRQE.

Now that the events are completed, each city will have a Community Action page under the Outcomes section on our website, www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org. Information about next steps, the outcomes of the event, relevant documents and media articles will be housed there.

Both cities have robust action planning committees composed of local organizations and leaders committed to incorporating the strategies expressed by the participants into Community Action Plans that will guide their cities’ responses to mental health going forward. Some of those strategies included: strengthening existing resources, improving preventive services and continuity of care, teaching mental health services in schools, and communicating information about mental health services to young people using more extensive social media.

E. Coast Forums on Lessons Learned from Hurricane Sandy

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NIF-logoFor those of you working on the East Coast or in community preparedness, we recommend you check out a recent post from the National Issues Forums Institute on a series of public forums being hosted by WHYY and the Penn Project for Civic Engagement.  The goal of the forums is to engage local communities in discussion on the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and what individuals, communities, and governments can do to be better prepared next time. With two forums already having been hosted, the next forums are slated for August 27th along the Jersey Shore.

The project description, dates, and locations for the forums can be found at WHYY’s website here.  You can read NIFI’s coverage of the project and find links to the audio commentary below, or you find the original post here.

Engaging the Public to Talk about the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy – Listen to Audio Commentary by Chris Satullo at WHYY

Listen to “Restoring the shore is about emotions as well as engineering”
Listen to “Ready for next time? Rethinking the Jersey Shore after Sandy”
Project description with dates and locations

This summer in Philadelphia, WHYY/Newsworks is sponsoring a series of public forums titled Ready for Next Time? Rethinking the Shore after Sandy. Five public forums are being held during July and August 2013 in a variety of locations around Philadelphia. Forums are free to attend but registration is requested.

Chris Satullo, executive director of news and civic dialogue at WHYY, Inc. describes the public forums project in a number of brief audio, print, and photo pieces including:

Restoring the shore is about emotions as well as engineering (An audio file posted July 21, 2013):

Restoring the Shore is not just about flood maps, building codes and economic multipliers…

But as this nostalgia inspires, can it also blind and distort? Might we throw good money after bad, ignoring the storm’s clear evidence about where unwise risk lies?  In striving to hang onto what we love most about the Shore, might we strew too much treasure right in the path of the next storm.

Because there will be a next storm.

These questions sit at the heart of WHYY’s community forum series called: Ready for Next Time? Rethinking the Shore After Sandy…

Rethinking the shore forum zeroes in on better planning leadership (a slide show and article posted July 16, 2013)

It was a night for expressing hopes, and the skepticism that undermines them.

About 60 people gathered at WHYY Monday night for the first event in our summer-long civic dialogue project: “Ready for Next Time? Rethinking the Shore After Sandy.”

The group divided into four smaller breakout sessions, each led by a moderator from the Penn Project for Civic Engagement and using an issue guide we prepared. Folks talked through the long-term choices facing New Jersey as it responds to the challenges left behind by the storms known as Irene and Sandy….

Ready for next time? Rethinking the Jersey Shore after Sandy (listen to an audio file/read this piece posted June 24, 2013, describes the project and lists dates and locations of forums)

For the last year, a horde of Jersey Shore property owners have been muttering an F-word under their breath.

An F-acronymn, actually. As in FEMA – short for Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Post-Sandy, people down the Shore have had many complaints about FEMA – confusing rules, late-arriving checks and, above all, those flood maps.

FEMA issued revised maps last week, which sharply reduced the size of the highest-risk flood zones and let many homeowners sleep easier.

So perhaps this is a moment to invite some calmer discussion about how to respond long-term to the lessons of Sandy – and Irene before her…

For more information about this project, contact Chris Satullo at csatullo@whyy.org, or NCDD supporting member Harris Sokoloff at harriss@gse.upenn.edu.

Join us on tomorrow’s NCDD Confab with Rich Harwood

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We’ve got 150 signed up for tomorrow’s confab call with Rich Harwood, but there are still some spots left if you haven’t registered yet! The call will take place tomorrow (Weds, August 7th) from 2:00 to 3:30 Eastern / 11-12:30 Pacific.

RichHarwoodOur confabs (interactive conference calls) are free and open to all NCDD members and potential members. Register here if you’d like to join us.

Rich Harwood is president and founder of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation and author of numerous books including his latest, The Work of Hope. A leader in our field for more than two decades, Rich was invited to Newtown to help community leaders and the public decide what to do with Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of last December’s mass shooting that shocked the nation and reignited debates over gun rights and mental health.

What happened, and what can Rich’s experience teach us about helping communities in crisis? Join us tomorrow to find out more, plus tell your own stories about working in distressed communities.

Peter Levine takes on the question “Do we live in a republic or a democracy?”

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I am excited to see the latest post on scholar Peter Levine’s blog, which tackles the bewildering question (I’ve found it bewildering, anyway!), Do we live in a republic or a democracy?

My pat answer to that question has been both — the U.S. is a democratic republic or a representative democracy; that in a large country you need some combination of elected representatives and direct citizen voice.  I’ve also said that this is partly a question of semantics and of changing definitions over time.  I’m happy to see I wasn’t far off. :)

But Levine has taken the time to answer this question thoroughly, with quotes and details from throughout America’s history. As many of our field consider themselves to be part of a movement towards a more deliberative, engaged democracy (NCDD members have written many books with titles like Democracy in Motion, Slow Democracy, the Tao of Democracy, and the Next Form of Democracy), we’d better be able to channel Peter an perhaps quote Ronald Reagan (see below) when we’re on the receiving end of this question!

Peter begins with a quote from Ronald Reagan:

“You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.”

- President Ronald Reagan, Normandy, June 6, 1984

Here are some pertinent excerpts from this valuable post:

From World War I until recently, leaders of both major political parties routinely claimed that the United States was a democracy. Politicians often called us “the greatest democracy on earth” and asserted that the purpose of both world wars, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War had been to defend democracy. The main debate was whether we had attained a democracy or were still struggling to be one, with the strongest skeptics on the left. A perennial argument pitted left critics–who asserted that our domestic and foreign policies were anti-democratic–against conservative defenders of our credentials as a real democracy.

This consensus about goals has broken down because the hard right now says that we were not founded as a democracy and should not be one….

How did this semantic ambiguity arise? The word “democracy” is of Greek origin. It literally means “rule of (or by) the people.” One could hold that the sovereign power in the US is the people–and hence we have a democracy in the etymological sense. Like all old words, however, “democracy” has accumulated resonances beyond its etymological origins. It may invoke the Greek city-states (whether seen as ideals or as disasters) or mass modern societies.

“Republic” comes from the Latin. My Latin dictionary says that “publicus” means “belonging to the people.” Thus “res publica” means the “thing belonging to the people,” whereas “democracy” is the “people’s rule.” If there is a significant difference in the etymological sense of these words, it is the difference between something that the people have (a republic) versus a power they wield (democracy)…

Ultimately, the United States can be called republican and democratic. The two words have interestingly different origins and resonances but are not sharply distinguishable. Nor do we have either a pure republic/democracy. Some limitations on the republic/democratic element are wise, but our current system is flawed by most standards. Although our democratic/republican aspirations are only partly realized, they remain beacons.

Check out the full post at http://peterlevine.ws/?p=12096.

White House to recognize two NCDD members at today’s “Champions of Change” event

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Below is the press release for today’s White House event, which NCDD Board chair Marla Crockett and other NCDD members are attending.  I was honored to have been asked for my suggestions for who should be recognized at today’s event, and two of my four nominees were chosen:  Steven Clift of e-democracy.org and Anita Brown Graham of NC State’s Institute for Emerging Issues.

Congratulations to Steven and Anita!  We’re proud of you and your myriad accomplishments!!

You can watch the event live at www.whitehouse.gov/live right now.

White House Highlights Open Government and Civic Hacking “Champions of Change”

WASHINGTON, DC – On Tuesday, July 23rd, the White House will honor 15 leaders and organizations as open government and civic hacking “Champions of Change.” As entrepreneurs, innovators, organizers, and community leaders, these “Champions of Change” have made a tremendous positive impact by building high-tech tools to help health workers and disaster-response crews better serve communities; piloting innovative programs to involve traditionally disengaged communities in local governance; using new technologies to enhance government transparency and collaboration; and more.

When presenting his new management agenda earlier this month, President Obama said, “… We the people recognize that this government belongs to us, and it’s up to each of us and every one of us to make it work better…We all have a stake in government success — because the government is us.”

The White House Champions of Change program was created as part of President Obama’s Winning the Future Initiative. Through this program, the White House highlights individuals, businesses, and organizations whose extraordinary stories and accomplishments positively impact our communities.

To watch this event live, visit www.whitehouse.gov/live at 10:00 am ET today. To learn more about the White House Champions of Change program and nominate a Champion, visit www.whitehouse.gov/champions.

Here is the list of “Champs”:

Anita Brown-Graham, Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues at NC State University, Raleigh, NC
Anita Brown-Graham is Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) at NC State University, a think-and-do tank focused on tackling big issues that affect North Carolina’s future growth and prosperity. From energy, to fiscal modernization, to improving our systems of higher education, IEI takes the lead in convening state leaders in business, higher education and government to address these issues in a comprehensive, long-term way to prepare the state for future challenges and opportunities. In her role at IEI, Anita led the development of the Emerging Issues Commons, a first of its kind civic engagement tool – both a physical space and an online hub that stands to transform how citizens across the state connect with each other, access information, and take action in the decades to come. Prior to her leadership at IEI, Anita worked as faculty of the School of Government at UNC Chapel Hill for 13 years, training communities in strategic planning to revitalize their distressed rural communities. Her work inspired both rural and urban communities to work together for a better future for the state. Anita is a William C. Friday Fellow, American Marshall Fellow, and Eisenhower Fellow.

Steven Clift, Founder of E-Democracy, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Steven Clift is @democracy on Twitter. He launched E-Democracy.org in 1994 and it is the world’s first election information website. His “government by day, citizen by night” insights were built as leader of the State of Minnesota’s first e-government initiative. He spoke across 30 countries for over a decade from Estonia to Libya to Mongolia on open government and civic participation to support non-partisan, volunteer-powered efforts for inclusive online local democracy. An Ashoka Fellow, today he is E-Democracy’s Executive Director. He leads a dedicated team with the BeNeighbors.org effort to connect all neighbors online (and off) in public life across race and ethnicity, generations, immigrant and native-born, and more. He lives with his lovely wife and two children in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Brad Lander, New York City Council Member, Brooklyn, NY
Brad Lander is a New York City Council Member representing Brooklyn’s 39th District, and a leader on issues of affordable housing, livable communities, the environment, and public education. Named one of “Today’s Social Justice Heroes” by The Nation magazine, Lander is co-chair of the Council’s Progressive Caucus and was one of the first councilmembers to bring “participatory budgeting” to his district, giving residents the power to decide which projects to support with their tax dollars. Prior to serving in the City Council, Brad directed the Pratt Center for Community Development and the Fifth Avenue Committee, a nationally-recognized community development organization.

Alderman Joe Moore, City of Chicago, 49th Ward, Chicago, IL
Known as a pioneer for political reform, governmental transparency and democratic governance, Joe Moore represents Chicago’s 49th Ward, one of the nation’s most economically and racially diverse communities. Moore became the first elected official to bring “participatory budgeting” to the United States. Each year, Moore turns over $1 million of his discretionary capital budget to a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making in which his constituents decide through direct vote how to allocate his budget. Moore’s participatory budgeting model has since been adopted by four of his Chicago City Council colleagues, as well as city council members in New York City, San Francisco, and Vallejo, California.

Steve Spiker, Director of Research & Technology at the Urban Strategies Council, Moraga, CA
Steve Spiker (Spike) is the Director of Research & Technology at the Urban Strategies Council, a social change nonprofit supporting innovation and collaboration based in Oakland for almost 25 years. He leads the Council’s research, spatial analysis, civic innovation, open data, and technology efforts. Spike has research experience in community development, housing, criminology, spatial epidemiology and reentry issues. He loves data, visualization, GIS and strategic technology implementation, especially open source tech. Spike is the co-founder of OpenOakland, a Code for America Brigade and is helping guide government technology decisions and civic engagement in the East Bay. In 2012 Spike was chosen as one of the Next American City Vanguard class. He is an outspoken supporter of open data and open government and speaks across the USA about data driven decision making. He also campaigns to end human trafficking and runs Stealing Beauty Photography.

Travis Laurendine, Founder and CEO of LA Labs, New Orleans, LA
Travis Laurendine doesn’t fit in the typical bio box any more than his hair fits into the typical hat. As a serial entrepreneur he has been on the cutting edge of both the web startup and entertainment industry for nearly 10 years. He launched his first web startup while an Economics major at Vanderbilt University, where he was also selected as the first Vanderbilt student with a film to make it in the Nashville Film Festival. When Hurricane Katrina struck his hometown of New Orleans, he stayed back in the city and found himself wearing the hats of startup CEO, concert promoter, restaurant general manager, standup comic, film/video producer and director, MTV News journalist, band manager/agent, investor, hackathon organizer, Entrepreneur-In- Residence, and cultural ambassador. Recently, he founded Louisiana’s first hackathon organization, CODEMKRS, which is currently being transformed into Louisiana’s only modern code school. This summer he has organized hackathons for giant music festivals JazzFest and Bonnaroo and is currently planning San Francisco’s Outside Lands’ first hackathon. His official job is being the founder and CEO of LA Labs, a startup laboratory focused on the marriage of entertainment and technology that uses New Orleans as the ultimate creative incubator. He is thankful for his loving family and friends and the daily inspiration he gets from the great city of New Orleans.

Scott Phillips, Co-Founder and CEO of Isocentric Networks, Tulsa, OK
Scott Phillips is the co-founder and CEO of Isocentric Networks, an advanced data center services company based in Tulsa, OK. He was previously the founder and CEO of a sensor technology company whose work included a project for NASA for use on a manned mission to Mars. Scott is also a founding board member of Fab Lab Tulsa, a 21st Century non-profit community center for innovation, entrepreneurship, and STEM education through a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scott’s current passion lives at the nexus of entrepreneurship, the maker movement, and civic hacking, three transformative movements that he believes are democratizing how we live, work and play. According to Scott, it is easy to understand the impact of civic hacking on government when you view it in three steps; give citizens transparency, give citizens a voice, then give citizens ownership.

George Luc, Co-Founder and CEO of GivePulse, Austin, TX
George Luc is Co-Founder and CEO of GivePulse, a social network that matches people to causes and enables nonprofits, companies and affinities to manage volunteers, list events and track service hours in one central community. GivePulse launched earlier this year in 2013 and has since tracked over 100K service hours and mobilized over 5K volunteers in Austin alone. George has a BS and MS in Computer Science from Virginia Tech with an emphasis in Human Computer Interaction. He spent much of his early career developing technology for people with disabilities and has worked with companies like Daylert, IBM, ESO and HomeAway. He serves as a board member of City of Austin Volunteer & Service, Austin Convention Center and Visitor’s Bureau, KLRU, Open Door Preschool, and was a City Commissioner for Austin Mayor’s Committee for People with Disabilities.

Craig Michael Lie Njie, CEO, Kismet World Wide Consulting, Mountain View, CA
Mr. Lie Njie is CEO of Kismet World Wide Consulting, which he founded in 2002. Lie has over 20 years of professional experience and currently consults world-wide on a variety of topics including privacy, security, technology design and development, education, entrepreneurship, management, sales and marketing, and mobile application development. Lie was given his name as an honorarium for his three years of service (2005-2008) as a Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia, West Africa, where he designed, deployed, and taught the first two years of The Gambia’s first Bachelor’s in Computer Science program at the University of The Gambia (UTG). Today his program is still successful and sustainable. After returning from the Peace Corps, Lie recruited and managed a volunteer team to build and release the free WasteNot iOS app to help people world-wide share their good ideas for reducing environmental impact. He furthermore helped the United Nations as a technology consultant and researched and documented the privacy risks of health and fitness mobile apps.

Christopher Whitaker, Project Management Consultant at the Smart Chicago Collaborative, Chicago, IL
Christopher Whitaker is a project management consultant at the Smart Chicago Collaborative, utilizing his experience in government and community organizing to advance civic innovation in Chicago. Whitaker also serves as the Chicago Brigade Captain for Code for America, supporting civic hacking events and teaching a weekly Civic Hacking 101 class. He is a graduate of DePaul University (MPA) and Sam Houston State University (BA, Political Science). Previously, Whitaker served with the US Army in Iraq as a mechanized infantryman.

Jessica Klein, Co-Founder of Rockaway Help, Brooklyn, NY
Together with a group of journalists and residents, civic hacker and designer Jessica Klein co-founded “Rockaway Help” in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Rockaway Help is committed to empowering the community to find solutions for emergency response, preparedness and rebuilding through hyperlocal open news and the development of innovative community-designed technologies. As part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, Jessica lead workshops and hackathons for designers, engineers and Rockaway Beach, New York residents to identify problems and prototype design or technology solutions in the devastated coastal community. Jessica is currently the Creative Lead of the Mozilla Open Badges project where she promotes openness and creativity in formal and informal learning environments and develops ways for learners to design their own unique narrative around their credentials. Jessica created the Hackasaurus project, the Web X-Ray Goggles and Thimble tools to help teens learn how to code through hacking. Over the last decade, she has worked at a variety of institutions dedicated to learning including the Museum of Arts & Design, The Rubin Museum of Art, The Institute of Play, Startl, The Hive and Sesame Workshop. She also founded OceanLab NYC, a project which asked parents, teachers and kids in the NYC community to investigate their urban coastal environment through casual interaction and play.

Caitria O’Neill, Co-Founder of Recovers, San Francisco, CA
Caitria O’Neill is a co-founder of Recovers, a disaster preparedness and recovery technology company in San Francisco. After a tornado struck her hometown, Monson, MA in 2011, Caitria and her sister Morgan worked within their community to connect survivors with local skills and donations. This kind of seat-of-the-pants organizing happens in every neighborhood, after every storm. The Recovers team has turned the best practices of many efforts into a user-friendly tech toolkit for risk mitigation and community response. In less than two years they have helped hundreds of thousands of people find information, aid, and ways to pitch in. Caitria holds a BA in Government from Harvard University, FEMA NIMS/ICS certifications, and was named an Up-and- Coming CEO by Forbes Magazine. Her work has been featured by CNN Opinion, TED.com, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Gerrie Schipske, Councilwoman on the Long Beach City Council, Long Beach City, CA
Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske is currently serving her second term on the Long Beach City Council. She has championed open, transparent and accountable local government since she took office in 2006 by being the first elected official in Long Beach to disclose their calendar and to communicate daily via blog, email, Facebook and Twitter. In January 2012, she took public education and transparency efforts one step further with her “Open Up Long Beach” initiative and website which provide residents increased access to the city’s every day affairs and documents, and includes opportunities for residents to “ go behind the scenes” of city operations. These efforts were lauded in California Forward’s report: The State of Transparency in California: 2013. Gerrie also brought transparency to the Medical Board of California on which she serves by initiating the requirement that members disclose each meeting any contacts they have had with interested parties. Gerrie earned her JD from Pacific Coast University School of Law, her MA from George Washington University, her BA from University of California, Irvine and her RNP from Harbor UCLA Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioner Program. She is the author of three books on the history of Long Beach, California

Robert Davis, Co-Founder of RadSocial, Cooper City, FL
Robert Davis is a recent marketing graduate from Nova Southeastern University in Davie, FL. His day job consists of managing a social media consultancy for small to medium sized businesses, and at night one can find him at the local maker and hacker spaces around Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Robert is a Code for America intern alumni (’12) and an avid supporter of creating civic tools with open data for the public good. Along with fellow Floridian Cristina Solana, the two created the Florida Bill Tracker, forked from the MinnPost and redeployed to easily track controversial Florida legislation. Robert is also an avid traveler and surfer, and hopes to inspire others to change their world regardless of age or expertise.

Deborah Parker, Tulalip Tribes Vice Chair, Tulalip, WA
Deborah Parker Tsi-Cy-Altsa (Tulalip/Yaqui) was elected to the Tulalip Tribes Board of Directors in 2012. As Vice-Chairwoman, Deborah brings to Tulalip leadership nearly two decades of experience as a policy analyst, program developer, communications specialist, and committed cultural advocate and volunteer in the tribal and surrounding communities. Serving as a Legislative Policy Analyst in the Office of Governmental Affairs for the Tulalip Tribes from 2005-2012, Deborah engaged in the legislative process on behalf of the Tulalip Tribes by providing quality analysis of issues most pertinent to the exercise of sovereignty and tribal governance, with particular emphasis in the areas of education, finance, taxation, and healthcare. Before joining legislative affairs Deborah developed two unique outreach and education programs for the Tulalip Tribes. Young Mothers was a culturally relevant program for teen mothers, and the Tribal Tobacco Program sought to inspire responsible tobacco use among tribal members, while acknowledging tobacco’s sacred place in Indigenous cultures. Prior to her work for the Tulalip Tribes Deborah served as Director of the Residential Healing School of the Tseil-Waututh Nation in Canada, and in the Treaty Taskforce Office of the Lummi Nation, where she was mentored by American Indian leaders such as Joe Delacruz, Billy Frank, Henry Cagey and Jewell James. As a passionate advocate for improved education for tribal members, and a belief in the inherent right of all Native Americans to expect and receive a quality education, one that is free from racial or cultural bias, Deborah is focused on educational reform, which includes developing curriculum that is a true reflection of an Indigenous ethics and knowledge system. Deborah remains committed to education by volunteering her time in the local schools where her children are enrolled. Deborah graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Ethnic Studies and Sociology where she distinguished herself as a scholar and a young Indigenous leader. Deborah lives in Tulalip with her husband Myron Dewey (Paiute/Shoshone) and their five children.

A Turning Point for the Public Engagement Field?

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We live in exciting, challenging and, in many ways, unprecedented times for governance in the U.S.  With massive public budget cuts, political polarization, and historically low levels trust in government intersecting with high unemployment, shifting demographics, and looming climate challenges, substantively involving the public in governance has rarely ever been more difficult or more necessary.

PetePetersonBut recent developments in California have sparked conversation here at NCDD about how the convergence of these circumstances may be creating a perfect storm in which the use of dialogue, deliberation, and pubic engagement can be catapulted to levels of reach and effectiveness that we have yet to see.  So we want to invite you to reflect with us on the significance that this moment might have for our work, and the opportunities it presents to reshape how citizens and government interact.

Our reflection began with a recent article penned by our friend, Republican Pete Peterson, head of the Davenport Institute (an NCDD organizational member), who contends that the problem with government is not whether it is too big or too small, as is the common framing in political debate.  Instead, he suggests that the issue is actually that, for many very good reasons, citizens no longer feel they can trust the government to do the right thing.

This lack of trust complicates other social and political realities, and feeds a downward spiral of relations between publics and their governments.  But Peterson believes that this situation hides a golden opportunity to begin boldly experimenting with new ways that public officials can put governance and decision-making power back into the hands of the public at large — that if everyday citizens can’t trust the government to address public problems in effective ways, maybe they can trust themselves and their communities.

As practitioners and scholars of our field know, some of the most creative and effective solutions to public problems come from the utilization of the tools of public engagement. But we also know that one of the greatest barriers to expanding those tools is the inertia of the status quo in public engagement, and that in many ways, we need a breakthrough that would elevate and normalize the kinds of citizen participation that we know works.

No one knows what that breakthrough will look like, but as Fox & Hounds writer Joe Mathews recently wrote, it might look like an experienced public engagement professional being elected to public office and using the position to expand the government’s official adoption and expansion of quality public engagement processes. And with the recent announcement that Pete Peterson will be running for California’s Secretary of State in the next election, just such a breakthrough for public engagement may be more within reach than ever. (We announced it here on the blog on April 23rd.)

Mathews points out that “the Secretary of State’s office [is] the natural headquarters for remaking governance in California around models of legitimate civic engagement.” And in the wake of the drastic budget cuts that have seen California government shrink in past years, the state is in a unique position to experiment with innovative forms of public engagement and participatory governance.  If those experiments go well — if Californians are empowered to have more say so in their own communities and rebuild some of their eroded faith in government — it could prompt local and state governments all over the country to begin running their own experiments in public engagement, which could eventually lead to a long-term shift in the way that governments engage with publics in the US.

This is what we mean by “a perfect storm” for the expansion of our field.  If just one influential state in the country could start demonstrating that government can be made more accountable, transparent, effective, and efficient by scaling up deliberative and participatory public engagement models, today’s political, economic, and social climate could prove to be fertile ground for that up-scaling to spread like wildfire.  We won’t speculate as to exactly what that would look like or what kind of results it would have, but we think that everyday people becoming empowered to play a bigger role in defining their communities’ priorities and decision-making can hardly be a bad thing.

An upsurge in robust public engagement could also have an impact on the left-right polarization our country is experiencing.  Peterson is running as a Republican, and as his article highlights, there is a great deal that conservatives should ostensibly be able to identify with and get behind when it comes to real public engagement, and he calls for conservatives to rally behind the cause.  It will be telling to watch how Peterson’s candidacy is received by a state and a field that has more than its fair share of progressives.

Still, we have to remember that Peterson’s run for Secretary of State is in no way a sure thing or a quick fix for the ills of the state or the country.  Indeed there are risks involved in his candidacy — the public and civic engagement movement could actually be damaged if Peterson, if elected makes mistakes or fails to implement the kinds of changes he sets out to make, and there is no telling whether California’s current situation will truly be improved by more participatory avenues for governance.  But Peterson’s announcement statement suggests that his campaign is about real engagement and transforming how the state is governed, and it seems like a serious.  So while there are no guarantees, we note that the potential for a significant shift is there, and that means we’ll be keeping an eye on next year’s elections in California.