Category Archives: From the Community

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.

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.

Bridging Our Divides on Criminal Justice Reform

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As we look toward NCDD’s 2016 national conference on Bridging Our Divides, we want to lift up stories of D&D projects that are actively showing how people can work together across huge differences, and NCDD member organization Living Room Conversations is a powerful example of that kind of work.  We wanted to share a recent article from their blog about the change LRC has brought to the criminal justice reform conversation, and we encourage you to read it below or find the original here.

Living Room Conversations & Criminal Justice Reform

LRC-logo

Critics of dialogue often ask, “what’s the point of talking?  It’s not like it’s going to change anything, right?”

In January of 2013, a Living Room Conversation took place between Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn and Mark Meckler co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.  After being surprised to discover how much they all agreed about criminal justice reform, Joan and Living Room Conversations partners decided to make this topic a priority in future efforts.

Front page coverage of the conversation between Joan and Mark led to a grant from California Endowment to organize Living Room Conversations about realignment (a change in CA prison policy that keeps non-serious offenders in county)  and community safety.  Those California conversations have prompted further conversations in Portland and Kansas City.

In 2013, Joan and Mark were invited to speak together on stage at Citizens University and Harvard Kennedy School – a clip of the Citizens University presentation was shared widely on Upworthy.

Joan wrote op-eds  about criminal justice reform with Grover Norquist and Matt Kibbe in 2014.  As the Living Room Conversations project got more and more attention, so did criminal justice reform – including a World Affairs Forum presentation that highlighted Living Room Conversations’ contribution to the the new momentum for criminal justice reform.

In October of 2014, these efforts led to Joan and Debilyn Molineaux helping convene a meeting of leaders in DC on the left and right,  from inside and outside D.C., to talk about opportunities to work together to achieve meaningful progress on criminal justice issues where we already have fundamental agreement. That meeting helped inspire the creation of the cross-partisan Coalition For Safety and Justice – bringing together the Center for American Progress, Koch Industries, the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform, FreedomWorks and others in the unlikeliest of alliances.

In December civil rights activist Van Jones co-hosted an event for Living Room Conversations focusing on criminal justice reform.  He shared details about his new partnership with Newt Gingrich to form #Cut50, aimed at reducing the prison population. This April Van and Newt hosted a bi-partisan summit in D.C. on reducing the prison population.  They had a fabulous turnout!

It is increasingly evident that criminal Justice Reform has reached a new place in the public consciousness. In May the NY Times had front page reports of presidential candidates on the right and left proposing to reform our system because there are too many people in our prisons and our drug policy is not working.  Culture leaders like John Oliver and John Stewart recently eviscerated civil asset forfeiture laws and incarceration that is caused by poverty rather than breaking criminal laws.  And leaders in Texas and Georgia now brag about reducing their prison populations.  Laws and enforcement practices are beginning to change and prison populations are declining.

So maybe there’s a point in talking after all?

You can find the original version of this Living Room Conversations blog post at www.livingroomconversations.org/2016/06/living-room-conversations-criminal-justice-reform.

Are Relationships the Real Product of Deliberation?

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Last week, NCDD supporting member Peter Levine shared the message below on the NCDD discussion listserv summarizing some key lessons from a book review he wrote of two recent books authored by NCDD members Caroline W. Lee and Josh Lerner. Peter argues that a key contribution of public deliberation lies in bolstering capacity for engaging in “relational politics” – not necessarily democracy or deliberation. We encourage you to can read his insightful piece below, find his original blog summary here, or read his full review article here.

Saving Relational Politics

In the June edition of Perspectives on Politics, I have an article entitled “Saving Relational Politics“* I review Caroline W. Lee’s Do-It-Yourself Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry and Josh Lerner’s Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics and I advance an argument of my own.

I argue that what’s most valuable about activities like public deliberations, planning exercises, and Participatory Budgeting is not actually “deliberative democracy.” Neither political equality (democracy) nor reasonable discussion about decisions (deliberation) are essential to these activities. Instead, they are forms of relational politics, in which people “make decisions or take actions knowing something about one another’s ideas, preferences, and interests.” That makes them akin to practices like one-on-one interviews in community organizing or Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed.

Relational politics has disadvantages and limitations – it’s not all that we need – but it is an essential complement to well-designed impersonal forms of politics (bureaucracies, legal systems, and markets). And it’s endangered, because genuine forms of relational politics are not valuable to governments or companies. Relational politics still occurs at small scales, but we need strategies for increasing its prevalence and impact against powerful opposition.

Lee’s book is a useful critique of typical strategies for expanding relational politics, which involve developing small models and trying to get powerful organizations to adopt them. Lerner contributes a strategy, which is to make processes more fun so that they are desirable to both citizens and institutions. I review both books positively but argue that they leave us without a persuasive strategy for saving relational politics. After considering some alternatives, I argue that relational politics is most likely to spread as a by-product of mass movements that have political agendas. However, we need some people to pay explicit attention to the quality of the participatory processes.

*Per the copyright agreement, I am posting the “version of record” on my personal web page after its appearance at Cambridge Journals Online, along with the following bibliographical details, a notice that the copyright belongs to Cambridge University Press, and a link to the online edition of the journal:

“Saving Relational Politics.” Peter Levine (2016).  Perspectives on Politics. Volume 14, Issue02, June 2016, pp. 468-473. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=10356927

You can find the original version of the post from Peter Levine’s blog at http://peterlevine.ws/?p=17055.

5 Chances to Deliberate Online with NCDD Member Orgs

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Attention civic tech geeks and newbies alike! This month, there will be several opportunities to participate in online deliberative forums about how we can tackle major issues facing our society. If you’ve never had the chance to participate in an online deliberation, we highly recommend you take advantage of the chance to participate in one of these upcoming events!

There are three great NCDD organizational members hosting forums this month. The Kettering Foundation (KF) and National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) are teaming up to host four forums using Common Ground for Action (CGA), the great new civic tech tool that they partnered to create. And Intellitics is hosting a special week-long deliberation using their text-based deliberation platform, Zilino.

All of these forums will be using NIFI’s expertly-made issue guides to help participants walk through deliberation about major decisions related to immigration, economic inequality, and health care. The dates, topics, and registration links to all five online deliberative forums are below. You can learn more about the NIFI/KF forums in the NIFI blog post here and about the Intellitics forum here.

We hope to “see” many of you later this month at one or more of these online events:

Climate Choices with NIFI & KF
Friday, June 17, 12-2 pm EST
Register here

Making Ends Meet with Intellitics
Monday, June 20 at 9am EST – Friday, June 24 at 3pm EST
Register here

Immigration with NIFI & KF
Wednesday, June 22, 12-2 pm EST
Register here

Making Ends Meet with NIFI & KF
Thursday, June 23, 3-5pm EST
Register here

Health Care with NIFI & KF
Thursday, June 30, 3-5pm EST
Register here

D&D CAN Hosts Call on Networks & Climate Change Work

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We encourage our NCDD members to register for the next D&D Climate Action Network (D&D CAN) conference call coming up on Tuesday, June 21st from 5-7pm Eastern / 2-4pm Pacific!

D&D CAN is a network led by NCDD supporting member Linda Ellinor of the Dialogue Group that is working to foster shared learning, networking and collaboration among those seeking to use dialogue, deliberation, and other process skills to address climate change. The monthly D&D CAN conference calls are a great way to connect with the network, and we encourage you to register to save your spot in their next conversation by clicking here.

This month’s call features NCDD sustaining member Beth Tener, who will lead a conversation on the topic of Networks: New Paths for Collaborative Climate Change Work. The call will focus on stories of network models that are springing up among people and organizations to connect and align around larger goals. Here’s how D&D CAN describes the call:

To address most of the challenging complex issues we face, such as climate change, the solutions cannot be achieved by one organization alone or one sector, such as business, advocates, or government. New models are springing up based in the principles of networks, where the work of many people and organizations can connect and align around a larger goal to enable them to have greater impact individually and together. On this webinar, Beth Tener will share stories of network approaches related to climate change, from her work as a facilitator and strategy coach, with an emphasis on how D&D professionals can use their skills in new ways.

The D&D CAN calls are being hosted on the QiqoChat platform, which is run by NCDD member Lucas Cioffi and about which we hosted a recent Tech Tuesday call (you can hear the recording of the call here).

The combination of online D&D technology and powerful ideas makes this call an exciting and dynamic conversation, so be sure to learn more and register today at https://ddcan.qiqochat.com. We hope to hear many of our members on the call!

 

MetroQuest Hosts Online Engagement Webinar, 6/14

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We encourage NCDDers tpo participate in an educational webinar on a case study of successful online engagement from British Columbia tomorrow, June 14th at 1pm that will be hosted by Metroquest, an NCDD organizational member. We originally heard about the webinar in the post below from the Davenport Institute and their Gov 2.0 Watch blog. You can read the post below, find the original post here, or go ahead and register for the webinar here.

Webinar: Online Engagement

Head’s up for a webinar offered by MetroQuest looking at how the city of Abbotsford, BC has implemented a successful online engagement called Abbotsfwd.

When: Tuesday, June 14, 2016
1:00-1:45 pm ET, 10:00- 10:45 am PT

Registration is required, but free of charge. You can register here.

More from the Metroquest description of the webinar:

This highly visual 45-minute webinar will present research findings and proven best practices, practical tips and award-winning case studies to guide agencies towards the successful application of online community engagement for planning projects. Participants will walk away with an understanding about how to leverage digital engagement to achieve unprecedented results using cost-effective tools. This session will feature our special guests Abbotsforward who will be online to talk about the innovative ways they combined online and targeted face to face community engagement to involve over 8,000 community members in the creation of an official plan for Abbotsford, BC. They will also share advice for agencies seeking to improve the breadth and effectiveness of their community engagement efforts and talk about the positive difference that broad community support is making in their implementation process.

You can find the original version of this Gov 2.0 Watch blog post at http://gov20watch.pepperdine.edu/2016/06/webinar-online-engagement.

OSU Launches Divided Community Project

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We were happy to receive the announcement below from The Ohio State University, which recently launched an important and timely project called the Divided Community Project, and they have selected NCDD supporting member Grande Lum, one of our featured speakers at NCDD2014 when he headed the US Dept. of Justice’s Community Relations Service. We congratulate Grande and look forward to seeing the Project’s work develop. Learn more at the Project’s website by clicking here.

Ohio State announces Divided Community Project – Grande Lum joins as Director

Today The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law announces the Divided Community Project.  The project aims to strengthen community efforts to transform division into action and focuses on how communities can respond constructively to civil unrest as well as on how they can identify and meaningfully address the reasons underlying community division.  Earlier this year the Project published its first publications:

 

Both documents are licensed using the Creative Commons so that (with attribution) they may be copied, shared, adapted and tailored to fit the needs of a community or interest group.

The Project is pleased to announce that Grande Lum, Gould Research Fellow and Lecturer at Stanford Law and former Director of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service, has joined Ohio State’s Divided Community Project as the Director.  In guiding the project, Grande will draw on his extensive experience dealing with civil unrest with the Community Relations Service, where he directed a staff of about 40 conciliators intervening in major domestic conflicts over the last few years, as well as his past experience working, writing and teaching in the dispute resolution field.  Grande will advance the Project’s initiatives to establish pilot programs which plan in advance of civil unrest, offer suggestions for improving practice, develop conflict assessment tools, and advocate for the use of collaborative methods for turning community division into positive action. 

On joining the Divided Community Project, Grande wrote: “I am thrilled to be joining the Divided Community Project, at a time when the country is grappling with polarization at seemingly every turn. I look forward to working with the Project’s extraordinary team to move divided communities toward peace and justice.”

The Divided Community Project’s steering committee is composed of seasoned dispute resolution practitioners and academics: Nancy Rogers, Josh Stulberg, Chris Carlson, Susan Carpenter, Craig McEwen,Sarah Rubin, and Andrew Thomas. Bill Froehlich, Langdon Fellow in the Program on Dispute Resolution at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, serves as the Project’s Associate Director.

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Program on Dispute Resolution serves as the host institution. The JAMS Foundation provided significant funding for the creation of the Project and the Kettering Foundation partnered in its early work.  The OSU Democracy Studies Program and Emeritus Academy have both awarded financial assistance that has supported valuable student research assistance for the project.