Telling Our Stories: Featured Entries to NCDD’s Dialogue Storytelling Tool

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

NCDD has been experimenting with collecting examples of dialogue and deliberation projects through the “Dialogue Storytelling Tool” we launched last summer at www.ncdd.org/storytelling-tool.

In partnership with the Kettering Foundation, we’ve been gathering brief case studies and project descriptions from dialogue and deliberation practitioners. Today we’re releasing a 19-page report that shares some of the best entries we’ve received so far.

Please check it out, share it widely, and add your stories today!

Some of the projects you’ll learn about in the doc are UrbanMatters, Migrant Farmworkers Reading Project, the Oregon Citizens Initiative Review, the Palestinian-Jewish Living Room Dialogue, Engaging in Aging, and more.

It has always been more challenging to collect case examples of projects than to get people to share information on their organization, method, or fee-based programs like upcoming trainings. Our strategy with the Dialogue Storytelling Tool is to keep the tool as simple as possible, and to emphasize the convenience of filling out a simple form in order to share your work with Kettering, with Participedia, and on the NCDD blog.

These are the only required fields in the form:

Name and email
Title of program
Short description
Your role in the project

All additional fields are optional! We encourage NCDD members to get in the habit of submitting the basics of all your projects on the tool. We’ll create publications like this one featuring your stories, share them with our friends at Kettering and Participedia, and we hope to eventually feature them on a map of projects.

NCDD members are busy, and we know it’s difficult to find the time to tell people about all your great projects. The Dialogue Storytelling Tool makes it easy to report on your dialogue and deliberation projects and events, and let NCDD help spread the word.

Kettering, Participedia, and NCDD are all interested in what you’ve got going on, and may follow up with you to learn more about your work.

Look for this image in the sidebar on the NCDD site whenever you have a moment to share your project’s story:

Introducing Grande Lum and his work at the US Dept of Justice’s Community Relations Service

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

I want to draw your attention to the important work being done by the Community Relations Service of the Department of Justice in communities like Ferguson that are in crisis. The director of the Community Relations Service, Grande Lum, is one of our featured speakers at the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation coming up in October, and we’re honored to be following his work and to be able to hear from him at the conference.

The Community Relations Service (CRS) is often called “America’s Peacemaker.” Over the years, CRS has worked with thousands of communities, many of whom came together in crisis and emerged stronger and more unified. CRS delivers four services: mediation of disputes, facilitation of dialogue, training, and consulting.

Their must-see resource page provides tips and best practices for police, schools, community leaders, and others who find themselves at the center of crises revolving around division and inequity.

In an August 18th press release from the Department of Justice on the federal civil rights investigation into the death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder highlighted the work of the Community Relations Service in Ferguson, Missouri:

In order to truly begin the process of healing, we must also see an end to the acts of violence in the streets of Ferguson. Those who have been peacefully demonstrating should join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters and others seeking to enflame tensions.

To assist on this front, the Department will be dispatching additional representatives from the Community Relations Service, including Director Grande Lum, to Ferguson. These officials will continue to convene stakeholders whose cooperation is critical to keeping the peace.

And an August 20th post on BuzzFeed covers how the mayor of Sanford, Florida (the town where Trayvon Martin was shot not long ago) has urged Feruson to welcome the help of the Justice Department and especially its Community Relations Service, saying it “saved the day” in Sanford.

Triplett, who is white, was the man in charge a year-and-a-half ago when the killing of Trayvon Martin spiked racial tensions in the area and far beyond. A situation that many expected to explode into violence, didn’t. Peaceful protestors were met with respectful police and public officials.

Triplett credits the the Department of Justice for the calm and in an interview Tuesday he urged Ferguson leaders to embrace the help the feds have to offer. In his town, Triplett said federal officials arrived with experience on how to handle large crowds and engage with protest movements.

They had tips on police tactics, too. “The best thing that you can do is use your mind and your mouth versus an nightstick and a gun. You know, ‘violence breeds violence’ type thing. These guys [Justice Department advisers] have been there, done it, they’re very astute,” Triplett said.

“We on the city side, we fix roads. We make sure your lights turn off and on. We make sure your toilets flush. We cut ribbons for new businesses. So you’ve got to rely on those that know.” Justice Department officials are engaged in Ferguson in full force, with six agencies on the ground in the Missouri town coordinating a federal investigation into the death, monitoring police behavior and trying to build a bridge between authorities and protesters through a previously little-known department branch called the Community Relations Service.

The agency, which has ten regional offices across the country, is specifically designed to diffuse tension after discrimination-charged events and was established as part of the 1964 Civil Rights act. On Wednesday, the head of CRS, Grande Lum, will be in the Justice Department party accompanying Attorney General Eric Holder on his trip to Ferguson.

Holder has been very critical of the police response to protests in Ferguson, and Justice Department officials have pointed to the early involvement of CRS as proof the feds have a better handle on how to deal with the Ferguson protests than local authorities do.

Read the full BuzzFeed article at http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/doj-in-ferguson#1gu9nsk for LOTS more interesting content.

CRS has 10 Regional Directors who supervise conflict resolution specialists (also called conciliation specialists) in regional offices and 4 smaller field offices. These offices are strategically located throughout the country to meet the unique needs of the states and communities they serve.

The Regional Directors are highly trained professional mediators, facilitators, trainers, and consultants who are experienced in bringing together communities in conflict to help them enhance their ability to independently prevent and resolve existing and future concerns.

Regional Directors oversee the regional conflict resolution teams in the development of customized and proactive local solutions. The 10 regional offices are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle. The field offices are located in Miami, Detroit, Houston, and San Francisco. The regional and field offices increase the availability of CRS services to rural communities and aid in rapid deployment during crises.

Grande Lum will be speaking during the closing plenary at the 2014 NCDD conference. Learn more about Grande here, and register today to join us at the conference!

Grande is also a Supporting Member of NCDD, and you can learn more about him on his member page. Also see NCDD’s previous blog post about Top #NCDD Resources for Addressing Racial Conflict & Inequality.

Top #NCDD Resources for Addressing Racial Conflict & Inequality

Posted on August 23, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

The NCDD community has a long history and strong track record of helping people address racism, racial tensions and inequity in their communities. Many of our long-time members were drawn to dialogue work during national crises we’re all reminded of as the situation in Ferguson, Missouri plays out, like the 1991 Rodney King trial, and subsequent Los Angeles riots back in 1992.

These days, with social media and 24 hour news at our fingertips, it seems like local crises can become national crises in a heartbeat. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri is the latest in a long string of incidents that spark outrage in cities where racial tension and inequity is already high, and raise public concern about police treatment of minorities, fairness in the U.S. justice system, media bias, wealth and opportunity gaps, and more.

In times like these, dialogue is key to helping people come together across divides (power divides, income divides, race divides, political divides) to talk through what’s happening and see if we can agree on steps to take going forward.

I want to point you to some helpful resources on race dialogue developed by NCDD members.

Recently, we’ve shared these top-notch resource compilations from a long-time leader in race dialogue, Everyday Democracy:

In the NCDD Resource Center, where you’ll find nearly 3,000 carefully indexed resources to help you in this important work, it’s worth checking out the 67 resources in our Race Issues tag.

Maggie Potapchuk’s resource-rich website, Racial Equity Tools, is another important destination for those engaging people across racial divides.

And you should certainly utilize the discussion guides that NCDDers have developed around these issues…

Racial and Ethnic Tensions: What Should We Do? (NIF Issue Guide)
Crime & Punishment: Imagining a Safer Future for All (IF Discussion Guide)
Community Dialogue Guide (US DOJ’s Community Relations Service)
Fostering Dialogue Across Divides: A Nuts and Bolts Guide (Public Conversations Project)
Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation (Everyday Democracy)

In the Resource Center, I found these by utilizing the sidebar search tool that says “I’m Looking For…” and selecting “manuals & guides” for Resource Type (category) and “race issues” under On This Topic (tag).

What do YOU think are the best resources to help people run dialogues on race issues or the other issues being surfaced by the events in Ferguson? Please add them via the comments here.

Visual Mapping Process Leading into NCDD 2014

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

NCDD is in the midst of an exciting mapping process leading up to our national conference in the DC area this October. We’re conducting this initial mapping project–and a more in depth mapping process we hope to launch at the conference–in collaboration with the Kettering Foundation.

Cool mapping image from www.mindmapart.com.

There is a vast field of organizations, communities and networks whose work centers around collaborative group practices. This work goes by many different names (dialogue and deliberation, deliberative democracy, whole systems change, collective intelligence, collaborative problem solving, etc.), and NCDD was formed to bridge these and other streams of practice to help us learn from, be inspired by, and work with each other.

People use collaborative group practices to reach numerous ends: planning stronger communities, influencing policy, addressing long-standing conflict, inspiring people to work together to solve collective problems, increasing awareness of the nuances of public issues, and helping people connect with each other across political and social divides.

The purpose of this initial mapping project is to help people working in this broad field of practice – especially those who attend the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation – get a better picture of the points of connection, the overlaps, and the possibilities for collaboration between the myriad networks and organizations that are innovating in this field.

The first stage of this mapping project is a very visual one, and was born out of a brainstorming conversation I had with Rosa Zubizarreta. We will begin by interviewing ten highly collaborative organizations that work in different spheres of this work. Kathryn Thomson of LeadershipMind Consulting will conduct the interviews, which will be recorded.

Graphic recorders will use the content generated from interviews with these key organizations and networks to create visually compelling maps of their respective “ecosystems” so that NCDD conference participants may see both the larger, interconnected system and their own points of intersection within that system. (We’re still looking for graphic recorders to partner with, so let us know if you’re interested! We’d love to work with 10 graphic recorders, so we can display a wide range of styles at the conference.)

Graphic mural created by Avril Orloff at the 2008 NCDD conference.

These maps will be on display during the opening plenary of our 2014 national conference, which will bring together about 400 of the most active and influential people in our field.

In the interviews, Kathryn and our graphic recorders will dig into the networks of connections, partnerships, overlaps, and points of possible collaboration among some of the key organizations and communities of practice whose work centers around collaborative group practices.

Kathryn is conducting interviews this month with the following organizations:

Animating Democracy
Art of Hosting
CommunityMatters Partnership
Deliberative Democracy Consortium
Everyday Democracy
Institute for Sustained Dialogue
National Issues Forums Institute
The World Café community
The emerging transpartisan group led by Mark Gerzon
And several other membership organizations NCDD works with, like ICA, IAF and IAP2

We chose to interview these particular organizations and networks not only because we consider them to be highly collaborative, but because they represent a variety of sectors within our broad community. Obviously, there are many other highly collaborative groups in our field that we could have selected.

It is our hope that by seeing some of these ecosystems mapped out and reflected back to the NCDD community, and subsequently creating new maps at the conference, attendees will consider how they might make further, deeper connections that will result in increased capacity for all of us in this field. My recent article in the Journal for Public Deliberation points to a growing desire among many organizations to combine forces, resources and expertise to make a greater impact, and mapping the field will help enable this.

Creating these visual maps is the first step of a larger process. At the October conference, we will announce a more inclusive effort to map the NCDD network using online mapping tools.

Mapping the network is one step toward inviting more people into the kind of leadership that will enable us collectively to grow a more robust, resilient and sustainable network – and recognizing some of the organizations in our field that already embody that kind of leadership.

Let us know your thoughts on this project. And if you are interested in helping advise NCDD on the second phase of our mapping process and have some knowledge about different approaches to digital mapping, please email me at sandy@ncdd.org to let me know!

Parker Palmer’s book “Healing the Heart of Democracy” now out in paperback

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

One of NCDD’s most well-known and well-loved members, Parker Palmer, alerted me today that one of his newest books, Healing the Heart of Democracy, is soon to be available in paperback.

Here’s what U.S. Congressman John Lewis, had to say about the book: “We have been trying to bridge the great divides in this great country for a long time. In this book, Parker J. Palmer urges us to ‘keep on walking, keep on talking’—just as we did in the civil rights movement—until we cross those bridges together.”

The paperback edition includes a detailed discussion guide with links to 40 brief online videos where the author talks about key issues in the book. You can download the discussion guide, the videos, tips for organizing a discussion group, and more at www.couragerenewal.org/democracyguide.

The Guide makes it easier and more attractive for people to gather in families, neighborhoods, classrooms, congregations, etc., and learn to talk with each other across lines of political difference. That’s what “We the People” need to do to reclaim the power of civic community in an era of divide and conquer politics.

In his email this morning, Parker wrote, “I know you’re as concerned as I am about the sad state of American democracy. ‘We the People’ are the only answer. But there can be no ‘We’ until more of us learn to value our differences, hold them creatively, talk across our divides and seek the common good so we can hold our leaders accountable. That’s what this book is about and that’s why I’m eager to get the word out, especially as we approach mid-term elections.

Among the many positive reviews, “Democracy & Education” called the book “one of the most important…of the early 21st Century.” In a Starred Review, “Publishers Weekly” said, “This beautifully written book deserves a wide audience that will benefit from discussing it.”

You can pre-order the paperback version at Amazon here, and you can visit the book’s website at http://lp.wileypub.com/healingtheheartofdemocracy/ where you can watch a video, read the Prelude, and find purchasing options.

Have you already read Healing the Heart of Democracy? Let others know what you thought of it in the comments!

Six Simple Changes for Better Public Engagement

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

NCDD supporting member Jennifer Wilding of Consensus and her team have been working to increase civility in Kansas City, and we love their infographic on what KC residents told them officials can do to improve public engagement. Learn more about Consensus’ Civility Project at www.consensuskc.org/civilityproject/ and in Jennifer’s write-up below the image.

Old Habits for Engaging the Public Make it Harder to Be Civil

Americans have talked a lot about civility the last few years. Along with exploring the way individuals behave, it’s important to pay attention to the processes that are used to engage the public. Outmoded habits are ineffective with a population that increasingly expects to be consulted, and can be disastrous in situations where values are in conflict.

It’s possible to change these habits, though. Specific, relatively simple changes can move people’s behavior from angry to productive. The Civility Project helps inform and advocate for building new habits that increase civility.

Consensus, a Kansas City-based nonprofit that focuses on public engagement, launched The Civility Project out of frustration with the way the 2009 health-care town hall meetings were conducted. Using the public hearing model meant that meetings intended to give people a voice ended up driving them further apart.

The project so far includes awards for people who bring civility to life and a one-day class on building civility into public engagement based on findings from 20 focus groups with local citizens. In addition, Consensus has held public forums co-sponsored by KCPT Public Television, the Congressional Civility Caucus and the Dole Institute.

Consensus held 20 focus groups across metro Kansas City and in Lawrence to talk about civility in public life and how it affects our ability to solve problems. The groups represented the entire political spectrum, but were in perfect harmony when they described what concerns them about our public processes and what would make things better.

Detailed findings are available at www.consensuskc.org/civilityproject, and we have distilled what people want into six simple changes elected officials can make to engage their constituents more productively.

For more information: Jennifer Wilding, jenwilding@consensuskc.org.

National Dialogue on Mental Health Turns 1!

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

A little over one year ago, on June 3rd, President Obama called for a national dialogue on mental health. Since then, the alliance of organizations running Creating Community Solutions (including NCDD) have been finding creative ways to get Americans talking about mental health in their communities.

It has been quite the year, with highs and lows and plenty of pleasant surprises along the way. Check out our Creating Community Solutions tag for all the NCDD posts on the project, and definitely explore the CCS website if you haven’t already.

As part of the project’s effort to link hundreds of community dialogues to action, CCS has been offering educational webinars. Visit www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/resources and scroll down the page to “Training Opportunities,” where you’ll find the following webinars archived and ready for you to view on demand:

Local Education Agency Grant Opportunities in Mental Health
State Education Agency Grant opportunities in Mental Health
Preventing mental health problems and identifying issues early by connecting child serving systems
Text, Talk, Act & Connect!
“Now is the Time” Project AWARE State Educational Agency Grants

See many more resources for holding dialogues on mental health at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/resources, and check out all the write-ups from the dialogues that have taken place at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/outcomes.

A Public Voice 2014

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

The Kettering Foundation’s annual DC event, “A Public Voice,” took place yesterday at the Newseum in Washington DC. The content of the event is off the record, so those from government can feel comfortable engaging in a deeper conversation in front of the audience that attends.

This year’s topic was Health Care: What Do We Want and How Can We Pay For It?, and the proceedings will inform the development of a National Issues Forums Institute discussion guide on this very timely and contentious issue. This roundtable panel bought together leaders with a deep understanding of healthcare policy, along with others who have similarly deep experience in engaging citizens on contentious public issues.

I was honored to have been asked to invite a dozen NCDD members to attend — members representing prominent organizations in our field and large networks of facilitators:

Kyle Bozentko, Director of Policy and Research, Jefferson Center
Courtney Breese, Board Member, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD)
Steve Brigham, Former Executive Director, AmericaSpeaks
Steve Clift, Executive Director, e-democracy.org
David Isaacs, Co-Founder, The World Cafe
Steven Kull, Founder and President, Voice of the People
Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Executive Director, University of Arizona National Institute for Civil Discourse
Martha McCoy, Executive Director, Everyday Democracy
Bill Potapchuk, President, Community Building Institute
Sarah Rubin, Program Manager, Institute for Local Government
Steve Waddell, Executive Director, Networking Action
Wendy Willis, Executive Director, Policy Consensus Initiative

I serve on the planning committee for A Public Voice, and also helped select the four panelists who represented the deliberative democracy community: Jean Johnson of Public Agenda and NIF, Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Val Ramos of Everyday Democracy, and Gloria Rubio-Cortes of the National Civic League. In addition, I facilitated and helped organize a planning meeting at Kettering in February with about 8 of the NCDD representatives, to talk about their role in Public Voice and glean their valuable input for Kettering.

Here is a snapshot of most of the NCDD members who were present yesterday, including my invitees, the panelists, and some Kettering guests who are members of NCDD.

NCDD Group Attending Public Voice 2014

I also helped with the content of the event brochure and some great postcards that were distributed yesterday. The event brochure included descriptions of the deliberative democracy organizations represented by my invitees. It was designed to give policymakers who were present a sense of the breadth and expertise available to them if they are interested in engaging citizens more deeply.

The postcard (which I’m really excited about) features a map of the United States that highlights the areas where you will find members of the NCDD community, the National Issues Forums network, and Everyday Democracy community leaders. Look at all of the blue circles that represent NCDDers! The larger circles indicate a larger cluster of contacts.

PV14-postcard-600px

I really enjoyed yesterday’s event, and loved having the chance to introduce some new NCDD members to the Kettering crowd. NCDD is proud to be developing such a strong partnership with the Kettering Foundation, and we look forward to engaging more and more of you in our work with Kettering.

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation a key player in Thursday’s Text Talk Act

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

We’re excited to announce that Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation is partnering with Creating Community Solutions to promote youth participation in Thursday’s Text Talk Act event! How cool is that?

We hope many of you are planning on participating on Thursday. For those of you still on the fence, please join in and hold at least one TTA conversation. All you need is 3 people, a smartphone, and about an hour, anytime on the 24th. Anyone can participate, though involving young people is especially encouraged.

If you are planning on hosting a Text Talk Act conversation on Thursday, do us a favor and add yourself to the Creating Community Solutions map! After logging in/creating an account on the Creating Community Solutions site, click on the “Add your dialogue to the map” button under the “Dialogues” tab — or just click here).

Learn more about Text Talk Act here, and sign up today.

NCDD is part of the collaboration running the Creating Community Solutions national dialogue effort aimed at tackling mental health issues in our communities, along with these other NCDDers: National Institute for Civil Discourse, Everyday Democracy, National Issues Forums Institute, AmericaSpeaks and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Check out all of our previous posts on Creating Community Solutions here.

Introducing our fabulous youth organizers for Text Talk Act

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Creating Community Solutions is pleased to announce that we’ve teamed up with Active Minds, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation, and our other partners (NCDD is one of them) to identify some fantastic young people across the U.S. who will be helping organize Text Talk Act events in their communities.

We asked them to send us selfies, and you can check out their brief bios here.

Hopefully you already know all about Text Talk Act from our previous postings and recent confab call on the project, but in case you don’t, Text Talk Act is an innovative event taking place on April 24th (next Thursday). Thousands of people across the country will participate by (1) getting together in small groups of 4 or 5 people and (2) texting into 89800 to get polling questions and discussion questions sent to them by text.

In other words, this is texting-enabled face-to-face dialogue. We’re experimenting with how the fun and convenience of text messaging can be leveraged to scale up face-to-face dialogue — especially among young people. And we hope all of you are planning to take part!