Equity in School Forums: An Interview with John Landesman

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 14-page article, Equity in School Forums: An Interview with John Landesman (2016), was written by Carolyne Abdullah, Christopher Karpowitz, and Chad Raphael, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. In the article, the authors interview Landesman of Everyday Democracy to share his experience working to address the barriers within the Montgomery County Study Circles Program, which he helped to coordinate. Landesman clarifies the importance between equality and equity; and how these play out when designing a process to effective address the power dynamics that arise within school spaces between admin, faculty, parents, and students.

Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

For adults and youth, American public schools are a major entryway to public engagement. Not only are public schools charged with preparing students for civic life, but they are the custodians of parents’ educational and economic aspirations for their children, often the largest recipients of taxpayer funding in a community, neighborhood hubs that host public meetings and events, and institutions that are formally accountable to the community through school boards, parent teacher associations, and other public forums. Schools need active support from their communities to approve school bonds, attract donations, enlist mentors and volunteers, approve (or at least accept) curriculum reforms, engage parents in supporting their children’s learning, and address social problems such as academic achievement gaps among students of different racial and income backgrounds, bullying, and gangs. Yet, like other institutions of democracy, public school governance is often dominated by the voices of politicians and policy makers, professionals (administrators and teachers), and privileged citizens (parents of higher socio-economic status) (Nabatchi & Leighninger, 2015).

In Maryland, the Montgomery County Public School system offers a hopeful example of how public dialogue can improve school governance. John Landesman, a Senior Associate at Everyday Democracy, coordinates the Montgomery County Public Schools Study Circles Program. The program engages parents, students, staff, and administrators in dialogue to address racial and ethnic barriers to parent involvement and student achievement in this multilingual, multi-ethnic school district. These dialogues have helped to build trust and collaboration, and increased involvement by parents of color, as well diminishing differences in achievement among students from more and less advantaged backgrounds (Childress, Doyle, and Thomas, 2009; Orland, 2007; Fagotto & Fung, 2009).

In this interview, Landesman explains how Everyday Democracy thinks about equity and equality, and how the organization integrated equity considerations throughout the process of organizing study-circle dialogues in Montgomery County, including recruiting and retaining diverse participants, forming agendas, facilitation, small group discussions in affinity groups of less-powerful participants as well as mixed groups, evaluation, and implementation of plans. The techniques discussed here can be adopted or adapted to forums on schooling and many other issues.

Equity and Equality
Abdullah, Karpowitz, and Raphael (AKR): Some people working in dialogue and deliberation have argued that instead of practicing equality by treating people 1 Abdullah et al.: Equity in School Forums: An Interview with John Landesman similarly, we should strive for equity by treating participants differently in order to create conditions that achieve fair discussion and decisions. Do you see this distinction between equal and equitable treatment as useful to our field and in your own work?

Landesman: I do see a distinction. There’s a picture that we often use in our presentations of three boys trying to look over a fence at a baseball game (see Figure 1). In the first panel, which shows equal treatment, each boy is standing on a box that is the same height. The tall boy can see the game over the fence, the middle boy can barely see, and the shortest boy can’t see at all. In the next panel, which shows equity, the tall boy’s box has been given to the little boy, so now all three of them can see the game. The idea is that everyone needs something different to participate in whatever they’re doing. But to me, this feels like the wrong question. The question should be, “What is the goal of the dialogue, and who needs to be in the room to make the dialogue effective?” If the goal is to have a variety of perspectives deliberating together, then organizers need to think about how to recruit for those different perspectives. If there are people who need something different to be part of it, but having their voice will make the deliberation more effective, then organizers have to use different strategies to get them there.

Think of successful companies like Coca-Cola. Their goal is to sell more of their products. They don’t just develop their product and then say, “OK everyone, come get it.” They spend a lot of time and resources thinking about how to get different kinds of people to buy their products. If the goal of deliberation is to have a richer understanding of an issue based on all the different perspectives that are in the community, than we need to spend time thinking about how to ensure that we get all those perspectives in the room.

In my experience, organizing for diverse perspectives is often an afterthought. Organizers plan the way they always have, and then say, “How do we get Latino participants or low-income folks, or people who have different political perspectives?” That never works, because all we’re doing is adding an extra strategy to what’s already been put in place. Successful organizing starts by asking, “What is the goal of the dialogue, and who needs to be in the room to reach that goal?” Then every piece of the organizing—whether it’s the outreach, the facilitation, the setup once you get there, where it’s located—all of those things are driven by who you want in the room and what perspectives you need to hear to make your dialogue effective. That’s a very different way of looking at it than saying, “We’re going to do it the way we’ve always done it, and now we’re going to develop a strategy to get to these so-called marginalized people.”

This is an excerpt of the article, which can be downloaded in full from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen friendly form.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol12/iss2/art12/

Shaping Our Towns and Cities (IF Discussion Guide)

Posted on February 21, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 40-page discussion guide, Shaping Our Towns and Cities, was published by the Interactivity Foundation in 2014 and edited by Jeff Prudhomme. The guide offers seven contrasting public policies to consider when shaping our towns and cities. These policies are broad approaches on how to design our communities; and while not exhaustive, these are mean to provide a starting point for creating public policy that supports thriving communities.

You can view the discussion guide in full on IF’s site and it can also be downloaded as a PDF for free here.

From the introduction…

As we look to the future of our towns and cities, what choices might we face about their design and development? From this one core question many more follow.

What basic vision of community design might guide our decisions? What makes good community design? What makes a good place to live? What values might guide our community design decisions? What if our values are in conflict?

The appearance of a community (its aesthetic qualities) is often a key value for many people. What would it take to design beautiful towns or cities? What about designing a community for a thriving economy? Some people value a sense of social connection in a community. Can we design towns and cities for a thriving community life? Can we have communities where young and old live together, where people are urged to stay rather than move to a new community in their later years? Can we design communities in a way that encourages interactions among all kinds of people who live there?

Cities and towns grow beyond their boundary lines as newcomers and immigrants arrive. Populations change with new languages and cultures. Cities also shrink as industries die off or as young people seek opportunity elsewhere. How can community design take account of such changes? What are the environmental considerations regarding community size or community design? How might we harmonize the constructed environment of our communities with the natural environment surrounding them?

Many community design and development decisions depend on transportation policy. Could our transportation decisions be the key to designing our communities? What model of transportation might we embrace as we design our towns and cities? The sprawling design, or lack of apparent design, of many communities depends on widespread car ownership.

What if people need or want other transportation options? What happens if fuel and energy costs spike to the point where car-centered designs are no longer tenable for most people?

Of course many of our community design decisions depend on funding. Our models for funding housing, infrastructure, public spaces, and so on determine much about the design and development of our towns and cities. Finance models determine who gets to live where, in what kind of housing, in what kind of neighborhood, and with what kind of transportation options. They determine the kind of infrastructure we have and the public and private spaces that make up a town or city. What different funding models might there be?

The direction of community design decisions also depends on who gets to make them. These decisions depend on governmental structures based on boundaries that might no longer make sense for a highly mobile society. What happens when the realities of our cities expand beyond the reach of traditional governance structures? Over time, we’ve seen cities expand into “greater metropolitan areas,” megacities, or interconnected urban corridors with increasingly urbanized suburbs and edge cities. Could we coordinate community design policy across a region rather than patching together policies from isolated jurisdictions? Could we harmonize community design decisions across various governmental agencies so we could better integrate, say, our environmental, transportation, economic, and housing policies?

These are just some of the many questions that might come up when you think about public policy for shaping our towns and cities. What other big questions can you imagine emerging in our future?

A group of your fellow citizens explored questions and concerns such as these over the course of roughly a year as part of an Interactivity Foundation discussion project. Some of the participants were experts in various fields related to community design and development. Others were simply interested citizens. All of them agreed to explore perspectives beyond their own and to develop diverging policy possibilities beyond their own preferences.

These explorations are loosely focused on “urban design.” In this case, “urban” isn’t limited to major cities or high-population centers. Instead, you could think of urban as indicating a settlement where people are living in proximity to one another and where they face shared decisions about how to design and develop the built environment of that community. As you explore these ideas, try not to get bogged down in disputes over what counts as “urban” or over the size of the communities under discussion. In this project, the participants used “town” or “city” in non-technical ways to talk about settlements of various sizes where communities face public decisions about how to design or structure their settlements.

The PDF version of this report is available for download here.

About the Interactivity Foundation
The Interactivity Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that works to enhance the process and expand the scope of our public discussions through facilitated small-group discussion of multiple and contrasting possibilities. The Foundation does not engage in political advocacy for itself, any other organization or group, or on behalf of any of the policy possibilities described in its discussion guidebooks. For more information, see the Foundation’s website atwww.interactivityfoundation.org.

Follow on Twitter: @IFTalks

Resource Link: www.interactivityfoundation.org/discussions/shaping-our-towns-cities

Safety and Justice: How Should Communities Reduce Violence? (NIFI Issue Guide)

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 28-page issue guide, Safety and Justice: How Should Communities Reduce Violence?, written by Tony Wharton was published on National Issues Forums Institute site on January 2017. This issue guide provides three options for deliberation around how communities should address the violence within their communities. In addition to the issue guide, there is a moderator’s guide and a post-forum questionnaire, all available to download for free on NIFI’s site here.

From NIFI…

After falling steadily for decades, the rate of violent crime in the United States rose again in 2015 and 2016. Interactions between citizens and police too often end in violence. People are increasingly worried about safety in their communities.

Many Americans are concerned that something is going on with violence in communities, law enforcement, and race that is undermining the national ideals of safety and justice for all.

It is unclear what is driving the recent rise in violence, but bias and distrust on all sides appear to be making the problem worse. Citizens and police need goodwill and cooperation in order to ensure safety and justice. For many people of color, the sense that they are being treated unfairly by law enforcement—and even being targeted by police—is palpable. Others say police departments are being blamed for the actions of a few individuals and that the dangers, stress, and violence law enforcement officers face in their work is underestimated. Still others hold that if we cannot find ways to defuse potentially violent interactions between citizens and police, we will never be able to create safe communities in which all people can thrive and feel welcomed and comfortable.

How should we ensure that Americans of every race and background are treated with respect and fairness? What should we do to ensure that the police have the support they need to fairly enforce the law? To what degree do racial and other forms of bias distort the justice system? What should we do as citizens to help reduce violence of all kinds in our communities and the nation as a whole? How should communities increase safety while at the same time ensuring justice? This issue guide is a framework for citizens to work through these important questions together. It offers three different options for deliberation, each rooted in different, widely shared concerns and different ways of looking at the problem. The resulting conversation may be difficult, as it will necessarily involve tensions between things people hold deeply valuable, such as a collective sense of security, fair treatment for everyone, and personal freedom. No one option is the “correct” one; each includes drawbacks and trade-offs that we will have to face if we are to make progress on this issue. They are not the only options available. They are presented as a starting point for deliberation.This issue guide presents three options for deliberation:

Option One: “Enforce the Law Together”
Expand policing while strengthening community-police partnerships. According to this option, residents and police officers in every community should focus on working together in ways that ensure that everyone feels safe. Americans should be able to expect that they can go about their daily lives, taking reasonable precautions, without becoming the victims of violence.

Option Two: “Apply the Law Fairly”
Remove injustices, reform inequities, and improve accountability. This option says that all Americans should be treated equitably, but that too often, some people are treated unfairly due to systemic bias throughout the criminal justice system and, in many cases, the way police go about their work.

Option Three: “De-escalate and prevent violence”
Address the causes of violence and take direct actions to disrupt conflict. BY ANY MEASURE, the United States is far more violent than other large developed nations. While violent crime has declined over the past decades, there is still far too much day-to-day violence, and the threat of it, in many communities. Many US cities have more murders than much larger countries.

About NIFI Issue Guides
NIFI’s Issue Guides introduce participants to several choices or approaches to consider. Rather than conforming to any single public proposal, each choice reflects widely held concerns and principles. Panels of experts review manuscripts to make sure the choices are presented accurately and fairly. By intention, Issue Guides do not identify individuals or organizations with partisan labels, such as Democratic, Republican, conservative, or liberal. The goal is to present ideas in a fresh way that encourages readers to judge them on their merit.

Follow on Twitter: @NIForums

Resource Link: www.nifi.org/en/catalog/product/free-safety-and-justice-issue-guide-downloadable-pdf

When is Deliberation Democratic?

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 14-page article, When is Deliberation Democratic?, was written by David Moscrop and Mark Warren, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. In the article, the authors theorize on how deliberative democracy operates in relation to equality and equity. They lift up two features that are of particular importance to pre-deliberative democracy: popular participation and agenda-setting, that must be paid attention to by theorist and practitioners. Deliberative democratic processes shape and are shaped by these two features, popular participation- how people show up and express their voice, and agenda-setting- how concerns are shaped into issues. The authors offer suggestions on responding to the challenges of equality and equity to democratic deliberation.

Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

“Deliberative democracy” is a compound term. In both theory and practice, it connects deliberative influence through reason-giving, reciprocity, and publicity to a family of political systems that broadly enable popular control of the state and government through empowerments such as voting, petitioning, and contesting, as well as the electoral and judicial systems that enable them. These empowerments are democratic when they are distributed to, and usable by, those affected by collective decisions in ways that are both equal and equitable.

While deliberative influence is best protected and incentivized by democratic political systems, not all deliberation is democratic, and not all approaches to democracy are deliberative. We should distinguish and relate these terms: we need to differentiate the practice of deliberation from the contexts of democratic enablements and empowerments in which it occurs. We can then focus on the pre-deliberative conditions that will enable or limit the extent to which deliberation is democratic. Two pre-deliberative democratic features stand out as particularly important in this context: popular participation—how individuals come to have standing and voice as participants, and agenda setting—how concerns come to be defined as issues. We further argue that since deliberation typically occurs downstream from agenda-setting, and since popular participation both shapes and is shaped by this practice, theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy should pay close attention to each feature well before deliberation begins.

To make this case, we first theorize the democratic dimensions of deliberative democracy through the concepts of equity and equality. Second, we focus on agenda-setting and popular participation as important, though not exclusive, pre-deliberative determinants of equality and equity during deliberation. Finally, we offer suggestions about how theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy might think about responding to the challenges generated by the tension between equality and equity prior to democratic deliberation.

Equality, Equity, and Deliberative Democracy
Deliberation can be separated from democracy conceptually and practically. There can be deliberation that is not democratic and democratic practices that are not deliberative. For instance, Rawls (2001) considered the United States Supreme Court to be a pre-eminent deliberative body. But the Supreme Court has an agenda that is limited by judicial process and—though an important part of a democratic system—is remote from democratic control. There are also democratic practices that are not deliberative. These include practices such as aggregate voting and purely strategic uses of words and images in political campaigns.

At a high level of abstraction, we can conceive of the “democratic” part of deliberative democracy as comprised of equality in opportunities for participation, and equity in processes and outcomes. Within the context of democratic theory, equality almost always refers constitutionally to rights and empowerments that attach to citizenship—equal rights to vote, equal protections for speech and association, equal standing before the law, and equal supports for social precursors of participation, such as education. These equal rights and empowerments are justified by moral equality; each person is morally worthy and possessed of equal moral dignity, and assumed to be capable of self-government (Dahl, 1999). In a democracy, these rights, empowerments, and moral assumptions attach to each individual equally, simply by virtue of their citizenship. They do so regardless of actual social and economic inequalities, or inequalities of capacity. They belong to individuals whether or not they are able to make use of them. Finally, these kinds of rights and empowerments are relative to the political units through which they are organized; their effectiveness is conditioned by the control governments exercise over an issue, and by the ways political systems enable citizens to participate in the kinds of control a government might exercise, including (for example) electoral system design.

Equity is a different matter. While equality operates through distributions of rights and empowerments that attach to citizenship, equity requires that each person is given his or her due according to circumstance. Equity considerations draw attention to the highly variable ways in which individuals are situated within social relationships, and to the duties and obligations that individuals have to one another as co-dependents within collectivities. That is, equity reflects considerations of social justice (Pettit, 2012; Rawls, 2001). Thus, while equality may be said to operate on a simple principle—equal provision of formal empowerments and protections—equity is more demanding and less amenable to formalization, as it requires attentiveness to the circumstances of each individual. Ideally, equality enables equity: equal distribution of empowerments such as votes, rights, and opportunities for voice should enable citizens to press for equity, to place equity claims on the agenda, and to deliberate about what equity requires in the many different kinds of locations that comprise collectivities of interdependent equals. Equality, properly understood, ought to move a society toward equity: when equal empowerments underwrite voice, then deliberative mechanisms should enable finer-grained attentiveness to historical injustices, persistent prejudices, and highly variable starting places in life. But because these kinds of circumstances affect the ways in which citizens are able to use their equalities, questions of equity may also be pre-deliberative; precisely those who are relatively disadvantaged may need additional support, organization, or representation in order to have their voices included in deliberative processes.

Who Gets to Deliberate and about What?
When we convert these ideals into more substantive questions of deliberative democracy, two questions stand out: How are issues placed on deliberative agendas? And who gets to deliberate?

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol12/iss2/art4/

Equity through Learning to Listen: The Case of Public Discussion on Body-Worn Cameras in Madison, Wisconsin

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 17-page article, Equity through Learning to Listen: The Case of Public Discussion on Body-Worn Cameras in Madison, Wisconsin, was written by Katherine Cramer and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. In the article, Cramer discusses the process around gathering public input on whether the Madison police department should implement body-worn cameras on their officers. She gives details around the context for the process and the four lessons learned throughout the whole experience.

Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

We expect deliberation to achieve many things—better-informed opinions, tolerance, efficacy, well-rounded decisions, and decisions that have legitimacy (e.g., Barabas, 2004; Fishkin, 1995; Gastil, 2000; Jacobs, Cook, & Delli Carpini, 2009; Karpowitz & Mendelberg, 2014; Mill 1859 [1956]). Deliberation supposedly enlarges our ability to incorporate moral values into governance (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996); enables an enlightened interpretation of the general will (Mansbridge, 1999); and increases the legitimacy of the decisions reached (e.g., Young, 2001). The expected democratic benefits of deliberation are numerous. But each of those outcomes relies on a particular quality: that a range of people and perspectives be included in the discussion. This means that ideal deliberation should involve equality of access as well as equality of who talks and who gets heard (Mansbridge, 1999; Mendelberg & Oleske, 2000).

But ensuring these things is difficult. As with all political participation, people with resources, particularly income and education, are more likely to show up. Also, people within social networks of politically active people are more likely to be recruited to participate (Jacobs, Cook & Delli Carpini, 2009; Ryfe & Stalsburg 2012; Verba, Schlozman & Brady 1996). Even when people representing a wide range of perspectives are in the room, deliberative processes privilege the views of privileged people (Sanders, 1997; Young, 2001).

Nevertheless, the belief endures that democratic governance is best achieved when people inform the decisions that affect them, and so the field of deliberative democracy continues to strive for ways to incorporate marginalized voices into the process to enable democracy to live up to its promise.

This brings us to the concept of equity. If striving for equality of access, and equality of voice and authority within deliberation is not enough, then perhaps it is time to focus on equity—intentional inequality such that those typically marginalized have the opportunity to voice their preferences and perspectives in all of their complexity, and have those concerns, with all of their nuances, enter into processes of democratic decision-making. Perhaps as a society we are still relatively unskilled at listening to one another. In order to input a wider array of perspectives into the discussions that affect our decisions about how to govern one another, we need to first exclude the voices that typically get heard, and then teach those in power how to listen to that who do not.

This possibility seems particularly acute in the United States with respect to issues concerning racial justice. Race has been a powerful line of exclusion/inclusion in the United States for centuries and these categorizations contaminate deliberative processes as well (Cramer Walsh, 2007). How then does a community use a deliberative approach to move toward racial equity?

The case discussed in this article suggests some expansions to our current conceptions of equity in deliberation. It is an example of a government-sanctioned process to gather public input for a policy decision about a controversial public issue involving racial justice. I draw on the insights of two practitioners who conducted a public deliberation process in 2015 to gather input for the City of Madison, Wisconsin, on a proposal for the police department to implement bodyworn cameras (BWCs). Colleen Butler is the Racial Justice Director for the YWCA Madison. The city hired the YWCA to conduct the public input process. She contracted with Jacquelyn Boggess to conduct most of the focus groups that were a part of this process. Boggess is the Executive Director of the Center for Family and Policy Practice, a national policy advocacy organization located in Madison.

The insights of Butler and Boggess reveal four main lessons with respect to equity in deliberation. First, their insights teach us that equity in public deliberation is sometimes achieved by intentional exclusion. Second, they suggest that members of marginalized groups are not necessarily motivated to participate by the potential to impact policy. Sometimes, the potential to be heard may be enough. Third, the case suggests that as we theorize the role of deliberation in democracy, we should recognize that for some people public talk is not about achieving democracy; it is instead about life and survival.

Finally, the case suggests that in order for deliberation to contribute to greater equity in democracy, people in power need to learn to listen differently. For our deliberative system to achieve equity, we may need public discussion practices that reveal previously disenfranchised voices but also advocacy efforts that compel people to listen to these voices. Without lobbying for policy makers to actually hear what previously marginalized voices have to say, the valuable perspectives revealed through an equitable process my continue to be ignored.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol12/iss2/art10/

Budgeting for Equity: How Can Participatory Budgeting Advance Equity in the United States?

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Keiva Hummel

The 18-page article, Budgeting for Equity: How Can Participatory Budgeting Advance Equity in the United States? , was written by Madeleine Pape and Josh Lerner and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. The article talks about the history of participatory budgeting, starting in Porto Alegre and how it has growth in the US. Two major claims of PB is that is it an opportunity to “revitalize democracy and advance equity”. Pape and Lerner share some of the challenges and strategies to equity within PB.

Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

In 1989, the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre undertook a radical experiment to alter the chemistry of democracy. After decades of dictatorship and thin representative democracy had cemented Brazil’s economy as one of the most unequal in the world, the newly elected Workers Party government attempted a new variant of democracy, one that mixed participation and equity. Its experiment in “participatory budgeting” aimed to redirect resources to those with the greatest needs – and it succeeded.

Over 3,000 cities have since tried to replicate Porto Alegre’s success by empowering residents to directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Many processes have inspired high participation, but struggled to engage or redistribute resources to marginalized communities. Participatory budgeting (PB) has recently grown dramatically in the United States, from a pilot process in Chicago’s 49th ward in 2009 to over 50 processes in a dozen cities in 2015. The once obscure concept has been heralded by the White House as a best practice of civic engagement and by scholars as the lynchpin of a “new wave of democratic innovation” (Stoker et al., 2011, p. 38; White House, 2013).

As PB has expanded in the US, scholars, practitioners, and participants have made two main claims about its impact: that it can revitalize democracy and advance equity. First, proponents argue that PB builds the trust, accountability, and effective decision-making necessary for democratic governance (Lerner 2014). Second, they suggest that PB makes participation and funding more equitable, by bringing marginalized groups to the table and allocating more money to their needs (see Baiocchi, 2001; Fung & Wright, 2003; Nylen, 2002). In the US, PB processes have experienced relative success in including the voices of less politically empowered residents, but there is less data on how PB is making funding more equitable (Kasdan et al., 2015; Great Cities Institute, 2015).

Our organization, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), has served as lead technical assistance partner for most US PB processes, helping over seventy cities, districts, and institutions develop PB processes that advance local priorities and goals. Although equity has often been a local goal, it has proven difficult to define, measure, and prioritize. In this article, we present the findings from a study of equity in PB that we conducted in 2015. Through semi-structured interviews with 17 PB facilitators and administrators, we explored two main questions: First, what common challenges to equity do practitioners face? Second, given these challenges, what can be done to make PB and its impacts more equitable?

We identified three key equity challenges and strategies to address these challenges. First, unclear goals shift focus away from equity, a challenge that can be addressed through stronger political leadership. Second, participants’ self interest often goes against equity goals, but this can be at least partly addressed by altering the process for idea collection and facilitating interaction between participants and other residents. Third, the limiting structures of budgetary and administrative rules constrain the potential of PB to address broader equity concerns, but expanding the scope and linkages of PB can help to overcome some of these constraints. By unpacking these challenges and interventions we hope not only to deepen the equity impacts of PB, but also to uncover new ways that participatory democracy can empower and support communities with the greatest needs.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol12/iss2/art9/

Equality and Equity in Deliberation: Introduction to the Special Issue

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 11-page article, Equality and Equity in Deliberation: Introduction to the Special Issue (2016), was written by Carolyne Abdullah, Christopher Karpowitz, and Chad Raphael, and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. The authors make the distinction within deliberation between equity and equality, and confront what this means to fairness and participants being able to fully engage in deliberation. The article examines different approaches to inclusion within deliberative theory and practice, as well as, the authors address some challenges and opportunities.

Read an excerpt of the article in full below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

Deliberative democrats have had much to say about equality and have long been concerned with creating conditions for it in discourse. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, for example, write that the principle of political equality “stands behind” the demand for deliberation (1996, p. 28). That is, deliberation presupposes that people deserve equal respect and that in conditions of disagreement such respect demands the open exchange of views and the mutual attempt to identify fair and just solutions. Yet how is equal respect constructed in deliberation? For example, if pursuing equality means treating everyone similarly, regardless of what they bring to deliberation, there are longstanding concerns that this approach can reproduce and reinforce enduring hierarchies of income, education, race, gender, or other characteristics (Young 2000; Sanders 1997). These disparities have the potential to frustrate and even derail the attempt to create conditions in which all perspectives can be included and fully heard. At the same time, if attention to such inequalities means treating deliberators differently, then the worry is that such approaches may stigmatize disadvantaged voices or even provoke a backlash among the more powerful.

This special issue examines different approaches to the full inclusion, participation, and influence of all voices in deliberative theory and practice. In approaching this issue, we mark a key distinction between the values of equality and equity. By equality, we mean an approach to deliberative fairness that emphasizes the need to treat all deliberators the same, regardless of their power (or lack thereof) outside of the deliberative forum. This approach holds that deliberative fairness is most likely to be achieved when those background inequalities are put aside, bracketed, or neutralized in discussion. In contrast, equity means taking into account the advantages and disadvantages that have shaped participants’ experiences, which may require treating participants differently in order to create conditions that achieve fair deliberation and decisions. As Edana Beauvais and André Bächtiger (this issue) put it, equality asserts “the fundamental sameness of common humanity” and the need to “abstract from social circumstances,” while equity emphasizes “attending to” social circumstances and the resultant distribution of power and resources. The contributors to this issue take up this core distinction between equality and equity in a variety of different ways, and occasionally with slightly different terms, but all of them are confronting the common challenge of creating circumstances in which all deliberators can participate fully and even authoritatively.

Tensions between equality and equity emerge constantly in both formal institutions of political decision-making and the wider political culture. We see these struggles in debates over access to education, fair wages, health and welfare policy, policing, immigration, regulation of speech, and many other issues.

Should universities prioritize equal treatment of applicants by following a “colorblind” approach to admissions or remedy the accumulated effects of past disadvantages by practicing affirmative action? Should schools prioritize creating more supportive environments for students from non-dominant groups by regulating offensive speech directed at them or privilege equal rights to engage in robust, even uncivil, expression? Should countries give equal access to immigrants regardless of their geographic origins, economic status, and social condition, or privilege applicants from particular countries, the highly-skilled, political refugees, or others based on social and historic circumstances? When do assertions of equal rights function to dismiss aspirations for equity? For example, in the United States, when the Black Lives Matter movement for fair and equitable treatment of people of color by the police is met with the response that “All Lives Matter,” does invoking the language of equality make it more difficult to confront and address historic and systemic inequities?

Friction between equality and equity also emerges in each stage of public deliberation, confronting organizers with thorny decisions about the design of institutions and projects, naming and framing issues, recruiting community members, rules for participation and decision making, and implementing outcomes. At every point in the process, civic forums must address the question of whether public deliberation should be organized using an equality or equity approach, or how to balance the two. For example, if we issue a general call for participation through “neutral” channels, can we have much hope of attracting less privileged and empowered community members? In the absence of facilitation or institutional rules that actively promote contributions from non- dominant participants, and encourage thorough questioning of prevalent understandings of issues, are we likely to reproduce the power dynamics that helped create the very social problem under discussion? Alternatively, at what point does stocking the room with under-represented people fall prey to charges of stacking the deck in favor of particular outcomes, risking the perceived legitimacy of deliberation?

Equality and equity must also be considered as outcomes of public deliberation. The historically marginalized are often drawn to politics more by a hunger for more equitable policies than for opportunities to deliberate. How concerned should we be about whether the policies developed through deliberation are equal or equitable? Can we be assured that deliberation will deliver fairer outcomes than other kinds of political engagement? What steps, if any, should deliberative democrats take to compel attention to equity and equality as critical aspects of all policy decisions? These are the questions that have motived this special issue.

Download the article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol12/iss2/art1/

Not in Our Town Quick Start Guide

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The Not in Our Town Quick Start Guide: Working together for safe, inclusive communities, was created by Not in Our Town (NIOT) and updated March 2013. The guide gives five steps to begin a campaign in your town or school to stop hate, address bullying, and build safer communities together

Below is an excerpt from the guide, which can be downloaded from NIOT’s site here or at the link at the bottom of the page.

From the guide…

You may be someone who is concerned about divisions in your neighborhood or school, or you may live in a community that has experienced hate-based threats or violence. Even just one individual or a small group can start a movement to stand up to hate.

Not In Our Town is a program for people and communities working together to stop hate, address school bullying and build safe, inclusive environments for all.

This quick guide provides steps for starting a Not In Our Town campaign that fits your local needs.

The ideas in this guide came from people in communities like yours who wanted to do something about hate and intolerance. Their successful efforts have been a shining light for the Not In Our Town movement.

Guiding Principles:
The steps that follow align with these core ideas…

– Silence is acceptance.
– Visible inclusion sends a positive message.
– Change happens when we work together.

Steps for Starting a Not in Our Town Campaign:

Step 1: Map out your allies
Think big, but don’t be afraid to start small. Change can start with a handful of people. But creating broad-based support will not only help your campaign, it will pave the way for deeper connections throughout your town or city.

Whether you have an existing group or are creating a new one, do an inventory of the people and organizations who support diversity, want to foster inclusion, and who may share your concerns about hate activity. Be sure to reach out to community groups that represent the targets of hate.

Step 2: Convene a meeting to launch efforts
Arrange an initial meeting with the above groups and individuals. Develop an agenda that allows time for introductions and getting to know each other. Acknowledge that standing up to hate and fostering inclusion is a long-term problem that takes time, but there may be some issues that need swift action. Discuss how to build and maintain an ongoing group that suits local needs, keeps everyone informed, and allows for meaningful participation for everyone.

Then, get busy.

Step 3: Identify issue(s) of highest concern
Every Not In Our Town campaign takes on the characteristics of the community and responds to local issues and needs. Hate and intolerance take on many forms, and your first meeting is likely to surface one or more issues of concern. Is it racism, religious intolerance, sexual orientation bias, bullying in schools? What group is most affected by these acts of hate? What can the group do about it together? Who are the key leaders of the affected groups? How can they be included in the group planning?

Step 4: Make your values visible develop an inclusive community-based action plan

Create a plan to respond to the issues of highest concern in your community. You may adapt one or more ideas for your group:

– Public Events
– Pledges and Petitions
– School Engagement
– Film Screenings and Dialogue
– Public Displays of Support
– Proclamations and Welcome Signs

For examples from the Not In Our Town movement, including videos, how-tos and sample materials, see accompanying guide, “Ten Ideas for Sparking Action in Your Town.”

Step 5: Analyze success, connect, and learn from others

Talk to each other and your community about what’s working and what isn’t, what to do next time, and how to resolve any conflicts that arose between group members. Change is hard, and disagreements are inevitable, but they can be worked out if people commit to long-term, agreed upon goals.

Don’t forget to publicize and document your efforts so the ideas can spread and help recruit new community members. Take photos, film interviews, write articles and collect materials to share with the Not In Our Town community around the world. Email items to web@niot.org for inclusion on www.niot.org.

Map your story here: www.niot.org/map. On NIOT.org, you can share your successes, challenges and your town’s story, and connect and learn from others.

About Not in Our Town
Not In Our Town is a movement to stop hate, address bullying, and build safe, inclusive communities for all. Not In Our Town films, new media, and organizing tools help local leaders build vibrant, diverse cities and towns, where everyone can participate.

Our unique approach is based on the premise that real change takes place at the local level. We focus on solutions to inspire and empower communities to create a world where:

All residents stand together to stop hate and promote safety and inclusion for all
Students and school leaders work to prevent bullying and intolerance, and promote kindness
Law enforcement and communities join forces to prevent hate crimes and violence

Follow on Twitter: @notinourtown

Resource Link: www.niot.org/guide/quickstart

Naming and Framing Difficult Issues to Make Sound Decisions

Posted on November 15, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 28-page report, Naming and Framing Difficult Issues to Make Sound Decisions (2016), was written by David Mathews and supported by the Cousins Research Group of the Kettering Foundation.

In the report, Mathews shares some core realizations Kettering has come to learn over the last 30 years of research about how people make decisions and take action. Kettering has found that there are two moments in the decision-making process that are especially important: naming and framing. The way a problem is defined and the how the different options are framed; significantly impacts how effective the process and response will be.

Below is an excerpt of the report and it can be found in full at the bottom of this page or on Kettering Foundation’s site here.

From the guide…

People are much more likely to work together if they have participated in the decision making about what to do. And in making the decision, they may come to a more complete understanding of the nature of the problem they are facing, which could open their eyes to untapped resources that they can bring to bear.

The obvious question is, what would motivate citizens to invest their limited time and other resources in grappling with problems brimming with emotionally charged disagreements? Generally speaking, people avoid conflict, and they don’t usually invest their energy unless they see that something deeply important to them, their families, and their neighbors is at stake. And they won’t get involved unless they believe there is something they, themselves, must do.

Therefore, in order for citizens to make sound decisions and take effective collective action, they have to:
• Connect with the things that are deeply important to them,
• Deal with normative disagreements that can lead to immobilizing polarization, and
• Identify those things that they can do through their collective efforts to help solve problems.

The Potential in Naming and Framing
There are opportunities to master these challenges at two critical moments in dealing with problems. One occurs when a problem is being named, that is, when someone defines the problem. This is usually done by a news organization, a professional group, or a political leader. While seemingly insignificant, Kettering Foundation research has found that who gets to name a problem— and how they name it—are critical factors that go a long way in determining how effective the response will be.

Another critical moment occurs when different options for dealing with a problem are put into a framework for decision making. There may just be one option on the table, a solution favored by a school board or championed by an interest group. Or there may be the predictable two options in a political debate, one being the polar opposite of the other. Our research suggests that deliberation is more likely to occur if the full range of options is available for consideration.

As every trial attorney knows, whoever controls the way an issue is framed in a court case has the upper hand. So how a framework for decision making is created— how the case is presented, as it were—plays a critical role in problem solving. This report describes ways of naming problems and framing issues that give citizens a greater ability to chart their future and solve problems. The results of this naming and framing might be a guide to use in forums or town meetings, or it might be a strategy used to break out of solution wars and give the public a stronger voice in decision making. Naming and framing can also be done in classrooms to introduce students to roles that citizens can play in politics other than campaigning and voting.

One clarification: while naming and framing are critical, they aren’t ends in themselves. They are just two elements in the larger politics of public decision making and acting. To reach a decision, people have to weigh various options for acting on a problem against all of the things they feel are at stake. Unless that happens, unless people face up to the consequences and sacrifices that are inescapable in every option, including the option they favor, there is no way to know how they will react when push comes to shove—as always happens on difficult issues. When people wrestle with the trade-offs they may need to make, they will often revise the name they have been using, or they may put more or new options on the table to consider.

In making decisions together, people also have to be mindful of the resources they will need, how they will commit those resources, and how they will organize the actions that need to be taken. These are other critical moments. When resources are being identified, they may or may not include resources that citizens have, such as the social relationships they can draw on. When resources are committed, the commitments may be limited to legally binding contracts and not include the promises people make to one another, covenants that also enforce obligations. When actions are organized, they may be bureaucratically directed and not make use of the self-directing capacities of citizens, such as networking. All of these are junctures when people are either drawn into or shut out of what should be the public’s business. And the way problems are named and issues are framed paves the way for all that follows.

This is an excerpt of the report, download the full guide at the bottom of this page to learn more.

About Kettering Foundation
The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/catalog/product/naming-and-framing-2016

Finding a Seat for Social Justice at the Table of Dialogue and Deliberation

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 4-page article, Finding a Seat for Social Justice at the Table of Dialogue and Deliberation (2014), was written by David Schoem and published in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 10: Iss. 1. In the article, Schoem discusses the relationships that many dialogue and deliberation organizations have toward social justice. Many D&D organizations have a tendency to shy away from social justice in an effort to maintain neutrality. Schoem puts forth three arguments that “the field needs to 1) work intentionally for social justice and serving the public good for a strong, diverse democracy, 2) confront the illusion of neutrality, and 3) address issues of privilege and power. ”

Read the article in full below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the article…

First, most people, whatever language they choose to use, regardless of their political affiliation, perspective, or point of view, share a hope for a better society and believe in a more just world. To use the foundation of a just society or a better world as a common starting point allows for purposeful dialogue and is an invitation to a wide range of people, perspectives and viewpoints. Even the Pledge of Allegiance speaks of “liberty and justice for all,” so it’s surprising that those words are too often taken off the table in dialogue and deliberation organizations because they are seen as “too political.” To ignore social justice serves only to diminish the opportunity and promise that dialogue and deliberation have to offer.

Second, ignoring inequity and inequality predictably leads to the marginalization and exclusion of less privileged groups and those expressing unpopular opinions. Rather than opening the door to open discussion and dialogue by invoking a value of neutrality, when issues of social justice are left off the table it signals to people who are concerned with such issues that the conversation will support the status quo, that substantive change will not result, and that they are unwelcome at the table.

Third, declaring an approach of neutrality, without accounting for power and privilege, almost always privileges those in power. The invocation of unexamined neutrality ignores the power relations embedded in social issues, makes invisible the privilege and power of members of different social identities actually participating in any dialogue and deliberation, and serves to silence less privileged voices. To presume a priori an approach of neutrality mistakenly creates an unequal situation from the outset.

Fourth, efforts to convene substantive dialogue and deliberation without a social justice orientation typically end up as an exercise to give already privileged people more power. When the D&D community gathers people together for good discussions and conversations without any acknowledgement of or attention to issues of social justice, power or privilege, it simply creates space for a privileged group of people to gain an even larger voice and to reify existing inequalities. Admittedly, some in the D&D community who previously felt excluded have carved a niche for themselves and found a voice in public discourse through D&D, but too often when doing so without any social, racial, economic and/or other justice orientation, they have left even further behind those with even less privilege and power.

Fifth, issues of power and privilege are present in dialogue and deliberation whether or not people are ignorant of their presence or choose not to acknowledge them. The fact that people with more privilege are unaware of their power or may consciously choose to ignore it, does not mean that such dynamics are not present and salient in dialogue and deliberation.

Download the article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

Follow the Deliberative Democracy Consortium on Twitter: @delibdem

Follow the International Association of Public Participation [US] on Twitter: @IAP2USA

Resource Link: www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol10/iss1/art20/