Category Archives: stories

Depolarizing Discourse by Understanding Emotion’s Role

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NCDD member Dave Biggs recently published the insightful interview below via MetroQuest – an NCDD member organization – and we wanted to share it here. Dave interviews the author of a new book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, on the way emotion and perceived risk contribute to polarization and toxic public discourse, and how understanding the psychology of our “emotional dialogue” can help us build bridges to understanding. We encourage you to read the piece below or find the original version here.

The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up

James Hoggan has influenced my work for two decades. I find myself quoting his work in many of my public speaking engagements and the lessons he has articulated have shaped MetroQuest and the best practices listed in our guidebook in numerous ways. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to sit down with Hoggan to discuss his new book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up. After years of research that included interviewing some of the world’s most profound thinkers on democracy, conflict, and consensus-building, Hoggan has cleverly articulated not only what’s wrong with public discourse but also what must be done to fix it. Here’s our conversation.

Dave Biggs: You named your book ‘I’m Right and You’re an Idiot.’ What does that title mean to you?

James Hoggan: The title I’m Right and You’re an Idiot describes today’s warlike approach to public debate. It’s a style of communication that polarizes public conversations and prevents us from dealing with the serious problems stalking everyone on earth.

It is an ironic title, chosen because it epitomizes the kind of attack rhetoric we hear so often today. It reflects the opposite of the real message of the book, which was best said by peace activist and Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh who told me to: “Speak the truth not to punish.”

Dave Biggs: It’s clear that you covered a great deal of ground in researching this book. Tell me about that journey. What motivated you to go to such lengths?

James Hoggan: I was driven by curiosity about how we might create Continue reading →

Lessons in Listening to Students from Providence Youth

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We recently came across a piece on a student-led, World Cafe-style event in Providence that provides a wonderful example of how schools can bridge the divide between youth and adults and teach deliberation, and we had to share it. The article below by Megan Harrington of the Students at the Center Hub describes the event, the students’ discussions, and their proposed solutions to issues in their schools, most of which are summarized in the open letter the students wrote after the event. We hope to see more processes engaging young people like this nationwide! You can read Megan’s piece below or find the original here.

#RealTalk: Providence Students Raise Their Voices

On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in April, over 100 high school students gathered at the Providence Career and Technical Academy cafeteria, talking with friends, setting up tables with sheets of paper and markers, and manning sign-in tables. They were members of the Providence Youth Caucus (PYC) – a coalition of Providence’s seven youth organizations -gathering to develop solutions to improve education in their public schools, which they would then share with relevant policymakers to advocate for change.

An entirely student-led event, the PYC Superintendent’s Forum began a little after 4pm, when student speakers took the microphone at the front of the room to lay the groundwork for the event. “Your thoughts and voices matter,” they said. “We’re going to take all of your ideas and present this data to the superintendent and city officials so we can make a difference.”

Key school leaders – including Providence Public Schools Superintendent Chris Maher – attended the event to hear the students’ insights.

After a round of icebreakers, the students quickly broke out into nine tables to discuss hot topics in education such as personalized learning, school culture, discipline, student voice, and the arts. Two facilitators – a conversation leader and a note-taker – led the discussions at each table, while the other participants rotated to a new topic table every 10 minutes.

The first table I sat down with discussed the value of arts education, the strengths and weaknesses of Providence high school art programs, and what an ideal arts education would look like.

Most students at the table felt arts programs were critical for students to develop new skills, express themselves creatively, and explore possible career paths. One student excitedly shared his experience in his school’s engaging graphic design class, but most students felt their schools’ arts programs were lacking or even for show. One young woman said she took a calligraphy class that lacked necessary pens and ink until a month into the semester, but “it was an arts class, so it counted.” Some students lamented that art studios were eliminated to make space for engineering labs, or arts funding was cut to continue funding sports. And, others commented, because higher standardized test scores meant more school funding in general, arts programs were often cut in favor of those courses that incorporated standardized testing. Overall, students seemed to be in agreement – improved arts programs were necessary at their schools.

At a neighboring table, students contested the importance of student voice in the classroom.

Most students agreed student voice was not being adequately heard in their schools. “If it was being heard, many of these changes would have already been made,” one young woman reasoned.

But why wasn’t student voice being heard? Some said the burden was on students. “We should make more of an effort to speak up, organize in our schools, and discuss these issues with our principals,” one young man commented. “But there are some students who are speaking up but aren’t being heard,” said another. Others in the group agreed. Veteran teachers were unaccustomed to incorporating student voice and made students feel like the classroom dynamic was adversarial. “Even student government can’t go in front of school leaders and be taken seriously,” one student chimed in.

And where did students feel their voice was most lacking? Curriculum issues struck a chord with many, leading to an animated discussion about non-white history. “The last time I heard about slavery was in 6th grade; all I’ve learned about since then are the ‘World Wars,’” noted one young woman. “Black History Month is the only time I learn about black history,” chimed in another student. Others expressed their frustration with the focus on European history: “Why can’t we have an AP African History or an AP South American History?” one student questioned. In contemplating solutions to this important issue, the Providence students concluded that it was important to have a diverse teaching staff to bring varying perspectives to history.

After students had visited a number of tables, the team facilitators shared the ideas collected over the hour with entire conference. Everyone cheered after each presentation, giving extra applause when they felt particularly inspired.

Like many of the students that night, I left feeling invigorated and inspired, excited to see where their discussion would lead in the future. The Providence Youth Caucus is scheduled to formally present their data from the Forum to the district’s school board and Superintendent Maher on July 27, 2016. Stay tuned for the results of their presentation!

Providence Youth Caucus is comprised of seven Providence student groups – Hope High Optimized (H2O), New Urban Arts, Providence Student Union, Rhode Island Urban Debate League, Youth in Action, YouthBuild Providence, and Young Voices. Learn more about their efforts by following them on Twitter at @pvdyouthcaucus.

You can find the original version of the above piece from Students at the Center Hub’s blog at www.studentsatthecenterhub.org/realtalk-providence-students-raise-their-voices.

Former Legislators Work with NICD to End Partisan “War”

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Recently, The Hill published a piece written by two former representatives, Republican Mickey Edwards and Democrat Zack Space – both of whom have worked with NCDD member organization the National Institute for Civil Discourse – on the current state of politics in Congress, and we wanted to share part of it here. The former reps urge us not to see politics in terms of warfare, instead calling on their colleagues to restore civility, bridge their divides, work toward solutions to national problems. We encourage you to read excerpts from their piece below or find the full original version here.

Politics Is Not War

One of the hardest things to do in Congress is to cease thinking of your opponent as your enemy.

Why wouldn’t you think of them as your enemy? You sit on opposite sides of the House chamber. You caucus in different rooms. You take opposing votes. Every two years they raise money to try and take your job.

The truth is those on the other side of the aisle are not the enemy. They are Americans, just like the citizens they represent back home in their districts.

The frame of “politics as combat” is ingrained into our society. The language of war permeates media coverage… But the difference is that these war analogies are harmful to the state of civility in our politics. Language matters. We cannot ignore the innate violence of this rhetoric, which has spurred us further and further into a place of polarization and discord. For many, working across the aisle is synonymous with “colluding with the enemy.”

…When we both left Congress, it was bad, but not this bad. The 2016 election is shaping up to be one of the most uncivil in decades, from the presidential level to the local level… Whoever lands in the White House will have their work cut out for them to put back the pieces of our splintered populace and restore civility.

If we’re to ensure a bright future for our nation, we must stop thinking of politics as war where our opponents must be defeated at any cost. Politics isn’t war, it is debate – the democratic means by which we come together to move America forward.

That’s why we are working with the National Institute for Civil Discourse to revive civility in our politics. We expect our leaders to act like leaders, not bar-room brawlers, and we hope citizens will stand up, peacefully, to incivility.

We’re not calling for a return to some “magic center” of American politics. No such center exists. There will always be liberals and conservatives, folks from across the ideological spectrum that agree on little…

But we do agree that our leaders should seek solutions, not conflict. Working together takes a mutual respect. Comedians often ridicule the tradition of members of Congress calling each other “my friend from X state,” or “my colleague from across the aisle” while giving speeches. This tradition is an important step away from the war analogies pushed by the campaigns and the media…

Treating the opposition with civility and respect is the first step toward actually getting things done and solving problems…

You can find the full-length, original version of this article from The Hill at www.thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/282698-politics-is-not-war.

Bridging Police-Community Divides through Truth & Reconciliation Processes?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth and reconciliation in Ferguson and beyond

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

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

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

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

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

Getting to the roots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth and reconciliation works

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get to the truth, get to healing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Lessons from NCDD Members Bridging Partisan Divides

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One of the most salient divides in our nation today that we will be focusing on during NCDD 2016 is the divide between the left and right sides of the political spectrum. Bridging the partisan divide, especially in an election year, is crucial work that many of our NCDD members have taken on, and we wanted to share the article below in which NCDD member Mark Gerzon of the Mediators Foundation poignantly shares lessons to be learned from their efforts. The original version of Mark’s piece appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and can be found here.

Four Ways to Fix American Politics

It’s not just young revolutionary Bernie Sanders supporters or angry-as-hell Donald Trump fans who want to “change the system.” It’s also the president of the United States of America.

The future we want “will only happen if we fix our politics,” said President Obama in his 2016 State of the Union address. “If we want a better politics, it’s not enough just to change a congressman or change a senator or even change a president. We have to change the system to reflect our better selves.”

But exactly how do we do that? The president did not say. And when William Jefferson Clinton in 1992 and George W. Bush in 2000 expressed the same noble sentiment, they didn’t tell us how either.

Our last three presidents did not tell us because they don’t know. They are products of the system and clearly are not going to reform much less revolutionize it. They have risen to the top of the leadership pyramid by playing the partisan game. Them telling us how to work together would be like an alcoholic telling us how to get sober: He knows everything about the topic except doing it.

On both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans are recognizing that they are in a long-term political marriage that needs help. But even if both donkeys and elephants want to repair their broken relationship, they still need to learn how. The primary causes of dysfunction that Obama identified – the gerrymandering of congressional districts and the tyranny of money in campaigns – are certainly real. But these and other causes will never be effectively addressed unless we stop restating the problem and start focusing on the solutions.

The good news is that we not only can bridge this political divide; in fact, we already are.

I have recently interviewed and profiled dozens of Americans who know how to solve problems across the divide. They are doing so in state legislatures and on Capitol Hill; in living rooms and town halls; between corporations and anti-corporate activists; with police departments and minority communities; and in almost every sector of our society. When diverse groups connect in constructive dialogue, they make progress on issues ranging from criminal justice reform to internet privacy to education reform.

Literally dozens of major initiatives have had concrete successes bringing Left and Right together to break down the partisan wall and find common ground. They have succeeded where Capitol Hill has failed. This movement to reunite America is gaining momentum because it starts with four fundamental shifts that are a vital part of fixing our politics.

From Confirming to Learning.
Anyone who thinks that political leadership means thinking that whatever we believe is automatically right – and anyone who disagrees with us is wrong – is not part of the solution. Simply confirming what one already knows is not leadership; it is an addiction to being right. The movement to reunite America is redefining leadership to be about learning rather than about being know-it-alls. (Check out Public Conversations Project, Everyday Democracy or Citizen University as examples of this shift.)

From Control to Relationship.
Particularly during elections, winning seems to be everything. “Controlling” the Congress and the White House appears to be the goal. But on the day after the election, whoever won or lost must forge a relationship with the opposition. Making relationships across the divide strong and healthy is today the key to accomplishing anything that endures. (Learn more from Living Room Conversations or the 2000-member National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation).

From Position-Taking to Problem-Solving.
America has a surplus of leaders with rigid positions and a deficit of leaders who solve problems. It’s time to reverse that imbalance. Across the country, a host of problem-solving organizations are gaining ground. (Examples include No Labels in Washington, D.C., to Future 500 in San Francisco, from the Village Square in Tallahassee to the American Public Square in Kansas City.)

From Endless Campaigning to Effective Governance.
The line between campaigning and governing used to be clear. Campaigns were brief preludes before Election Day, not never-ending tit-for-tat attacks that became a permanent part of civic life. But today campaigning is benefiting from unprecedented levels of investment, and governing is being paralyzed. Fortunately, from the offices of city mayors to state-level initiatives and even on the edges of Capitol Hill, red-blue coalitions are finding common ground on a wide range of policy issues ranging from criminal justice reform to education to defense spending. (The National Institute of Civil Discourse’s “Next Generation” project, for example, has convened across-the-aisle collaboration in scores of state legislatures.)

So we Americans do know how to work together. But we have to get past the soaring rhetoric from the right and the left about how they alone can “save America.” We have to get down to the real business of learning and applying boundary-crossing skills. If we actually want a “system that reflects our better selves,” let’s start with what works. Let’s take to scale the scores of projects where that is already happening.

You can find the original version of this Christian Science Monitor article at www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Politics-Voices/2016/0425/Four-ways-to-fix-American-politics?cmpid=gigya-tw.

Bridging Divides in the Methodist Church on LGBTQ Issues

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As we prepare to think together about how we can bridge our nation’s divides during our NCDD 2016 conference, there’s much to be learned from the piece we’ve shared below from the Public Conversations Project, an NCDD member organization. In it, PCP’s Jessica Weaver reflects on key lessons that can be learned how the Methodist Church has been dealing with its perennial conflict about LGBTQ people in the church. You can read her article below or find the original piece here.

Three Lessons About Embracing Difficult Conversations from The Methodist Church

PCP new logoAs you may have read in the last few weeks, a deep conflict within the Methodist Church has surfaced once again. More than 750 congregations within the Church have formed the Reconciling Ministries Network, which advocates for the inclusion of LGBT people in a denomination that has barred them from being ordained, and from marrying a person of the same sex.

“It’s the perennial issue that will not go away, and for better or for worse, it’s the main battle flag issue between the liberal side of the Church and the conservative side of the Church,” said Mark Tooley, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Religion & Democracy, as quoted in the Religion News Service.

Understandably, this conversation has a history of being emotionally and politically fraught, disrupting conversations, gatherings, and relationships. The narrative I’ve noticed emerging from major media outlets about this movement is that it’s a sign of struggle, of irrevocable conflict, of failure. But I look at this story and I see something beyond a deeply emotional, and seemingly intractable conflict. I see resilience, a willingness to come to the table in the midst of deep differences, and an intentional approach, not only to the outcome of this critical discussion, but to how those conversations take place and how relationships can be preserved. Here are three strengths I think we should celebrate amidst this very difficult – and very public – divide.

1. A perennial conflict isn’t a sign of failure, it’s a fundamental reality of being part of any human community: there are differences we have to live with, not overcome.

The mainstream media has drawn out notes of exasperation in its coverage of this resurfacing issue. From within the U.S., where same-sex marriage is legalized and supported by the majority of the American public, the Church’s struggle is being criticized as backwards and behind the times. Research reveals, however, that almost two-thirds of church members accept homosexuality in society, simply not within the Church (i.e. would not want the Church to ordain someone who identifies as LGBTQ). Broader social acceptance of gays and lesbians in American society is complicated by the Church’s recent expansion into regions of the world where homosexuality is flatly banned.

In other words, it’s far more complicated than “liberals vs. conservatives,” as a number of factors are pulling factions of the church in different directions. That it is once again up for debate is not a sign of the Church’s failure to engage in a difficult conversation, or a sign that previous conversations have failed. There will always be differences in identity: in sexual orientation, faith, and relationship to scripture. What matters most is the community’s continued willingness to engage in these difficult conversations; to keep listening through the hard conversations.

2. How the conversation happens is just as important as the outcome.

Before diving into the specifics of the issue, the Church’s top lawmaking assembly (the Commission on the General Conference) decided to define a structure for discussing this divisive and often emotional issue. “We need to expand the ways that we can make decisions and be in conversation with each other,” said Judi Kenaston, the commission’s chair. The resulting “Group Discernment Process” called for smaller committees to meet and draft petitions to be submitted to a larger body of elected members. On Wednesday, however, that process was voted down.

While deep disagreements persist around how to even have this conversation, at least the “how” is being broached with intentionality and transparency. That’s not the case for so many divisive community issues. So it seems the Methodist Church acknowledges something critically important: no constructive conversation can proceed without an effective process in place.

3. “Togetherness” isn’t a monolith, and it doesn’t mean consensus.

In such a divided environment, talk of schism or splintering has inevitably arisen. Prominent leaders in the Church have openly admitted that it’s a possible outcome, especially in the midst of such a polarized age, when the “nation’s third-largest denomination and many of the political and theological divisions that divide America into its red and blue camps.” Those same leaders, and many more, are also exploring the nuances of what “unity” means and are unwilling to prematurely name the future of the Church. Said the president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, “we remain open to new and innovative ways to be in unity. We will remain in dialogue with one another and others about how God may be leading us to explore new beginnings, new expressions, perhaps even new structures for our United Methodist mission and witness.”

So what we have here is messy. It’s the hard, raw stuff of deep differences and human pain. But it’s worth noticing when public conflicts are handled with resilience and curiosity instead of posturing and accusation. This is a community struggling to remain intact and understand exactly what that means, how to reconcile individual beliefs with a community’s story. Let’s not shame them; let’s name what they’re doing right.

You can find the original version of this Public Conversations Project piece at www.publicconversations.org/blog/three-lessons-about-embracing-difficult-conversations-methodist-church.

Using Ground Rules to Create “Safe-Enough” Spaces

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We learned a lot from the article below written by a team from the Public Conversations Project, one of our NCDD member organizations. The piece uses story and art to offer a valuable lessons about how ground rules in dialogues can temper the impacts that power and privilege frequently have on tense discussions and help everyone be heard, even when emotions run high. We encourage you to read the PCP article, cross-posted below, or find the original here.

No, We Won’t Calm Down: Emotion and Reason in Dialogue?

PCP new logoA recent cartoon on digital platform Everyday Feminism stimulated a lot of questions among Public Conversations Project staff. Entitled “No, We Won’t Calm Down-Tone Policing is Just Another Way to Protect Privilege,” it raised important issues about power, privilege, the apparent contrast between reason and emotion, and the roles of advocacy and dialogue.

Tone policing

The protagonist, Robot Hugs, talks about how tone policing allows privileged people to define the terms of a conversation about oppression and how this “hinges on the idea that emotion and reason cannot coexist – that reasonable discussions cannot involve emotions.” It further asserts that this allows privileged people to regain control of a conversation that is making them uncomfortable and thereby avoid the discomfort caused by being exposed to the very real emotional fallout of oppression and discrimination.”

Image via EverydayFeminism.com, Credit: Robot Hugs

Our dialogue work frequently focuses on polarized and extremely controversial topics that touch on issues of power and privilege. We see “tone policing” as something to be avoided; we value people’s bringing their feelings into dialogue. That is one reason we talk with participants beforehand: to offer guidance about how they can speak in ways that are more likely to be heard, and how to listen with resilience. The communication agreements that participants commit to beforehand are ones that they have jointly drafted and found acceptable to support their purpose in having a deeper, more authentic conversation.

Power and privilege

The cartoon raises challenging and important questions about power and privilege that surface frequently in the course of our work. In fact, many partisans (on whatever side of a controversial issue) see advocacy and dialogue as mutually exclusive and cite issues of privilege and power imbalance as reasons it should be avoided. As Robot Hugs continues, “these conversations aren’t meant to be comfortable. We are discussing real, dangerous, structural things that make lives worse for entire groups of people. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, the thing to do isn’t to try to get us to talk about it differently – the thing to do is to help us stop it from happening.”

Why there may still be a need for dialogue

There are, however, many occasions when people on different sides of important issues feel the need to sit down and talk together. They may be tired of conflict or violence, or may see the potential benefit to their community of such a conversation. Our work in Montana was initiated because pro and anti-open carry advocates decided that it was important to try to understand each other’s perspectives, to strengthen their communities and keep them safe. In Nigeria, we worked with Muslims and Christians who wanted to address sporadic outbreaks of violence between their communities.

Bottom line, there are times when people experience the need to listen to one another, as a first step toward building relationships and trust. If such efforts succeed, people may be interested in attempting to work together to address problems, when neither group can solve the problem on their own.

Shared purpose, shared power

A dialogue is a conversation that participants enter with the clear and shared purpose of mutual understanding. They have also had an opportunity to contribute to how they want to be together. They contribute ideas that will promote this purpose, so they are the ones who are actively participating in designing the structure and communication agreements, rather than someone who is more privileged or powerful “imposing” them. They have agreed to focus on certain questions, to limit the time of responding, and to respond in ways that enhance learning and connection. We are aware that everyone is not always interested in such conversations and they may not be possible in certain circumstances.

The power of agreements

The agreements are co-created by all participants so that those who are “privileged” hold the same power as all others. Agreements can be negotiated throughout the process, so that if something is not working, the opportunity to fix it exists. In dialogue, the purpose of the conversation is mutual understanding. We know that when people are having difficult conversations around polarizing issues, it is helpful to create a space for effective communication. Hard work! In order to create a safe space – specifically one that does not induce a flight, fight, or freeze response – a person has to feel safe.

Avoiding fight, flight, or freeze

A part of our brain is watching for danger, and may prevent us from being capable of having a constructive conversation when we most need it. When there’s a lot at stake and we feel under attack, the brain and central nervous system release hormones designed to keep us hyper vigilant, with physiological (racing heartrate, cold, sweaty palms, etc.) and psychological effects. Our capacity to think and reflect shuts down as we prepare for fight, flight or freeze. A conversation with highly emotional responses, however justified, can trigger this reactive response. A structured, voluntary conversation, however, creates a sense of safety and wellbeing so that participants can focus on the narratives and not the fear that emerges because of feeling threatened.

One example of this dynamic occurred a number of years ago, in which issues of power imbalances and privilege caused collaborative work to run aground and precipitated a request for our assistance. The Massachusetts Department of Mental Health had received a three-year federal grant to reduce the use of seclusion and restraint in its psychiatric hospitals. DMH formed a Steering Committee, which included people with lived experience of psychiatric illness, family members, advocates, mental health clinicians, hospital directors, and staff.

Although all the participants shared a common purpose, the enterprise foundered within its first six months, as Steering Committee members experienced massive frustrations, with many voicing the sense of not feeling seen or heard by others. People with lived experience spoke powerfully of their sense that DMH staff were unwilling to hear their experience of having been traumatized by the seclusion and restraint orders that psychiatric hospital staff had initiated. In response to voicing their concerns, the message they heard back was that they needed to speak differently so that the (more powerful) DMH staff would not feel attacked. Many of the clinicians felt guilty and misunderstood, seen as one-dimensional and complained of being attacked verbally when they attempted to engage or empathize. From their perspective, there was a power imbalance in terms of the “moral power of the victim.”

Freedom through structure

One of our first tasks was to help them figure out how both sides could express themselves clearly and powerfully, in ways that invited thoughtful listening, rather than resistance and shutting down. How could the issues of power and privilege be addressed in a way that would allow them to resume their work together? We began by meeting with each group separately and helping them think through their priorities and their purpose in coming together. It soon became evident that there were significant differences within each group.

We encouraged a candid discussion that focused on helping them identify the kinds of behaviors and commitments that would support their purpose. As participants explored their own feelings and experiences within each group, they engaged energetically with each other. As facilitators, we did not impose “ground rules” but allowed these to emerge from the group after thorough discussion.

When the two groups came together one of the first items of conversation was the negotiation of these ground rules. This was accomplished quickly and it successfully provided the kind of “safe-enough” space within which participants were able to have a more fruitful conversation that led to their getting back on track.

Purpose first; no policing later

Image via EverydayFeminism.com, Credit: Robot Hugs

To return to Robot Hugs, one of the underlying assumptions that we noted was the lack of clarity in identifying the purpose for the conversation. Robot Hugs expressed the belief that sometimes conversations are not just for moving toward solutions but they can also be for exploring situations, letting off steam, finding community, and feeling less alone. The cartoon suggested that those conducting the “tone policing” had very different purposes for the conversation, namely to retain their power and privilege and avoid feeling uncomfortable.

One thing that we emphasize in our work is the importance of purpose. If the purpose for a conversation is clear and shared, then developing shared commitments of how people want to be together can help support that purpose. If the participants have very different purposes for the conversation, these differing purposes frequently manifest behaviorally and interfere with task accomplishment. If the purpose involves mutual learning and understanding, differences of power and privilege can usually be directly addressed and successfully negotiated. This kind of direct and open conversation, focused on mutual learning and understanding, can lay the foundation for collaborative action to create more fairness and justice.

Robot Hugs rightly complains that the more powerful people sometimes want to make the rules of the game, to impose their views on how the conversation should be held. In our work, communicating with participants beforehand helps to address issues of purpose, conducive behaviors, and commitments. Groups might, for example, talk about sharing airtime, listening with resilience, and other kinds of behaviors that would help support their purpose.

Emotion and reason are not enemies. We want people to bring their feelings and their passions into the room when they engage in dialogue, but not to be overwhelmed by them. And we want to help them to think about how they can express these in ways that invite listening with an open heart and speaking in ways that invite receptivity.

You can find the original version of this Public Conversations Project post at www.publicconversations.org/blog/no-we-wont-calm-down-emotion-and-reason-dialogue#sthash.YJKzIe1V.dpuf.