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What Does it Mean to Transform Governance?

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Back in February, NCDD member and Public Agenda staffer Matt Leighninger penned the article below on his trip to a democracy conference in Manila, and we wanted to share it here. In it, Matt shares some great insights on what it means to “transform governance” and improve democracy that really get at the heart of what many in our field are seeking to do. We encourage you to read his article from the PA blog below or find the original post here.

One Week in Manila: Democracy, Development, and “Transforming Governance”

PublicAgenda-logoThis week, I will join a group of people from around the world meeting in Manila to talk about how to make democracy work in newer, better ways. Convened by Making All Voices Count, a collaborative of the Omidyar Network, the US Agency for International Development, the UK Department for International Development and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the group will include Asian and African democracy advocates, civic technologists and researchers.

In the Manila meeting, the participants will be using the term “transforming governance” to describe the changes they seek. The central question of the gathering is: If we want to ensure that citizens have meaningful roles in shaping public decisions and solving public problems, can technologies play a role in helping them do so?

They are asking a very old question, but with new hypotheses, new tools and new principles in mind. It is increasingly clear that the older democracies of the Global North do not have all the answers: citizens of those countries have increasingly lost faith in their political institutions. Northerners cherish their human rights and free elections, but are clearly looking for something more. Meanwhile, in the Global South, new regimes based on a similar formula of rights and elections have proven fragile and difficult to sustain. And in Brazil, India and other Southern countries, participatory budgeting and other democratic innovations have emerged.

How can our democratic formulas be adjusted so that they are more sustainable, powerful, fulfilling – and, well, democratic? Some of the new answers come from the development of online tools and platforms that help people to engage with their governments, with organizations and institutions, and with each other. Often referred to collectively as “civic technology,” these tools can help us map public problems, help citizens generate solutions, gather input for government, coordinate volunteer efforts and help neighbors remain connected.

Despite the rapid growth of these forums and tools around the world, in most cases they are not fully satisfying expectations. One reason is that they are usually disconnected from one another, and from other civic engagement opportunities, so are not reaching their full civic potential. Another is that some are designed mainly to gather small scraps of feedback from citizens on a government service, with no guarantee that government will be willing or able to use the input, so they only have limited civic potential.

But while it is unfair to expect any new technology to automatically change our systems of governance, we should certainly have these tools in mind – along with the many processes for productive public engagement that do not rely on technology – when we think about how to redesign democratic systems.

In that conversation, “transforming governance” can be a helpful term because it urges us to think more broadly about democracy, and about the power of democratic systems to improve our lives. There are at least three ways in which these positive transformations can occur:

  • Changing how people think and act in democracies, by giving them the information they need, the chance to connect with other citizens, the opportunity to provide ideas and recommendations to public officials and public employees, the confidence that government is accountable to citizens’ needs and desires, and the encouragement to devote some of their own time and energy to improving their communities.
  • Changing how governments work, so that public officials and employees can interact effectively with large numbers of people, bridge divides between different groups of citizens, provide information that people can use, gather and use public input, and support citizens to become better public problem-solvers.
  • Changing how civil society organizations (‘intermediaries’) and information mediators (‘info-mediaries’) work, so that they are better able to facilitate the interaction between citizens and government, monitor and report on how decisions are being made and problems are being solved, and provide training and support to new leaders.

These changes can add up, in many different combinations, to democracies that are more participatory, energetic, efficient and equitable. In Manila and elsewhere, we should face the old questions with new tools, new visions and new hope.

You can find the original version of this Public Agenda piece at www.publicagenda.org/blogs/one-week-in-manila-democracy-development-and-transforming-governance#sthash.OzbfQ9g9.dpuf.

Fond Memories of Hal Saunders

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I’m so sad to share this news with the network, but our long-time member Harold Saunders passed away yesterday at the age of 85. Hal had an incredibly distinguished career – I can’t even begin to do it justice. He developed and practiced the process of Sustained Dialogue, a “public peace process” to transform racial and ethnic conflicts.
 He authored four books on peace building and dialogue. He worked with Kissinger, President Carter, and so many others. He became the Director of International Affairs at the Kettering Foundation. And he was just an all-around incredible human being.

Many of us were privileged to know him, as he always attended the NCDD conferences and interacted with all of us with an open heart and an amazing attitude of humble curiosity and camaraderie. He participated in a panel of field leaders at our 2004 national conference in Denver, and spoke again at our 2008 conference in Austin. Please join me in mourning the loss of our friend and colleague. Contributions in his memory can be sent to the Sustained Dialogue Institute. You can read more about Hal’s incredible work in the Kettering Foundation’s write-up below or read the original here.

Dr. Harold H. Saunders, 1930-2016

kfHarold H. Saunders, assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration and the recently retired director of international affairs at the Kettering Foundation, who spent more than 20 years in high foreign policy positions in the United States government, died on March 6, 2016, at his home in McLean, Va. He was 85.

The cause of death was prostate cancer.

“Hal Saunders served with distinction under six U.S. presidents and was a significant figure in America’s international affairs for more than 50 years. We were fortunate to have had his good counsel for much of that time,” David Mathews, Kettering Foundation president, said. “In addition, we will remember his interest in young people. He reached out to college students and built a network devoted to sustained dialogue, one of the primary themes of his work in recent years.”

“He tackled some of the greatest challenges of our times –  protracted conflict, destructive relationships, weak governance, dysfunctional democracy and the need for a new world view,” Dr. Mathews continued.

After serving as a U.S. Air Force lieutenant and in the Central Intelligence Agency, Saunders joined the National Security Council staff in 1961 and served through the Johnson and Nixon administrations as the council’s Mideast expert, a period that saw the Six-Day War of June 1967, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the Kissinger shuttles. He was appointed deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs in 1974, director of intelligence and research in 1975, and was appointed by President Carter to be assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs in 1978.

During his tenure as assistant secretary, Saunders was a principal architect of the Camp David Accords and the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. In the early morning hours of November 4, 1979, a call was patched through to his home from Tehran, and over the next two hours he listened to the overrun of the American Embassy. For the next 444 days, Saunders worked tirelessly to free the American hostages, culminating in their release on January 20, 1981.

For his contributions to American diplomacy, Saunders received the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Service, the government’s highest award for civilian career officials, and the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award. After leaving government service in 1981, he was associated with the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution for 10 years before joining the Kettering Foundation as director of international Affairs. In 1981, he also became U.S. co-chair of the Task Force on Regional Conflicts for the Dartmouth Conference, the longest continuous dialogue between American and Soviet citizens.

Harold H. Saunders was born in Philadelphia on December 27, 1930, and attended Germantown Academy there. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University in 1952 with a bachelor’s degree in English and American Civilization and received a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University in 1956. He was president of his class at Princeton, later served on the Board of Trustees at Princeton and received the Class of 1952’s “Excellence in Career” award.

Over the past 35 years, Dr. Saunders developed and practiced the process of Sustained Dialogue, which he described as a “five-stage public peace process” to transform racial and ethnic conflicts. He was the author of four books, co-author of another and co-editor of still another, all dealing with issues of international peace.

In 1999 he wrote A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflict. That experience led to his founding the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue (now the Sustained Dialogue Institute), which he served as chairman and president until his retirement on December 31, 2015. He is also the author of The Other Walls: The Arab-Israeli Peace Process in a Global Perspective (1985), Politics Is about Relationship: A Blueprint for the Citizens’ Century (2005), and Sustained Dialogue in Conflicts: Transformation and Change (2011).

Through IISD/SDI he moderated dialogues among citizens outside government, from the civil war in Tajikistan to deep tensions among Arabs, Europeans, and Americans and all factions in Iraq. More recently, he had been collaborating with established organizations in the U.S., South Africa, Israel and the Americas to embed sustained dialogue in their programs.

Dr. Saunders was the recipient of many awards. From Germantown Academy, he received its first Distinguished Achievement Award in 2002. He was given Search for Common Ground’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 and the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Annenberg Award for Excellence in Diplomacy in 2010.

He had served on the board for the Hollings Center, the executive committee of the Institute for East-West Security Studies and on the boards of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Internews,  and Partners for Democratic Change and had been a member of the International Negotiation Network at the Carter Presidential Center. He served on the governing council of the International Society of Political Psychology, which presented him the 1999 Nevitt Sanford Award for “distinguished professional contributions to political psychology.”

He taught international relationships and conflict resolution at George Mason University and at Johns Hopkins University’s Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

He was awarded honorary degrees of doctor of letters by New England College, doctor of international relations by Dickinson College, doctor of humane letters by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and doctor of arts, letters, and Humanities by Susquehanna University. He was an elder in the Presbyterian Church and had participated in a Roman Catholic-Reformed Churches dialogue.

Dr. Saunders’ first wife, the former Barbara McGarrigle, died in 1973. He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Carol Jones Cruse Saunders, a son, Mark and daughter-in-law, Robin Stafford, daughter Catherine, a step-daughter, Caryn Hoadley, and her husband, Brad Wetstone, three grandchildren and two step-grandsons.

Burial is private. A memorial service will be held at a future date.

In his memory, contributions may be made to his Sustained Dialogue Institute.

You can read the original version of this Kettering Foundation remembrance at www.kettering.org/blogs/harold-saunders-1930-2016.

Technology & Democracy Video Project Seeks Submissions

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Here’s a fun-but-relevant thing happening out there: the collaborative team at hitRECord is partnering with the ACLU to crowd source a series of short films on the theme of how technology has impacted democracy. They’re asking folks to submit videos of themselves speaking on the subject, and we know many of our NCDD members have great thoughts to share on the topic! Read more about the project below or find hitRECord’s original post along with their introductory video by clicking here.

Are you there, Democracy? It’s me, the Internet.

Today’s technology is changing pretty much every facet of our lives – even things as important as our Democracy. And especially with this being an election year here in the US, I think these changes are really worth having a conversation about, and making art about.

So, I wanna hear what you think. Record yourself (or interview someone else) on camera answering these three questions:

  1. Is today’s technology good or bad for Democracy?
  2. How might the technology of the future be BAD for Democracy?
  3. How might the technology of the future be GOOD for Democracy?

Once we have lots of footage of different people answering these questions, we’ll use that footage to produce a bunch of short films. We could make a stylized documentary, we could dramatize somebody’s personal point of view, we could do animation, a song, who knows.

And now, I’m very pleased to announce that for this project, hitRECord will be partnering with the ACLU. The ACLU is a 100-year-old, non-profit, legal organization who is right at the forefront of figuring out how today’s laws should or shouldn’t adapt to today’s technology.

And, although this project isn’t about the money, as with every hitRECord production, if one of your contributions is used in one of the final short films, you will get paid. I just finished shooting a movie where I play Edward Snowden, which really got me thinking about all of this. And so I’ve decided to donate my acting fee from that movie to facilitate this conversation about technology and democracy. Some of that money will go to this production, and the rest will go to the ACLU.

That’s about it. I really look forward to hearing how you answer the three questions and seeing what kinds of short films we can make out of it.

You can find the original version of this hitRECord post at www.hitrecord.org/projects/2650089.

Pluribus Project Seeks Narrative Projects & Ideas to Fund

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We strongly encourage our NCDD members to take note that the Aspen Institute’s Pluribus Project is calling for projects and ideas aimed at changing the national narrative about citizen participation that it wants to fund with grants of up to $50,000, and we know many of our members could be eligible. All are encouraged to apply for this great opportunity, but the deadline is March 15th, so don’t delay! Read more in the Pluribus Project’s announcement below or find the original here.

Pluribus Project Narrative Collaboratory: Open Call For Fundable Projects

Our nation’s founders envisioned a republic in which the people would be the ultimate source of power. Today, however, a pervasive cultural narrative – across the right and the left – tells Americans it is pointless to participate in civic life because the game is rigged and their voices just don’t matter. At the Pluribus Project, we believe that it’s time to counter this dominant negative narrative and to displace it with a storyline of citizen empowerment so that Americans can begin to see that change is possible and how to become a part of it.

The reality is that many Americans in communities across the country are finding ways to come together and create real change. They may be a minority but they are not uncommon and they are still noticeably absent from the mainstream conversation. That’s why we created the Narrative Collaboratory, a platform for generating and propagating new narratives of citizen voice and efficacy, coupled with the tools of power and action that others can use. Think of it as a venture platform to seed experiments in media, storytelling, organizing, and experience design.

We are now announcing an Open Call for experiment and project ideas. We intend to select and support multiple proposals that creatively and effectively spread narratives of citizen power. Selected projects will be eligible for financial support, ranging from $5,000 to $50,000, from the Pluribus Project, and will be featured to additional donors and potential supporters through various media and events including the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Ultimately, we believe that with a sense of collective purpose, some trial and error, and the ingenuity of the many (that’s you), there is real opportunity right now to reinvent our civic reality, and to help create a more representative and responsive democracy.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Promise: All projects should show great promise to counter the pervasive, disheartening narrative that discourages citizens from engaging in their democracy. We are looking for platforms for experimentation that can generate or propagate new, durable, and contagious narratives of citizen power and efficacy.

A Diversified Portfolio: We are looking for projects that are diverse in type. Some may be media ventures, involving traditional journalism, digital media, or social media. Some might be organizing initiatives. Others might political ideation ventures. Some may even be hybrids. All projects must be non-partisan, and we prefer projects that are trans-partisan.

Scalable with a proof of concept: We are structure-agnostic – meaning that we will consider both for-profits and nonprofits. We generally prefer ventures with demonstrated proof of concept and a clear plan for reach and sustained impact. All funded ventures will be required to enter into a formal written agreement with the Pluribus Project, committing to use grant funds for specific purposes—including the charitable and educational ends—outlined in their proposal.

SELECTION PROCESS

Applications are due March 15, 2016. We will choose a set of projects to fund by April 15 and these projects will be implemented through the calendar year.

Applications will be reviewed and evaluated by a team of experts in civic engagement, innovation, and investment. The final portfolio will be financed at the discretion of the Pluribus Project Narrative Collaboratory team, who will receive advice and input of the experts engaged throughout the process.

TO APPLY

Please answer the following questions. Email your answers to narrative@pluribusproject.org. You may also include relevant attachments. The deadline for applications is March 15, 2016.

(1) Describe the narrative project or experiment. What exactly are you are doing, or do you plan to do, in order to generate or propagate new, durable, and contagious narratives of citizen power and efficacy? (500 words max.)

(2) How will you use the money and why will your project benefit from this investment? (250 words max.)

(3) What results have you achieved to date (if applicable), and what results do you anticipate for the next year? (250 words max.)

(4) Please provide brief bios for each core team member.

You can find the original version of this Pluribus Project announcement at www.pluribusproject.org/news/narrative-collaboratory-open-call.

Gloucester Shows How to Build a Culture of Dialogue

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Our friends at with Public Conversations Project recently posted the story of a wonderful community dialogue project from Gloucester, MA, and we wanted to repost it here. The piece by Kathy Eckles shares some great history and reflections about the founding members of Gloucester Conversations’ efforts to build a culture of dialogue in their town, and there’s lots to learn from it. We encourage you to read Kathy’s piece below or find the original version here.

We are Creating a Culture of Dialogue And So Can You

PCP new logoWhat does “all in the same boat” really mean? Focus. Balance. Lean in. Pull together. For a harbor city on the east coast the phrase seems appropriate. In fact, as Gloucester citizens we are trying to figure out how to keep our shared boat afloat. With our history, the sea, land, skies and all people on board, we must discover how to sail onwards together, and remain stable, listening, and helping one another. Are our relational skills up to the urgency of integrating the depth and breadth of our history, cultures, environment, economies, education, needs and interests? We’re working on it.

It’s no easy task to move from an establishment model of engagement to ‘we the people’, but that’s where we’re headed. The tensions of what we could lose – our rugged beauty, passionate individualism, hardworking harbor and our interdependence – hold all of us accountable to each other and our community when it may seem easier to simply sell, fight or fold.

In light of this need, Gloucester Conversations (GC) was formed. Through the generosity of our mentor organization, Public Conversations Project, Gloucester Conversations is helping our city develop a culture of dialogue. Thoughtful conversations are gradually replacing ‘my side/your side’ battles. A confluence of people are caring about ‘how’ we do ‘what’ we do. From city government and journalism, fishing and small businesses, arts and cultural groups to education, human and environmental services, we’re striving to use frameworks that make a place for people to be heard, respected and part of the decision-making.

How did Gloucester Conversations start? 

Inspired by the successes of other communities, Gloucester resident John Sarrouf of Public Conversations talked with locals and eventually gathered a group of five interested in Gloucester becoming a more collaborative community. We met for what seemed ad infinitum to explore our values, vision, skills and personal styles and to develop a strategy and related materials to help foster a culture of dialogue.

The first step was figuring out how other people and organizations had done this work, and done it well. We reached out to Everyday Democracy and invited in leaders from Hands Across North Quabbin, Portsmouth Listens and Lawrence Community Works to share with our whole community their dialogue, decision-making and community engagement processes. We launched two cornerstone initiatives. First were two types of dialogue circles. We hosted small group dialogues for people to tell their stories and express their hopes for the city. In addition to discussing specific issues, participants reflected on the process of dialogue itself, what worked, and how dialogue makes a place for everyone. The other type of dialogue circles were called Kitchen Table Conversations, a framework for anyone to gather neighbors and friends for a deeper kind of conversation in their home.

Our second initiative was training a cadre of facilitators who could lead small group conversations within larger community dialogues. We shared our vision with leaders in government, journalism, education, arts and culture, asking for their support and seeking to understand how we could help them. In addition to in-person dialogue planning and facilitation support, our website offers dialogue and facilitation resources for anyone interested in pursuing a new conversation in Gloucester or another community.

What’s working?

Behind-the-scenes dialogue design, group facilitation and support for specific city projects. Here are two examples:

When tensions escalated over the placement of a donated piece of public art, city leaders asked Gloucester Conversations to help guide the conversation around developing a public art policy. We designed and facilitated a dialogue session for arts and cultural leaders, and later, a successful open community meeting. GC also supported a dialogue to resolve tensions between representatives of a day-center for homeless individuals and its neighbors. Participants discovered significant common ground, opened the possibility of collaborative problem-solving, and developed a plan for ongoing communication.

What have we learned?

The quality of conversations we have publicly is key to developing communication skills for every aspect of our lives, and visa versa.

While we might not always agree, our commitment to remaining in conversation with one another creates fertile ground for community, collaboration, and leadership. It helps us build strong families, raise kind children, and be good neighbors – people who listen, understand and act upon shared values for our shared future.

Gloucester is an amazing community. In the midst of major changes we are strengthening our capacity to steadily focus, balance, lean in, and pull together. May we become people and a community our children are proud of, and may the legacy we leave them be one they enjoy and tend lovingly for their children, and their children, too.

You can find the original version of this Public Conversations Project blog piece by visiting www.publicconversations.org/blog/we-are-creating-culture-dialogue-and-so-can-you#sthash.IbXMcZe4.dpuf.

How Do We Show Dialogue’s Risks are Worth its Rewards?

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Last month, NCDD Board member John Backman sparked lots of thoughtful conversation on our NCDD Discussion Listserv with the article below, and we wanted to share it on the blog too. His piece examines the fear we feel sometimes have around engaging in dialogue that could shift our stance on strongly-felt issues. He points out that for many average people, the idea of dialogue with “the other side” presents a risk – maybe real, maybe imagined – that allowing our opinions to shift might hurt some of our important relationships.
John’s article prompts us dialogue workers to take seriously what it sometimes means for us to ask people to take a risk like that, and it asks us how we can demonstrate that the risk is worth the reward. We encourage you to read John’s article below (original here) and let us know what you think about his questions in the comments section.

Guns, Changes of Mind, and the Cost of Dialogue

My opinion on government gun policy is starting to shift. That shift fills me with dread – and the reason, I think, may say a lot about why dialogue is such a hard sell.

Let’s start with my own biases. Temperamentally, I am as close to pacifist as you can get without actually being pacifist. Guns hold no appeal for me whatever (beyond the curiosity I have about pretty much everything). I grew up on Bambi. For most of my life, then, my thoughts on gun control were pretty much a default on the pro side.

But recent events have nudged me into more reflection. My experiments with gun dialogue (last month and in 2012) put me in contact with gun owners and their stories about why they value their guns, the enjoyment of pursuits associated with guns, the security they feel in owning a gun and knowing how to use it. Moreover, after pondering the Second Amendment, I can see how the standard gun owner’s interpretation may have some merit.

Bottom line: I can still support commonsense measures like background checks and waiting periods. But now, whenever cries to reduce gun ownership permeate the public square, I can’t quite join in – as much as my Bambi instinct still wants me to.

But this post is not about guns. It’s about why the shift scares me.

There are several reasons, but one towers above them all: some of the most important people in my social network – dear friends, immediate relatives, colleagues who might influence the course of my career – are vociferously anti-gun. I can think of a family member whose wisdom and love I would not do without… a colleague whose family has suffered several murders due to gun violence… a Catholic writer who shares many of my sensibilities but whose wrath grows with each mass shooting.

Will they abandon me now that I’m expressing a different opinion, even if just slightly different?

You might argue that it’s unlikely, and you’d probably be right. But in our current culture, friends and colleagues do part ways over disagreements like this. Consider the “harmonious” traditional family that fractures when a daughter comes out as gay, or good neighbors who find themselves on opposing sides when a casino comes to town. The notion that “if they abandon you over this, they weren’t real friends (or colleagues, or loved ones) anyway” is far too simplistic.

Now consider that I feel this dread strongly enough to hold my tongue around certain people – and I’m a dialogue person. How can I expect folks who are unfamiliar with dialogue to enter in when the risk is so high: when they might lose not only their basic convictions, but even their friends? How can those of us who care deeply about dialogue demonstrate that, in fact, the reward is worth the risk?

You can find the original version of this piece by John Backman on his blog at www.dialogueventure.com/2016/01/12/guns-changes-of-mind-and-the-cost-of-dialogue.

NCDD-CRS Meetings Catalyzed Projects, Continue in 2016

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In the last year, we’ve been reporting on the collaboration that NCDD formed with U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service to organize meetings between NCDD members and CRS staff at their fourteen regional field offices. To date, meetings or conference calls have been held with CRS offices in Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, Dallas, and Seattle. Meetings are still in the works for Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and San Francisco in 2016, so be on the look out for more news if you live in those cities. The meetings are limited to dues-paying members and 2014 Conference attendees, so if you want to participate in one of the remaining meetings, make sure your dues are current, then contact NCDD’s Program Director Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org.

NCDD Supporting Member Janice Thomson helped organize the NCDD-CRS meeting in Chicago, and it was a great example of the powerful collaborations that are being catalyzed by this initiative. She wrote up some insightful reflections on the meeting and the partnerships it made possible it on her blog, and we encourage you to read them below or find the original piece here.

How D&D Can Help Communities Adapt to Rapid Change

Since the 1960s, the US Department of Justice has provided peacekeeping services via its Community Relations Service (CRS) for community conflicts and tensions related to race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and disability.

In 2015, the heads of the CRS and the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) organized a series of nationwide meetings to identify possible areas of cooperation between the two groups. I and a dozen other NCDD members from Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan met with CRS staffers in Chicago and Detroit on February 23, 2015.

During our meeting, it became apparent that the types of conflicts the CRS commonly addresses are often symptoms of multiple stresses communities can experience as a result of rapid demographic, social, and economic change. The CRS can legally only act as a first responder after a crisis event. However, NCDD members can help support these communities to address the underlying stresses and so prevent crises from ever occurring.

As farming and manufacturing declined in the Midwest, service sector jobs grew, and real estate values fell, newcomers with very different histories, needs, and values from those of long-time residents moved into what previously were fairly stable and homogeneous communities. As a result, traditional ways of handling everything from public safety to education to transportation planning just aren’t working anymore. Resources are stretched. Residents are frustrated. Community leaders are desperate for new ways to meet residents’ needs and resolve issues before they fester into anything as destructive as hate crime. Importantly, this is happening not only in the Midwest, but throughout the country and in many other parts of the world.

As specialists in dialogue and deliberation, methods for helping communities to engage in meaningful conversations and make wise public decisions, we NCDD members knew that we had powerful tools to bring to communities struggling with rapid change. But how could we convince more communities to try them?

Three of us, Tracy Rogers-Tryba, Hubert Morgan, and I, decided to start answering this question by creating and testing an introductory D&D training designed specifically for communities struggling to adapt to disorienting demographic, economic, and social change.

With the support of The Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and the DeKalb County Community Foundation, on August 5, 2015 we shared this day-long training with members of DeKalb area civil society. We showed how 12 D&D methods have been used in other towns, suggested ways they might be applied to a fictitious case study city, and then provided time for participants to reflect on how they might be used in their own community. D&D methods were chosen to represent diverse approaches. Each was well-developed, time-tested, and supported by organizations, trainers, and resource materials.

We used the NCDD four streams of practice model to structure our discussions. This framework was originally designed to help practitioners decide which D&D methods to use when. However, it can also be a very helpful way to show how different D&D methods could complement each other when used by various groups within the same community (e.g., government, museums, schools). Below is a summary of methods we shared from each stream.

D&D methods from the Exploration stream encourage residents to learn more about themselves, their community, and/or an issue. They also teach skills in respectful listening and considering diverse viewpoints. They can thus provide a low-risk way for communities to begin to discuss difficult issues. We shared the Civic Reflection, Conversation Café, and Study Circles methods. For the case study city, we suggested using the first with teachers to address issues of burnout caused by growing student needs and declining resources. Conversation café would be used to explore community aspirations and address the issue of declining community spirit. Study Circles would explore public safety, both examining causes of increasing crime and identifying potential solutions.

Conflict Transformation approaches are used to resolve conflicts, foster personal healing, and improve relationships between groups. They provide safe ways to discuss divisive and sensitive topics, including issues linked to race, ethnicity, religion, and social class. We shared the Public Conversations Project (PCP), Restorative Justice Circles, and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) methods. In the case study city, we proposed using PCP to diffuse religious and ethnic tensions related to immigration. Circle would be taken up by schools to resolve non-violent student conflicts. NVC would be taught within diverse faith groups as a way to embed conflict transformation skills in the community.

Decision-making processes seek to influence public decisions and public policy, and to improve public knowledge on topics such as public education, policing, and economic development. We outlined the 21st Century Town Hall Meeting and Citizens’ Jury methods, as well as various approaches to informal and online engagement. For the case study city, we suggested using the first method to get resident input when cutting the city budget. A Citizens’ Jury would provide neutral guidance to voters on a contentious ballot initiative to change the tax structure. Informal and online engagement would both be used to get the input of “hard to reach” residents on a regional transportation plan.

Collaborative Action methods empower groups and individuals to solve complicated problems and take responsibility for the solution. We presented World Café, Open Space Technology (OST), and Appreciative Inquiry. World Café would be used to improve university-resident understanding and identify common goals. OST would help residents and economic development stakeholders to collectively identify ways to build a more vibrant economy. Appreciative Inquiry would help kick off a housing summit on a positive note by reminding participants of current assets and successes.

Our primary goal with this training was to introduce participants to dialogue & deliberation by demonstrating how a dozen different methods might be used in a community similar to their own. That we achieved.

We also wanted participants to start thinking about how they could use these and similar methods in their own work. They did. Collectively, they identified about a dozen potential projects or areas to explore.

What we could have done better, however, was help them to overcome risks inherent in trying something new in a potentially volatile environment. While they saw the need for and benefits of D&D, they were also worried about possible negative outcomes. Careful planning, involving key stakeholders from the beginning, and starting small could help reduce some of these risks. However, ultimately it takes courage to be the first to host a community dialogue on sensitive topics. Hopefully, we will have inspired some individuals and organizations to try and that their efforts will in turn make it easier for others to follow suit.

You can find the original version of this Janice Thomson piece at www.janicethomson.net/new-faces-changing-towns.

Host a Story Circle During 2016 “People’s State of the Union”

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As a start to the new year, the US Department of Arts & Culture (USDAC) – one of our presenters during NCDD 2014 – is inviting communities across the US to come together from Jan. 23-31 to share stories that define the state of our nation in their People’s State of the Union project. The USDAC is looking for folks to host a story circle where they live, and we thought our members might be interested. Learn more about the PSOTU in the USDAC announcement below or find the original here.

People’s State of the Union: An Annual Civic Ritual & Participatory Art Project

Every January, the President delivers a State of the Union address highlighting important issues from the past year and suggesting priorities for the coming year. It’s a broadcast from one to many. But democracy is a conversation, not a monologue. Understanding the state of our union takes We the People reflecting in our own communities on our challenges and opportunities locally, nationally, and globally.

The People’s State of the Union is an invitation to supplement the President’s stories with our own, together hosting a national conversation in our own homes, schools, houses of worship, and community organizations. To change the world, we have to change the story!

Story Circles Nationwide & the Poetic Address

The People’s State of the Union has two main parts: story circles across the nation, and a collaboratively composed Poetic Address to the Nation. (Yes, our State of the Union address is a poem!)

Between January 23-31, 2016, individuals and organizations across the U.S. will host story circles. (Last year, more than 150 communities signed up.) Participants are invited to share their own take on the state of our union, either by reflecting on the following prompts or by creating their own prompts around a specific theme such as education, environment, or racial justice (e.g., “Share a story about something you have experienced that gave you insight into the state of education in this country”):

  • Share a story you think the next President absolutely needs to hear.
  • Share a story about something you have experienced that gave you insight into the state of our union.
  • Share a story about a moment you felt true belonging – or the opposite – in this country.

When you sign up to host a story circle – whether it’s a few folks in your own kitchen or a dozen simultaneous circles in a high school gym – you’ll get a free Toolkit that explains absolutely everything you need to know to organize, promote, and pull off your event, plus online training and technical assistance. Sign up below.

When PSOTU 2016 launches on January 23rd, the story portal will go live. Scribes from each event (and individuals anywhere) will be able to easily upload stories to a website where they can be browsed and shared. (You’ll find more than 500 stories at the PSOTU 2015 story portal.) Members of the USDAC National Cabinet will once again offer their own commentary too.

As the culminating event, a diverse group of poets will be invited to collaboratively create the 2016 Poetic Address to the Nation, which will be performed and livecast in February. (Watch and read the 2015 Poetic Address to the Nation.)

Sign Up to Host a Story Circle

Any individual or organization can sign up to host a People’s State of the Union event by following these three simple steps.

STEP 1: SIGN UP & DOWNLOAD THE TOOLKIT

The free PSOTU Toolkit offers you everything you need to organize, promote, and pull off your #PSOTU2016 event. Once you sign up for the toolkit, we’ll email more information about online story circle trainings.

STEP 2: JOIN THE COMMUNITY ON CTZN

Join the community of story circle hosts. We’ll use CTZN to upload stories and images to the PSOTU website. Just click the button, select Join, and create your account.  All information is available in the toolkit.

STEP 3: PUT YOUR EVENT ON THE MAP

Once you know the time/date/place of your event, be sure to add it to the National Action map! You can also use this feature to invite people to your event and to collect RSVPs. Be sure to use the same email address for STEP 2 and STEP 3 so that stories shared at your event can be tagged to your location on the map!

Do you work with a larger organization, coalition, or network that might be interested in inviting your constituents to host their own People’s State of the Union events, reflecting on the state of our union through a particular lens? We can support you! Drop us a line to explore partnership: hello@usdac.us.

You can find the original version of this announcement from the US Department of Arts & Culture at www.usdac.us/psotu.

New Curricula Teach Deliberation through Historic Decisions

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The team at the Kettering Foundation recently shared a fascinating post about a new, innovative set of tools they’re creating to help teachers teach history and deliberation in classrooms that we wanted to share. Kettering and the National Issues Forums Institute are rolling out a set of deliberative decision guides based on historic decisions that shaped US history, and they’re finding success using them in classrooms. Check out the Kettering post below about the project or find the original here.

Historic Decisions Create Citizens of Tomorrow

kfLisa Strahley of SUNY Broome recently shared a video her college and a local middle school produced based on their experience using NIF’s Historic Decisions curricula in their classroom. Historic Decisions issue guides take important decisions from American history and frame them, not as stories of great men making decisions for the country, but in terms of the difficult choices citizens at the time were confronting.

The goal of these issue guides is to allow students to feel the difficulty and power of making such choices and to learn to look at current-day problems with the same lens and sense of agency.

KF program officer Randy Nielson noted, “This video provides a really nice illustration of what political learning looks like. It shows what the subjects of the learning are (the practices of choice making and the effects of making the practices deliberative) and also the feeling of it – the kids were excited, because they had come to a different way of seeing the past, but also because their sense of themselves as actors in a life of choices with other people had changed. They had learned a new way of interacting and they knew it and could feel it. And that self-consciousness was beautifully evident.”

The 1776: What Should We Do? and A New Land: What Kind of Government Should We Have? guides are both available in print or digitally on NIF’s website. Eight more historic issues are currently being framed as part of a research exchange led by KF program officer Joni Doherty.

You can find the original version of this Kettering Foundation blog post at www.kettering.org/blogs/historic-decisions-create-citizens-tomorrow.

Public Agenda & WNYC Release NY Opinion Survey Results

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Last month, another great D&D-public radio partnership came to fruition – this time between Public Agenda, an NCDD member organization, and WNYC. PA conducted a survey of metro NYC residents’ opinions on key public issues and released its results in an in-depth report and a series stories on The Brian Leher Show all accompanied by PA blog posts. We encourage you to check out the results of their partnership in the PA announcement below or find the original here.

PublicAgenda-logoNew York Metropolitan Area State of Mind

Over the past year, we’ve been working with WNYC to survey residents of the New York metropolitan region. We wanted to know how area residents are thinking about public issues like education, income inequality, housing costs, taxes, crime and police-community relations.

Throughout the fall, we’ll be releasing results from that survey in coordination with WNYC. Starting Monday, October 15, tune in each day to The Brian Lehrer Show at 10 a.m. ET to hear about what we found. Will Friedman and Carolin Hagelskamp, our president and director of research, respectively, will be talking with Brian about a different story each day. If you’re not in the area, you can listen online, live or after the show.

The segments will be accompanied by blog posts from us, which we’ll post below, and reporting from WNYC’s newsroom and data viz team. Don’t miss out on any of it: follow us on Facebook and Twitter, where we’ll be providing links in real time.

In November, we’ll release a couple of formal reports summarizing everything we’ve learned. Be sure you’re registered for our email list if you want to receive those reports.

The Public Agenda/WNYC Survey is the first annual Deborah Wadsworth Fund Project and is possible thanks in large part to the generosity of our donors. The survey will help inform our next annual Deborah Wadsworth project, through which we’ll seek to find collaborative solutions to an issue local residents care and worry deeply about…

Methodology

The Public Agenda/ WNYC New York Metro Area Survey was conducted between June 29 and July 21, 2015 with 1,535 residents in the New York metro area, including New York City, Long Island, Southern New York State, Northern New Jersey, and Southern Connecticut. Additional responses were collected from 219 residents on a small subset of questions between August 25 and September 4, 2015. Some questions were posed to random subsamples of the overall sample, including the reported questions on people’s view on policing and crime, which explains why the total number of responses on these questions is smaller than the total survey sample. Data were collected via phone, including cellphone, and online, and weighted to be representative of known demographics in the region.

The Results

Full Report

What’s At Issue Here?: New York Metro Area Residents on the Problems That Concern Them Most

This PDF summarizes main findings from the 2015 Public Agenda/WNYC New York Metro Area Survey.

Survey Topline

Public Agenda/ WNYC New York Metro Area Survey Topline

This document includes a full description of the questions asked in the survey, complete survey responses and a comprehensive methodology report.

Press Release, October 12, 2015

Is New York No Longer the Land of Opportunity?

New York Metropolitan Area Residents Feel Trapped by Economic Insecurity, According to New Public Agenda/WNYC Survey; Most Say Government Responds to the Wealthy, Not Them

 

Press Release, October 12, 2015

Public Agenda/WNYC Survey Finds Stark Racial Differences in How New York Metropolitan Area Residents View Crime, Policing

Black and Hispanic Residents Twice as Likely as Whites to View Police-Community Relations as a Serious Problem

 

Blog Post

What Do Residents of the Greater New York Metro Area Worry About Most?

Regardless of where they live, affordability is what residents of the greater NY metro region worry about the most.

 

Blog Post

New Yorkers Don’t Resent the Wealthy, But…

Most New York area residents say it’s ok for wealthy people to get wealthier as long as everyone else also has a good chance to get ahead. The problem is, people don’t feel like they’re getting that chance.

Blog Post

In Solving Region’s Problems, New York Area Residents See a Role for Government, and for Themselves

New York area residents see a place for both the government and for themselves in solutions to the region’s problems.

 

Blog Post

New Yorkers on Taxes: Contradictory or Common Sense?

New York area residents say high taxes are a big problem, yet they want more government spending on housing and education. What gives?

Blog Post

Police-Community Relations Strained Where Police Needed Most

Results from our recent survey with WNYC suggest that the communities that may need police the most are also likely to say their relations with the police are most problematic.

You can find the original version of this Public Agenda posting at www.publicagenda.org/pages/wnyc-new-york-metro-area-survey#sthash.F1GGrsYj.dpuf.