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Awesome Interview of World Café’s Amy Lenzo

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We recently started reading a terrific interview series from the talented team at Collaborative Services on public participation lessons they have learned in the last year, and we wanted to share their insights with the NCDD community. The first interview in the series features the reflections of NCDD supporting member Amy Lenzo of the World Café - an organization whose founders are also NCDD founding members. You can read the interview below, or find the original on Collaborative Services’ blog by clicking here.

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The World Café: We Are Wiser Together

You may have heard the saying “If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.” Meaning if you aren’t actively participating, then you’re probably the topic being discussed or getting ready to be figuratively eaten. All the more reason to pull up a seat and actively engage in the discussions that matter to you.

Participating in large groups can be difficult, but one organization has developed a unique approach to make it easier for people just like you to be at the table for important civic discussions.

This week we start our series on successful public participation hearing from Amy Lenzo, the Director of World Café Learning Programs. The inspiration for the World Café came from a gathering of twenty academic and corporate leaders one rainy day at the home of World Café founders, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs. Since the rain prevented the group from starting their day on the patio, Brown and Isaacs set up make-shift café tables in their living room using TV tables fit with white easel paper as table cloths and vases with flowers as an alternative setting for their guests to gather for coffee and breakfast upon their arrival for their second day of key strategic dialogue on the field of Intellectual Capital.

Soon, and without any prompting, Brown and Isaacs noticed the small groups becoming deeply engaged in conversation and writing their thoughts and comments on the paper table cloths. Forty-five minutes later the suggestion was made for one host from each small group to stay at their table and for the rest of the members to move to different tables as a way for everyone to learn what had come out of the conversations happening in the other groups. From there the room was alive, the guests were excited and engaged, and the World Café method was born.

The World Café method emphasizes the importance of  creating a comfortable environment to draw people in. Just as with Brown and Isaacs’ group of academic and corporate leaders, small round tables with checkered tablecloths and vases with flowers help create the feeling of being at a café and make participating feel as easy as conversing over a cup of coffee with friends. Having a hospitable and inviting environment is important, especially when discussions have the potential to get heated.

The World Café method has resonated with cultures around the world, helping to establish a global common ground for public participation. This week we will learn more about the World Café’s global community and its method and process for successful public participation.

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How is the World Café approach different from traditional approaches to public engagement efforts?

The World Café is based on the premise that we are wiser together than any of us are alone, so it’s all about participation, and welcoming diversity so that we can learn from each other. It’s not a “top-down” communication process – each voice is valued equally and the focus is on sensing the “collective wisdom” that can exist between us when we really listen to each other and pay attention to the patterns that emerge within our conversations.

Another unique characteristic of the World Café process is its capacity for both intimacy and scale.

World Cafes can engage very large numbers of people – They have been done successfully with many thousands of people – without losing the sense of intimacy and depth that 20-minute table conversations with no more than 4 people at a table can foster. It’s amazing how deep these table conversations can be even among strangers, while the rotating rounds of conversation & whole group harvest give participants an experience of the larger picture.

Credit: The World Café Flickr

Is there an ideal use of the World Café approach or can it be applied to all public gatherings?

Well, there are situations where the World Café is not the best approach – when the group is less than 12 people, say, or when the result of the conversation is already known, e.g. when you just want to get information across. But when you have more than 12 people and there is respect for the innate capacity of people to address what is most important to them, the World Café can work well for any event, be it community-based and public or private including corporate, organizational, and institutional.

The World Café is based on seven design principles. How were these principles developed?

The World Café process itself happened spontaneously in response to particular circumstances during an international gathering of Intellectual Capital pioneers at Juanita Brown’s home. Subsequently, when it was clear that something extraordinary had happened that day, Juanita and colleagues Finn Voltoft and David Isaacs, with help from many others, embarked upon a serious investigation to find out exactly what conditions led to the experience and research whether or not the experience could be replicated. The result of this research gave rise to the formulation of the seven World Café design principles, which form the basis for World Café practice.

Is one or some of the principles more integral to fostering meaningful conversations? Or do they all play an equal part?

Every World Café design principle is a key element within the set. They can be used individually as powerful aids to meaningful conversation, and there are many synergies among them, but when the seven design principles are utilized in concert together they create the conditions whereby something truly extraordinary can occur.

Tell us more about the World Café online community. When did this start and how has it evolved over the years?

The international network of people using the World Café has grown exponentially ever since the World Café method was introduced. This growth was organic – largely through experience or word of mouth – and steady. Within a few years there were more than a thousand people engaging in conversation about their experiences hosting or participating in World Café. At that point, the World Café Community Foundation commissioned the first online community platform to support these conversations within what we have come to call a “community of practice.”

Credit: World Café

Online platforms have changed and been re-designed, but the number of people in the World Café online community continues to grow. There are currently almost 4,500 members from every continent, and almost every country in the World Café online community platform and over 2,000 in a Linkedin group. In addition, people all over the world share their World Café photos on Flickr and participate in a variety of other social media conversations online.

The actual number of practitioners and those who have experienced a World Café is of course many, many times higher. And now, as our online learning programs expand (we’re launching a new Masters Level course in World Café and Appreciative Inquiry with Fielding Graduate University in the Fall 2014 term), the numbers of actively engaged new practitioners continue to grow exponentially.

You’ve coined the term “conversational leader.” Can you explain the responsibilities of a conversational leader and what processes they should follow to successfully engage their participants?

We didn’t coin the term – World Café host Carolyn Baldwin did – but we have continued to evolve and develop the idea. Juanita Brown and Tom Hurley wrote a wonderful article on this subject, which is available as a free download on our website. Basically, the idea is that conversational leaders recognize conversation as a core meaning-making process and consciously create opportunities for meaningful conversation to occur in their organizations, as well as fruitfully utilize the results of those conversations.

The World Café approach is used by organizations and educational institutions around the world. What are some of the best examples of this approach in action that you have seen?

There are so many! We have an impact map on the World Café website with some great examples but I think one of the most striking was a World Café hosted in Tel Aviv. It was a reasonably ambitious event from the beginning – planned and set up as an outdoor World Café to engage up to 4,000 Israelis in a political and social conversation about transforming their country for the better – but according to reports from the hosts and other media, over 10,000 people showed up!

Why do you think this approach resonates with so many different cultures?

Conversation is a core human activity. We all do it; it’s fundamental to our nature, whatever our culture. We all crave the opportunity to be heard as we speak to others about things that really matter to us, and it is always moving to hear what really matters to others. Being part of a World Café conversation where there is a truly diverse set of participants – all of whom are welcomed and their perspectives valued – can be a life-changing experience.

An example of graphic recording from the Reno Climate Change Café.
(Credit: The World Café Flickr)

Graphic recording (capturing people’s idea’s and expressions in words, images and color – as they are being spoken) is recommended as part of the World Café approach. While recording the input received is a valuable practice, and many times a requirement for most public engagement opportunities, how does graphic recording benefit the participant?

From my perspective it’s the participant that gains most of all by having a graphic listener/recorder present as part of the World Café hosting team! Professional graphic facilitators are trained in ways that make them very valuable in capturing the essence of what is being shared during the harvesting process, but they are also invaluable collaborators for things like finding the right questions to help participants cut to the heart of the issue. During the harvest, having their words and ideas faithfully reflected is very powerful for the participant who has shared them, and seeing the collective meaning literally take form in front of the group is very valuable for the whole group – a fabulous fulfillment of the 7th World Café principle to “share collective discoveries.”

Which strategies could our readers take with them to help them become better communicators?

I think the main skill we can all develop in becoming better communicators is that of deep listening. And by deep listening I mean not just listening to understand another person’s point of view, although that can be very valuable in and of itself, but listening for what we can learn from the differences in perspective we hear. In other words, stepping outside of our own opinion in order to listen and learn from diverse points of view. That skill or strategy alone could not only make us better communicators, but it might even change the world for the better.

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Thank you Amy for sharing your insights and for working to change the world for the better.

This interview is part of a blog series from Collaborative Services, Inc. - a public outreach firm in San Diego, California that brings people together from their individual spheres and disciplines to improve communities and help people adapt to an ever-changing world. The firm uses inter-disciplinary efforts to manage and provide services in stakeholder involvement, marketing and communications, and public affairs. The firm’s award-winning services have spanned the western region of the United States from Tacoma, Washington to the Mexico Port of Entry.

We thank Collaborative Services for allowing NCDD to learn along with them, and we encourage our members to visit their blog by clicking here. You can find the original version of the above article at www.collaborativeservicesinc.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/the-world-cafe-we-are-wiser-together.

How Iceland Changed the Way We Think About the World

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We are pleased to highlight the post below, which came from NCDD member David Inman of Wilma’s Wish Productions. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Then you’re invited to use our Submit to Blog form to share your news post on the NCDD Blog. Click here to find out more!

Jaws dropped around the world when the Icelandic banking system collapsed in 2008. One of the biggest success stories of western industrialization, Iceland’s economy was seen as both stable and affluent. Then the three main privately owned banks crumbled, taking just about everyone in the small, 300,000 person population with them. Tears fell to the ground and hands flew to the air as a vibrant indignation beat through the streets of Reykjavik in protest against the hidden, faulted government regulation of the banking system. The Prime Minister was forced to resign, a new government stepped in, and the entire population was at risk of losing hope.

Shortly thereafter, something incredible happened.

The population surged and moved mountains. Dialogue facilitated the propagation of a constitutional assembly. Dialogue between laymen, professionals, farmers, businessmen, theologians, truck drivers. Dialogue spanning the entire swath of societal positions. Conversations at home, in small groups, abroad, in loudly populated meeting halls. Dialogue.

With a population half the size of Seattle alone, Iceland’s dialogue probably doesn’t seem such a huge feat. Yet considering the range and application, the grandeur of what was happening became an astoundingly unique phenomenon. Together, Iceland’s population organized an assembly to draft a new constitution for their country. The old constitution, an adaptation of the Danish one that once governed Iceland as a colony, was adopted in the late 1940′s and proved incapable of adapting to the issues of current day society. With the banking collapse and the opaque operations of the old government, a new document which truly reflected the needs and cares of the people urgently weighed on the minds and hearts of all. Though facing skepticism and doubt, the assembly formed.

The documentary Blueberry Soup explains the feasibility of Iceland’s project a bit more. In a country where one in ten people are published authors, public arts and education is a passionate value, and in which the term “community” is in every sense of the word sincere, the incorporation of the population’s input was a natural step. But obstacles persisted. Disillusionment. Hopelessness. Frustration. Political opposition. Even anger over the attempt to fix anything fearfully based in concern that the assembly would add salt to the wound and make the population more dejected. Alongside these problems lay the entrenched reluctance of national news sources to report upon the assembly. Indeed, many members of the population didn’t even know what was happening until it was nearly done and over with.

Through dogmatic effort and constant reassurance from interested people around the world the assembly beat on and finished their draft within four and a half months. Tireless days spent hashing out ideas, examining comments from all over the country, and bringing diverse perspectives together in dialogue saw them to the end of the project. The only thing left to do in order for it to be ratified was pass it in a vote. Both the majority of the population as well as the parliament had to vote yes in order to institutionalize the new constitution. Tension was high. The population of Iceland voted ‘yes.’ The parliament voted ‘no.’ Never before seen by the world, the first binding social contract propagated through outreach, social media, and crowd sourcing failed to pass. And yet it was not a failure, not quite.

What astounded me upon watching the documentary for the first time and then later interviewing Eileen Jerrett, the director of Wilma’s Wish Productions, was the fact that, realistically, there was only a victory. Legitimized by its failure, the new constitution displayed the blaring faction between the Icelandic government and the population. People weren’t being listened to, commerce replaced citizenship, and the need for inter-professional dialogue became all the more pressing.

For us, the dialogue community both here and abroad, the effort of Iceland to draft a new constitution ought not go unnoticed. Demonstrating the vast, successful potential of social media to reach a broad audience and facilitate meaningful dialogue Iceland functions as a microcosmic example of what may successfully occur in the United Sates. Albeit privileged with a much smaller population that is rudimentarily grounded in civic involvement, Iceland’s efforts are not without potential for replication. But how might such efforts be reproduced? In what way can dialogue be made accessible to more people with varying levels of compatibility?

I think we can answer these questions. I know we can. In fact, let’s challenge ourselves as a national community. Let’s find the underlying principle which pushes us all into civic engagement and break apart barriers of profession, age, opinion, and region.

You can find the trailer to Blueberry Soup here: http://vimeo.com/ondemand/blueberrysoup.

Learning from Chicago’s PB Challenges

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Participatory budgeting (“PB” for short) is an innovative form of empowered public engagement that has started proliferating in parts of Chicago, New York and California due to the leadership and hard work of one of our organizational members, the Participatory Budgeting Project.

PB is a process through which ordinary residents decide how to allocate government funds. Residents identify possible projects that could be funded, research them and develop them further, and then decide through a popular vote how to allocate the funds.

Initially developed in Brazil in the late ’80s, PB is finally picking up steam in the U.S. As part of its Second Open Government National Action Plan, the White House singled out PB as a promising practice in public participation, and has committed to work with key partners to increase awareness about PB and to support communities that are interested in launching PB processes.

PB has enjoyed a lot of success and recognition over the past few years, but the process has also faced some interesting challenges that those in our field should be aware of.  A recent article in the Hyde Park Herald tells the story of how one Chicago ward’s PB process ran into such challenges, and unfortunately was discontinued.

As a group committed to the growth of public engagement in meaningful decisions about our communities, we want to see PB and other public engagement processes continue to expand and thrive. But while it was disappointing news to hear, we believe Chicago’s 5th Ward provides a case study from which we can draw a few key lessons. One of the first challenges to the 5th Ward’s process is presented at the beginning of the article:

Hyde Parkers met Ald. Leslie Hairston’s decision not to continue the 5th Ward’s participatory budgeting (PB) program this year with a mixed reaction.

The 5th Ward’s experiment with PB — a political process born in Brazil in the late ’80s, in which constituents decide how their district’s money is spent — was the first on the South Side. A series of meetings took place beginning in 2012 and culminated with a public vote last May on how to spend $1 million of the 5th Ward’s discretionary funds.

Although Hairston said the program will be assessed next year, she said earlier this month that it was discontinued on the heels of a monthly ward meeting last October, where some participants described the process as cumbersome.

“They said it was very time consuming, a lot of meetings, and that they thought the neighborhood groups that they had were active enough to do it without having all of the expenses that were associated with it,” Hairston said.

We added the emphasis to the last sentence because this is an important idea for us to retain: like many engagement processes, PB is a lot of work for the sponsors, organizers, and citizens involved, and they can be more successful if they tap into already-existing community organizations to help get that work done.

Maybe it’s obvious to some of us, but PB needs buy-in from many parts of a given community, and a commitment to share the work load or the costs is one of the most genuine kinds of buy-in we can get.

The decisions about which existing community organizations to involve need to be made on a case-by-case basis, but in general, we should be looking to engage such groups as early as possible about actively contributing to a PB process, and even creating plans for outreach to these kinds of groups before we get started. Substantial participation from established groups will strengthen the process and signal its credibility to local residents.

The second insight we are taking away is similarly straightforward: low turnout can kill the PB process.

A news brief dated May 8, entitled “5th Ward Participatory Budgeting Process Wins High Marks,” framed voter turnout as historic despite the fact that just over 100 people voted… But last year’s process won’t be repeated this year, because of a low voter turnout and financial cost that led Hairston to question its effectiveness…

Hyde Parkers’ reactions to the program’s end ranged from understanding to disappointment — to both. “The turnout of approximately 100 was extremely disappointing,” said Roger Huff, a co-chair on the 5th Ward’s participatory budgeting leadership committee… “I don’t really blame Alderman Hairston for what she decided to do, because when it came time to vote, the community didn’t show up.”

Clearly, numbers matter in PB. In many public participation projects, turning out large numbers of people is important, and finding effective practices for doing that is a perennial issue in our field. But a key part of what we think is important here is that sustaining those numbers matters more.

Long-term community participation and buy-in is what makes PB work, and without a plan to cultivate and continue to engage a broad base of participants, the process can start to unravel. In addition to focusing on turnout from our communities, the 5th Ward’s case also highlights the fact that we may also need to pay attention to turnout in neighboring communities.

Chicago’s 5th Ward is not the only area of town where PB has caught on:

…the [5th] ward’s approximately 100 voters were dwarfed by more than 500 in the 46th Ward and around 1,400 in the 49th Ward, where PB was also available.

In some respects, this dynamic of the 5th Ward’s story suggests that it may be possible to become victims of our own success – if PB participants from one area of town see that the participation from their neighbors in other communities is dwarfing their own, it may impact the morale of the group and, ultimately, participation levels.

We aren’t pretending to know the solution to this issue, and maybe this wasn’t actually a factor in the 5th Ward’s situation. But it strikes us as a consideration that could end up bearing fruit if it is creatively accounted for. (If you have a creative suggestion on this front, please let us know in the comments section!) Another piece of the article brings us to one of our last takeaways from the 5th Ward’s experience: flexibility with the way money can be spent is key.

Although he applauds Hairston for her decision to open up the budgeting process to others, [Hyde Parker Alon Friedman] says certain changes could have been made — such as starting the process earlier — or using part of the $1.3 million in discretionary funding on related costs.

This is currently impossible, however, according to project coordinator [and NCDD member] Maria Hadden, of the New York City-based Participatory Budgeting Project, a nonprofit which has worked as a project lead for Chicago’s wards and similar processes nationwide.

She says Chicago wards’ discretionary funds can only be spent on fixed assets, not services. “The menu money is bond money, and it cannot be used for anything other than infrastructure,” Hadden said.

This kind of problem – older laws on the books undercutting newer attempts at public engagement – is hugely frustrating for our field in general, and it’s why NCDD supports the recommendations of the Making Public Participation Legal report around revising our legal statutes to remove barriers to effective public engagement processes. (Learn more about the report and our involvement here.)

It seems clear that the Chicago PB processes only being allowed to spend money on projects that are legally considered “infrastructure” limits the participants’ creativity and the possibilities for how PB money can be spent – something that can hurt morale and possibly thwart a community’s willingness to engage in such an involved process altogether. Altering the laws the govern such decisions may or may not be a simple thing to do, but as in many situations like this, it could unlock a lot of the potential for the kind of transformative change that real public engagement can bring.

The last thing we are taking away from this article – mentioned multiple times in the article – is advice that we all sometimes have trouble following: start early.

“We should reconsider and maybe try it again next year, much, much earlier,” he added, perhaps in the summer. “I think that if we do that we have a good chance to succeed and get many more people in voting for the projects.”

“The early bird gets the worm,” as they say, and though it’s an annoying cliche, it remains true: the more time we have to plan and generate buy-in, the more effective our engagement processes will be. Our project schedules are constantly pushed and pulled by funding limitations, busy schedules, and lots of variables we often can’t control, but as much as we can, we should always be trying to get working as early as possible.

So while it is disappointing to see the 5th Ward’s PB process discontinued, we think it is a good learning opportunity for the rest of us that could make our efforts stronger in the end. But we also remain optimistic that PB can make a comeback in the 5th Ward eventually, and that it could come back stronger than ever.

We wish everyone involved the best of luck, and we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Chicago’s public engagement processes as it continues to pioneer new practices and provide new lessons.

You can find and read the original Hyde Park Herald article here: www.hpherald.com/2014/01/15/low-turnout-blamed-for-participatory-budgeting-ending. Also see NCDD supporting member Janice Thomson‘s insightful blog post on how and why Occupy Roger’s Park members have protested PB in Chicago.

Community Participation in Racial Justice Efforts

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As we reflected this week on the meaning of Martin Luther King’s example for our work, we took quite a bit of inspiration  from one of the stories shared in the most recent newsletter from our partners at Everyday Democracy that we wanted to share with you. The story of this Virginia town’s struggle to confront racism is a glimpse into what it might look like for our field to deal more with questions of justice in our democracy. You can read the story and see the video below, or find the piece on EvDem’s website here.

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In 2006, racial tensions rose among Lynchburg, Va., residents as a result of the death of Clarence Beard Jr., a black man who died during a struggle with two white police officers. City leaders looked for a way to help residents grapple with issues of racism and racial equity in their increasingly diverse city. To make progress, they knew they needed to work together to address these racial tensions.

With the support from community, the city initiated the Community Dialogue on Race and Racism. To indicate their commitment to inclusion and systemic change, they recently renamed themselves “Many Voices – One Community” (MVOC). Their efforts have involved more than 2,000 people in dialogues, action forums, and task forces.

Many participants gained a new understanding of how racism and racial equity affect them on a daily basis: “I think what struck me most was…all the different ways that we could evade the issue of racism and not want to acknowledge our own involvement,” one participant commented. “I think it unsettles us in a good way. I think it’s both terrifying and at the same time, welcoming.”

The new understanding and new relationships that have formed continue to generate action. Action teams meet regularly to plan and implement ideas that emerge from the dialogue groups. Plans are in place to expand the program in the faith community, schools, and local businesses. Their efforts have led to:

  • A partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau to educate the public about the census and encourage people to be counted.
  • Improved diversity training in the Lynchburg Police Department, the Criminal Justice Academy, and the City of Lynchburg.
  • Efforts to bring more diversity to the workforce at the police department, and in local businesses and on boards and commissions in the city.
  • The creation of a non-profit organization, Beacon of Hope, that provides support for all students to have access to resources in order to reduce the achievement gap.
  • A Racial Support Group to help resolve institutional racial conflict.

With all of this, racial incidents and disparities have continued in the community. The leaders of MVOC know there is much work still to do.

So, in the fall of 2013, the dedicated MVOC organizers convened Lynchburg’s first Race, Poverty and Social Justice Conference. Plenaries and workshops provided participants with insights and tools for advancing justice in a variety of community arenas including policing, economic development, the arts and health care. In the conference opening, Everyday Democracy director Martha McCoy described a long-term vision of a just Lynchburg, noting “We need each other. We can’t do it alone. We can’t get to the beloved community by ourselves.”

Deliberative Forums on Thailand’s Future

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We wanted to share an interesting post from out friends at the National Issues Forums Institute that showed that, even amid the recent political turmoil that has gripped Thailand over the last few months, there have been encouraging steps taken toward fostering deliberation about the country’s future. You can read more about the project below, or find the original post (with more pictures) by clicking here.

NIF-logoKing Prajadhipok’s Institute (KPI) has organized Public Deliberative Forums on Thailand Future in many provinces all over Thailand since 2011. The objectives are to help strengthening the public participation in being consulted on the ways out from Thailand political conflicts and establishing an atmosphere of hearing from others who think differently, in understanding and peace.

Before organizing the forums, Issues book, facilitators’ guide book and manual on deliberative democracy are prepared. There are 2 groups of participants; the first group consists of 80 people who are the eligible voters (over 18 years old). Their names are from probability systematic sampling form the vote list.  The second group (20 people) is from representatives from the specific groups such as the youths, civil societies, NGOs, local government politicians, political support groups (extreme activists), religion leaders, and people with disability. All of them are invited and informed of the activities at least 1 month before the meetings.

The deliberative forums take one and a half days, starting from introduction on the deliberative democracy and public deliberation process, ground rules, and then continuing with the consensus building and relationship establishment. The deliberative forums are conducted afterwards. The common ground on Thailand future is what they would like to see and how to achieve it as well as who has to do it. In addition, they also mention what they have to do to help the country in moving forward to what they have imagined. Moreover, the pre and post questionnaires are distributed to check the people’s opinion on the deliberative process and the concept of Thailand future.

 KPI also introduces this deliberative democracy concept and techniques for organizing deliberative forums to the Thai government and various policy makers as well as the parliamentarians so that they understand the new ways of public participation and conflict management.

More deliberative forums on Thailand Future will be organized in many provinces in the near future.

A Look Inside an NDN Conversation

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Our friends at the Interactivity Foundation recently published reflections from Dennis Boyer on his experience convening a conversation on poverty as part of the National Dialogue Network - one of the winners of the 2012 NCDD Catalyst Awards. We thought it was a great look inside the NDN process and wanted to share it with you. You can read the full article below or find the original on the IF blog by clicking here.

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The National Dialogue Network (NDN) spent over a year planning and organizing the initial phases of a national dialogue on a topic of public concern, relying on practitioners within the public participatory sphere to assist and comment. Cooperating practitioners assisted in selecting and framing the concern of the first NDN dialogue project: poverty.

I first heard of the effort at the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation(NCDD) conference in Seattle, Washington in the Fall of 2012. It was my intent from the outset to personally facilitate a small group discussion for the project. I had advocated for a national discussion of either climate impacts or the role of money in political campaigns, but was satisfied that the chosen concern of poverty would provide a useful experiential basis for national dialogue.

By late Summer of 2013 the NDN was actively soliciting practitioner participation in facilitating “Phase 3” of the project: local discussion of the materials developed on questions surrounding poverty and wealth. I facilitated one such discussion in Iowa County, Wisconsin, a rural area about an hour’s drive west of Madison. Three of my participants had prior experience in public discussions sponsored by the Interactivity Foundation (IF) and one of those had participated previously in public discussion of material produced by Kettering Foundation/National Issues Forum (KF/NIF).

The NDN discussion materials are very different than IF discussion reports or KF/NIF discussion guides. IF reports usually pose six to eight contrasting conceptual policy possibilities and KF/NIF guides usually focus on three somewhat more developed policy approaches that often reflect some alternatives and some middle ground. When asked how to outline how IF’s approach differs from KF/NIF, I usually explain IF’s possibilities as discussion starters close to the origin point of the deliberative continuum, with KF/NIF materials representing more concrete ideas somewhat further out that continuum. NDN materials, on the other hand, may represent a location even closer to the deliberative origin point, calling upon discussants to explore some very basic thinking that shapes public impressions of the topic of concern.

I retain a spirit of openness toward the usefulness of all three approaches in their respective roles and harbor a belief that robust democratic governance discussion might harness all three in turn—and follow with approaches further out the continuum.

NDN poverty materials encourage some very basic personal introspection and group interaction that more developed policy materials might not. It is often the case that public conversation neglects the feelings and values that go into our impressions of a policy concern. Many deliberative practitioners seek to restore civility to public conversation, but in doing so may make participants more circumspect. NDN materials represent a move away from detachment and passionless pondering.

In that sense they reminded me of IF President Dr. Jack Byrd’s developmental materials on “Fairness” and “Freedom and Responsibility”. My own facilitative experience with Dr. Byrd’s materials have allowed me to see how participant exploration of the personal and experiential side of basic ideas that underlie social and political relationships opens many participants up to deeper understanding of their own positions, the positions of others, and the opportunities for common ground. My NDN discussion experience also exhibited these positive benefits.

The Iowa County NDN discussion group was not very representative of national demographics. We were very white (with one American Indian participant), somewhat older, more likely to be married (all were), and somewhat more clustered in lower-middle income brackets. By the same token, there were some indicators of diversity: a good mix of partisans and independents, backgrounds in different faith communities and secular outlooks, and broad life experiences (foreign travel, volunteer service, etc). Half claimed to have experienced economic deprivation at some point in their lives. All had family members or friends who had resorted to food stamps or public assistance at some point.

NDN materials definitely helped these participants tap their empathetic reserves concerning poverty. In the course of the discussion there was increased recognition of how hard it is for those who have not experienced poverty to understand how debilitating it can be. At the same time they were also made more aware of just how different rural poverty is from urban poverty. Until fairly recently the civil society side of dealing with rural poverty had been relatively strong, with extended families, churches, and fraternal groups playing major roles. Many stories were told about personally benefitting from these informal, non-governmental networks. And there was much speculation about what had made rural poverty harsher over the years: industrialization of agriculture, decline of subsistence living skills, declining population and out-migration, and disappearance of manufacturing jobs in nearby urban areas.

One major discussion thread that occurred independent of the materials was the extent to which informal mechanisms to deal with poverty are still workable. Some thought that certain aspects of the subsistence economy could be revived in rural areas. Others thought the complexity and skill needs of an information economy made it very difficult for the rural poor to overcome their disadvantages.

The arguments over these cleavages were not, of course, resolved. But through the exploration of values, experiences, and goals there was a sense that we as a society could do a better job in dealing with poverty. Where I saw the common ground emerge was around the notion of “good outcomes” that most, if not all, participants could share. This seemed to represent a pulling back from political positions and a refocus on a widely held vision of “what could be.”

Restorative Justice & Democratic Process in Baltimore

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We recently read a great article in the Boston Review that we had to share with the NCDD community. The piece is actually part of a larger series we’ve been following called “Trench Democracy: Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places” by Dr. Albert Dzur, and features an innovative approach to community conflict that is being lead by Laura Abramson:

Lauren Abramson is the founder of the Community Conferencing Center in Baltimore, an organization that aims to divert people from the criminal justice system before they enter it by providing “a highly participatory community-based process for people to transform their conflicts into cooperation, take collective and personal responsibility for action, and improve their quality of life.” Lauren’s center has helped thousands of people address problems in their communities before they become formally designated as crimes to be handled by the justice system. We talked recently about how communities can handle tensions on their own and what kinds of democratic practices have evolved to facilitate this.

The article continues with a fascinating interview between Albert Dzur and Lauren Abramson in which they explore the process the CCC uses, the relationship between community participation, restorative justice, and criminal justice, as well as other key insights. But first, it begins with a story about how a football league transformed a tense and hostile Baltimore neighborhood dynamic.

We highly recommend that you read the full article and interview below, or find the original post on the Boston Review by clicking here.

The Football League

All was not well on Streeper Street in Southeast Baltimore. Kids played football in the road late into the night, bumping into cars, setting off alarms, even breaking mirrors and windows. Why couldn’t they play in the park just two blocks away? Were they selling drugs in the street rather than just playing football? Tensions between adult residents and the players escalated into arguments, hundreds of calls to the police, and petty retaliations such as putting sugar in gas tanks. Finally, when police interventions didn’t succeed and the conflict threatened to get more serious than minor property damage, a neighborhood organization contacted the Community Conferencing Center to arrange a meeting with those affected.

One of the Center’s facilitators, Misty, canvassed the neighborhood for three weeks, going door-to-door inviting everyone to participate in a conference where they could articulate concerns and contribute to a desirable and workable solution. Remaining neutral, she encouraged attendance by showing them a list of those who had already agreed to participate. In all, forty-four people attended, with a mix of adults and youth.

The conference began with angry comments. Parents defended their children against what they felt was unfair treatment by neighbors. In turn, the adult residents expressed their frustration over the late night noise created by the football games: was this really the best place to play football at night? The children explained that the park two blocks away that the adults thought was much safer than the street was actually fouled by dog waste at one end and inhabited by drug dealers and older bullies at the other—problems that the adults had not heard before. From that point on, the neighbors started brainstorming possible solutions. They shifted focus from what to do about a bunch of noisy young people to how to find a safe place for the neighborhood children to play. Misty asked people how they might put their solutions into practice and in less than half an hour the group had come to an agreement on a list of actions, such as adults volunteering to chaperone kids in the park and kids helping clean up the neighborhood.

The next day, in fact, Don Ferges chaperoned twenty-two kids in the park. By the end of three weeks, the number had grown to sixty-four, and by the end of the summer there was a thriving football league. What started out as a public nuisance warranting police action developed into neighborhood-wide recognition of common interests and action to improve the shared space. The residents had the power to make these changes, but it took a well-structured conference to deliberate and act together.

Albert Dzur: On your website and elsewhere you talk about providing a highly participatory community-based process. Can you say a little bit more about how the community is involved in your work?

Lauren Abramson: We define “community” as the community of people who have been affected by and involved in the conflict or the crime. Everybody who’s involved in or affected by the situation, and their respective supporters, is included. We make the circle as wide as possible. Thus, conferences usually include between ten and forty people. The Streeper Street neighborhood conflict had been going on for two years and forty-four people attended. Conferences are always about engaging the entire community of people affected by whatever’s going on and giving them the power to try to fix it.

AD: When forty-four people gather together do you have certain expectations for participation?

LA: Well, transparency is a principle behind what we do. People always know what they are coming into. And they know, first of all, that this is a meeting for people who are interested in trying to make the situation better. So if they’re not really interested in trying to make the situation better, then the conference is probably not the place for them.

AD: Do you have any people exit at that point?

LA: Not often. People know that when they come, they’re going to sit in a circle with no table and talk about three things. First, they’ll hear what has been going on—what’s happened—and hear it from the people directly involved. Second, everybody in the circle will have a chance to say how they were affected. Third, once everyone has spoken and had a chance to listen, then the group will talk about what can be done to repair the harm and prevent this from happening again.

AD: When you say, “after everyone has spoken,” do you mean the people who are primary to a given conflict or everybody in the room?

LA: Everybody in the circle has an equal chance to participate.

AD: And so you brought up the case of forty-four people. All forty-four are in the circle?

LA: Yes.

AD: So if they come into that room they need to be prepared to say something.

LA: They know that they are going to have the opportunity to speak if they wish to.

AD: Have you been in a group where somebody keeps their arms crossed and doesn’t say anything?

LA: The emotional piece of the conference is important. And a lot of times people come so angry and disgusted and terrified that they will sit with their arms crossed and with their backs turned and all sorts of things. Throughout the Community Conference, though, there are many opportunities to speak and to listen. If they don’t want to speak in the initial discussion, when the group starts to come up with an agreement and we still see somebody whose arms are crossed, we’ll say, “Before we fill this out, is there anything else anyone would like to say?” Or we would say to that person, “Is there something you’d like to see happen that would help you feel better about this?” So at a number of points during the conversation, the facilitator gives everybody an opportunity, but we don’t make anybody do anything.

AD: This seems to be as much emotional work as cognitive work. Dialogue is important in restorative justice but reading through your descriptions of the conferences I wonder if something even more basic is involved—namely, proximity: just getting people who wouldn’t normally sit next to each other to do that.

LA: I think that’s a big part of it. That’s the difference between what we do and, say, study circles. Study circles typically engage people in dialogue but participants tend to have similar value systems already. And what I love about this work is that you do get people together who normally would not be sitting in the same room with each other, let alone talking with each other.

AD: And that’s the price of admission to the conference: you’ve got to come into the room and sit next to people you may not like. Have you seen changes in disposition because people come together?

LA: Many times. Hundreds and hundreds of times. Not just because they come together, though. In schools, principals try to have what they call a conference or a meeting and bring together kids and parents and it blows up into a huge melee. We know so many principals who will not bring together families anymore. So I don’t think proximity is the only factor. A well-designed structure is also crucial for good communication.

Conferencing is elegant. There are three questions that the group’s going to talk about. And they can talk in whatever way they want. We don’t go in saying, “You can’t make racist comments,” because if you do that then the person who is racist is never going to get a chance to change. We let the group decide. So once something offensive comes up, the facilitator will say to the participants, there is a request to not say these kinds of things, is this something everyone can agree to?” It lets people be who they are and then lets that group decide for itself the norms for their behavior from this time forward.

Imagine justice that builds a sense of community.

AD: Why do you think it is important for people other than criminal justice professionals to be involved in resolving these issues?

LA: In a participatory democracy it is important for people to make decisions for themselves. And I’m not talking about a representative democracy, either.

It’s like in the seventies when medical researchers made a breakthrough in managing postsurgical pain. They realized that if they gave people this little clicker that let them administer their own morphine, people used less morphine and got more pain relief. Patients knew best what they needed; emotionally and psychologically having control over pain relief was huge.

AD: I love that example from the Streeper Street neighborhood conference. You have said that if you told Don Ferges, “Hey, why don’t you start a football league,” he probably wouldn’t do it!

LA: He would have said, “Get the heck out of here!” Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; people typically don’t like being told what to do, and will react against it. So we’re being inclusive and encouraging collective decision. What we see over and over and over again is that communities get much more creative and lasting solutions when they decide for themselves how to resolve these situations.

AD: This theme of recognizing that people are capable of resolving their own conflicts is really interesting. But in some ways, these are neighborhoods where they are not capable of resolving their own conflicts without the Community Conferencing Center.

LA: That is not quite right. It’s not just about these neighborhoods. It’s not about where you live, how much money you make, what color your skin is. I mean, think about it, we don’t resolve conflicts very well in our workplaces either.

AD: But that’s my point. We don’t have participatory social control. We turn an awful lot of problems over to the criminal justice system.

LA: Well, conferencing recognizes that we all have a larger capacity to resolve complicated conflicts and crimes than we are allowed to. But people also need to have an appropriate structure to do it. I think it was Winston Churchill who said, “We’re shaped by the institutions that govern us.” So if our institutions are top-down—if we need a judge in a black robe telling people how they should be punished—then we’re going to get one set of outcomes. But if we engage people with this alternative structure—in a circle where they acknowledge what happened, share how they’ve been affected, and then decide how to make it better—then we will get a whole different set of outcomes. This could happen in a workplace or in any number of places in our society where we don’t manage conflicts well.

Because urban areas with high concentrations of poverty have more violence than other communities, many assume that the people who live in them are different. And that is not true. We need to look at what structures we offer people in our society to resolve conflict and crime, because they determine the outcomes. The fact that people in highly distressed neighborhoods can negotiate solutions within the structure provided by Community Conferencing only emphasizes the fact that we are all capable of safely and effectively resolving many of our own conflicts. Maybe we could really prove this point if we could get the U.S. Congress to sit in circle and address some of their conflicts!

AD: You’ve been doing this since 1998. Do you feel that in that time the communities you’ve been active in have come to own the process more?

LA: It’s varied. Some neighborhoods have used the conferences consistently. Sometimes people move and attendance drops off. You know. I would say that the Streeper Street neighborhood was significantly changed. Many schools have embraced this, too, and they have significantly changed. But one thing I’ve learned is that this work does not just implement a new program; it changes our culture, which takes a long time and a lot of exposure.

AD: A nagging question about restorative justice programs in the U.S. is whether and how much they have actually impacted the larger system.

LA: I feel that they have. Restorative justice programs bring about reform from both the bottom up and the top down. In Baltimore, our juvenile courts are diverting felony and misdemeanor cases from their system to Community Conferencing. Could they refer more cases than they do? Absolutely. But for them to take a felony case and say, “We think these people can resolve it better through Community Conferencing than through our system,” that’s a significant change. And every year around 1,400 people in Baltimore participate in a Community Conference.

Has it completely changed our criminal justice system? No. But when judges call us and ask us how they can use Community Conferencing more, I know that we are making progress.

AD: That’s what I’m getting at. Do we incarcerate the largest percentage of our citizens of any country in the world? The answer is “yes.” So if that’s your metric of success, then restorative justice hasn’t done a whole lot.

LA: Well, cultural change doesn’t happen overnight. Kay Pranis, who is a leader in this country on restorative justice, says restorative justice is like groundwater. Most people don’t see groundwater but it nourishes a lot of things. Eventually, it’s going to bust through. So has restorative justice fixed everything? No. Is it incrementally making steps toward a tipping point? I would say, most definitely, yes.

It’s really starting to happen in education. A lot of school systems are talking about restorative practices. But it’s going to take a long time to change our cowboy-puritan culture of individuals to begin to look at things as relationships and accountability instead of punishment.

AD: So we are returning to where we started, the importance of community participation.

LA: In our facilitator training, we explain the four main features of participatory democracy, as my colleague David Moore defined them: Participation—inclusion; Equality—that everyone has an equal voice; Deliberation—that everything that is brought up is discussed and not swept under the rug; Non-tyranny—no one is allowed to dominate the conversation. I don’t know if you would agree with those four key points of participatory democracy.

AD: Those sound pretty good. Restorative justice holds that the public ought to own its conflicts, that we can’t give these problems over to professionals or state actors without a moral remainder left over for which we still need to be accountable. A broad swath of the public has a complacent attitude to the criminal justice system.

LA: Because most people affected and involved in a conflict do not get to participate in a court hearing. It is owned by other people and a whole other set of players who are very expensive.

AD:Community conferencing, as an especially participatory form of restorative justice, does attempt to broaden public responsibility for criminal justice.

LA: I think the more people you involve in the justice process the more potential there is for community building. Imagine justice that builds a sense of community. If only two people are involved, the potential for building community is very limited. That’s why we use the process we do. I love the fact that nobody talks on behalf of anybody else. Inclusion has a ripple effect and we include all the ripples.

Find the original article here: www.bostonreview.net/blog/albert-w-dzur-trench-democracy-criminal-justice-interview-lauren-abramson

Ending Washington Paralysis with Dialogue and… a Third Party?

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We recently read a fascinating piece from our friends at Public Agenda, an NCDD member organization, covering the highlights from their recent Policy Breakfast event. The reflections from former Sen. Bill Bradley have interesting and provocative insights for the state of dialogue in Washington, D.C., and we encourage you to give them a read. You can see the piece below or find the original version on PA’s blog by clicking here.

Is Progress Possible? Bill Bradley on Changing the Future

PublicAgenda-logoWhat is your vision for a future in which our national political leaders collaborate, in spite of their differences, and do the work their people want and need them to do? Can you even imagine it?

For former Senator Bill Bradley, a Democrat who represented the people of New Jersey for 18 years, there are a few variations of such a future.

Senator Bradley joined us this week for the latest installment of our Policy Breakfast series. On a snowy, messy New York morning, Bradley addressed a full room at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, our partner in the series.

Adam Davidson, of NPR’s Planet Money and The New York Times Magazine, spoke with the former Senator about the past, present and future of American politics.

Senator Bradley fondly recalled a time of personal relationships among members of Congress. “It was a time when there were personal relationships among members of Congress… People lived in Washington and socialized with each other. It made a big difference,” he said.

He also shared an anecdote about working with Senator Alan Simpson, a conservative Republican from Wyoming who was charged with a 1986 immigration bill. “I had 22 questions about immigration on a yellow pad. I asked him the 22 questions and he answered them, no staff present. I agreed with 16 of them, I disagreed with 6 of them, and at the end of the meeting, I said, ‘Well, you’ve got my support on the bill.’ I didn’t even know if there was a Democratic position, because it was the relationship with someone you trusted who’s competent substantively.”

The current state of play in Congress is a vast departure from the Senator’s days, and one he identifies as possibly dangerous for our future. “There are real opportunity costs to paralysis,” he said. Historically, decisions and actions key to the health of our nation stemmed from compromise between opponents.

Instead of doom and gloom, the former Senator shared a few visions of a pathway forward. His most provocative included a third party – something many people believe will be key for any possibility of progress. For the Senator, realistically, this party would be a Congressional party, not a presidential one, and would gain a foothold in 2016.

The former Senator could see the party running 30 to 40 candidates, half of whom would be ex-military. This theoretical party would have four issues they would stand firmly for – infrastructure, for example, and deficit reduction. Most importantly, their proposals for addressing these issues would be very specific and resolute. “You have to have almost the draft law, then say, if you sign up, this is what you support,” said the Senator. Candidates would commit to serving 6 years in Congress.

If 20 to 30 members of this third party were to succeed, “they’re the fulcrum of power and suddenly Congress is turned into Parliaments around the world where third parties are indeed the deciders of what happens… You could easily see this agenda done and you could see the country saying, well, we moved forward.”

During the remainder of the interview and the audience Q&A portion of the event, Senator Bradley addressed issues including U.S. history, globalization, the economy, education, the teaching profession and immigration. Video and audio of the full event will be available shortly. Interested in attending a future Policy Breakfast? Let us know.

Video review of JCRC’s Year of Civil Discourse

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I’m thrilled to share with you this wonderful video overview of Rachel Eryn Kalish‘s work on the Jewish Community Relations Council’s Year of Civil Discourse initiative. Congratulations, Eryn, on your incredible work with the Community Relations Council in Northern California.

Eryn is a long-time supporting member of NCDD, and we’re so very proud of her!

The Year of Civil Discourse (YCD) Initiative was designed to elevate the level of discourse in the Jewish community when discussing Israel. This innovative project is a joint effort of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation, in partnership with the Board of Rabbis of Northern California.

YCD envisions an inclusive Jewish community where people from across the political spectrum can come together, discuss challenging topics, inspire and empower one another, leading to a stronger and more vital Jewish community. YCD will provide Jewish community members, institutions, and leaders with the tools to have respectful, vibrant, engaging conversations about Israel and emerging controversial issues.

Randi Dodick Fields serves as Project Coordinator, Rachel Eryn Kalish is Project Facilitator, and Abby Michelson Porth is Associate Executive Director of the JCRC. (Eryn and Abby founded Project Reconnections, the catalyst to the Initiative.)

Funders for the Year of Civil Discourse Initiative included the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, and the Walter and Elise Haas Sr. Fund.

Why are BAD Words %$&#@!?

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I recently stumbled across the following video and was fascinated with some of the statistics presented in the first few minutes (does your community swear more than others? Looking at you Ohio!).  But the entire video is equally fascinating.  I’ve never been bothered by what others consider offensive language.  They’re just words afterall… or are they?  When civility is key to a successful dialogue, understanding the language of incivility becomes a necessary skill in every facilitator’s toolkit.

Michael, in the video above, mentions a lecture given by experimental psychologist Steven Pinker, also available on YouTube. It’s headier stuff than the Vsauce video, but worth a watch for those interested in the pschology of language. Pinker defines swearing as a window to a person’s emotions, and examines language as a window into human nature.

I would love to hear about how our community deals with “bad words”? Are they discouraged (or even forbidden) in your engagement processess? Or have you learned to work with them in a way that avoids disruption? Or are they even encouraged? Leave a comment and let us know!