Join our Confab on “What’s Next?” Post-Election, 11/29

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Courtney Breese

As we posted about earlier this week, the Presidential election has brought forth new needs for dialogue and deliberation, as well as renewed importance of the work to bridge divides that our field has been doing for many years. We’ve been appreciating the responses our community have had so far to this post, and we’d like to provide an additional opportunity for us all to discuss this important time in our work.

Join us Tuesday, November 29th at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific for a 90-minute Confab Call to talk together as a community about what’s next after the election. This will be an open call, allowing community members to talk about their bridge building work, or ideas for what they can do post-election. NCDD staff will lead the call, but we won’t have any featured presenters – we want to hear from you!

The need for dialogue and deliberation is stronger than ever, and our network is poised to help our communities and nation come together across divides to tackle our toughest challenges. Join us as we talk about what’s being done now, and what’s possible for us in our work individually and collectively.

NCDD’s interactive Confab Calls are free and open to all members and potential members. Register today if you’d like to join us!

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing, and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Register today if you’d like to join us.

Join Conversation on Public Voice After the Election

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

NCDD member organization Public Agenda is hosting a post-election event tomorrow in NYC that we want our members to be aware of. They’ll be convening a breakfast panel including two field-leading NCDD members along with an NYC city councilor to discuss making politics more responsive to public input in light of the election results. You can tweet or email them questions you want to see discussed, or register to attend if you’re in the area. Learn more in the PA blog post below or find the original here.

The State of Public Voice, Post-Election

Many in the United States have felt for some time that our elected officials don’t put the public’s concerns first. Now, years of diminishing trust in government and a growing divide between elites and the public have culminated in 2016: a growing, rarely productive populism and a divisive election season here in the United States.

While this year has been tumultuous and confusing, it also represents a crossroads. Can we harness the growing populism and cultivate a more meaningful, productive public conversation and a more engaged, informed public?

We’ll be exploring this and other questions during our upcoming policy breakfast, Can the Public Have a Real Voice in American Politics?

The event takes place the morning of November 17th, after the election. We’ll know who our next president will be. But we’ll have a lot more questions to explore.

We hope you can join us for this exciting conversation. We’ll dig into how politics – at the national and local levels -can become more responsive to people’s needs and give them more meaningful and powerful roles in our democracy.

This event will include a networking breakfast, panel discussion, and audience Q&A. More details are below and you can register here.

When:

Thursday, November 17th
8:00 – 10:30 a.m. ET

Where:

Scandinavia House
58 Park Avenue, 2nd Floor, (between 37th and 38th Streets), New York, NY 10016

Who:

Moderator
Geraldine Moriba
Executive Producer Program Development and Vice President Diversity and Inclusion, CNN

Panelists

Carolyne Abdullah
Director of Strengthening Democratic Capacity Team, Everyday Democracy

Brad Lander
Councilmember, New York City Council

Matt Leighninger
Vice President of Public Engagement, Public Agenda

Follow the conversation online using #AMPolicy and following @PublicAgenda.

Utah Citizen Summit: Bridging Divides After the Election

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

For those eager to continue the conversation we began at NCDD 2016 about how to bridge our nation’s divides after the election, we encourage you to attend or tune in to the Utah Citizen Summit on Nov. 12th in Salt Lake City. The day-long event has been organized with the help of many NCDD members, and the centerpiece of the event, a conversation across partisan divides about the common good, will be livestreamed. You can learn more about the Summit in the announcement below from NCDD Sustaining Member John Steiner, or by clicking here.

An Invitation to Participate in a National Conversation

The national heart of the Utah Citizen Summit – to be held on Saturday, November 12th in Salt Lake City – is an afternoon, 90-minute dialogue, which will be facilitated by Mark Gerzon, with a leading Democrat, Republican, an Independent, and a major civic leader. The animating question will be: Now What? After this election how can we, as Americans, come together across our many divides to address challenging issues and to work for the common good?

We’ll be asking the following or similar questions of our participants:

Now that the election is over, what are your hopes and dreams for Americans coming together?
How might we learn to better live with our differences – with greater mutual respect and honor, with civility and compassion – in order to address challenging issues and to make progress for the common good?
What first step might you (and your organization) be willing to take to help make this possible?

This conversation will be live streamed and recorded.

With the intention of recreating our public square – as Hannah Arendt once said, “Democracy needs a place to sit down” – we would like to catalyze similar conversations around our country after the election and before the inauguration. We’re reaching out to national organizations and networks with which we’ve been involved to see who might want to host similar dialogues in their communities, whether in living rooms, public libraries, at universities, etc.

The questions we’ll be asking can serve as a template or model. While we encourage local facilitators or Living Room Conversation hosts to follow this format, anyone can certainly create their own questions within the spirit of our session in Salt Lake City.

We have a website – www.utahcitizensummit.org – which is being enhanced so that dialogues can be registered and results reported, harvested, and shared with those involved.

Many thanks for considering participating,

John Steiner & the Utah Citizen Summit team

P.S.: Online collaboration resource

Our wonderful Salt Lake City colleague, John Kessler, who is largely responsible for the Utah Citizen Summit, is also offering the following as part of our national outreach process, for those communities who would like to participate in a more ongoing way:

One of the deeper purposes of the Utah Citizen Summit is for communities to be creative and emergent in becoming more civil, compassionate, inclusive, and collaborative in conversation, policy making, and action. In addition to connecting around the Utah Citizen Summit, we have an interactive web tool, which, on an ongoing basis, can provide a convening space for communities in an interactive, collaborative, online learning and practice environment. There exists the capacity to do this locally, nationally, and/or globally in an online environment, where communities and community based groups meet, connect, co-learn, and collaborate.

We have developed developed this resource in partnership with uBegin, a web based platform. Our civil network can now do this in a partnering way and invite other communities into this space. We’d like to make this available more broadly. Please let me know if you’re interested in exploring this option.

You can find more information on the Utah Citizen Summit at www.saltlakecivilnetwork.org/utah-citizen-summit.

Free Webinar on Making Participation Accessible, Oct. 27

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

As you may have seen recently on our NCDD discussion listserv, NCDD members are invited to attend a free webinar this Thursday, Oct. 27 on how to make our processes more accessible. The webinar is being offered by MH Mediate, and will be a good opportunity for practitioners to continue to learn new tools for going beyond “the usual suspects” for participation in our events. You can learn more in MH Mediate’s announcement below or register here.

Become Accessible to a Wider Audience

Thursday, October 27th, 1-2pm Eastern / 10-11am Pacific

Accessible processes are equally appealing to people with diverse abilities and needs, including people with disabilities. After we explore a universal design framework for creating accessible dialogue processes, we’ll apply key accessibility principles to some examples. Finally we’ll discuss how to communicate your accessible practices to constituents and organizational partners.

E-mail dan@mhmediate.com if you have any questions or examples you’d like to cover during the presentation. You can also submit them when you register for the webinar.

About the Presenter
Dan Berstein is a mediator living with bipolar disorder and the founder of MH Mediate. He has hosted a variety of dialogue events, including the first New York City National Dialogue on Mental Health event which became a model for inclusive discussions around the country. Dan is an expert in accessibility, having trained practitioners across a dozen states. Dan’s workshops stress designing processes that work better for everyone while ensuring they work with people living with disabilities and other needs.

Attend the Everyday Democracy Nat’l Convening, Dec. 8-10!

Posted on October 24, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We want to encourage everyone our NCDD network to consider registering to attend the Everyday Democracy national convening, The Moment is Now: Democracy that Works for All. The gathering will take place Dec. 8-10 in Baltimore, and it will be a great opportunity to learn from and connect with EvDem’s national network of community leaders and practitioners who are working to create change for racial equity, economic opportunity, and deep democratic engagement through dialogue in their locales. Learn more in EvDem’s announcement below, visit the conference page, or register today!

Everyday Democracy’s National Convening

There is no time like now to come together, share experiences, learn, and expand our impact.

At Everyday Democracy’s National Convening, The Moment is Now: Democracy that Works for All, this December 8-10 in Baltimore, MD, you will join hundreds of active, engaged and influential individuals from across the country who are making positive change in their communities.

The Convening will be a space for changemakers of all backgrounds and sectors to share lessons and ideas on how to build equity, inclusivity, and increased voice and participation in our communities and our country. You will meet people doing great work – people like the residents of Wagner, South Dakota who, for the past nine years, have used Everyday Democracy’s coaching and materials to organize dialogue circles to work through issues of intergenerational poverty and racism. The program has decreased tensions and helped build trust between native and white residents. Results include a significantly higher native graduation rate and the establishment of a small business incubator with a racially diverse board. Read more about their work here.

This is just one of many examples of people coming together across divides for honest, productive dialogue on tough issues and then solving problems together. Let’s connect these local efforts for greater national impact.

Highlights of the Convening

This will be a collaborative, arts-oriented, multi-cultural event. Some of the noteworthy features include:

The release of the new edition of Everyday Democracy’s guide on community-police relations with a special focus on racial equity,
Panel of young community leaders,
Arts to connect and inspire us,
A photography/storytelling exhibit that will be created during the convening,
An opportunity to hear from John W. Franklin, curator for the newly opened African-American Museum, and
An opportunity to hear from national leaders in participatory democracy, criminal justice, education, and health.

The election is almost here, and afterwards, no matter what the outcome, we will need to build on positive examples of dialogue and deliberation and real work towards equity. Please join us in Baltimore, MD, December 8-10, and get ready to be inspired.

Click here for more information about the Convening and click here to register. More stories of change, and resources for all communities, are here at our web site, also.

We hope to see you there!

Field Trip Option for NCDD 2016 – Youth PB Idea Collection

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Sandy Heierbacher

As if there wasn’t already enough to be excited about for this week’s NCDD 2016 conference, we wanted to make sure everyone knows about a great opportunity to take an experiential field trip during the gathering!

Field Trip: Participate in Boston’s Youth Lead the Change PB Process

NCDD participants will have an opportunity to not only learn about participatory budgeting (PB) but to participate in the historic Boston youth PB process. In 2014, Boston became the first city in the country to implement a citywide PB process focused on youth. The Youth Lead the Change program allows young people to directly decide how $1 million dollars of the city’s capital budget is spent every year.

Participants in this field trip will have the rare opportunity to join one of the official idea collection sessions in the Youth Lead the Change PB process – an event where youth PB participants get together to start formulating the ideas that will eventually become proposals to be voted on for how to spend this year’s $1M in PB funds. You can learn more about what the Boston youth PB experience is like for the young people in this write up from a youth participant.

By joining this field trip, you’ll have a chance to get an overview of PB, suggest ideas to make Boston better, and see one of the best PB process in the country live and in action. It’s an incredible opportunity! Then after the idea collection event is over, we’ll take some time to debrief and reflect together over dinner and drinks downtown.

The field trip will be co-hosted by Francesco Tena, the Manager of Boston’s Mayor’s Youth Council, and Shari Davis, Boston’s former Department of Youth Engagement and Employment Executive Director. Francesco and Shari have been involved in Boston’s youth PB process for years, and will be your expert guides and hosts for this unique experience.

We have space for 30 people in the bus, but the trip is filling up, so reserve your spot soon! Email our Logistics Manager Rob Laurent at robdotlaurent@gmail.com to claim your spot, and plan to bring a check for $35 or cash with you to cover your portion of the bus costs. The bus will leave at 4pm return to the conference hotel at around 10pm.

Haven’t registered for the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation? It’s not too late, but you have to register ASAP!

NCDD 2016 Preview: Race, Police, & Reconciliation Stories

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

With the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation less than two weeks away, we are continuing to preview the great content we have in store for conference attendees. It’s still not too late to register for this incredible event, but you should register today to save your spot! For those of you who still need more convincing, we want to highlight the powerful set of speakers we will feature during the NCDD 2016 opening plenary. bumper_sticker_600px

Bridging the Race & Community-Police Divides

One of the longest and most visible divides in our country today is the racial divide. Racial division and inequity have a long history in the US, and seem to perennially resurface in our communities and in our politics. In addition, the division between average people – especially people of color – and the police feels like it’s reaching crisis levels with the heightened tensions and conflict rising from seemingly weekly videos of new police violence against unarmed black and brown people combined with the killings of several police officers this summer.

It’s easy to feel hopeless and even afraid about these issues today, which is exactly why we in the dialogue field need to lifting up stories of how people are actively healing our race and community-police divides to show that there is in fact hope. We’ll begin our opening plenary by doing just that.

You can read a bit more about the three practitioners who will be sharing stories with us below, or just register for NCDD 2016 to come hear from them in person!

Our Speakers

Shelby Brown, Managing Director of Everyday Democracy
Shelby is currently the Managing Director at Everyday Democracy, which helps communities talk and work together to create communities that work for everyone. Prior to working at Everyday Democracy, Shelby ran an agency for the State of Connecticut and before that, she served in human resource leadership within the Board of Regents for Higher Education. Shelby has long been involved in community organizing, participatory democracy and racial justice.

We’ll hear from Shelby about how the work she and EvDem are doing is bridging racial divides in communities across the country.

India L. Gerald, Program Supervisor at Roxbury’s Youth and Police in Partnerships
India serves as the Program Supervisor for Children’s Services of Roxbury’s Youth and Police in Partnerships program, which seeks to build trust and understanding between inner city residents and Boston police. For the past decade, she has worked to support vulnerable and at risk populations. India has extensive experience with Boston-based nonprofits, including Brookview House Inc., ABCD, Go Girl Go! Boston, Dimock and Women Connecting Affecting Change. In addition, to her experience she holds a Bachelors degree in Human Services and a Masters degree in Organizational Management and Leadership.

India will talk about her experiences working to empower young people in Boston to keep the gap between police and young people from growing wider.

Robert Daum, Ph.D., Board of Directors of Reconciliation Canada
Robert Daum is an educator, researcher/practitioner, and private consultant. He advises on and leads diversity and institutional change initiatives for universities, government, and not-for-profit organizations. Robert serves on the inaugural Board of Reconciliation Canada, which is leading the way in engaging Canadians in dialogue and transformative experiences that revitalize the relationships among Indigenous peoples and all Canadians.

Robert will share a few lessons about bridge building that we in the US can learn from his experiences with the powerful reconciliation work being done between Canada’s indigenous and non-indigenous communities.

You won’t want to miss out on hearing these powerful stories in our opening plenaries or the rest of this amazing conference, so make sure that you get registered to join us!

NCDD 2016 Schedule & Workshop List Announced!

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We at NCDD are thrilled to announce that we recently published the official schedule and list of conference sessions and workshops for the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation this Oct. 14-16 in Boston!

NCDD 2016 promises to be the most exciting NCDD conference to date! As always, we’ve planned the conference weekend to be full of activity, learning, and connecting. It includes rich pre-conference offerings, our famously engaging plenary sessions, experiential field trips, the D&D Showcase, and a new Open Space – there is going to be something for everyone! Be sure to have a look at the full NCDD 2016 conference schedule at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016/schedule.

And of course, it wouldn’t be an NCDD conference without a smorgasbord of incredible workshops and sessions hosted by the brightest leaders and innovators in our field. NCDD 2016 will feature six concurrent workshop block with over 50 super diverse sessions that span the breadth and depth of the work being done by those in our field who are Bridging Our Divides, while also featuring some of the most exciting new initiatives and successful case studies in D&D. We encourage you to check out the full list of sessions and workshops at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016/workshops.

If you’ve been waiting to register for NCDD 2016, wait no longer! This schedule and list of conference sessions is just more proof that this year’s gathering will be one of the most engaging, catalytic NCDD events yet, and you won’t want to miss out!

The conference is less than a month away now, and we can’t wait to be with 400 of the most engaged and innovative leaders in this work! We look forward to seeing you in October!

Looking for a Roommate at NCDD 2016? Find One Here!

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

Registration numbers are climbing, with nearly 200 attendees signed up so far for the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation! The conference is only a month away now, and we know many folks will want to cut down on lodging costs as they plan for the trip. If that’s you, we encourage you to use the comments section of this blog post to find people interested in splitting a room at the conference hotel.

The NCDD 2016 is taking place at the lovely Sheraton Framingham Hotel & Conference Center just outside of Boston, MA, and we encourage everyone coming in from out of town to stay there for your own comfort and convenience! We’ve negotiated a fantastic rate of $165/night (plus tax) for our conference attendees, but you need to take advantage soon – the deadline for securing our reduced rate is September 26th!

If you need to cut lodging costs while still staying at the hotel, drop a comment in the comment section below about your interest in finding a roommate. Here are some things you may want to include in your comment:

Your name, gender, and any special requirements or considerations your potential roommate should know about you (for example, if you’re a smoker, night owl, snorer, etc.)
When you’re arriving and departing and which nights you want to share a room
Email or phone contact info in case people would like to connect with you directly

To get the NCDD room rate, make sure you use this link when you reserve your room:

www.starwoodmeeting.com/Book/NCDD2016

We think you’ll be very glad you’re staying at the conference hotel. Staying at the Sheraton means you can take a break or nap whenever you need one, spend more time networking, and you won’t have to worry about transportation to and from the conference every day. Plus you can partake in all the other hotel amenities like free wifi, the fitness center, the pool, the business center, and more!

We recommend that NCDD 2016 attendees arrive on Thursday, October 13th, since we start Friday morning and you’ll want to take advantage of the great pre-conference activities your D&D colleagues will be organizing! You should plan to depart on Monday, October 17th or later in the day on Sunday, October 16th, since we end at 3:30pm. Find out more about your transportation options on our NCDD 2016 travel & lodging page.

Again, our cut-off date for the reduced room rate is Monday, September 26th, so be sure to reserve your room ASAP! We recommend not waiting until the last minute, as our room block is filling up quickly this year.

If you have any questions that are not addressed here, check out our conference FAQ page. If you still have questions after that, feel free to send Sandy an email at sandy@ncdd.org.

Join EvDem’s Monthly Twitter Chat for Young Leaders

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We encourage our younger members to join the Twitter chat that our NCDD member organization Everyday Democracy hosts every 2nd Tuesday. It’s a great way to connect and get new ideas out there, so we encourage you to learn more in EvDem’s post below and join them today using the hashtag #EvDemChat! Save the date for next month’s chat on October 11th!

Twitter Chat for Young Leaders

Everyday Democracy hosts a Twitter chat the second Tuesday of every month at 2pm ET.

September’s Twitter chat will highlight the work of young leaders organizing and creating change in their communities. Join us this month for a great discussion!

We’ll talk about:

What inspires you to do community change work
Strategies you use to engage people
How you’ve overcome barriers you’ve faced as a young leader
How you talk about racism and racial equity in your work
How do you make sure young people’s voices are heard

Details:

Date: Tuesday, September 13
Time: 2-3pm ET
Hashtag: #EvDemChat
Host: Everyday Democracy (@EvDem)

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