A Resounding “Thank You” to Andy Fluke

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NCDD Co-Founder Andy Fluke’s role as Creative Director is coming to a close in July. While many of you know Andy, you might not realize the scale of the contribution he has made over the years. It’s a story well worth telling.

Andy-pumpkin-borderAs creative director, Andy has been the graphic design force behind our website and publications, quietly anchoring NCDD’s infrastructure and fostering its growth for the past 12 years.  He may be best known for developing the website from a handful of pages to what it is today: a 6,000-page compendium widely regarded as the leading source for news and resources in the field. In NCDD’s first 12 years, Andy redesigned and expanded the website four times, in response to the needs of our community and the growth of the organization.

His first love has always been graphic design, a skill he learned in his father’s printing business and wielded to create the conference guidebooks, reports, signage, infographics, and other NCDD materials that have drawn praise from professionals throughout the dialogue and deliberation community.

To focus only on Andy’s creative skills, however, would be to miss the myriad other ways he has helped to shape NCDD since its founding in 2002. As co-founder, he played a critical role as sounding board and thinking partner for Sandy over the years. His contributions to NCDD’s day-to-day operations have also been significant: he has assisted with office tasks, written and edited content for the website, helped behind the scenes at NCDD’s events, maintained the staff’s computers, and much more.

AndyOnRock-borderAbove all, Andy has been essential as a problem solver, stepping into new responsibilities and mastering new skills on the fly. “There is no accomplishment that I’m more proud of than my overall ability to solve problems and create opportunities with little or no financial investment,” he said. “In every task, I’ve dedicated myself to seeking the most cost-efficient and productive ways to make things happen for NCDD.”

This ability has been indispensable to NCDD’s success. When Sandy and Andy co-founded NCDD in 2002 after running the first National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation, planning conferences and running organizations were new territory for them. NCDD has always been a lean operation, and the desire to do as much as possible for NCDD members required them to be thoughtful, frugal, and clever when attempting anything new, especially online.

As Andy moves into the next phase of his career, we know that his resourcefulness and “keep it simple” approach will serve organizations well for years to come. At the same time, as Andy says, “I look forward to acting as an ambassador for the fantastic work that NCDD continues to do and continuing to support the dialogue and deliberation community.”

Andy will continue offering his skill and experience to the dialogue and deliberation community and is available to consult on or engage in any publication or internet design projects. His personal email address is afluke@gmail.com and you can also learn more about him at andyfluke.com.

The Care-Centered Economy: A New Theory of Value

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I recently encountered a brilliant new essay by German writer Ina Praetorius that revisits the feminist theme of “care work,” re-casting it onto a much larger philosophical canvas. “The Care-Centered Economy:  Rediscovering what has been taken for granted” suggests how the idea of “care” could be used to imagine new structural terms for the entire economy. 

By identifying “care” as an essential category of value-creation, Praetorius opens up a fresh, wider frame for how we should talk about a new economic order.  We can begin to see how care work is linked to other non-market realms that create value -- such as commons, gifts of nature and colonized peoples --all of which are vulnerable to market enclosure.

The basic problem today is that capitalist markets and economics routinely ignore the “care economy” -- the world of household life and social conviviality may be essential for a stable, sane, rewarding life.  Economics regards these things as essentially free, self-replenishing resources that exist outside of the market realm.  It sees them as “pre-economic” or “non-economic” resources, which therefore don’t have any standing at all.  They can be ignored or exploited at will.

In this sense, the victimization of women in doing care work is remarkably akin to the victimization suffered by commoners, colonized persons and nature.  They all generate important non-market value that capitalists depend on – yet market economics refuses to recognize this value.  It is no surprise that market enclosures of care work and commons proliferate.

A 1980 report by the UN stated the situation with savage clarity:  “Women represent 50 percent of the world adult population and one third of the official labor force, they perform nearly two thirds of all working hours, receive only one tenth of the world income and own less than 1 percent of world property.”

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CIRCLE’s release on today’s Civics results

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23% of 8th-Graders “Proficient” in Civics According to Nation’s Report Card Released Today
Today’s Release Shows Inequality in Civics Education, Serious Gaps by Racial and Economic Backgrounds Reflecting Unequal Education

Medford/Somerville, MA – Today, the Federal Government released the Nation’s Report Card: 2014 U.S. in Civics. Experts on civic education from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) based at Tufts University’s Tisch College – the preeminent, non-partisan research center on youth engagement – have been involved in both designing and analyzing the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Civics Assessment and can provide informed commentary.

“The quality and equality of civic education is a reflection of our investment in a healthy democracy,” said Dr. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of CIRCLE. “The National Assessment of Education Progress, or the Nation’s Report Card, as it’s also known, is a difficult and complex test that successfully measures some key areas of civic learning and how well civics is taught. However, as the new Nation’s Report Card: 2014 shows, we are far from achieving an acceptable quality or equality of civics education.”

The 2014 NAEP Civics, released today, finds that 23% of America’s 8th graders are “proficient.” Although higher scores would certainly be desirable, many adults might be surprised by how difficult the NAEP Civics questions are. For instance, in 2014, 8th graders were asked to identify a power of the modern President not described in the Constitution and to understand that growth in the elderly population would affect Social Security spending.

NAEP assessments in all other subjects yield roughly comparable proficiency levels to those found in civics. For instance, on the 2013 Mathematics NAEP, 27% of 8th graders scored proficient and 9% scored advanced.

More significant than the overall proficiency levels are gaps by student groups. For instance, only 9% of African American students reached at least the “proficient” level in the 2014 NAEP Civics, compared to 40% of Asian/Pacific Islander students. Students from urban areas, students whose parents didn’t attend college, students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, and students with disabilities all scored lower than average.

“The NAEP Civics measures education for citizenship, which is an essential purpose of schools,” said Peter Levine, Associate Dean for Research at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service and a member of the NAEP Civics Committee. “In 2014, due to budget cuts, the NAEP Civics was fielded only at the 8th grade level. It is important for the NAEP Civics to be administered regularly and at the 4th grade, 8th grade, and 12th grade levels so that we can assess our progress in educating America’s kids for citizenship.”

Previous research by CIRCLE has shown that what students know about civics is related to how much and how well they are taught civics. The gaps in NAEP scores reflect inequality in civic education.

Dr. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg closely studied previous NAEP Civics results for a fact sheet entitled, “Do Discussion, Debate, and Simulations Boost NAEP Civics Performance?” In that work, Kawashima-Ginsberg explored the relationship between three promising teaching practices and NAEP scores for various demographic groups.

Dr. Peter Levine, Associate Dean for Research at Tisch College, has written a fact sheet entitled, “What the NAEP Civics Assessment Measures and How Students Perform.” The fact sheet looks closely at what the NAEP Civics test measures, the skills and values that it doesn’t capture, and in general how to interpret the results. Levine was a member of the committee that helped design the 2014 civics test.

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Recap of the NCDD Confab Call with Pete Peterson

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We had another great Confab Call event last week with NCDD member Pete Peterson of the Davenport Institute. Pete shared some very interesting insights and lessons that he learned from his recent run for Confab bubble imageCalifornia Secretary of State last year in a bid to become, as he calls it, the state’s “Chief Engagement Officer.”

It was an inspiring conversation in many ways, and after listening to Pete, there very well may be a few more NCDD members thinking about using their public engagement backgrounds to run for office!

In case you missed it, you can watch the recording of the call by clicking here (we used join.me, so there is screensharing plus audio). We also encourage you to check out some of our past Confab Calls for more great conversations and ideas.

the struggle to control images from Baltimore

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“10,000 Strong Peacefully Protest In Downtown Baltimore, Media Only Reports The Violence & Arrest of Dozens”

There is a struggle underway to influence how Baltimore is portrayed visually to America. My news feed is full of images like the one above–of peaceful protests or hardworking Baltimoreans cleaning up the streets. I doubt many of those photos are getting through to the mass TV audience that is watching hurled stones and burning police cars.

For my own part, I believe the property damage and physical conflicts with police were pretty much inevitable; but images of them don’t communicate two other crucial facts: that thousands have protested peacefully (which is difficult to organize and sustain, by the way), and that everyday life in cities like Baltimore is deeply oppressed.

The experience of the 1960s teaches us that it matters which images predominate.

In 1964, the summer’s urban riots/insurrections were seen to benefit Barry Goldwater’s campaign. Johnson’s aides called them “Goldwater rallies” because they played into the Republican presidential nominee’s narrative about America. LBJ nevertheless beat Goldwater soundly. But 1968 was different. As Clay Risen writes in the Guardian,

The [1968] riots thus provided an entrée for conservatives to finally, fully assert law and order as a national political issue. Something that had been brewing for decades at the local level, and which had played a role in the GOP victories of 1966, became after April 1968 the single most important domestic concern in the 1968 presidential race. Polls repeatedly put it at par with, and even above, the Vietnam war. Richard Nixon, who had largely avoided talking about riots and civil rights before April, now made law and order – and the revulsion of white suburbia against the violent images of rioters reacting to King’s death – a central theme in his campaign.

The riots also vaulted Nixon’s eventual running mate, the obscure Maryland governor Spiro Agnew, to national prominence. In the wake of the violence in Baltimore, Agnew had called local civil rights leaders to a meeting and then ambushed them with accusations that they had facilitated the racial militancy that he – and much of white America – believed to be the cause of the riots. Nixon aide Patrick Buchanan clipped a news story about the speech and handed it to his boss. And while Nixon toyed with other running mates, he ultimately chose Agnew based on his newfound fame as the standard-bearer of the “silent majority”.

To be clear: I don’t care whether Democratic or Republican politicians benefit or suffer from the images from Baltimore and other cities. But it is important which direction the nation takes. And (fairly or not) it’s people far from Baltimore, Ferguson, and Cleveland who will decide. That is why we should all be drawing attention to the alternative images from Baltimore.

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What the Hell is Happening in Baltimore?

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Last night, as news spread of protests, riots, and looting in Baltimore, I was struck by just how difficult it was to follow what was going on.

There’s something about today’s capacity for instant, constant, and hyper-local news that makes me feel like I ought to know everything accurately right away.

Of course there are regular disruptions to that rule – confusion and conflicting stories are regular features of breaking news, often fueled by interruptions in communication.

But the stories coming out of Baltimore were different – like a real-time view of “history being written by the victors.” It wasn’t that diverging stories were coming out of Baltimore – there were divergent narratives unfolding.

Now, I want to be clear about something: I know nothing about Baltimore. I’ve got friends in the area and I’ve watched The Wire, but that’s about the extent of my knowledge. I make no claims at expertise and everything that follows should be taken for what it is – an outsider’s attempt to follow a major news story.

Freddie Gray’s funeral took place yesterday, Monday, April 27. Twenty-five year old Gray was arrested in West Baltimore on the morning of April 12. He died in police custody on April 19 from a spinal injuries.

According to the Atlantic, its unclear why Gray was arrested and it’s unclear how his injuries were sustained. Video of Gray’s arrest show Gray, seemingly with a broken leg, being dragged off by police.  The Atlantic describes that “Gray didn’t resist arrest and that officers didn’t use force.”

The Baltimore Sun says that “Gray’s family has said he underwent surgery at Maryland Shock Trauma Center for three fractured neck vertebrae and a crushed voice box — injuries doctors said are more common among the elderly or victims of high-speed crashes.”

The Baltimore Police are investigating, but no information has been released.

The Baltimore Sun further reports that yesterday’s riots “started Monday morning with word on social media of a “purge” — a reference to a movie in which crime is made legal.”

What’s great is that since Twitter has an advanced search feature you can search for tweets including a specific keyword, like purge, within a specific time frame.

As early as April 26, you can start seeing references to the purge on Twitter, with people saying things like:

  • The purge anarchy or just regular Baltimore?
  • #FreddieGray we purge for you shun!! #Justice4FreddieGray
  • All this bullshit happening in Bmore makes me wish The Purge was a real thing………#justsaying

That continues for awhile, and on Monday, you start seeing things like:

  • Breaking: Baltimore shut down because of plot of the warriors, possibly the plot of the purge
  • Student ‘purge‘ threat shuts down Baltimore businesses, schools http://fw.to/sETY3pS

So, while there are many social networks out there, young people don’t seem to have planned a riot on Twitter. There are plenty of analogies to the Purge, but few threats and even less planning.

Maybe they were on Yik Yak, I don’t know.

Now, this is where I find it really confusing.

The Baltimore Sun reports that at 3pm, a group of 75 to 100 students were heading to Mondawmin Mall. Presumably, this was a group of ne’er-do-wells who were setting out to start a riot they supposed planned on social media.

As the Sun points out, “The mall is a transportation hub for students from several nearby schools.”

So…at 3pm, were kids just…heading home from school?

One teacher shared her eyewitness description publicly on Facebook. (And since teachers are public employees, it’s easy verify that the poster is in fact a teacher.)
“We drove into Mondawmin, knowing it was going to be a mess. I was trying to get them home before anything insane happened,” she wrote. Presumably, the fact that the mall is a transportation hub necessitated going there? I don’t know.
She continues: “The police were forcing busses to stop and unload all their passengers. Then, Douglas students, in huge herds, were trying to leave on various busses but couldn’t catch any because they were all shut down. No kids were yet around except about 20, who looked like they were waiting for police to do something. The cops, on the other hand, were in full riot gear marching toward any small social clique of students who looked as if they were just milling about. It looked as if there were hundreds of cops.”That’s a far cry from the idea that local thugs decided to cause a riot and the police did the best they could to stop it.I mean, I’m no expert, but the presence of such a large police force at the site of what I understand to be the place of the 1968 riots following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. seems like it might be trouble waiting to happen.Add to that the long history of tensions between Baltimore residents and law enforcement officials, and, well, none of this seems like a good plan. I don’t want to be anyone at this party.And then there was word from the Baltimore Police Department that gangs were “‘teaming up’ to take out officers.”

I’m confused about that, too, since the Sun also reports that “a group of men who said they were members of the Crips — they wore blue bandannas and blue shirts — stood on the periphery and denounced the looting.”

So, if they had a pact…they are really bad at it.

It’s taken a lot to sift through all this information. To come in as an outsider and try to find credible, verifiable information.

I still have no idea what the hell is going on in Baltimore, but from what I can gather, I’m skeptical of the police narrative. It looks to me like the police went in way over powered into a tense situation and made everything far worse than it should have been.

Should you blame the people who looted and destroyed property? Sure, but also blame the situation that put them there –

Baltimore police and leadership failed them.

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learning exchanges at Frontiers of Democracy

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There is still space for registrants at Frontiers of Democracy 2015, and we have just posted a preliminary list of the interactive concurrent sessions, or “learning exchanges.” More details here, but the headings are:

Additive/Replacement Engagement

Organized by Stephen Abbott, Great Schools Partnership, and the Glossary of Education Reform

Advancing Equity in Civic Deliberation

Organized by Chad Raphael, Santa Clara University

The Civic Media Project

Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis, Emerson College

Civic Potential of Modernity: Civic Studies as an Antidote to Civic Despair

Peter Levine, Tisch College, Tufts University
Joshua A. Miller, George Washington University
Karol Soltan, University of Maryland

Community—Police Relationships: The Critical Intersection of Race, Rights, and Respect

Bruce Mallory and Michele Holt-Shannon, New Hampshire Listens and the University of New Hampshire
Carolyn Abdullah and Val Ramos, Everyday Democracy

Continuum of Civic Action

Jason Haas, MIT Media Lab/Education Arcade
Cindy S. Vincent, Salem State University
Christy Sanderfer, University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service
Sarah Shugars, Tisch College at Tufts University

Creative Democratic Work at the Intersection of Faith and Community

John Dedrick, Kettering Foundation
Elizabeth Gish, Western Kentucky University
Robert Turner, Mathews Center for Public Life

Democracy through Text Messaging

Timothy J. Shaffer, Kansas State University

How does conflict resolution theory and practice contribute to the field of public deliberation?

Tina Nabatchi, Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Lisa-Marie Napoli, Indiana University, Political and Civic Engagement Program

Innovations in Civic Technology

Charlie Wisoff, Kettering Foundation
Nick Santillo, Conva

Is there a place for social justice in higher ed? Practitioners and academics share their experiences

Margaret Brower, Tisch College at Tufts University
Ande Diaz, Allegheny College
David Schoem, University of Michigan

Next Generation: Training Lawmakers for a Different Kind of Politics

Ted Celeste, NICD
Democratic and Republican legislators from Massachusetts

Schooling and Citizenship (P-20)

Lori D. Bougher
Phil Martin
Jim Scheibel
Rebecca Townsend

From Protest to Policy

Allison Fine

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Discomfort with Ancestors

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Years ago, my mother – who is really into genealogy – told me that one of my (white) ancestors had been lynched in the south because he’d been helping African Americans through the underground railroad.

I was so proud.

That’s the kind of person I wanted to be related to.

I, of course, don’t remember the details of what happened or how this person was related to me, but I remember – I’m descended from people who worked on the underground railroad. Folks who were on the right side of history. Who died for what they knew was just.

Several years after that, my mother was sharing another genealogical finding. It’s possible that I was not as attentive as a good daughter ought to be, until she said something that caught my ear. Something about an ancestor owning slaves.

No, no, I piped in. You told me that our family worked on the underground railroad!

My mother looked at me blankly as if I’d made the most nonsensical declaration she’d ever heard. Then she patiently explained to me that I was white – a fact she seemed to think had somehow eluded me.

Yes, yes, we have relatives who worked the underground railroad, she told me, but any white person whose family’s been in this country awhile is related to slave owners.

She hadn’t mentioned it before just as she hadn’t mentioned the sky was blue – it was obvious.

And yet there I was – a woman in my early 20s, just putting those pieces together.

There was a bit of a to-do last week about a certain actor who expunged his family’s slave-owning history from a genealogical documentary.

I can appreciate what he might have been thinking at the time – no, no, I’m not related to the bad guys.

Who would want to admit that?

The truth is, though, there is privilege even in that denial.

How many African Americans, do you suppose, who know their family has lived in this country for generations, tell themselves – no, no, my ancestors weren’t brought to this country as slaves.

Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World with an estimated 450,000 Africans arriving in the United States over the course of the slave trade.

I’m not sure that’s a piece of their past they have the luxury of denying.

Not as easily as I can casually claim ignorance of my own family’s slave-owning past, at least.

It’s important to recognize this history. To accept it.

The truth is – I didn’t work on the underground railroad and I didn’t own slaves. Those people are in my history, but they are not me.

I can’t claim divinity from one relative’s actions while claiming absolution from another’s. I have to make my own path, make my own choices. Informed by my history but not bound by it.

Indeed, we are all shaped by our past – but we are not doomed to repeat it.

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All-Expenses Trip to Train on NIFI’s Online Deliberation Tool

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We want our members to know that the Kettering Foundation and National Issues Forums Institute are offering an amazing opportunity for NIF moderators to attend an in-person training on their new online deliberation tool, Common Ground for Action, this May 18-19 in Ohio. Kettering is generously offering to foot the while bill, but you must register by April 29! Read more below or find the original announcement here.

NIF logo“We need some way to be able to take National Issues Forums online.”

NIF moderators and conveners have been telling us this for years.

Well, we heard you.

NIFI and Kettering Foundation have been collaborating with a working group of NIF members for over two years on an online version of the NIF forums we all know and love. It’s called Common Ground for Action, and it’s now available to all NIF moderators to use anytime.

Best of all, there’s no technical mumbo jumbo – CGA runs in any web browser, and has a simple, intuitive design. If you’re an experienced in-person moderator, all you’ll need is a little practice with the platform.

And to do that practice, we’re offering a special in-person moderator prep workshop at Kettering Foundation May 18-19. We have 15 spots available for the workshop, and Kettering takes care of all travel and lodging expenses as well as meals. These 15 spots are available on a first-come, first-serve basis, so register right away if you’d like to attend. REGISTER NOW!

Once you register, we’ll be in touch shortly with instructions on how to make travel arrangements through the foundation, as well as an agenda and prep materials. All travel arrangements must be made by Apr. 30, so registration will close Apr. 29!

This workshop will run from noon, Monday May 18 – noon, Tuesday May 19. We’ll be splitting into small groups to give everyone the maximum opportunity to practice moderating, and we’ll have time for lots of feedback and questions. In addition to ensuring you master the technology, we’ll also be focusing on how moderators can make these forums as deliberative as possible.

If you have any questions, email Amy Lee at alee[at]kettering[dot]org, the Kettering Foundation program officer who developed the platform with NIFI.

You can find the original version of this NIFI blog post at www.nifi.org/en/groups/attend-person-workshop-about-using-new-online-deliberation-tool-common-ground-action.