The Civil Debate Wall—popularly known as ‘The Wall’—is a unique, innovative social media tool created by Local Projects for The Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida and funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation. The Wall creates constructive dialogue by providing a physical social media tool that connects large touch screens, a texting system, and a website. These three synchronized components create a single, seamless interactive experience for the broader University of Florida community to actively engage in local, national and international issues.  See a video overviewing The Wall at http://vimeo.com/35397675.

The Wall:

The physical Wall is a series of five interconnected touch-screen displays, which allow students, teachers and citizens to share ideas and solutions to pressing political questions facing the nation. Users post opinions or join existing debates on questions that deal with a range of relevant subjects varying from the environment to foreign policy. The Wall is installed at the University of Florida’s Pugh Hall, home of The Bob Graham Center.

SMS:

The Wall allows users to follow debates via SMS. Debaters are notified via text when another person joins the debate and can continue the discussion by texting back to the Wall. By connecting a population that relies almost exclusively on text to communicate, the wall will provide a social place that appeals to this mode of communication.

The Website: (www.civildebatewall.com)

The website component of the Wall closely mirrors the physical Wall. The website attracts users who are not physically on campus. Providing the same features, the website gathers users from a broader population and allows users to keep track of debates.

Statistics:

The Wall sifts through the key words of postings, tabulating them in dynamic data visualization to show where agreement lies. Collected information will be used by Knight Foundation scholars as well as users to locate common ground on potentially divisive topics.

Resource Link:  www.civildebatewall.com

The Kettering Foundation’s soon-to-be-released book, Democratizing Deliberation: A Political Theory Anthology, brings together recent and cutting-edge political theory scholarship on deliberative democracy. Edited by Derek Barker, Noelle McAfee, and David McIvor, the collection reframes deliberative democracy to be sensitive to the deep conflicts, multiple forms of communication, and aspirations for civic agency that characterize real public deliberation. In so doing, the book addresses many of the most common challenges to the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.

Here’s what NCDD member Katherine Cramer Walsh (University of Wisconsin-Madison) says about the book:

“This book is a great resource for deliberative democracy practitioners and scholars alike.  It puts in one place seven gems from the literature on deliberative democracy and wraps them in a concise yet thorough genealogy of the concept. This book is not just theory, however. The pieces were carefully chosen to challenge all of us to contemplate the link between talk and action. Presented in this way, the volume provides inspiration and knowledge that will nourish the practice of deliberative democracy in its wide variety of forms.”

Chapters and Authors…

Foreward by David Mathews
Introduction by editors Derek W. M. Barker, Noelle McAfee, and David W. McIvor

PUBLIC REASON AND BEYOND: BROADENING CONCEPTS OF DELIBERATION

Three Models of Democratic Deliberation by Noelle McAfee
Rhetoric and Public Reasoning: An Aristotelian Understanding of Political Deliberation by Bernard Yack
Difference Democracy: The Consciousness-Raising Group Against the Gentlemen’s Club by John S. Dryzek

DELIBERATION IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS: EVERYDAY TALK AND DE-CENTERED DEMOCRACY

Everyday Talk in the Deliberative System by Jane Mansbridge
De-centering Deliberative Democracy by Iris Marion Young

FROM TALK TO ACTION: DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE AND PUBLIC WORK

Sustaining Public Engagement: Embedded Deliberation in Local Communities by Elena Fagotto and Archon Fung
Constructive Politics as Public Work: Organizing the Literature by Harry C. Boyte

Resource Link: http://kettering.org/publications/democratizing-deliberation/

Ordering Info:  Call 1-800-600-4060 to order your copy of the 184-page book, or email your order and mailing address to info@ait.net.  The list price is $15.95, but there is a 20% discount in effect until October.

Note from NCDD…

Soon after Democratizing Deliberation is officially released, NCDD will be running our first online book club on the book, using the NCDD blog and other communication tools to engage NCDDers in the book’s contents chapter by chapter.  See www.ncdd.org/7863 for the full announcement of the book club and sign up now!

Jacob Z. Hess is a Mormon, a community psychologist, and a devoted conservative, while Phil Neisser is an atheist, a leftist, and a college professor. Yet in 2009, after meeting at an NCDD conference, they embarked on a two-year conversation about the issues that divide them. The result is “You’re not as Crazy as I Thought,” an entertaining dialogue about power, government, media, religion, morality, gender roles, sexual orientation, race, and more.

Drawing on the latest debates in social and political theory, Hess and Neisser engage each other with expertise and passion, and disagree right to the end. Yet they also laugh together, learn from each other, and grasp each other’s basic decency. The net effect is a book that’s a good read and a shining counter-example to the angry and polarizing discourse that plays such a prominent role in national politics.

More about Jacob Hess…
After graduating from Brigham Young University as psychology department valedictorian, Jacob Hess was admitted to the doctoral program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  There, he was invited by the UIUC Program on Inter-group Relations to help develop and co-facilitate a liberal-conservative dialogue course for undergraduates, the first of its kind in the nation.  Jacob also joined Nathan Todd in interview research comparing narratives of liberal and conservative citizens.  After completing his Ph.D. dissertation research on long-term depression treatment outcomes in 2009, Jacob has worked as research director at Utah Youth Village, a non-profit for abused children in the Rocky Mountain region.

More about Phil Neisser…
Phil Neisser teaches political theory at the State University of New York at Potsdam, where he also serves as the Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences. Neisser earned his M.A at Georgetown University and his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  He is the author of United We Fall: Ending America’s Love Affair with the Political Center (Praeger, 2008), co-editor of Tales of the State: Narrative in Contemporary U.S. Politics and Public Policy (1997), and the author of essays and book chapters on a variety of subjects.  And in the year 2000 he received a SUNY Potsdam Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Resource Link:  www.political-dialogue.com (purchase the book here on Amazon.com)

On January 21, 2012 the City of Bell convened a historic bi-lingual Community Forum that brought more than forty residents together to deliberate and to offer guidance to local officials on goals and budget priorities for the 2012-13 fiscal year.

This process is one of several initiatives of the new Bell City Council to restore transparent, community-focused government to Bell.

Following a welcome from Mayor Ali Saleh, and short presentations on the purpose of the forum and the overview of the City’s fiscal condition, small groups were asked to consider, “what are the most important and highest priorities for the City to accomplish in the coming year?” (more…)

New Hampshire Listens works at the local and state level to facilitate and support civil, public deliberation of complex, polarizing issues. We share resources on dialogue design, train facilitators, and work with local and state leaders to create opportunities for informed conversation on social, economic, and policy matters. We bring people together for engaged conversations and informed community solutions.

Public dialogue opportunities augment formal, traditional means of engaging citizens by creating venues and resources for face-to-face and on-line deliberation. Our vision is to create a network of engaged communities in New Hampshire that can share their experiences and resources with each other.

We are a civic engagement initiative of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Resource Link:  www.nhlistens.org

Submitted by Michele Holt-Shannon of The Democracy Imperative (an NCDD organizational member) via the Add-A-Resource form.

The Institute for Local Government offers the following general tips to help guide effective public engagement relating to public safety realignment as part of the 2012 Institute for Local Government Public Engagement Program.

Here’s an excerpt, on “clarifying goals” when approaching public engagement:

1. Clarify Your Public Engagement Goals.

Determine the intended goal(s) of your public engagement meetings or other activities. Do you want to inform the public about public safety realignment, its requirements and its impacts, answer questions, and/or ask residents or others to identify values, concerns or recommendations that will help plan or guide the realignment undertaking?

Information sharing should be part of any effort, as should the opportunity for participants to ask questions. However, it can be very helpful to think about the specific areas where public input would be useful and to ask participants for their guiding views or recommendations on these specific points.
Approaches that include deliberation among participants, and more collective input will typically require more time, more meeting preparation, and good facilitation. Don’t set a public engagement activity up for failure by trying to accomplish – or claim – more than available time and the chosen approach will allow.

This article is a service of the Institute for Local Government (ILG), whose mission is to promote good government at the local level with practical, impartial, and easy-to-use resources for California communities. ILG is the nonprofit 501(c)(3) research and education affiliate of the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties

Resource Link:  www.ca-ilg.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/pe_and_realignment_final_4-24-12.pdf

Submitted for the NCDD Resource Center by Terry Amsler of the Institute for Local Government (an NCDD organizational member) via the Add-A-Resource form at www.ncdd.org/rc/add.

Engagement Commons, currently in beta, is a collaborative, dynamic, and accessible resource that both catalogs technology for civic engagement and highlights stories of real-world success. City officials and civic leaders can leverage the platform to identify, evaluate, and deploy the right apps to engage their communities. Engagement Commons is a project of Code for America and the Knight Foundation.

Engagement Commons is a wiki-based, community-built resource. Contribute by adding an app or organization entry, or sharing an engagement-related story.

Engagement Commons is part of the Civic Commons site (civiccommons.org), which we added to the Resource Center here in February 2012.

Resource Link:  www.engagementcommons.org

Submitted by Lauren Dyson of Code for America via the Add-A-Resource form at www.ncdd.org/rc/add.

Written and self-published by Sami Sunchild of the Peaceful World Foundation in 2008 and 2011, this is a short, readable, simple and lively manual for holding meaningful circle conversations in public places where traveler’s gather. The impetus for the manual comes from the idea of turning the tourist industry into a conscious vehicle of social transformation by systematically inviting people to host conversations in tourist centers.

The booklet, which can be purchased on the Peace Arts website, includes “Six Ingredients of a Good Conversation” which focuses on valuing differences, similarities, speaking from experience, empathy over persuasion and active listening. It can be used with a combination of strangers and friends. The stories we share are always personal with driving topics such as “ a turning point in my life,” “expanding my personal impact”, – perhaps “help I need,” “a hope I am acting on”, always “what I am doing and how it is working out”. This lays the groundwork for creating a social network of support.

Resource Link:  www.redvic.com/secure/peacearts-scripts/peace_manual.html

Submitted by Laurie Marshall of the Peaceful World Foundation via the Add-A-Resource form at www.ncdd.org/rc/add.

Bereavement Support Groups: Breathing Life into Stories of the Dead is a must-read for therapists, grief counselors, facilitators, and anyone who has lost a loved one. This book fills the gap between the challenges to conventional grief psychology and the practice of bereavement counseling. The deceased person has often been left behind in counseling conversations, requiring the bereaved to distance themselves from honoring memories that could soothe their heartache. Ironically, the stories about the dead person have not featured prominently in the grief experience.

The book offers a structured guide for facilitating bereavement support groups, but is intended as more than a simple “how to” book. It will also inspire readers with invigorating practice ideas. This new way of thinking includes the stories and love that remain after death. Here is a model for folding the deceased person’s values, legacies, meanings, and connections into the lives of the living. The book shows how to utilize the metaphorical presence of the deceased, accessed through stories, actions and rituals, to affirm the relationship with the deceased as more than a lost memory to be shelved next to dusty old photo albums.

About the Author:
Dr. Lorraine Hedtke teaches about death, dying and bereavement throughout the world. Her unique ideas and practices are drawn from narrative therapy and represent a departure from the conventional models of grief psychology. Her articles have appeared in numerous professional journals and magazines. With John Winslade, she has co-authored Remembering Lives: Conversations with the Dying and the Bereaved (Baywood, 2004). Her children’s book, My Grandmother is Always with Me (Xlibris 2005), is written with her daughter, Addie. For additional information about her innovative work or to contact her, go to www.rememberingpractices.com.

Resource Link: http://www.taosinstitute.net/bereavement-support-groups

Submitted by Dawn Dole of the Taos Institute (an NCDD organizational member) via the Add-A-Resource form at www.ncdd.org/rc/add.

Throughout California, most local agency efforts to involve residents occur occasionally as one-time public engagement activities that are focused on issues such as a general plan update, annual budgeting, a public works project, a public safety issue, a climate change plan, etc. Fewer cities and counties think about and “embed” a capacity to regularly consider and use public engagement tools as an ongoing part of local governance. This 2011 document from the Institute for Local Government Public Engagement Program (www.ca-ilg.org/engagement) provides several useful caveats for any effort to embed a greater capacity and use of public engagement.

Here’s an excerpt, from the section describing what “a sustaining orientation” to public engagement looks like:

3. Local Agency Public Engagement: A Sustaining Orientation

• There is a commitment to a longer term and “co-produced” public engagement plan, developed by the local agency and community participants, which outlines how the city or county may best develop and maintain a capacity for the ongoing use of public engagement approaches to address appropriate local issues.
• There is an adopted set of principles that generally define and encourage the use of effective and inclusive public engagement when and as appropriate.
• There may also be a checklist, protocols or “toolkit” to guide information sharing with the community, and help determine and carry out an appropriate public engagement approach (if any).
• There are established public engagement-related plans and performance goals for appropriate local agency departments.
• There are established public engagement performance criteria for relevant individual agency staff.
• There are local agency staff/offices with appropriate public engagement responsibilities, or (where available resources make it possible) a staff office/position primarily “charged” with public engagement responsibilities for the local agency.
• see the tipsheet for more!

This tipsheet is a service of the Institute for Local Government (ILG), whose mission is to promote good government at the local level with practical, impartial, and easy-to-use resources for California communities. ILG is the nonprofit 501(c)(3) research and education affiliate of the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties.

Resource Link:  www.ca-ilg.org/PEorientations

Direct link for download: http://www.ca-ilg.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/resources__Orientations_of_Local_Agencies_to_PE_FINAL_1-24-12.pdf

Submitted for the NCDD Resource Center by Terry Amsler of the Institute for Local Government (an NCDD organizational member) via the Add-A-Resource form at www.ncdd.org/rc/add.