Deliberative Democracy and the Promise of Place

This post by Slow Democracy coauthor Susan Clark first appeared on Resilience on June 27, 2022 as part of the Democracy Rising series.

“The climate crisis is urgent and it’s global! So how can we possibly rely on tools that are slow and local?” When I speak with environmental activists about the value of local democracy, this is, hands-down, the most common question.

Are local change efforts too small in the face of the enormous problems we face? In my view, no. In fact, the opposite is true. Local, place-based actions are among the surest (and, ironically, fastest) ways that we will ensure transformation. Because place-based change is change at a human-scale.

International policy solutions are terrific in concept. Those with expertise and access should work toward them, with firm guidance from the international science community. But for better or for worse, human beings must still be at the heart of these solutions—not only to create and implement them, but to embody and live by them. Humans are deeply flawed—so we need to frame changes deliberatively, in ways that our brains will allow us to embrace them (as discussed in Democracy Rising 4). And for a number of reasons, local, place-based action will be crucial to the sustainability of these solutions.

Perhaps not surprisingly for Resilience readers, some of the most important lessons about the value of place have arisen from the field of environmental education.

Lessons from Environmental Education, Part One: Fall in Love

The first Earth Day in 1970 is often seen as the launch of the modern environmental movement—a global clarion call to “Love Your Mother” (Mother Earth, that is). In the decades following the first Earth Day, environmental educators launched countless innovations to explain the importance of ecology to kids. Classrooms were filled with pictures of sewage being piped into rivers and smokestacks belching toxins to awaken students to issues like water and air pollution.

But by the mid-1990s, environmental educators were noticing a disturbing trend. Children had been so inundated with news of ecological catastrophe that they started to fear the natural world. Antioch professor David Sobel dubbed it “ecophobia” [1]: Children were so attuned to stories of environmental disaster that they literally became afraid to go outside. And who can blame them, with this messaging? By 2005, Richard Louv coined the term “nature deficit disorder,”[2] identifying trends in youth that, due to alienation from the natural world, led to ADHD, obesity, and depression.

Today, most environmental educators agree with Sobel’s policy, “No Tragedies Before Fourth Grade.” Instead of starting with melting polar ice caps, teachers and parents need to introduce nature to children through the sheer joy of it.

In order to want to save something, we have to love it first.

So to nurture budding environmentalists, we encourage them to put their hands in the dirt, catch fireflies, and build forts and fairy houses. Listen to birds, observe anthills, and watch the clouds. Explore, create, imagine. Fall in love.

Lessons, Part Two: Make a Difference

Also in the 1990s, environmental educators made another discovery. For decades, those in the field believed that providing learners with solid information would improve their attitudes and behavior toward nature. “From Awareness to Action” was a common conference theme. (It sounds good, right? I don’t even want to count how many publications and events I helped create with this motto.)

But a comprehensive study by professors Harold Hungerford and Trudi Volk examining what had inspired people to become active environmentalists—to exercise environmental citizenship—revealed the opposite.[3]

Hungerford and Volk found that what really inspired environmental citizenship were factors like:

• feeling empathy toward the environment;

• having the issues resonate for us personally; and

• feeling confident that we can make a difference.

So “From Awareness to Action” never really covered it. In fact, a more accurate way to think about this very human dynamic is “From Action to Awareness.”

In other words, when we get up to our elbows in stuff that we love, care about personally, and where we see we can make a difference, that’s when we hear a democratic “click” in our heads. Now, we’re ready to be environmental citizens.

There’s a valuable lesson here about engaged citizenship. To combat the climate crisis, we desperately need people to commit to environmental action and democratic change. But news about uncivil discourse among congressmembers, contested national elections, and dysfunction in federal government is the democratic equivalent of watching sewage piped into rivers. Increasingly we look at the national public sphere as something toxic. Like children suffering from ecophobia, citizens are afraid to “go outside” and take part in national democracy.

Fall in Love and Make a Difference—Locally

Few Americans are confident that national partisan leaders will help us get along. Our partisan polarization has gotten so deep that 40 percent or more of both Democrats and Republicans see the other party not only as folks they disagree with, but as “a threat to the well-being of the nation.”[4]

When assessing our local options, however, Americans are consistently more confident. According to Gallup, an average of 70 percent of those polled trust local government to handle local problems, compared to only 53 percent who trust the federal government to handle domestic problems.[5]

Taking a look at preceding articles in this blog post series gives us a clue as to why. From the “Portsmouth Listens” citizens’ group successfully navigating local controversies in New Hampshire (see Democracy Rising 7) to Montevallo, Alabama’s, pathway to a non-discrimination ordinance (see Democracy Rising 19), at the local level people can, as Montevallo Mayor Hollie Cost wrote, “come together to discuss some fairly wicked issues using exceedingly civil means.”

Working locally, we can follow the lessons of environmental education. We can fall in love with the changes we can create through deliberative democracy—and watch as we actually make a difference.

For climate activists, examining place-based change offers a number of valuable take-aways:

Place teaches us. Focusing on the local gets us two for the price of one. We not only improve local decisions (environmental sustainability in Portsmouth’s city plan; welcoming of LGBTQ+ residents in Montevallo, Alabama), but we strengthen our civic infrastructure. By working through deliberative processes, we strengthen our skills at self-governance. This improves the chances that future decision-making opportunities will lead to more sustainable decisions.

Place can’t deny nature. A farmer friend of mine makes it clear: Folks who work close to the land are experiencing climate change personally. For them, there is no “denial”; the growing seasons are changing, water tables are altered, and novel pest infestations are frequent.

When we focus on the local, we are forced to listen to our neighbors who have the most intimate experience with our natural systems. My farmer friend expressed it compellingly:

“I personally believe centuries of human activity has contributed to climate change, but even if I didn’t, I would still need to take necessary actions to continue farming. Debating the existence and/or causes of climate change is a red herring for me, because it distracts from dealing with what is happening in real time, right before my eyes.”[6]

Place is real. Many find conspiracy theories irresistible, especially online. But when we’re meeting face-to-face about very local issues, it’s harder to get away with presenting “alternative facts.” In today’s world of nationalized and globalized debates, it’s weirdly refreshing to skip arguing about the truth, and move straight on to how we’re going to deal with it. And that’s what can happen at the local level.

In Florida, communities have been dealing with rising sea levels, flooding, and salt water in their wells for years. Having worked successfully with civic and business leaders to approve adaptation and mitigation measure there, Yale professor Dan Kahan argues that while these problems are caused by climate change, the most successful discussions are framed around local solutions.[7]

The best way to overcoming the entrenched political economy at the national level is to activate demand at the local level, notes Kahan. Here, community members from planners to realtors to store owners can literally see, feel, and even taste the need for immediate action.

“It’s a practical discussion among people who have a common objective … Then it doesn’t matter whether they’re red or blue or whatever,” notes Kahan. “They all have a stake in it, and they trust each other because they can see that they all have the same relation to it."

“What you don’t want to happen is for those conversations to become infected with the same kind of polarizing significations by which climate change as a national policy issue is characterized,” Kahan explains. “And what you really don’t want are people who … aren’t parts of those communities to come in and tell people, ‘oh, your conversation is about this.’ That is really counterproductive.”

Place is realer to some than to others. Social psychologists tell us that many of our dearly held values are not simply opinions. They are largely innate, and even help explain conservative, liberal, and libertarian worldviews. In his book The Righteous Mind, Prof. Jonathan Haidt explains why certain of these qualities gave us survival advantages evolutionarily, and that they are, to a significant degree, hard-wired.

Some humans may be more innately likely to focus on the local than others.  Indeed, some researchers argue that whether we are more or less place-based may be a significant factor in today’s polarization. British journalist David Goodhart offers an intriguing analysis that divides modern cultures into two groups:  what he calls the “Somewheres” and the “Anywheres.”[8]

In Goodhart’s penetrating analysis, Anywheres are cosmopolitans. They have accumulated enough formal education and career success that they can live, well, anywhere. Their “achieved identity” is portable. They tend to be comfortable with new places and people; they value autonomy, mobility, and novelty. Anywheres have no problem thinking globally.

Somewheres tend to ascribe their identity to a particular place and group—often multi-generational, perhaps because their work is placed-based, whether it’s fishing or mining or factory work. They tend to value tradition and social contracts like families and community. While they do live in the real world, and evolve with changing norms about race, gender, and other issues, they prefer change to be moderate rather than rapid.

Goodhart argues that Anywheres, who often hold leadership positions, have increasingly not understood the values or the needs of Somewheres. He points to a gutting of vocational and apprenticeship education programs, and housing and transportation crises, that primarily impact Somewheres. And Goodhart offers extensive sociological data making the case that the misunderstanding and lack of respect between these two worldviews help explain both the rise of Brexit and Trump.

However, it would be an oversimplification to draw all place-based preferences simply along liberals vs. conservative lines. Political science professor Frank Bryan wrote that local democracy practitioners are “… perfectly situated on the nexus where traditional ‘local control’ conservatives and newer ‘small is beautiful’ liberals meet.”[9]

While Somewheres sound more traditional and in some ways conservative, their value of place should be a value for environmentalists to celebrate. We can help ensure broader acceptance of environmental solutions by emphasizing what is, in fact, a common priority.

Place is Literally Our Commons

People’s amenability to difference, and to change, varies a lot. Some human beings will always resist rapid change, and we’re stuck with that truth—because some portion of these qualities is genetic.[10] But we can work to diminish these negative reactions. A canny response to help create sustainable change is to lead with, focus on, and indeed celebrate what we have in common.

In the U.S., we have centuries of place-based sins to reckon with, from violently displacing Native American populations from their homelands to enslaving and forcibly relocating Africans to our shores. Whether or not by design, the U.S. is also a nation of multicultural communities, incorporating immigrants and refugees from across the globe. Whatever our histories, many people feel a strong, natural connection to what is now their home place—and experience a very human need to engage with it.

Looking at place from a social change perspective, even those of us who tend to “think globally” would do well to understand the values of those who focus on the local. It will strengthen our chances of creating policies that will gain broad acceptance.

Farmer and author Wendell Berry, famous for his understanding of place-based culture, has defined “community” this way:

“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”[11]

As is often said, there is no silver bullet to address the climate crisis—it’s going to take silver buckshot. It will require millions of individual actions combined, in service to our shared place—the very definition of community. The good news is that when place-based wisdom informs local solutions, the solutions are all the more sustainable.

[1] David Sobel, Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education(Great Barrington, Mass: The Orion Society and the Myrin Institute, 1996);  https://www.davidsobelauthor.com/beyond-ecophobia.

[2] Richard Louv, Last Child In the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005).

[3] Hungerford, H. R., & Volk, T. L. (1990). Changing Learner Behavior Through Environmental Education. The Journal of Environmental Education: Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 8–21.

[4] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trust/archive/winter-2020/how-americans-view-trust-facts-and-democracy-today.

[5] https://news.gallup.com/poll/355124/americans-trust-government-remains-low.aspx.

[6] https://www.addisonindependent.com/2022/02/03/climate-matters-farmers-must-deal-with-reality/.

[7] https://ideas.ted.com/how-can-we-talk-about-climate-change-or-can-we/.

[8] David Goodhart, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (London: Hurst & Company, 2017).

[9] Susan Clark and Woden Teachout, Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012), p. x. Foreword by Frank M. Bryan.

[10] Stenner, Karen (2009). Three Kinds of “Conservatism.” Psychological Inquiry: Vo. 20: 142-159.

[11] https://hoptownchronicle.org/magazines-short-selective-biography-of-berry-has-lines-from-forthcoming-book-which-will-offend-most-everyone/

Deliberative Democracy and the Role of Power

This post by Slow Democracy coauthor Susan Clark first appeared on Resilience on January 24, 2022 as part of the “Democracy Rising” series.

We all admire the power of art. We praise the power of creative entrepreneurship. We are impressed by the power of athletes. But some of us aren’t comfortable talking about power in politics. While power is the currency of activists, to others it may sound inflammatory—a topic to be avoided unless we want a fight. Still, listen for words like “influence,” “impact,” “authority,” or “control” and notice where and when they’re applied. Whatever we call it, power is a crucial element of democracy. 

I have described “slow democracy” as local decision making that is inclusive, deliberative, and empowered.[1] While that can seem like a tall order, combining these three elements as a package offers a kind of magic stardust that allows public engagement to avoid painful pitfalls. Functioning with only two out of three leads us to dark places:

1)    Deliberation + Power, without Inclusion: This is the classic “back-room deal” many of us have come to expect from cynical politics. (I discuss how to strengthen inclusion in the 1/5 post below and here.)

2)    Inclusion + Power, without Deliberation: This describes, all too often, practices such as initiatives, referenda, and recalls. These direct-democracy reforms were originally created with the laudable goal of empowering voters. However, critics maintain that they weaken informed democracy and instead lend themselves to polarizing slogans and manipulative special-interest power grabs.[2] Unfortunately, “populist processes have led to anti-populist realities.”[3] (Revealingly, adding a face-to-face deliberation process can alleviate the worst of these tendencies, as we will see below with the Citizens Initiative Review process.)

3)    Inclusion + Deliberation, without Power: Ouch. How many of us have teamed with neighbors, committed hours of heartfelt effort to a project, only to realize bitterly that our ideas would be ignored by leaders? 

Public engagement must be connected to power. Democratic leaders have been getting this one wrong for decades. Back in 1969, activist Sherry Arnstein decried disempowered public engagement, observing caustically, “what citizens achieve in all this activity is that they have ‘participated in participation.’ And what powerholders achieve is the evidence that they have gone through the required motions of involving ‘those people.’”[4]

How, then, can we make sure our efforts have power, and wield that power in the most democratic ways possible? Let’s consider the “who, when, why, and how” of empowered engagement.

Who?

With the exception of super-villains from Marvel Comics, most of us do not actually want all the power all the time. The fact is, there are plenty of things we’re happy allowing others to decide. As one urban planner noted, everyone wants to know their garbage will be collected, but not everyone needs to attend the meeting where the garbage truck route is determined.

Leaders should be transparent, and community members should be informed, about where the decision-making power is in any engagement process. The dashboard on our cars gives us feedback on our vehicle’s various power metrics—like how fast we’re going and how much fuel we have. Likewise, it would be helpful if every decision-making process came with its own “power gauge.” Who decides? The power gauge might depict the needle pointing to the left end of the gauge to show that leaders hold all the decision-making power; in the middle, leaders and the public will decide together; and when the needle is pointing to the right, the public will make the final call. 

Find out who decides. Is public participation in this process worthwhile? If the needle is not set to your liking, you should know it before you engage, and make sure others know too. And if you want to shift the needle, work to do so as early as possible—not at the end when it’s too late.

When?

Both leaders and community members should think strategically about when to make decisions together. Projects are especially likely to benefit from empowered public engagement if one or more of these situations is present:

·      It’s early enough to make a difference. Brainstorming ideas, setting goals, and prioritizing actions are all likely candidates for empowered civic participation.

·      The project will have a broad reach. If a proposal affects a large population, it makes sense to incorporate the wisdom of a wide range of stakeholders.

·      Complexity is high. When projects are complicated, misinformation and misunderstandings can quickly take root. Done well, engagement will help people grapple with issues and trade-offs constructively, and the project will benefit from more diverse perspectives.

·      Community consensus is absent. Well structured, open, and empowered decision-making can help reduce suspicions, controversies, and pushback. This allows both leaders and the public to focus productively on the real issues.

·      There’s been a historic power imbalance. Transparency and power-sharing are crucial to healing a history of marginalization. Period.

Why?

It is critical that those who hold the decision-making reins determine why they want to engage the community. They can then match their techniques to their goals. 

When it comes to power, perhaps the most frustrating public engagement occurs when there’s a mismatch between expectations and experience. Meeting attendees are angry if they arrive expecting to express their views then find out that it’s an informational meeting with no public comment allowed. Paradoxically, tempers also flare when they arrive expecting information, but the meeting was designed to gather comments so no one is available to respond to questions.

The International Association for Public Participation offers a spectrum to help guide public engagement design based on power.[5] It offers five levels of engagement:

·      Inform: At this least-empowered end of the spectrum, the goal is to provide balanced information to help the public understand. Tools might include flyers, websites, and open houses. 

·      Consult: To solicit ideas and comments from the public on an issue, appropriate tools include surveys and focus groups. 

·      Involve: In the mid-range of empowerment, working directly with the public to make sure their ideas are understood could include techniques such as visioning exercises and deliberative small-group discussions. 

·      Collaborate: Partnering with the community to develop alternatives and prioritize action steps might involve creating advisory committees and consensus meetings. 

·      Empower: When the final decision is up to the community, tools include Participatory Budgeting and a binding public vote. 

Each of these goals is appropriate for different moments. Good democratic engagement is not a single event; it’s a series of opportunities. In each case, be sure the tool matches the goal, and that the purpose of any engagement effort is crystal-clear.

How?

Across the world, leaders and community members have created a tapestry of diverse methods to balance leaders’ and residents’ quest for power. Here are a few notable examples.

Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a citizen-centered process that empowers community members to make decisions about discretionary parts of their public budget. First pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989, participatory budgeting has now been implemented in over 7,000 cities across the globe, employed in states, counties, cities, schools, housing authorities, and other institutions. 

No one knows their community better than its residents. That’s why leaders find PB so valuable; it incorporates residents’ priorities. PB works through an annual cycle that typically begins with inclusive brainstorming process so that residents can generate project ideas, from bike lanes to parks to new public programming. Volunteer delegates then develop ideas into proposals; residents vote on those proposals; and the institution funds and implements the top vote-getters. Designed to deepen democratic engagement, improve equity, and strengthen community, this welcoming process is founded on community-powered change. Because of this, PB has inspired fresh engagement from community members who have historically been shut out of decisions.

Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) gives an old system a much-needed update. The initiative and referendum system, used in two dozen American states and many cities, allows voters to create public policy through ballot measures. In Oregon, leaders were concerned that this direct democracy process, while allowing voters substantial power, was missing a key ingredient: deliberation. Sure, voters could talk with neighbors and do their own research, but there was no built-in forum for public give-and-take on ballot initiatives before voting. Well-funded, high-stakes campaigns often oversimplified or skewed the issues, and surveys showed that voters were frequently not well informed before they voted.

Through CIR, a random sample of 20 voters gather to do a deep dive on ballot measures. This “mini-public” reads, interrogates experts on all sides of the issues, deliberates, and distills their learning into an overview of the most salient issues. The process combines the values and experiences of lay citizens with the insights gained from a well-run deliberative process. The findings are distributed statewide in an official Oregon Voters’ Pamphlet. The collaborative process between public officials and citizens helps bring more empathy and rationality into the ballot process, and thanks to CIR, studies show that voters are better informed.[6]

New England Town Meetings: In the northeastern United States, many New England towns have governed themselves for centuries using a traditional method of direct, deliberative democracy called town meetings. A far cry from the raucous “town hall meetings” staged by some politicians, the New England town meeting is a deliberative democratic body. Here, on issues of finance and governance, every voter can participate and serve as the legislative branch of their town’s government. In a face-to-face format, they can amend the budget and take other binding action from the floor. While the system is not perfect, a comprehensive 30-year study of Vermont town meetings offers insights that could inform deliberative democracy in other places.[7] Among the most transferable findings: 

Scale matters. Town meeting research reveals that smaller towns get better per capita turnout than larger ones. Structuring decision-making on a human scale, where people can feel their impact most authentically, improves participation. As we also see with Participatory Budgeting, many community members find adding their voice to neighborhood-level issues like bike paths can feel more valuable than trying to make a difference on global policy issues. Both are needed, so more power to them!

 Power matters. Besides town size, the single strongest variable for town meeting participation is whether there are hot issues on the agenda. While many political scientists believed that Americans dislike controversial meetings, town meeting data proved them wrong. Analysts believe the difference is that a New England town meeting is not simply a show or a place to sound off; it is an empowered deliberative body. In the end, people are willing to engage with difficult issues if they trust that through a fair process, they can make a real difference.

When local leaders and active residents share power, deliberative democracy shines. Here are a few tips to consider as you work to make your local processes more empowered:

·      Consider why power sharing is a challenge. Local leaders may have legitimate concerns that public engagement will derail their hard work or foist unrealistic new assignments on them. It’s important to demonstrate that by sharing power, leaders will actually make more progress. Community groups should make themselves trustworthy, looping leaders in on their work from the beginning and demonstrating their commitment to shared goals.

·      Highlight the benefits. Many leaders already recognize the advantages of sharing power. They have seen that it increases public trust, informs projects, and improves outcomes. Local leaders tend to trust other leaders, so find another community that has an empowered deliberative democracy process you admire, and arrange a conversation with leaders in your community. 

·      Be transparent about the who, where and when of decision making. In every process, identify it early and communicate it often. Some groups have taken to creating a project timeline, on a presentation slide or even on a large roll of newsprint, and displaying it at every meeting. Pointing to the timeline dotted with public meetings and decision inflection points, they’ll remind the community, “This is where we’ve come from; here’s where we are now; and over here is when we will make the final decision.” 

·      Create a public engagement protocol for your community. More and more cities are formalizing a system for public engagement.[8] In Portland, Oregon, the parks and recreation department begins every project with a public-involvement assessment to evaluate public impact, public interest, and controversy. Planners then match the participation need with the appropriate tool. Staff have welcomed the clarity and strategic value of the system. 

Across the world, communities that offer more inclusive, deliberative decision-making power are rebuilding trust in democracy. Building on decades of success, the Participatory Budgeting organization now houses a collaborative national campaign aptly named Democracy Beyond Elections to respond to what over two dozen organizational partners identify as a crisis of credibility in American government. The coalition plans to build political support and pilot additional programs to model equitable, participatory democracy. New models of democratic governance, led by communities, are needed. As these organizers argue, “This means committing to radically reimagine what participation and civic engagement really entail—including tangible and consequential power sharing.”

Power is the essential element that prevents public engagement from just being “participating in participation.” Power, inclusion, and deliberation work together—slowly but surely—to yield stronger, more resilient communities.

[1] Susan Clark and Woden Teachout, Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012)

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/us/california-recall-constitutional-amendment.html

[3] “The Gavin Newsome Recall Is A Farce: Most Californians want no part of this nonsense.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/opinion/california-gavin-newsom-recall.html

[4] Sherry Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” American Institute of Planners (July 1969): 219.

[5] Find the “Spectrum of Public Participation” (copyright International Association of Public Participation www.IAP2.org) and other valuable public participation tools at https://www.iap2.org/mpage/Home.

[6] John Gastil and Katherine Knobloch, Hope for Democracy: How Citizens Can Bring Reason Back into Politics.(Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2020)

[7] Frank M. Bryan, Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). See also Susan Clark and Frank Bryan, All Those In Favor: Rediscovering the Secrets of Town Meeting and Community (Montpelier, Vermont: Ravenmark Publishing, 2005), www.vtinstituteforgovt.org.

[8] For guidance, see https://www.publicagenda.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PublicAgenda_StrengtheningAndSustainingPublicEngagement_2018.pdf

Celebrating the Role of Deliberation in Democracy

This post by Slow Democracy coauthor Susan Clark first appeared on Resilience on January 12, 2022 as part of the “Democracy Rising” series.

When I lead workshops about public engagement, I sometimes begin by asking folks about their own experiences. I assign half of my workshop participants to public engagement “Heaven,” tasked with describing what outstanding civic participation looks and feels like, and what it achieves. The other half are assigned to “Hell,” describing public processes from, well, you get the idea.

The room quickly becomes animated. The Hell tables are especially lively, punctuated with chuckles and groans. Once a table even mutinied—assigned to discuss “Heaven,” they insisted on relishing their shared hellscape instead.

Report-outs reveal a pattern. If workshop participants are local leaders, they’ll often describe Public Engagement from Hell as time consuming and poorly attended. Our workshop erupts with laughs of recognition as they add that those who do show up are the most strident on any issue: residents are uninformed, or worse, misinformed, but that doesn’t keep them from gassing on all night. Too often, they report, engagement is uncivil, and at worst, it’s dangerous.

Meanwhile, if my workshop attendees are ordinary citizens, they describe Public Engagement from Hell as sitting with sweaty hands in a stuffy room, faced with crackling microphones and intimidating 2-minute time limits. Leaders don’t listen, won’t answer questions adequately, and offer no evidence that input will be used. It’s probably too late in the process to make a difference anyway; worse than a waste of time, this engagement is an insult.

But once the “Hell” tables have vented, a calm usually comes over the room. The “Heaven” tables have been reflecting on effective engagement experiences, and their recollections also resonate. 

These leaders describe processes yielding true insights from residents, revealing new angles to improve projects. Public engagement helps them identify potential problems before projects advance too far. Respectful discussions allow residents to take in new information and their neighbors’ perspectives. Rather than taking an adversarial role (with leaders or with each other), residents become supporters and even ambassadors of community efforts. 

Meanwhile, residents describe the joy of meeting neighbors and discovering surprising connections and collaborations. Contributing their local knowledge strengthens their sense of community. For some, what begins as one positive meeting blossoms into active volunteerism or new leadership roles. Productive public decisionmaking leads to more just, sustainable community solutions. 

As these discussions make clear, people know in their guts what scholars now back up with research:[1] A) When done wrong, public engagement can be hell; and B) there is a better way.

It’s been 50-plus years since the conventional “public hearing” format has been the go-to public engagement tool, often mandated by law in the United States. And over the decades, researchers have discovered that “public hearings” are frequently neither—that is, there’s usually a poor representative sample of the “public,” and there’s very little “hearing” going on. Rather than helping the best ideas win, what becomes entrenched is the battle itself. But a growing cadre of scholars and practitioners have developed better engagement tools. And a key element is high-quality deliberation.

What is deliberation? It’s not a debate, not a negotiation, and certainly not the shouting matches that too often characterize the public sphere. Deliberative democracy and related fields such as dialogue and deliberation include a growing and evolving variety of techniques.[2] A deliberative “how-to” looks less like a single, fixed recipe and more like a collection of inspiring practices from across cultures, but key elements apply in most cases:

• Community deliberation processes invite all residents—not just leaders or experts—to engage on issues of local concern. With a well-planned process (trained facilitators can help), participants explore well-researched information to learn about an issue; share their experiences and consider diverse viewpoints and values; generate new options and weigh trade-offs; and—this is critical—they make decisions.

• A well-run deliberative process is designed so that everyone gets a chance to speak and fully understand each other. Exploring a wide variety of ideas and experiences is encouraged, and ground rules are enforced to ensure that everyone is treated with respect.[3]

Doesn’t all this take forever? Some Resilience readers may feel that in today’s moment of profound injustice and extraordinary global fragility, we don’t have time for this kind of “slow democracy”—we need to fight. Many supporters of deliberation wouldn’t disagree that adversarial politics and advocacy are sometimes necessary—but they’re not always the fastest or most effective path to durable change. 

One of the reasons that conventional and adversarial processes are often ineffective is the amazing, and often frustrating, human brain. In one well-known neuroimaging study[4], researchers wired up voters to explore what exactly happens inside our brains when we receive new information, especially when the new information doesn’t fit our worldview. A group of self-described Republicans and Democrats were subjected to unflattering information about their own party’s candidates. According to their MRIs, when subjects were confronted with information that contradicted their biases, their brains actually under-processed the information. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for conscious reasoning, hardly even fired. Instead, the emotional circuits of their brains lit up. Essentially, participants’ brains used emotion to ignore information that they didn’t like to hear but couldn’t discount intellectually. 

Evolutionarily, there’s a reason that our brains work this way.[5] Polarization is effective for building group cohesion. But it’s terrible for processing information or finding solutions. 

And that’s what makes deliberation so crucial at this moment. Many of today’s hot topics—addressing poverty, grappling with immigration, tackling water shortages—are so resistant to resolution that they’re what policy analysts have dubbed “wicked problems.” Science can’t give us a simple “one-right-answer,” partly because of competing identities and underlying values. 

 The world is full of polarities—two crucial, interdependent but contradictory variables that must coexist.[6] It’s not easy but we manage them every day: parents must be firm but flexible; a good boss is both grounded and visionary; organizations must embrace continuity and change. In my home state of Vermont, we’ve somehow functioned under the paradoxical motto “Freedom and Unity” since 1788.

Issues become “wicked” when we’re managing multiple polarities at once. When town planners have to consider one group’s justifiable interest in open space and wildlife, another’s interest in economic vitality, and another’s in affordable housing, there is no single solution that will please everyone. 

Rather than thinking about “solving” wicked problems, we need to think about managing them—naming the competing values, authentically exploring trade-offs, and doing the hard work together to find the best balance in each case. 

Colorado State University professor Martín Carcasson explains that most problem-solving models focus either on expertise or on activism. But wicked problems are inherently different. They don’t respond to technical solutions, nor do they respond to advocacy. What they do respond to is slow, trusting, face-to-face communication. As Carcasson has noted, solutions begin when we recognize that with wicked problems, it’s the problem that’s wicked, not the people. And that’s where deliberation can help.

The residents of Portsmouth, New Hampshire have learned from experience the value of deliberation. A seacoast city of about 20,000 people, Portsmouth has adopted an inclusive deliberation model created by Everyday Democracy to address their most divisive issues. Over the years, a group of volunteers called Portsmouth Listens has emerged to offer neutral facilitation, create balanced study guides, and convene residents on local issues. Their small-group process has been employed on such issues as school relocation/renovation, race relations, affordable housing, environmental sustainability, and two Master Plan updates involving thousands of people.

When Portsmouth identifies a problem that needs focused attention, the process begins with community organizing to ensure inclusive and diverse participation. Residents are then broken into smaller groups for a dialogue process, spending at least one or two meetings listening to each other’s experience on the topic. Sharing stories as neighbors and building trust is a critical preface to the next step, which is the face-to-face deliberation. 

Residents don’t need specialized knowledge to take part—every resident has valuable lived experience to offer—and inclusion is further strengthened because residents have come to trust that they won’t be asked to give a speech or endure shouting matches. The small groups base their discussions on balanced research and may supplement them with field trips and presentations from experts. Rather than a binary framing that pits neighbor against neighbor, the deliberative process uses open questions that help identify underlying values unique to Portsmouth. In long-term planning, the framing question was “How can we make Portsmouth the best place for everyone?” A controversial school redistricting process inquired, “What issues should the redistricting committee consider in balancing the enrollments of the school?” 

Importantly, city government embraces the Portsmouth Listens system. When participants report their findings to leaders, they can see how they are put to use. Having a link to decision-making power is enormously important to successful deliberation.

 Portsmouth Listens proved its worth when a controversial school re-districting question that had plagued the city for over a decade was resolved through a six-month deliberative process. Ironically, “slow democracy” is usually the fastest way to deal with polarized problems.  

With the help of both local leaders and active residents, deliberative democracy can become part of every community. Here are a few tips to consider as you begin:

1.     Design the process to support the outcome. Consider finding an experienced facilitator to help create the process that’s right for your situation—ideally one who has experience with a wide range of techniques.[7]

2.     Be trustworthy. It is valuable to have a diverse planning committee representing a wide range of perspectives (see “Inclusion,” posted below and linked here). However, the person or people leading the deliberation itself must be seen as objective, with no stake in the outcome. It can be helpful to find a facilitator from out of town.

3.     Plan ahead. You will need time to format an appropriate process, ensure participants hear about it, research and create balanced informational support materials, and set up a welcoming in-person and/or online space.

4.     Good information is critical. Create well researched, objective background materials, made widely available in advance. This could involve surveys to identify underlying community values, and early informational meetings featuring a range of experts. If the situation is too polarized to allow participants to agree on baseline information, it is probably a sign that more dialogue is needed before deliberative decision-making can proceed.

5.     Build community capacity. Every public engagement process is an opportunity to coach interested residents in dialogue and deliberation skills. Your facilitator could lead a training, guide residents in leading small-group discussions, and leave your community with a team to help lead future community discussions.

6.      Decide how to decide. You may choose majority rule, consensus, or some other model, but make sure everyone is clear from the beginning on how the final decision will be moved forward.

7.     Use ground rules. Ask participants to agree to ground rules. You may present the group with suggested ground rules or have them generate them together.[8] Here is a sampling of ground rules often used by groups:

• Share the floor—everyone participates, no one dominates

• Listen carefully to others, and remain open to ideas

• Only one person talks at a time

• Avoid personal attacks on people—focus on the issue

• It’s okay to disagree, but do so respectfully

8.     Connect to power. Show the connection between your deliberative process and real-world change. Ideally, get leaders’ commitment to honor and, to the degree possible, implement your deliberative outcomes. (In a future post, I’ll discuss the critical consideration of power.)

9.     Offer alternatives. Be aware that deliberative processes can privilege certain skills and cultures. If possible, pair your efforts with other events that can help the whole community shine. For instance, a hallmark of Community Heart and Soul engagement initiatives is storytelling, where residents are encouraged to share their personal experiences and values in an informal, welcoming manner.

 Scholars are finding that deliberation makes participants more open to new information, helps us recognize connections, decreases our cynicism, and leads to a virtuous upward spiral of continued engagement and community resilience. Put more poetically, E.F. Schumacher noted in his 1973 book Small is Beautiful,

“Divergent problems … force us to strain ourselves to a level above ourselves; they demand, and thus provoke the supply of, forces from a higher level, thus bringing love, beauty, goodness and truth into our lives.”[9]

People are yearning for authentic engagement. Although deliberation is hard work, it leads to much-needed rewards.

[1] For instance, see Tina Nabatchi and Matt Leighninger, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy. 2015: Jossey-Bass.

[2] See the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation website for information on dialogue and deliberation practices: https://ncdd.org

[3] Communications scholar John Gastil offers a comprehensive description of high-quality deliberative process in Political Communication and Deliberation (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2008).

[4] Drew Westen and his colleagues’ study, which has been widely replicated, was published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18, no. 11 (2006): 1947-58: http://birc.jaredjustus.com/assets/publications/Westen,%20Kilts%202006%20J%20Cognit%20Neurosci.pdf.  A popularized summary appeared in Science Daily, “Emory Study Lights Up the Political Brain, at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060131092225.htm.  

[5] See Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Random House, 2012). Follow Haidt’s ongoing work on bridging moral divisions at https://www.civilpolitics.org .

[6] See Brian Emerson and Kelly Lewis, Navigating Polarities: Using Both/And Thinking to Lead Transformation(Washington, D.C.: Paradoxical Press, 2019).

[7] For a helpful overview to help match tools to your needs, see the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation’s “Engagement Streams Network”:  https://ncdd.org/rc/item/2142/

[8] For an overview on facilitation skills including a sample list of ground rules, see the University of Kansas Community Toolbox, https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/leadership/group-facilitation/facilitation-skills/main

[9] E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (London: Sphere Books, 1973), p. 95. I updated Schumacher’s references of “man” and “himself” to “us” and “ourselves.”

Deliberative Democracy and Inclusion

This post by Slow Democracy coauthor Susan Clark first appeared on Resilience on January 5, 2022 as part of the “Democracy Rising” series.

What if we cultivated local democracy the way the artist-chefs of the Slow Food movement create a luscious meal? Obviously, we would gather the widest variety of fresh local ingredients. We would seek to understand them so we could help their finest qualities shine through, incorporating the best of both traditional wisdom and new techniques. And taking care not to rush, we would assemble them so as to allow their unique flavors to marry over time, knowing that their synergy will create a richer result than simply the sum of their parts.

This was the inspiration my coauthor and I brought to our book Slow Democracy[1] (reviewed on this site here and here) nearly a decade ago, and it’s a vision that continues to nourish my work today. I won’t pretend local democracy has gotten any easier. Public engagement is increasingly inflamed by misinformation, social media, and (to use author Amanda Ripley’s useful term) “conflict entrepreneurs.”[2] In fact, the increasingly toxic polarization of recent years has meant that before many communities can even consider using deliberative democracy practices,[3] remedial trust-building is needed. An inspiring number of new groups has emerged to take on this bridge-building.[4]

 Despite these new challenges, I stand by our premise that slow democracy—local decision-making that’s inclusive, deliberative, and empowered—is essential to a sustainable future. The “slow” in slow democracy doesn’t mean change needs to take longer; it’s simply an acknowledgement that high-quality decisions are worth the time. In fact, “slow” is often faster—because we can skip the pushback from polarized voters, and instead reap the rewards of information sharing and innovation.

Partisan animosity in the United States is rising, yet recent work by the nonprofit group Public Agenda[5] indicates that broad agreement exists among Americans on many key issues—agreement across party, race, and other demographic measures. From raising the minimum wage, to infrastructure investment, to creating a citizenship path for undocumented immigrants, the majority of Americans are surprisingly united. As researchers have observed, the problem is not that we disagree but that partisan animosity “…is undermining the ability of Americans to recognize common interests, deal with our differences productively, build broad-based coalitions, and work together to bring about needed change.”[6]

If we are to survive together, these arts of self-governance will be crucial. Many of us feel immobilized in the face of national polarization and global crises, but here’s where engaging with the “other” becomes a powerful, even radical act. Whether we are elected leaders or simply inspired neighbors, whether our efforts of inclusion are reciprocated or not, we can help, as deliberative scholars advise, “keep the conversation going.”[7]

Democracy is a “we,” not a “they.” Especially at the local level, inclusion does not simply mean everyone is “represented,” it means offering authentic opportunities for people to be involved individually and personally. In this and the two following posts I’ll revisit slow democracy’s three elements of inclusion, deliberation, and power. Just as slow food embraces the uniqueness of local ingredients, there’s no single recipe for engagement that works everywhere, but we’ll explore practices you can consider when working toward sustainable local democracy.

Eleven Tips to Strengthen Inclusion

1 – Ask Yourself: Can My Efforts Benefit from Inclusion?

Whether we know it or not, we often target our communication to a specific audience. For instance, if I’m trying to create a new local park, it might seem obvious to generate help from my environmentalist allies. Thus, I might frame my park proposal around the value of parks in fighting pollution. To spice it up, I might even toss in some clip-art showing animals choking on smog and people hugging trees. 

If I do so, in gaining support from one sector I may turn off or even generate opposition from another. I may increase polarization.

Polarization is enormously valuable for mobilizing action. A polarizing message can garner immediate, short-term involvement, and commitment to a single answer. Polarization and outrage go hand-in-hand. 

But there are times when this divisiveness is not useful. Researchers have long understood that polarization is counterproductive when we are trying to assimilate new information.[8] Ironically, in our passion to create action, our divisive message can reinforce inaction. Polarization is antithetical to long-term collaboration, especially if we’re trying to generate new answers together. Incorporating diverse perspectives informs, enriches and strengthens community efforts.

That’s why outreach for inclusion is different. Slow democracy is not about framing to win, but framing to help new solutions emerge. Slow democracy is not “ A versus B”; it’s “Let’s co-create C.” 

What might this look like? When the creators of the bridge-building group Living Room Conversations first attempted to convene liberals and conservatives, organizer Joan Blades suggested focusing the discussion on climate change. Her conservative co-organizer warned her that this framing would be a non-starter with her conservative friends. Convening instead on the more broadly appealing theme “energy independence/climate change” created more diverse attendance. The resulting conversations revealed alignment around increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. And perhaps as importantly, participants discovered they liked each other, with the majority expressing interest in continuing with similar conversations. Still going strong after more than a decade, Living Room Conversations has created discussion guides on over 100 topics, offering skills and models for everyday folks to find connection across divides.

2 – Consider: Are You Ready for Inclusion?

Check in with yourself: Are you ready to invite people who may not share your values? 

In their valuable Bridging Differences Playbook, UC Berkeley researchers note, “not everyone can or should be a Bridge Builder, or feel compelled to build bridges in every situation. … It’s ethically dubious—and, research suggests, often counterproductive—to ask people to bridge differences when they’re being discriminated against or otherwise denied social power.”[9]

While the researchers outline skills for communication among people and groups, they correctly urge us to begin from within. Inclusion involves risks—risking conflict, risking rejection, and risking encountering ideas that might even change your views. Unlike pure advocacy, inclusion work will mean building our personal capacity to see past differences and listen mindfully, not to persuade but to understand. 

Note: If you do move forward with inviting people with radically different views, you’ll need to set up clear ground rules, and possibly employ a trained facilitator to design a process to ensure constructive communication. We’ll address these points in a future column about deliberation.

3 – Examine Community History. In many circles the word “inclusion” is bundled with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work. DEI efforts aim to address historical inequalities and discrimination against marginalized communities like people of color, people with disabilities, or low-income people. In your community, whose voice is often missing in decision-making processes?[10] In some places, historic biases center on race, class, or religion; in others, patterns may be as quirky and unique as family feuds or lingering neighborhood disputes. Everyone has blind spots, including (and maybe especially) long-time residents, which is why this next step is critical:

4 – Gather a Diverse Pre-Planning Team. Even before your first meeting, recruit community members from diverse backgrounds to help you plan for true inclusion. 

You might begin one on one. Reach out to the head of a neighborhood group, a member of a church or mosque, or whatever populations you are hoping to engage—and sit down for coffee. Explain your project and inquire about whether you share common goals. Are there changes they would suggest? Request their reaction and, if they’re willing, their help. 

Ask, from their perspective, how you can ensure everyone knows they’re welcome. What is the best way to frame your project? What publicity and event locations are most accessible and appealing? These diverse insights will be invaluable in creating inclusive communication and venues.

5 – Ask: Are We All Here? At your first, and every other gathering, look around the room and invite everyone to consider: Are we all here? Together, compile a list of the diverse participation you’re seeking. It’s likely to range from broad categories such as gender, race/ethnicity, and age, to considerations specific to your community, such as geography or political affiliations. How will you reach artists, local officials, farmers, immigrants and new residents, students, night-shift workers, homeless people, folks who don’t use the internet? Do you want to tap those who don’t live in your community but have a stake there, such as business owners/employees or seasonal residents? You may wish to use asset mapping to strengthen your analysis. 

Imagine if your organizing committee represented the full diversity of your community—who would be there? While avoiding symbolic tokenism and the pitfall of expecting one person to “represent” everyone who shares their background, ask the group to think broadly about participation. Ideally, anyone looking at your organizing committee will recognize key aspects of themselves among the members.

 6 – Frame for Connection. Slow democracy focuses on action that’s local. Our communities of place are, quite literally, our commons. A town or neighborhood offers an invitation to set aside our competing identities and focus instead on the connection we share—our common place—for the common good. Here, democracy can be scaled to allow residents to see how one person can make a difference. Here too, neighborly interactions can counteract and belie the stereotypes we project on each other.

What might this look like? Decatur, Georgia is a city of 25,000 just outside of Atlanta. The city’s strategic plan prioritizes encouraging “racial, ethnic, economic, cultural, and other types of diversity,” but city leaders wanted this goal to be more than words on a page. The city launched an inclusive, deliberative process led by a “Better Together Leadership Circle.” This committee’s efforts featured an extensive survey followed by facilitated community conversations on the topics of diverse participation, racially just policing, and affordable housing. The community was invited to review the priorities and action steps identified through the survey and discussions. With some 800 residents investing over 1,300 hours, the resulting action plan was endorsed by the city commissioners in 2015, and featured dozens of specific steps that individuals, organizations, and local government could take to “encourage a diverse and engaged community.” An ongoing citizen advisory board guides the city in implementing the steps.[11]

7 – Set Specific Inclusion Goals. Suppose your committee is planning their kick-off event to launch a new park project. Rather than simply hope folks show up, let’s get specific. How many people do you hope will attend? What percentage might be students, families, seniors? (Check the list you created under #5.) Set numerical goals and plan how you’ll meet them. Assign individuals from your planning committee to reach out personally to key populations. At your next meeting, check on progress.

8 – Consider Language and Images. Moral psychology research indicates that values that appeal to you may trigger aversion among others; for instance, experience has taught some liberal bridge-builders about key terms to avoid if they want to engage conservatives. Do a test-run with your inclusion team—do your words and images truly have general appeal?

In all outreach, be certain that the information you provide is reliable. Well framed, accurate information will be critical to the next step—deliberation—so it’s never too early to triple-check content. 

9 – Remove Barriers to Participation. Not everyone learns the same way, so use a variety of types of outreach and gatherings. Aim for at least three different ways a resident might have engaged with your efforts. In-person and online engagement each has its merits and flaws, so use both. Weekday, weekend, and evening events will each attract their own audiences, so try for variety. Your efforts might range from written tools (newsletters, posters), to online/social media, to face-to-face (tabling at events, going door-to-door), to family-friendly field trips, to cartoons, and beyond.

Are your location and materials accessible to all? Consider needs for physical accessibility, adequate sound, and translation. Can you offer childcare, transportation to your event, or (for virtual events) help with online access? Might it be possible to offer stipends for participation? Your diverse planning team will help you prioritize.

10 – Have Fun! Take a tip from Warm Cookies of the Revolution, a Colorado-based “civic health club” working to prove that civic life “doesn’t have to be boring and hard.” Offering free cookies is just the beginning of their welcoming, creative ideas: “Civic Stitch & Bitch” offers moderated discussions on hot political topics, but with simultaneous craft-making to cut down on pontificating. “The Huddle” is a gathering to watch Thursday night football, but time-outs are used to discuss the social issues in professional sports. And how about their “How to Survive A Zombie Apocalypse” event (complete with costumes) to encourage emergency preparedness?   

11 – Take Heart. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t get a big crowd at first. Surveys show that when people have heard about a local project and have felt invited, it helps them feel part of their community—even if they don’t participate. Just inviting people strengthens community.

Deliberative democracy can be an antidote to incivility, a key element of sustainability, and a way to be part of the solution. And it begins with inclusion.

[1] Susan Clark and Woden Teachout, Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012)

[2] Amanda Ripley, High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2021).

[3] See the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation website for a trove of information on dialogue and deliberative democracy practices: www.ncdd.org.

[4] See the Bridge Alliance: https://www.bridgealliance.us/.

[5] Public Agenda, America's Hidden Common Ground on Renewing Democracy, July 19, 2021; https://www.publicagenda.org/reports/renewing-democracy/.

[6] Will Friedman and David Schleifer, "Hidden Common Ground: Why Americans Aren't as Divided on Issues as We Appear To Be," USAToday, April 27, 2021; https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/04/27/case-unity-americans-arent-divided-issues-appears-column/7190411002/.

[7] Scholar/practitioners Renee Heath and Jennifer L. Borda’s question “Will the conversation continue?” emphasizes the role of civility, not to quell divisions but to undergird constructive conflict. See their research at https://delibdemjournal.org/article/id/976/

[8] Dan Kahan, “Fixing the Communications Failure,” Nature 463 (2010), https://www.nature.com/articles/463296a

[9] Scott Shigeoka et al., Bridging Differences Playbook, University of California/Berkeley Greater Good Science Center (date unknown), p. 11; https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/Bridging_Differences_Playbook-Final.pdf.

[10] For valuable insights on this topic see The Principles for Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement published by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University (2016): 

http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ki-civic-engagement.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2fb988EWVaa8HUjDYQqWFL9Qfp8mBm_jy5A69LjMl2hvJK6QtUAIsQ4h0

[11] For a history of this project, see https://www.everyday-democracy.org/stories/decatur-and-beyond-it-all-starts-conversation. The full Better Together Community Action Plan for Equity, Inclusion, and Engagement adopted by Decatur in December, 2015 can be found at https://www.decaturga.com/sites/default/files/fileattachments/better_together_advisory_board/page/7224/better_together_community_action_plan_for_equity_inclusion_and_engagement.pdf

Slow Democracy and the Power of Community

Slow Democracy coauthor Susan Clark offers a keynote address to the Vermont Library Trustees and Friends Conference (online), September, 2020.

"Local Control"—What Does Place Have To Do With Democracy?

Slow Democracy coauthor Susan Clark explores the history and meaning of “local control” in Vermont, and the role of place-based values in democratic decision making, on Vermont Public Radio’s “Vermont Edition,” May 28, 2019.

Democratic Rules of the Road

This post by Susan Clark first appeared as a Vermont Public Radio commentary on February 28, 2018. You can hear the original commentary here.

A neighbor told me recently that his fifth-grade son was interested in Town Meeting. “He wants to learn more about – what’s that ‘order’ thing?” 

“Robert’s Rules of Order?” I asked, a little incredulously.

“That’s it!” he said. “He wants to know how they work.”

“Well, send him on over!” I said.

Interest in parliamentary procedure from a 5th-grader was a first for me. But as a facilitator and a Vermont town meeting town moderator, I’ve seen increasing concern about how we can be civil together.

Democratically speaking, we’re currently experiencing perilous driving conditions. National leaders seem more committed to ideological positioning than to finding a common route forward. Unscrupulous media pundits heckle from the backseat. And Russian bots are using social media to distract us with wildly polarizing fake opinions – expressly designed to make democracy crash and burn.

In such hazardous conditions, I appreciate tried-and-true process rules. Like well placed road signs, formal rules help keep democracy from skidding out of control.

People often complain that Robert’s Rules are too rigid:
Only speak if recognized.
Only talk about the current article.
Your amendments must be germane.
Blah-blah-blah!

I’m sympathetic. As a meeting facilitator, I know communities need brainstorming meetings and creative engagement throughout the year. But when it's time for a few hundred diverse folks to come together and make final decisions, Robert’s Rules have advantages. They’re firm. They’re predictable. They protect the rights of the minority, yet allow us to move forward with the will of the majority.

Likewise, the League of Women Voters has spent decades perfecting a candidate forum structure that’s built for rocky terrain. Their firm protocol keeps everyone engaged, but focused on the issues.

With a well designed process, I have literally watched from the podium  as people moved from fearful, closed-minded distrust, into engaging appreciatively with the issues. When people know they can trust the process, they often relax gratefully into productive citizen-mode - listening respectfully, providing thoughtful opinions, and offering their best selves.

Time-honored rules of order help us avoid head-on collisions. But like the white lines on our highways, these rules are just guidelines. They don’t actually keep cars in their lanes. Only the drivers can do that.

This year, I’ll be sure that my fifth-grade neighbor has an active helping role at our Town Meeting. Democratically, he’s a beginning driver. But his interest in the democratic rules of the road gives me hope.

Polarization Hangover

This post by Susan Clark first appeared as a Vermont Public Radio commentary on November 15, 2016. You can listen to the original commentary here.

In the wake of one of the most divisive elections in history, a lot of us have a wicked post-election hangover caused by the polarization bender we’ve been on for the past year.

It’s not exaggerating to say that political polarization is an addiction. Many of us, on all sides, have been binging on a diet of confirmation bias. Among our divisiveness “dealers” are the media silos we choose, and social media tools that are designed not to inform or challenge us, but to give us more fuel for our pre-existing beliefs.

Polarization works on the human mind like a drug. Our tribal, even reptilian brains crave certainty. We’re suckers for a simple, good-versus-evil narrative. Brain studies show that when we receive new information that doesn’t fit our worldview, the prefrontal cortex responsible for conscious reasoning may hardly fire. Instead our emotional circuits are activated.

And - get this - when we go through this process of reinforcing our pre-existing beliefs, the reward centers of our brains light up. Like a drug, we get a hit every time we ignore information that challenges our worldview.

Polarization is effective for building tribes. But it’s terrible for processing information or - dare I mention it? - finding solutions.

Many of today’s hot topics - climate change, race, immigration - are what analysts call “wicked” problems. They’re especially hard to solve because of competing underlying values.

Colorado State professor Martin Carcasson explains that most problem-solving models focus either on expertise or on activism. But wicked problems are inherently different. They don’t respond to expert, technical solutions, or to deal-making. They respond to slow, trusting, face-to-face communication.

So for our polarization hangover, the “hair of the dog that bit you” isn’t going to help.

A real cure is to sit down with someone who voted differently from you, and ask them whether they have their snow tires on yet. How are their kids? Just remember what it's like to be human with them.

Later, once you’ve rebuilt trust, you can listen to them about issues. Take a breath. And try to discover the concerns beneath their stances. The interests beneath their positions.

The cure for our wicked polarization hangover begins with patience, listening, and the knowledge that with wicked problems, it’s the problem that’s wicked, not the people.

Hamilton and America's Story

This post by Susan Clark first appeared as a Vermont Public Radio commentary on June 10, 2016. You can listen to the original commentary here.

I’m old enough to remember America’s Bicentennial in 1976 – but young enough to have been an impressionable pre-adolescent at the time. I was swept up in the national celebration, and my giggling all-girl birthday party even went to see the new film, adapted from the musical 1776.

That’s when I developed one of my earliest crushes - on Thomas Jefferson. He was portrayed as a young, homesick, lovesick, fiddle-playing revolutionary poet, and he won my heart. To give you an idea of the vibrancy of my crush, the first time I visited Jefferson’s home in Monticello, I actually got butterflies in my stomach.

My early Jeffersonian impressions have matured and sobered, but they sparked a long-term interest that’s served me well as a democratic researcher, writer, and activist.

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, with his astonishing score and magnificent storytelling skills, is now making history come alive for a new generation. Classrooms are vibrating with the music, families are rocking out to it, and Miranda himself can’t wait for high schools to perform it.

In this show, except the wonderfully foppish King George, nearly all characters are played by non-white actors – including Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton, himself – with a driving hip-hop sound that makes history relevant by beaming it through the prism of today’s America.

The Revolution sings as a story that stars new Americans. Caribbean-raised Hamilton and French General Lafayette celebrate their battlefield collaboration with the shout “Immigrants! We get the job done!” This line gets so much applause when performed that the actors have had to add a pause to the score.

Hamilton’s wife Eliza didn’t have the policy influence of an Abigail Adams. But the vibrant presence and soaring vocals of Hamilton’s female characters are powerful reminders that half of our nation’s history was made by women.

Most of us won’t get to see the sold-out Hamilton anytime soon. But the soundtrack alone tells the story, and it’s readily available to buy, download, or stream so you can get your ears on Hamilton. It’s fierce, funny, romantic, tragic, passionate, and deeply human. It makes America’s creation story new and real and alive again. Maybe you’ll even fall in love.

And America’s story could use a little love right now. Hamilton’s story, like Jefferson’s - like America’s really - is loaded with imperfections. But only through a loving lens can we understand these flaws and work to improve them.

In this time of disillusionment, when it seems that polarization could destroy our great American experiment – such a rich historical celebration was never more needed.

The Vase of Community

This post by Susan Clark first appeared as a Vermont Public Radio commentary on June 5, 2015. You can hear the original commentary here.

A well-known optical illusion shows two silhouetted faces in profile looking at each other. At first, most viewers just see the faces, then comes the sudden realization that there’s a contoured vase between them. Even though this image is only a simple drawing, it’s compelling. It engages us as we focus, and then focus again. The face? Or the vase?

In the education debate, we’ve focused a lot on faces: faces of taxpayers who want spending reduced, faces of children whose educations, we’re warned, range from excellent to below-par.

Consolidation advocates argue that students could benefit from more uniformity in education, and newly regionalized districts would be better able to move around resources and teachers, gaining efficiencies that could slowly save money.

But this law also pays towns to eliminate local school boards. Consider the impacts on the vase of community.

When neighbors work together at the local level to take responsibility for services held in common, we build social capital — a vessel to support our kids. Or to return to our puzzle picture, the vase at the center that defines the faces.

When small schools become a minority voice on a regional board, the school’s future is no longer in local hands.

Meanwhile, eliminating local boards removes a key training ground for democratic leadership — especially for women. And research shows that when we dilute opportunities for participation, citizens turn away.

It’s true that Vermont has many small schools and school boards. But that’s because we live in many small towns. More of our population lives in towns of under 2,500 people than any other state except Maine. And this may be our strength.

Schools function best when community is involved. Public education depends on a public – engaged and willing to invest time, wisdom and dollars.

Too often, Americans think of government as a “they.” But Vermonters consistently view local government as a “we.” Last year, more than 90% of school budgets passed. With our local focus, we can see that they’re all “our” children.

With regionalization, our values may change – and as in much of America, Vermonters’ attitudes may shift from “everybody’s kids” to “nobody’s kids.”

The new law comes with many unknowns. But one thing is sure. It doesn’t protect Vermonters’ sense of community. In fact, it pays us to dismantle local democratic involvement in schools.

It will take vigilance and wisdom to maintain the dual nature of our communities - that elusive, mesmerizing balance between the face and the vase. As with our state motto, Freedom and Unity, both define us.

Warm Cookies of the Revolution: Social Change and Happiness

This piece by Susan Clark appeared on the "Slowstruck" site in September, 2014. See the original post here.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the glories of summer -- especially slow-paced time with friends. In summertime, relationships are warm and the hours are fluid. A day at beach stretches into an evening around the campfire, stars overhead and crickets chirping.

 But as autumn creeps nearer, things will inevitably quicken. In the worst case, my autumn relationship with the world will be characterized by frustration -- annoying school board meetings, polarizing debates, or nasty elections. My slow, summery community fades, to be replaced by cold politics and, frankly, people I simply may not agree with.

 As a community-development kind of gal, I’m always looking for other models – ways to hold onto much-need connections and “slowness.” Here’s a new favorite.

“Warm Cookies of the Revolution” has been busy in Denver, Colorado for the past few years building community engagement – while having fun. They call it a “civic health club.” Their website explains, “Well, you go to a gym to exercise your physical health, a religious institution to exercise your spiritual health ... Warm Cookies of the Revolution is where you go to exercise your Civic Health.” 

Founder Evan Weissman can hear your skepticism already, but his enthusiasm is contagious. He explains, “It doesn’t have to be, like, ‘I’m going to tell you why the world is horrible! And you have to listen and feel bad, and not know what to do!’”

Yes, as you’d expect, every “Warm Cookies” event features free milk and a variety of baked goods. But the name also symbolizes a far-reaching vision. Politics and social change don’t have to be scary; they can be appealing, lively, and often very funny.

One event, entitled “Bring Your Government,” featured a three-person panel discussing what an ideal government should look like. But with Warm Cookies, expect the unexpected. The panel featured a state senator, a mayoral candidate, and a local comedian. Oh, and while listening, the audience was simultaneously collaborating on building a Lego city.

When building community, laughter is a great start. But there’s more to this than feeling good. Brain science tells us that we can use our full intellectual capacity better when we don’t trigger the usual “us/them,” “fight/flight” response. We need techniques to slow down and engage people in a less polarizing way, so we can collaborate and discover new answers.

At the “civic health club,” you can experience authentic connection with a variety of viewpoints. Instead of a lecture about how horrible the world is, how about one of these events?

• “The Huddle” encourages participants to take time-outs while they watch the Thursday night football game to discuss the social issues that revolve around professional sports.

• “Pies, Pies, and Pie Charts” is a lively gathering where people enjoy pizza pie, dessert pie, and discuss – you guessed it -- economic issues.

• “Civic Stitch ‘n’ Bitch” features moderated discussions on tough political topics – think gentrification, gun control, or legalizing marijuana. But people are also encouraged to bring their knitting or other handwork – and if you forget your project, craft materials are supplied. The relaxed setting increases friendly idea-sharing (and reduces pontificating).

“People who have come to our events…feel better than when they came,” explains Weissman. “That’s what you expect when you do a workout. … That’s why you do it.”

As Weissman put it with a grin, “My civic muscle? It’s my mind – my heart – my soul!”

With slow patience, humor, and a little help from cookies, we can build the cozy, creative, crackling fire of community -- so important in the coming coolness of autumn.

The Movement of Starlings

This piece by Susan Clark appeared on the "Slowstruck" site on May 28, 2014. See the original post  here.

It’s called a “murmuration of starlings.” Maybe you’ve seen one, either in an online video or, if you’re lucky, in person: magnificent, soaring groups of birds that swoop and dive overhead, creating stunning patterns with their overlapping arcs. Just the word “murmuration” somehow makes you want to slow down and ponder: how do they do it? Hundreds of birds collaborate to create patterns of breathtaking grace and beauty. They never collide. And interestingly, they do it all without any leader.

The movement of a murmuration cheers me up when I’m feeling low. And since I deal with political decisionmaking and community conflicts on a regular basis, believe me: I can feel low pretty often.

What can nature teach us about the way communities work, and the nature of motion and change itself? Pondering the movement of starlings is instructive for those of us who are embracing “slow,” and who may be pained by the direction of politics today.

Let’s face it, most of us shy away from political engagement. In fact, mocking the government is a sort of national pastime in the U.S., and Canadians aren’t far behind in their disdain for elected officials. Last time I looked, the U.S. Congress had an approval rating that was significantly lower than BP’s during the oil spill. After last fall’s U.S. government shutdown, humorist Andy Borowitz reported that the majority of Americans “would enjoy seeing Congress torn limb from limb by a ferocious bear,” and the only disagreement was over “which bear would be best suited for that assignment.”

We turn away from politics in disdain, but we are all troubled by a small voice that wonders where the answers will come from. Whether we’re concerned about social issues, the economy, or climate change and energy independence -- we lovers of “slow” know very well that our world could benefit from more effective political processes. Why can't democratic decision making be more like slow food -- local, organic, and full of the vibrant creative spirit of home?

I think it can. And bear with me, because here’s where the starlings come in.

“Emergence” is the term that scientists use to describe the phenomenon where many local collaborations produce global patterns. And “emergent change” is a model that can give lovers of “slow” a sense of hope about the future.

The Internet has given us an extraordinary new tool to communicate information at speeds, over distances and in volumes that were until recently unimaginable. But it’s done more. It’s changed the way we think. Today’s voters are veterans of the Open-Source Revolution. Gone are the days of top-down control; welcome to networked citizens with extraordinary online research and organizing abilities.

Governments are now slowly realizing that we’ll all do better if they treat citizens as collaborative equals, working less like a hierarchy and more like a wiki. Reliance on “experts” is giving way to decentralized, bottom-up strategies that reward innovation and information sharing.

In the coming weeks, I’d like to invite you for a cup of tea, and enjoy some stories of “slow democracy.” In recent years, more and more communities are inviting citizen participation in creative, friendly, human-scale activities. Forget about public hearings with squeaky microphones; I’m talking about neighbors sharing stories, exploring common values, and making a lasting difference. Citizens and governments are collaborating to create processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and empowered. Sometimes “slow democracy” involves art, sometimes storytelling, and almost always, a fair amount of friendly laughter.

I am only a single bird. But as each of us makes the individual decision to slow down and become a bit more mindful about how we spend time in our communities, beautiful, meaningful patterns of change are beginning to emerge.

I look forward to sharing stories with you about slow democracy.

Slow Democracy and Transformation

This piece by Susan Clark and Woden Teachout appeared on the openDemocracy "Transformation" blog on November 20, 2013, as part of their series on trans-partisan politics. See the original post here.

Is there anything less popular among Americans than their own government? During the temporary shutdown in October 2013, the public’s approval rating for Congress dipped to an all-time low of five per cent. “A majority of Americans say they would enjoy seeing Congress torn limb from limb by a ferocious bear,” quipped humorist Andy Borowitz at the time. The only disagreement was “which species of bear would be best suited for the assignment.”

Such stories make us want to laugh and cry. Given this level of cynicism about government, what hope is there that people will use the democratic process to make change? Looking carefully, we find small seedlings of optimism, breaking through green and vigorous, at the local level. While most Americans share a disdain for national politics, many are finding new possibilities locally by taking governance back into their own hands. And by working to change the political process, they are also being changed themselves. It’s a process we call “slow democracy:” taking time to co-create new forms of politics based on inclusion, deliberation and local power.

Citizen advocacy at the local level brings to mind the story of David and Goliath. For some people, these fights are heartening. When communities successfully organize against corporations and ban genetically modified crops, or win back the right to create a local energy plan or market local foods, some feel hope for an empowered future. For other people, however, local advocacy is a source of pain and skepticism. Get real, they say; in the long run, the big money behind projects like genetically modified foods and fracking for natural gas will always win, no matter how earnest the local efforts.

Regardless of where you stand on this spectrum, relentless local battles bear witness to the fact that it’s not just the content of laws and policies that needs changing, but also the system of making them. Local power is necessary but not sufficient. Political systems consist of relationships, and in the US system, adversarial relationships are the norm. Issues are divided along lines that are determined by interest groups, including political parties, industry lobbies, and environmental and social justice organizations. These groups determine the menu of political choices that’s on offer, and it’s a menu that is both short and relatively fixed. There may be a debate that produces winners and losers, but there is little public deliberation out of which something new and creative might emerge.

If we want to re-energize democracy it has to be more than the same old political system transposed to the community level. Instead we need slow democracy, which is not a clarion call for endless meetings but a reminder of the care that’s needed for full-blooded community decision making.

Slow democracy takes its name from the “slow food” movement, which argues that the centralization and homogenization of “fast food” symbolizes much of what is wrong in society. Paralleling slow food’s push for authenticity in what we eat, slow democracy calls for firsthand knowledge of the local decisions that affect us. Just as slow food encourages cooks and eaters to become more intimately involved with the production of local food, slow democracy weaves together three key elements of democratic decision making: inclusion - ensuring broad, diverse public participation; deliberation - defining problems, weighing options, and co-creating solutions through sound information and respectful relationships; and power - defining a clear connection between citizen participation, public decisions, and action.

To appreciate what these principles mean in practice, consider the story of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Once the home of a major air force base, the city was thrown into economic and social flux when the base was closed with the loss of thousands of jobs. As Portsmouth’s demographics changed, the city’s elementary schools became unbalanced, with two under-enrolled schools and another that was bursting with students.

“Changing the way schools work, especially elementary schools, is… probably one of the most intense things a city can go through,” recalls city manager John Bohenko. Local lawyer Jim Noucas puts it more bluntly: “Tackling the issue was political suicide,” he said. In early public discussions regarding redistricting, some residents resorted to painful insinuations about other people’s class and culture. Recalls Noucas, “People stood up at public hearings and denigrated the elementary school that was literally ‘on the other side of the tracks.’” While parents argued, leaders equivocated, and students suffered, the issue went unresolved for a decade.

Desperate for a solution, the school board appointed a redistricting committee in 2000 that discovered a technique called “study circles.” Organizers rallied 105 citizen volunteers to participate in a series of small-group meetings, a diverse group that represented the demographic make-up of the city. Rather than diving into decision-making, the study circles encouraged a slow and careful approach to deliberation. First, the groups visited all three schools to ensure excellent information gathering. They also spent hours sharing stories as parents and neighbors, breaking down stereotypes and building trust and understanding.

Then, when the groups were ready to discuss policy options, the issues were framed openly. Rather than polarizing “option A against option B,” the study circles talked about “what issues…the redistricting committee should consider in balancing the enrollments of the schools.” This inclusive framing generated innovative ideas and common ground. In the final phase of the process, the groups reported back to a school board that had been involved in the process from the beginning and was therefore more open to hearing their ideas. The board developed a proposal to help balance the quality of the three schools backed by $2 million of improvements, which the 105 “ambassadors” explained to parents and neighbors. The proposal received broad voter support and was approved, ending a decade-long destructive stalemate. A “slow” process proved to be the fastest route to success.

Over the past fifteen years, Portsmouth has used study circles to address many more issues including school bullying, the city’s master plan, racism, and environmental sustainability. Citizens have created “Portsmouth Listens,” a committee of volunteers trained in facilitating the public dialogues that are now integral to addressing the city’s toughest issues. Small-group discussions are now used at election time as an alternative to divisive debates between candidates. And hardest to describe but perhaps most important, many of Portsmouth’s residents sense a fundamental shift, speaking of an increase in civic pride, an improvement in public participation, and heightened expectations of what democratic participation can offer. As city councilor Chris Dwyer noted, “we’ve raised the bar.”

Portsmouth’s experience is not unique: it represents a new generation of slow democracy experiments. For example, participatory budgeting techniques are inspiring renewed citizen energy in cities around the globe. Scholars and practitioners have dramatically increased the study and practice of dialogue and deliberation both nationally and internationally. This new wave has the potential to transform both individuals and communities.

Neurological research is revealing why slow democracy processes can help citizens to absorb new information and craft fresh solutions. Brain science tells us that we can use our full intellectual capacity more effectively when we avoid triggering “us versus them” responses. Communications researcherJohn Gastil notes that democratic deliberation “has shown the power of thoughtful, respectful, public exchange in generating consensus among citizens of diverse moral persuasions…appropriately structured deliberation achieves this…by slowing people down.”

Portsmouth and other communities have shown that citizens will take the time that’s needed for slow democracy when they can see that their involvement makes a difference. Yet time and time again governments create policies that shift power from local entities to the state and federal levels. The removal of opportunities for citizens to collaborate face-to-face, create local solutions, and experience real, hands-on decision making is causing a creeping democracy deficit in the United States.

We desperately need leaders with clarity, wisdom, and courage - and voters to elect them. If people have been in leadership positions themselves, they will have a much better idea of what real political leadership entails. They will know not to expect agreements overnight, and be able to distinguish between bullying and respectful deliberation, and between political posturing and authentic debate. 

Slow democracy is not just an add-on to representative government - the two systems complement each other. As communities become more engaged in decision making, larger agencies can step back from micromanagement and work to support and connect local efforts. As one local official in Portsmouth, New Hampshire concluded, “There can be no going back to the old ways of doing things.”

Democracy and Baseball

Democracy and baseball: two great American traditions, although we don't usually think of them as going together. But if we did combine them, what might we learn?

It was an imaginative promotional gimmick. Early this season, Mike Veeck, independent baseball league executive and part-owner of the St. Paul Saints, hosted an “umpire-less game.”

Was the runner safe or out? The tough calls were crowd-sourced.

Mike Veeck is the son of Bill Veeck, legendary Hall of Fame team owner and crazy baseball promoter. In August, 1951, Veeck the elder hosted “ Grandstand Managers Day, ” allowing fans to vote on game strategy. Before that game, fans even voted for the starting line-up. And here’s a tip for improving democratic turn-out – everyone who voted got free game tickets.

At the stadium, the crowd - 1,115 “ managers ” - received placards with a green “yes” on one side and a red “no” on the other. Throughout the game, Veeck’s staff asked the fans questions like “Steal?” or “Infield Back?” Meanwhile, to symbolize his uselessness, the real manager sat on top of the dugout in a rocking chair.

It’s revealing that Grandstand Manager’s Day is one of Veeck’s best known and most-imitated stunts. It reminds us that although Americans enjoy a good show, we’re also consistently willing to take part, as well.

When it comes to democracy lately, many of us think of it simply as bad TV – a lot of fighting and nothing accomplished. It even gets lousy ratings. With Congress recently receiving its all-time-low approval rating of 9 percent, it looks like we’d love to banish most politicians to a rocking chair on top of the dugout.

But just as no two ball games are alike, democracy takes many forms. And studies show that when we ask citizens to take part in face-to-face decision making – and their participation really makes a difference – democracy’s ratings soar. Most participants in deliberative, empowered groups - like juries and community planning projects - not only enjoy the experience, but report that they’d like to be involved more often.

There’s something about giving participants real decision-making power that makes us all less grumpy. In this year’s Umpire-less Baseball Game, manager Greg Tagert said, “What slows the game down is the constant arguing about balls and strikes. I think we took that element away, actually.”

Of course, a certain level of maturity is required for deliberative democracy. For instance, Veeck’s game this year featured “juries” on the first - and third-base lines - fans deciding close plays. Nice idea, except the jurors got bored and abandoned their boxes by the sixth inning. Maybe the juror pool should have been wider than the local East Tonka Little League.

Adding democracy to baseball is a fun stunt; but maybe what we really need is more baseball in democracy. Or at least, more of what baseball stands for – working together at a human pace; being friendly even with members of the opposite team; being a good sport.

Bringing more people into decisions, and more decisions to the people, might bring some of that neighborliness back to democracy. And then more voters might be singing, “Take me out to the ball game!”

This post first aired as a commentary on Vermont Public Radio on July 11, 2013. You can listen to it here.  

Who Ya Gonna Call? Deliberative Democracy Resources

As interest in deliberative democracy grows, more and more people are looking for resources to launch an initiative in their communities. Many people have heard of one tool or another (“Study Circles,” “World Café,” etc.) but wonder if this tool is the best fit for their needs; others only know that something needs to happen, but aren’t sure where to begin.

Thanks to Tom Atlee of the Co-intelligence Institute, here is a draft list of clearinghouses, databases, and resource sites related to democracy and participation. Slow Democracy authors have recommended NCDD before, and will again – it’s on the list – but as you can see, there is a wide variety of others as well. Each of these is its own clearinghouse – a doorway to another set of doors. The good news is, many (including NCDD) feature list-serves and other means for you to ask questions and get guidance as you move along. In hopes that this will be invigorating rather than overwhelming, we wish you joy in your exploration. And feel free to add to the list!

1.  Participedia - http://participedia.net/

2.  ParticipateDB - http://participatedb.com/

3.  The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation - http://ncdd.org - especially their resource page - http://ncdd.org/rc/ - and even more especially, their participatory practices http://ncdd.org/rc/item/category/participatory-practices

4.  Deliberative Democracy Helpline - http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/helpline/

5.  Involve:  e.g., http://www.involve.org.uk/tag/tools/

6.  WiserEarth - e.g., http://www.wiser.org/all/search?phrase=democracy and http://www.wiser.org/all/search?phrase=participation and others

7.  Wikipedia.org - e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Democracy and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Collective_intelligence and others

8.  Innovations in Democracy database - http://democracyinnovations.org/wagn/Resources_by_name

9.  E-Democracy - http://forums.e-democracy.org/

10.  Aarhus Convention Clearinghouse - http://aarhusclearinghouse.unece.org/resources/?sortby=da&c=1000003&c=1000006&c=&c=

11.  Democracy and Elections Database - http://www.idea.int/resources/databases.cfm

12.  Arts for Democracy Database - http://animatingdemocracy.org/great-links/specialized-databases

13.  The Deliberative Democracy Consortium - http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/ - especially their resources page

http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=74

14.  Amazon books on Democracy  - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=democracy

15.  Co-intelligence Institute lists:

a.  Community Resources from the Co-Intelligence Institute - http://co-intelligence.org/CommunityResourcesCII.html (includes extensive materials on multi-process programs)

b.  Compilations from the Co-Intelligence Institute http://co-intelligence.org/CI_compilations.html (which features

https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/03/toolbox/ )

16.  A Pattern Language for Group Process - http://groupworksdeck.org

17.  Tom Atlee's list of participatory budgeting resources - http://www.tomatleeblog.com/?p=43549766

Vermont Thinkers Aim to Slow a Fast-Lane World

Unlike our other blog posts to date, here's one that's not by Slow Democracy coauthors. The following article by Kevin O'Connor appeared in Vermont's statewide Sunday Rutland Herald/Times Argus on June 8, 2013. The link is here. For photos of the event, see Slow Democracy's Facebook page.

State-turned-national environmental leader Jonathan Lash had seen himself lauded by Rolling Stone magazine as a “hero” for “fighting to stave off the planet-wide catastrophe” when it hit him.

“I have been working on issues of sustainability for 35 years,” the former secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources recalls thinking, “and everything has gotten worse faster.”

And so Lash, having climbed the ladder of state government to chair the U.S. President’s Council on Sustainable Development and World Resources Institute, decided to return to New England and grassroots work — in his case, shaping future generations as head of the progressive Hampshire College in neighboring Massachusetts.

“I thought changing the rules was a rapid way to change society,” Lash says, “but at this point, on the issues that concern me most, we’ve got to change the culture first.”

That’s why Lash joined other Vermonters seeking healthier social, economic and energy policies at a Slow Living Summit this past week promoting, as Yankee Farm Credit president George Putnam summed it up, “Sustainable, Local, Organic and Wise” solutions to growing global problems.

“Slow living is not about pace — it’s about whether we are alive with our own nature and the laws of nature,” author Frances Moore Lappé told a crowd of 300 gathered in Brattleboro. “The good news is we can remake the streambeds of our minds with new ideas.”

Lappé had written the three-million-copy bestseller “Diet for a Small Planet” when she moved to Vermont almost 25 years ago. Now traveling the world as founder of the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, she’s still studying the best ways to feed the body — and the mind.

“The world is producing 40 percent more food than when I wrote ‘Small Planet’ and yet we have just as many people who are hungry,” she said. “How do we make sense of the fact we together are creating a world that we as individuals would never choose?”

Lappé points to a fear-based “scarcity-mind” that spurs hoarding and separateness. In her latest book “EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want,” she advocates a shift from competing to connecting, cooperating and creating change.

“We can move from this scary message of lack, lack, lack, take a deep breath and align with the rules of nature,” the author said. “Think ‘I’m just a drop in the bucket’? Buckets can fill up really fast.”

Middlesex town moderator Susan Clark, co-author of the recent book “Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home,” also called for more public participation.

“Slow democracy is not a call for longer meetings,” Clark said. “We really need to reconnect with our decision making and revitalize our role in it. We need to bring more democratic decisions to the local level.”

That begins, she believes, with people talking.

“Deliberation doesn’t mean A versus B — it means co-creating C.”

And that starts with finding ways to listen.

“How can we come up with creative solutions if we can’t even take in the information? So not to trigger ‘us’ and ‘them,’ we need to frame issues and engage people in less polarizing ways.”

Ask about “climate change,” Clark said, and you may spark a political debate. Seek opinions on “energy independence” and you’ll potentially reveal more common ground.

“What kinds of words can we use that resonate with a broader audience, get past this gridlock and move forward?” Clark said. “We can embrace the idea that all of us know more than any of us.”

Alex Wilson, the Dummerston founder of BuildingGreen Inc. and the Resilient Design Institute, confirmed such a shift in language could bring movement. He pointed to people who’ve witnessed natural disasters ranging from Tropical Storm Irene to recent tornadoes. Talk science and they don’t necessarily respond. Talk public safety and they do.

“Convincing people to do something simply because it’s the right thing environmentally isn’t working quickly enough,” Wilson said. “But safety is an idea even the Rush Limbaughs of the world could get behind.”

Several Green Mountain interests are working to widen talking-point measurements such as the gross domestic product with broader assessments such as the Genuine Progress Indicator being developed by the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics.

“If we keep using the same data, we’re going to keep telling the same story,” said Kate Jellema, project director of Benchmarks for a Better Vermont. “In order to have a new story, we need to start measuring new data.”

Tom Barefoot, co-coordinator of Gross National Happiness USA, noted his Washington County-based group is promoting an array of measurements of good governance, community, culture, education, environment, time balance and material, physical and mental health.

“If you ask people what they care most about, they mention all kinds of markers of happiness and well-being,” Barefoot said. “I think it’s important as a population to start a conversation about what really matters. We not only need measures to tell us if we’ve gotten there, we need them to help enable us to make the change.”

Lash said it all starts at home. The 1969 Putney School graduate served as state commissioner of environmental conservation in 1985, natural resources secretary in 1987 and director of the Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center in 1990. After national and international service, the self-described “lapsed Vermonter” decided to take his current college job after facing growing government dysfunction.

“I suddenly thought if anybody is going to change things, it’s going to be people like today’s students.”

That said, Lash also has hope for his peers.

“How do we create a culture of sustainability? Living differently is necessary. I’m slowing down, living in my community and seeing what’s possible.”

kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com

Slow Democracy: Power – Do We Talk About It In Polite Company?

​​This post appeared on May 25, 2013 at the Orton Foundation's Cornerstone Blog. You can see the original post here.

This is the last in a four-part series adapted from the book Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home by Susan Clark and Woden Teachout (Chelsea Green, 2012).

​Some people are uncomfortable talking about power. While power is the currency of political activists, it’s a dirty word to many of us—like “money,” it is not mentioned in polite company. But listen for words like “influence,” “impact,” “authority,” and “control,” and notice how often they come up. Ultimately, power is a crucial element of democracy and something we need to acknowledge and discuss in community decision making—early and often.

​It would be helpful if every decision-making process came with its own “power gauge.” Imagine a dial like an old-fashioned speedometer that would tell us how leaders answer the question, “Who makes the decision?” At one end, the dial reads “Me”—the leader holds all the power. In the center, “We”—decisions are made together. At the far end, “You”—citizens make the decisions. Exactly where the needle quivers on this dial should be clear to every leader who plans to engage the public, and to every citizen before he or she commits time to the process.

The Power Spectrum

Social change analysts have been fooling around with some version of this “power gauge” for more than 50 years, offering a variety of advice on where to set the needle. (For a radical 1960s perspective, read Sherry Arnstein’s classic “A Ladder of Citizen Participation”.) From the perspective of community leaders, setting the dial on “Me” allows for speedy decisions; as long as leaders make arrangements for the decision to be well informed and implemented, avoiding public involvement saves time.

But if a community ranks other values higher than saving time—priorities such as keeping the public informed, strengthening citizens’ democratic skills, building a sense of community and teamwork, or tapping public opinion and wisdom—then leaders would do well to move the dial toward “You.”

Clearly it makes no sense to have every citizen participate in every decision. (The International Association for Public Participation has a handy guide to help leaders in this analysis.) Citizen participation is most critical for complex and controversial issues, for those with diverse stakeholders, and those where there are concerns about legitimacy and buy-in.

But perhaps most important, timing is key. Early tasks like goal setting, idea generation, and prioritizing alternatives are ideal times for citizen engagement. Never, ever try to “include” the public in a decision that has already been made; there’s nothing worse than fake engagement.

Democratic Impact Statement

You’ve probably heard of an “environmental impact statement”—the form that developers must fill out to show the effect their proposal will have on the local wildlife, and water and air quality. New development proposals are also often assessed on how they impact historical resources, traffic and aesthetics.

Well, if we value our democracy, how about a “democratic impact statement”? While we are making sure our policy-making processes are empowered, we must also consider what effect any resulting new programs or policies will have on the power of local citizens to engage. What impacts, positive and negative (and usually unintentional) can our actions have on local democracy?

For instance, in the case of rural school consolidation, we ask about effects on student learning, program efficiencies, and, of course, spending. Rarely, if ever, do we inquire what impact a policy will have on citizens’ power, or their feelings of connection to their local democracy. When small schools close and several school boards shrink down into one board, what are the effects on citizens’ ability to influence education-related decisions? And what about the role of the school in fostering social capital and citizen engagement? Valued qualities like “community” and “democracy” need to be given voice at the bargaining table alongside “economy” and “efficiency.”

Likewise, planners have long recognized that, while their early attempts at downtown renewal were well intentioned, they often destroyed neighborhoods and shredded connections between neighbors, locally owned businesses, and other strands of invisible but vibrant social fabric.

While a “democratic impact statement” has yet to be invented, with each new policy under consideration let’s ask local citizens: How will it affect your power to make decisions and the likelihood that you will engage democratically?

People Power

Communities are becoming increasingly creative in how they boost citizens’ influence, sometimes even handing over decision-making power entirely. For instance, through the Participatory Budgeting process, several wards in Chicago and districts in New York City now empower citizens to initiate and create local projects. The result: citizens making direct decisions about millions of dollars worth of discretionary spending.

In other cities, planners are working hard to give citizens real power in shaping decisions about the future to ensure that the resulting plans foster strong, connected communities. For example, the City of Golden, Colorado involved thousands of residents in its Golden Vision 2030 city planning process, supported by the Orton Family Foundation. With more than 30 percent population grown between 1990 and 2000 and further growth projected, Golden wanted to involve the whole community in the City’s vision for the future. How would the community address new challenges, from affordable housing to neighborhood livability to democratic engagement?

Through inclusive events such as block parties, community summits, and group story listening, organizers were able to distill hundreds of residents’ stories into two guiding principles and ten core community values. The City, in turn, formally adopted these values and incorporated them into the City’s Comprehensive Plan so they would inform future policies, strategic planning, and investment decisions. The values were later incorporated into Golden’s Neighborhood Plans—a testament to the effectiveness of the engagement process and how well the results were received within local neighborhoods.

Power—knowing that their participation will make a real impact on community decisions—makes citizens want to continue engaging in democracy.

Slow Democracy: Deliberation – More Than Just Talk

This post appeared on April 11, 2013 at the Orton Foundation's Cornerstone Blog. You can see the original post here.​

​This is the third in a four-part series adapted from the book Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home by Susan Clark and Woden Teachout (Chelsea Green, 2012).

The scene at the public hearing is all too familiar. A tired-looking panel sits in front of the auditorium at a table cluttered with documents and microphones; although the room is full of chairs, most are empty. Citizen questions and discussion are not encouraged, testimony is polarized and tempers flare.

The “public hearing” is one of the most-used citizen participation processes in the United States, with many local and state governments legally mandated to use it. But leaders and citizens are often frustrated by the format.

While originally devised to improve participation, hearings are too often framed as contests between points of view. They’re not structured to seek common ground or collaboration, and occur too late in a process to be taken seriously.

As former Missoula, Montana mayor Daniel Kemmis observes, “A visitor from another planet might reasonably expect that at a public hearing there would be a public, not only speaking to itself but also hearing itself… But this almost never happens.”

Sadly, “public hearings” are frequently neither.

But scholars and practitioners in the emerging field of “dialogue and deliberation” are working to sweeten the democratic experience.

Effective “deliberation” is much more than just talk. Not a negotiation, not a debate, and certainly not the shouting matches that have come to characterize many public issues, a healthy deliberative process includes some key qualities.

As defined by communications authority John Gastil, key elements include analytic processes, such as: sound research; values clarification; determining a variety of viable solutions; evaluating the pluses and minuses of each solution; and making the best decision possible. But they also include social processes, like: making sure everyone gets a chance to speak; ensuring that participants understand each other; valuing local knowledge as well as expert opinions; and ensuring mutual respect.

Municipal managers and academic leaders increasingly agree that while voting is important in a democracy, it’s not enough. Entire university institutes are now dedicated to deliberative democracy. Check out the Center for Democratic Deliberation at Penn State, the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State, or theInstitute for Civic Discourse at Kansas State, to name a few—none of which existed ten years ago.

Inclusion—making sure everyone can participate—continues to be the bedrock of a good “slow democracy” process. But when it comes to public engagement, quantity isn’t everything; we also need to think about quality. New models that incorporate face-to-face deliberation are popping up all over the US:

• Two dozen American states and many cities allow voters to create public policy by ballot, via initiative and referendum systems. Supporters of this process argue that it keeps power close to citizens, especially important in this era of deep skepticism about government. However, “ballot initiatives” lack a forum for citizen discussion and amendment. Instead, special-interest campaigns often result in a misinformed, polarized electorate and multiple re-votes. What to do? The Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review, created in 2011, strengthens ballot initiatives by incorporating deliberation. Here, a random sample of citizens hears from experts and advocates, then deliberates on the merits of the issues. Oregon officials value the resulting “citizens’ statement” so highly that they distribute it to every voting household in the state.
   
• An innovative technique called Participatory Budgeting (PB) is used in more than 1,200 cities and towns across the globe, including eight districts in New York City and four wards in Chicago. Here, citizens (not elected officials) come face-to-face to deliberate and decide on discretionary funding in their local budgets. Internationally acclaimed for improving local governance, PB has inspired a new wave of engaged citizen-leadership in many cities.
   
• The Orton Family Foundation finds that focusing engagement efforts on youth pays big dividends. InCortez, Colorado, Heart & Soul Community leaders polled 400 high school students to learn about their interests. More than 300 youth responded, and 54 said they wanted to get involved with the Heart & Soul project and their City as a whole. That interest prompted local boards and committees to create seats for youth representation. In Manchester, Vermont, the Foundation’s youth engagement initiative lead to youth voting members sitting on almost all Town boards.

Citizen engagement and public deliberation are more than just “feel-good” concepts. They strengthen our economy. A 2011 report from the National Conference on Citizenship shows a correlation between citizen engagement and community resilience against unemployment.

They help us respond to crises. As recent storms such as Irene and Sandy have shown, federal resources go further when they’re partnered with local leadership, volunteers, and collaboration.

They can also change us personally—for the better. For instance, new research on juries reveals that people who have engaged in these empowered deliberations are statistically more likely to vote.

Structures that allow citizens to frame issues and craft collaborative solutions are a superb match of today’s skills and today’s complex problems. Deliberation is more than just talk; it’s a key element of creating resilient communities.

Slow Democracy: Inclusion Takes Creativity

This post appeared on March 21, 2013 at the Orton Foundation's Cornerstone Blog. You can see the original post here.

This is the second in a four-part series adapted from the book Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home by Susan Clark and Woden Teachout (Chelsea Green, 2012).

A great example of “outside-the-box” thinking actually comes in a box.

In Essex, Vermont, “Essex Heart & Soul” is working to engage the community in dialogue about the future.

Rather than beg busy residents to attend yet another 7 p.m. meeting, leaders brought the conversation to living rooms and other gathering places across the community with—you guessed it—a “Meeting in a Box.”

It’s an actual box full of printed materials: a discussion guide, priority-setting tools, clipboards, nametags, and more.

Interested hosts invited guests, and were paired with trained volunteer facilitators who brought the box to each gathering and reported the results of the conversations to organizers. By meeting people in places where they already gather, leaders in Essex were able to hear from residents in a more natural, inclusive setting, which often results in more honest feedback. And the meetings were a lot more fun as well.

Inclusion is critical to the success of public decision making. Without it, community efforts are likely to fail on multiple fronts. Issues may not be explored broadly enough; solutions will not be as well informed by diverse local wisdom; and decisions are more likely to be challenged. In addition, a traditional process is less likely to produce the surprising, synergistic new solutions so often sparked when different perspectives bump into each other.

The reality of our social structures means that inclusion doesn’t just happen; local organizers have to pay special attention to get spirited, diverse participation. Traditional community organizing techniques are invaluable—for instance, recruiting participation via known and trusted neighbors and reaching out through existing organizations. But the goal of organizing for inclusion is not simply to make sure “your side” gets heard. It’s critical that we bring all perspectives to the table.

Here are some useful tips from communities doing just that:

--Make sure your effort mirrors the diversity of the community itself.

In rural Randolph, NH, political discussions often divide this way: conservative, traditional land-use voters on one side, and progressive, ecologically minded voters on the other. In Randolph, one key to a successful effort to create a town forest was that the steering committee included both a senior member of the state police, who was well known in the hunting, fishing and snowmobiling community, while another member was an environmental activist. Because most people in town could look at the steering committee and recognize “someone like me,” they could then examine the town forest question with an open mind about its merits. (See also: Compromise and Community, a post about how two residents of Bristol, VT, from opposite sides of the aisle found a compromise to a 10-year-old land use debate.)

So in addition to seeking critical gender and racial/ethnic balance, brainstorm a list of your community’s diverse assets: longtime residents and newcomers; all age groups; businesses, schools, government, and non-profits; low-income and homeless people; artists; computer users and the non-tech-savvy; day and night-shift workers; and so on. Orton’s Heart & Soul Community Network Analysis will walk you through this exercise. Remember, if you look around the room at your first meeting and recognize only friends and neighbors, you have not looked far enough.

--Frame your convening question to ensure that all sides are at the table.

Living Room Conversations (LRC) is an open-source project designed to short-circuit national political polarization and reweave community fabric by launching 2½-hour gatherings. The trick is that LRCs call for two co-hosts: one self-identified conservative and one progressive—and each host invites two additional people who share their political views. In their pilot conversations, participants focused on “Energy Independence/Climate Change,” a title deliberately chosen to accommodate both conservative and progressive viewpoints. By beginning with an inclusive frame, and continuing to explore issues in an open-minded and civil way, Living Room Conversations now launching across the US are helping people find common ground.

--Use a variety of techniques to help people make their voices heard.

Although getting participants into the room is a big part of inclusion, that’s not all there is to it. It’s just as important to engage people in ways that allow them to participate as fully as possible.

While some people are comfortable with deliberative processes, the status of those deliberating—based on factors like race, power, and privilege—can affect the process and the outcome. It is critical that organizers offer participation options for a variety of cultures and learning styles. Creative options include:

• Storytelling – a forum for sharing personal experiences so that “non-experts” can offer their local wisdom.
• Deliberative theater – a combination of drama and discussion used effectively in Pennsylvania to help neighbors understand different points of view of the hydraulic fracking controversy.
• Online tools – Online polls and deliberative tools offer critical participation flexibility for those who dislike crowds, for introverts who need to process information before they respond, and for those with work or childcare conflicts. Whether you want to use a survey to discover and aggregate opinions, help citizens develop documents collaboratively via Wiki, or simply create an online space to share opinions, it is important to choose the right online tool for the right scenario.

What outside-the-box approaches have you tried in your community?

Slow Democracy: Citizen-Powered Communities for the 21st Century

This post appeared on January 30, 2013 at the Orton Foundation's Cornerstone Blog. You can see original post here.

This is the first of a four-part series adapted from the book Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home by Susan Clark and Woden Teachout (Chelsea Green, 2012).

The “slow food” movement began in the mid-1980s with protests against the opening of a McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps in Rome, but it has since inspired untold thousands of supporters across the globe.

Slow food argues that fast food symbolizes much of what’s wrong with the world today. We’ve taken the goal of “efficiency” too far, advocates argue. We need to slow down and understand where our food comes from, and recognize our connection to agriculture, to communities, and to our natural systems. We have a responsibility to do so, for human, economic, and ecological health.

I was thinking about slow food while thinning carrots in my garden one weekend, listening to Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma on my ear buds. That’s when it hit me: the work I had been doing in community development was perfectly aligned with the efforts of the slow food movement. Local, human-scale, interconnected…the metaphor was inspiring, and it brought a wave of fresh, exciting ideas to mind. Slow Democracy!

I ran inside to test the idea out on my husband Mark. He seemed impressed, saying enthusiastically, “Slow Democracy? Great idea! Hey, I bet you could even get the domain name—SlowDemocracy.org!”

Then I noticed the twinkle in his eye as he added, deadpan, “While you’re at it, why not see if you can get PainfulDentistry.org, too?”

Okay, he had a point. Who wants their democracy to be slow?

Still, despite Mark’s teasing, I remained convinced that “slow democracy” was a concept that should be part of the public conversation. I found a co-conspirator in my coauthor Woden Teachout, and our book Slow Democracy is the result.

Slow democracy invites us to bring the advantages of slowing down, listening, understanding and connecting from our dinner tables to our communities. Just as slow food encourages us to understand the production of local food, slow democracy calls for firsthand participation in the local decisions that matter to us, encouraging us to govern ourselves in ways that are inclusive, deliberative and citizen powered. Reconnecting with the sources of decisions that affect us is at the heart of 21st-Century sustainable communities.

“Slow” is a wise, almost tongue-in-cheek term—a raised eyebrow at what “fast” has come to mean. Slow democracy is not a call for longer meetings or more time between decisions. Instead, it is a reminder of the care needed for full-blooded, empowered community engagement and decision making.

Slow democracy observes that as we move increasingly toward centralization and privatization of public resources and decision making in the name of “efficiency” we give only lip service to citizens’ wisdom. As a result, we can wind up with unrepresentative decisions that we need to revisit again and again, and a discouraged, democratically anemic citizenry.

Over the past twenty years scholars and practitioners have discovered a pent-up demand among citizens for authentic community action; we want to make a difference. Given today’s deliberative innovations and extraordinary technological tools, we are more skilled in self-organizing than ever before. Communities now have the ability to make choices that are more ecologically, economically and socially resilient. And as importantly, people have the will to implement them.

The message from slow democracy’s grassroots is clear: it may take time, but it’s worth it. This is evident in towns like Damariscotta, Maine, and Victor, Idaho, where Orton’s Heart & Soul Community Planning approach guided residents through thoughtful face-to-face conversations, and careful analysis of the issues that were unique to their towns. This is how communities can ensure that project outcomes reflect community needs and visions.

Slow democracy can set off a positive upward cycle: discussions that reveal creative new solutions; citizens who open up their thinking and are ready to help solve problems; and smart, lasting results that could, slowly but surely, change the world.​