Last year, this networked remix of an exercise created by Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. and Debby Irving, was offered as a way of spreading commitment to learning about, talking about and taking action to solve racial injustices in the food and other related systems. This year, additional tools and virtual platforms were added to create a more robust environment for learning. This included:
an even richer resource page with readings, videos and organizational links,
a blogroll of daily prompts with links to resources and room for participants to offer written reflections,
a series of original blog posts on the FSNE website committed to relevant topics and themes
Remixers and meme-makers, we have a tool for you. We are pleased to be partnered with Center for Story-based Strategy in the release of an illustration kit: the4thbox.com
Imagery is a huge factor in framing the terms of a conversation. This kit is meant to inspire imagery that provokes new interactions between people. We believe these interactions will help open up imagination towards the liberated, equitable society we want.
On April 10, 2016, Food Solutions New England (FSNE) launches the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge with more than 600 participants who want to normalize the conversation about race and racism. IISC is a co-sponsor because we agree that skill building and conversations are key for collective capacity to identify and address the different manifestations of racism, whether internalized, interpersonal, institutional, or structural.
IISC Senior Associate Curtis Ogden has been helping to weave FSNE’s network for over five years. He is a member of this year’s Racial Equity Habit Building team, which will include blogging about racial equity and promoting the conversation on social media. Additionally, IISC’s communications team, Lawrence Barriner II and Danielle Coates-Connor, have been supporting this year’s Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge with communications and engagement strategy.
“If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.”
– William Stafford, From “A Ritual to Read to Each Another”
A couple of weeks ago I was a participant in a SSIR webinar on network leadership. I spent my air time talking about Food Solutions New England as an example of a social change network that has been leveraging authenticity, generosity and trust to address issues of racial inequity in the food system. In telling the story, I realized that much of it amounts to a gradual process of shedding layers and “making the invisible visible.” Specifically, it has been about making visible power and privilege, connection and disconnection, tacit knowledge and diverse ways of knowing, and complex system dynamics. As a result, many in the network sense we are now in a better position to build from what we have in common, and that it is more likely that the vision of a vibrant, equitable and eco-logical food system will be realized. Read More
Our eyes met and locked a split second after we noticed the feet of two young men sitting next to each other in the circle – both had a pant leg rolled up to show an ankle monitor. In the same circle, sat two sheriffs with guns and tasers strapped to their hips and covered by their untucked shirts. It was day three of our training, Moving Forward in Addressing Race, Power and Privilege, and we were now harvesting the fruits of many hours of challenging mental, emotional and spiritual work.
“I have learned to see that not all police officers are rude and mean,” shared a 14 year-old Latina girl. “I have learned that some officers care about me and want to be fair; this is the first time I’ve been in a space where I felt heard by adults (in the system).”
Having law enforcement at the table with an openness to change is important. Systems are made up of individuals. Individuals centered on equity values and skilled in moving policy forward, in partnership with multi-sector networks towards common goals, can create long term change.
“I have gained sight and vision where before I was blind,” shared a white male law enforcement officer, “and I am willing to give what ever it takes personally and professionally to our cause.”
This same individual had entered into the circle two days before carefully monitoring his every word, letting us know that he was stretching to understand what others were saying. This man’s perspective was literally transformed over the course of three days; it was an amazing shift to witness. Lifting the veil that usually hides the ways in which white people have benefitted from racism and other forms of oppression, as well as the ways that white people unintentionally reinforce discrimination and mistreatment can be shocking.
Why does confronting racism in the juvenile justice system matter?
The U.S. stands out in its use of youth incarceration. We incarcerate youth at higher rates than anywhere in the world: five times the rate of South Africa; 15 times the rate of Germany and 30 times the rate of Italy. With more than 75 percent of youth locked up for non-violent offenses, the U.S does not have an alarming crime problem; we have an alarming incarceration problem. And it’s a problem primarily for youth of color. We know that our current youth justice system is not equitable, excellent, or used sparingly and appropriately. Nearly 55,000 youth were incarcerated on any given night in 2013, most (87 percent) for non-violent offenses. The majority (66 percent) were youth of color. Nationwide, youth of color are significantly more likely to be incarcerated than White youth. In 2013:
Black youth were 4.6 times as likely;
Native American youth were 3.3 times as likely; and
An adolescent who has spent time in secure detention is far less likely to attain a high school diploma or consistently participate in the labor force in the future.[2]
When the youth of color created and performed a skit to illustrate the everyday harassment they face at the hands of police in this room full of adults, some of whom have a role in incarcerating them, all involved were transformed. The unfair treatment of people of color and at the hands of law enforcement is and has always been a life or death issue, and while public outcry lifting up this issue is important, finding ways to build bridges across this divide is even more crucial.
In our circle sat law enforcement, juvenile justice system-involved youth and parents, detention center and juvenile probation staff, non-profit leaders, leaders in the school district and staff from the district attorney’s office. We were all there with a single purpose, to decrease the disproportionate level of incarceration of African American, Native American and Latino youth. This was a crucial moment: a group of 30 people living and working in the same county with a rich diversity of perspectives, roles in the community and life experiences spent three whole days learning about the history and current manifestations of racism, listening to each other’s stories, and beginning to build a deeper level of trust.
“I hadn’t wanted to build relationships with the people in this group. I thought I could do the work with you and not necessarily like you. Many of us came to this table thinking that we were not playing a part in the negative impact we were having on youth. My biggest learning is that we need to have a level of trust and if we do not allow the education and vulnerability, we will not be open to own the part that each of us is playing in the dynamics of racial disparities. Without the relationship building and trust we can not move the work forward.” – Committee Chair
Nine months before this day, we met this group because they were in the midst of an intense racialized conflict between two leaders at this table, and the group’s long-time work had come to a halt. Years of tensions bubbling between “community” folks and “systems” people, between white folks and people of color, had risen to the point of ugly accusations and deep hurts. People who had been leading this work were seriously considering walking away.
How did the group get to this point? Years before, community stakeholders in this county formed a committee to address the overrepresentation of youth of color in their county’s juvenile justice system. New partners were asked to be part of that committee, including community stakeholders who had never been included in justice system reform. Traditional meeting locations and times at the courthouse were changed, and Judges, public defenders, prosecutors, juvenile probation and detention staff began going to meetings in the community, sometimes in the evenings, with youth and families who were directly impacted by the justice system. Although the disproportion of youth of color in the system was acknowledged by all, the initial strategies developed by the subcommittee for reducing that overrepresentation had limited impact and fell apart quickly. Furthermore, a lack of a common understanding of racial and ethnic disparities or agreed upon manner to communicate through hard conversations about racism had caused a divide between system stakeholders and community partners.
The dramatic shifts we saw the group take were rooted in the hard work by many people at this table and those that had supported them in the past. For five years they learned to work together as well as build cooperation across sectors. We supported the group to take a step back, rethink assumptions, account for the impact of their actions, and recommit to repairing relationships and backing up each others’ integrity and leadership. The stakeholders now have a renewed capacity to honor their commitment to the youth in their community, address institutional and structural racism together, and are in the process of implementing new practices within their Juvenile Probation Department informed by young people themselves.
“We talk about restorative justice for young people, but we also went through a restorative justice process ourselves. We are more able to have the difficult conversations about racism and I think this has shifted the power in the group. I feel I can bring my full self to the space now.” – Committee Chair
We, the trainers in this scenario, are two people who have devoted our lives to holding space for people to do the deep, challenging, and life-affirming work of understanding how racism operates and of actualizing a commitment to racial equity. As we led this training, it was not lost on us the vast differences we too were bridging. One of us is a formally undocumented immigrant who grew up in poverty and has been deeply targeted by oppression, and the other is a white person whose ancestors migrated to the U.S. with legal privileges from various parts of Europe in the 1600-1800s and has benefited from countless race and class-based advantages.
We are trained in different methodologies for leadership, collaboration and racial equity. One of us is a VISIONS Inc. trainer who has learned how to manage and support individuals to process and shift at personal and interpersonal levels while at the same time shift the culture and structure that lead to disparate racial outcomes. The other is a consultant and trainer at the Interaction Institute for Social Change who has supported groups that have a desire to do racial equity work but are unsure how to make it real. Many such groups have gone through an anti-racism training and then get stuck in a soup of spiraling emotions and an inability to translate the learning into action. Others have made some progress toward reducing racial disparities and are coming up against the roadblocks of cultural clashes that prevent a deeper level of cross-sector collaboration and change. Bringing the sets of tools both organizations have developed to a group that was ready to take their work to a new level of depth was the magic sauce that allowed for the incredible learning and shifts people experienced at this training.
“And now it’s time to get real again and roll up our sleeves, because [even though we have been working on this together for years already] this is just the beginning. There is still a tremendous lack of accountability in our system, a lack of consistency and practice. There are a few people in the entire system that get it – and so we got a long way to go. It is so refreshing and healing to be where we are now and we can take that medicine to keep going. The truth is that young people in our state are being mistreated. I am not going anywhere and neither is the institution we are trying to reconstruct. Language development, protocol, procedure, culture — all of that needs to be a continuous part of the work going forward.” – Committee Chair
During these three days, a few lessons about what it takes for this work to be successful became clear to us:
Break out of our silos – people from all parts of a system need to be at the table, including a critical mass of those most affected by the inequities (in this case that meant having more than one or two system-involved youth of color participate)
Take the time to build a shared understanding of what racism is, and how it operates at the internalized, interpersonal, institutional, structural and cultural levels as well as at the intersection of these
Make room for people to share their stories, and to show up as complex human beings (beyond job titles)
Create a space that allows people to show up with their minds, bodies, and spirits (an interactive learning environment that requires everyone to show up with vulnerability and openness is required; lectures and surface level activities don’t cut it)
Lean into disagreements and misunderstandings in order to build trust and a deeper level of collaboration, which makes the real work possible
Commit to the long-term nature of this work
In our country, images of young people of color being killed or harassed by law enforcement are commonplace. Growing numbers of youth and men of color in prison continue to skyrocket. As the Movement for Black Lives grows across the country, racial tensions simmer. People of color are afraid for their lives. White people are afraid to acknowledge the ways racism continues to define our country and to courageously and non-defensively do their part to undo racism. Bringing young people together with adults who work in the juvenile justice system and other adults that are part of extended ecosystems of support and contact is crucial to address the racial divide that has continued to divide our country and that has maintained the disparities that ultimately hurt us all.
What does it take for people of color, adults and youth to feel safe to fully speak about the negative impact of racism on their lives and for white folks and adults to hear this with out reacting defensively and sinking into guilt? What will it take for young people of color, those most affected by the juvenile justice system, to be seen as experts about the way racism plays out in the current system and about how to create a system where young people of color are not unduly punished for their mistakes, but treated like human beings?
About the Interaction Institute for Social Change: IISC increases the collaborative capacity of individuals, organizations, and institutions so they can find solutions to social problems. Over the past 25 years, we have developed a lens through which we facilitate social change and we bring it to every engagement. IISC invites groups and leaders to shift power dynamics, focus on building networks, and magnify love as a force for social change. Using this collaborative change lens, we see leaders overcome challenges and have astound-ing impact.
Never before have people with such varied histories been so intimately connected, whether because they live in a densely populated urban area or because they are linked online. Communities are struggling together with immense complex problems, from childcare to climate change. This makes being willing and able to facilitate meaningful discussions across differences one of the most important leadership skills of the 21st century.
Solving complex problems means understanding they have a systemic nature. Powerful leaders offer ways to investigate the root causes, in order to look for high leverage solutions and engage non-traditional allies.
IISC is building Big Democracy, the collaborative infrastructure to facilitate sustained engagement by leaders in their organizations and cities.
About VISIONS Inc: Founded in 1984, VISIONS, Inc. (www.visions-inc.org) is a non-profit training and consulting organization, specializing in diversity and inclusion. We have offices in Dorchester, MA; Rocky Mount, NC; and Fresno, CA; and are supported by our highly skilled and diverse team of consultants located throughout the United States and abroad. VISIONS mission is to:
equip individuals, organizations, and communities with the tools needed to thrive in a diverse world.
remove structural and cultural barriers that prevent full and equitable participation.
help create environments where differences are recognized, understood, appreciated, and utilized for the benefit of all.
We realize this mission by implementing a time-tested, insight-driven, process model of consulting and training that supports our clients in becoming catalysts for change and effectively engages all people in the deep, challenging, and rewarding work of authentic inclusion, personally and within their organizations and communities.
[1] The W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice Fairness and Equity, http://data.burnsinstitute.org/about
This is the fourth of a four part series, sharing some of the lessons IISC and Horsley Witten Group learned in our efforts to support RhodeMap RI in weaving social equity into its regional planning process, and particularly our facilitation of the project’s Social Equity Advisory Committee.
Lesson 4: Lead boldly, collaboratively, authentically
Finally, working in this kind of collaborative partnership is unfamiliar for many planners and also for many community residents. It requires everyone to do their best to embrace the discomfort and awkwardness that comes with learning and develop both attitudes and habits that support collaboration. IISC has found that several key values and attributes are important for collaborative change agents to be well-positioned to support this way of working. The attributes include demonstrating a collaborative mindset, strategic thinking and a receptive and flexible skillset for facilitating collaboration. Core values include mutuality and service, authenticity, and love – a deep regard for the well-being of others. Read More
This is the third of a four part series, sharing some of the lessons IISC and Horsley Witten Group learned in our efforts to support RhodeMap RI in weaving social equity into its regional planning process, and particularly our facilitation of the project’s Social Equity Advisory Committee.
Lesson 3. Build the capacity and culture within public planning institutions to focus on equity and to facilitate broad-based public engagement.
Most planning agencies, regulators, and planning consultants are not well equipped to take on the challenge of seriously engaging communities that chronically experience social inequities. As a planning agency prepares to launch a planning process, it needs to build both a culture and capacity that welcomes and supports engaging community members. This often begins with acknowledging the expertise that comes from lived experience, and the awareness that the agency may not have all the knowledge and skill it needs to take equity seriously. Read More
This is the second of a four part series, sharing some of the lessons IISC and Horsley Witten Group learned in our efforts to support RhodeMap RI in weaving social equity into its regional planning process, and particularly our facilitation of the project’s Social Equity Advisory Committee.
Lesson 2. Design the process for maximum and meaningful involvement, particularly of those who are most directly affected by the inequities, and build the community’s capacity and infrastructure to participate in the process.
This is the first of a four part series, sharing some of the lessons IISC and Horsley Witten Group learned in our efforts to support RhodeMap RI in weaving social equity into its regional planning process, and particularly our facilitation of the project’s Social Equity Advisory Committee.
Lesson 1: Weave equity into the planning process AND the content of the resulting plans.
As you heard from the participants in the video above, if you really want a plan for housing, economic development, land use (or anything else, really!) that results in more equitable outcomes, the process needs to reflect a commitment to equity, and the plans need to include elements that explicitly aim for greater equity. Before we go any further, a working definition: By “equity,” we mean a situation where all groups have access to the resources and opportunities necessary to improve the quality of their lives (that’s the process part!) and differences in life outcomes cannot be predicted on the basis of race, class, or other dimensions of identity (that’s the outcomes part!). It’s pretty hard to imagine achieving greater equity in both senses without being intentional about how the process is designed and the ideas that are included in the plans.
We worked with the Horsley Witten Group to facilitate the work of RhodeMap RI’s Social Equity Advisory Committee (SEAC), which focused specifically on social equity. SEAC was charged with offering input and feedback into planning activities and contributing to the housing and economic development plans. SEAC developed a set of Guiding Principles to guide the planning process and implementation of the resulting plans. These principles have relevance well beyond RI.
Principles related to the planning process included:
Do not shy away from frank discussions. Get comfortable with words we don’t like to use, such as segregation and racism. Be explicit about the role that race and ethnicity play in the distribution of benefits and burdens in Rhode Island.
Listen to the voices of those who have historically been excluded from planning decisions and create opportunities for lasting involvement in planning decisions by members of communities of color.
Engage and involve community residents during implementation.
Make sure meetings and materials are accessible.
Principles related to the content of the housing and economic development plans included:
State clearly that the goal of all of these plans is to eliminate disparities along race, class, gender, and other dimensions of diversity. Prioritize efforts to improve the housing and economic conditions of those who are struggling the most.
Make sure that [economic and housing] development is focused on the needs of people.
Use public funds for public good, particularly marginalized populations in the community, not private profits.
Be clear, specific and direct so that outcomes can be measurable and there can be accountability for outcomes. Mandate accountability in the implementation plans.
Make sure that plans for housing, economic development and transportation are integrated because the issues are connected.
While not a perfect process, participants from communities, government, and organizations credit SEAC with making strong contributions to the plans, as well as providing important feedback about the process. You can check out the economic development plan yourself and look for evidence of SEAC’s thinking woven throughout. Stay tuned. In upcoming posts, we will explore three other lessons learned:
These three moments with these three individuals in recent months have stuck with me. Each of them is part of a multicultural group of folks working to integrate racial equity in their work – whether it be for youth in the juvenile justice system, for children and adults to get quality and affordable dental health care, or for people with HIV. They got me reflecting about what it takes to move racial equity work forward in multiracial, mostly white, collaboratives and institutions. And about how much I love the challenge of moving this work forward in settings where talking about race and racism is NOT the norm.
“I was taught not to say the word ‘white’ in front of white people; you’re the first white person I’ve heard talk about being white and challenging racism.” — Youth activist (Native woman) in New Mexico
Last week I had an interesting conversation with an evaluator who was curious about some of the networks for food system development we’ve been supporting through IISC. We got to talking about “metrics,” which led into consideration of the role of story in not simply gauging network effectiveness, but also in stimulating network evolution. Communication and social learning are part of the life-blood of human networks. This is something that we’re coming to understand at a more profound level amidst the complexity of food system transformation work at all levels.
As we try to identify “leverage points” to shift regional food system dynamics in New England in the direction of increased local production, food security, economic development, resiliency and equity across the board, we are realizing that more robust connectivity and sharing across boundaries of many kinds is a significant strategy and form of structural change that can allow for critical self-organization and adaptation. Stories become one of the critical nutrients in this work.
For example, as much as we have begun to share data, and importantly disaggregated data, across the region, we have found that stories often have more stickiness and staying power. The stories that were shared at last year’s Food Solutions New England (FSNE) Food Summit about racial equity and white privilege have been referenced for their impact in creating an environment of genuineness, that have spurred others to speak up and take up the conversation about the reality of structural racism in our food system. This has in turn brought more trust and diversity to the network, which has helped to create a more comprehensive understanding of the food system and possibilities for decentralized and more formally coordinated network action.
Furthermore, we have begun to solicit stories of success and innovation around embracing the FSNE Vision (of 50% self-sufficiency with regards to regional food production by the year 2060) and racial equity commitment. And coming out of this year’s Summit, there is interest in sharing stories of how people are working towards “fair price” across the food chain, in such a way that food workers, producers of varying scales, distributers and consumers have living wages and access to health-promoting and culturally diverse food. The curation of these stories we see as beginning to change the underlying economic narrative.
Stories then become fuel in many ways, providing different points of access, connection, inspiration, education, and meaning-making. Stories are like enriched compost that can be fed back into the network to nurture new growth. Our work as a Network Team, as network gardeners, is to “close the resource loop,” encourage and support more equitable channels for expression, more cross-fertilization, more interest in diverse (and concealed) stories and “processing venues” for these (virtual and in-person).
How are you using story to feed your net work forward?
Keynote at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Conference on June 11, 2015.
Direct Experience
This story begins for me when I was in Central America and had terrible fall and I could hardly walk. I was medi-vaced back to the US where doctors gave me x-rays, bone scans, and cat scans, but they were unable to discover what was wrong. Everything changed for me when I visited a holistic doctor. She laid me on the table and proceeded to touch my body all over.
What I realized at that point was that up until then, doctors were trying to understand me by looking mainly at representations of my body. It was not until someone engaged my body physically that the missing information was included that led to a pathway to health. This experience of representative data failing and direct experience finding a solution to a problem left a lasting impression on me—literally. As you can see, I am moving and healthy now. It helped me understand that what we know how to measure is not all we need to know in order to understand.
Thank you for the opportunity to talk with and have a conversation with you about community knowledge and voice. One thing I have learned is that this topic is not just a concern for grant makers. It is also the core issue for building a just and inclusive democracy.
To illustrate this and open a dialogue on the implications for grant making, I am going to tell you about an innovative approach to bring community knowledge and voice to a central public policy issue going on right now here in Boston.
All In
I have spent my life practicing and innovating what it takes to bring community knowledge to how we build equitable and just societies; or, as I like to say, for us all to be all in. All in framing issues. All in providing the information and knowledge needed to understand the issues that affect us. All in making decisions that impact us all. All in, especially those who are most often always left out.
In this and many other countries, we do not have the infrastructure nor process in place that will allow us to be all in, and to bring the full force of what we know to inform our understanding of the world.
And so we are left wondering—How can we build the will and develop the skill of the diverse public to collectively create a just society? How can people live in peace on a healthy planet, balancing their individual interests and complex differences? I call this quest to create a new infrastructure and process to bring us all in BIG DEMOCRACY.
Right now, in Boston, we are using transportation planning to demonstrate that Big Democracy is possible. And we can do this because it’s a new day in Boston with a new Mayor, Marty Walsh, who has a desire to hear more voices than ever before. Go Boston 2030 is a project of the Mayor’s Office, the Boston Transportation Department, and the Barr Foundation to develop a vision for Boston’s transportation future that is defined by the diverse Boston public.
There are four components to this effort:
Creating a new context for public participation
Using questions to engage the public
Making meaning of public knowledge
Creating a shared vision
Present Day Dance Theater performs outside the Go Boston 2030 Visioning Lab on May 9, 2015. Photo by Rafael Feliciano Cumbas.
Creating a New Context
For it to truly be a new day in Boston, we had to let the public know we were serious about letting them frame the transportation vision for Boston. We used our Question Campaign technique to get people who live, work, and visit Boston to donate their answer to the following question—”What’s your question about getting around Boston in the future?” We started with a blank canvas and asked the public to fill it in from its own experience.
To let the public know the city was serious about hearing from everyone, we created an ad campaign designed to let the public know they were being invited into something different. If this was January, you would have already encountered ads, as they were all over the public transportation, digital billboards, even the trash cans in the city had ads.
The ads were designed to be provocative and to get people thinking about what’s possible beyond their current reality. The ads were also designed to elicit an affective response, to touch people, because we believe that to engage people, we need to engage both their hearts and minds. The ads are also designed to let them know what they needed to do to participate; and all of this because we want to tap into the creative energy and deep knowledge of the public.
What we understand about democracy is that most people have opted out. They believe it is impossible for the demographically complex and diverse public of this country to work together. The counter intuitive action is that, to bring people together, you first create the opportunity for each person to speak for themselves, and, over time, with each other.
Advertisement by Ad Hoc Industries.
Using Questions To Engage The Public
We put our ads throughout the city to demonstrate that anyone can have a question even if they don’t see themselves as an expert in transportation planning. All anyone had to do to participate was donate a question. We use the word donate purposefully to let people know that we recognize their question has value.
To engage people in the process of democracy, you have to lower the barrier to participation. And what we have found is that asking people what their question is about something allows anyone, regardless of age and language, to participate. Even the six-year-old boy who asked the question, “Will dinosaurs be a source of transportation in the future?”
Listening to people’s questions is a way to understand what the breadth of the issue is, what people’s diverse experiences are, and what they most value. Because we believe it is critical for people to see themselves and their reality in the ads, we used our digital channels to reflect back to the public images of people with their questions. We do this to present a counter to the general narrative that is out there that the public is not smart.
In one ad, Rami an 11 year old African-American boy is pictured with the words from his question. “How will global warming and rising sea levels affect the future of transportation?” Knowing that this is the kind of question that he has, how does this change what you think he needs and what’s important in his life?
Big Democracy requires us to shift our thinking and to realize that people, no matter where they are or what their station in life, actually have valuable knowledge to contribute. We learn to value The Other.
Rami Hayes-Messinger quoted in Dudley Square at the What’s Your Question Truck. Photo by Leise Jones.
We collected over 5,000 questions and touched every neighborhood in Boston. We did this by letting people submit a question in a way that makes sense to them and meeting people where they are.
For example:
People could submit questions via text, email, handwritten cards, Tweet, Instagram, Facebook, and other ways.
We designed an interactive glass truck that went to 15 neighborhoods.
We used digital media to publicize on the city’s social media pages, built a following, and attracted thousands of questions.
We had over 80 partners from city agencies to grassroots organizations committed to bringing their networks into the campaign.
We participated in existing events all over the city.
We knew it was working because we’d show up at a non-transportation event in the city and get asked for questions. This is something we were part of starting, but the public owned it.
In democracy, in order to solicit the knowledge that the public has, you have to ask people in the form they’re used to having conversations in, and you have to show up where they are. The opportunities for participation have to exist within the normal flow of ones daily life. This doesn’t necessarily mean you, but you have to create the opportunity for the request to show up.
Videos shot and edited by Oluwaseun Ajewole.
What’s Your Question Truck parks in neighborhoods to collect questions. Photo by Allana Tarranto
Making Meaning of Public Knowledge
As the questions came in, they were organized by emerging themes and zip code, and made available for viewing on the website. But how do you move from 5,000 questions to something people can anchor around and build a vision? The Question Review Session was a half-day convening of city officials and community leaders who reviewed all of the questions and worked together to understand and articulate what the public was saying. Participants identified sets of questions that best represented what was most recurrent, provocative, and visionary amongst everything people had said.
What is important to note here is that the primary responsibility we ask is that of discernment. They had a responsibility to weigh each question the same and try to discern the shared meaning emerging from what the public had to offer—and they took it seriously. What they produced was later verified by the public at the Visioning Lab. The public will work hard to support open and inclusive democratic processes, and if you are transparent, the public will actually trust the process.
Democracy requires that we have open, transparent processes so when community knowledge is refined by others, it is not set in stone. Once refined, it requires a process of affirmation from the public again.
Every question was read at The Go Boston 2030 Question Review Session on February 24, 2015. Photo by Leise Jones.
Creating a Shared Vision
The Visioning Lab was a place for people to share their vision of our transportation future. It was designed to test the resonance of the themes, questions, and vision ideas that emerged from the Question Campaign and Question Review Session. People were invited to answer some of the key questions and to articulate how they imagine seeing each vision idea come to life.
The 2-day event was highly interactive. Large, multi-lingual walls were created for each theme that emerged from the Question Campaign. Participants could offer their own vision through words or images, build on other people’s ideas, and indicate what content most resonated with them. The walls also included images that were submitted from the public online via the website. In the same area were info graphics drawn from multiple data sets showing how people get around Boston. This input became the basis for informing the goals and targets of the transportation plan.
Mayor Walsh opens Go Boston 2030 Visioning Lab at China Trade Center on May 8, 2015. Photo by Leise Jones.
The vision lab reveals an important point of Big Democracy. If you were to look at one of the theme panels you would notice that at the top is the theme, below are the framing questions, then people’s ideas represented in different forms, and, at the very bottom, a place to vote. In Big Democracy, voting is an artifact of democracy because the real work of democracy is creating the opportunities for people to lift up their knowledge and make meaning together. This is the opposite of where we currently place our emphasis in supporting democracy. As the next presidential election comes into focus, funders will begin to prioritize much needed Get Out the Vote campaigns. However, if we understood voting as an artifact of democracy, we would also be supporting efforts to have the public frame and discuss the key issues that inform the presidential election.
Right now all the information from the Visioning Lab is being pulled together to set the goals and targets for Boston’s transportation plan, and those votes that people cast have actually set the priorities of the themes. They are informed decisions. In January 2016, the city will start designing projects to meet these goals and targets, and open a new process to engage the public in that phase of the work. Interaction Institute for Social Change is in the process of continuing the public engagement in that effort, continuing to help build the public’s muscle for democracy. The questions that have been collected have been organized and coded in such a way that, as projects are identified, we can call up the questions connected to that project and use them to define effective solutions.
Go Boston 2030 Visioning Lab participant. Photo by Rafael Feliciano Cumbas.
Interventions in Democracy
I started out this talk by lifting up the distinction between Big Data and community knowledge. We live in an information economy and data will always be an important part of what we need to consider in making decisions. However, if we want to strengthen democracy, data alone is not sufficient. We need more robust interventions in democracy.
Like the holistic doctor who figured out what was wrong with my back by touching it, we need to reach out and understand communities. We need interventions in democracy. That holistic doctor has a deep knowledge system in place that allows her to do that. We need to work to develop a knowledge system for working with the public.
Just as we are creating the infrastructure to both lift up a holistic approach to health and integrate it with traditional medicine, we need to do the same thing with building democracy. We need to intentionally build an infrastructure that is going to support community knowledge to sit with data. Holistic medicine is growing. It’s widening. It’s deepening. It’s integrating with and becoming part of how we think of traditional medicine. Just as we’re getting more conscious about holistic health, we’re also valuing and getting better at traditional forms of health and data.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that the public is hungry for Big Democracy, but for it to work, every institution that touches the public must take on the responsibility of building the democratic muscle of the public. Every institution that touches the public has the possibility of building the democratic muscle of the public.
To do so we need to:
Design processes that allow the public to bring their knowledge into the conversation.
Create imaginative ways to let people know they are being invited into something different.
Invite conversations that honor what people already know.
Refine what comes out of public process openly, checked by the public.
Structure accountability methods into the implementation phase.
Much of what I have presented here is about what structural things we need to create in support of democracy, but the path is not all structural. There is a simple step that each of use can take every day to make sure that, through our actions, we are creating a world in which everyone is in. Just as we know that to undo structural racism we have to attend to the micro-aggressions that happen every day. In building a democracy where everyone is in, we have to create micro-inclusions—daily actions that signal to a person that they are included. We have to build Big Democracy and demonstrate that it is possible for the public to be all in.
