Posts filed under ‘Transpartisan News’
Seattle Transpartisan Dialogue/Debate
Seattle Transpartisan Alliance
Stay connected, join our Meetup.com site!
Sunday, October 10, 5 to 7:30pm, Uptown Espresso, 2504 4th Ave. (4th & Wall)
CONVENING QUESTION: “How can we reach across barriers to build community resiliency in an economic crisis, and respond to excess corporate/government power?”
GOALS: 1) Get beyond conflict, avoid wasting energy fighting each other, 2) Catalyze a healthy conversation across the socioeconomic and political spectrum, 3) Come together to build a respectful, responsible “populist movement.”
VISION: Catalyze an informal network of networks that can cooperate to organize a city-wide network of informal, transpartisan citizen councils with links to official councils.
Left-right citizens meet in healthy dialogue/debate on health care
This past Wednesday night at a meeting of the Transpartisan Alliance at the Mosaic Coffee house in Seattle about 20 Seattle area citizens from the left, right, and center met for a two hour dialogue/debate. We had no set agenda for the meeting. Topics were allowed to emerge from the group.
Make “Demand Question Time” transpartisan not just bipartisan
The other day Obama and Republican house leaders enaged in a constructive, substantative policy debate. As a result, today a politically diverse group of bloggers, commentators, techies and politicos launched an online campaign called Demand Question Time.
Transpartisan Grassroots Organizing
At this time in our nation’s history, we have a DOS operating system of governance. We are faced with complex and interlocking challenges in multiple sectors: economics, environment & health, for example. The United States requires a Windows operating system to allow for innovation which will create generative solutions that work for all. The Transpartisan Alliance is serving as a catalyst to facilitate this shift and amplify the voice of the common interest.
Response: upgrade the operating system by organizing a Citizens Assembly, an informal wisdom “branch of government”
Begin a process in advance of a shutdown of the operating system to create an unofficial, community wide, transpartisan Citizen Assembly. The sole role of the Assembly is to truly bring ALL SIDES together in an ongoing, creative & informal conversation. Its role is never to engage in politics-as-usual – i.e. supporting candidates, or advocating specific legislation. The result, given healthy ground rules and dialogue processes – i.e. Open Space, World Café, Conversation Café – will be innovative, out-of-the-box, win-win policy options that, let’s say, 80+ percent of the community can say “yes!” to. As a whole, its role is NEVER to lobby, advocate, or takes sides on issues that emerge. The Citizen Assembly’s role is to continually educate the community about creative public policy thinking. In this way, wisdom emerges from the bottom-up and policy thinking is adopted by official decision makers because it is attractive, not because it is forced upon them.
Outcomes
• Catalyze a shift in the political culture from destructive polarization to a more respectful, responsible and cooperative search for solutions.
• Authentic citizen empowerment where people a) see their role as responsible co-creators of solutions to complex public issues and b) become a valued resource, with a perspective that can widen outside of the traditional confines that often restrict policymakers.
• Serve as the hub of a multi-sector, community wide, unofficial, open source, open participation network-of-networks – transpartisan alliance — that becomes a unique, influential community resource (and institution) capable of informally reconciling the needs of all sides.
Organizing Strategy
Phase One: Citizen Leaders Council
Build trust, respect, and communication among 12 to 24 citizen leaders representing a true microcosm of the community – left, right, center, insiders, outsiders as well as representation from as many of the 12 sectors as possible. Citizen leaders decide to engage in transpartisan dialogue as a way of changing traditionally conflicted relationships because they feel they need to act and it is something they can do that will make a difference. Because they come from all sides, the Council has very high combined social capital – value of their relationships and networks – and are in a position to serve as an authentically neutral convener, as a community organizer.
Phase Two: Mapping –“What’s Important?”
Participants come together to talk—to map and name the elements of “what’s important” to them personally and the relationships responsible for dealing with “what’s important.” In early meetings, this talk can be diffuse, and participants vent their grievances and anger with each other and with the old operating system. This stage will end, at least for a time, when there are discernable clusters of topics of importance. Some participants will want to act on “what’s important” to them. The group may decide to alternate its meetings between taking action through awareness/education projects and dialogue to deepen relationships and uncover high leverage change strategies.
Phase Three: Uncovering Change Strategies
At meetings that focus on dialogue, in more disciplined talk, participants probe specific topics of importance to uncover high leverage change strategies. They ask questions like: What resources do we have? What are the obstacles to moving in this direction? What steps could overcome those obstacles? Who could take those steps? How could we sequence those steps so that they interact to generate momentum for change?
Phase Four – Engaging Wider Networks
At this point, the Council is a neutral, community-wide convener that has built trust among a core group of empowered citizen leaders, mapped what’s important to them, and uncovered some high leverage change strategies. They are now ready to begin engaging their networks in low overhead town hall meetings. The core inquiry of “what is important to you?” remains the same. At these venues, the Citizen Leaders Council can both present the thinking that has emerged in their sustained dialogue, as well as listen to and catalyze new creative thinking.
Phase Five – Attracting Citizen Assembly Early Adopters
As a part of town hall meeting program, the vision/possibility for a Citizen Assembly can be presented. Groups can self organize to discuss questions about it like: Who’s involved? Where does it meet? What is its role, function? What difference will it make? How will its voice be heard? How does it relate to official government? If the vision is truly compelling and has value for the community it will become a rallying point for further self-organizing.
Is the Tea Party Movement already transpartisan?
In a recent email to me, pasted below, Andrew Langer, President, Institute for Liberty and an emerging voice in the conservative movement makes the case that the Tea Party Movement (TPM) is already transpartisan.
Out-of-the-box political thinking…transpartisan convention 2011?
Political lines in the sand are being drawn. Polarization can be expected to increase sharply in the coming mid-term elections. Isn’t it time for a new type of political convention – a “conference of conferences” – to bring together all sides to talk like adults about the true state of our union?
As a transpartisan organizer that has spent the last six years convening transpartisan leadership retreats with leaders of national groups and as the organizer of the first American Citizens Summit, a prototype event for a “conference of conferences”, here’s my bold, but practical, vision:
In early 2011 during the “armistice” period – armistice means “cessation of hostilities” – I can imagine a national political convention, a conference of conferences taking place in a central part of the country, like St. Louis. It will be co-sponsored and attended by national political parties – in reality, in my experience, mainly third parties will buy-in, R and D leaders have been very defensive about this idea in the past – as well as members of groups like Netroots Nation, Freedom Works, League of Women Voters, American for Tax Reform, MoveOn.org, Campaign for Liberty, etc. It will also be co-sponsored by facilitator/mediator groups like the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation and the Common Bond Institute (conveners of the “Engaging the Other Conferences.”)
It will be several days long, probably five or six. The first day and a half will be to allow groups who regularly convene anyhow, to meet by themselves. Presuming we plan a large enough convention center, each of these groups can conduct their own private agenda undisturbed by the other groups meeting in adjacent spaces. Later in the day of day two, all groups can begin to meet in a large plenary. I imagine a large room set in a world café format (tables of four or five). The program for the night is simply a handful of powerful small group dialogue questions like “What is the true state of our Union?” and “What is the role of the citizen – beyond voting — in navigating our nations future?”
The way world café works is that after each twenty minute conversation, people get up and go to a different table. Therefore, after a couple “rounds” of conversation the people are mixing together all around the room. At the end people randomly share with the room, from their seat, their experience and what they heard in their various conversations. The effect is that all these separate groups that came into the event with their own separate agenda’s begin to develop relationships with individuals from the other groups. The intent of this first plenary session is simply to acknowledge that we’re all Americans, we’re all in the same boat, and that maybe cooperation between groups from all sides may make sense in the face of a crisis.
I can imagine the next day being an inquiry into values. “What’s most important to you as an individual and as a citizen?” We can spend time allowing people to throw out words discuss them in small groups and then collect them and vote on them using wireless keypad voting (something we have done numerous times with great affect in the past — see list from Feb ‘09 Citizens Summit). Once people see that we’re all Americans and that we share a lot of the same values, then we need to have some tools to deal with the areas where we disagree, often very strongly.
In this case, maybe for a whole afternoon (day three) we can hear from professional trainers about dialogue and conflict resolution tools like: listening to be heard, speaking to be understood, managing emotional triggers, the art of inquiry, and techniques for managing judgemnet. This session, based on experience, builds a great deal of trust and gives participants the sense that we can safely and effectively deal with our differences. The conversation from this point forward becomes grounded in an acknowledgement of common bonds.
On day four and five is when we can get into “the issues.” Very often people want to begin discussing policy immediately and in my experience that’s a mistake. Trust, respect and communication has to be created. By this time in the conference I can imagine we use a self-organizing process called open space technology (free market conservatives call this process “spontaneous order”) that allows any individual to convene a breaklout session on any topic/theme of their choice. When this happens and there are very different groups represented, its amazing the crosspollinization that takes place. Throughout the day I can imagine Greens and Libertarians co-hosting sessions on local control and localization. I can imagine MoveOn.org members and Tea Partiers co-hosting sessions on the role of government. Because there is no-one “in charge” dictating the agenda and people are free to come and go from sessions at will. The conversations tend to be much more creative and imaginative and much less adversarial, the natural tendency when people are in a relaxed, open environment where they feel safe is to be innovative.
What this country needs right now is creative innovative thinking. The adversarial “game” is tearing us apart. At a deeper level, our current political “operating system” cannot deal with complexity. The system is defaulting in the face multiple, interlocking crises, i.e. economic, environmental, national security and health. Neuroscientists have found that people who are skilled at “managing chaos” are people who engage not only their left brain – reason, logic, analysis – but also their right brain – intuition, creativity, imagination. Government is primarily a left brain institution. From my point of view, what we need is a parallel, integrated left-right brain “institution of citizenship” where people can relax, open up and get creative about the challenges facing us (this new “institution” can take many forms from local house parties, library dialogues, town halls, citizen assemblies, all the way up to this annual national conference of conferences.)
As a conservative and an organizer who wandered into the dialogue and deliberation community five years or so ago, I feel that as governments at all levels become overwhelmed and unable to respond to complexity, naturally citizens will need to self-organize and begin to respond on their own. This can go well or it can go badly. My intention is that we anticipate the “gathering complexity storm” and begin to organize events like this transpartisan conference of conferences. We need a healthy alternative process for generating win-win policy options that work for liberals, conservatives, greens, independents, libertarians, and those who don’t identify with any side.
I have the greatest confidence that we as Americans can do this. We have always been incredibly adaptive in times of need. These times are calling for innovation in our political process. I see us rising to the occasion.
Transpartisan Alliance News
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MoveOn.org and Tea Parties working together??
Is it realistic to think that two groups such as MoveOn.org and Freedom Works, the lead catalyst and organizer of the Tea Party/9-12 movement could possibly find common ground? Given the institutional and financial pressures inherent in the two-party system it will be very difficult for these groups to actually work togther publicly, but recently two of their leaders met on a “transpartisan panel” at the Engaging the Other Conference. Their was a remarkably civil dialogue and all present were inspired that if the unthinkable cooperation were possible, the red-blue game may begin to shift in dramatic ways. Here’s a 7 min. video that gives a flavor of the very hopeful conversations…
Transpartisan Grassroots Up-wising!
For six years I have been trying to communicate the vision and strategy of Reuniting America at the leadership and at the grassroots levels…
Continue Reading December 8, 2009 at 1:56 pm Leave a comment
Transpartisan Town Hall, Fresno, CA
The other night about 35 people in Fresno got together at “the big red church” to talk about Ending the Political Un-Civil War. They were real estate brokers, retirees, non-profit leaders, former senior business executives, conservative columnists and politicos from the left and right. The purpose of the evening was to engage this group of community thought leaders and networkers in the possibility of a new way to going about politics. A way that moves beyond traditional dualities and fixed positions by applying proven techniques of dialogue, deliberation, and conflict resolution.
Invitations for the evening went to all sides and was promoted on Alan Autry’s conservative radio show, but to be honest those who showed up tended to be more progressive. Ideally participation is approximately a third progressive, a third conservative, and a third independent or unaligned.
The room was set up as a world cafe format, and after an introduction to the national organizing work of the Transpartisan Alliance and setting of ground rules for civil dialogue, participants began to talk among themselves. They told stories to each other about “what experience most shaped their political point of view.” They then told a story about a time when they were deeply emotionally triggered by a political conversation, person or issue. They then were asked to step into the other point of view and tell the story, in the first person, through the other’s eyes. It was at about this point in the evening that most folks realised that we all have stories…liberal, conservatives, greens, independents, even those who choose not to participate.
After this opportunity to get to know each other as people rather than labels or positions, participants had a chance to brainstorm as a group about “The Transpartisan Possibility in Fresno.” What would transpartisan dialogue aimed a building bridges of cooperation look like here? Would it be a series of trust building house parties among formal and informal community leaders? Would it have to focus on an issue like water or economic development to get people involved? Would a core group of citizen leaders form a neutral convening body that could organize town halls where all sides felt welcome, trusted the integrity of the process and were comfortable their particular agenda would be honored.
Tuesday night’s town hall was the next step in an unfolding process that began with a house party among a dozen or so folks on labor day week end. Fresno based core team member of the Transpartisan Alliance, Debilyn Molineaux, is committed to keeping the conversation moving forward. If you’re intrigued, inspired to learn more or just want to play with this new approach to creating win-win solutions for Fresno, contact Debilyn at debilynm@transpartisan.net, or 559-213-8463?
