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Dialogue on Israel/Palestine
The Jewish Dialogue Groupworks to foster constructive dialogue within Jewish communities about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other polarizing, controversial issues.
The JDG is a non-partisan, grassroots organization that formed in November 2001. The workshops are designed to help people to:
(1) listen to and understand one other, across political differences
(2) work through their feelings
(3) examine difficult moral and intellectual questions
(4) deliberate about the choices they face
They have just published a new guidebook:
Constructive Conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Guide for Convening and Facilitating Dialogue in Jewish Communities in North America
To download the guide free of charge or order a printed copy ($18 plus postage), visit: www.jewishdialogue.org/guidebook.htm
.: posted by Claudia Horwitz, 5/24/2006 07:02:00 AM
Opportunities for Deeper Engagement - Summer '06
This summer there are multiple opportunities popping up for deeper engagement around issues that matter. Here are three that have come to our attention most recently; all look amazing in their own way:Reimagining New Orleans
May 25-28, Wildacres Retreat Center, Little Switzerland NC
In a new initiative aimed at reviving civic engagement and civil society, Second Journey will convene a COUNCIL OF ELDERS charged with Reimagining New Orleans. Ironically, great national calamities, such as Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, also contain the seeds of great opportunity in the deep sense of solidarity and civic engagement they foster. The May 25-28 Council will invite a diverse group of participants to reexamine fundamental aspects of the American social contract and confront environmental and social realities made starkly clear by Katrina.
Our national debate thus far has focused on the question, Can we save New Orleans? By asking a different question, Can New Orleans save America?, we arrive at a different truth: namely, that we cannot reimagine New Orleans without also reimagining America. The Council will be held at Wildacres Retreat Center in western North Carolina and is limited to 40 participants, a quarter of whom will come from the Gulf Coast region.
See http://www.secondjourney.org/NewOrleans.htm
2006 Authentic Leadership Summer Program Global Village Square
June 16-18, 2006 Halifax, Nova Scotia
As leaders from diverse contexts, where can we bring our stories and questions, our hopes and fears, and our impossible challenges? Where will the elders, the young people, and the middle generations gather, so that they can better understand their contribution to the whole village? Please join us in the village square. A global village square will form in Halifax, Nova Scotia, this June. We will come together as a multi-generational gathering of peers who are being called to respond to some of the pressing community and global challenges of our time.
For more information: www.shambhalainstitute.org/global_village.html Or call: 902-425-0492
The Shambhala Institute is a nonprofit organization based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Global Village Square is part of the Authentic Leadership Summer Program, which also includes a five-day Core Program, June 18-24. Presenters include Peter Senge, Margaret Wheately, Hunter Lovins, John McKnight, Christina Baldwin, Adam Kahane, and others at the vanguard of authentic leadership for organizational and social change.
Summer of Resistance to the Iraq War
Summer of 2006, Washington DC
This summer, a consortium of local and national activist groups has initiated a Summer of Resistance to the Iraq War, inviting young people to Washington to learn a range of skills for resisting the war, learned in process as they hit the streets in various creative ways with their peace message. Youth will reclaim public space and use political art forms like guerrilla theater and will organize demonstrations and direct actions. Sponsoring groups include Peace Action, CodePink, AFSC, Nonviolence International, and the Washington Peace Center . Participants will benefit from hundreds of years of collective organizing experience and will be provided with materials and training.
To friends in activist organizations:
Please endorse this Summer of Resistance! Endorsement can range from simple verbal support for our mission to stop the Iraq war through nonviolent resistance to an array of contributions in resources or staff. Can your group provide a part-time paid internships for participants in our program, or donate financial resources to this six-week program?. Please assist with any of: Meals, Presentations, Supplies, Cash, Program promotion, Housing, Internship & employment opportunities
TO JOIN THIS EFFORT to stop the war:
http://www.summerofresistance.org
.: posted by Claudia Horwitz, 4/26/2006 02:15:00 PM
Strategy Skillshare for Movement Building
Two key social change groups, Ruckus Society and Training for Change, joined together to host this event at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Northern California. The aims were to learn how to best offer our movements strategy trainings and how to increase strategic thinking. This is my personal take on what happened.What is working?
We have a lot of successful tools. We only got to the tip of the iceberg, but there were a lot of very useful things introduced, including:
-Spectrum of allies, that allows for a mapping of the range of people and groups who would be affected or connected to a particular issue, campaign, strategy.
-SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
-Reclaiming our ability to tell the story and use "smart memes" (for more info on this check out http://www.smartmeme.com- very compelling stuff)
-Storytelling and "case studies," This included watching the film "Bringing Down A Dictator" about the student-led movement Otpor that led to the overthrow of Milosevic in Serbia. The film, and participant members' stories about their own strategic highs were incredibly effective in generating discussion and principles.
-Six-stage campaign framework, as developed and used by MLK and the Civil Rights movement. The stages are: gathering info, doing education and leadership development, negotiate, increase motivation for struggle, direct action, new relationship with opponent.
-Scenario work (see fuller description at the end)
-Tableaus, that allow us to reconnect with a particular moment in time (from our activist work) and the visceral impact of success or transformation or pain.
Questions for the future
1. What are the new forms and language that will assist activists to engage in dialogue about strategy that has not just winning, but liberation at the heart? This would mean that strategy would systematically and explicitly be set in a context much broader than planning and tactics. And it would mean new language and framework to replace winning/losing and us/them.
2. What are the new forms and language that will assist activists to engage in dialogue about strategy, across multiple lines of difference? By this I mean not just identity (race/ethnicity, age, gender, and sexual orientation) but also our ideological differences and our different approaches. This is the kind of diversity we have not yet begun to engage adequately. Similarly, we need to do a bit more definitional work upfront - what do we each mean by strategy? What are the growing edges of our work in this realm? What is working?
3. What are the new sources of inspiration, the new models that offer us possibility? We can still learn a lot from the Civil Rights movement for example, but only alongside more modern day examples, like the emerging global justice movement, youth organizing in the Balkans, etc.
Scenario work
I have been learning some about scenario work from a mentor and friend, Katherine Fulton at the Global Business Network. It is a way of engaging people with the future and with things that are out of their control. I like it because it gives us permission for not knowing. It also gives us another way of thinking about strategy beyond the often-felt despair of feeling like current conditions will continue indefinitely and getting stuck in a fantasy-land when we only think about what should be. Here is a look at the steps, a very basic version:
1. Develop a focal question
This should be specific, open-ended, non-rhetorical, and in a future frame of ten years. Folks work on their question, first alone, then with a partner. We decided we wanted more guidance on the best way to develop these questions, but people felt sufficiently satisfied with where they ended up.
2. Certainties and uncertainties
The next part is to make a list of certainties (things that probably will not change in ten years, for example - the state of U.S. military power or the use of the Internet) and uncertainties (things that probably will) that will affect the focal question. There can be a lot of juicy debate about which fit where. Again, folks work on these two lists individually and then share with their partner.
3. Creating the matrix
You choose the two uncertainties that would have the most impact and create a matrix. This was all very eye-opening for people. This was when the real strategy work would begin, the fleshing out of each the four quadrants that result from the matrix. I shared some thoughts about how to do this: consider what you know about these variables, how people often react in the face of them, what has been true in the past, what you can imagine. Many of our other strategy tools would now be useful in each of these quadrants as well.
.: posted by Claudia Horwitz, 3/31/2004 10:36:12 AM