Civic Engagement
and the Restoration of
Community
Six
Conversations That MatterSM
Overview
This is a set of ideas and tools
designed to restore and reconcile our community by shifting the public
conversation. The public conversation is the one we hold when we gather
in meetings and in large events, and the one that occurs in the media.
Restoration comes through creating new possibility in those places where
history and the past seem overridingly restraining.
The dominant existing public conversation is
void of accountability and soft on commitment. To be accountable, among
other things, means you act as an owner and part creator of whatever it
is that you wish to improve. In the absence of this, you are in the
position of effect, not cause; a powerless stance.
To be committed means you are willing to
make a promise with no expectation of return; a promise void of barter
and not conditional on another’s action. In the absence of this, you are
constantly in the position of reacting to the choices of others.
Our
intention is to create the possibility of an alternative future by
creating a public conversation based on communal accountability and
commitment.
|
