This post was submitted by NCDD member Joan Blades, co-founder of Living Room Conversations and MoveOn.org…
At times I feel like a mad scientist bringing together people with diverse views to have conversations about challenging issues. In unstructured social circumstances, I would be concerned about potential blow-ups. What awes me again and again — the container that Living Room Conversations creates enables meaningful connections to form and defuses the explosive elements. It is such a joy to see the best in people as we learn from each other and discover our commonalities.
Living Room Conversations are a little startup right now, but as we connect with partners working on criminal justice reform, Wall St. reform, immigration, energy, eliminating corruption and more, the potential for empowering communities becomes clear. If this simple formula can help people connect and find common ground on a broad set of issues, just perhaps, we can change our civil and political culture.
How do we enable this simple open source project to go viral? We’ve created a sharable short video and even submitted it for the MacArthur Looking@Democracy competition. Check it out, vote, and share it if you think of an organization or individual that might have ideas for how to use them!
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