So much is happening under the guise of “the budget crisis” that I thought it might be useful to deconstruct this issue a bit. I am concerned, in particular, because a number of efforts are emerging to formally engage the public in deliberations a…
Probably virtually everyone reading this is already aware of the triple crises in Japan — mega-earthquake, mega-tsunami, and mega-nuclear catastrophe. I have found it often difficult to find truly useful information and perspectives on this crisi…
What would happen if professional organizers and facilitators of dialogue and deliberation decisively and publicly demonstrated their capacity to help cities and states solve their biggest problem — collapsing budgets — and then broadly promoted…
Recently I’ve seen a swirl of information (mostly on the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation listserv) about participatory budgeting. Below, you’ll find a sampling of this info, in relatively raw form. I do not know enough to sort it …
Check out this website… particularly its critique of “traditional” sustainability activism and the need for “greatly enhanced capacity for rapid adaptive social learning” — which is largely what my co-intelligence work is all about.
This article was written for a progressive magazine which asked for an updated version of my earlier essay on the Haitian crisis. http://bit.ly/7pJ0iF I decided that rather than updating it I would reorganize it to reflect some deeper dynamics I s…
I’ll talk about democracy in a minute. But first a note about crises and evolution.Evolutionary science tells us that crises and catastrophes are cauldrons of co-creativity, generating new forms.Perhaps the most dramatic example is how the 70 heav…
The story about the Haiti earthquake is pretty clear: A horrible thing has happened to a lot of people. They need help, and the world is moving to help them. True enough, as far as it goes. But there is more to it than that, almost overwhelmingly …
It seems the there’s a hot proposal in California to convene a constitutional convention in the form of a randomly selected citizen deliberative council — and to make the ability to do that, as needed, part of the law of the State. This would be …
In my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, the City has chosen to explore the issues of climate change and energy challenges through the lens of six topics – * Buildings and Energy * Food and Agriculture * Land Use and Transportation * Consumption and Wast…