​The 188-page guide, Fostering Dialogue Across Divides: A Nuts and Bolts Guide, was written by Maggie Herzig and Laura Chasin and published in 2006.

For years, Essential Partners (formerly the Public Conversations Project) has set the standard for facilitation materials and training in the dialogue and deliberation field. This guide is chock-full of EP’s road-tested techniques for effectively engaging people across differences–is an invaluable resource for both established dialogue facilitators and newcomers to this work.

The guide is available for free download on EP’s website here.

From Essential Partners…

Preface
This guide shares some of what we and our colleagues at Essential Partners have learned grappling with this question during the past fifteen years. The text offers general advice as well as very specific nuts and bolts tips for those who wish to convene, plan, and facilitate constructive conversations on deeply divisive issues. What we offer in these pages is based on our experiences working in many different settings and on a wide range of topics, including abortion, foresting practices, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sexual orientation and the teachings of Christian scripture, the war in Iraq, interfaith and interethnic relations, and social class differences.

From the Introduction
Dialogue participants talk in ways that serve such purposes, communicating their views, experiences and values without attacking their opponents personally or “trashing” opposing perspectives. Dialogue participants talk about the experiences and values underlying their own views. They ask real questions. They avoid interruptions. They listen.

The need for dialogue in our public life is less well understood than the need for debate and activism. In history and civics classes in the US, debate and political activism are presented as time-honored tools in the toolbox of democracy, and rightly so. It was largely through these forms of public engagement that slavery and segregation were ended, women and African Americans got the vote, and the war in Vietnam was ended sooner rather than later.

Dialogue has a vital, if quieter, role to play in a resilient and civil democratic society. It can build bridges across divides in the body politic. It can promote healing in small communities that are struggling with a controversy. It can also reduce the likelihood of gridlock in the halls of Congress, hatred in the arena of public opinion, and potentially dangerous misrepresentations in our sound-bite saturated media.

This is an excerpt from the guide, you can find it in full on the Essential Partners’ site here. 

About Essential Partners
Essential Partners helps civic groups, faith communities, colleges, and organizations build resilience, cohesion, and trust across deep divides of values, beliefs, and identities. EP’s trademark methodology helps communities and institutions have healthier, more complex, more inclusive conversations about polarizing differences of values, beliefs, and identities—whether the issue is building a new public school in Ohio or addressing the global refugee crisis in Jordan.

Follow on Twitter: @essentialprtnrs

Resource Link: https://whatisessential.org/fostering-dialogue-across-divides-download

This 31-page PDF was used to guide Jay Hartling and Laura Wells’ well-received workshop at NCDD’s 2006 conference in San Francisco. The lively lecture-style presentation and discussion examined action beyond dialogue, and the intersection of state institutions, civil society organizations and neighborhoods through preliminary research on the implementation of Venezuela’s new Law of Communal Councils. Presenters discussed the convergence of political will and pressure from grassroots communities to support a bold shift to a truly participatory democracy. The session also shared information on different approaches to democracy in other regions of the globe, particularly the global south.

Democracy is more than free and fair elections and the ability to choose leaders to represent our views. It is also about creating a healthy civil society, an active political culture, and providing ample opportunities for the incorporation of all people into the political, economic, democratic, cultural and participatory process.

Venezuela has institutionalized representative AND participatory democracy in its constitution, its laws and in practice. This is a work in progress, as Venezuela moves away from 40 years of elite rule to an inclusive, democratic and participatory structure that facilitates the active involvement of all citizens in the development, implementation, management and evaluation of public policy.

Jay Hartling and Laura Wells

Download the document here

Gwendolyn Grant of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City created this dialogue guide and workbook to accompany Jim Myers’ groundbreaking book “Afraid of the Dark: What Whites and Blacks Need to Know About Each Other.” According to Grant, “Afraid of the Dark defines with such clarity and simplicity so many of the issues that have created this gulf between blacks and whites. It brings to the forefront the stuff that we talk about within our black and white circles, but seldom, if ever across the color line.” Grant distributed this 12-page resource during her well-received workshop at the 2006 NCDD conference in San Francisco.

Gwendolyn Grant’s workshop at the 2006 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation was titled “Honest Talk About Race – Afraid of the Dark Reading & Dialogue Circle.” Here is the workshop description:

Race lies at the center of many aspects of American life, yet it is difficult to talk about race in ways that bridge the gulf between African Americans and Caucasians. In light of recent events such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and rape charges filed against the Duke University Lacrosse Team, it is increasingly apparent that blacks and whites view things so differently, but seldom engage in dialogue about those differences in constructive and productive ways, especially when talking about education, crime, and law enforcement. Afraid of the Dark Reading & Dialogue Circles create a safe environment for authentic and candid dialogue that advances racial understanding in ways that diversity workshops cannot. With inquiry and dialogue, participants will learn how to use Afraid of the Dark Dialogue Circles to improve relationships across the color line and work more effectively to address many of the social challenges that face us.
Gwendolyn Grant and Jim Myers, 2000

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This 5-page document was handed out at John Frank, Ed.D.’s workshop at the 2006 NCDD conference. The workshop, “Mapping A Culture of Peace: A Community Conversation Project of the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice,” focused on the experience of a remarkably successful and innovative project on Mapping a Culture of Peace in Florida.

Here is the first paragraph of the document:
The primary purpose of the dialogue is to engage citizens of a given community in vibrant conversation about the meaning of a Culture of Peace. How do we define it? What does it look like? How is it practiced in the context of the social institutions of a given community? Would we know it if we saw it? The premise is proactive and suggests that peacemaking must be more than simply protesting war or posturing an elusive notion of lions dwelling with lambs and doves flying free among the clouds. For peace to be real it must be concretized in the context of the dominant culture, not separate from it. It must be enfleshed in the structures and systems of our social institutions, cutting through overlapping circles of human exchange as it impacts educational systems, business practices, religious institutions, government, the political economy, media, and family life. It needs to be manifested in our relationships, our workplaces, neighborhoods, and all institutions. The maps cut across the fabric of our lives, linking one community to another, creating a web of relationships that make the global, local and the local, global.

Workshop description for “Mapping A Culture of Peace: A Community Conversation Project of the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice”:
This session is grounded in theory and practice, drawing from transformational leadership and the function of values talk in the context of progressive civic discourse. The presentation focuses on the experience of a remarkably successful and innovative project entitled “Mapping a Culture of Peace in Florida.” Learning objectives include (1) sharing an innovative design for recruiting conversationalists across diverse progressive constituencies that are not previously connected; (2) discovering how conversation unpacks and gives fertile meaning to the phrase culture of peace; (3) learning how to map the organizational and institutional infrastructure of an emerging culture of peace in a given community; and (4) learning how to reframe peace/social justice/sustainability issues in a way that moves beyond a reactive approach to a more proactive agenda, and one that empowers local communities. The presentation will conclude by considering the potential for these dialogues to impact the broader political discourse.

John W. Frank, Ed.D.

Download the resource here