{"id":4123,"date":"2003-01-16T17:14:26","date_gmt":"2003-01-16T17:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4123"},"modified":"2003-01-16T17:14:26","modified_gmt":"2003-01-16T17:14:26","slug":"in-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4123","title":{"rendered":"in DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

My commute to the University of Maryland<\/a><\/p>\n

takes me about an hour and fifteen minutes each way (I live in Washington<\/p>\n

and take the Metro to work). Therefore, I like to cluster my downtown<\/p>\n

meetings on the same days, rather than shuttle back and forth between<\/p>\n

DC and Maryland. Today—the coldest day so far this winter—I<\/p>\n

had a string of meetings neatly arrayed across downtown. The first was<\/p>\n

a breakfast with my good friends from the Study<\/p>\n

Circles Resource Center<\/a>. They support thousands of local "study<\/p>\n

circles" around the county—groups of citizens who meet face-to-face<\/p>\n

to discuss issues. We ate in an Irish-themed hotel restaurant near Dupont<\/p>\n

Circle and talked about ways to promote a national deliberation for young<\/p>\n

people on the topic of young Americans’ role in public life. As a researcher,<\/p>\n

I am interested in what would happen if several organizations that promote<\/p>\n

deliberation in very different ways all conducted a deliberation on the<\/p>\n

same topic at the same time. For example, there are online deliberation<\/p>\n

sites like E-ThePeople<\/a>; grassroots<\/p>\n

networks of citizens involved in face-to-face discussion like the National<\/p>\n

Issues Forums<\/a>; groups that convene randomly selected bodies of citizens<\/p>\n

for intensive, lengthy conversations; and groups that manage very large<\/p>\n

summit meetings of citizens all convened together in a single place. I<\/p>\n

am interested in the differences among these methodologies. However, as<\/p>\n

a result of the discussion with Study Circles, I realized that the important<\/p>\n

differences are not really in methods. There probably isn’t even a huge<\/p>\n

difference between online and face-to-face conversations. The important<\/p>\n

distinction is the way that these groups fit into a larger social context:<\/p>\n

how they recruit people, who participates, and what outcomes potentially<\/p>\n

result from the deliberation.<\/p>\n

Next stop was a meeting with United<\/p>\n

Leaders<\/a>, a Massachusetts-based group that has a Washington outpost<\/p>\n

in a major law firm. So I found myself sitting in the lobby of an elegant<\/p>\n

office building, decorated with scupltures that looked like Henry Moore’s.<\/p>\n

(They weren’t.) The flagship program of United Leaders is a summer internship<\/p>\n

for young people, and they wanted me to help them get some support from<\/p>\n

the University of Maryland. I’m going to do my best.<\/p>\n

Then on to the Council for Excellence<\/p>\n

in Government<\/a>, a major nonprofit, where my colleague Deborah has an<\/p>\n

office. I wanted to camp out there for a little while, get Internet access<\/p>\n

so that I could catch up with the latest developments with The Civic Mission<\/p>\n

of Schools, and talk to Deborah. <\/p>\n

At 3, my colleages Margaret and Carrie and I met with Dorothy Gilliam,<\/p>\n

a distinguished Washington Post <\/i>reporter who now manages the Post<\/i>‘s<\/p>\n

programs<\/p>\n

in journalism education<\/a>. Our goal was to acquaint Ms. Gilliam and<\/p>\n

her colleagues with our work with high school students in Prince George’s<\/p>\n

County—work that involves a lot of journalistic skills (from interviewing<\/p>\n

citizens to interpreting news articles). We were not well prepared and<\/p>\n

did not have a good answer when we were asked what we wanted from the<\/p>\n

Post<\/i>. I blurted out that we were simply hungry for guidance from<\/p>\n

people who had more experience than we do in journalism education. I don’t<\/p>\n

know how we came across, but I did enjoy the conversation about young<\/p>\n

people of color and their relationship to news and newspapers.<\/p>\n

Margaret and Carrie and I then had a quick coffee near my house to debrief,<\/p>\n

and that ended my work day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My commute to the University of Maryland takes me about an hour and fifteen minutes each way (I live in Washington and take the Metro to work). Therefore, I like to cluster my downtown meetings on the same days, rather than shuttle back and forth between DC and Maryland. Today—the coldest day so far this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deliberation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}