Colleagues -- friends ---WHOA!

    How about we use our collective creativity and mix it with some of our methods, and begin to turn this dialogue into something SO MUCH better --- bringing our dialogue onto higher ground?  

     Marshall's points are well taken -- we know how to plant a foot in the establishment and disestablishment, looking from the inside out on each side, and bring into being a new stance.  We can start by demonstrating this to ourselves now!   No need for anyone to quit the dialogue, but we can begin to restore basic respect with one with whom we may disagree.

     Tonight, I've seen on 60 minutes a group who represented all perspectives, once again shout over each other, accuse each other, without listening. A facilitator tried to get them to reflect.  They could not, but we can -- this is our strong suit!  We can restore deep listening.

      WHAT IF -- we called for an election process that uses only "I statements"  (I believe, I propose, I respectfully disagree") but does not allow for character assassination and other psy-war approaches?  We conducted such a process during the UN Peace Tent in Nairobi at the UN Decade for Women Conference, 1985.  Women from "enemy" countries sat in the Peace Tent for an hour at a time -- US and USSR women; IRAQI and IRANIAN women, ISrAELI and PALESTINIAN women, etc. listened, spoke, stated what they heard, course-corrected, slowed down, used a talking stick as needed.  These groups of women actually got somewhere with this.  No name calling, no "you" statements, only "speaking for oneself" statements. They got to "I would like to see" and "I wish we could" and "I want us to try..."

      What is your WHAT IF?  Please send them in!  We might come up with a list for a better election process in the future!  Knowing us, we could generate quite a brainstorm list of creative ideas.

Aurinkoista paivaa!

Joyce Bonafield-Pierce

bonafieldcohort26@gmail.com
[just back from a refreshing time in Finland, where collaboration is the name of the game]


On Sun, Nov 6, 2016 at 8:18 PM, Nancy Grow via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
Well said, Marshall!  Thank you!     Nan Grow
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2016 6:19 PM
Subject: [Dialogue] more news for Susan

I've 'enjoyed' Susan's anti-Hillary diatribes, especially her cartoon. Not that I agree with her biases--I actually voted for Hillary (without holding my nose too hard).
But I'm stunned that so many of my colleagues took the bait she threw at us--and jumped all over her.
Her cartoon, for example, articulates the entrenched "meme" or biased and emotionally charged view of a large segment of voters who have voted or will vote without reference to FBI Director Comey's last-second letter of "reprieve" for Hillary.
I predict that this letter won't change Susan's biases at all. She's totally stuck in "their" popular anti-Hillary meme, and nothing you or I or Mr. Comey can say will change her mind.
So what does this mean for all of us? Can we even relate to people--relatives, "friends", workmates, or (goddess help us) even old "colleagues"--who have bought the same political malarkey Susan has swallowed whole?
How can we make any sense of how Susan can be so misguided, given the depth of our common understanding of the way life is?
Or, for that matter, how can we embrace people with whom we have developed personal trust and mutual esteem, once we learn they're "living on a different political planet"?
Surely this is the moment for the 'transestablishment' dynamic. We need to speak to the hidden suffering 
of those who are angry and fearful and feel disempowered by their loss of economic, political, and cultural status as once-prosperous members of the middle class. And also to the segment of the electorate who feels Hillary is WAY too Establishment, is in bed with Wall Street and Corporate America, and has used the political system to disenfranchise them and dismiss their candidate.
Finally, it has become obvious that the political process may come to an electoral outcome, but that does not allow for healing or reconciliation between warring political parties, who will feel obliged to take the political battle to the next level--the halls of Congress.
Acknowledging and honoring the humanness of those we see as "our" political "enemies"--and eliciting their inclusive wisdom and insights into profound humanness--can be challenging as long as we take their bait and reflect their hate. We need to get WAY beyond this political impasse.
Marshall
BTW, American political cartoons in the 19th century were historically WAY nastier than anything Susan has sent us. But their distorted perspectives made political points and served an important function: they dramatized the way "ordinary" people perceived political shenanigans.




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