The quality of public dialogue in Richmond

I'm a strong advocate of the general concept that good dialogue can work wonders for resolving conflicts, building community, and improving the world we live in. (That's dialogue instead of, say, violence, explosive angry yelling, paternalism or monarchy, snap judgments, knee-jerk fear-mongering, heated debate, or silence and avoidance.) As a result, I am constantly aware of the need for better dialogue in my own community of Richmond, Indiana, and for venues that facilitate that practice. I would go so far as to say that Richmond is, on the whole, handicapped by the poor quality of public discussion about the issues that matter to us, and that addressing this handicap is one of the opportunities most ripe for the picking in our community today.

When you think about it, there aren't that many places for the citizens of Richmond to encounter each other regularly about the concerns and opportunities affecting us all. What does that mean about how we make decisions as a community? What does it mean about how we shape our driving vision?

• Those who do have a public voice tend to influence the process heavily
• When decisions are made that are contrary to our own wishes, we have a harder time accepting and adapting to those decisions if we weren't involved in the process
• When we don't know our neighbors and their desires, interests, and needs, we can't serve each other as community members
• When we don't talk to each other, other forces fill in the gaps, and they often don't have the best for our community in mind
• Our private lives tend to be less fulfilling when we are isolated from those around us

I could go on - Parker J. Palmer explores these kinds of issues well in his book Company of Strangers: Christians & the Renewal of America's Public Life. But it seems that no matter how you look at it, any hard choice to make or difficult situation to face - whether it about zoning or preservation or poverty or racism or cultural values or the future - is going to be a lot harder when people can't exchange ideas about those choices and situations.

So, I'd like to review the venues for dialogue that I know of, and seek comment from anyone else out there who can add to or comment on this list.

• The Palladium-Item Op-Ed Page
  The local paper has a fairly active op-ed page, but it is by no means what I would call an engaging public forum. Because it is the only such page in town and is subject to the interests and idiosyncrasies of its limited readership (and the smaller number of whom bother to write in), the quality and quantity of relevant thoughts on a given subject are not very stable. The Pal-Item also has a limit of 300 words for a letter to the editor, which tends to restrict any serious commentary or in-depth exploration of an issue unless they invite you to be a guest columnist, which just adds to the already significant discretion they have in shaping the quality of the conversation. They also seem to have a severe problem with the same small group of readers writing in regularly (thus, I assume, their requirement that you wait 30 days between submissions), and responses and "threads" of discussion are cumbersome in general, which further limits the quality.
   
• Public Common Spaces
  Richmond has little in the way of traditional public spaces where people come together to engage in conversation with whomever else might be there to do so. The layout of our main street / uptown is perhaps most suited for this, with its wide sidewalks, public benches, and variety of attractions that could bring an equally diverse slice of the population together. Unfortunately, it's largely quiet on evenings and weekends, and isn't perceived by most as a place to come meet others for conversation. The parks are similarly well suited and wonderfully maintained common spaces, but rarely attract a critical mass for meaningful dialogue. Malls of all sorts tend not to encourage spontaneous conversation, though the Richmond Square Mall is certainly well-used as a gathering place for all ages and backgrounds. Some neighborhoods have active neighborhood associations and perhaps even street parties and the like, but they tend to be limited to very localized areas in their benefit. My sense is that the use of public common spaces for striking up conversations with "strangers" is a practice fading in most of America these days, so Richmond isn't uniquely constrained in this way.
   
• Online Forums and Blogs
  I'm an advocate of using the technologies of the Internet to build community, and there are some good resources out there. The WayNet.org Talk of the Town forum isn't very high-traffic but hosts conversations about everything from history to education to genealogy to restaurants. As the number of bloggers in the area increases, some interesting conversations are going on in the comments and cross-posts happening there - I think the G101.3 blog became the most popular one almost overnight (but maybe that's the power of radio, eh). Some coffee bars and other hangout spots in town are creating online discussion areas to complement their physical spaces. And, hey parents, did you know that your teenager is posting his or her innermost thoughts on LiveJournal for their friends (and the rest of the world) to see? But of course there's the constant problem of lack of regular access to the Internet for much of the county, and online discussion formats tend to be very limiting in their own right, removing a certain human element from exchanges. So these virtual discussions are certainly contributing to public dialogue, but for now remain a very small slice of it.
   
• Public Events
  Being a fairly small city with a full roster of clubs, organizations, and special events, there are certainly a number of times throughout the year when you can go to meet your fellow citizens. The county fair, music festivals, the Rooftop Rendezvous, Chamber of Commerce events, Young Adult Professionals, various cultural happenings at the local educational institutions, etc. Even events like a Civic Theatre production or a Symphony performance can be great opportunities for discussion. I guess the "down side" to these is again that because they aren't really dedicated to raising the quality of public dialogue in the community, any progress made in that area through them tends to be accidental. They don't serve as a vehicle for that discussion unless the people attending are very proactive about it.
   
• Religious Organizations
  Richmond certainly has an active community of churches, and I know that the various congregations have a lot of opportunities for dialogue between regular services, community service events, common meals, and similar gatherings. I might suggest that these gatherings are some of the most active venues for public dialogue, but while there are certainly some inter-denominational events too, I think it tends to be the case that discussions had within a given church community don't often expand beyond their walls on a regular basis, and often don't have the goal of engaging the community as a whole.
   
• Private Gathering Places
  The bars. More bars. Book stores. Coffee shops. Restaurants. All of these places are locations where people go to socialize, but most of the ones we have in Richmond are not laid out to be open public discussion spaces. The average restaurant experience is fairly isolating. The average bar sports loud music and other distractions. I do see people making spontaneous connections and striking up conversations at places like Charlie's Coffee Bar & Gallery or Readmore Bookstore and Coffee Shop, but they are sadly under-used and under-appreciated as such.
   
• Intentional Public Discussions
  These are the events that are specifically organized to facilitate public discussion about a given topic or topics. Perhaps the most widely attended are City Council meetings (and related commission meetings), especially when a hot topic is on the agenda. Those particular meetings tend to be more about presenting viewpoints in front of the meeting body and public television cameras, instead of exchanging ideas freely with fellow citizens, so they are fairly restrictive. But other kinds include the Study Circles and Community Builders groups that have been organized around issues like racism and ethnic violence, community forums organized by places like the Townsend Center and Earlham College, and other one-off events put together by various civic and non-profit institutions.

This last category of venue is the one I would *love* to see more of: spaces created intentionally to bring people together to have respectful and in-depth conversation about the things that matter to us. It's not that I think all social exchanges need to be so cerebral, but I think there are good middle grounds where people can have fun while also engaging each other authentically. Something like the Conversation Cafe Initiative provides a cookie-cutter format for such experiences, and is easy to do if you can just get the people there.

So - those are my note on where we do and don't have quality public dialogue in Richmond today. What am I missing? How do you like to engage your fellow neighbors? What are the other opportunities out there?

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