Using an old-fashioned "Shhhhh" to handle obstructionists.

[daynurse]

People scattered throughout the audience at Woolsey's Town Hall using an old-fashioned "shhhhhh" can keep it calm.
Hope you all can be there. Be sure to read below about using "Shhhhh".




You are invited to join me, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, for a townhall meeting to discuss health care reform.


Monday, August 31, 2009


6:00 – 8:00 pm


Petaluma Veterans Memorial Hall


1094 Petaluma Boulevard South


Petaluma, CA 94952


For more information or to request special accommodations, please call either of my California offices (415-507-9554 or 707-542-7182)


Sincerely,


Lynn Woolsey


Member of Congress


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Help us ensure the majority voice is heard in town halls.



Hi


I just got a report from our organizing director in California, Laura Deehan, about a town hall meeting she attended with Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA). One attendee, she said, yelled at the top of her lungs that the representative wanted to "kill my grandma," and she wouldn't stop.


How are you supposed to have a debate with that going on?


In order to prevent the dissenters from taking over the room, Laura was able to coordinate the rest of the room to shush disruptors -- and it worked.


Thanks to many of you, the tone of many congressional town hall meetings has improved.


There are just two weeks left and still 300 more town hall meetings in districts around the country, and if we want to make sure they don't devolve into rowdy discussions about death panels, or yelling matches dominated by a few obstructionists, we need to get our organizers to as many meetings as possible.

[jofish]

People scattered throughout the audience at Woolsey's Town Hall using an old-fashioned "shhhhhh" can keep it calm.

In order to prevent the dissenters from taking over the room, Laura was able to coordinate the rest of the room to shush disruptors -- and it worked.

Thanks for the reminder that we need new approaches to making town halls and other forms of citizen democracy work. Many of us who work in the field of public participation have come to believe that the issue is not so much disruptive people, but the very way we conduct these kinds of town halls. Large rooms with a single speaker communicating to a one or a few "leaders" is a recipe for lowering the quality of interaction. It emphasizes speaking over listening and rewards the eloquent, the outgoing, and unfortunately pandering or demagogic speech.

There is a fabulous group of public participation practitioners, The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (https://www.thataway.org/), that has called for a new way to conduct these town halls that can revive their essential value. Check out "Upgrading the Way We Do Politics (https://www.thataway.org/?page_id=1663)."

Bottom line: shhhhhing may help short term, but we all need to look hard at how we actually 'do democracy'. The essence of democracy is less about being sure one's unique voice is heard as it is about generating collective wisdom. May we all get better at that and quick!

Joseph