Hello Representative Kucinich,

I was deeply moved by your speech, and I would like to share a story with you about a community development method that I have found crucial in my work toward the creation of the kind of world you speak of so eloquently .

While there are many paths to take us there, this is one tool that I have found enormously useful. (I have some friends who are 'tellers' of oral tales, and they meet on Tuesday nights....while I wasn't there last night, I seem to have tapped into their energy this morning; hence the form of this story.)

A little tale

In Washington State, in the town of Hansville, there is a community called Shorewood. Once upon a time it, it was a summer retreat, with a few A-frames and many empty lots. It is a beautiful place, with a sandy beach and a swimming pool, and over time, it has grown into a place with many year-round residents of diverse backgrounds.  In Shorewood, there is a board, and that board is comprised of volunteers. In the early years, when all the members shared a common culture, a legacy from two wars-WWII and Korea, and many unquestioned assumptions--some good: "people should be trusted until proven otherwise" and some less helpful: "authority is always right" things went fairly smoothly running the clubhouse, the pool, and the common grounds.

Over time, things grew complicated. The community grew bored with governance, with so much focus on by-laws and rules and so little on dreams and aspirations, and the people went to sleep. They stopped supporting the board. They stopped calling. They stopped writing. Many never bothered to show up at the annual meeting, and sent in proxy votes instead. The board began to work harder and harder to fill the gaps, but they couldn't do it--they were just seven people, in a community of 257 lots. When problems developed, the people who didn't call, didn't write and didn't show up would complain, mostly to others, and one problem turned into many, and more rules were written, and people withdrew, farther and farther, waiting for someone to solve the problem. "We need an expert" they would say. "If only someone would fix this!" Sometimes they would find a person who was willing to try, and they would put that person on the board, only to chew them up a few years later....and this went on and on and on, and the problem in Shorewood grew, and other places had similar problems: businesses, and school boards, and PTA's and state governments and the armed forces and everywhere...."We need better leadership" said the people.

Now, in that neighborhood lived a facilitator who had been a facilitator for a while. And this facilitator was very interested in creativity. In her work, she was beginning to learn to deal with 'the energy of the group', and this intriqued her. She saw flashes of brilliance, sometimes in corporate environments, sometimes in non-profits, but she couldn't figure out how to unlock this group potential consistently. For years she played around with methods, testing and thinking and being creative...but the work was slow and discouraging, and very little progress was made.

In another land, the land of Port Townsend, not so far away from Hansville, was another creative person, and something of a dreamer, named Jim Rough...and Jim had a method, and that method was called dynamic facilitation....and that method had a webpage, called <http://www.tobe.net>www.tobe.net and one night, while searching for something on the internet--she didn't know what, but she needed some key to better group problem-solving-- the facilitator came upon Jim's website, and knew she had discovered something important. So the facilitator made a pilgrimage to Port Townsend to study the lessons of Mr. Rough. And from that experience, the facilitator began the powerful work of shaping group culture away from decision making toward "choice creating".

When the facilitator returned to her community, she began to work immediately with this method, incorporating it into the other things she knew about creativity in groups. When she went to a meeting, for example, to learn about school board issues, and the people were tired, and the people complained, the facilitator would nod. "You are tired," she would say, from the audience. "Your method is no longer working. Perhaps you would like to try something different." Often, the people would nod. "Yes," they would say, "Perhaps it is time to try something different." And sometimes they would try. And when they did, they found that the method was brilliant, and the method was simple, and the people were pleased.

The people became excited. "Do this more," some said. "I made a contribution," said others. "I want to learn to do this too," said others. The facilitator nodded. This was the power she had seen before only in flashes, opening up in wider and wider circles, a way for groups to work together, to sort and sift issues and distill them into simple meaningful documents written not by one, but by many voices, acting together, a way to tell their board members, or principals, or even just each other, "This is what we have decided is important. This is what we want to do." The people began to create maps. "There is a way," they said. "We can find it."

Things began to change. The people began to say, "We need to do this." "How do you want to do it?" said the facilitator. "We could do it like this," one would reply . "But there is a problem," said another. "Tell me," said the facilitator, "What would you need to solve that problem?" " Oh, " spoke a fourth person, "I can solve that--here is what you do..." And the people would talk, and the people would listen, and the people would act. And the facilitator would smile. Yes. Yes. Yes.

What is this?" the people would say to the facilitator. "What are you doing?" The facilitator would reply, "I'm not doing anything. You are."

The end

The change is beginning. Jim's work is influencing many people, and his work is influenced by the work of others. This process is appearing in many places...this week, I believe John Abbe is working with it in Sri Lanka....it is growing and will continue to grow. dynamic facilitation....choice creating...wisdom council....these are tools, they are easily learned, can be built upon and used with other methods, but they deserve to be known more widely. Please check out the website, and Jim's book.


Deirdre Duffy

Thanks for letting us share this one Deirdre!