I’ve been wanting to write for a while, on how I see the relationship between listening and social change. As much as I love dialogue… and as passionate as I am about mediation / facilitation (especially the transformative, non-linear, emergent varieties thereof…)  I also think it’s key to acknowledge that, on its own, facilitation is not going to change the world. On the other hand, I don’t think we are going to create the kind of world we need, without the value that listening can bring…

So here is a story I’ve been telling for a while, that is paradigmatic for me of the deeply synergistic kind of relationship that can exist, between activism and facilitation…

Almost ten years ago now, when I lived in Sonoma County, local agricultural experts became concerned about a tiny pest that was starting to migrate north from Southern California. As the glassy-winged sharpshooter was a potential threat to the vineyards that are a mainstay of the local economy, County experts developed a plan for using airplanes to spray the fields with clouds of pesticides. Problem was, lots of people lived in “tham there hills”, and the toxic substances officials intended to use in their spraying campaign, were also highly toxic to humans…

So concerned local people came together, and attempted to contact the powers-that-be, to initiate a conversation about their concerns. However, the response was underwhelming. Local officials at that point did not seem to be particularly interested in the environmental and health concerns that were being presented…

At which point, concerned people formed something called the “No Spray Action Network”, and began collecting signatures of folks who were willing to do non-violent civil disobedience, the moment that any spraying began….

That’s how I found out about this issue: a friend of mine approached me , asking if I would be willing to sign a pledge, stating that all of the undersigned would be peacefully occupying the major thoroughfare of Santa Rosa, and were willing to be arrested on this matter of conscience, principle, and public health and safety….

While I signed the pledge, along with hundreds of other concerned community members, the planned occupation never took place. As it turned out, once a local newspaper article reported how many people had signed and were willing to be arrested, the No-Spray network suddenly received an invitation, to come talk with local government officials…

And here is where it gets really interesting: according to my sources, the activist folks said something along the lines of, “why thank you, yes, we’d be very willing to come talk with you… and, we will be bringing a trained professional facilitator with us, to ensure that we can all be heard, and that we can all come up with an agreement that will work for everyone.”

While it took several months, many meetings, and countless re-writes, that is exactly what they did.  With all of the various perspectives around the table, folks came up with a pest abatement plan that took environmental and health issues seriously, and that also met the needs of the agricultural community. (Some of the history is still available online, thanks to the internet wayback machine.) Just for clarity’s sake – I was only minimally involved in this story, in the activist role via my signature on the pledge; I was not personally involved in this exemplary facilitation process.

So… activism and facilitation. To my mind, it is clear that we need both… Few people in positions of power are willing to seriously consider perspectives other than their own, unless there is a clear and compelling reason why they would benefit from doing so. In negotiation circles, this is called the BATNA  — the “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. In other words, parties who don’t feel they have to negotiate, since their BATNA is quite high, thank you very much, are very unlikely to come to the table. Hence, the need for activists to make visible, the “compelling need” to find a better way.

On the other hand, as a committed practitioner of non-violence, I think it is a sort of “moral violence” to believe that “we have the answer” on any particular issue, rather than to engage in a deep, honest, and good-faith dialogue with all who are affected by that issue.

Of course, to make sure that it is a good-faith dialogue, we need to make sure that everyone has a compelling reason to be there, and that the alternatives are clearly less desirable than a solution that truly works for everyone. As we’ve seen too much of lately in our national politics, negotiation doesn’t work, if only one “side” is willing to negotiate! And so we come back to, the clear and irreducible need for activism…

So, there you have it, my view on the interrelationship between the listening arts, and social change. While the listening arts are absolutely indispensable… they are also, especially when issues of  power imbalance are involved, clearly insufficient on their own. However, having both approaches working jointly… the readiness to engage in peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience, AND, the willingness to create a new future together, one that works for ALL… now there’s recipe for hope.

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A few recommended resources:

1) Lyn Carson is a pioneer in exploring  the interplay between activism, dialogue and deliberation, and democracy. Here is one of her early articles on this topic.

2) Another excellent academic article by Peter Levine and Rose Marie Nierras,  on the relationship between activism and public deliberation.

3) An essay  I wrote some years ago for the Collective Wisdom Initiative, inspired by Tom Atlee’s book, Tao of Democracy.

4) Just about anything on Tom Atlee’s co-intelligence site!