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send a subtle message for those participating about how to engage in a peaceful civic dialogue. I

saw it as my chance turn a social issues oriented group dialogue into a case-study, but do it without

my influencing consensus or a course of action by those attending so that the study is focused on

purely the individual experience and resulting impression or sense of self realized as a conclusion.

In summary, deliberative dialogue exists when a certain process is in place and when the

application of process allows dialogue group members to move from many diverse individual

perspectives to a point of shared perspective. This will require ‘us’ to see beyond diatribe, being

able to distinguish between relevancy, truth, priorities and combing out fake news, narratives of

diversion and distraction. With respect to process, Yankelovich (2001) whom I was fortunate

enough to meet with informed his students that dialogue becomes deliberative when the following

four qualities are in place: participant equality and the absence of coercive influences; a

commitment to listening with a fresh willingness to trust with empathy; and a willingness to bring

thoughts and assumptions into the open. Applying deliberative process to the practice of civic

dialogue, as I do in this dissertation, results in discourse that allows groups the opportunity to

create an environment for individuals to agonize with oneself and others (Saunders, 1999) about

the topics of concern being addressed like poverty, implicit bias, harassment, race and racism. etc.

The review of literature consists of various sections addressing the public sphere and public

spaces, town meetings and public hearings, deliberative democracy and freedom, intergroup

contact, reason and rational discourse, conflict and tension, and race and racism.

Democratic practices are variations on the things that happen every day in communities. In

order for these routine activities to become public, citizens have to be involved. Yet this doesn’t

mean that communities have to do anything out of the ordinary—they just have to do the ordinary

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