Page 362 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

Creating WRECK space (Metasphere) to move from hurt to healing. Civic dialogue

and public deliberation can be convened in places and space where politeness can give way to

conversations that challenge and confront the ideas of individuals who gather purposely to explore

critical social issues from a range of perspectives. Such is the purpose Habermas’ public sphere:

“The public sphere is best described as a network for communicating information and

points of view…; the streams of communication are, in the process, filtered and synthesized

in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions.”

(Habermas, 1996, p. 330)

A primary intent for the Albany Community Conversations to work was to offer four

deliberative dialogues whose theme “Implicit Bias” included focusing a lens on discrimination,

race and racism. The purpose was to bring people of diverse opinions and perspectives together to

discuss, share, frame new understandings, and challenge stereotypes and misperceptions. The

conveners understood that the dialogue space itself was an important aspect of the conversation

setting as it offered members of the group a known address that was an appropriate meeting

environment and a large enough place to contain breakout tables for confronting the issues and the

disagreements that were likely to arise.

Spaces for having any dialogue that deal with social issues are uncommon and often occur

in reaction to incidents, rather than a proactive practice. As such, an inviting environment is

essential to conveying to participants a warmth and sense of commitment to exploring critical

topics of concern with fairness and safety. The dialogue conveners, with assistance from City of

Albany agencies brought in a few professionals with proficiency in effectively creating and

employing the practice of civic engagement and deliberative dialogue tools, were keenly aware of

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