Page 421 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

function to help bring change and end strife, so one can argue that this effort can coalesce into an

organic form of DIY community intervention. This development involves challenging some of the

tenable assumptions of current mainstream sociological thought, media narratives and stuck

political paradigms that neighbors can’t or aren’t willing to talk to each other. Let’s build on a new

set of assumptions that fits with the nature of what these local efforts are tackling by talking and

accomplishing together. I have provided an overview of what is taking place and readers might

consider their involvement as the next step getting involved in the service of building community

conversations that improves neighbor relations and moves toward the elimination of all inequities.

I fully recognize the challenge and barriers that macro-level influences have on community

wealth and well-being and there is also need for assessment of those impacts too. Let’s also study

how dialogue offers worker empowerment and what impacts it has on education. My overall

emphasis, however, is on the ways in which Community Conversations can serve as a resource for

improving local capacity to respond to immediate social issues and for longer-range community

development.

Acknowledging dialogue as action takes on a greater meaning and more accurately

describes the depth of engagement and breakthroughs possible with sustained civic engagement

practices. As observed from my ‘in the action perch’, the forms of participant interaction and

leadership-exemplified (LE) produced specific shifts in the Metasphere carried out over the CC

sessions. Insight and perspectives shared describes a form of action and a quality of engaged

interaction and ‘being’ in the moment “I” awareness of participants and facilitators attending the

Community Conversations whose accumulations resulting in this dissertation’s study were gained

from analysis of interview data, informal observations and civic dialogue literature.

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