tension, allowed participants to get to know each other better, and helped people see how our policy opinions are often based on our personal experiences. This initial conversation also established a level of trust within the group.
4- Using a written guide to help structure the sessions proved beneficial. Groups tended to be more effective when they followed a guide that provided discussion questions, background information on the issue, and suggestions for managing the sessions. Some of the guides also presented viewpoints that mirrored the main arguments being made about race; these views were intended to present a sampling of the ideological spectrum, so that participants could analyze different ideas and options and relate them to their own experiences. These guides were sometimes written by local organizers but more frequently supplied by national organizations specializing in race dialogues or public deliberation.
None of these techniques for successful small-group discussions were entirely new. They had been used, in one combination or another, by dialogue efforts and organizations well before the 1990s; in fact, they can be traced back to the civil rights movement fifty years ago, the Chautauqua adult education methodology of a century ago, and other precedents in other eras. And just as some organizers were employing these techniques to address race, other leaders were using them on other issues. But the dynamics of race as an issue, along with the sheer scale of public engagement on race in the 1990s, meant that these tactics were reinforced and disseminated more than ever before; they set the template for public engagement at the beginning of the 21 st Century. How we learned to move from talk to action, on race and other issues There was another key realization that emerged from this work: holding a few small-group dialogues would not be enough. In order to make sufficient progress on any of these issues, it was clear that large numbers of people, and many different kinds of people, had to be participating in the discussions. The best way to fight racism, boost volunteerism, or develop trust between citizens and government was to involve a critical mass of citizens in the effort. Local organizers also learned that no single group or organization would be able to recruit the large numbers and different kinds of people that would make the project credible. Outreach through the media or by public officials would help to legitimize the effort, but citizens would be much more likely to participate if they were approached by someone they already knew. The only way to accomplish this kind of largescale, one-on-one recruitment was to reach out to all kinds of community organizations— businesses, churches, neighborhood associations, clubs, and other kinds of groups— and ask the leaders of those organizations to recruit their own members. Together with the small-group discussion techniques, these recruitment tactics became key ingredients of public engagement. Organizations with missions that focused explicitly on race, such as the National Conference for Community and Justice, the YWCA of the USA, and state and national associations of human rights workers, began to popularize and promote these strategies, as did civic groups like the Study Circles Resource
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