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The purpose of these meetings is to understand issues that affect our lives from different perspectives in order to work together
to discover shared interests and effective responses to the problems and opportunities we face.
Ground
Rules
Maintain an atmosphere of curiosity and respect
Avoid discussing politicians or their
selling points
Include everyone in the conversation
Do not judge or criticize
Initial
Meetings: Asking Questions
There is no hurry, pressure or time frame. Go through as many steps as
make sense for your group. Each time you meet, review the previous steps. Have fun.
1. Choose
an issue (Health Care, Taxes, Inequality, Race, Jobs, Climate, Environment - this step may be done before the group meets)
2. Ask questions about that issue to find an area you all agree to focus on. (Health Care could be narrowed
to: How did it get so expensive? Why is it so inefficient? What do other countries do that works or doesn’t
work? etc.)
3. Ask questions about the area you choose to focus on. Don’t try to evaluate
or answer the questions. Just list as many questions as you can think of. Return to this step as needed.
4. Play with your questions. Change closed-ended questions (questions that have a clear, simple answer) to open-ended
(questions that invite more questions) and open-ended to closed ended. Find questions that lead to other questions.
Organize the questions into categories. Change the categories.
5. Each person prioritizes his
or her questions by looking at what is most important or relevant to their lives. Priorities are shared with the group.
6. Each person chooses a list of questions they would like to have answered and posts them to the website.
Decide whether to explore the questions individually or in teams.
7. Bring the questions to the local
library and ask the librarian how to best find reliable answers to the questions.
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