At each event, as a candidate I’ve tried to balance a series of (sometimes competing) goals for my participation, including:

• Authentically presenting my true self to the audience while also trying to make a good impression
• Speak clearly and intelligently about those issues, getting specific whenever possible, in a very limited amount of time (“you have two minutes to lay out an economic development strategy for the next four years – GO!”)
• Highlighting substantive differences in approach and perspective between myself and my fellow candidates, without engaging in any personal attacks or petty remarks
• Actually answering the questions being posed while also tying them into the bigger picture and what might be meaningful to voters
• Being humble and gracious in my comments while also showing that I’m someone who will stand up for what’s equitable and just
• Making use of the time given to speak without dominating the conversation
• Showing respect and appreciation for all points of view while calling out problematic logic or misleading statements

As you can guess, doing all these things well and at the same time is quite an endeavor!  It’s one that I generally enjoy, but it also consumes a lot of energy and is quite a vulnerable experience.  My hope is that the end result is meaningful to voters.

I think there’s also value in previewing how a would-be officeholder might handle the debates, discussions and conversations that they would engage in once elected.  Do they actually get to the heart of the matter, or do they engage in pandering and circuitous logic?  Do they stay focused on specific positive outcomes, or do they keep coming back to what they’re against and who to blame?  Are they willing to listen carefully and change their minds along the way, or are they intent on showing everyone how right they are?

These qualities will directly impact the ability of (in my case) the City Council to get work done and move the community forward.  I’ve appreciated those who have told me that when they’ve watched the debates I’ve been a part of with these kinds of questions in mind, they’ve seen even more notable differences between candidates than even the answers to the debate questions might reveal.

Of course, not everyone watches debates that way.  For some people, it’s about who “wins” or who comes across as the strongest, most powerful presence.  I certainly understand that for the organizations hosting the debates, it can be more interesting to produce an event where some sparks fly and the tension rises.  That’s okay – I’ve said all along that we have to be careful not to be too polite to each other when the future of the City is at stake, but we also have to make sure we don’t turn the conversation into a shouting match, as some of the Presidential debates happening right now seem to have become.  It’s hard to talk credibly about collaboration and inclusive leadership when you’re also brandishing a knife.

I appreciate all the groups who have made the unusual number of local debates and conversations possible and accessible in this election: the Chamber of Commerce, the Palladium-Item, WCTV, the Human Rights Commission and the Student Initiative for Equality and Justice, Center City Development Corporation, Friends Fellowship Community, RadioTroy.com, WHON, and others.  Thank you!

We were asked about education, access to affordable housing, how to pay for proposed improvements in City government, the local Latino population, the community’s relationship with its workers, what we can do to keep more college graduates here, whether Council members should be injecting themselves into private business decisions, and more.

But I think the one question that was probably most  piercing for all of us was from Toivo Asheeke, who asked what we as Council members would do to restore a sense of hope and empowerment to people who live in Richmond.  It’s a huge, important, emotional question, and as Toivo was quoted as saying in today’s Palladium-Item, our answers as candidates were indeed “insufficient.”

As candidates running for one seat on a 9-seat local legislative body in a small city in the Midwestern U.S., it might be tempting to shrug off the call to play a role in restoring hope and empowerment in our citizens.  And politicians should rightly be careful to make promises they can’t keep – if you believed the statements that sometimes came out of President Obama’s election campaign, for example, as soon as he was sworn in there was going to be so much hope and empowerment flowing in the streets we’d choke on it; how’s that working out for us?

But I do think restoring hope and a sense of empowerment is something City Council can impact here in Richmond, and that’s what I said last night:

On the matter of hope, I said that we’re living in a world where hope is hard to come by globally, as economies decline, fuel prices rise and the gap between rich and poor grows larger, so it makes sense that the tension and uncertainty in the air is here in Richmond too.  But I think that every community has an opportunity to redefine what makes it hopeful.  We can shift from a culture that suggests you find hope in wealth, cool products/gadgets/clothes and defining yourself as a consumer to a culture that finds hope in the relationships we build with our neighbors and families, the way we treat other people, the way we care for those in need.  If we can show that hope exists in our humanity and in people instead of in economic indicators, I think we can model a life that our community members – especially young people – will find more hope in.

On the matter of empowerment, I agreed with Toivo that this is an area that City Council has done a disservice to the community, especially around the matter of the defunding of the Human Rights Commission.   As I said last night, you can argue the point of whether or not we need a government-funded HRC – that’s fine – but it should have been a two-way conversation that reflected a serious engagement by Council members with the perspectives and viewpoints brought by members of this Community.  Instead, it was a one-way conversation, with most members of Council agreeing outside of public meetings how they would vote and then not responding to the many concerns, questions and pleas for dialog that came from their constituents.  There are few things more disempowering than to feel like the elected officials who represent you at a local level – where the impact is felt most directly – are not listening, not willing to talk through the nuances of an issue, in some cases not even willing to respond.

That has to change.  If we want voters to care about an election, that has to change.  If we want our young people to feel more engaged with the civic life of Richmond, that has to change.  And if we want to build a version of Richmond that actually reflects the hopes and needs of its residents, that has to change.

I really appreciated Toivo’s question, challenging as it was.  My particular hope today is that voters here continue to push candidates for office with such thoughtful and relevant questions.  It’s good for us, and it’s definitely good for Richmond.

To be sure, I think the President (and any President) deserves an unusually high level of courtesy in that particular setting, and that Wilson’s actions were unusual and historically unprecedented in their dis-courteousness.  But I don’t think they represent some aberrant, isolated flare-up on the part of a single person.  Instead, I think Joe Wilson has highlighted the fact that much of the conversation about health care reform – and much of the way politics are done in Washington in general -  is driven not by respectful dialog, but instead by emotionally charged, disrespectful outbursts that come in many forms.  As unfortunate and ill-considered as his shouting was, we can at least commend him for acting from the heart, where as his peers in Congress typically reserve their uncivil comments for settings where they know they won’t be held as accountable to them, masking their failure to engage in real dialog with feigned respect and disingenuous, emotionally manipulative exchanges.

By yelling out at the President during the speech, Joe Wilson showed the true colors of the way most politicians are approaching the health care debate: interrupting, yelling, disrespecting, misrepresenting, trying to get a laugh or a jab in without ever engaging the substance of the issues at hand, and with so little concern for the people actually affected by the conversation that you’d think they weren’t actually agents of democracy, just people who play them on TV.

It’s not clear to me why we entrust such an important conversation to such ineffective, duplicitous people.  Is it clear to you?

There are some exceptions to this phenomenon: politicians, issue advocates and community organizers who are actually trying to engage the substance of the issues and work for a real solution that actually addresses real needs.  You don’t hear from those people too much – they certainly aren’t interrupting Presidential speeches or inciting hateful speech at Town Hall meetings.  They’re too busy trying to get something done, and sometimes, the broken systems and processes in place actually move aside enough for those people to succeed.  But we know that’s rare, and certainly not as exciting to talk about on cable news as death panels, abortion funding and illegal immigrants stealing your soul in the night.

In this sense, then, it might benefit us all for members of Congress to stop pretending and speak from their hearts like Joe Wilson did.  If you follow that to its natural conclusion, you know it would get pretty messy before it got any better, but perhaps it would be a step forward in creating a process that honors real dialog and integrity, instead of political convenience and artificial appearances.

I would be happy for our representatives in Washington – who often hold life and death issues in their hands – to show us their true colors on live national television every day.  Wouldn’t you?

As I thought about these observations (which I suppose are fairly obvious to those who hop between cultures), I realized that I’m definitely someone who prefers to be challenged, and who gets the most out of a conversation when I feel safe doing the challenging. But I know that in the course of seeking healthy dialog, especially dialog in the public sphere amongst relative strangers, it can still be quite a balancing act to engage in challenge with a positive outcome. And I worry that our fear of challenging or being challenged, or being out of practice with actually doing it, means that we end up missing out on great opportunities for conversation and building shared vision with those around us.

So I thought it worth writing down some of the ways that I find useful to challenge and be challenged, in hopes of eliciting comments and refinements from others who find themselves aware of their own tendencies and preferences in these areas.

First, I should be more clear about what I mean when I talk about challenging someone. If you’re already clearly engaged in a debate or dialog about an issue (such as you might be at a book club, or debate competition, or editorial board meeting), then you may be challenging each others` perspectives or opinions, but that’s not the kind of challenge I’m referring to. I’m talking about a setting like the scenario mentioned above, where there’s no default expectation that a statement or expressed view is in question, or that the listeners will react in any remotely opposing way to the speaker.

A dinner gathering where conversation is typically kept polite. A hallway conversation about the day’s news. A social exchange in a public place. These seem like settings where if someone says “Red really is the greatest color out there, and so…” and you happen to think that red is simply the worst color out there, you generally aren’t expected to interrupt them to say so, if you say anything at all. The challenge is a turning point where the chit-chat has ended, where the weather is no longer relevant, and the topic at hand is of importance to those conversing. And of course, I’m not talking about colors here….for me, red is politics, red is reproductive rights, red is money management, red is peak oil and climate change, red is how to raise kids properly, red is peace and justice issues, red is religion and spirituality.

What do I get out of being challenged? I’m asked to reconsider my views, to explore where they came from, to understand where I’m at with them now – that’s exciting! I learn how to communicate better, to make myself understood in ways that I don’t currently know – that’s great! I get to know viewpoints that are not my own, to really understand them, and perhaps even to adopt them – wonderful. When I think of times in my life when I’ve grown the most, felt the most alive, they are times when I’ve been challenged into new ways of looking at the world.

So, If someone wants to tell me that I’m wrong about red, to challenge me on my views, here are some ways that really work for me:

• Speaking plainly and boldly about how you feel. “Chris, I think you’re just wrong about that, and here’s why.” I respect it when feelings and views are not diluted out of concern for ego or politeness, though I certainly understand and frequently give in to that impulse.
• Maintaining the tone of the conversation even as its importance or intensity may escalate. I appreciate that some people express themselves best through raising their voice or gesturing wildly, but I generally don’t respond well to it. I think emphasis and importance can be shown in ways that don’t alienate someone (like me) who wants to hear and process the words as clearly as possible, without distraction. I fully realize that this is just something I can hope for, but not expect out of many people.
• Understanding my perspective fully. As I always strive to do for someone in a conversation, I can most engage another when I know that they are trying to see an issue from where I stand, and ask the questions necessary to get there. If it is always left to me to “make my position clear” and the other person isn’t invested in helping, then things quickly turn to debate and thoughts of victory for victory’s sake, instead of genuine mutual understanding.

Here are some things that really don’t work for me:

• Interrupting. If I’m interrupting someone, then we’re not having a conversation, we’re exchanging monologues, and we’re back to trying to win instead of trying to understand or agree. If someone is interrupting me, then I no longer have any sense of confidence in their ability to hear me out, and I just want the conversation to be over. I know that many, many interruption-laden conversations happen every day in families, businesses, and public spaces every day, and I know that it seems normal to some, but for me it’s a symptom of the declining quality of important dialog.
• Justifying a challenge based solely on vague personal declarations of understanding about how the world is. I’m fully in support of having conversation in this country that is LESS focused on the might and power of logic to the detriment of emotion and less cerebral forms of connection. But, if you’re going to tell me that I’m wrong about red, you can’t JUST tell me that it’s because you feel that way: “Chris, you’re wrong about red because everything I’ve ever experienced tells me so.” Whatever your reasoning, or emoting, or deep sense of right and wrong that guides you, you have to find a way to help me see it if we are to understand each other.

When I challenge someone, there are a number of things I take into consideration:

• Is this a situation where challenging this person can have a good and worthwhile outcome? Is it possible for us to have an exchange that is meaningful? If not, is the challenge about an issue that is important enough to go ahead anyway (i.e. standing up for something on principle more important than my relationship with the person I’m challenging)? Will the resulting conversation be impacted negatively by the setting? Would a written challenge be more effective?
• When I challenge someone’s views, can I do it in a way that authentically represents my own views or that respectively questions the reservations I have about their views, or is it just going to be a negation of something they’ve said that leaves no real path forward for them in the conversation? Am I challenging out of care, or out of the desire to be right?
• When does it end? If we challenge each other, and we don’t come to some point of understanding or clarity, how will we find closure? Does the other person want to resolve the challenge as much as I do (or more, or less)? What kinds of signs should I look for that they’re done? When and how will I express my need to end the conversation?

That’s what I have for now. What do you think? Do you like to challenge or be challenged in a conversation? If not, why not? If so, what methods or approach do and don’t work for you?

As a Senior Citizen I am really disappointed that not one question was asked about Health Care and rising Drug Costs for all the people. I can send you an email response and/or question but I do not know how to take or send a video or download and all that other stuff that younger people do. So therefore I was not given the chance to ask a question and I feel this is a form of discrimination…

Kolger goes on to suggest some topics that she would have wanted to cover had she been able to submit a question. The responses in the comments range from agreement to disagreement to outright insult. Of course this is all happening on the highly interactive website of the news organization that pioneered the fast-paced media product directed at short attention spans. I suspect there are some “senior citizens” out there who wouldn’t know how to point a mouse at cnn.com, and some who are preparing their YouTube video responses complete with CGI effects right now. Good for Nancy for getting this far.

Of course, we still CAN have a Presidential / Vice Presidential Debate here in the Fall of 2008, and one that gets national media attention. The Commission on Presidential Debates that turned us down is a private corporation that represents the Democratic and Republican parties, and that works to explicitly exclude other political parties from the debate process. While the practice of third-party exclusion is largely accepted in mainstream politics, it is certainly counter to the very notion of a true democratic process, as I discussed in an RNR podcast episode about Richmond’s bid.

So, now that we’ve shown we have the resources and interest in hosting a presidential debate, we can make an additional contribution to the political process by joining the Open Debates movement and petitioning the Citizen’s Debate Commission to host a debate in Richmond. Not only will we get national media attention and Presidential Candidates taking the stage at Civic Hall, we’ll also be helping to work for an important change in the election process – a debate that actually serves the interests of the American people first.

(Full disclosure: I participated in the Debate Bid Steering Committee as an adviser on matters related to telecommunications infrastructure and marketing.)

Update: My transcript of the mayoral debate is now available.

My response, posted in the forums (despite my better judgement):

It would be possible to debate some of Mr. Yevcak’s points related to the role of the courts, the history and nuances of U.S. immigration policy, and the legal technicalities of the recent presidential intervention in the Libby case. But I’m not sure what purpose that would serve, since Mr. Yevcak seems intent not on having meaningful debate or dialogue, but just on disparaging and insulting a wide swath of people, essentially on the grounds that they don’t agree with him about how the world should work. And of course, when that is someone’s goal, you can’t really have a meaningful conversation with them.

Whenever I see those kinds of comments, I’m always on the lookout for what sort of hope, what sort of ideological alternative the speaker has to offer us, so that the conversation can be about what’s possible and what we want for the world and each other, instead of what’s wrong with each other and why we should be afraid and hateful. Progress can certainly happen when we engage each other about the issues that are important to us, even when we disagree strongly, but I think it can only happen if we’re open to the possibility of something new, something better, something greater than ourselves. If we’re just here to insult each other’s backgrounds, views, and lifestyles, then we’ve resigned ourselves, I think, to a life that does not at all honor what’s possible or good in the world. We’ve decided that our differences are all that matter, and we lose out on what it means to be a part of humanity.

I look forward to future letters to the editor that have some positive vision to share, some sort of inclusive hope for the future and how to get there. Even if I have strong disagreements with the author’s world-views, I know we can move past our initial tensions to have those conversations with respect and with an eye on the common good.

Right now, the Pal-Item has a troll infestation. Ewwwww. And it’s not just the obvious kind either (though there are plenty of those). They’ve also got the kind that like to spread negativity, hate, oppression and self-referencing, oversimplified explanations of how the world is and should be, all under the guise of participating in some sort of great online community experiment. Which means it can take one or two reads of a post and a few seconds of brain processing time that you’ll never get back to realize that you’re dealing with a troll – who has the patience for that?

And so you’re just reading along looking for interesting conversation or news, and all of the sudden you spot a troll offering up its bait!

A-ha! Maybe if you were a forum newbie, you would try to respond with some positive perspective, a plea for civility, or some other retort. When you’ve been reading online forums as long as I have, you become jaded and bitter (or you just realize you have better ways to spend your time, like tending a garden or adoring your sweetheart), and you don’t bother with that any more. The instinct becomes to look for the button that says “IGNORE ALL POSTS BY THIS USER.” That’s the nice thing about trolls – they tend to be consistent in their ability to offer up nothing of value.

The issue is, a lot of forums don’t have that “Ignore” button available. Sometimes it’s an actual policy issue, and other times they just haven’t gotten around to it or there are other barriers. And then there’s the awkwardness and privacy issues of having your “ignore list” visible by the administrators of the forum – faux pas galore!

Enter the power of technology to help you reclaim your forum browsing experience. Here’s what you do:

1. Make sure you’re browsing the web using Firefox, one of the best web browser software packages available. It’s fast, free, secure and regularly updated and improved. Wow.
2. Install the Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox. It’s free, easy to install, and allows you to do some mighty cool things (though it doesn’t do much on its own).
3. Install the phpBB User Ignore script for Greasemonkey. Also free, also easy to install.

Now, remember our silly little troll friend? After you follow the steps above, the next time you pull up the forum page, you get a little [X] next to its name:

When you click the [X], the Troll is added to a list of forum users on your computer who you never want to hear from again. And when you reload the page, you experience blissful peace and quiet:

Of course, if you REALLY want to see what they’re saying, you can toggle that easily. And you can always take them off your blocked list if you need to. This system works for most any forum that is powered by phpBB, one of the most widely used forum packages out there. People have even begun to adopt it for use on other forum types as well.

Perhaps not surprisingly, once I built up my Troll-inventory and browsed the Pal-Item forums, I enjoyed the wonders of largely empty pages, ghosts of pettiness and provocation fading into the background as a few gems of halfway coherent comments popped up now and then.

In all seriousness, I’m sure some of the above sounds a little harsh at times, and the discussion about whether or not it’s kosher or helpful to just wipe other people out of your browsing experience is certainly one worth having (um, without the trolls). In most cases, I’d rather not be using an online forum at all – real human interaction can’t be beat. But for those times when you want to keep up with a virtual conversation and your box of Troll-B-Gone hasn’t arrived yet, I think this is pretty handy. Let me know how it works for you.

Did you watch or attend the debates (or listen to them)? What did you think?