II. What Happens in Dialogue?
What's Facilitation Got to Do With It?

A. Participants: Identifying, Matching, and Preparing Participants

Identifying, matching, and preparing participants it sounds like we're matchmakers, doesn't it? Well actually, this was one of the most fun aspects of our particular dialogue project. We have no romantic matches to our credit, that we know of anyway, but we did unwittingly (or half-wittingly) contribute to one or two truces in longstanding personal conflicts among activists.

We definitely acted as a catalyst for friendships, for cross-fertilization between organizations, for matching up a set of happy housemates, and for the initiation of an intergenerational women's creativity circle.

Dialogues led to informal helping relationships including dog care, child care, housepainting and roofing; to exchanges of recipes and delicious late night feasts, as well as increased support for the International Solidarity Movement (engaged in nonviolent actions defending Palestinians against some of the indignities and cruelties of Israeli occupation), and increased attendance at events related to indigenous peoples in the U.S.

The long-term results of the many dialogues, in fact, continue to unfold currently, over three months after the project's pilot year ended. However, none of these results was the least predictable as we sat at staff meetings matching name to name for the early rounds of one-on-one dialogue.

What did we look for? In its simplest form, we simply tried to match the two most contentious sides of a triangular relationship: matching older activists to younger activists, and matching UPenn students to community-based youth activists. There was no particular conflict between older activists and Penn students, who tended to work together fairly comfortably, so with a few exceptions we didn't focus on that match. However, we took many other factors into consideration, including the preferences stated by activists themselves.

If an older activist stated flat out, "I don't want to waste my time with anarchists, they're not interested in coalition," then we would work hard to match that elder with a young, articulate anarchist activist whose experience included serious alliance building.

We matched an older activist, a former Communist Party member and lifelong labor activist, with a young anarchist who had just started a job organizing sanitation workers.

An older, gay Latino activist was matched with a young person who tended to be judgmental of older activists as "sellouts"; the seasoned activist could hardly be dismissed, having lived out his politics his whole life and always intellectually and creatively on fire as a poet, as well -- so this was one of the more exciting dialogues, with enthusiastic reports from both participants.

Occasionally older, seasoned activists who are people of color expressed a preference to mentor young people of color, rather than sitting across the table from a young white activist. In at least three cases we matched older/younger pairs of people of color, producing in one dialogue an enthusiastic connection, in another a long-term friendship between activists who never otherwise might have met; and in a third, increased familiarity among acquaintances who had been "fellow travelers" at political meetings for years, but had never had a chance to get to know each other personally.

A few other examples of matching according to preferences and common interests: a young activist who found white male labor activists intimidating, was matched with a with a white male labor activist- the facilitator anticipating correctly that they would find common ground on prison issues. The labor activist had spent several years in prison as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War; the younger activist has spent seven years working on prison issues.

In another case, a young, straight white male student leader with a very strong ego was matched with an older, butch lesbian seasoned community activist with, perhaps, an even stronger ego- essentially we matched a much-admired young man with considerable privilege, with someone not easily impressed, who could challenge him and be comfortable allowing him to feel uncomfortable.

In another case we matched a young activist particularly outspoken about the need for armed struggle, with one of the most ardent older pacifists in the country. We matched a Palestinian woman with enough political experience and courage for several lifetimes, with a younger white woman anti-racist activist whose partner, a Middle Eastern man, encounters plenty of everyday racism.

In short, we looked for a combination of sugar and spice: enough common ground to sweeten any combination of activists who might have otherwise assumed they didn't have much to say to each other--. and enough cayenne pepper, or difference, to give the pair something interesting to explore. In reality, many a match was made on the basis of purely pragmatic considerations: who could show up where, when.

Scheduling turned out to be the single greatest practical challenge of the dialogue project, and often we would "match up" names of activists we thought would make great dialogue partners, only to give up on the basis of scheduling. One of our happy surprises, though, was that even last-minute dialogues dialogues in which a scheduled partner was a no-show, and another activist was substituted on a stand-by basis often turned out to be unpredictably smashing successes.

In one such dialogue, an older community-based activist was able to vent her frustration at being wrongly stereotyped as an "upper class suburban" activist just because she wore a suit to speak at a press conference and the dialogue partner to whom she vented worked for an organization led by the influential activist who had done the harmful stereotyping. In another, a ten-year old conflict was peacefully mentioned and admirably resolved after an hour and half of serious conversation. Such occurrences, although individually unpredictable, are exactly the kind of fruit we would expect to come out of a pattern of dialogue across differences.

Preparing participants: this varied a great deal, depending on such factors as the reluctance or eagerness of participants. Those activists who immediately said, "Intergenerational dialogue? GREAT IDEA! I'll be there, what time?" tended to need little preparation, but they were the exception. Most activists required several (three to ten!) conversations about the goals of the project, the process, the engaged, safe atmosphere created by facilitators, etc. before they committed to a time and place.

We found that older, seasoned activists tended to want to know a little more about who they were meeting with; tended to think more about their own curiosity and questions even before the dialogue began; and tended to be more reliable about time and place. Younger activists, both students and community activists, seemed willing to show up knowing little about the person they were about to meet, or knowing just a name and very general category. We found it useful to share just enough about the dialogue partner to whet the curiosity of the participant, without saying so much that our own biases, whether admiration or judgment, might get in the way.

If a participant had a strong reputation for being a talker or for being very shy, we might mention that in an understated way to their partner, i.e. "You may have to be assertive about saying your piece," or "you may want to be patient in drawing this person out," but even that level of "warning" or suggestion was unusual. More typically we focused on the overarching goals of the project facilitating connection, exploring difference uninhibitedly in a safe environment, and encouraging intergenerational collaboration and let the ensuing connection unfold naturally.