Training for Change Web-Based Manual for Dialogue Facilitators

By Marie Bloom
October, 2002

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Welcome facilitators, potential facilitators, brother and sister social change activists! This is your guide to the jungle, the thicket, the thorn-filled process of exploring differences among activists. It may not be easy. in fact I can guarantee it won't be easy but the first thing you should know is that the Activist Dialogue Project, at least as experienced by its first three pilot facilitators here in Philadelphia, was not only frustrating, but creative, funny, inspiring, provocative, growth-producing, and had its moments of great happiness.

So why did we do this thing, anyway? Well, wow, for people committed to creating a more loving and liberated society, we sure do dis each other sometimes, don't we? Maybe this is just an East Coast thing, but us organizers often seem to be dis-organized as we get in each other's way, judge and dismiss each other, fail to share resources, issue scathing critiques of each other's politics, competence, hypocrisy, and generally disagreeable ways of doing things. And really, deep down, each of us has the REAL answer, the right recipe, the truly revolutionary or the most deeply nonviolent, the most pragmatic or the most fun, irreverent, radical approach to bringing about desperately needed change-right?

From September 2001 to May 2002, Training for Change carried out a Dialogue Project, using three part-time facilitators, with the intent of addressing a small and specific, but vital, piece of the many and massive divisions among activists. What follows is part chronology, part comedy of errors (we'll try to entertain you with our mistakes), and part a serious guide for those of you who would like to carry out similar projects in your neighborhood, city, state, country, or region.