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<FONT FACE="Optima, Times New Roman"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>I wanted to share my blog entry from today on this week’s Open Space with a very hostile community group. <BR>
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So this week I facilitated community meetings in my neighborhood aimed at authentic community engagement around a housing development proposal. The context: the most demographically diverse neighborhood in the region of 4 plus million where voices polarize between support for high and low income housing.<BR>
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In spite of near violence, proposal sponsor near-hijacking of the process, and participants shouting objections to giving input (the stated event intention!), the 300 plus participants - in our meager 45 minutes of time - interacted on what matters to them relative to this actually very complex situation. (The more vocal) People were livid at being asked to talk as a community about their issues and ideas instead of enjoying the usual public fare of public hearing grandstanding that we offered later that produced zero actionable content.<BR>
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In Open Space where I very simply introduced and invited and held the space, we had over a dozen topics drawing genuine contributions harvesting 8 printed pages of proceedings.<BR>
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It was the usual and beautiful reminder of what happens when a community is invited into a premier launch from historic victimhood to authentic engagement. Their mythic proportion resistance to their own empowerment was based on a stated preference for positional grandstanding and verbal pie-throwing against perceived persecutors. I stopped counting the number of people who remarked at the amazing and palapable difference in the energy of the community during and after Open Space ... the space where no one can control anything and everyone gains everything. <BR>
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(Thanks to Lisa Heft for gorgeous spiritual support throughout ...)<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Papyrus, Times New Roman"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>Jack<BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#808080"><FONT FACE="Papyrus, Times New Roman">jack ricchiuto<BR>
two.one.six/three.seven.three/seven.four.seven.five<BR>
www.designinglife.com / www.appreciativeleadership.com</FONT></FONT></SPAN></FONT><FONT FACE="Optima, Times New Roman"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'><BR>
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