Report

A review of ideas of how we could have been more effective at this event. Every event dynamics is different. So need a lot of flexibility to maximize effectiveness.

In the moment at these events it's sometimes hard to take the initiative. There is a lot of tension doing new things or actions. For example, taking the empathy tent to the other street corner I don't know how the police will reach. Will they try to stop it? etc.

Ideas

  • We could have set up the tent on it's own corner

  • Offer empathy circle practice to Unity protesters from the start.

    • do 30 minutes of connection to get grounded.

    • How do you feel about taking part in this event?

    • New people coming to the event join an empathic listening group.

  • Have someone talk to the media,

    • have a handout with our story.

    • be clear we are here to foster empathic listening to everyone, offer dialogue facilitation and mediate between the groups.

  • Outreach

    • Go around with chocolates 'Empathy Kisses' and offer them to all sides.

    • Invite them to the empathy tent, have a hand out.

    • Offer a recorded empathy session on the spot and record the interviews.

Plans

    • Have a pre event plan

        • pre circles

    • Event plan

        • event circles

        • have handout.

        • gather names and contact info

        • like the media do one one empathic listening video recorded sessions.

    • post event follow up plan

        • contacts for post circles

        • we have international team of empathy circle facilitators.

Empathy Tent Report from Roseville.

    • Story - Right wing.

    • one person hard to effectively work the area.

    • women's Indivisible problems - need team building and empathic communication skills

    • leadership Indivisible problems - need team building and empathic communication skills

    • lot's of people actually walked between the sides and mentioned how they had dialogued with the other side.

    • The Answer group said they did not trust 'right' because they were not open and honest about their intentions.

    • the Unity group dispersed at 12:30 and the right keep growing, had more commitment.

    • Empathy Tent: Articulate difference between protest/counter protest and empathic engagement. It's the process that is applied to all problems. Dave working on this. It's transformation versus win/lose.

Dave: I watched all those Roseville videos. My sense is that the real opportunities at these events for us is to make contacts. If we had enough of us there taking names we could organize a TownHall type Empathy Circle thing. People obviously wanted to talk to each other. Perhaps you could still arrange that with the people you met?