WinC had another opportunity this past summer to take dialogue facilitation “on the road.” Sam (Richards) and I and a small group of alumni facilitators all boarded planes from Austin, Newark, DC and Philadelphia at dawn on a beautiful Friday in July, and landed in LA within hours of each other. From there, we drove to Irvine to spend the afternoon preparing for the Sounds of Truth festival set to occur the next day.
This was going to be a gutsy event organized by Rebellious Truths, a gutsy group of people, who want “the facts” and think we should seek those facts together. So they spent months meeting up with members of Occupy, the Tea Party, Oath Keepers, Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats and others, asking them to consider engaging in a single dialogue with their counterparts. When one of the founders shared with me their plan, I was immediately intrigued and interested. We all wanted to see if this kind of gathering could happen, and if it were possible to find common ground amidst the divisiveness. When the day finally arrived, a film crew followed all of us through the event–from its awkward beginnings to its monumental end. And finally, just two days ago, they released their documentary about what we tried to accomplish that day. In this season of (too often) mean-spirited bi-partisanship, this just might provide a vision of hope. Check it out: The Day We Came Together:
