Review the 500,000 Voices opinion survey
At a time when decision-making in Clark County and Southwest Washington seems increasingly fractious and angry, the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington and Washington State University Vancouver are making a display of problem solving through respectful civil discourse and listening to people.
On Thursday afternoon, WSUV associate political science professor Carolyn Long announced the new Institute for Public Deliberation, a program of the WSU Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service.
Long, speaking before a group of around 200, also announced a schedule of open forums about one of the most pressing problems facing this area and the nation as a whole: affordable housing.
That’s because 80 percent of people who completed a voluntary online public opinion survey about values and beliefs in Southwest Washington — part of a large survey project called “500,000 Voices,” sponsored by the Community Foundation last summer — said that affordable housing is an important priority now. Fully 40 percent said the problem is “urgent.”
At the same time, Long pointed out, 75 percent said that working together to solve problems is desirable, but only 47 percent said they actually expect to see it happen.
“The survey created an urgency,” said WSUV Chancellor Mel Netzhammer. “The results are too important to let them lie.”
“We need to act differently,” Long said.
Long has already been teaching a class inspired by the survey results, she said, called “Civil discourse in a time of incivility.” Her students have been studying meeting facilitation and deliberation, and they’re ready to lead the community forums that have been scheduled. “The students will be our pioneers,” she said.
True civic deliberation should be respectful, attentive and an “antidote to adversarial politics,” Long said. If it’s done right, she said, it should be powerful enough to solve the “wicked problems” that partisan politics and ideological grandstanding never seem to solve.
On hand to hail civic discourse and respectful deliberation was former Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, who told a few tales from his long career in government. He learned directly from his mentor, Gov. Daniel J. Evans, the power of listening to your opponents during the most fractious of times — the late 1960s and early 1970s — and finding ways of turning them into allies, he said.
“You don’t get things done by being a strident partisan,” he said. “Your challenge, here in Southwest Washington, is to figure out how to have civil discourse at the local level.”
Netzhammer said the new effort and the Institute for Public Deliberation demonstrate WSUV’s “commitment to the civic health of our community” and to a “vibrant deliberative process.”
Here’s the schedule of open forums on affordable housing.
• 10 a.m. to noon March 24 in Battle Ground: Battle Ground Community Center, 912 E. Main St.
• 5 to 7 p.m. March 25 in Longview: Mark Morris High School, 1602 Mark Morris Court.
• 2 to 4 p.m. March 26 in Vancouver: WSUV, 14204 N.E. Salmon Creek Ave.
• 5 to 7 p.m. March 31 in Camas: Camas High School, 26900 S.E. 15th St.
• 5 to 7 p.m. April 1 in Skamania County: Stevenson High School, 390 N.W. Gropper Road, Stevenson.
• 5 to 7 p.m. April 2 in Vancouver: Clark College, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way.
To register, contact Carolyn Long at ipd@wsu.edu or visit www.500Kvoices.org.
