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The D+D Community Rallies to Help in U.S. Gulf Coast Restoration
Immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a large Gulf Coast Diaspora was created, with refugees spread throughout the U.S., particularly in the South. In truth, the Gulf Coast from Fort Walton Beach, Florida to Port Arthur, Texas, is one gigantic disaster area in dire need of rebuilding. Although some major work has been going on since Hurricane Ivan (September 2004), major repairs have hardly been started post-Katrina. The Mississippi coastline looks almost as bad as photos from the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Thus, a tremendous need exists for all kinds of reconstruction. This includes: infrastructure (water lines, roads, bridges, sewers); homes; businesses; schools...and millions of lives and families.
A Multitude of Tasks It’s no surprise, then, that in addition to fixing the basics which is underway, that more long-term planning has already begun in earnest. But what would be the priorities? How will they be decided? Who will decide them? How will actual communities that were flooded out be restored? Like many other Americans with practical skills, practitioners of Dialogue and Deliberation (D+D) have been contacted by local, state and federal leaders to begin thinking about how best to mediate and facilitate this massive reconstruction effort. Within days after Katrina struck, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi set up a Commission to coordinate the enterprise. Along with Mississippi’s Congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., one of the U.S.A’s leading D+D organizations, AmericaSpeaks (www.americaspeaks.org) was invited to Biloxi, Mississippi–which had nearly been wiped off the map. At the same time, some of the world’s leading architects were conducting a planning exercise in the top floor of an otherwise destroyed casino to help develop some plans for the future of Biloxi. The idea was to have the results of this planning session...and some preliminary work by AmericaSpeaks...presented publicly late in December by the Governor’s Commission. The publisher of the Biloxi Sun Herald, and its parent organization, Knight-Ridder Publications, were determined to maximize citizen participation in this unprecedented rebuilding effort.
Where It’s At Now and Where It’s Headed Almost simultaneously, other members and networks of the D+D community have been meeting–via telephone conference calls and email lists–to brainstorm on how best to serve the needs of the Gulf Coast Diaspora and the rebuilding efforts on the ground there. Representatives of the Biloxi Sun-Herald, Knight Ridder, the Knight Foundation, The Deliberative Democracy Consortium (www.deliberative-democracy.net) , The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD at www.thataway.org ), and AmericaSpeaks are involved as well. These calls and conferences are on a continuing basis now and into the indefinite future. Another participant in the calls, The International Association of Facilitators, has issued an invitation for immediate help by trained facilitators who are willing to go to Mississippi (www.globalfacilitators.org .) The continuing telephone and email conference group has just finished a jointly produced opinion-editorial essay that it will try to get published throughout the Gulf region, if not nationally. Once that is done, JPD will reproduce it on these pages. It has also come up with some preliminary ideas about which kinds of D+D will be most productive at various stages of the community rebuilding process...and which groups are the best candidates to the Gulf Coast and help out. The guiding value behind all this is that the citizens of the Gulf Coast...those remaining and those who fled but who want to come back... should be “at the center” of the rebuilding process and that this will best be accomplished with some help from the D+D community.. All this is still taking shape. JPD will provide instant “news” as the Gulf restoration process unfolds. JPD also has two blogs that are discussing this and other “disasters” that are accessible on the home page at www.auburn.edu/jpd .
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