“Keeping Civility in our Discourse” is the theme for Dublin’s community forum on Saturday. Facilitators Leaf Seligman and Balmeet Khalsa describe the forum as a “nonpartisan toolkit to survive primary season,” featuring tools the average person can use to keep potentially difficult conversations and discussions fruitful and effective.
Dublin’s community forums grew out of an intention to promote common ground and bridge divisions in the community following the 2016 presidential elections, Khalsa said. The monthly forums focus on topics that help attendees find common ground, and past conversation topics have included family lore, hunting, and winter sports. Khalsa said the conversations are ways everybody in the community can learn a little more about the topic and one another, and attendance ranges from 10 to 40 people depending on the month.
“With January being the official beginning of primary season, we decided to take a risk and have this topic,” Khalsa said, but emphasized that the conversation isn’t about politics, but how to communicate, “helping us find ways to talk to each other that would allow us to have difficult conversations without ending relationships.”
“I’m a little nervous,” she said of expanding the forum into subject matter related to political divisions, but believes the forum has been going long enough and strong enough to be able to take on the topic. “We’re very capable of laughing at ourselves,” she said of herself and co-facilitator Seligman.
“The way to have a community is to overcome the inertia and come out and do it,” Khalsa said. “That effort is what makes the difference between a strong community and a not so strong community, people willing to put themselves out there once or twice a month in a room with people you’re not so sure you’ll agree with.”
The forum is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 25 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the DubHub.