How do we the people best confront a crisis like this (coronavirus pandemic)?
That’ll be the question we explore at our upcoming Democracy Cafe, live on Zoom video, on Thursday March 20 at 2 pm Eastern Time U.S.
Here’s a couple pertinent paragraphs from a New York Times piece on Sunday March 22:
Terrifying though the coronavirus may be, it can be turned back. China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan have demonstrated that, with furious efforts, the contagion can be brought to heel.
Whether they can keep it suppressed remains to be seen. But for the United States to repeat their successes will take extraordinary levels of coordination and money from the country’s leaders, and extraordinary levels of trust and cooperation from citizens. It will also require international partnerships in an interconnected world.
How do we create such extraordinary levels of trust and cooperation from citizens aka We the People?
Which begs the question: how do we create this trust and cooperation in times of polarization and distrust?
Almost five years ago, seeking answers when California was in the midst of a severe drought, I presided over a Democracy Cafe on a kindred question at the Mt. Shasta public library main branch in Mt. Shasta, California, where I’ve been invited at least once a year (except one year) since 2012 to lock hearts and minds with their diverse thinkers via Socrates Cafe, Constitution Cafe, and Democracy Cafe initiatives..
Here’s the link to a snippet of that:
It was meaningful and helpful to explore insights from sundry citizens who genuinely share the mission of Democracy Cafe — namely, that if we’re ever to create genuinely trust-based societies and communities on myriad scales, at home and abroad, then we have to explore matters of import together as equals, and give equal consideration to a plurality of perspectives: philosophical, spiritual (or lack thereof), political ( libertarian, progressive, mainstream liberal or conservative, impossible to lable, what have you).
Sharing philosophies of and, interlaced with this, concrete approaches to ‘handling’ a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic, and what each of us concretely might do, early and often, to pitch in will be explored at this apx. 90-minute gathering.
One note: I’ve been coming across many essays on the Internet in which the authors are basically saying the exact same thing: That we need to take advantage of the coronavirus crisis to ‘take pause’ so we can reconnect with ourselves and with nature.
But the fact is that hundreds of millions of people the world over have zero time or opportunity to take pause, and this particular crisis exacerbates exponentially the other crises that they continually face in their lives, all of which in one way or another touch on issues of equity.
Perhaps, just perhaps, we should indeed take pause — those of us privileged enough to be in a position to do so — but of a reflective sort a la Democracy Cafe that might enable us to dive back into the fray more effectively and more committed than ever, creating a world in which everyone matters and counts and is treated with equitable humaness.
Please join us if you have an open mind and heart, and enjoy listening to others at least as much as you do listening to yourself. Here is all the info you need (the primary language for this will be English, but we also speak Spanish fluently):
Christopher Phillips is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Democracy Cafe Zoom Meeting — How should we handle a crisis like this?
Time: Mar 26, 2020 02:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Meeting ID: 655 122 344
Password: 013688
Meeting ID: 655 122 344
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