| Home > Events > Disease, Disaster, and Democracy, 2006 > Conference Speakers > Panel 2 Panel II Q&A Session Panel | Audio | Q&A audio Transcript
Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
Thank you very much Kristina. Now we have about ten minutes for your questions, and we will do as we did in the last panel. If you would please to go to the microphones and identify yourself. If you could address your question to a particular person, that would be helpful. Matt Hewitt (audience):
Hi. My name is Matt Hewitt. I’m with the Peace Corps, in their Crisis Corps. I’m not sure who to target this to, maybe to Kristina. How do you create a sense of community in the absence of disaster? Where I live—I don’t know how everybody else feels—but how do you create that community so that people bond together? It seems that in this area in the bayou, there already is a pre-established community. Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
Does anybody have a burning desire to answer that question, other than Kristina? We can start that way. Okay, Kristina, you’re on. Kristina Peterson (panelist):
I think one of the ways you can do that—I have worked with very marginalized communities elsewhere—is to help them focus on what it is they perceive as their burning issue, and not to start with something that seems superficial for them. Whether or not it’s the issue of kids making it to school or having enough food for the rest of the month…whatever it is that are their issues, you start at that point and you start developing the community around it. It develops very quickly, and becomes very vocal, and very, very active if they see that you are really taking them seriously. It’s called participatory vulnerability analysis (PVA). There is a very good pamphlet put out by ActionAid and the Royal Geographical Society in England about PVA. It has had good results from people like Terry Cannon, Piers Blakie, and Ben Wisner who has evaluated it in the field. Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
Are there other questions? You know guys, you’re going to get me in big trouble after I harassed them to hurry up and there are no questions! Thank you! Arrietta Chakos (audience):
My name is Arietta Chakos. I’m with the City of Berkeley, California. First of all, I have to commend this panel. It was absolutely fabulous; each of you really just gave a lot to all of us. I’d like to ask a question about the PEPPPI work, and if the materials are available for the communities to read your information about the ten answers you need to know about flu, et cetera. Roger Bernier (panelist):
We can make those available. The report itself is available online. It’s a 98 page report. I can’t give you the exact URL, but I can tell you that it’s on the website for the Keystone Center, which facilitated it, that’s keystone.org. I think if you click on the science policy department there, or if you just Google PEPPPI, you will find several references to it now that will give you the report. There are a couple of journalistic articles about it, which are also very good. Mary Pat MacKinnon (audience):
It’s another question for Roger. Roger, could you talk a bit more about the results of PEPPPI? And in particular, help us understand a little bit better where the citizens were going with the number one, which was to “ensure the functioning of society,” and the second [objective], which was to “reduce death and hospitalizations.” You make reference to the stakeholders flipping [what] the citizens had as number one, the “well functioning.” I’m just really interested in the value of logic framework that citizens were using that led them to that, and what that meant. If you could just comment on that a little bit. Roger Bernier (panelist):
I was reading a piece in Science last week by the bioethicist at NIH, who talked about another possible objective, which would be saving people who are between twenty and forty or fifty, something like that, for a different rationale. I realized that one of the things we didn’t do that well in our project was, we didn’t capture the rationales that led to the outcomes that the citizens and stakeholders chose. I can’t say to you as elaborately as was said, for example, in that Science article what the rationales were. But I can tell you that the results were what they were, and I did share with you some of the conditions, if you will, that were put on the findings. If you go into the report— it’s a rich report and has lot of comments from the University of Nebraska, evaluations and so forth. One thing I want to say is that this morning we could get the impression that everybody is in favor of this. We need to be realistic. I like to say, “If democracy is such a good idea, how come we don’t have more of it?” I think there is a real lack of trust, not only between citizens and government, which we talk about, but there is an equally big distrust of government on the part of citizens. I’ve been trying to sell this for four years, so I can entertain you for a long time about the challenges in promoting these ideas. I think the thing that was interesting was because it wasn’t set up as an experiment, but because we ran independently from the experts, it did give everyone a realization that experts have a worldview. It’s often based on their professional training and discipline, but really, what more would you expect from experts who are trained in health than to tell you that saving lives is the most important thing for them? It’s a no-brainer. I think what this did reveal is that citizens do have a different perspective, and we might be best served by having as broad a perspective as possible, particularly when these value questions are at stake. I’m not promoting this for every technical question that we face, but I think there is a subset where this is important. I think the PEPPPI project helped people to see that there is – this is one of the major questions in front of citizen participation – “What is the value added of citizen engagement?” It’s easy to understand if what you are trying to do is get an extra pair of hands to help pull, or push, or whatever, but when you are actually thinking about policy or decision making, the question of what is the “value added” of citizen input, I think is more difficult to answer, particularly in the technical area. Two heads are better than one, we think, but what if one head is a technical head, and another head is a lay head? Are those two heads better if it’s a technical question? I don’t think so. But, if there are technical questions that actually involve values, then I think there is the possibility of “value added” from citizen input. I know, it’s a long winded answer and I’m not sure if I’m addressing Mary Pat’s exact question, but that’s what I’ll say for now. Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
She seems satisfied. I’m looking at her face. We are going to go here, and then to this gentleman. Rachel Kleinfeld (audience):
Rachel Kleinfeld with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. First, I also want to commend the panel. That was a fantastic level of information. I think this question is for Ann, but if others want to answer, please go ahead. One thing I have come across in our work is, the kind of deep learning that we really want citizens to be doing to really engage and protect themselves, needs to be integrated across their life to become a cultural habit, as well starting young. Your pictures, Kristina, of two-year olds getting involved is very much the way we all learned “Stop, drop and roll” fire safety, and the other things for which citizens are very prepared. But, we are all stove-piped into our organization, so we think about pandemic flu, or we think about bio-terror, we think about fire safety. It’s not integrated, and it is certainly not across life. It’s a focus group, or even a deliberative democracy day, but it’s not that deep level of cultural engagement. I’m wondering if you think that observation is the truth, or the case, and if so, how you would actually get us to involve citizens in that life-long learning process that could prepare them? Ann Patton (panelist):
I’ll take a crack, and then pass the mike on. I think you’re absolutely right. I think we want to change the culture both of government and of the citizens. I think one way to do that, as I said before, is to actually take your message to where the people are, and then go into a mode of listening. I want to also mention one thing in response to what you said. In my opinion, absolutely, if you can cross fertilize, if you can marry the technical expert, the subject matter expert, with the local wisdom expert—that is when you get good public policy. It’s very hard to do, but it is possible to do. Kristina Peterson (panelist):
One of the ways that we found to be extremely effective in the Grand Bayou, is at all those various groups that I mentioned that have had presentations, they were done by the local folks of the Bayou, to the National Academy of Science and to others. As they prepare for that presentation, from their local wisdom, and learning also from the others from the outside, they are blending both what we would call “expert” and “the traditional’ together in order to incorporate that within their own lifestyle. That’s why today they are talking about pandemic flu as they are bringing in shrimp, because of the presentation that they have helped create for today. It’s incorporating that and putting that into their oral history traditions and then pulling out their resources from that tradition. It goes hand in hand. Roger Bernier (panelist):
I just thought of a point I think is important for us to keep in mind. You could see a little tension here that people were trying to say what I was ignoring in my comment, about the local knowledge. I think one important distinction we have to make is, when the federal government wants to involve citizens, and when a local community wants to engage citizens, they are two different points. At the national level, we were trying to engage citizens in helping to shape federal guidance, so the kind of contribution that citizens can bring to that problem is different than the kind of value that citizens can add when the question is more localized, at a community level. I think obviously, at the community level, local knowledge is something unique and special that citizens can bring, in addition to the values piece that I was talking about. I would say that at the local level, citizens can even add, in that sense, more value than they can at the national level because their local knowledge is just not so relevant. I’m not saying it’s irrelevant, but it’s not as much in play perhaps. Michael Dunaway (audience):
This question is sort of gratuitous because you have actually been talking about— Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
Excuse me, can you tell us who you are please? Michael Dunaway (audience):
Michael Dunaway. I’m with the Chesapeake Critical Incident Partnership. It’s a public and private sector organization in Annapolis, Maryland. We are also in a flood plain, like Tulsa and the bayou country, and this question is directed along that line. It would almost seem to be that the larger issue that Mrs. Patton lays out, with regard to the flood control in Tulsa, and the problem that Mrs. Peterson lays out with flood control in the bayou are diametrically opposed. On the one hand, we have Tulsa, which has built up a method of controlling the flooding in your area by, I presume, developing the area so you get good drainage. In other words, you control the natural environment in such a way that you can now have a city where a city actually shouldn’t be built if it is that much of a flood plain. On the other hand, Mrs. Peterson’s thesis is, because of the building up that has taken place along the Mississippi River—the bayou country—our people are now subject to a problem that we probably wouldn’t have if it weren’t for this building. How do you reconcile that larger social problem, which is a very large strategic problem? And probably on a grand scale, the problem the nation faces in the long run, which is how do we have a sophisticated, technologically advanced nation on the one hand, but preserve the culture and the individual areas of our indigenous population? On the other hand, and not having to either build or force off on one culture, or having the culture so isolated that it doesn’t provide anything back to society at large. We can’t answer that here, but that’s at the root cause of the issue that the two of you have raised. It’s a microcosm of that larger problem. Ann Patton (panelist):
That’s a profound question; it deserves a long answer that we won’t try to give. I would say that how you do that is very carefully, and that whatever you do must be in sync with the natural world and human nature. Then, I think it becomes a question of designing it for your specific area. Kristina Peterson (panelist):
Part of the problem we’ve had over the years is the arrogance of people thinking that they can harden the natural environment in order to be able to protect themselves. We are finding now that we have to live more in harmony with the environment. In New Orleans, you’ll see T-shirts that say: “Make levees, not war.” Well, we propose that you need to make wetlands, not war. We need to look at safety, but also we need to look at how do we get back to having the ecosystem be more in balance, and that’s tough. Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
It looks like you have the honor of the last question. Esther Brimmer (audience):
My name is Esther Brimmer with the Center for Transatlantic Relation at Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies. So right here in Washington, you’re actually in my neighborhood. My question is: in our work, we look at particularly how lots of communities within the transatlantic area work on these issues. This of course includes the United States and Canada. My question ties in with the first panel and the second panel, because I was delighted to see we have Canadian-American representatives here. My question is in many of our communities we share a fantastically long border with communities that live on both sides of the border. I wonder how we are reasoning together in our local communities that span the U.S.-Canada border on some of these questions that actually acknowledge the local systems that are trans-border? How do we do that, what are the mechanisms and how might we have that conversation that crosses that international border? Kristina Peterson (panelist):
Something we did was to host part of the meeting of the Organization of American States when they were meeting at LSU. The people from the bayou went to the professors that were hosting it, saying, “I think we might want to have that (international) conversation.” The OAS workshop spent two days in the bayou with their conversation instead of in the classrooms at LSU. To utilize those kinds of opportunities, I think is one of the ways in which we can do it. Ann Patton (panelist):
We don’t share a border with anybody except for other states and other towns, but in this day of immigration, a lot of people have come to us from other countries. One of our very base core values is that we work very diligently to try to bring in and include people from those other cultures. I’ll just give you my bottom line philosophy here: the best defense against disaster, in my experience, is a community of people who understand each other, work with each other, take care of each other, and love each other. If we can build those kinds of communities, whether it’s across a border or not, we are going to be so much stronger and safer. Roger Bernier (panelist):
I have nothing to add to that. [Laughter] Roger Bernier (panelist):
I know when to quit. [Laughter] Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
Thank you very, very much to our panelists, as well as to the questions, and for the gentleman from an Annapolis, Kristina and Ann are going to have the paper written for you by the end of the day, don’t worry. You will get your answer. I can smell the wheels turning from up here. I heard a couple of things that I think may be worth leaving us with as we break for lunch. I’m going to give the microphone back to Monica for the logistics. Among them are benedictory remarks: - The notion of participation in building community through listening to people and meeting them at the place where they come to the table while not imposing an agenda;
- The value of culture change, and how in this country, and I would assume in Canada also;
- The very important need to bring about a culture where we care about each other again, and we take care of each other, rebuilding trust in our government structures and in each other;
- The notion of continuous participatory action research, and I might add to that, participatory communication where often the listening piece in the two-way communication is overlooked;
- The notion of local ownership and local control came through in many of the presentations;
- Then the value of indigenous or local knowledge rising to the top, sometimes above expert testimony and expert knowledge; and finally,
- The living in sync with reality from which people come, living in sync with nature, living in sync with the politics of the city or the environmental conditions from which people come.
Thank you very, very much for what I agree was a wonderful panel. [Applause] Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
I might ask Kristina, respecting the traditions and principles in the bayou, are there limits to how much of your information people in the room can use? Because with these kinds of meetings, we will all go back, and you will see your stories appearing in our presentations. So if there are limits, we should probably know what they are. Kristina Peterson (panelist):
The people of the bayou said, as of today, yes, they can be used. Denise Gray-Felder (moderator):
Great. I was hoping that was the answer. Okay, Monica. Monica Schoch-Spana:
Spectacular panel! Just some quick announcements. In your summit attendee package, you will find brief blurbs on the programs that were showcased in this panel, in addition to Citizen Corps which Karen Marsh spoke about today. You will find URLs, including the one that will direct you to the PEPPPI final report. This is meant to be a networking exercise, so please make very good use of your summit attendee list. This was an opportunity to introduce you to one another and to foster future conversations, so it certainly doesn’t end here. We are going to break for fifteen minutes. In this time, we would like you to go next door, retrieve lunch, and then return here. We are going to have a working lunch. We have the pleasure of David Oshinsky talking to us about the social history of polio and the search for a vaccine in the twentieth century. So, if people can return no later than fifteen minutes with lunch in hand. Thank you very much. Proceedings of the May 23, 2006 Summit: Disease, Disaster, & Democracy Transcription by CastingWords
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