A friend writes:
As some of you already know, about a month ago I was randomly selected to participate in a “Deliberation Day” project organized by PBS. The purpose of the event was to get the perspectives of every-day Americans on issues relating to National Security and the Global Economy. 100 people from the greater Seattle area participated in this all event, which was held at the Seattle Public Library last Saturday. For the morning portion, participants split into 8-9 groups of 15 and deliberated on topics relating to National Security, Civil Liberties, Spreading of Democracy, International Trade, Outsourcing and the Global Economy. Within our groups we were asked to come up with two questions, which were posed to a panel of experts that met with us in the afternoon.
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17 other events like this are being held around the country. Both the local event and national coverage of all events will be televised on PBS. The Seattle deliberation will be broadcast on KCTS, Channel 9 this Thursday, October 21st on “KCTS Connects Special Report” from 7:00-8:00 pm PST. The national broadcase, including footage from all deliberations, will be broadcast locally on KCTS this Friday, October 22nd on “A Time to Choose: A By the People Election Special”, from 8:00-9:00 pm PST. I’m not sure how the national schedules will work, but if you’re not local to Seattle, you can check them out at www.pbs.org
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Watch one or both of them if you can! Sadly, any television footage of me will be pretty fleeting — my small group wasn’t selected for television coverage — but you may catch sight of me in some of the “big-audience” pan shots during the introductions at the beginning and when we met with the panel in the afternoon.
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Being part of this was a great experience and a lot of the discussion that came up, in both my deliberation and the big panel, was very interesting, thought-provoking and sometimes downright sobering. Watch, in particular, for the near-fist fight between two of the panelists over outsourcing and whether it is a negative or positive thing for the US Economy. Hopefully they won’t cut it in the final edit–it was pretty awesome! 😉
I’ll see if I can capture this or a file and make it available to the author of the above email.
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