What does Transpartisan mean to you?

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Permalink Reply by Bruce Schuman on October 13, 2008 at 4:04pm

Dear Joseph McCormick --

Thanks for putting this project together, and getting these essential elements into a clear and coherent framework, where they can grow. This is something we badly need, and some of us need to take the plunge, so I am glad you are doing it.

Just by way of replying to your comment (which, if I understand this site, has not yet received a reply), I do very much agree with your point of view -- in that yes, we need to do everything possible to "encourage a spirit of dialogue" in the context of American democracy. So, I do accept and enthusiastically support all the values you have included and listed -- here, in this comment, and on other pages of this "transpartisan" web site.

With my background in "interfaith", and stemming from years of work and exploration involving "what religions have in common" -- or maybe "the universal spirit expressed through (almost) any religion" -- I might want to add something to your definition.

Think about this. We have this huge issue in the USA -- stemming from "the Establishment Clause". And with good reason -- at least up 'til now. We do NOT want an official state religion, and we don't want a theocracy -- as per Iran, for example. BUT - does that mean that we must then necessarily be "a nation without spiritual guidance?"

It's a subtle issue. Does church/state separation mean we have to rely on secular humanism as a source of ethics and virtue in society, because any approach to "spirit" is inherently parochial, and must be disallowed in the public square?

I feel called to invite some deliberation of this issue. My feeling is: the entire transpartisan agenda and vision can be very much empowered and accelerated -- when this conjunction with universal spirit begins to be recognized and incorporated.

And, it seems to me -- this idea is in no way inconsistent with your proposal and definition -- because all of these concepts you are proposing -- can be understood as legitimate and even traditional expressions of what some of us might call "The Holy Spirit". If this is true, and can be shown clearly -- then, perhaps we are finding a way to introduce the power of the Spirit into our collective deliberations, without losing our ground in Deep Center...

Democracy: freedom, equality, regard for the common good
Republic: order, responsibility, security
Spirit: joy, grace, humility, co-creativity, collaboration, the genius of community....

It feels to me -- that adding this element of spirit -- fully connects us back to the energies of "the founding fathers" and the core vision that has made America great. Spirit HAS been a motivating driver in the evolution of American civilization -- and perhaps we are now beginning to uncover new ways to understand spirit, in ways that can be incorporated into secular and public affairs, without the distorting influences of some particular religion. Yes, this is a lot to ask for. But perhaps something like this is deeply inherent in "the American destiny". Combine the creative power of deep spirit with the balanced authenticity and inclusion of transpartisan politics, and we have a formula for a inspiring and transformative revolution in our national identity.

http://interspirit.net/spirit

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Permalink Reply by Robert David STEELE Vivas on October 14, 2008 at 11:24am

Transpartisan is viewed by the right as a code word for keeping the bi-partisan pork system alive. John McCain uses the term Post-Partisan. I use the term Non-Partisan. All three have good intentions, that I would sum up as combining:

Reality-based policy-making
Appreciative respectful inquiry and dialog
Transparent evaluation of trade-offs and true costs
Open transparent decision-making
Accountability to ALL the people, not just Wall Street and their political servants who violated our trust.

Three things excite me about the near term future:

1) True costs of good and services can be known
2) Put enough eyeballs on it, no corruption is invisible or invulnerable
3) Peace is cheaper than war, we just need to help EVERYONE understand that and then demand it.

I have posted a free book online ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, at www.oss.net/PIG. It includes chapters on the substance of governance, candidates on the issues, balanced budget 101, call to arms: fund We not them, and an annotated bibliography with hot links to over 500 non-fiction reviews relevant to restoring the Republic.

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Permalink Reply by Annie Loyd on October 14, 2008 at 11:27am

Thank you for all the effort i know it has taken to get this site and organization up and running. You have my full support! I spent 15 months as a candidate for US Congress running on a platform of Transpartisanship.

Last night October 13, 2008 - in Phoenix, Arizona - we held the first Voices for Civil Dialogue Forum - "Immigration:Creating a path to solutions." Below is an overview of what we accomplished last night and the process that brought us this far. I offer this as an example of committed individuals in a community that are not waiting for perfect or for permission to act. We are doing transpartisan community development and deliberative democracy right now!

The setting was the new ASU (Arizona State University) Downtown Campus at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.

The transpartisan forum began the the process of community action with dialogue for comprehensive immigration reform. The panel shared their experience of how to create opportunities for expanding civic engagement using a process of dialogue and deliberation to begin to identify common-ground solutions. The event was a deliberative democracy project of Voices for Civil Dialogue, a Phoenix-based coalition of community leaders dedicated to respectful cooperation among groups and individuals from all sectors of society.

A question-and-answer session followed the panel discussion.

Panelists included Ron Wakabayashi, board member of the California Association of Human Relations Organizations; Deedra Abboud, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation of Arizona; Roshi Johndennis Govert; Julie Erfle, law enforcement advocate; Sheridan Bailey, president of Ironco Enterprises and co-founder of Arizona Employers of Immigration Reform; Jean Tennyson of Boston , MA, co-founder of Navigating Our Future; and Genoveva Acosta-Bueno, community health adviser for Maricopa Integrated Health Systems.

Moderators include Annie Loyd, president of the FUSION Foundation and chairwoman of Voices for Civil Dialogue, and ASU research associate and journalist James Garcia.
________________________________________

Voices for Civil Dialogue, is a coalition led by Annie Loyd, President of The Fusion Foundation and former US Congressional Candidate District 3, is focused on creating peaceful reform of immigration and due process of law, holding safety and humanity on equal footing, through transpartisan, open dialogue and deliberation.

Voices for Civil Dialogue is a transpartisan, inclusive coalition of community leaders dedicated to genuine, respectful cooperation, involving groups and individuals from all sectors of society. Voices for Civil Dialogue is a deliberative democracy program of The FUSION Foundation (thefusionfoundation.org).

The coalition has had numerous dialogues including meeting with representatives from the offices of AZ Governor Napolitano, Mayor Phil Gordon, Congressmen Jeff Flake, Raul Grijalva, Ed Pastor, and John Shadegg; additionally with the Consul General of Mexico Carlos Flores Vizcarra; Doug Pruitt President of Sundt Corporation; AZ Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio; AZ State Representatives Russell Pearce, Mark Anderson, and David Lujan; Sheridan Bailey, President of Ironco Enterprises; Ron Wakabayashi, Regional Director, Dept. of Justice; representatives of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce of Phoenix, AZ; the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, AZ; elected officials and staff of the AZ Maricopa County Board of Supervisors; Rebekah Friend Executive Director of the Arizona AFL-CIO; and AZ law enforcement officials and representatives.

Arizona and in particular Phoenix has been at the center of the "debate" of us-vs-them regarding federal immigration reform. I believe we must be at the front of discovering what the common ground solutions will be as well. Last night was a beginning and demonstrates the powerful opportunity that exists within transpartisan dialogue and deliberation.

as someone once said - we will never get to an effective, efficient, evolutionary and sustainable solution by only talking with our best friends! All stakeholders must be at the table - that is transpartisan in a nutshell to me!

Thank you!

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Permalink Reply by Matt Deppe on October 14, 2008 at 11:49am

Transpartisan means to me being committed to working with real people to find the common ground between parties/ideologies and working toward solutions that can be agreed upon; the two pivotal points being ‘work’ and ‘real people’. It is so easy to build straw men out of those that I ‘seem’ to disagree with and to allow myself to become annoyed by them and eventually turn a deaf ear. It was not until I began having significant conversations with my neighbors, and learned to avoid so many of the buzz words, that I began to get any sense of what they wanted to see happen in their/our communities and nation.

During this time my particular stance changed from being “against socialized medicine and health care” (as an example) to “for the care of the sick and impoverished”. It was never my goal to stop something from happening but that was how I learned, somewhere along the way, to present my vision for health care and it stopped any and all conversation and disallowed any seeking of common ground. This isn’t about semantics; it is about keeping me and you from running for our trenches and allowing us to begin to discuss what our base goals are and building up from there. As opposed to finding where we disagree and who is the better arguer. And it is work from there.

It is sort of like having roommates. In theory it is less work and cheaper. But we all know that in practice it is always more work than living alone. The focus in these discussions is about bringing your friends and neighbors along, not getting to the end result of getting one’s way. That is my base for Transpartisan.

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Permalink Reply by Bruce Schuman on October 14, 2008 at 2:41pm

Wow. I am excited. This discussion is coming alive -- with high-caliber responses. This is great, couldn't ask for better.

There's now three responses posted here besides mine, and I could try to answer them all, and want to. But let me just pick this one, from Annie, and get into a few things that might get right to the point.

Maybe there is something in the air, maybe this "call to action" is picking up steam. Maybe something in our souls just "knows" that it's time. I'm not sure I can explain it -- but I am feeling it. Last night here in Santa Barbara, at our "Mind/Supermind" lecture series, futurist and author/speaker Barbara Marx Hubbard told us that she had just taken her "Peace Room" and "Wheel of Cocreativity" ideas to the Obama campaign people, and they were enthusiastic. Barbara's theme last night was "evolutionary spirituality", and she told us "As the system is rapidly breaking down, it's also rapidly breaking through" -- and "What is breaking through has to connect faster."

Maybe we know that, maybe we just want to "connect faster". I think that is true of me...

I make a living these days as an internet system builder. I am a database programmer and network developer, and I want to support this vision -- of an emerging and transformative new politics -- a politics based on dialogue, on listening, on co-creativity -- on invoking and calling forth everything that is best and most fine in our natures. I just had a friend visiting with me today, who has worked on dialogue -- Peter Senge, William Isaacs, etc. -- and we were talking about the core of American politics today. His understanding of why Obama didn't pick Hillary as VP, for example -- he sees as a failure of dialogue. Something broke down. There was too much bitter rhetoric during the last two months of the primary -- it just couldn't be healed.

I had held this vision that Obama and Hillary COULD work together -- even if they are very different. Obama knows how to work across the boundaries of diversity -- bringing very diverse people together. Maybe that's because of his experience as a "community organizer", maybe it's because he was born with those instincts -- or maybe, as my friend was suggesting, he knows "the literature", he has studied dialogue and the work of people like Senge. So, I was envisioning this amazing coalition that became so powerful because they are such different personality types. Obama takes the transcendental high ground, he's the Philosopher/King. And Hillary -- well, she knows everybody and everything, she has been around for 30 years, she has contacts everywhere, and she hits like a Mack truck.

Well, that didn't happen. And today, the pressure is ramping up. I guess we just gotta spin our prayer wheels, and keep the spirit steady. Let's hope the lights stay on.

*

Annie, I was excited to see that you had run for Congress, and that you are involved in immediate local projects working on dialogue. That's great -- and a wonderful promise of things to come -- things we have to help bring into the world....

I just want to mention -- that today, feeling kinda grumpy when I got out of bed -- something just seemed to settle into my spirit, as I was thinking -- I just got to do something about these things today...

So, here's where I am going with this...

I've been hacking out this "Spirit of Democracy" project. It's about "spirit in politics", yes -- and that is a critical and powerful thing all by itself. In the USA, "church/state separation" is a huge issue, with a ton of force behind it. Spirit/religion is built into our national identity -- but we don't know how to handle it. We're confused, endlessly uncertain. And there is tremendous political motivation behind the question -- but we just don't quite know how to frame it without stepping on toes, and we end up just a bit paralyzed. So, there's all that in the air...

And... [to be continued...]

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Permalink Reply by Annie Loyd on October 14, 2008 at 5:05pm

Bruce -
my heart jumps with the joy of knowing you had the opportunity to spend an evening with Barbara - her messages are magical and her energy infectious!

Then you mention Peter Senge!!!

Transpartisan - in my not so humble opinion is about moving beyond parties - moving beyond the imperialist - egocentric leadership model

Transcendent leadership is exemplified in the obama campaign - insisting - encouraging - inspiring cooperation, collaboration, individual responsibility from all of us

Transpartisan is not just about all voices it is about the responsibility we all have to participate, the responsibility we all have to engage, to not only recognize and acknowledge our common ground AND it is a "call to action"

I have come to believe we have an inner voice calling us to do - and for many we have brushed that voice aside saying - no not now- no I don't have what it takes - no others can do it better , etc.

Running for Congress gave me insight I didn't have - even after working on campaigns and in politics for 2 decades - i came to realize we the most important work to be done is right here in my backyard- the greatest contribution i can make is not waiting to get elected - it was to get busy and do -

I saw no effective leadership in regards to bringing people together to work on federal immigration reform and watched attempt after attempt fail

For me immigration - out of any issue - is the most connected to our humanity - it provides us with an opportunity to discover - develop - design a model that honors our humanity, fully supports natural law and is transparent and honest for without that all attempts will fail - why? because we've tried out the other models and they have not worked!

To me Transpartisan is not about fixing the antiquated political model it is remember the principles of the Iroquois Nation that were used when the constitution was written and this country was founded - the essences of the Peacemaker and the Tree of Peace -

The people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroqu...

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Permalink Reply by Vicky Dill on October 15, 2008 at 10:54am

"Transpartisanship" recognizes those broad areas in which the venn diagrams of all of our lives, concerns, visions, and passions overlap -- these are the conversations that encourage personal civic responsibility and remove barriers that allow us to demonstrate something we now long for: international leadership. In transpartisanship, we rise from, as Barbara Jordan once said to her students, "what we should do" to "what we ought to do;" that "ought-ness" nurtures the full flowering of our humanity and contrasts sharply, I fear, to the base activities and ruminations of partisan politics. In such a conceptualization and with dialog and deliberation, this nation can re-awaken hope in disillusioned voters and rebuild trust in the statesmen and women this country has historically brought forth for leadership and who are now so momentously needed.

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