AmericaSpeaks worked for nearly two decades to engage citizens in public decision making through large-scale deliberative processes. They conducted over 150 projects engaging over 180,000 citizens to provide input on issues like rebuilding after disasters, regional planning, and policy issues. AmericaSpeaks developed innovative methods like the 21st Century Town Meeting model to bring citizens together to have thoughtful discussions and provide priorities to decision makers. Their work demonstrated that citizens can grapple with complex issues and find common ground, and that public input can impact policies, budgets, and decision making.

1. of Critical Innovations in Deliberative Democracy
and Citizen Engagement
The work of AmericaSpeaks began with a
clear and compelling vision: to reinvigorate
American Democracy by engaging citizens
in the public decision-making that most
impacts their lives. For nearly two decades,
we brought this vision to life and, in so doing,
made a lasting contribution to the field.
Through 150 projects that engaged more than
180,000 people and touched thousands more,
AmericaSpeaks repeatedly broke new ground
and achieved real results across the U.S. and
around the world.
“
AmericaSpeaks was never meant to be
a mere experiment in democratic practice. It
always worked to effect change on the ground
by improving policies and strengthening
communities. Yet in doing so, it also achieved
an essential proof of concept and gave the
field detailed insights about what works in
deliberative democracy.
-
”
Peter Levine, Professor of Citizenship & Public
Affairs Director of CIRCLE (Center for
Information & Research on Civic Learning
& Engagement), Tufts University
Large-scale deliberation combining
technology and skilled facilitation to engage
thousands of citizens in thoughtful and
productive discussion, was AmericaSpeaks’
signature method. Our unique “21st Century
Town Meeting” helped link citizens’ voices and
priorities to the rebuilding of lower Manhattan
after 9/11; established essential plans for the
future of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina; and energized regional planning
processes in metro areas around the country.
Across multiple areas, AmericaSpeaks made
a demonstrable impact on policy, budgets
and planning; on communities’ capacity to
engage citizens; and on the way we think
about the role of citizens in a democracy.
As AmericaSpeaks closes its doors, we
recognize the continued importance of our
vision, and we celebrate the innovative
methods we developed and refined. We
believe that our works leaves a critical legacy
for the field of deliberative democracy and for
citizen engagement efforts into the future.
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2. AmericaSpeaks’ most Significant Contributions
to the Practice of Public Participation
Over the course of nearly 20 years, AmericaSpeaks
repeatedly upended conventional wisdom about the
practice of citizen engagement, and demonstrated what’s
possible in large public deliberations.
Public meetings can have a real impact on
participants and decision-making
Public hearings and traditional town hall
meetings — our nation’s standard citizen
engagement methods — tend not to be
effective ways for the public to have a real
impact on decision-making. Such events are
often speaker-focused, with little learning
for participants or decision-makers because
individual concerns dominate and participants
often fall into repetitive ax-grinding,
grandstanding or shouting matches. In the end,
decision-makers don’t know which points of view
have the most salience because there has been
no authentic, informed exchange of opinions
and no opportunity to build a true consensus.
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AmericaSpeaks developed the 21st Century
Town Meeting model as an antidote to these
concerns. The model is an innovative blend
of face-to-face dialogue and technologysupported, large-group engagement that
enables hundreds — or thousands — of people
to discuss challenging issues and find shared
priorities within a single day. The 21st Century
Town Meeting model also explicitly and
strategically links citizens’ collective views to
current decision-making processes. The impact
of this process on participants and decisionmaking has been substantial.
Click here for highlights of the research.

3. Essential Ingredients
for Public Engagement
AmericaSpeaks’ 21st Century Town
Meeting established the importance
of seven key ingredients for successful
public participation in decision-making:
People can and will find
common ground despite
deep differences of opinion
In this era of divisive politics, bridging differences is one
of our nation’s most crucial challenges. Yet even in the
most highly polarized environments, AmericaSpeaks
proved that citizens will put their differences aside to
solve problems and find common ground. Core elements
of the 21st Century Town Meeting model made this
possible, including values-based discussions; careful
attention to participant diversity and seating; facilitation
of discussion groups; collective decision-making; and onsite reporting.
In 2010, AmericaSpeaks took-on the hot
button issue of our national debt and
deficit. Across 19 sites, 3,500 people —
including members of local Tea Party groups and activists
from MoveOn.org — came together to deliberate and
develop shared views. Not only did participants find
substantive agreement, they also reported learning from
the experience and having been positively influenced by
others’ views and opinions. Click for more information on
the Our Budget our Economy initiative. Other notable
examples include Colorado 100, Tough Choices in
Healthcare, Washington DC One City Summit, World
Economic Forum.
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•
A link to decision-makers
The people responsible for taking
action on an issue must be
involved from the start and
committed to responding to what
they hear.
•
Participant diversity
Demographic and political
diversity are essential for helping a
community reflect the ideas of all
its members, and for leaders to
know the results are credible.
•
Informed participation
Providing neutral and accessible
background materials ensures a
level playing field for all participants.
•
Facilitated deliberation
Trained facilitators at each
discussion table help participants
wrestle with difficult tradeoffs and
divisive issues.
•
Fast feedback
Iterative and highly productive
conversations are made possible
through computers at each table, a
Theme Team culling shared ideas,
live participant polling to prioritize
the results of discussions, and
immediate reports on the day’s work.
•
Shared priorities and clear
recommendations for action
Carefully designed meetings
ensure participants find areas of
shared support and common
priorities for action.
•
Sustained Citizen
Involvement
Citizens must play an ongoing role
in implementing shared priorities,
evaluating progress, and
identifying areas for continued
collaboration.

4. Average citizens can handle complex content
and make good decisions
It is a commonly-held belief among elected
officials and other decision-makers that
the general public is not really capable of
understanding complex policy issues; of
grasping nuance and providing substantive
input. Many also assume that citizens will rarely
accept trade-offs and/or put the common good
above their individual needs. This is why some
argue that citizen engagement is not worth
the effort and expense. Over the course of
two decades, AmericaSpeaks repeatedly and
resoundingly disproved these assumptions.
Health care reform is a highly
complex issue, combining social
policy, medical science, health
economics and health delivery systems. In 2007,
AmericaSpeaks partnered with government,
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business and philanthropy leaders to convene
3,500 Californians in substantive deliberations
on health care reform, including proposals that
were before the state legislature. Although
legislative staff were quite skeptical about
whether ordinary citizens could carefully analyze
and weigh-in on these issues, the events
powerfully demonstrated a different story.
A diverse group of citizens worked through
strong differences of opinion and gave leaders
specific guidance on policy options related to
employer, government, insurer and individual
responsibility. Click for more information on
the CaliforniaSpeaks initiative. Other notable
examples include: Americans Discuss Social
Security, Meeting of Minds, Common Ground:
A Blueprint for Regional Action, Shaping
America’s Youth.

5. Large-scale public deliberations can
transform “stuck” governance
Through multiple initiatives, AmericaSpeaks
demonstrated that high-quality, wholecommunity deliberation will influence
governance, even under challenging
circumstances.
When Hurricane Katrina
devastated the city of New
Orleans, it exacerbated a
governance structure that
had been troubled for decades — a city in which
efforts to meet people’s needs had routinely
failed or been inadequate. In this context, it
was not surprising that official planning efforts
following the Hurricane were unable to produce
the widely-supported rebuilding strategy that
would be required to release desperatelyneeded federal emergency relief funds.
In late 2006, AmericaSpeaks was invited to
bring its process of citizen engagement to
New Orleans and try to “unstick” things.
Through massive outreach and decision-maker
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engagement, as well as meticulous attention
to the political and emotional dynamics on the
ground, AmericaSpeaks went about its work.
In the end, the 21st Century Town Meeting
model enabled New Orleanians who had been
dispersed across 16 cities to come together in
live deliberations with each other.
The work had a remarkable impact: nearly 4,000
citizens participated in the development of a
“Unified New Orleans Plan;” virtually all local
and state decision-makers endorsed the plan;
federal funds were released; and over time,
important aspects of the way New Orleans
conducted its business were changed, including
the adoption of new zoning rules and the
development of a citywide masterplan. Click
for more information on the New Orleans
Community Congresses. Other notable
examples include: Listening to the City,
Southern Louisiana Rebuilding Lives Summit,
CaliforniaSpeaks and We The People.

6. Leaders will act on what the public has to say
High quality public engagement requires good
process. But it’s not enough. AmericaSpeaks
led a critical advance in the deliberative
democracy field by emphasizing an additional
priority: explicitly linking engagement to current
decision-making. Without this component, we
knew that participants’ time and effort were at
risk of being wasted, and a loss of faith in civic
agency would be the unfortunate result. We also
knew that leaders would be more effective in
tackling complex budget and policy problems
with the participation and support of the people.
Following the destruction
of the World Trade Towers,
AmericaSpeaks brought
4,300 New Yorkers together
to discuss the city’s designs for the rebuilding of
Ground Zero. The deliberation was developed
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in close partnership with key decision-makers
who committed to fully participating in the
process and heeding the results. After a
day of tough deliberation, participants told
leaders that the proposals on the table didn’t
meet the city’s needs. Within a week, it was
announced that plans would be redrawn in
accordance with public priorities. Click for more
information on Listening to the City. Other
notable examples include: Unified New Orleans
Plan, CaliforniaSpeaks and We The People.
For Research demonstrating the impact of
deliberation on decision-makers, click here.

7. Key Results from our Work
In addition to busting popular myths and assumptions
about citizen participation in governance, AmericaSpeaks
also produced concrete results in key areas.
Policies and budgets that reflect public priorities
AmericaSpeaks influenced dozens of important
public policies that have had a direct impact
on tens of thousands of people and millions of
public dollars. For example:
• Over seven years, the Washington, DC
Mayor redirected millions of dollars in
the city’s budgets to reflect citizens’ most
pressing concerns. Read more.
• More than 1,000 people helped launch a
national consortium and shape a policy
agenda to advance the futures of adults with
autism. Read more.
• 650 citizens in Northwest Kentucky
prioritized solutions to long-standing
community concerns about downtown
planning, substance abuse, and government
collaboration and are jointly tackling these
issues. Read more.
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• 350 residents of the Oakland Mills village in
Maryland forged a community revitalization
plan that has brought new rehabilitation
centers, a new community policing office –
with a decrease in crime – and a booming
“Street Captains” program, among other
initiatives. Read more.
• More than 300 rural leaders from across the
country developed a common vision for
strengthening rural America – they raised the
visibility of their concerns, produced policy
initiatives, and helped launch a national
network of rural interests. Read more.
• In 2004, following four devastating
hurricanes on the Florida Coast,
AmericaSpeaks partnered with the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
to bring the public’s voice into recovery
planning. FEMA used the community
priorities that emerged to strengthen its
efforts on the ground and sought dedicated
funding sources for these efforts. Read more.

8. Citizens who feel empowered
Independent evaluations of AmericaSpeaks’
work found that participants were positively
impacted by their involvement. They both felt,
and showed themselves to be, more informed
about the issues. Where common ground was
difficult to find, 21st Century Town Meeting
participants moderated their opinions. They
also reported a greater sense of civic efficacy.
And, the effects of their participation lasted
beyond the meeting itself – people were
moved to take action such as contacting public
officials, volunteering for organizations, signing
or circulating petitions or contacting the media.
For research demonstrating the impact of
deliberation on participants, click here.
A stronger deliberative democracy field
AmericaSpeaks played a
significant role in the creation
and/or development of
some of the most important
organizations in the field,
such as the Deliberative
Democracy Consortium
and the National Coalition on Dialogue and
Deliberation. AmericaSpeaks also supported the
Deliberative Democracy Consortium to launch
critical publications like the Journal of Public
Deliberation, and the Deliberative Democracy
Handbook. Through targeted convenings and
conferences, such as the Strengthening Our
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Nation’s Democracy series, AmericaSpeaks
played a key role in helping organizations across
the democracy field build stronger relationships
with each other.
AmericaSpeaks’ own think tank, The Democracy
Lab, led more than a dozen expert roundtables
and conferences, and published nearly 20
original papers while contributing to many
more. Highlights of this extensive body of
work include: Taking Democracy to Scale
(pdf); Designing 21st Century Governance
Mechanisms (pdf); and Public Deliberation: A
Manager’s Guide to Citizen Deliberation (pdf).

9. Better citizen engagement practice
AmericaSpeaks inspired dozens of organizations
in the U.S. and around the world to integrate
technology with deliberation and adopt other
key elements of the 21st Century Town Meeting
model. We were a substantive participant in the
development of the Obama Administration’s
Open Government Initiative aimed at improving
government’s use of citizen engagement
strategies. And, we influenced the on-going
practice of a number of federal agencies through
the Champions of Participation initiative.
Over the course of eight
years, AmericaSpeaks
partnered with Washington,
DC Mayor Anthony Williams
to engage more than 13,500 residents in
budgetary and policy decision-making; to
establish new community-based governance
mechanisms; and to codify a role for youth
in policy development. The repeated use
of city-wide 21st Century Town Meetings in
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Washington, DC left an indelible impression
there: nearly 14 years after the first DC
Citizen Summit, city agencies still routinely
use technology and engagement methods
introduced to them by AmericaSpeaks. Click for
more information on the DC Citizen Summits.
Other examples include: We the People; Voices
and Choices, Ward 8 Summits; United Agenda
for Children; City of Tuscan Climate Action
Summit, Your Health, Your Care, Your Say.

10. More participatory urban and regional planning
City, state and regional planning is complicated,
often contentious work. Over nearly two
decades, AmericaSpeaks used the 21st Century
Town Meeting model in more than 40 planning
processes.
Beginning with a set of agreed-upon criteria and
values, the model proved exceptionally adept
at helping citizens balance priorities — such
as economic development, the environment,
housing and education — while also finding
short- and long-term investment trade-offs they
could accept. Working with AmericaSpeaks
inspired many planning organizations and
leadership bodies to adopt new participatory
practices, deliberation strategies and the use of
technology.
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In 2005, in one of the single
largest public planning
projects every undertaken,
AmericaSpeaks directly
engaged 21,000 people across 16 counties
in Northeast Ohio in deliberations about the
region’s future through interviews, workshops,
town meetings, community conversations and
online “choicebooks.” Many thousands more
participated through a strategic layering of
additional communication and engagement
methods. The emerging action plan, and
extensive network of engaged citizens and
leaders, became known as Advance Ohio,
and remains a central part of the regional
landscape today. Click for more information
on Voices & Choices. Other notable examples
include: Envision Prince George’s, Hamilton
County Community COMPASS , Power of
32, Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning
Commission.

11. Increased community capacity for
democratic practice
AmericaSpeaks created a network of more
than 5,000 skilled facilitators trained to support
the face-to-face dialogue that can build
consensus on our most challenging concerns.
These individuals continue to carry-out citizen
engagement work in their own communities.
AmericaSpeaks also built a network of more than
80 associates from around the country (and the
world) skilled in the design and implementation
of large-scale citizen engagement processes that
are linked to decision-making. Trained, talented
and passionate people like these represent
a human infrastructure that is vital to making
robust citizen engagement a regular part of
governance in this country.
Even a quick look at politics today reveals disinterested, cynical citizens,
and leaders who capitalize on public differences and are more likely
to be influenced by campaign contributions than by voters’ views. The
work of AmericaSpeaks and its deliberative democracy colleagues has
demonstrated that there is a better way to make public decisions.
Again and again, well-designed public engagement has been shown
to transform politics, communities, businesses, and individuals. Our
country’s challenge now is to build on this groundwork and ensure that
authentic citizen engagement becomes a routine part of the way our
government and communities do their business.
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12. Over nearly two decades, AmericaSpeaks collaborated
with many hundreds of people -- far too many to name
individually, but all deeply appreciated. We would like to
formally acknowledge here the contributions of:
Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer
AmericaSpeaks’ Founder and President from 1995 to 2012, and Board member since the organization’s inception.
Steve Brigham
Chief Operating Officer from 2001 to 2012 and President from 2012-2013.
Board Chairs
Ed Nevis (1996-2002); Stephen Jenks (2003-2007); and Damon Hemmerdinger (2008-2013).
Board members past and present
Brian Cornell, Kevin A. Ewing, Reese W. Fayde, Archon Fung, Vincette Goerl, Juanita Hardy, Peter Levine, Benjamin J. Lieblich, Ali Solis,
Adam Solomon, Barbara Roberts, Howard M. Rossman, Peter Tarlton, Anthony Williams, Carol Wishcamper, and Ernest Urquhart.
Staff members (1995 to 2013)
Sujeet Ahluwalia, David Anstett, Marianne Bottiglieri, Ashley Boyd, Alayna Buckner, Josh Chernila, Daniel Clark, Erzuile Coquillon,
Mary Lauran Crary-Hall, Holly Davis, Dianna Dauber, Eric Diters, Cara Elkins, Janet Fiero, Brian Foyer, Joe Goldman, Elana Goldstein,
Andress Green, Susanna Haas-Lyons, Megan Hamilton, Lars Hasselblad-Torres, Hala Harik Hayes, Kecia Jackson, Janice Kruger,
Melvin Moore, Darrick Nicholas, Evan Paul, Audra Polk, Michael Ravvin, Jeff Rohrlick, Andrea Scallon, Julie Segal-Walters, Kim Sescoe,
Anne Shoup, David Stern, Daniel Stone, Elizabeth Stoops Johnson, Roberta Travis, Stefan Voinea, Irene Wairimu and Elizabeth White.
Associates Network
Diane Altman Dautoff, Frances Baldwin, Ann Begler, Deanna Berg, Juanita Boyd-Hardy, Theo Brown, David Campt, Mary Cogan,
Katherine Curran, Shelley Durfee, Don Edwards, Bernardo Ferdman, Ka Flewellen, Katie Fry, Scott Gassman, Laura Gramling,
Dedoceo Habi, Jonno Hanafin, Mattice Haynes, Damon Hemmerdinger, Peter Hyson, Stephen Jenks, Gregory Keidan, Bob Kolodny,
Matt Larson, Becca Lewis, Harold Massey, Jacqueline McLemore, Hubert Morgan, Steven Ober, Anita Perez-Ferguson, Linda Perkins,
William Potapchuk, Ruthann Prange, George Reed, Le’Kedra Robertson, Tracy Russ, Diane Schwartz, Sally Sparhawk, Benjamin Stephens,
Elizabeth Stoops Johnson, Clare Stroud, Julia Sullivan, Vickey Wilcher, Jennifer Wilding, Gary Willoughby, Jennifer Wright, and William Zybach.
National Advisory Board
Hon. Tom Allen, Hon. Bill Bradley, John Bridgeland, Hon. Steve Burkholder, Hon. Henry Cisneros, Hon. Mickey Edwards, Archon Fung,
Bill Galston, David Gergen, Hon. Lee H. Hamilton, Elisabeth MacNamara, Jane Mansbridge, Constance Barry, Hon. Norman Rice,
Alice Rivlin, Hon. Barbara Roberts, Hon. Anthony Williams, Daniel Yankelovich
Share Your Memories
How did AmericaSpeaks impact you?
Email your written memories or photos to americaspeakslegacy@gmail.com
Your email’s body and attachments will be directly posted without edits.
See everyone’s contributions at americaspeakslegacy.tumblr.com

13. of Citizen Engagement Projects