August 2005

Two new developments:
• Refreshing Democracy. My playwright and essayist wife, Carla, pointed out in a February 2003 essay in The Christian Science Monitor how Americans were beginning to feel depressed -- muffled by the times and our politics. That concern with the state of our democracy found resonance with a number of our neighbors of the 26th Legislative District Democracts. Drawing on the CoLab process, the 26th LD Dems are sponsoring a series of "Refreshing Democracy" community laboratory events this Fall. To involve citizens of all political stripes, the Refreshing Democracy project will begin with testimony from an experts group, then proceed via a one-day rehearsal using high school students to a day and a half event with 60+ participants from all of the key sectors in our community. Our goal is to help focus a handful of citizen campaigns to address the most pressing of the "must act now" problems and opportunities facing our community. Much more to follow.

• Sri Lanka Peacebuilding. My friend and colleague, Dr. David Ratnavale -- a psychiatrist based in Washington, DC who also practices in his native Sri Lanka, has just returned yet again to Sri Lanka where he and I collaborated on a highly successful PeaceLab a couple of years ago. David is a widely recognized leader in the new field of societal trauma -- recognizing that, just as individuals can be traumatized by personal tragedy, the socio-political functions of whole societies can be affected by their collective trauma in war and disaster. Sri Lanka, with the December tsunami on top of twenty years of civil war has suffered plenty of both. David is leading the effort to hold an international symposium this December for a one-year-after assessment of lessons learned from the massive tsunami relief effort. In conjunction with that symposium, we are proposing a PeaceLab to find ways to connect the immediate tsunami recovery work to a longer term peacebuilding strategy. Again, more to follow. In the meantime, watch our TraumaDoctor blog for further insights as David proceeds on his current mission.