GrokTV: NHListens / Granite State Future – Circle "BBBB" Parts 1, 2, & 3 - Granite Grok

GrokTV: NHListens / Granite State Future – Circle “BBBB” Parts 1, 2, & 3

After talking with Tim Carter of the Lakes Region TEA Party and listening to the Intro remarks by John Krebs and Molly Donovan, it was time to start observing “how” the “what” was going to happen.  As I said in the Intro post, I was not there to participate but to merely observe.  To recap some of what I had observed thus far:

  • A strictly controlled meeting agenda of questions and issues
  • A division of the prospective audience / attendees into “circles” consisting of about 10 people (remember that number)
  • Paid “Facilitators” and “Scribes that are to guide the “conversations” and to “take notes” – in this case, paper easels

The meeting lasted just about two hours so there is a lot of video.  Again, I apologize for the relatively low sound quality (even though I was using a shotgun mic that is supposed to mitigate that – sometimes room acoustics trump technology.  I’ll have a few more observations from observing NOT just the circle that I chose to record (circle “BBBB”), but another one as well (to be explained later).  Now to be sure, NONE of the segment / clips are NOT what I would call riveting and jaw dropping excitement video – in fact, they are rather boring if you are expecting “gotcha” moments.  However, I did see some rather interesting dynamics being played out – not only in how each small group was run (and make no mistake – by the end of the evening, it became VERY clear that these were not just simple listening session) but the dynamics between the two poles of the culture / political worlds too.  First Segment here with two more after the jump – and yes, there will be more posts with more later as well as a single post on the other circle I “observed after the fact”.  Each of these 3 three videos runs about 9 to 10 minutes; here is Part 1:

Segment 2:

Segment 3:

So we can start adding in another role (and remember that number 10!):

  • The “Enforcer” – tasked with being the person who would argue with anyone that was challenging the narrative.

Now, I certainly identified one person, Steve, that seem to be very argumentative anytime someone with a traditional or conservative observation.  Not once, or twice, but on an on-going basis.  It seemed that the purpose was to shut off any discussion in that area that an ordinary person might have brought up – a “shaming” perhaps?  And I noticed that the Facilitator would then take one of two actions:

  • Side with the Enforcer, reinforcing what the Enforcer had said
  • Shut off that conversation altogether by exclaiming something to the effect “well, that might be important but we have to stick to the Agenda”.

And a couple of times, Molly Donovan was called in when the ordinary person from the public really wanted to discuss that particular idea and, for all intent and purposes, refused to let go of their ideas The tactic was to reinforce that of the Enforcer and the Facilitator said – to distract (like one would do to angry toddlers or misbehaving pets) by say things “well, go so such and such a website and that will answer your question” or to go back to the Agenda paper and say things like “well, that is good, but we have to cover these topics first”.

SideNote: (in fact, I panned over to the group that Tim Carver was in (how can you miss him in that neon yellowish jacket?) early in Part 1 and again in Part 1 at about the 7:00 mark when in the group I was observing; “It’s not one of the questions” and NOT from either the Facilitator or Enforcer).  We shall return to that later.

So, why is this important, to enumerate the roles? Remember what I have said before: “and remember that number 10! “.  This means that 30% of each circle (and on Thursday nite, there were 3 of these such circles) are already associated with the group putting on the listening: NHListens.  I can’t snarkily ask “well, what’s their Agenda?” in “stacking the deck in doing this because the actual Agenda was handed to the participants when they sat down.  But, just like the magicians on stage, it isn’t what you see but what you don’t see that is of most importance.  To the ordinary person, at ground zero in the circle, it is not clear what is going on and that was quite obvious – they got shut down.

But cameras do,(i.e., Big Flashlights!)  don’t they?  And that is probably the reason why Molly Donovan did not want the cameras rolling (as Ed from GovernmentOversite.com was there with his big rig as well). But  I’m getting slightly behind of myself (or is that ahead?).  If you notice that I did pan over to the other group fairly often – I noticed that the Scribe over there was writing a LOT more than what the group I was observing, so I decided, once in a while, to capture what they were writing.  And in doing so, I discovered something else:

  • It was not entirely clear from the description that a Scribe would put to paper exactly what the discussion was going over.  Rather, in some cases where the back and forth got more into the philosophical areas, the notations got briefer and more ambigious in such a way that later on, it could be debateable what that actually meant.

SideNote: After all, NHListens was not recording the groups themselves for enhanced transparency.  Instead, it was left to a couple of bloggers (pesky people that we are to those that would want to rule) to capture that (and not edited in any way other than for time of segment (or when there was silence as folks read materials))

And in Part 3, starting at about 2:00, we see another role starting to appear as “Susan” starts to talk about Zoning codes, “sprawl”, the lack of mixed-use, compact, community centers and blames zoning for lack of access to services.  She also goofs up with “Smart Growth principles…<slight pause> and the New Hampshire principles…community centered”.  An older person said it: “that’s Agenda 21!” and Susan smiled – in what seemed to be that “I just got caught” type of smile and leans in. And then something strange happened – Marcia, the reluctant Scribe, pitched in with “What did you call that, Susan?”  The answer was “the New Hampshire Smart Growth Principles”.

Funny, I’ve heard of Smart Growth for years – but I have NEVER heard it branded as “New Hampshire Smart Growth” before.  Such marketing – making it seems as this is a New Hampshire traditional value.  Then the ‘conversation” quickly went to “food insufficiency” and THAT was what the facilitator put up along with a lack of community centers – nothing about sprawl or about Smart Growth or Zoning laws even though there was a challenge!  In Fact, in the next group over (now at Part 3, at the 8:20 mark, Tim Carter goes up to HIS Scribe and demands that a written note be changed – I asked him about it later and he said that what the Scribe put up was not adequate in describing what was actually said

>