By Izzy Cevallos ’27 (DCI Fellow)
It is February of 2023, at 6:30 on a Friday afternoon and I have just logged off of Zoom. I had just completed my first D Team meeting. Our topic was public education, and the question posed to us was the role of vouchers: when, or should, parents utilize them for their children? As someone who has attended public school my whole life, I had a lot to say about this topic. But even after two hours of discussion, I felt as though I still had another hour’s worth of points to make. I closed my computer, got a drink of water, went to dinner with my friends, and still just felt off- like I hadn’t said enough, or done enough. I was restless. After each D Team meeting that semester I had the same feeling.
So when the opportunity arose to apply to become a DCI Fellow, I jumped at the opportunity, thinking that becoming a Fellow would cure this restlessness and allow me to do more. But at the end of the fall semester, I felt as if only one of these things was true. Yes, I had done more: I had facilitated my own D Team, I had attended a Deliberative Forum and facilitated a discussion at it. I had recruited many of my peers to join DCI the next semester, I had most definitely taken action. But I still felt restless.
A common critique of deliberative institutions like the DCI is that there’s too much talk, not enough action. Why spend all this time arguing about something, when you could be taking action on that very same topic of debate? This is the frustration that I was feeling. I almost felt as if deliberation was not enough.
My dilemma reminded me of an article and a short documentary that the fellows had been tasked with completing at the beginning of the school year. The topic was Ireland’s Citizens Assemblies. Back in 2016, the assembly was established as a way to discuss ways to improve Ireland’s constitution, through the random selection of 100 deliberators. These individuals would discuss a wide variety of topics pertaining to Ireland’s constitution: abortion, term limits, climate change, etc.
But the crucial part about this process is that after the discussions had taken place, the assembly would then make recommendations to members of parliament based on their deliberative conclusions. And these recommendations had significant impacts: results of the 2018 referendum on abortion closely matched the conclusions made by the assembly. Parliament’s climate action plan was also shaped by the assembly’s recommendations.
My point here is that deliberation is only half of the battle: action almost always should follow deliberation. This insight is embedded in the DCI’s “action inclination” deliberative disposition and its Pathways Guides that map out ways participants can follow-up on the topic discussed after each DCI deliberation.
I sat down to write this blog post, fully intending to preach the importance of action post-deliberation and reflect on my own lack thereof, but I realized that I had, in fact, already done so. I was inspired by my own D Team experience to join the DCI. While I didn’t take direct action on public education and the role of vouchers, I took a step towards becoming involved in a community that would give me the opportunity to take action on a multitude of other issues. Just as Ireland’s Citizens Assembly teaches us: deliberation does not exist in a vacuum. It is not always a one-off conversation; it is a first step.
At the end of my final D Team meeting in the fall, I thanked my participants for their time, and before I could even begin to shamelessly plug more upcoming DCI events, several of my participants asked me how they could continue to stay involved with the DCI. Here was the action I had been waiting for. It may not be an assembly of citizens impacting governmental policy, but it was a step towards something else. Yes, deliberation is just talking about an issue, but it can also function as a precursor to a dozen different actions to take. Essentially, deliberation doesn’t require action, but it is made infinitely more meaningful when it inspires it.
