Hello everyone, welcome back to my weekly post on the blog. This week went by without any apparent hardship. Everyone is already used to the activities and there were no changes in the schedule or the 自由会話 (jiyū kaiwa, free conversation) lessons. However, the participation rate is, in some groups, slowly decreasing. Why is that? Well, there may be many different reasons. For example, it could be because all the students got used to talking directly to one another, or because they believe they do not have anything left to say. In this article, I will assume it is a bit of both, and while the first reason is in itself a good sign, I will principally discuss the situations of this week and propose a new way to tackle this project.
I mainly have three ways to understand how the project is going as a Junior Coordinator. First, I can directly observe each channel on Slack. Secondly, I have the opportunity to join 自由会話 (jiyū kaiwa, free conversation) lessons, where I can see various groups interact. Lastly, we do a meeting with the 責任者 (sekininsha, students with responsibilities) each week. From what I understand, the number of messages that are sent on Slack is slightly decreasing, but the conversations are still going strong. In fact, I would even say that it is not the number of messages sent that is valuable, but the intention and the meaning behind each text. Thinking before sending a message should be natural, after all in our project most of the conversations are about “hard: topics (but they shouldn’t necessarily be written with difficult words, content is more important than style). Students should not worry if they need a lot of time to reply or write on Slack each day. Time will give everyone a chance to reflect on what they really want to say.
In this spirit, I would like to propose a new activity, or rather a different way to approach dialogue in each group. To make groups’ discussions more engaging, I suggest democratic forums. It is similar to what many of you are already doing, but I understand that if written down it can become much clearer. A forum is a place for public discussion. There is usually a moderator (they can be elected democratically each week, or utilizing a different method previously voted) who poses the questions. The speakers speak one at a time and try to fully explain their views about the subject. Finally, people who did not have anything in particular to say can now ask questions to the other members of the group. For the sake of clarity, I will create a fictional example. Let’s suppose that in Channel 1 (COVID-19) the subject of the week is how to deal with vaccine distribution and equity. The moderator could propose a discussion about what has been discussed during the week or even pose a new question. For example, they could ask “How would you deal with vaccine distribution if the production was halted?” or “What is a fair way to distribute vaccine doses between the whole world?”. These questions have strong links with news and current events. A good practice is to introduce questions with “if you had the power to decide or change the current policies”. This way, we can feel powerful and able to make a change in the world. Not all conversations need to be about “how could we make the world a better place”, but it is a good way to have a dialogue in a democratic manner.
I am sure it is clear to everyone already, but I want to repeat it to stress the importance. Learning to have a democratic dialogue means being able to act in our society. Not only that but also in worker cooperatives (Wolff, 2012). Dialogue is our mean for social change.
To conclude, I would like you to watch “Knock Down the House”, a documentary film about four women running for Congress in the USA. In the documentary, there are many scenes where dialogue is clearly the empowering force that promotes democracy.
I hope you found this an interesting read. If you have any question or comment feel free to write them as a comment.

References
Wolff, R.D. (2012) Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket Books.