The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice Manual

Engaging one's adversaries in a positive way, while exciting and personally
transformative, requires risk-taking, self-reflection, and hard work. In order to celebrate this
effort, reinforce our mutual vision, and recognize landmark achievements, we included a
celebratory conference banquet where we made a common ground award to a noteworthy
common ground group.
Providing a bigger picture.
Having always viewed our work in the abortion conflict as part of the global effort to
change the way the world deals with conflict, we wanted to put conference participants in this
larger context. We therefore used our opening plenary speakers to inspire us by talking about
efforts to foster collaborative solutions to violence and societal problems on other topics besides
abortion.
Opinion Survey.
This tool for examining differences, similarities and misperceptions is explained in
Chapter 3. At the conference, we had attendees complete the survey during their orientation
session, and, on a subsequent day, posted the results with an explanation and someone present to
answer questions.
Planning follow-up action.
At the Syracuse conference, the concluding plenary was devoted to the question of "what
next?" Participants were grouped geographically at tables where they talked specifically about
how they would take the lessons learned from the conference to their communities.
Closure.
The final plenary ended with a simple exercise aimed at helping people pull together
what they had learned and experienced and, if they chose, sharing that with the entire group. At
the first conference, people "filled in" the overlapping circles we use to graphically illustrate the