Imagine a cross-section of 100 New Haveners -- everyday people, not specialists or officials -- sitting down to work out the tough questions raised by immigration by talking public TV-style, not yelling or spewing. It just might happen.


That's the plan, anyway, for an event this coming Saturday. Gateway Community College will host "By The People: a Civic Dialogue on Immigration," a day of discussion among New Haveners of all walks of life.

One hundred New Haven citizens will spend the day talking together in small and large groups, discussing problems and solutions, articulating questions and answers. The event is being organized by Gateway in partnership with Connecticut Public Broadcasting, which will film the activities for broadcast. Saturday's dialogue is part of a nationwide series of civic discussions put together by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.


Dialogue participants were selected randomly from around the city and contacted by telephone to confirm their ability and desire to attend. The organizers stressed that there was absolutely no screening or filtering of the participants. When asked if their were to be any undocumented immigrant participants, Evelyn Gard, Gateway's director of public relations replied, "We don't know. We didn't ask." The chosen 100 will receive a small stipend for their participation, to cover gas and child care expenses.


The dialogue will be a full-day event, starting at 8 a.m. with registration and breakfast. Participants will fill out a survey and watch a background video about immigration before breaking into groups of ten for moderated discussions. The morning discussions will be geared toward the articulation of questions that will be presented at a mid-day plenary session with a panel of "local experts." There will be another small-group discussion session in the afternoon followed by a closing survey.

In conjunction with this weekend's dialogue, local libraries are hosting a number of immigration-related events this week, including an evening of storytelling tonight at 6 p.m. at the Wilson Branch Library on Washington Avenue. Several people will tell the stories of their families' immigration to the United States, whether it was several years or several generations ago.


http://www.newhavenindependent.org/arch ... itizen.php