" In
Perspectives
on Rhetorical Invention, edited by Janet M.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
Now is the time to take a stand and fight.
Here are a few things you can do:
Spread the word! Tell your friends and family about the economic dangers of the RCC project. Urge them to spread the word.
Make your voice known. There are many ways in which you can partner up with local or national interest groups that will side with you against RCC. Rally your fellow citizens, start a petition, do whatever it takes.
For students in SAERG, civic participation involves both negotiating through community interests and developing integrative skills that can help town citizens mobilize their interests. It also involves actively participating in community discourse and conflict.
The semester-long project culminated in a mock town hall meeting where all three groups, who had been exchanging research and documents, met for the first time and discussed their differing positions. Following PowerPoint presentations from the students role-playing as the mining company and special interest groups, members from all three classes joined small group collaborative sessions to discuss the issues in further detail. These groups of approximately twenty-five students (roughly one-third from each class) offered
Mediating Differences 241
242 Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
physical spaces for people to discuss the different positions and further ex- plain why they took their specific views on the mining proposal. Similar to the mediation rooms at OF, these spaces created opportunities for role-players both to collect data and recognize others' needs. After deliberations, all classes reconvened, and the townspeople took the stage, where they discussed what they had learned from talking one-on-one with the interest group and min- ing company representatives. Attempting to persuade their peers, different townspeople explained their sides and eventually voted for an appropriate course of action--in this case, opposing the mining company's bid.
"Showdown in Superior! " created an opportunity for the transformation of both invention and collaboration strategies. It provided a comfortable environment for students to discuss their different views and listen to their opponents in order to resolve conflicts. With the townspeople serving as medi- ators, the small group deliberative sessions paralleled transformative media- tion sessions where people control the agenda and discuss whatever issues they think are relevant to the case at hand. Modeled after the transformative principle of avoiding caucusing, these sessions created a place where inven- tion is not limited to the beginning of one's arguments and people can work together to actually invent new understandings and resolutions. Students both became empowered through documents and presentations and also recog- nized others by working together and listening to alternative views on their issues--views expressed by real people seated next to them. They learned con- flict resolution strategies that will help them examine and better negotiate their differences.
Breaking through the Border
Building on their experiences in "Showdown in Superior! " Erik Juergens- meyer and David Reamer joined with colleague Leslie Dupont to create another scenario designed to foster transformative mediation and rhetorical invention in a border town. Occurring during fall 2006, "Breaking through the Border" asked professional writing students to research, represent, and collaboratively discuss current issues at the Mexico-Arizona border, with par- ticular consideration of how these issues affect Tucson residents. Students con- fronted challenging issues that were both close to their lives and represented potentially intractable conflicts--scenarios where they could apply transforma- tive mediation strategies to create change. Ultimately, students had to suggest a specific course of action, such as increased border security or humanitarian support, that would influence local and state agencies. Students from Erik's business writing class researched and represented issues from the border de- bate based on their social impact on Tucson citizens. Representing different groups, these students created mission statements, brochures, and informa- tional letters detailing their claims. Students from David's technical writing class researched and represented issues based on their economic impact on
Tucson citizens. Representing different groups, these students created bro- chures and Web pages detailing their claims. Student's from Leslie's business writing class, role-playing as professional writers commissioned to write a proposal to the legislature, read and listened to the other classes' sides and created proposals attempting to represent as many interests as possible.
Throughout the semester, students from all classes met in two "forums" where they discussed their different research and attempted to influence final proposals. At the first forum meeting, David's and Erik's students presented on social and economic impacts in the hopes of convincing Leslie's students that their particular views of the border issue were relevant. Following Power- Point presentations, students joined small group deliberative sessions in order to further discuss their presentations and answer any questions that might have arisen. At the second forum meeting, Leslie's students presented their proposals to David's and Erik's students, who hoped to have their views rep- resented. David's and Erik's students voted on which proposal best represented the border dispute. Building on the previous project's strengths and address- ing its weakness, "Breaking through the Border" focused more on collabora- tion and open invention. Most important, we eschewed the town hall model used in "Showdown" because we believed it created a physical space that encouraged division and competition as the townspeople became consumed with critically analyzing each side's research. We instead designed two forum meetings where students presented and discussed their research with the hopes of influencing others' work. Whereas the one meeting of "Showdown" culminated in a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote, the forums of "Breaking" espoused a generative and informational environment. Students provided research to their peers and used data gathering and collaboration as ways to expand invention. We also realized that assigning sides to the two classes in Showdown (pro- or antimining) was too prescriptive. So, for "Breaking" we let students create their own groups. Whereas we restricted one class to "social" and one to "economic" impact to avoid repetition, we found students more invested in their arguments as they represented their personal beliefs. They were also more creative as they could research different viewpoints and pro- posals to create their side and proposed course of action. Enabling open in- vention of groups expanded "the pie" by letting students create possible solutions that were not confined to our categories.
When questioned about the project's strengths in a follow-up question- naire, students described "a sense of purpose with assignments," an appreci- ation for "working together in a group and doing good research together," and a "fun atmosphere [that] provided for learning and using collaboration while recognizing a specific audience. " Several even suggested the experience was "exciting. " Finally, when asked about what was learned in "Showdown," one student noticed an increased ability to "find relevant points in any side I choose to take and different ways of looking at the given information. "35
Mediating Differences 243
244 Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
Similar to the comfortable spaces of mediation, the nonhierarchical settings of "Showdown in Superior! " and "Breaking through the Barriers"--places where students sat together during presentations and collaborated face-to- face in small group deliberative sessions--created valuable experiences for learning how to be both rhetors and citizens. By creating similar projects, teachers can connect students to community issues, helping them negotiate through the conflicts that often limit collective action.
Conclusion
In the realm of public dispute resolution, rhetoric both provides useful frame- works for approaching conflicts as well as specific strategies for improving people's abilities to resolve those conflicts. Looking at mediation through the lens of rhetorical invention can improve conflict resolution strategies. Like- wise, similar to many of the most useful dimensions of rhetoric, conflict resolution provides new ways to understand the rhetorical tradition and its applications in the classroom as well as community. Our positions as teach- ers of rhetoric and composition do more than help us profess important communication and persuasive skills. They provide opportunities for us to reconnect to and participate in our immediate communities. These connec- tions can help us challenge the misconceptions that have limited our ways of discovering solutions to conflicted situations. By focusing on invention and its possibilities for improving conflict resolution practices, we are better equipped to demonstrate how the arts of rhetoric move beyond mere persua- sion and create increased opportunities for social change.
Notes
1. Poole, "When Neighbors Collide. "
2. "Our Family Services," para. 7.
3. "Our Family Services, Programs. "
4. "Our Family Services, Community Mediation," para. 1. 5. Poole, "When Neighbors Collide. "
6. Kelly, "Taxpayer Watch," para. 4.
7. Lloyd-Jones, "Rhetoric and Conflict," 173. 8. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives.
9. LeFevre, Invention, 65.
10. Corder, "Varieties. "
11. Teich, Rogerian Perspectives, 3-4. 12. Lewicki et al. , Negotiation, 74. 13. Kovach, Mediation.
14. Fisher, Ury, and Patton, Getting to Yes.
15. Lewicki et al. , Negotiation.
16. Trimbur, "Consensus. "
17. See Flower, "Partners"; Flower and Deems, "Conflict. " 18. Fisher, Ury, and Patton, Getting to Yes, 17-81.
19. Bush and Folger, Transformative Approach, 18. 20. Ibid. , 55.
21. Ibid. , 109.
22. Meece, "Companies Adopting," para. 3.
23. Flower and Deems, "Conflict," 98.
24. Flower, "Partners. "
25. Kovach, Mediation, 21.
26. NACM, "Overview," para. 1.
27. Ibid.
28. Corder, Uses of Rhetoric, esp. 49-50.
29. LeFevre, Invention; Laswell, "Social Setting. " 30. LeFevre, Invention, 65.
31. Kovach, Mediation, 50.
32. Beer and Steif, Handbook, 113.
33. Lakoff, Don't Think, 15.
34. Jackson, Juergensmeyer, and Reamer, "Showdown. " 35. Ibid. , para. 20-22.
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Benford, Robert D. , and David A. Snow. "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. " Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 611-39.
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------. "Varieties of Ethical Argument, with Some Account of the Significance of Ethos
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Flower, Linda. "Partners in Inquiry. " In Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for
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Ann Watters, 95-117. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English, 1997. Flower, Linda, and Julia Deems. "Conflict in Community Collaboration.
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Class Collaborative Course Design. " Composition Studies 33, no. 2 (2005). http://www
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. compositionstudies. tcu. edu/coursedesigns/online/34-2/Showdown%20in%20
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? A Place for the Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education
"Sending up a signal flare in the darkness"
Diana George and Paula Mathieu
A rhetorical education enables people to engage in and change American society--but not always. 1
Resistance is sending up a signal flare in the darkness. 2
In 2007 the Council of Writing Program Administrators sponsored a Modern Language Association (MLA) session asking, essentially, "Should academic or public writing constitute the focus of a first-year composition course today? "3 It is an important question, one that might easily send composition scholars and teachers back to an observation Jim Berlin and others made many years ago, that any rhetoric arises out of a time, a place, and a social context. In that way, a rhetoric is always situated, "always related to larger social and political developments," and so a composition course needs to acknowledge that situ- atedness, by recognizing that no language, no rhetoric, is ever innocent, ever free of the politics and culture from which it emerges. 4 That question--public or academic--suggests, however, there might be a clear-cut choice: we either teach students to understand and use the language of the academy, or we turn to a different kind of rhetorical education entirely. To a large extent, that concern over what to teach has been the dilemma of first-year composition all along, though at times the proposed opposition has been academic pre- paredness versus private expression. For our purposes here, then, the question is not so much academic versus public writing but, instead, why is public writing often considered, if not out of bounds, at least not quite worthy of the college classroom? Moreover, if we choose to teach public writing--as many of us do--just what public writing do we teach? Do we teach the rhetoric of electoral politics, the language of corporate structures, the appeal of nonprof- its? What about the rhetoric that students are warned against--the bare out- rage of radical politics? What is the rhetoric our students need for this time, in this place?
248 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
To put all of this in a more direct light: as the two of us write this piece, we are living in a country at war--a war argued for and made possible by pub- lic debates and shoddy news reporting. (Witness, for example, the New York Times's 2004 apology for not carefully investigating the Bush administra- tion's claims of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. )5 We are in a coun- try where, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, requests for emergency shelter have increased in some cities by as much as 24 percent in the just this past year (2007), while a number of those same cities (Atlanta and Orlando are two examples) have passed legislation to restrict the distri- bution of food to people who are homeless. These ordinances were voted on and approved, we presume, after public arguments made to legislatures and their constituents about homelessness, the nature of homeless persons, and the need to do something. The National Coalition for the Homeless tells us:
The motivations behind city food sharing restrictions vary as greatly as the tactics themselves. For instance, some cities view the restrictions as a way to channel charitable activities through designated organiza- tions and institutions that provide services. Other food sharing restric- tions seem geared toward moving homeless persons out of downtown areas and away from tourist and business locations. Finally, some cities' restrictions demonstrate an open hostility to the presence of homeless persons anywhere in the city limits. 6
We are in a country at a time when the general population does not trust its leaders or its traditional sources of news and information. According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, the number of regular viewers of television news and readers of newspapers who actually trust these outlets to give them reliable news has dropped by 10 percentage points in the past decade. The number of readers who have turned to Internet blogs as their pri- mary source of news has risen almost as sharply. The same report found that even the journalists writing the stories are skeptical of the media's reliability. 7
Admittedly there is little new in a claim that writing courses, in particular, have typically responded to the pull of contemporary politics, changing class- room demographics, economic down- and upturns, and more. The semantics movement of the 1940s and 1950s, for example, has often been credited to the propaganda-soaked conclusion of World War II, the beginnings of the Korean War, the paranoia of the McCarthy era, and the sudden entrance of television into homes across the country. Later, in the shadow of the Vietnam War, cam- pus protests, and, eventually, the disillusionment of Watergate, it is no surprise that writing classrooms turned to the importance of the individual and indi- vidual expression as one primary lesson in this course. 8 As well, a number of scholars have observed that composition took what has often been called a "social turn" in the 1980s. 9 Most recently, perhaps as a logical extension of that social turn, we have begun to hear increased calls for attention to public
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 249
rhetoric or public writing--calls that might easily be read as a rhetorical turn, or, to put it more accurately, a rhetorical return--a turn back to questions and lessons that locate writing instruction at the heart of at least one rhetorical tradition: preparing students for participation in civic life. The question that arises in that rhetorical re-turn, if we might call it that, is how a rhetorical edu- cation might embrace not only the social or political structure at hand but also the rhetoric of those outside that structure arguing for change. Is there a place, even or especially in calls for public or civic rhetoric, for a rhetoric of dissent?
We opened this article with a brief passage from Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer's Rhetorical Education in America. In that collection of essays, Glenn reminds us that traditionally, a rhetorical education was meant to enable citizens "to en- gage and change American society--but not always. "10 Glenn's "not always" is a useful caveat in her discussion because she follows it by tracing the his- torical trajectory of a rhetorical education in the United States geared to enable those already in power--white, privileged, and (for a very long time) male. This was a rhetorical education generally inaccessible to anyone outside the halls of power and privilege. It was also a rhetorical education that would not have drawn upon the kinds of public writing or civic rhetoric that have, for decades, moved the public to action: the dissident press.
When, for example, African American abolitionists Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm wrote, in the 1827 inaugural issue of Freedom's Journal, the first African American-owned and -operated paper in this country, "We wish to plead our own cause," they were addressing those very rhetors who (even with good intentions) had for too many years been speaking for and about them. 11 That belief in the power of language to do something--change minds, form coalitions, uncover lies--is at the center of dissident movements through- out history. It is also at the heart of any rhetorical education, and especially one that seeks to engage in public writing or public rhetoric.
It is in this context that we explore the role of what Glenn calls "nontra- ditional rhetors"--in this case, the dissident press--in a rhetorical education. 12 In what follows, we offer an examination of just what the dissident press is, what constitutes a rhetoric of dissent, and what role the dissident press has played in social and political movements of all sorts. In particular, we focus on "Hobo" News (1915-1929 in its initial iteration) as the sort of small, special interest dissident paper that can, as Tony Kushner writes, send up "a signal flare in the darkness," the kind of paper (and rhetoric) often ignored, even reviled in the writing course. 13
What Is the Dissident Press?
Ordinarily, one particular rhetoric is dominant--the rhetoric embody- ing the ideology of a powerful group or class--but the exclusion of all other rhetorics is never completely achieved, not even in a totalitarian state where the effort to do so is common. . . . A democracy, however,
250 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
ordinarily provides political and social supports for open discussion, allowing for the free play of possibilities in the rhetorics that appear-- although these possibilities are obviously never unlimited. 14
According to journalism scholar Lauren Kessler, the mainstream press in the United States has never represented an open marketplace of ideas, where a diversity of opinion is tolerated and circulated. 15 Kessler argues that his- torical studies overwhelmingly show that the U. S. mainstream press has con- sistently spoken for the "homogenous middle" and thus has been a closed marketplace of ideas, with access routinely denied to those holding aberrant or unpopular beliefs. 16 This denial of access--especially to blacks, abolition- ists, working-class radicals, labor organizers, feminists, utopians, pacifists, gay and lesbian groups, and homeless advocates, among others--results from such groups being excluded entirely in the press or by the press selectively covering their disruptive events (such as demonstrations or strikes) but not their goals or ideals. Such coverage often even ridicules and stereotypes the philosophies and positions of such groups. Mainstream news media tend to focus on events ("if it bleeds, it leads"), not issues, further marginalizing groups seeking to cir- culate new ideas to a broader public.
Denied access to the established media, a vast and varied assortment of fringe groups initiate publications of their own. Such publications often begin because of the financial support of one or a few people working on a shoestring budget, and many continue to struggle with financial problems throughout their runs. Some writers and editors have faced government harassment or have been ostracized by others in their communities. Many publications have started and stopped suddenly, as funds run out, public pressures change, or the issues begin to receive broader, more balanced coverage in the popular press. Kessler importantly notes that the fringe publications she studied--papers linked to social movements like the New Harmony Community's New Har- mony Gazette or the agrarian revolt-inspired National Economist--were typically as closed to ideas at odds with their own group's beliefs as was the main- stream press. 17
The difference, it seems, is that dissident publications have embraced their situatedness, never claiming to be broad-based or inclusive. In fact, according to Kessler's study, many dissident press writers were--and are--simultaneously those who lead a movement and who write about it. The dissident press, then, does not pretend objectivity. It does not seek to cover a wide array of issues, nor does it prize disinterest or balanced reporting. In other words, dissident publications are and have always been nakedly rhetorical, with the real and concrete aim of having their words and ideas do something, to make changes in the broader world.
In order to make changes, dissident publications have sought both to speak passionately to an audience of their believers and to educate and persuade a
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 251
broader public about their issues and alternative ways of understanding those issues. Achieving these goals of a more focused and a broader readership at once has been difficult, practically as well as rhetorically. In practical terms, reaching a broad audience with limited resources and distribution networks is extraordinarily difficult; rhetorically, writing both for those deeply commit- ted and those indifferent or unaware of a cause represents a tricky challenge. As a result, sometimes the writing in dissident press papers is uneven or incon- sistent; some pieces are quite heated and polemical while others seek to intro- duce issues or provide evidence to argue for a cause.
Despite the ongoing material and ideological problems of circulating un- popular views in what might be called undiplomatic language, the dissident press in the United States has often managed to successfully circulate and eventually normalize issues that once might have seemed radical or out of bounds. Until dissident publications began championing them, for example, causes like the abolition of slavery, women's rights, or education about AIDS received little to no mention in mainstream publications. Because of these and other examples, journalism scholar Rodger Streitmatter argues that the dissident press has "been instrumental in shaping the history of this nation. " He goes as far as to assert that "a strong argument can be made that the dis- sident press has played a more vital role in shaping American history than has the mainstream press. "18 If this is true, then it would follow that studying the rhetorical strategies and force of a dissident press, both contemporary and historical, would and should occupy a central place in a classroom devoted to rhetorical education. What might such study entail?
A Rhetoric of Dissent
Political theorist Iris Marion Young writes that rhetoric--"the way claims and reasons are stated"--occurs in all sorts of public address, including, Young writes, "the affective dimensions of communication, its figurative aspects, and the diverse media of communication--placards and street theatre instead of tabloids or reports. Rhetoric has the important function of situating those seeking to persuade others in relation to their audience. "19 Young thus reminds us that rhetoric is inherently situational. That is, in responding to a particular need/argument/event and aiming to persuade a particular audience, rhetoric must be grounded in the situation at hand.
While it might seem common sense, then, that anyone trying to persuade an audience to support an unpopular cause or radical social change would want to write with a measure of caution, an ear to a broad audience in need of con- vincing, the rhetoric of dissent is anything but cautious. What, for example, might we make of a newspaper or magazine that introduces itself in this way:
This Magazine is Owned and Published Co-operatively by its Editors. It has no Dividends to Pay, and nobody is trying to make Money out of it.
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Diana George and Paula Mathieu
A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine; a Magazine with a Sense of Humor and no Respect for the Respectable; Frank; Arrogant; Imperti- nent; Searching for the True Cause; a Magazine Directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is found; Printing what is too Naked or True
for a Money-Making Press; a Magazine whose final Policy is to do as
it Pleases and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers--A Free Magazine. 20
With this masthead boast, the Masses, an early-twentieth-century socialist magazine, declared itself beholden to no one, a magazine "searching for the true cause," a "revolutionary" magazine presumably uninterested in "reform," a magazine free from the constraints of capitalism. That declaration, if we take it on face value, defies every lesson on audience at least as it is tradition- ally taught in rhetoric handbooks. The writer violates, for example, several of the rules that Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee have outlined in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students for creating a successful ethos: the claims lack specific evidence, which violates a demand for showing that one has done one's homework; the arrogant tone arguably fails to create goodwill with the reader; and the third-person discourse fails to create a personal relationship between writer and reader. 21 If evaluated on the basis of classical rhetorical appeals within the text, the Masses--and many dissident press concerns-- might be deemed rhetorical failures. Perhaps this is why, in classrooms where we purport to study the power of language to make change in the world, we pay scant attention to the universe of dissident texts. Ignored or dismissed as "bad rhetoric," dissident texts offer the opportunity to study rhetorical exam- ples that have consistently sought to make changes in the world, and occa- sionally have succeeded.
Looked at in this way it seems that rather than violating rules of discourse, this passage from the Masses seeks to change the rules of the game. In declar- ing itself free, true, revolutionary, nonconciliatory, arrogant, "against rigidity and dogma," the editors challenge readers to imagine themselves as somehow aligned with a publication that aligns itself with no one and with nothing in particular, save the freedom to print what it wishes as it wishes.
Spread the word! Tell your friends and family about the economic dangers of the RCC project. Urge them to spread the word.
Make your voice known. There are many ways in which you can partner up with local or national interest groups that will side with you against RCC. Rally your fellow citizens, start a petition, do whatever it takes.
For students in SAERG, civic participation involves both negotiating through community interests and developing integrative skills that can help town citizens mobilize their interests. It also involves actively participating in community discourse and conflict.
The semester-long project culminated in a mock town hall meeting where all three groups, who had been exchanging research and documents, met for the first time and discussed their differing positions. Following PowerPoint presentations from the students role-playing as the mining company and special interest groups, members from all three classes joined small group collaborative sessions to discuss the issues in further detail. These groups of approximately twenty-five students (roughly one-third from each class) offered
Mediating Differences 241
242 Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
physical spaces for people to discuss the different positions and further ex- plain why they took their specific views on the mining proposal. Similar to the mediation rooms at OF, these spaces created opportunities for role-players both to collect data and recognize others' needs. After deliberations, all classes reconvened, and the townspeople took the stage, where they discussed what they had learned from talking one-on-one with the interest group and min- ing company representatives. Attempting to persuade their peers, different townspeople explained their sides and eventually voted for an appropriate course of action--in this case, opposing the mining company's bid.
"Showdown in Superior! " created an opportunity for the transformation of both invention and collaboration strategies. It provided a comfortable environment for students to discuss their different views and listen to their opponents in order to resolve conflicts. With the townspeople serving as medi- ators, the small group deliberative sessions paralleled transformative media- tion sessions where people control the agenda and discuss whatever issues they think are relevant to the case at hand. Modeled after the transformative principle of avoiding caucusing, these sessions created a place where inven- tion is not limited to the beginning of one's arguments and people can work together to actually invent new understandings and resolutions. Students both became empowered through documents and presentations and also recog- nized others by working together and listening to alternative views on their issues--views expressed by real people seated next to them. They learned con- flict resolution strategies that will help them examine and better negotiate their differences.
Breaking through the Border
Building on their experiences in "Showdown in Superior! " Erik Juergens- meyer and David Reamer joined with colleague Leslie Dupont to create another scenario designed to foster transformative mediation and rhetorical invention in a border town. Occurring during fall 2006, "Breaking through the Border" asked professional writing students to research, represent, and collaboratively discuss current issues at the Mexico-Arizona border, with par- ticular consideration of how these issues affect Tucson residents. Students con- fronted challenging issues that were both close to their lives and represented potentially intractable conflicts--scenarios where they could apply transforma- tive mediation strategies to create change. Ultimately, students had to suggest a specific course of action, such as increased border security or humanitarian support, that would influence local and state agencies. Students from Erik's business writing class researched and represented issues from the border de- bate based on their social impact on Tucson citizens. Representing different groups, these students created mission statements, brochures, and informa- tional letters detailing their claims. Students from David's technical writing class researched and represented issues based on their economic impact on
Tucson citizens. Representing different groups, these students created bro- chures and Web pages detailing their claims. Student's from Leslie's business writing class, role-playing as professional writers commissioned to write a proposal to the legislature, read and listened to the other classes' sides and created proposals attempting to represent as many interests as possible.
Throughout the semester, students from all classes met in two "forums" where they discussed their different research and attempted to influence final proposals. At the first forum meeting, David's and Erik's students presented on social and economic impacts in the hopes of convincing Leslie's students that their particular views of the border issue were relevant. Following Power- Point presentations, students joined small group deliberative sessions in order to further discuss their presentations and answer any questions that might have arisen. At the second forum meeting, Leslie's students presented their proposals to David's and Erik's students, who hoped to have their views rep- resented. David's and Erik's students voted on which proposal best represented the border dispute. Building on the previous project's strengths and address- ing its weakness, "Breaking through the Border" focused more on collabora- tion and open invention. Most important, we eschewed the town hall model used in "Showdown" because we believed it created a physical space that encouraged division and competition as the townspeople became consumed with critically analyzing each side's research. We instead designed two forum meetings where students presented and discussed their research with the hopes of influencing others' work. Whereas the one meeting of "Showdown" culminated in a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote, the forums of "Breaking" espoused a generative and informational environment. Students provided research to their peers and used data gathering and collaboration as ways to expand invention. We also realized that assigning sides to the two classes in Showdown (pro- or antimining) was too prescriptive. So, for "Breaking" we let students create their own groups. Whereas we restricted one class to "social" and one to "economic" impact to avoid repetition, we found students more invested in their arguments as they represented their personal beliefs. They were also more creative as they could research different viewpoints and pro- posals to create their side and proposed course of action. Enabling open in- vention of groups expanded "the pie" by letting students create possible solutions that were not confined to our categories.
When questioned about the project's strengths in a follow-up question- naire, students described "a sense of purpose with assignments," an appreci- ation for "working together in a group and doing good research together," and a "fun atmosphere [that] provided for learning and using collaboration while recognizing a specific audience. " Several even suggested the experience was "exciting. " Finally, when asked about what was learned in "Showdown," one student noticed an increased ability to "find relevant points in any side I choose to take and different ways of looking at the given information. "35
Mediating Differences 243
244 Erik Juergensmeyer and Thomas P. Miller
Similar to the comfortable spaces of mediation, the nonhierarchical settings of "Showdown in Superior! " and "Breaking through the Barriers"--places where students sat together during presentations and collaborated face-to- face in small group deliberative sessions--created valuable experiences for learning how to be both rhetors and citizens. By creating similar projects, teachers can connect students to community issues, helping them negotiate through the conflicts that often limit collective action.
Conclusion
In the realm of public dispute resolution, rhetoric both provides useful frame- works for approaching conflicts as well as specific strategies for improving people's abilities to resolve those conflicts. Looking at mediation through the lens of rhetorical invention can improve conflict resolution strategies. Like- wise, similar to many of the most useful dimensions of rhetoric, conflict resolution provides new ways to understand the rhetorical tradition and its applications in the classroom as well as community. Our positions as teach- ers of rhetoric and composition do more than help us profess important communication and persuasive skills. They provide opportunities for us to reconnect to and participate in our immediate communities. These connec- tions can help us challenge the misconceptions that have limited our ways of discovering solutions to conflicted situations. By focusing on invention and its possibilities for improving conflict resolution practices, we are better equipped to demonstrate how the arts of rhetoric move beyond mere persua- sion and create increased opportunities for social change.
Notes
1. Poole, "When Neighbors Collide. "
2. "Our Family Services," para. 7.
3. "Our Family Services, Programs. "
4. "Our Family Services, Community Mediation," para. 1. 5. Poole, "When Neighbors Collide. "
6. Kelly, "Taxpayer Watch," para. 4.
7. Lloyd-Jones, "Rhetoric and Conflict," 173. 8. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives.
9. LeFevre, Invention, 65.
10. Corder, "Varieties. "
11. Teich, Rogerian Perspectives, 3-4. 12. Lewicki et al. , Negotiation, 74. 13. Kovach, Mediation.
14. Fisher, Ury, and Patton, Getting to Yes.
15. Lewicki et al. , Negotiation.
16. Trimbur, "Consensus. "
17. See Flower, "Partners"; Flower and Deems, "Conflict. " 18. Fisher, Ury, and Patton, Getting to Yes, 17-81.
19. Bush and Folger, Transformative Approach, 18. 20. Ibid. , 55.
21. Ibid. , 109.
22. Meece, "Companies Adopting," para. 3.
23. Flower and Deems, "Conflict," 98.
24. Flower, "Partners. "
25. Kovach, Mediation, 21.
26. NACM, "Overview," para. 1.
27. Ibid.
28. Corder, Uses of Rhetoric, esp. 49-50.
29. LeFevre, Invention; Laswell, "Social Setting. " 30. LeFevre, Invention, 65.
31. Kovach, Mediation, 50.
32. Beer and Steif, Handbook, 113.
33. Lakoff, Don't Think, 15.
34. Jackson, Juergensmeyer, and Reamer, "Showdown. " 35. Ibid. , para. 20-22.
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? A Place for the Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education
"Sending up a signal flare in the darkness"
Diana George and Paula Mathieu
A rhetorical education enables people to engage in and change American society--but not always. 1
Resistance is sending up a signal flare in the darkness. 2
In 2007 the Council of Writing Program Administrators sponsored a Modern Language Association (MLA) session asking, essentially, "Should academic or public writing constitute the focus of a first-year composition course today? "3 It is an important question, one that might easily send composition scholars and teachers back to an observation Jim Berlin and others made many years ago, that any rhetoric arises out of a time, a place, and a social context. In that way, a rhetoric is always situated, "always related to larger social and political developments," and so a composition course needs to acknowledge that situ- atedness, by recognizing that no language, no rhetoric, is ever innocent, ever free of the politics and culture from which it emerges. 4 That question--public or academic--suggests, however, there might be a clear-cut choice: we either teach students to understand and use the language of the academy, or we turn to a different kind of rhetorical education entirely. To a large extent, that concern over what to teach has been the dilemma of first-year composition all along, though at times the proposed opposition has been academic pre- paredness versus private expression. For our purposes here, then, the question is not so much academic versus public writing but, instead, why is public writing often considered, if not out of bounds, at least not quite worthy of the college classroom? Moreover, if we choose to teach public writing--as many of us do--just what public writing do we teach? Do we teach the rhetoric of electoral politics, the language of corporate structures, the appeal of nonprof- its? What about the rhetoric that students are warned against--the bare out- rage of radical politics? What is the rhetoric our students need for this time, in this place?
248 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
To put all of this in a more direct light: as the two of us write this piece, we are living in a country at war--a war argued for and made possible by pub- lic debates and shoddy news reporting. (Witness, for example, the New York Times's 2004 apology for not carefully investigating the Bush administra- tion's claims of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. )5 We are in a coun- try where, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, requests for emergency shelter have increased in some cities by as much as 24 percent in the just this past year (2007), while a number of those same cities (Atlanta and Orlando are two examples) have passed legislation to restrict the distri- bution of food to people who are homeless. These ordinances were voted on and approved, we presume, after public arguments made to legislatures and their constituents about homelessness, the nature of homeless persons, and the need to do something. The National Coalition for the Homeless tells us:
The motivations behind city food sharing restrictions vary as greatly as the tactics themselves. For instance, some cities view the restrictions as a way to channel charitable activities through designated organiza- tions and institutions that provide services. Other food sharing restric- tions seem geared toward moving homeless persons out of downtown areas and away from tourist and business locations. Finally, some cities' restrictions demonstrate an open hostility to the presence of homeless persons anywhere in the city limits. 6
We are in a country at a time when the general population does not trust its leaders or its traditional sources of news and information. According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, the number of regular viewers of television news and readers of newspapers who actually trust these outlets to give them reliable news has dropped by 10 percentage points in the past decade. The number of readers who have turned to Internet blogs as their pri- mary source of news has risen almost as sharply. The same report found that even the journalists writing the stories are skeptical of the media's reliability. 7
Admittedly there is little new in a claim that writing courses, in particular, have typically responded to the pull of contemporary politics, changing class- room demographics, economic down- and upturns, and more. The semantics movement of the 1940s and 1950s, for example, has often been credited to the propaganda-soaked conclusion of World War II, the beginnings of the Korean War, the paranoia of the McCarthy era, and the sudden entrance of television into homes across the country. Later, in the shadow of the Vietnam War, cam- pus protests, and, eventually, the disillusionment of Watergate, it is no surprise that writing classrooms turned to the importance of the individual and indi- vidual expression as one primary lesson in this course. 8 As well, a number of scholars have observed that composition took what has often been called a "social turn" in the 1980s. 9 Most recently, perhaps as a logical extension of that social turn, we have begun to hear increased calls for attention to public
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 249
rhetoric or public writing--calls that might easily be read as a rhetorical turn, or, to put it more accurately, a rhetorical return--a turn back to questions and lessons that locate writing instruction at the heart of at least one rhetorical tradition: preparing students for participation in civic life. The question that arises in that rhetorical re-turn, if we might call it that, is how a rhetorical edu- cation might embrace not only the social or political structure at hand but also the rhetoric of those outside that structure arguing for change. Is there a place, even or especially in calls for public or civic rhetoric, for a rhetoric of dissent?
We opened this article with a brief passage from Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer's Rhetorical Education in America. In that collection of essays, Glenn reminds us that traditionally, a rhetorical education was meant to enable citizens "to en- gage and change American society--but not always. "10 Glenn's "not always" is a useful caveat in her discussion because she follows it by tracing the his- torical trajectory of a rhetorical education in the United States geared to enable those already in power--white, privileged, and (for a very long time) male. This was a rhetorical education generally inaccessible to anyone outside the halls of power and privilege. It was also a rhetorical education that would not have drawn upon the kinds of public writing or civic rhetoric that have, for decades, moved the public to action: the dissident press.
When, for example, African American abolitionists Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm wrote, in the 1827 inaugural issue of Freedom's Journal, the first African American-owned and -operated paper in this country, "We wish to plead our own cause," they were addressing those very rhetors who (even with good intentions) had for too many years been speaking for and about them. 11 That belief in the power of language to do something--change minds, form coalitions, uncover lies--is at the center of dissident movements through- out history. It is also at the heart of any rhetorical education, and especially one that seeks to engage in public writing or public rhetoric.
It is in this context that we explore the role of what Glenn calls "nontra- ditional rhetors"--in this case, the dissident press--in a rhetorical education. 12 In what follows, we offer an examination of just what the dissident press is, what constitutes a rhetoric of dissent, and what role the dissident press has played in social and political movements of all sorts. In particular, we focus on "Hobo" News (1915-1929 in its initial iteration) as the sort of small, special interest dissident paper that can, as Tony Kushner writes, send up "a signal flare in the darkness," the kind of paper (and rhetoric) often ignored, even reviled in the writing course. 13
What Is the Dissident Press?
Ordinarily, one particular rhetoric is dominant--the rhetoric embody- ing the ideology of a powerful group or class--but the exclusion of all other rhetorics is never completely achieved, not even in a totalitarian state where the effort to do so is common. . . . A democracy, however,
250 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
ordinarily provides political and social supports for open discussion, allowing for the free play of possibilities in the rhetorics that appear-- although these possibilities are obviously never unlimited. 14
According to journalism scholar Lauren Kessler, the mainstream press in the United States has never represented an open marketplace of ideas, where a diversity of opinion is tolerated and circulated. 15 Kessler argues that his- torical studies overwhelmingly show that the U. S. mainstream press has con- sistently spoken for the "homogenous middle" and thus has been a closed marketplace of ideas, with access routinely denied to those holding aberrant or unpopular beliefs. 16 This denial of access--especially to blacks, abolition- ists, working-class radicals, labor organizers, feminists, utopians, pacifists, gay and lesbian groups, and homeless advocates, among others--results from such groups being excluded entirely in the press or by the press selectively covering their disruptive events (such as demonstrations or strikes) but not their goals or ideals. Such coverage often even ridicules and stereotypes the philosophies and positions of such groups. Mainstream news media tend to focus on events ("if it bleeds, it leads"), not issues, further marginalizing groups seeking to cir- culate new ideas to a broader public.
Denied access to the established media, a vast and varied assortment of fringe groups initiate publications of their own. Such publications often begin because of the financial support of one or a few people working on a shoestring budget, and many continue to struggle with financial problems throughout their runs. Some writers and editors have faced government harassment or have been ostracized by others in their communities. Many publications have started and stopped suddenly, as funds run out, public pressures change, or the issues begin to receive broader, more balanced coverage in the popular press. Kessler importantly notes that the fringe publications she studied--papers linked to social movements like the New Harmony Community's New Har- mony Gazette or the agrarian revolt-inspired National Economist--were typically as closed to ideas at odds with their own group's beliefs as was the main- stream press. 17
The difference, it seems, is that dissident publications have embraced their situatedness, never claiming to be broad-based or inclusive. In fact, according to Kessler's study, many dissident press writers were--and are--simultaneously those who lead a movement and who write about it. The dissident press, then, does not pretend objectivity. It does not seek to cover a wide array of issues, nor does it prize disinterest or balanced reporting. In other words, dissident publications are and have always been nakedly rhetorical, with the real and concrete aim of having their words and ideas do something, to make changes in the broader world.
In order to make changes, dissident publications have sought both to speak passionately to an audience of their believers and to educate and persuade a
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 251
broader public about their issues and alternative ways of understanding those issues. Achieving these goals of a more focused and a broader readership at once has been difficult, practically as well as rhetorically. In practical terms, reaching a broad audience with limited resources and distribution networks is extraordinarily difficult; rhetorically, writing both for those deeply commit- ted and those indifferent or unaware of a cause represents a tricky challenge. As a result, sometimes the writing in dissident press papers is uneven or incon- sistent; some pieces are quite heated and polemical while others seek to intro- duce issues or provide evidence to argue for a cause.
Despite the ongoing material and ideological problems of circulating un- popular views in what might be called undiplomatic language, the dissident press in the United States has often managed to successfully circulate and eventually normalize issues that once might have seemed radical or out of bounds. Until dissident publications began championing them, for example, causes like the abolition of slavery, women's rights, or education about AIDS received little to no mention in mainstream publications. Because of these and other examples, journalism scholar Rodger Streitmatter argues that the dissident press has "been instrumental in shaping the history of this nation. " He goes as far as to assert that "a strong argument can be made that the dis- sident press has played a more vital role in shaping American history than has the mainstream press. "18 If this is true, then it would follow that studying the rhetorical strategies and force of a dissident press, both contemporary and historical, would and should occupy a central place in a classroom devoted to rhetorical education. What might such study entail?
A Rhetoric of Dissent
Political theorist Iris Marion Young writes that rhetoric--"the way claims and reasons are stated"--occurs in all sorts of public address, including, Young writes, "the affective dimensions of communication, its figurative aspects, and the diverse media of communication--placards and street theatre instead of tabloids or reports. Rhetoric has the important function of situating those seeking to persuade others in relation to their audience. "19 Young thus reminds us that rhetoric is inherently situational. That is, in responding to a particular need/argument/event and aiming to persuade a particular audience, rhetoric must be grounded in the situation at hand.
While it might seem common sense, then, that anyone trying to persuade an audience to support an unpopular cause or radical social change would want to write with a measure of caution, an ear to a broad audience in need of con- vincing, the rhetoric of dissent is anything but cautious. What, for example, might we make of a newspaper or magazine that introduces itself in this way:
This Magazine is Owned and Published Co-operatively by its Editors. It has no Dividends to Pay, and nobody is trying to make Money out of it.
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Diana George and Paula Mathieu
A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine; a Magazine with a Sense of Humor and no Respect for the Respectable; Frank; Arrogant; Imperti- nent; Searching for the True Cause; a Magazine Directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is found; Printing what is too Naked or True
for a Money-Making Press; a Magazine whose final Policy is to do as
it Pleases and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers--A Free Magazine. 20
With this masthead boast, the Masses, an early-twentieth-century socialist magazine, declared itself beholden to no one, a magazine "searching for the true cause," a "revolutionary" magazine presumably uninterested in "reform," a magazine free from the constraints of capitalism. That declaration, if we take it on face value, defies every lesson on audience at least as it is tradition- ally taught in rhetoric handbooks. The writer violates, for example, several of the rules that Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee have outlined in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students for creating a successful ethos: the claims lack specific evidence, which violates a demand for showing that one has done one's homework; the arrogant tone arguably fails to create goodwill with the reader; and the third-person discourse fails to create a personal relationship between writer and reader. 21 If evaluated on the basis of classical rhetorical appeals within the text, the Masses--and many dissident press concerns-- might be deemed rhetorical failures. Perhaps this is why, in classrooms where we purport to study the power of language to make change in the world, we pay scant attention to the universe of dissident texts. Ignored or dismissed as "bad rhetoric," dissident texts offer the opportunity to study rhetorical exam- ples that have consistently sought to make changes in the world, and occa- sionally have succeeded.
Looked at in this way it seems that rather than violating rules of discourse, this passage from the Masses seeks to change the rules of the game. In declar- ing itself free, true, revolutionary, nonconciliatory, arrogant, "against rigidity and dogma," the editors challenge readers to imagine themselves as somehow aligned with a publication that aligns itself with no one and with nothing in particular, save the freedom to print what it wishes as it wishes.
