Climate Week Listening Circles at the United Nations
No registration necessary, just come by and be listened to.
In Sustaining All Life/United to End Racism listening projects, pairs of people will be on the sidewalk in front of the United Nations all week during Climate Week, engaging passers-by and people entering and exiting the UN to listen to their thoughts and feelings about the climate emergency. We will listen with interest and warmth, and without offering our own thinking unless asked. Our experience is that if people can be listened to well, without judgment, they can talk at length and will have new thoughts.
The process opens them up to considering other thinking, even if it is different from their own. The listening projects will be Monday, September 18, through noon on Saturday, September 23, from 9 – 11 a.m. and 12 – 2 p.m. Engaged listening is especially useful when faced with important and difficult topics like climate change. Because the topic is so charged with emotion, many people have never had the chance to fully state their thinking and show how they feel on the topic. (Instead others interrupt them to correct them or tell them what they think or feel about the topic.) We will post engaging questions on poster board that our listeners will hold up to people on the sidewalk. We will engage them, asking for their thoughts on the questions.