Kitchen Conversations: Democracy in Action at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

This article describes the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's ongoing public dialogue on immigration, the first in the United States. As she joins facilitators in reflecting on the importance of dialogue in a democracy, museum president Ruth J. Abram explains how and why the program was initiated, the obstacles that had to be overcome, and the public reaction to it. Kitchen Conversations represents the museum's commitment to the proposition that historic sites must function as places of civic engagement, using the history they interpret as a starting place for dialogue on related contemporary issues.