Peace Talks Radio
Bridging Political Divisions
Paul Ingles: This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I’m series producer Paul Ingles, today with correspondent Emily Cohen.
Polarization, while to some degree, always an issue in United States history, many would point to recent decades as among the most divisive in a long time. It isn’t just deeply rooted in our major governing institutions, but divisions are affecting our relationships with family members, neighbors, and coworkers. According to the Pew Research Center, over half of Americans say they struggle with such tense divisions in their own families.
There are numerous initiatives underway to help us find common ground, including an effort by the National Governors’ Association called Disagree Better, also a non-profit organization called Braver Angels trying to bring disparate sides together in groups to practice civil discourse and the public media initiative called StoryCorps has launched what it calls the One Small Step program, recording conversations with individuals from different sides of the political spectrum.
On today’s Peace Talks Radio episode correspondent Emily Cohen explores some of these initiatives and helps us all to learn about ways to have more open and respectful conversations ourselves.
We first hear from Monica Guzman, veteran journalist and the author of the book “I Never Thought of it That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.” Guzman is a senior fellow at the national nonprofit Braver Angles. She speaks about her organization’s work bringing people together from opposite sides of the political aisle.
Monica Guzman: Braver Angels workshops, we have something like 50 different programs ranging from skills building workshops to our very popular debates workshop. Our workshop, maybe our most signature one, is called the Red Blue Workshop. The way that one works is you start off with a small group of reds, conservative-leaning people and a small group of blues. They do what is called the stereotypes exercise. They each separate out into rooms and make a list. If it is the reds, “What are the stereotypes that the other side holds about us?” Then the blues do the same. They have this other column. The stereotypes are listed and then we list the corrections that we would offer that stereotype. Then there is a third column, “What are the kernels of truth to this stereotype about our side?”
Then the two sides come back together and go through their lists together. Each side is able to witness the other humbly admit to the shortcomings and the complexities of their side in the public eye. That starts you in a place of humility. Then we go into an exercise where each side asks the other questions where they really want to try to better understand how they came to their views on climate change, on abortion or whatever it is.
This sounds like it might happen very quickly, but it takes several hours because it can be hard to come up with a question for example that is not accusatory or “gotcha” or cornering people but is actually driven curiously meaning that it’s trying to close the gap between something you know and something that you want to know.
Emily Cohen: You describe yourself as the liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted for Trump twice. You talk with your parents about politics, and you have a good relationship with your parents. How do you do this in a civil way? What advice do you have?
Monica Guzman: There are lots of things that we can try. Some of them are really technically quite simple if they are psychologically difficult. When you are talking with someone and you want to jump in with your opinion, if you can make yourself ask one more curious question first, then you spend more time listening to the other person. Research shows us that people hear better when they are heard. The more time you spend listening to someone, the more likely that they will listen to you. It’s not a guarantee, but it happens.
Another thing is that curiosity is contagious. If you use what is sometimes called hedging language or more flexible language as you express your own opinion, for example not “This is this!” but rather “When I think about this, here is how it comes up for me. What do you think?” Studies show that using hedging language does not make you seem weaker and doesn’t make your command of the subject any less, instead it becomes this contagious thing where the other person is more likely to use that sort of language with you and you’re not talking in absolutes, so you’re able to really explore each other’s perspectives.
One last one that I will say that has helped a lot with my parents, I once asked my mother while I was writing my book, “What do you think has helped us?” She immediately said without skipping a beat, “We acknowledge each other’s good points.” I realized she was right, we really do. A lot of people don’t want to say, “That’s a good point,” or “I see what you mean,” because they think that’s giving ground. It’s not giving ground. What you are saying is, “Something about what you’re saying makes sense to me.” What that does is encourage the other person to go deeper, to go farther.
These are just a few strategies that help a conversation become more curious, more flexible and more about exploring perspectives rather than performing perspectives.
Emily Cohen: Can you elaborate a little bit on how to realign our conversation approaches, how to shift our perspectives?
Monica Guzman: Our instincts in conversations of disagreement especially when we’re really attached to our point of view, like many of us are and should be, we want to change the other person. We want to change their mind. We believe we are right, and maybe we are, but we come in wanting to change the other person. The beginning of that difficulty is that when you’re trying to change someone, you can’t understand them. You’re not trying to understand them. If people don’t feel heard, why would they want to be influenced by you? That’s the first thing.
Often, we come in with the question, “why?” which seems like a perfectly curious question, “Why do you believe what you believe?” Across a big divide where there is suspicion and distrust, that is a pretty loaded question. It can make people feel like they are on trial, that they’re being put on the stand and have to defend not just their position but themselves from attack. A person will think about the talking points, grab those and shoot them back. It doesn’t usually end up with a lot of understanding.
If you change the question from “Why do you believe what you believe?” to “How did you come to believe what you believe?” What you’re doing is inviting that person to be a storyteller. It just so happens that they are the reigning experts on their own story. “How did you come to believe what you believe?” is a completely different question. You don’t have to fret over having the strongest arguments or having them on the spot so that the person won’t think that you’re not good or smart. Instead, you may say, “This happened to me. I have a cousin for whom this issue is important. I once came to a decision point and made this decision.” Suddenly, the person listening to you is not arguing with you, they are relating to you. They are visualizing your story in their own minds. They are forming connections with you as a person. When you do that, debate becomes a lot more productive.
Emily Cohen: What about with the media? We often silo ourselves with what we consumer, with what news we read, watch and listen to and we are echo chambers. How can we better or more consciously engage in media so that we are exposing ourselves to the other side and being open to other points of view?
Monica Guzman: With all the focus on conversations across the divide, we often miss the most important conversation which is the conversation that we each have with ourselves. Anytime you’re talking to someone, anytime you’re reading an article, you are also having a conversation with yourself. This is the conversation I think we have to do the most work on.
When you are reading an article, the next time you find a headline that represents a popularly held view that you can’t stand, that really wrinkles you, the thing to practice is reading that article not looking for ammo for your own view, which is our default, but rather asking yourself the question, “What are the deep down honest human concerns that are animating this point of view?” In an article, it can be really hard sometimes, mostly because you have your own resistance to this point of view; “This is stupid! This is evil! This is terrible!” You have to question that within yourself. Is this person really crazy? What if this is a good person with a different point of view? What then? You question those assumptions, allow space to build and then you’re able to listen.
Now, you may also run into anger. A lot of commentary gets attention by being very rage-filled. You can even apply curiosity to anger. There is an author I really love named Valarie Kaur and she says that “anger is a force that protects that which is loved.” If you see anger, ask yourself what is this person protecting or trying to protect? What feels under threat? That kind of listening, if you practice it with an article, is a really great way to slowly build up the muscle to do it in a conversation.
Emily Cohen: There are a lot of initiatives right now, Braver Angels, One Small Step and groups that are working to mend division yet at the same time, division and the divide between red and blue is actually growing. We are siloing ourselves. What do you have to say about this?
Monica Guzman: Yes, it is true that blue zip codes are getting bluer and red zip codes are getting redder. We are sorting ourselves even more into like-minded groups. It’s hard to blame us for that. There are some real-world consequences. There are some laws in different states that mean a lot to people. People want to be where they are comfortable because that is just a human instinct.
What I think is changing dramatically is awareness of the problem. I mean it when I say “dramatically.” Across politics, media and around the kitchen table, we can see a little better the monster of toxic polarization and how it affects us. We are talking about it more. We are raising awareness about what it means for our own psyche and how we approach the world and what assumptions, fears, uncertainties and questions that we allow ourselves to have.
I see so much evidence of that. Just to give a quick example, the republican Governor of Utah Spencer Cox is making himself a champion of better disagreement. He is the chair of something called the National Governor’s Association, all the nations’ governors and their initiative this year is entirely about disagreeing better.
Emily Cohen: I know from other programs including One Small Step that it has been historically hard to recruit conservatives to these sorts of programs. How has this been for Braver Angels and how have you confronted this challenge?
Monica Guzman: Recruitment on a level into this movement is a challenge but one that is the most important to confront. The on-ramps that people need to this is one thing that we have at Braver Angels called The Braver Angels Rule. At all levels of leadership, we need to have 50% liberal leaning people and 50% conservative leaning people. That is the most important rule in our organization. It is true; at the level of our grassroots alliance, at the very highest level, it is 50%-50%. It is always evenly split.
We did a convention in July at Gettysburg. We went to the site of the bloodiest battle of our Civil War to try to prevent another one. We had 700 people in attendance, evenly split between liberals and conservatives. There were more liberals who wanted to come to the convention, but when we hit a certain point we said, “You can’t come liberal unless you bring a conservative friend.” We were able to maintain that even split.
I’ll say this, from the many conservatives that I have talked to, there are so many different reasons. We all have reasons to resist this work. Sometimes they are good reasons. Many conservatives are saying, “Why would I want to put myself in a room where contempt and shame will be thrown my way for what I believe?” I think that’s something that the blue side has to wrestle with, and this is one of the barriers, especially in organizations where it’s mostly liberals. Conservatives are afraid that they will be made to feel bad about themselves. That’s something that we all have to work on.
Emily Cohen: Good advice. Well, is there anything else that you want to add?
Monica Guzman: Just one thing which is that a lot of people think that with this kind of thing you have to be some Zen master of curiosity and be remade in the garb of better listening all of a sudden overnight, but that is just not true. This is about small steps. One small step sums it up. It really is, it’s asking one more question when you want to jump in with your opinion. It’s engaging one more person. It’s building short bridges, not going to the person that you are most afraid of disagreeing with but someone with whom you agree a lot but there is one issue. It’s finding little, incremental ways to build more curiosity, build up that muscle and then over time be able to tackle big bridges if you want to.
Paul Ingles: That was Monica Guzman from Braver Angels, a non-profit citizens' organization uniting red and blue Americans in an effort to depolarize America. Monica has a new podcast called A Braver Way, that aims to equip people with the tools they need to cross the political divide in their everyday lives and confront the barriers in their way.
When you find yourself in a tense political conversation, do you dig in or run away? Do you present facts and figures to make your case or speak from your heart?
Next up we hear from Alyson Spery a Wyoming-based documentarian and social worker about her experience facilitating conversations in Jackson, Wyoming for the One Small Step program. One Small Step is an initiative from StoryCorps that brings strangers from the same community together for a conversation, not to debate politics but to get to know each other as people.
One Small Step is based on contact theory, which states that a meaningful interaction between people with opposing views can help turn “thems” into “us-es.” Since its launch in 2021, over 3,400 people across 40 states have participated in a One Small Step conversation. Alyson Spery walks our Emily Cohen through the One Small Step process.
Alyson Spery: The first thing we have people do is to identify why they wanted to have this conversation. When they share their motivations, immediately they see that they came for the same reasons.
Then a really interesting but awkward thing happens where I ask one participant to read another participants’ self-written biography written in the first person; “I grew up … I learned … My work is …” The person reading the biography aloud is not the person who wrote it, but they have to read it in the first person. They are literally putting themselves in the shoes of another person, of the person that they are looking across the table at. It’s awkward. I always have to remind people to please read it exactly as it is written. Yes, they read in “I” statements. I really think that it is a psychological practice that is so subtle to really shift the dynamic.
Then we ask people to talk about influences in their lives. When we talk about politics, we’re not asking people to state their political positions, we are asking them to identify when the first time was that they became aware of politics and how their community and their upbringing influenced that.
Every question the participants ask of each other is formulated and written down by StoryCorps in advance. They are open-ended questions, and both participants are given the same questions. There is a lot of “and you?” when answering questions because they are also asking it of their partner.
I paired two dads together with a 30-year age range where both had individually expressed to me that their kids had come out. Religion is very important to both of them, but their religious beliefs had shaped them very differently in their politics. I was excited that that conversation would likely lead to talking about LGBTQ rights and homosexuality within religious frameworks. It went there and that conversation was such an honest exchange between two men about being fathers wanting to do the best for their children coming from such ideological differences.
Emily Cohen: Do you think that conversation made a difference in their lives?
Alyson Spery: I think so. I have spoken with both men since and although they haven’t connected with each other, I know the door is open for that dialogue to continue. Especially for the younger dad, I think he really appreciated the way that the older father with his wisdom of experience was listening to him and hearing him out.
Emily Cohen: Do you think these conversations, these one-on-one conversations are making a difference on a broader scale in our community, in our country?
Alyson Spery: I’d like to believe so. If anything, it’s just practice for talking with someone in a respectful way. Some of our law enforcement agents have treated it that way. The chief of police has signed up and encouraged other officers to sign up to practice the skills of listening.
Emily Cohen: To that point, what advice do you have for people who are going to engage in a conversation with someone who has different beliefs from them?
Alyson Spery: Stay curious. Really try to ask questions that help to guide the conversation towards getting to know how and why even the where of how that person got to believe what they believe.
When people are speaking in platitudes about what they believe, it’s helpful to ask, “And why is that important to you? Tell me about when that belief really solidified for you.” Curiosity is really important because then you’re not assuming that you know anything really. I think even as well as we think we know people; they can surprise us.
Emily Cohen: Is there anything else that you want to add?
Alyson Spery: StoryCorps has been working with individual communities, through radio stations but is also expanding this program because of the tremendous interest in it to DIY national level. You can go to www.storycorps.org and check out the do it yourself version of One Small Step where you can get matched with someone on a national level to have one of these conversations virtually, but still be able to participate and to stretch and grow yourself.
Paul Ingles: Alyson Spery with our Emily Cohen talking about the One Small Step program. And now, let’s hear a sample from one of these One Small Step conversations featuring two fathers, Mark and Andy, a generation apart and politically and religiously different, who happen to both work as guides on the Snake River in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Mark: A couple questions came to mind. The first one was just intrigued to hear a little more about your family, who they are.
Andy: Yes, I’ve got two boys and three girls. We’ve probably overdone it with outdoor adventures as a family. The kids that are teenagers now, I ask them to do more outdoor adventures and they tend to resist. I feel lucky and fortunate when they do say yes, so we get to do stuff together here in Jackson Hole like go for a bike ride or float down the river. As a parent, I’ve made an effort to really try to do a lot together, but maybe I overdid it a bit or they’re just typical teenagers resisting.
Mark: As a teacher and coach, I’ve spent many years with teenagers, so they’re probably quite typical.
Andy: Okay, that’s good to hear!
What role has faith played in forming your moral compass or your belief system and your politics?
Mark: It has had a strong influence more historically than in the present day. I started college in 1971. I grew up in a Lutheran household.
Andy: Wisconsin.
Mark: Wisconsin, yes. When I first went to college, I became involved with Lutheran Campus Ministry, met Carl Juk. You wouldn’t know him. He was the Lutheran minister. He is 80 now and is also gay. He was able to help me connect the dots that doing social justice work can take place not in a vacuum but within the context of one’s faith that ones faith can lead to advocating more for justice in the world. For me, that led me into doing 50 years of advocacy work around LGBTQ issues.
Andy: Fifty years!
Mark: Yes, a multigenerational journey.
Andy: The only multigenerational thing I’ve got going on is my faith.
Mark: What better place to put your energy and look to the future. Your children are launching – I’m sure you hope that you have created a framework for them that gives them a center and a moral compass that they can follow.
Andy: Yes, I had hoped that, but lately I struggle with that because I think my teenage daughter who is 18, I don’t know how sincerely, but she has expressed how she is bisexual, and I’ve tried to not react in a strong way. I’ve had to resist a little bit of my natural reaction to that.
Mark: Of course.
Andy: I think that my 15-year-old daughter definitely has some appearances of being a homosexual herself. She seems to find within me some strong biases that are not in favor of homosexuality based on my religious perspectives for sure.
Mark: With your daughters, are you still able to engage in conversations around that topic?
Andy: Yeah, yeah, we can still talk a little bit.
Mark: It’s hard for a parent to talk to teenagers about anything.
Andy: It’s so hard. Yes, I worry about talking too much or saying the wrong thing and pushing them away or getting them to shutdown for sure.
Tell me more about your Lutheran faith in God, what you were mentioning and how that drove you to want to advocate for the LGBTQ minority.
Mark: Going into college, I was considering the ministry as my vocation. I shifted off that path over time, but I felt what I learned growing up in the Lutheran faith is compassion, caring for those among us who are less fortunate. I just ended up centering on LGBTQ issues. I was deeply involved in that work when my daughter came out in 1996 in eighth grade.
Andy: You raised her here?
Mark: Yes.
Andy: But she came out of the closet?
Mark: She did.
Andy: I gotcha.
Mark: At 13 years old.
Andy: Okay, 1996. I bet she felt alone.
Mark: It was interesting, she had a very supportive school system that showed the value of having adults in one’s life that will accept you for the journey you’re on.
Andy: And you were already at that point. Do you think you led her to that in any way or it was all her?
Mark: No, I don’t. I taught middle school for a while. I think middle school students, 11, 12, 13 are not so focused on math and history. They’re focused on their hormonal development and for me, my belief is that people know who they are attracted to and who they are not attracted to. I don’t believe that I led her to that place. I think that is organic with who Berta is. I think she may have gained value in growing up in our household where it was in a way a non-issue.
Andy: It is an issue for my own children for me. It is something that I struggle with. As a parent, I feel responsibility to guide and direct my kids towards what I think is the best, what I think is correct or right or true and I try to be more open every day, but like you, historically or the heritage that I have with my faith considers homosexual acts as a sin. I would try to steer my kids away from that sin. I haven’t gotten to that place where I am okay with them saying that they are bisexual or whatever.
Mark: Right. We are all in the place we are.
Andy: I find that you are listening very intently, and I appreciate that. Thanks for your patience.
Mark: Maybe it’s the start of a future conversation.
Andy: Yeah, for sure. I would welcome that.
Mark: Yeah, I would too.
Andy: Thanks.
Paul Ingles: That was an excerpt from a recent One Small Step conversation; the StoryCorps initiative that brings strangers with different political affiliations in the same community together for a conversation. You can find links to this program on our website, www.peacetalksradio.com.
In Part 2 of the program, coming up next, we’ll hear more about how a Story Corps initiative is working in Congress as well as how one states’ governor brought a team of rivals a la Abraham Lincoln together in recent years in the name of good governance. Stay Tuned.
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Paul Ingles: This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I’m series producer Paul Ingles, today with correspondent Emily Cohen here with part two of her exploration of ways to find common ground in an era of acute political and social division.
As we hear Emily’s guests in part one suggest, one of the key themes is to stay curious, to question our own assumptions about others and to ask questions that get at the how and the why when we might disagree with another person’s viewpoint.
In this part two, Correspondent Emily Cohen speaks with Ron Gunzberger. Gunzberger is the Chief of Staff at StoryCorps, the national nonprofit media organization that records, preserves and shares the stories of Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs. Its mission statement is "to help us believe in each other by illuminating the humanity and possibility in us all, one story at a time".
Before joining StoryCorps, Ron Gunzberbger, a Democrat, served for eight years as a Senior Advisor and Political Director for Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan. Ron comes with a wealth of experience navigating political divides, working as a campaign manager or senior strategist on more than 130 campaigns for centrist, good government candidates. As a child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Ron is acutely aware of what can occur when people lose sight of their shared humanity.
Gunzberger describes to Emily Cohen the climate of debate and openness in the Larry Hogan Administration in Maryland from 2015 to 2023.
Ron Gunzberger: Two-thirds of the in the senior staff were republicans, but the other third were democrats and independents because they actually felt that it was a good thing to have different views at the table, especially in his case where he was a republican governor, only the second republican governor to be reelected in the 200 plus years of the State of Maryland and he had a democratic super majority legislature that could do whatever they wanted. They could override vetoes if they chose to.
We had to find ways to get our agenda passed working with democrats who ultimately didn’t want him to succeed, but after his second term when he was term limited, they were willing to work a bit more with us.
He was an example of how you can govern if you don’t look at the labels but rather figure out decision by decision what seems the best or what is your core principle and what are the things you can compromise on because it’s not a core principle. That’s how government is supposed to work. It gets back to the old description of politics that politics is the art of the possible.
The governor’s one big goal was after 40 plus tax hikes for the eight years before he came in under the previous administration, he wanted no tax hikes. Not only did we get no tax hikes, but he was actually able to get through a veto-proof democratic majority legislature, the two biggest tax cuts in the history of the State of Maryland.
He got a great amount of his agenda done and it was done by working with people across the aisle. One of the lines he liked using was, “Ideas should rise and fall based upon merit and not what side of the aisle they come from.”
Emily Cohen: It sounds like he created a team of rivals like what Abraham Lincoln did with his cabinet.
Ron Gunzberger: Oh, he did, and he would actually love to see the debates at meetings, at senior staff meetings because he wanted people to defend their positions and make their case. As the staff was debating points in front of him, he would listen and think it through. He wanted to flush out the points and have these debates. He thought that internal debates were healthy for foreign policy, and I think they are.
Emily Cohen: Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic and any lessons that people can take in their own lives about how to listen and also how to ask questions, what kinds of questions to ask to challenge another persons’ point of view and maybe their own?
Ron Gunzberger: By training, even before I worked for Governor Hogan, I was a campaign manager and a trial attorney. I was in senior government, a senior commander at the third largest sheriffs’ office in America.
Mind you, I certainly have opinions. I certainly know what I think might be solutions for X, Y or Z, but I am willing to be persuaded that I am wrong. The best approach that I have when I’m listening to someone make their case when I truly don’t know is to ask questions rather than say, “Here is why you’re wrong.” If you start with that, you’re going to put up walls and no one will get anything done.
I often take what I call the “Columbo approach” for an older TV reference. You start asking questions and they explain. If you can do that well often enough, you might get yourself educated and decide the right answer or two, if the points you’re making connect the dots well, that kind of dynamic does better not only for policymaking but for interpersonal relationships as well. I’ve been married for 36 years. I think that these approaches work as well in life as they do in government as they do in the workplace.
Emily Cohen: Where does all of our division in your mind come from? Is it because we are not somehow learning to think critically or ask questions?
Ron Gunzberger: I think questions are a good way to diffuse tense situations if you want to get something done. Some people in politics today on both sides of the aisle don’t want to get things done. They would rather get sound bites and be on TV than actually legislate and do their jobs.
A great example, essentially a one off, we do it with members of Congress from across the aisle and let them have conversations. We do that also because some studies, the ones done by More in Common and other groups are showing that the behavior of the public has become so toxic, this polarization because people see their leaders acting that way and they are following the leaders’ example. If we can flip the dynamic and people can see leaders acting well, it might promote better behavior. We’re doing this in Congress.
A great one that we did recently was between Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger from Virginia and Congressman Blake Moore of Utah, a republican. He said the thing that he likes to do when he goes back to his district when he speaks in front of different groups is to say, “Who here has heard of Marjorie Taylor Greene? Put up your hand.” “Who has heard of Matt Gaetz? Put up your hand.” Then he mentions names like Jason Smith or Kay Granger, two of the most powerful committee chairs and not a hand in the room goes up. No one knows the people who actually do the job, do the work, make it function, do the budget, but they can all tell you who the bums are that get on TV. That’s part of the problem. I think it’s actually a big part of the problem.
If you look back historically, the period of time in this country that we all have generally gotten along versus the times that were terribly polarized, the good times are a lot less than the bad times historically. We had a very long period that was good from essentially The New Deal all the way through the Kennedy Era. Then the Vietnam War broke that down. Watergate broke that down. Then we had a better relationship again from the Reagan Era for a period of time again until the more modern era with the Tea Party Movement or even before.
There’s been a Newt Gingrich effect on Washinton. It all became much more personal, that’s where I think it largely changed and the public follows that. Going back to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, they were horrific to each other. The supporters would write and put out accusations that were very personal, even more so than some of the stuff we have now. It was so bad that the Alien Sedition Act, one side was literally trying to arrest the other side including elected members of Congress just for opposing them. That alone is how bad it got. We’ve had bad periods.
We had the Bonus Army when we sent the National Guard out after WWI during the Depression basically to suppress veterans who were seeking benefits they were promised. We’ve had violent periods and harsh periods, but we don’t want to get there.
There are ways to get us back, but it will take leaders demonstrating it and the public wanting it. I think the public wants it. The problem is that the 80% that want it are not the people that we hear from every day because they’re not sexy on the news. What’s sexy are people yelling at each other, throwing things, making news incidents, politicians acting badly and until we start punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior, right now the opposite happens, it won’t change.
There are some examples. In North Carolina last year, the example I will give you is Madison Cawthorn, one of the bomb-throwers in Congress, he only lasted one term. He got dumped in his own primary by someone probably equally conservative, but who was a serious state legislator who was going there to actually do the job, not be on TV. Everyone knew who Madison Cawthorn was. I don’t think many people in the country know who Chuck Edwards is, the guy who beat him, but I bet the people in his district do because he has helped them more than Cawthorn did. He is an anomaly right now, but when we start promoting good behavior and there is a reward for good behavior, it will help.
One other person who deserves a brief shoutout is Governor Spencer Cox of Utah. He is using his chairs’ initiative, the Vice Chair of the National Governors Association Jared Polis, a democrat from Colorado, an initiative called Disagree Better. It’s not that we have to disagree with each other. We don’t need a kumbaya movement. We don’t need to come together and meet somewhere in the center. Having two different views that we all hold, two different parties that are advancing different agendas is healthy for the country. We just have to do it in a way that is productive, thus this Disagree Better idea.
One Small Step is part of where we need to go. Disagree Better is part of where we need to go as well as Braver Angels. All of these groups in the ecosystem have one thing in common, probably 100 plus groups, bridging the ecosystem of trying to stabilize civil society in America. We are all in our own way pieces of that puzzle. Like any real puzzle, when enough pieces come together, the picture becomes clear and helps everyone get to where they need to go.
Paul Ingles: Today on Peace Talks Radio you’re hearing our correspondent Emily Cohen speaking with Ron Gunzberger, Chief of Staff at the StoryCorps recording project. He has formerly been a campaign manager and senior strategist on scores of political campaigns and for many years, the democrat on the staff of former Maryland republican Governor Larry Hogan.
Back now with Emily’s interview with Ron Gunzberger.
Emily Cohen: It sounds like you’re saying that division is really part of the fabric of America. It’s part of our DNA in some ways, although there is concern that we are as divided now as we were before the Civil War.
Ron Gunzberger: It goes back to the start of political parties, something George Washington warned about. In the beginning there were no parties, there were just elected officials. Ultimately, over time, there arose the federalists and the anti-federalists which formed parties. Once they formed actual factions is when rival newspapers began, the Fox News and MSNBC of their day. There was a newspaper publisher named Calendar who was horribly vial. At one point, he was on one side but got burned by that side so switched sides. Then he became equally vial in the other direction. It was the most scurrilous newspaper you could imagine, what they put out, but it was only parties and tribalism.
People get really worked up about sports teams. At the end of the day, whether Team A or Team B wins doesn’t really matter all that much, but people get really worked up about sports. There are bar fights over the Yankees and the Red Sox. People want to feel a tribal affiliation because it helps give them more meaning and helps fill in some identity beyond what they’re doing every day. They like the strength in numbers. I think parties do that too.
If parties went back to being healthier and more focused on what they each want to achieve and move away from personal attacks … election day is a zero-sum game. Only one can win, but once you’re in office, at least for that term, every day shouldn’t be a zero-sum game. It shouldn’t be, “Did the Democratic Party win the House or the Senate?” In between it should be “Are the American people winning?” We lose sight of that when we’re only trying to put points on the board. You see it in the publics’ approval rating or lack thereof for our elected officials.
By the way, for the other pillars of society too, journalism has been trashed in public perception. Policing has been trashed. The idea of putting people in a room together to talk and have normal conversations is just one key step to starting again. Like our founder David Isay says, “It’s hard to hate up close.” When you meet people up close, it helps.
In Congress, what is even worse is that a lot of congresspeople do actually like each other, but they can’t admit it publicly. They’ll sound terrible publicly, but behind the scenes, they get along just fine. That doesn’t help because the public only sees the bad behavior and that’s what they’re following.
Emily Cohen: Could you talk a little bit more about the congressional version of One Small Step? How is that working? How many conversations have you had?
Ron Gunzberger: It’s hard to get them to do them in part because trying to schedule a congressperson is hard. Trying to schedule two congresspeople with competing congressional schedules is even harder. The joke is that everyone who has been recorded probably happened on the third or fourth try. Schedule is one big obstacle.
Next is finding members willing to do it. In the beginning, they didn’t want to because they weren’t sure how it was going to look. Subsequently they have seen the products that we produce, audio cards with 300 videos and they said, “Oh, this looks pretty good.” Now we have more congresspeople interested.
We’ve now done about ten stories with 20 members. We have a bunch more in the pipeline, none with dates, but all saying they want to do it. I won’t use the names of the ones who haven’t done it yet, but very surprising names probably for some people who are seen as much more on the fringes, some probably for their own self-interest. They may be up for reelection and want to look more centrist going into an election year. I get that too, but you know, if it serves the greater good of emulating good behavior, it’s better for the country as a whole even if they have another motive also.
One [story] we did that is online was a great conversation between Dean Phillips, a democrat from Minnesota, a center-left guy and Tim Burchett from Tennessee who is probably one of the three or four most conservative members of Congress. He was one of the eight who brought down Kevin McCarthy, but he did it because he is a total budget hawk, and he didn’t like any of the budget stuff. He brought it up in his conversation with Phillips.
He has a sense of humor but also sees the value of this. When he walked in, he came up and introduced himself to me. He stuck out his hand and say, “Hey, I’m Tim. I’m a far-right extremist but I like talking to people and I like what you guys are doing, so let’s do this thing.” That was a good start.
The two of them had some really good chemistry. Burchett said, “I’m pretty far right.” Phillips interrupted and said, “You’re so far to the right, I can’t even see you in my peripheral vision.” But it was a great conversation and they really got along well. They agreed to disagree. If we can’t act the way we’re supposed to act, how can we expect anyone else in America to do it?
Another conversation we had was with another Congressman after it was over who said, “I like what you’re trying to do, but maybe I’m just too much of a pessimist because I don’t think we can get back to normal and all get along again until something horrible like another 9/11 happens or Martians invade, and I don’t want either one of those. Other than that, we are so broken, I don’t know what it will take to fix it.” They acknowledge it but they don’t know the answer either, but they want it better.
Emily Cohen: There was a recent study that found that these conversations are making a difference, creating more empathy for people on the other side. Can you talk about that study and some of the surprising findings, particularly for people who are conservative?
Ron Gunzberger: It’s a study done of our work to validate it. We validate it in three different ways. Dr. Jenn Richardson, the country’s leading expert on Contact Theory about how to change people up close does surveys of participants before and after and then down the road further. That’s part one.
Part two is we also have More in Common that does its own separate studies of our work using Dr. Richardsons’ data and other data points that they look at.
Third, we use traditional political polling in our model communities to check the impact year over year of perceptions like are we getting along better, are we more divided than we’ve ever been before? We have four model communities that we operate in. We are in Fresno California, Wichita Kansas, Richmond Virginia and Columbus Georgia. Those are laboratories and we get to see up close how it works. We tweak and change things as we go along to make sure that we are the most effective that we can be.
The interesting thing is that after the conversation, they come away liking the person who sat across from them. The liberal will like the conservative, the conservative will like the liberal. That is not a huge surprise because using these conversations because we pair them using some commonality. Maybe they’ve both been Marines, they both like fishing, they both recently lost parents or some common element that gets them talking about things in their lives and even if they don’t agree, they can see that this is a good person, and they like each other.
What’s fascinating and what Dr. Richardson’s study from Yale has found from actual participants is that virtually all show greater feelings of empathy for the person who sat across from them. What we are finding is statistically significant feelings of empathy for people on the other side in general, but it’s going more in one direction than the other. What surprises people is it’s the conservatives who are showing much greater feelings of empathy for liberals after the conversations than liberals are towards conservatives.
I have my own theory about this and it’s one that we want to test further, but having talked to Dr. Richardson and others, they think that there might be something to this approach. The suggestion is that you have to look at how someone defines themselves, not how you want to define them because when you cast aspersions on the other side, it’s just never going to work.
If you look at how a conservative defines themselves, the work they often use is “patriot.” They see themselves as patriots. Even some of their movements in their committees, they use the word “patriot.” A patriot is someone who loves their country. If you look at how they define themselves, if after the conversation they decide that the person across from them is a liberal, they can see them as a good American, just one who is horribly wrong. I think that’s what’s going on there.
I think on the other side, it’s much more tied to the causes. We need to fight gun violence because people are dying. We need to protect women’s rights when it comes to choice because it’s destroying their lives. We need to increase social spending or provide a single payer medical system Medicare for all because that’s the only way people will have healthcare. Housing should be a right. These are causes. If you don’t agree with them, you’re just wrong. That’s one of the differences.
Both sides are sincere, but I think that’s why we are seeing more movement so far on one side rather than the other. We are seeing liberals showing some increased empathy towards conservatives as a whole afterwards but not yet at the level that conservatives are showing towards liberals and that is fascinating.
Emily Cohen: So, One Small Step conversations are between people who don’t know each other, strangers from within the same community. What advice do you have for entering into conversations with people that we do know?
Ron Gunzberger: One, if you can’t get beyond it, talk about other things in your life. If all Uncle Joe wants to do is talk about everything he has heard on Newsmax or MSNBC or whatever side he is on and how horrible the other side is, it can be a hard conversation and a long night.
If you say, “Look, we disagree. I get that. What else is going on in your life? Talk about your kids. Talk about your work. Talk about your hobbies. Do you have any vacations coming up? Where did you go this year?” There are a whole lot of things to talk about that are nice and safe ground.
Actually, one of the members of Congress used this in her conversation. She said, “In normal life, if you say, ‘What do you want to eat tonight?’ One person says Chinese the other says ‘I don’t know, sushi,’ and then they never talk to each other again.” With politics, we just cut it off right there.
If we can’t have a rational conversation that doesn’t end up in yelling or mean feelings, find one of the many other topics out there. And if you have nothing else to talk about but politics, maybe you need to reexamine your own life because I’m a political person, but I can talk about lots of other topics too. If there was only politics, I probably would have been divorced years ago.
Emily Cohen: That is very practical and good advice. Ron, is there anything else that you would want to add?
Ron Gunzberger: I would actually encourage people to go to www.onesmallstep.org and sign up for the program because beyond the communities that we are in, we have an app in beta testing now that should be out in a few months and we will be able to facilitate conversations that way as well between people and match people up. We can do some virtually. Sign up.
Get involved. Talk to people. It’s not just us. Get involved with us and have a conversation. Get involved with Braver Angels if they’re in your community. Get involved with every one of these other groups. Start on your block. Start a community garden to bring the community together. Find things that bring people together because if we go back to being a community again and we can see the humanity in each other, it doesn’t just make for a better country, it also enriches our own lives. You will be happier, and your neighbors will be happier.
Frankly, if one of your neighbors has a Biden sign and another neighbor has a Trump sign, good for both of them. At the end of the day, still get together and have a glass of wine because you’re all decent people.
That should be the underlying message. Find ways to frankly strengthen the fabric of society that weaves us all together through human connections every day, from the little connections to the groups that we belong to and that’s what people need to do.
Paul Ingles: That was Ron Gunzberger, Chief of Staff at StoryCorps, speaking about political division and his work crossing the aisle. Find more information about Ron and all our guests from both parts of this episode at www.peacetalksradio.com. That's where you can also go to hear all the programs in our series dating back to 2003, see photos of our guests, read and share transcripts. You can sign up for our podcast and make a donation to keep this non-profit program going into the future. Find it all at www.peacetalksradio.com. Contact us with your questions and comments by writing info@peacetalksradio.com.
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Nola Daves Moses is our Executive Director. Ali Adelman composed and performed our theme music. Our Supervising Producer is Jessica Ticktin. For Correspondent Emily Cohen and our cofounder Suzanne Kryder and the rest of our crew, I’m Paul Ingles. Thanks so much for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio. (gentle music)