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Heidi: Hi, I'm Heidi Burgess, and I'm here today with my partner, Guy Burgess. And we are talking with David Eisner, who is a person that we've met through something called the Inter-Movement Impact Project (IMIP). David has had a long and varied career in government, nonprofits, business, all over the map. And that's given him a really, we think, unique and very valuable insight into the topic of polarization, which is, of course, what we're particularly interested in, and more broadly, challenges to democracy. We had a wonderful conversation with David a couple of weeks ago, and I was kicking myself the whole time because we weren't recording it. So I asked David if he would join us for a recorded discussion, and we're delighted he said "yes". We're not going to revisit the same territory we did before. At the end of that conversation, we had a whole lot of things that we hadn't talked about that we wanted to, and we're going to start from there and see where it goes. I'd like to start, though, by asking David to give us a little bit about about his background, because I think it really does inform his ideas of what's going on now and is a useful thing to understand before we head into the questions.
David: Sure. Thank you, Heidi. And guys, great to be with you. I really enjoyed our first conversation, and I was eager for that conversation because I get a huge amount out of Beyond Intractability. I find each issue to really move my thinking forward. Thank you.
Heidi: Thank you!
David: My own background is eclectic, basically, because I'm old. I've been doing it a long time. I spent about five years working for three Republican members of Congress as communications director, then spent time doing communications consulting, and spent most of the '90s working with America Online (AOL) and creating the corporate communications and the AOL Foundation. I went from there into government to support AmeriCorps and the Corporation for National and Community Service, which was an appointment by President George W. Bush and Senate confirmed. After planning to spend a year and a half there to fix some of the challenges they were having in 2003, I ended up staying for the entire administration because I was so moved by the capacity of citizens to actually make meaningful progress on issues, so long as the engagement allowed folks to feel invested and belonging. So I moved from there into the nonprofit sector. I ran the National Constitution Center for several years, Repaired the World for about seven years, and most recently, Convergent Center for Policy Resolution. And now, in this part of my life, I've decided I'm no longer trying to raise millions of dollars for organizations and I'm no longer reporting to a board of directors. I'm just focused as intently as I can on addressing polarization in the US.
Heidi: Wonderful. We, too, have released ourselves from fundraising, and it feels so good and allows us, too, to focus in on the topics that we really care about as opposed to the topics that our university cared about or the funders care about. So I certainly understand the freedom that you now have lets us do this. Let's go into the questions. I gave you a list of questions. You came up with two more, and I really liked yours. So let's start with yours, and I'm going to read it.
The first one was that you wanted to address a contradiction that you see on the left between a call to avoid violence and then articulating the threat that either Trump or Republicans more generally will destroy democracy in America. And I thought we should tease out two things in that, and Guy pointed out a third. The two that I wanted to tease out were, first of all, the notion of threats to democracy. Because I see both sides accusing the other of threatening democracy and being very afraid that if the other side wins the election, we will lose our democracy. Guy pointed out there's a question of what we mean by "democracy," which is kind of an academic question, but it has a practical side too. So we might want to look at that. But then, what are the real threats to democracy and who is behind them and what could be done about it?
And then the other aspect of that in your question is that you went on to say that "I personally believe that violence may actually be warranted if it's necessary to save democracy." So my question on that is what kind of violence, by whom, in what context? And do we agree that, indeed, violence might be necessary or effective to save whatever it is we decide democracy is. So there's a lot to chew on there. That can probably keep us going for a while.
Guy: Now, the one clarification on the things that Heidi and I were talking about is there's a question about what are the true threats to democracy? And both liberals and conservatives emphasize different things and think about democracy in different ways. And for many of them, democracy is a system that's smart enough to implement Republican or Democratic policies, rather than an underlying system that allows people with very different values to live together in peace and mutually beneficial ways. And then there's also the question of scaremongering, that some of this is just political tactics. There's some fundamental psychological literature about that. I had a friend who was fond of saying that literally, "it's been proven that the fear part of the brain is wired ahead of the hope part of the brain." So political tactics based on scaremongering and scaremongering over democracy are really very effective. But they drive the hyperpolarization spiral that's tearing us all apart.
David: I think that makes a lot of sense. And really, it was fear mongering that I meant to be the most focused on. I actually think that when I was talking about the contradiction, there's something that's being said on both sides, but I feel it's more forceful on the left. It is that "if the other side wins, this country, as we know it, will somehow fail or cease to exist." And I think that's just such a horrible exaggeration. And for me, the way of understanding that it's a horrible exaggeration is this idea that we really want to curtail violence. Well, if something was happening that caused the United States to fail or that resulted in the United States no longer being a democratic, pluralistic republic, it seems to me that's the essence of why we have troops defending the country. And we know that in cases where we need to where to actually defend ourselves, there is at least a decent argument that rather than fail, citizens can take pretty extreme measures to help support the United States. This looks similar to when we've had to use troops to protect ourselves. And I don't believe that there's any basis for believing that that kind of failure or that need for violence is there. I believe we need to be significantly driving down the impulse for violence. And I believe that we're failing to do that when we're simultaneously saying that the stakes in this election are existential.
Now, I also need to share that I haven't gone into great detail internally in terms of thinking through some of Heidi's specific questions, what kind of violence and what circumstances, because I really am thinking of it as fundamentally such a powerful exaggeration that it potentially incentivizes violence, rather than parsing what kind of violence might be useful.
Heidi: Well, one thing I think I'm inferring from what you said that troops might be necessary. I'm tossing in my brain whether I want to use the word "legitimized violence." We usually think of our armed forces as using violence legitimately. But it's always on an external threat. And I think there's actually a law or regulation about that. We used to work some on civilian military relations, and I knew more about it then, than I remember now. But US troops are not supposed to work within the United States, with the exception of the National Guard, unless there is some sort of emergency and they're given special dispensation to do so. So I'm remembering with Hurricane Katrina, the situation was so dire that they managed to pass some sort of a law that enabled the military to help out. But it takes extraordinary measures. Normally, they're not supposed to work in the United States, I don't think.
I want to back up for a minute and say that I almost entirely agree with you that there's a lot of fear mongering going on, and making this look existential makes it look ever so much more dangerous. But I'm getting somewhat more sympathetic with the left's view when Trump is out making statements saying, "After four years, you won't need to vote." That's worrisome. His "dictator for a day" statement is worrisome. Now, my hope is that the system is strong enough that it will be able to resist any such impulses that he has. I think he probably has impulse to get rid of elections. Now, his chances of being healthy enough to be president in five years strike me ia pretty low, and he clearly isn't thinking that way. But I think there are real legitimate reasons for alarm. And if you don't think that our system is strong enough to hold Trump's authoritarian impulses back, then I think the left is somewhat justified in its grave worries.
Guy: One thought is that one of the definitions of democracy is it's a set of violence-limiting institutions. It's basically an agreement that we will use democratic processes to resolve our disputes, and we will forsake violence as an option. And once one talks about losing confidence in those institutions, then you're off to anarchy, basically. I used to work for a professor Kenneth Boulding. I often cite what he called "Boulding's First Law." That is "if it exists, it must be possible." There are certainly an awful lot of states run by Republican administrations that really aren't too bad. And the notion that a Republican victory means the end of democracy ignores that law. There's only so much that one person can do. You have to consider the whole population of Republicans that work in government during Republican administrations. And there's a long history showing, arguably, that in some ways, they do even a better job of governing. And this kind of existential language that gets awfully close to justifying violence is very, very worrisome.
David: It is. But just going back to Heidi's points, I want to be really clear. I don't have an answer. And I agree that there are some really challenging outcomes, regardless of which direction we choose. My own sense is that there's a more responsible way to talk about this problem which would be by saying "you know, this election puts us on a really dangerous trajectory as a country. We're beginning to explore what is the resilience and the capacity of our infrastructure. We're testing how much executive power and executive privilege can be healthy and sustained. We're testing our country's ability to be resilient in the face of divisive remarks and policies that are culturally and identity-based anathema. But we're testing whether we have the resilience to deal with that or not. I think that those are very true. I actually think that there's some testing of that that would happen both ways, with either candidate. And both sides saying that the other candidate is sort of an immediate abrogation of the country. It is just an invitation for people to take extraordinary means. And it's a signal that the compact that citizens have with the government might become null. And once that compact becomes null, then we really have a hard time articulating why violence isn't an option.
Heidi: Help me a little bit. I've been trying to read on this and haven't found anything very useful. What is it that Republicans think that the left is doing that is a threat to democracy as they see it?
David: So I think the idea that some Republicans articulate is that the amount that the system is rigged to prevent Republican ideas to be expressed, is anti-democratic. Certain identity groups, in Republicans' minds, are being over-prioritized. They feel that their votes don't matter, and that there's sort of this conspiracy between the elites, the media, the universities that are all driving America in the same direction. I think that they then generalize that, not to mention the border stuff and you know other policy-related stuff, but they generalize that to believe that this is going to destroy the country and that there needs to be a really big interruption and a level of destabilization that has to happen in order for this to be corrected.
And so they are also creating this wedge that we need to vote Republican in order to prevent the Democrats from destroying the country. My sense is that in general, that view feels less existential objectively than the language used by the left, in terms of the kind of destruction that will happen to the country. But I don't think it has a different impact. I think the impact on the right is we need to fight to protect our rights as Americans. And I think that's the core message and the difference between "we need to fight" and "let's resort to violence," the line is pretty darn thin.
Heidi: Yeah. The thing that strikes me as interesting, maybe I'm oversimplifying here, but it strikes me as interesting that the concerns on the right sound like they relate to the Bill of Rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, certainly right to bear arms. You didn't mention that one, but that's in there. And I can certainly understand why they feel those are under attack. What the left, I think, is concerned about is the right to vote. Other things too. They are somewhat concerned about the separation of powers and the administration taking over the judiciary and the legislature. Trump has managed to get most of Republicans in Congress to do his bidding. So there's a concern on the left that the separation of powers isn't working as it should. And the thing that's interesting to me is both sides are saying the Constitution isn't being upheld and we need to uphold the Constitution. Yet both sides are also talking about a constitutional convention to remake the Constitution. And I'm thinking, no, we've got a good Constitution, and everybody's concern is that it's not being upheld. So maybe we should look at what we need to do to uphold it.
David: I personally tend to agree with that, but I don't think it's existential whether we focus on amending the Constitution. I tend to think that doing so would be adding more divisiveness than removing it. And I also tend to suspect that, even if we were able to come up with an amendment, it would be really difficult to imagine ratifying it, especially the ones that either side are looking at.
Heidi: Yeah. How long has it been since we have successfully ratified a Constitutional Amendment? I don't even know when the last one is abolition, maybe?
Guy: The 25th Amendment. Probably the presidential succession amendment the most recent.
Heidi: Was that after Roosevelt?
Guy: Yeah. A lot of it is that democracy involves making a lot of difficult calls on tough issues. And there have to be rules about how you vote. And you can imagine that each rule benefits one party or the other a little bit. And when you have elections resolved by or decided by a few tens of thousands of votes, it doesn't take very much in the way of changing the rules to have a huge impact.
David: Right.
Guy: We need to learn to deal with these kinds of difficult issues.
David: Right!
Guy: One of the, I think, big flash points that doesn't really get enough attention is what you might call "the secular humanism loophole." Under the Constitution, you can't teach religion in the schools and the state can't advocate for religion. But if you have a set of cultural beliefs, as the left does, on what are fundamental moral issues, the kind of things that Christian religion cares a lot about, but you don't believe those on the basis of some religion, but rather, based on a secular set of beliefs, then you can teach them in the schools and you can advocate for them in public policies. And that's the kind of thing that pushes the right, I think, pretty hard. If I try to put myself in the position of someone who believes in traditional family values and the way in which the left is pushing an opposed set of values under a kind of secular human rights agenda, I would find it pretty disturbing.
David: Yeah. I think that that's my experience as well, Guy. I do feel like people feel disturbed. But I also feel like we have to be willing to have some major losses electorally and legislatively, without feeling like the existence of the country is at risk. Yes! It's safe to say that a particular perspective, you believe, may diminish Americans' quality of life. It may set us on the wrong trajectory. It may move us away from some of our more cherished values. These are really big, terrible, horrible losses. And yet, they're losses that can be fought over. They can be debated. We can learn from them. We can put up different candidates next time. We can come up with new policies that are just fundamentally different from saying that "if we can't change the composition of the courts, the country's doomed," right? We really need to find a pathway to not have everything be so climactic.
Heidi: I think that's a good point. Climactic language increases the risk of violence. But the interesting thing to me is that suggests that violence is illegitimate. If it raises the risk of legitimate violence, then maybe that's okay. But given my long personal background in the peace area, I'm very anti-violence and tend to prefer nonviolent approaches. Pretty much every time. I'm not a complete pacifist though. The same fellow that Guy was talking about, Kenneth Boulding, who had Boulding's First Law, was a Quaker. And we had long discussions as to whether or not World War II should have been fought. I won't go that far. I think that Hitler had to be defeated. But all of these statements that Trump is Hitler, I think, are very damaging. I really do think he has some authoritarian tendencies. and I'm worried about that. But as I said, I'm hoping that our system is indeed strong enough to withstand that.
I was interested that you use the word "resilience." We just did a talk with Nealin Parker that just was released a couple of days ago. Nealin is from Search USA. And she's looking at the same areas too, and she's using the term "resilience" and saying that's really what they're focusing on, is trying to come up with resilient communities. And they're working primarily in red states, which, as I noted in our interview, I found interesting because the kind of work she's doing is more typical of things that progressive organizations do. And in fact, I think Search is fairly progressive. But they're working successfully in red states.
David: I saw that a piece and thought it was wonderful and was not surprised because you guys are, but also because Nealin is really one of my heroes. I agree that Search comes from a more center-left kind of perspective, but everything that I've seen shows that they really understand how to meet people where they are and how to not be influenced by their judgment. They play a really straight down-the-line game that actually builds trust across the communities they engage with. And I think Nealin, personally, does that as well.
Heidi; So that brings us to another topic that wasn't on your list of two, but it's where our conversation's going in my head, which is a discussion that we had with Julia Roig earlier in our blog and with Bernie Mayer and Jackie Font Guzman before that about the role of neutrality versus partiality on the part of third party. Search is a third-party neutral who comes in and tries to resolve conflict. And Search USA is trying to reduce U.S. polarization, just like we're trying to do in different ways. And Julia Roig is saying that, and Bernie Mayer earlier said that polarization isn't the problem. The problem is injustice. And we have to fight in justice first and that will solve polarization. And there's something of a chicken and egg thing going on here, of course. But I find the focus on justice without a focus on what you mean by that injustice for whom to be problematic.
David: I agree. I think that your sense that this is chicken and egg problem is exactly right. I can't imagine a justice agenda actually reaching fulfillment without a broader, more inclusive conversation nationally that brings additional viewpoints into the space. And I can't imagine a bridging agenda of connecting Americans so that we find social cohesion. I can't imagine that reaching fulfillment without advancing a meaningful set of adjustments around inequality and inequity and injustice that we must find a way to deal with. And both [fighting injustice and fighting polarization] get to a very specific idea around belonging and inclusion. And my sense is that if you say you're not doing either if you're not doing bridging, then you're creating non-belonging and non-inclusion based on a really large set of viewpoints. And if you're not focusing on issues relating to justice, then you're creating non-belonging and non-inclusion among groups of historically marginalized communities that must be part of our next chapter in America.
Heidi: Belonging was another term that Nealin used quite a bit. So is that maybe an antidote to polarization that we ought to be focusing on? Before Nealin, and now you, I hadn't heard that term.
David: I guess I think of "belonging" more as an indicator of whether what we're working on is succeeding. So if you think of effective anti-polarization work, whether that is about deliberative dialogue or it's about simply coming together for greater understanding, or it's about coming together to address meaningful policy issues or coming together to address specific needs in communities, I think that all of those models should ultimately result in greater belonging. And if they don't result in greater belonging, I think that's an indicator that the model's not working or else it's not being executed right. So I think of belonging more as an indicator and less as a set of work.
Heidi: Makes sense.
Guy: It seems that the key concept is whether people are being left behind, out of your system of belonging. And I think one of the real problems is that we tend to focus on belonging, and we're very good at building consensus within our coalition. And then we go to war with the other coalition. I was struck in some of the community work that I've done around Boulder, that people are really, really good at conflict resolution skills within the coalition, but then it all breaks down when they talk about "the enemy."
The other thing that I think is central to a lot of this, at least in terms of a goal, is that it would be great to figure out how to do is something I call "the great reframing." Right now we frame politics in terms of "us versus them." It's a battle against "them." And we gather up all the horror stories that we can and we use those to mobilize support for our side. But if we could reframe things in terms of the real enemy is the hyperpolarized conflict that's tearing us all apart and making it impossible for us to find mutually beneficial solutions to common problems, then we're all on the same side. We all have an advantage in diffusing this and making a democracy that really lives up to its ideals.
David: I think that's right. I think that a great reframing can be thought of in a lot of ways. One of the ways that I'm most focused on right now is how to help reframe what success in the election is, so that we think less about whether the folks that supported us gave us a mandate, and more about whether we're positioned to actually help the whole country. And I'm anticipating a lot of mandate discussion regardless of who wins. And I actually think that we really are going to need to figure out what does it look like to include whoever loses. That's one kind of refrain that I think gets to what the success of the election looks like.
Heidi: That's interesting. You're coming at it from the opposite end from the way I was coming at it. Because what I'm hearing you say is that you're thinking at the leadership level, one side's going to win, and they will presumably claim that they have a mandate to implement all of the policies that they've promised.
I'm not sure that either side is very interested in helping the other side. They're going to give voice to being a president for the whole country. Trump did that in his inauguration address. Biden did that. All presidents stand up and say, here using an Obama quote, "I'm not a president for blue America or red America. I'm a president for all of America." But then they don't act that way. And it seems to me that what their behavior is, is I've got to make my side as happy as I possibly can so that they will reelect me in another four years." Or if you're term limited, like we presume Trump would be, they'll reelect another Republican in four years. But it seems like I don't see a whole lot of interest in the leadership to act in behalf of the whole country. On the other hand, if you look at the grassroots, I think people really want the leaders to do that. So what the expectation is down here and what the plan is up there are different.
David: I think that's right. I still think that we need to change the leader's behavior, but the only way to change the leader's behavior is changing the incentives. And the number one incentive is the marketplace. To use Amanda Ripley's phrase, we've got "conflict entrepreneurs" coming mostly in the space of politics and media. In politics, they're using the divisiveness in order to pursue power. And in media, they're using divisiveness in order to pursue profits. Both of those are assuming that citizens are buying what they're selling. So, while it's true that citizens are saying that they want their politicians and media to behave differently, they're not behaving in a way that corresponds to what they say they want.
Heidi: Are they given the opportunity to?
David: We do need to give them the opportunity to. And this is where I think our whole set of civil society areas of work need to really focus. Finding pathways for citizens to feel, first of all, a sense of hope that if they engage toward the outcomes that they want, that they can actually achieve those. I think right now, even though those citizens that have as their highest priority, finding ways to come together as a country, don't feel any sense of hope that they could accomplish it, which is a terrible disincentive to actually do it.
Guy: There's also a number of structural factors that bias the system in favor of the strongest partisans. Part of that is psychological. If you really, really believe deep down inside that the other side is a threat to everything that you care about, that's going to motivate you to be very active in politics. If you're sort of a little undecided, can see both sides, you're not quite sure who needs to win, then you don't fight so hard, because you're not quite clear about how to fight.
The system is set up so the partisans dominate the primary contests and the candidate selection. I just signed a petition the other day to let unaligned, unaffiliated voters actually vote in primaries. But there are, in different states and in different ways, many ways in which moderate voters are disenfranchised. One of the arguments that comes out from time to time in these IMIP meetings is the argument that the real voter suppression problem is the suppression of votes in the center.
David: Yeah. But not being suppressed by force. While we're walking through the causes, one of the causes that I'm really compelled by, and I think I read it in Beyond Intractability a couple of months ago, is the idea that American politics is based on a 51% win. Right?
Heidi: "The 51% Hammer Effect" is Guy's line.
David: Right. And that's forcing everything to be so close. And once things become that close, it seems to make everybody a little bit more intransigent because the stakes of losing one argument or one venue just becomes intolerable.
Heidi: I think what you said about citizen involvement and efficacy and feeling like if you work for something, it will be worth it. A lot of people, especially the folks that we're talking to in the Inter-Movement Impact Project, but lots of other people too, have pretty much written off the national scene and said that we're going to focus on what's happening at the local level and the state level because that's where people can affect change. It's where they really can get involved, have a sense of belonging, have a sense that they can make a difference. And I think most people feel that the government and the systems at the state level are working, whereas the federal level isn't. And the hope is, if we can get really functional states, then maybe the Fed will see that what's happening at the local and state level is working better than what's happening at the national level and start patterning some of what they do after that. I don't know. That strikes me as probably optimistic thinking. But I do see a lot of value in focusing in on the local and the state level because it's just a much more manageable size. And there's more cohesiveness. We live in Colorado, which is a purple state. So there's a lot of difference of views. But still, we all are facing similar problems. Water is a huge problem here. Right now, we've got a huge problem of wildfires — all across the West. And they affect red and blue alike. And we can address those without worrying about our political differences, because we have common needs, common concerns. We can work together to address them. I think working at the state level is a way to reinstill some hope, reinstill a sense that the other side isn't evil incarnate. And then maybe that can flow up or flow down.
Guy: Local politics is even better because you know these are things that really affect your lives. You get to talk to people. One of the things that I worry about a lot is the demise of local news coverage. I think back in the times in my life that I've been really active in local politics, there was a newspaper. And every morning, you could read a write-up, a fairly decent one, on the school board meeting or the open space meeting or the city council meeting the night before. There was a lot of coverage. And now the newspaper is doing well to have a three-day old weather forecast. Now all the politics is national, but the ones that matter are local.
David: Yeah, I think the focus on local makes a lot of sense. And I think it's still a very immature theory. There's a rule that I've observed over and over again, which is that top-down doesn't work and bottom-up doesn't scale. And any effort at reform that's actually meaningful and valuable has to have the two operating in gear-like tandem. My own sense is that the idea that we need to be supporting is local or state initiatives is not quite right except for policy issues. Policy issues are better pursued at the state and local level right now because you can't get anything done in Congress.
But a lot of this other work is different than just pursuing policies. And what we should be thinking of is getting as close to citizens as we can, because ultimately all of this changes through citizens. And there are ways to work with both local and national initiatives that make touching down with citizens more successful. So for example, Ohio State University has done some really powerful work on town hall meetings that enable members of Congress to have discussions with their citizens where the loudest voices don't overpower and where it's integrated into their ability to do the mail. It's integrated in their ability to do town hall meetings. And it's integrated into their ability to talk about issues with their constituents. From my perspective, that is a really powerful initiative that supports citizen engagement. And just because it's a national initiative doesn't mean that we should be de-emphasizing it. So I would say that we really need to not think in a binary way, saying, "We're only going to support local or state and not national activities." The real question should be, is this going to move and mobilize and inspire and engage citizens?
Heidi: So what do you do to mobilize, inspire, and engage citizens when it appears to me that most efforts that are being most successful are — going back to the beginning of our conversation — based on fear? How do we effectively counteract that fear factor?
David: My sense is that we need to help members, legislators in general, and politicians, feel like they have a choice other than to feed the most powerful red meat to their base and vilify the folks on the other side. And I think that if we can if we can see more citizens that are not the most bellicose advocates for particular causes be more engaged with those politicians, we'll start seeing a de-escalation of some of that rhetoric. But right now, we've locked ourselves into the system where no matter where the politicians go, they're hearing the loudest voices.
Heidi: One of the interesting things that I knew and found data on the other day is that independents are now the largest political bloc. They're larger than Republicans, and they're larger than Democrats, and they're growing. So that's a hopeful sign, I think, that more and more people are beginning to move towards the middle. And again, at a middle level, there's the National Governors Association Disagree Better Campaign, which I find to be very helpful. And if it can be done at the governor level, then maybe it can be done at the national level, at least with Senators and Representatives, — Presidents is going to be hard for a while.
But our feeling is that we can have conversations like this and think about this, but in reality, probably not a whole lot's going to change until after the November election. After the November election, though, no matter who wins, there's going to be a real opening for some innovative thinking and innovative approaches so that we don't have another election that looks like this one.
David: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think there's a strategy to this. It's true that if you look at the broad sweep of what's going to happen, efforts before the election to depolarize or to reduce the heat, even to stem violence, are going to have limited effect, just because no matter how many millions of dollars and thousands of events we have, it just gets trivialized by the billions going into divisiveness right now.
However, I do think that there's an inoculation strategy we should be focused on. We should be going underneath the big, broad movement and be finding specific pockets of early adopters that are willing to band together and make their cause the idea of nonviolence and democracy renewal and strengthening of civic culture. And if we can create that small, thin set of early adopters that are beginning to feel like they have hope and opportunity and feel really motivated to engage hard after the election, that's our inoculation strategy. And once after the election, we really begin to pick up some more steam because the engineers of divisiveness hopefully will be a little bit more tired. Then it's that small set of early adopters that's likely to help us set the tone. And if we're just so discouraged that we don't make anything happen before the election, then we're going to be much further back than if we were operating somewhat invisibly over the next five, six months.
Heidi: Guy, You have been quiet. I want to give you a chance to talk.
Guy: Well, I was just actually thinking about a rather silly, but rather smart, proposal that George Will had, that we ought to have a constitutional amendment that prohibits senators from running for president. And his point was that all they've ever run was the Senate office. Now, if you'd have governors who've actually had to balance all sorts of issues and solve real problems and meet budgets, that's a different set of skills. And something like that — of trying to emphasize organizations or the folks that actually make government work would be helpful. So, too, are success stories, again, going back to Boulding's first law.
And the other thought, on your notion here of trying to convince people that they can be successful and it works, is almost what amounts to a franchising operation, where you find a case where somebody's done something in some local community that worked well. Then they should make it clear how that worked and share that and share what people have learned. Think in terms of lots of discrete little projects that people could do that make a difference and to try to make it easier to do that, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time.
One could imagine putting together a website of these incremental steps to which people can share information. We talked, I think, in our earlier conversation about on-ramps and off-ramps — of how you make it easier for people to get involved in this sort of thing. One of the professors we worked with years ago as a graduate student did a big study of activist communities. And what he found was that a big part of the drive to participate was social relationships. So a big part of why people go and do all these things is it's fun. You get to meet people who have similar views. You get to do something worthwhile. So cultivating that also makes sense, especially if you can stop short of cultivating a common hatred for the other side.
David: I agree. And I need to tell a quick story. Liz Joyner, who runs Village Square in Tallahassee, Florida, and who's been doing it for decades and so has an advantage on a lot of us. She has really built Tallahassee into a hub where the business community, the service community, lots of other folks come together in the cause of building social cohesion. And she was using the SCIM tool, which is one of the new measuring tools that's emerged for the entire bridging space and identified that when humor was injected into her bridging activities, that the success indicators went way up. Everything including reduction in bias, increase in understanding, willingness to compromise. All those things went significantly up when the program included humor. So Guy, I couldn't agree more.
Heidi: You talked about a narrow line of people who were engaging in bridging nonviolent approaches to solving problems. I actually am quite heartened through participating in the Inter-Movement Impact Project and some similar things about how thick that set of organizations is. When we first started to come to those meetings, there were probably, I don't know, 20, 25 people who were on the monthly calls. Now they're closer to 60. And many of them represent really large organizations like Braver Angels, which is a topic that we were interested in talking about, and we may at a future conversation. Braver Angels is huge, and it's getting bigger all the time. Bridge Alliance is an organization of organizations, which is huge. Listen First is huge. There are big organizations that are doing this that aren't doing as much as I think they could, but they're doing more, to try to become visible. If people know that there is more pro-social anti-polarization, anti-divisive stuff going on, better yet, problem-solving going on, and they have an opportunity to become involved, they can see the on-ramps, then I think we're in a much stronger position than we would be otherwise. And so I think strengthening those organizations, strengthening the visibility of those organizations is crucial.
We just got an email from one fellow who's got a podcast on polarization. And he said he was thinking about not running his podcasts for awhile because nobody's interested in talking about bridging at this point. Well, yeah, maybe they aren't talking about bridging, but we need to be getting ourselves out there and getting visible so that, as you said, come December, there's a place people can go. And they know about it. Because if they don't know about it, then it's going to take us another six months to wrap up. And that will be close to having midterm elections and we'll be off to the races again.
David: Yeah. I agree, Heidi. And I would just underscore, over the last 10 years, the number of organizations that have in their mission statement, the idea of bringing Americans together across divides has increased from something under 20 to in the thousands.
Heidi: Wow.
David: And there's some challenging news too. I mean, those organizations, it's a cottage industry, very small organizations that haven't fully adopted or understood all the best practices in the space. They aren't even, in many cases, really strong, functioning nonprofits. They haven't figured out fundraising, how to manage the board, policy work.
The other thing is that in general, in this space, very few organizations have really big distribution. So even you mentioned Braver Angels. Their lists are still limited. We need to figure out how to think of United Way and Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity and Boys and Girls Clubs as drivers of bridging. Those are the folks that need to be in these conversations. That's the number of citizens we should be reaching, to begin to build scale —and to bring the early adopters into our work. And so I would say our cottage industry needs a lot of support, and we need to really be reaching past the cottage industry if we're going to make the kind of contribution we want.
Heidi: Great point! I'm looking at the time and realizing that we probably should cut this conversation here, but there still are a few things to talk about, I think. So we might well continue this at a later conversation. But I want to thank you very much for engaging with us today. And I certainly learned some things, and you've given me some interesting things to think about.
David: Thank you. I really enjoy being in conversation with you. And, of course, I remain passionate about these issues, even though I think we're still in a place where we're raising more questions than we are providing answers.
Heidi: Well, I think that's better than being sure of ourselves and being wrong.
David: Absolutely.
Heidi: All right. Well, thank you very much.
David: Thank you.
Guy: Thank you.