- Tired of the toxic level of polarization in the United States?

Interested in talking with people whose perspective differs from your own in ways that stay constructive?

We invite you to join us for a year focused on creating a culture of conversation rather than division.

(inspiring music) The Padnos/Sarosik Center for Civil Discourse, Kaufman Interfaith Institute, Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and WGVU Public Media are pleased to partner for Talking Together, Strengthening our Communities through Conversation, a dialogue initiative aimed at interrupting polarization and investing in the principles of civil discourse and respectful conversation.

The aim is to assist community members engaging in conversation with one another across differences in perspective, identity, and life experiences.

Today, How to Talk with your Neighbor.

How to have conversations about important issues with people who believe, think, and vote differently than you.

That One America Movement offers a framework for navigating difficult conversation, exploring the neuroscience and social science of polarity and divisiveness, offering both theory and interactive practice for having productive conversations that move towards listening and cooperation.

Kevin McIntosh is with the One America Movement.

Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- I've gotta ask right off the top, how did this all begin?

- The One America Movement?

- Yeah.

- So we started right before the Unite the Right rally.

Our President and CEO had an idea about how do we engage faith communities into pushing back against toxic polarization?

How do we engage with churches, synagogues, mosques, landmarks of our civil society, how do we use those to push back?

And he had this framework, he had this idea, and then Unite the Right rally happened in Charlottesville and he saw this as a time to see if my theories work.

So he went to Charlottesville, he worked in the background.

He got pastors from evangelical churches, rabbis from synagogues together in the same room to really talk about what was going on there and how do we stop instance of violence from happening in our local communities.

- So the goal is pretty simple.

- The goal is pretty simple.

Let's come together, let's talk together, let's push back against this toxic level of polarization that's coming up and let's create positive norms and think about issues that can create cross-cut and identities to really focus on that local community.

- You conducted a workshop at Grand Valley State University, who's hosting Talking Together, that's where it all began.

I was present and I have to say, I stepped in as a skeptic.

I'm in the news media.

You see the polarity all around us.

And yet being there, I felt as though you have found a way to cut through that, and I think it begins with understanding.

We talked about the neuroscience at the beginning.

- Yeah.

- There's like a baseline that maybe if we can all understand how we're processing this in our minds, maybe there's a chance that we can talk with each other.

- Yeah.

I think it also, I think, we'll talk about that in a second, but I think it also starts with this idea between polarization and toxic polarization.

Polarization is normal, right?

Polarization gives us creative ideas.

It gives us two people with different policy views coming together for conversation.

It becomes toxic when I don't like you because of your ideas.

I use a quote in my presentation from John Inazu that says, when we go from you're wrong to your evil, it becomes very scary.

'Cause you're wrong means I can't convince you to be on my side.

We can have conversations.

When I say you're evil 'cause of your ideas, it leads to that avoidance.

And so we talk about that, how conversations need to happen, and it's okay.

I feel that often we don't talk about the scary things 'cause we don't have practice, and so this framework we can talk about in a second gives us reps.

It gives that time to practice, how do you actually have them?

- How have we gotten to that point of the toxic polarization?

I guess, how have we let that happen?

- Yeah, so one of the things we see, we see five main drivers.

We see ideas of misperceptions and metaperceptions.

So, folks thinking the other side is much more extreme than they are, folks thinking the other side, whatever side you're on, if you're thinking politics or religion, the other side doesn't like you.

We get there 'cause of toxic partisanship.

I will allow you a pass because you're on my side even though I would call somebody out on the other side for that same thing.

Dehumanization, bigotry, Islamophobia, antisemitism.

And then lastly, misinformation and conspiracy theories that are out there that are pushing us apart.

- Do you need to have acceptance, though, that you buy into some of these things to make those conversations work?

Because that's a difficult thing, we get defensive, too.

- We do.

So acceptance that, what do you mean?

- Accepting those theories?

- Oh.

- [Patrick] Accepting that this is happening or that we're allowing this to happen.

- Yeah, so we see data, and I think data out there from our partners at Beyond Common or Beyond Conflict and More in Common that polled Republicans and Democrats, and they asked them two questions.

They asked them, as a Republican, what do you think about these 10 major issues?

And as a Democrat, what do you think these 10 major issues?

And then they also asked Republicans and Democrats, what do you think the other side would say about the same issue?

And in that we see Republicans thought Democrats were way over there, Democrats thought Republicans were way over there, and yet we assume there's no middle ground, right?

We assume that these things are happening or we can't talk to each other.

I think once you start telling the stories and once you start realizing people on the other side, we realize in reality, we're at, like, here.

We're not saying we're all gonna get along.

We're not saying, One America Movement does not believe that if you're gonna come to our groups, you have to sacrifice your values, if you wanna work with us, you have to not be fully at a 100% you.

It's come in and actually having those conversations.

- Yeah, you use that graphic and it caught my attention also where there is that perception.

- Yeah.

- And then there's the reality.

So the perception is that it is like a 90% we're not on the same page, but the commonality is it's 60%.

It's above 50, but you're saying there's that gray area.

There's that space where there is compromise and conversation.

- Yeah, there's room for nuance.

These issues are big, immigration, gun control, abortion.

Whichever issue you and your friends or your family wanna talk together with, whatever that issue is, they're big issues, they're complex issue.

And so to boil that down as you think 100% this or 0% this as a on or off switch, you're either on this side or this side takes away all those conversations, all those nuances, and takes away all that potential for creative solutions.

- People tend to stick with like-minded people, too.

- Yeah.

- You gotta work your way through that.

- Yes.

Yeah, you know, so we work a lot with religious, we work mainly with religious groups.

And religious groups are some of the only places where you might still sit with somebody who you disagree with in the pew or pray at a mosque with somebody or sit in the temple with somebody who you vote differently than them.

'Cause you have that shared superordinate identity that you're gonna come together into this place of worship.

- So the idea then is to have multiple identities.

- Yeah.

- Right.

Well then you're working with other groups.

- Yeah.

- And you might find moderating voices.

Is that a part of it?

- You can find moderating voices.

You can also, I think, I think when you bring a evangelical, more conservative church together with maybe a more liberal synagogue or a mosque, you get to see people as fully people and not these characters.

You know, we think about this both in a religious sense and in a political sense, that if we don't know our fellow citizens, whether they're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or if we don't know our fellow citizens, whether they're Republican or Democrats or independents, it's very easy to paint that character in our mind, that they're all on this very far side of the graph, that they are insert your stereotypical X, Y, or Z that everybody's like that, when once you get to meet people, whether it's doing service together or having conversations together, it disrupts that narrative.

- So at the individual level, which is where the conversations-- - Yes.

- Truly lie, you present something called Sacred Values.

- Yep.

- And it's interesting how that definition has morphed over time.

- Yeah.

- So let's just begin with the core of that definition.

- Yeah.

- And then we really get into how do we have these conversations.

- Yeah, so we all have things we care about, right?

I'm a, we talked earlier, I'm a big baseball fan, so I have lots of Tampa Bay Rays gear.

You could probably pay me, I could promise you, you could pay me a certain amount of money to come here to this TV studio and probably burn some of those things.

I'm also a Christian.

No money could have me come here with my Bible and burn that.

So already we start with religion, that's where we're at and that's probably the easiest way.

We already hold things higher than other things, right?

I'm able to compromise talking about baseball.

We can have conversations about baseball or other policies.

The scary thing is, is more and more things in our brain are going, are becoming sacralized and are becoming tied to our identities, and so it becomes harder to have those conversations.

You know, issues of gun control or issues of abortion, those have become, in some people's minds the same level of sacredness as religion has held in the past.

- How have those topics or issues elevated?

Why have they arisen to a sacred value?

When you talk about religion, sacred being the word.

- [Kevin] Yep.

- But now you get into Second Amendment or other societal issues.

- Yeah, so we see, we have all these different identities, and often what happens is that our identities can become this singular, rigid one.

And toxic polarization pulls us from way out here into this singular rigid identity, and every other identity is tied up in that.

And so to be a good Republican, it means you have to think this way on guns or you have to think this way on abortion or you have to think this way on immigration, and to be a good Democrat, you have to think this way and that way.

And it becomes a win-lose when our identities become this very singular rigid.

So our work is to think, how do we break apart from that rigidity?

How do we create these cross-cut identities where we can disagree on one policy but still work together on another one and come together for those conversations.

- [Patrick] And that's when you get into the Motive Misattribution.

- Yeah, so Motive Misattribution is something I'm guilty of doing it every once in a while, probably a lot, especially before I got this job and still even now, is when we're having conversations with somebody, we assume that they are coming out of it with hate and we are coming out of it with love.

And so it could be as simple as, we talk about this in the example, is when you're driving and you miss a stop sign or you cut somebody off, you can think of a thousand excuses of why you do it.

When somebody else cuts you off, right away you're like, that person, what a jerk.

You might drop some four-letter words, and we quickly assume the other person's acting outta this bad intent, that they're acting out of harm.

And yeah, often, in many of our policy positions, it's not like we roll outta bed and decided that day, we're gonna vote X, Y, or Z.

We have stories that we tell that is how we get to that reason.

- And that there, that is the starting point for having a conversation.

- It is.

- Right?

It's not always this data-driven gotcha.

- No.

- It is the, okay, let's find out about each other or a shared experience or-- - Yeah.

- How does that begin?

Walk me through this, and I know we'll get into more of the confrontational-- - Yeah.

- Conversations, but just in general.

- Yeah.

- I guess when we're meeting people and having conversations.

- Yeah, so I think often when we get into a conversation, especially we think it's gonna be a hard conversation and we go right to the data.

It's safe, right?

It's numbers, it's safe, but what our evidence and what our stuff has shown is that data doesn't change people right away.

Stories can help change people, but if you go right into data and right into numbers, actually you can push people to get stronger in their original beliefs.

I'm sure you've probably have seen Facebook threads where I post a link, you post a link.

It's not like somebody walks out of that, I've never seen this happen and it might have happened once where somebody walks out and is like, oh, I read this Facebook link.

Let me change my mind on this issue.

- Yep, done and done.

- Done and done.

- I learned it right there.

- Yeah.

Instead what's gonna happen is people will go and get their own data and then respond with that, and they get more and more in their beliefs.

With stories, you can actually open up some conversation.

You can open up to see where your sacred values might overlap as well.

And so you and I could have that our families are sacred value and we could see, we come to this policy issue with different ways.

But the reason we're both coming to it is 'cause our sacred value is to take care of our families, is take care of our kids, is take care of our X, Y, or Z.

And we can get to different policy decisions, but have that same sacred value once we're there.

- And I know you always have the question is, or people present you with the question, which is, does that mean I have to work with-- - Yeah.

- Extremists, or do I have to compromise my values when you're having these conversations?

- Yeah, we get those two questions a lot, and the answer is no.

We want people, there's organizations that work with extremists.

We want people to have conversations with their neighbor.

We want people to have conversations with that person in the PTA that they disagree with.

We want college students to have conversations with that person in their residence hall they disagree with.

We're not asking folks to go talk to a member of the KKK or talk to an extreme group.

We're also not asking people to compromise their values.

If you hold in a position on any of these topics, we want you to have that position.

We want you to come and hear stories and have that conversation, but it doesn't mean you need to change who you are or change your beliefs.

The last question we get asked a lot is, when do I need to engage?

And I often ask people, if you feel unsafe, you don't always need to engage, but if you feel uncomfortable, think why.

Nobody's gonna check you, nobody's gonna ask you, but think about that difference between unsafe or uncomfortable.

- And how much of that too is establishing kind of that level footing to make sure you're both... - Yeah, so I think-- - In the same space.

- I think part of it is we tell people if you're gonna have a conversation outside of our simulated space, find something you can trust.

I had a pastor who told me that we need to build bridges that are strong enough to hold these conversations, and that doesn't happen overnight.

There's another sociologist who says that he likes the idea of bridge building 'cause bridges don't come down from the sky.

Anybody who has lived in Grand Rapids and had to deal with the bridge construction knows that building bridges takes time, repairing bridges takes time.

Whenever the freeways close, we know it takes time to do.

And so the bridge and building bridges, that takes time, that takes relationship building.

It takes doing service projects, it takes asking about families and learning who the person is that you wanna have that hard conversation with.

- So walk me through this.

- Yeah.

- How do you have a good, guided conversation?

Like, what are those steps?

You want the storytelling?

- Yeah, so it's all about storytelling.

So first off, we ask people to start with establishing a starting place.

So ask questions, and this whole guide's on the Talking Together website.

But the first two questions are around, when did you start to care about this issue and when does this issue come up to you?

And usually those two questions, you can start to hear why this matters.

And we ask, we usually do a debrief after the workshop, after each section.

And when we ask people how did it feel to start with those questions, we often hear responses like, it felt like a softer entrance.

It felt like I didn't wanna walk away right away.

It felt like as a good on-ramp.

You can't disagree with their story.

I got to know them a little bit better as I heard about why they cared.

So it was a really great way to really just establish that conversation, establish what you're talking about and get to know a little bit more about your partner.

- And then there are elements within or some good stepping stones or reminders when you're having that conversation.

- Yeah, so we have our ground norms, our group norms and stuff like, ask for cues or look for cues, which is much easier in person.

We've all been on Zoom a lot recently and that's a little bit harder.

But look for cues.

Be present, active listen.

Don't always be thinking about the got you question.

Actually listen.

Ask for information, not, or ask for clarifying questions.

Don't ask to judge if you're gonna ask questions.

And again, all those group norms that we keep are on our workshop, on our worksheet that's on the website.

- Yeah, I know cause there are quite a few.

- There's there's a lot.

There's some really good ground rules for conversation up there.

- There's also the confidentiality involved.

- Yeah.

- In a lot of the conversations.

- Yeah.

- That you have.

- So what we say, I have a colleague who talks about the double confidentiality.

I think most people understand confidentiality.

If you're having this, especially in a simulated session, you don't go tell X, Y, Z what the other person thinks.

What my colleague talks about is this double confidentiality, where if I see you next time and you brought something up, I don't always need to come to you and say, hey, remember this thing you brought up.

It's knowing that there's times and places to talk about all these issues and to make sure that you have the space and time to actually go into it, that it doesn't need to be sprung on your partner whenever you see them.

- When you feel like it's getting a little off the rails maybe and it might be turning into more of a debate or voices start to rise-- - Yeah.

- Or the cues, how do you, I guess, not necessarily disengage, but bring the conversation back?

- Yeah, so we have a second sort of block of questions that are looking at values, and they're questions that we ask, like, when have you ever questioned your position on this?

Or when have you strengthened your position on this?

And that gets more into, again, the storytelling aspect of, that you didn't wake up today and just decide you're gonna vote or think or believe a certain thing, that you've had debates about it in your own mind, you've had thoughts about it in your own mind, you've questioned your own opinions in your own mind.

And so I think the second part of the conversation is where it could get off track and where we remind people, don't ask those got you questions or remember about Motive Misattribution.

But the second part is really a good time for folks to explain how they got to where they are and what data they used, what strategies they used.

Again, not throwing numbers, 'cause we know the backfire effect doesn't let that happen.

But it's a way to let people tell their story and show that they've come to their decision in a very, they didn't wake up today and just decide they were gonna think about it in a certain way.

- So the mission isn't to convert somebody.

- No.

- The mission is to have more of an understanding, and then to find a way to move forward.

- We gotta work together.

So if you and I disagree on an issue, we still need to be able to roll up our sleeves and either think how can we work on this issue together or how can we work on this issue over here that has nothing to do with this.

But if you and I can't have a healthy conversation, that also means we can't work together.

And local issues means sometimes we have to pull up our sleeves and get to work.

It means that we need to come together, whether it's going to Kids Food Basket or Habitat or other nonprofits in the area and doing service and doing work together, 'cause we need to come together to solve the most pressing issues in our community.

- So to have a successful conversation-- - Yeah.

- How should someone feel coming out of this?

- I think after a good conversation, this time that you should always debrief.

So if you're gonna have a hard conversation, you always need a little bit of time.

Find a good quiet room, get your favorite tea or coffee or hot chocolate and think about how the conversation went.

You can ask yourself, like, is there anything, what bothered me in that conversation?

Did any questions hit my sacred values?

Is there anything I need to process before I can have a conversation with them again?

Is there anything I need to think about more when I see 'em the next time?

And then lastly, what can we do together to continue this conversation or to continue working together, and how can I reach out to that person again?

- [Patrick] And that's the ultimate.

- That's the ultimate.

- Is working.

It doesn't always end that way.

- [Kevin] It doesn't always end that way.

- So when it doesn't end well-- - [Kevin] Yeah.

- What's the fallback?

Where do you go from there?

- I think it's realizing probably both of you felt that way, and I think if it's somebody you have a relationship with, is who you should be having these conversations with.

You shouldn't be having a conversation with a stranger on the street who you don't know at all.

You need that relationship.

I think if you realize the conversation didn't go well, they probably also did, and so try to take some time, take the time you need, but go back and see what happened and see if you can go back to the guide and go back to those questions and continue having that conversation.

Again, just 'cause we disagree, we can't shut the door on each other.

- I know at the end that there are some strategies that you-- - Yeah.

- Like to share with people.

- Yeah.

So I think the two strategies I usually use for this presentation is how can you be an in group moderate?

We love Neville Longbottom from "Harry Potter".

For anybody who hasn't watched or read the books, Neville Longbottom has very little friends.

Three of his friends are Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione, and in the first book, Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione are gonna sneak out to go solve or battle Voldemort, whatever, and Neville stands up and says, "Hey, you all should not sneak out.

"This is not good.

"You all are doing something bad."

And that took a lot of courage for him.

He has no friends, and if he's pushing back against his couple of people who treat him nicely for what he thinks is going to the extreme, that can be a scary thing to do.

So we often tell people to be like Neville.

You know, how can you, when you see folks in your own group speaking a little bit extreme or become a little bit toxic, how can you say, hey, this is not who we are, right?

Call them in to be back to, this is not who we are as Republicans, this is not how we are as Democrats or Christians or Muslims or Jewish folks.

This is not who we are.

That's one.

The other one is, how do you get to meet new people?

Think about the identities.

You know, I just met you today and we've already had a great conversation about baseball, right?

And that might seem trivial, but what are those issues?

What are those topics you can talk about with people that are different from you to get to know them, right?

I have a colleague who we talk comic books every once in a while, and we've gotten to know each other because of our love of comics and Marvel movies.

And then after we have that baseline relationship, we can now talk 'cause we have that bridge to talk about the hard things.

We can talk about gun control, we can talk about immigration, we can talk about other issues that come up.

But how can you create those cross-cut identities?

In Grand Rapids, it could be, we disagree on a lot of things, but we're both Grand Rapidians, and what issues that are packed in our city can we come together on and work on together?

- When you're having these heavy duty conversations, do you wanna pick it apart a little bit?

Like to find, okay, this is big.

Can we, let's talk about, let's focus on-- - Yeah.

- Just one area, 'cause I know, I think gun control was something that-- - Yes.

- You had talked about.

- Yes.

In our presentation, we don't do a great job 'cause we give big buckets because that's easier to do, but one of the biggest things is know what you're talking about.

And you and I could be having a conversation and we may not be talking about the same thing while we're talking about the same thing.

And so how can you make whatever the conversation is as narrow as possible?

So if you wanna talk about gun control, are you talking about all guns?

Are you talking about assault rifles?

Are you talking about pistols?

What are you talking about when you talk about guns?

That's a big topic.

When you're talking about student loan forgiveness, are you talking about everybody's loans?

Are you talking about folks making under X dollars?

What are you talking about especially?

And just making sure that you know the key details so you both know exactly what you're talking about instead of talking about this whole big thing.

- I'm gonna circle back before we wrap.

- [Kevin] Yeah.

- And that is, this all begins primarily in Charlottesville.

- [Kevin] Yeah.

- How have things changed there?

- In Charlottesville?

- How is this working?

- Yeah, so in Charlottesville, we have a group there who's meeting together and still having conversations together.

Two of those folks, our evangelical pastor and our rabbi, have now both started working for us and they actually just were at the White House for a summit receiving an award as two uniters who help bridge divides in the country.

- That's great work.

Again, I'm now a convert.

Skeptical walking in, a convert now.

So for more information, you mentioned More in Common.

- More in Common, Beyond Conflict are two great resources.

If you are a house of worship and you wanna get involved with us, you can find more information on our website at oneamericamovement.org.

- Kevin Macintosh, it's been great.

- It's been great.

- Thank you for stopping in.

One America Movement.

Thanks for all your work.

- Thank you.

- I appreciate it.

And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again soon.

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