- 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.

(bright upbeat 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.

How do we bridge our differences at a time when partisan politics thrive on the dehumanization and demonization of one group of voters against the other?

The documentary, "The Reunited States" offers that our political divisions are symptomatic of something much deeper, fundamental cultural tensions.

The documentaries suggest bridging differences begins with discovering what connects us as Americans.

(bright upbeat music) - Our country is very divided right now.

We are as divided now as we were before the civil war and we're not really getting at the root causes.

(crowd chattering indistinctly) - What we have today is a kind of party loyalty that is starting to transcend our loyalty to our country.

(crowd chattering indistinctly) - What we're seeing today is a dehumanizing of everyone who opposes us.

(crowd chattering indistinctly) - If you ask people why they're a Republican or why they're a Democrat, it's because I hate the other party.

- Sounds like they're making arrests.

- Why are they making arrests?

- I dunno.

- The divisions, they're happening in our neighborhoods.

They're happening in our schools and they're happening in our families.

(crowd chattering indistinctly) - It wasn't that they just had political disagreements, folks were physically attacking one of them.

(crowd chattering indistinctly) - Stop, stop.

(police sirens wailing) (crowd chattering indistinctly) - The root causes of division, go all the way down into our foundation as a country.

- And we're facing problems that we've never faced before.

(crowd chattering indistinctly) If we're gonna live in a democracy, all of us have to learn to be mediators and bridge builders.

- I'm Stephen Olecara.

- My name is Susan Grow.

- I'm Greg Armon.

- I'm Mark Gerzon.

- I'm the author of the Reunited States of America - And I've been a bridge builder between Democrats and Republicans and the Partisan Divide for the last 30 years.

What I've learned is that polarization is not just in Washington, it's in our own hearts.

Before we can fix government, we have to fix ourselves in the way we see our fellow citizens.

- We're Aaron - And David Leverton.

- We decided to travel to all 50 states to get an understanding of what was causing these divisions.

- The real key to solving the Partisan Divide is within each of us.

That's part of being a citizen of America.

We are the solution.

Ordinary citizens working across the divide every day to make this country a better place.

- Whether it's a liberal agenda or a conservative agenda hate does not belong to either one.

- We're always gonna have liberals and conservatives in America.

We'll never make the other side go away.

It's in our own interest to learn how to cross the divide.

- We are the government.

If we want to see a different government the genius of America is that it's our responsibility to fix it.

- We need a narrative about the left and the right working together.

This is something we have the power to change.

This is something we have control over.

- I want to create a third force in our politics that's able to get us beyond this partisan warfare.

- This country needs bridge builders, people who have the courage to be pioneers, who are willing to get out of their comfort zones, to bring both sides together.

That's the path forward (bright music) - Here to offer some suggestions for getting out of our comfort zones and to become bridge builders are Denise Fase, CEO of Grant Rapid's Initiative for Leaders Alejandro Meza, Family Support Services Manager with the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan.

Julian Newman is Founder and CEO of Culture Creative.

And Rich Feldman is a council member with the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center for Nurture Community Leadership located in Detroit.

Thank you all so much for being here.

This Talking Together program that we're a part of we break it down into different parts.

And I think today bridge Building is the core of the conversation.

We see it in this great documentary.

Let's begin with a definition that might help everybody for our viewers.

When we see common ground bridge building or bridging differences involves trying to overcome a a history of conflicts, interpersonal or political or forging an alliance between one opposing groups to work toward a common goal.

It sometimes centers on more modest shifts.

Kind of deep there but I think it gives us a bit of a guidepost here.

Walk us through your organizations, what you do and how bridge building is essential to your mission.

- Sure.

I'm with Current Infants Initiative for Leader CIIL for Short.

Our mission is strengthening leaders to transform communities.

We believe that all of us have influence and therefore we're leaders.

And our the biggest piece we can do in understanding our purpose is to know who we are do the work of figuring out, understand our purpose and then commit to living within that.

And when we can get to that place we begin to see people for who they are as well.

And then together we can cause change.

And part of our work then is this understanding of we need each other.

We cannot do this on our own.

If we're gonna cause change it's all of us who have to come together to do this work.

So learning how we communicate learning how we develop assumptions, learning how we overcome that and to do this work together is our work, especially focused around bridge building.

- And we're gonna dig into that a little bit more as we move through this.

Alejandra, how are you?

And tell us a little bit about your organization and what you do.

- Yes.

Hi.

So I am Alejandra Meza and I'm the Director of Program Services with the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan.

And what we really focus on is making a bigger impact in the Hispanic community.

We do specialized serving all of our Hispanic community members.

And as you know, in the Hispanic community it's beautifully blended with so many different cultures.

And what we try to do is bring in that social support for people who are here in the United States trying to navigate these new systems trying to get comfortable with building a home building a life here.

So we offer so many different programs services and support.

We build on our community to make sure that they're successful they have the tools that they need, and they're connected.

We try to learn new, new challenges because as time passes, as COVID has shown, you know, the the changes will change.

And how do we adapt our services?

How do we make sure that everything that we're bringing here to Grand Rapids is going to benefit our community too?

Are we addressing the language barriers transportation barriers?

And I mean, the list can go on and on.

So yeah, we definitely rely on a lot of partnerships.

We know that we can't do it alone.

And those in partner and in partnership we're able to to make a bigger impact.

- Well, I'm the founder and CEO of Culture Creative which is a diversity inclusion consultancy.

And our tagline is beautiful together.

Because our belief is none of us have everything but all of us have something.

When we put all of our somethings together, we have everything.

And we want to help organizations.

We want to help companies build atmospheres and environments where every person can achieve the highest level of their human potential.

And in doing that I think we can begin to forecast the future with a lens of hope.

And I think that's what all of us are looking for.

- Rich, - Hey, my name's Rich Feldman and I have had the privilege of working with the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture community Leadership, which is based on the ideas of James and Grace Boggs who were activists in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Friends of Malcolm X and Friends of Martin Luther King and activists throughout that period in Detroit up until Grace died in 2015.

The organization is committed.

We use a phrase nurturing community leadership because we believe that we need to create the values and the principles and the vision for our society particularly in Detroit starting, but in the suburbs and across the country, about what does it mean to become human and how do we reach our human potential as folks are sharing and fundamentally believe that the entire system of racial capitalism is coming to an end.

And it's that desperation that has created this unbelievable, but not unbelievable because this is not new to American history.

To find building bridges is necessary.

We didn't not build bridges in the past.

And there's reasons why we don't have not built bridges.

And we can get into that when you have them when we have a little - Well, no, because that's just it.

I mean, it's these cultural tensions that have been a part of this country's history, right?

That are, that's a part of the issue here.

How do we, how do we get through all that?

- You're calling them cultural issues.

They are not cultural issues, - Cultural tensions.

- No, no, I disagree.

- Okay, that's fine.

- I don't really, and welcome the conversation to be in the spirit of civil conversations.

Sure.

- Yeah.

- These are contradictions that emerge with the founding of this nation based on the belief that we put economics and technological advancement above the relationships of human beings and social values.

That's the only way you could justify enslavement.

And that was for 600 years this country has been built on that.

And if we think, if we think we are gonna build bridges without creating a new vision based on new values we're a new system.

It's much more than getting along.

It's where are we going and what are the values we need to build that drive our vision at this point?

And I would welcome and really want to emphasize we're in Grand Rapids and take a moment of silence to commemorate Patrick Lawyer who was killed here.

And he was, but he came here and this makes me so he came here because of what the US government did in the Congo in 1960.

Overthrowing Patrice Lamumba creating chaos in South Africa.

And we are now reaping the, the pain and the pain.

And we want to be comfortable and think there's not a history to why this young man was killed.

There's a history that created it.

And we need to now find our humanity by creating a new future.

- Where do we go?

Because as you said, this is so deep-rooted.

So where do we begin?

Where do we begin?

What the reality of it all with what Rich is telling us, where do we start?

Where do we begin to see each other to move forward?

- I think it's important for us to, like Rich is saying we need to excavate our history.

I think it's important for us to do that in the proper context.

We love the I of a dream speech.

I think anybody who knows anything about America loves Dr. King's I of a dream speech.

And he does something very, very powerful in this speech is he frames what was, the was, the is and the can be.

He talks about the history of things and talks about a hundred years before he talks about everything that went on with Lincoln.

And he says, this is our past.

Presently the Negro is still not free.

It ends with a crescendo talking about a possibility of a beautiful future.

And so as we talk about the painful history and have the courage to be able to lean into it when it's juxtaposed and connected to what is happening now as well as what could happen next, allows us to through the challenges that change presents to all of us.

So where do we begin?

I think we begin with what happened in our past and how does it affect us now.

What choices do we make in the presence so we can build a different future?

How do we make it so the next generations don't inherit this broken pain and past that we've been discussing.

And we, and I think you said it, and we're talking about building bridges and humanizing one another.

And I think that we humanize one another by leading with the person and not the problem, the perspective or the the issue.

Because in our society right now one of the reasons why we have the polarization that we're all existing within is because I see the issue that you're connected to the problem that you're connected to.

I associate you with all of those things but I don't see you as a person.

And when we lead with people then we can wrestle through some of the problems.

We do that for people that are in our family that we love that we don't agree with, that we see, you know what I accept this person crazy Uncle Dave, but I don't endorse everything that Uncle Dave does or believes.

But you know what, it's holiday dinner.

You know, we're gonna sit down together.

And I think we have to do that beyond our family in our society to be able to create a different atmosphere for all of us.

- How do we break through that polarization?

Because there are people who do identify with political parties and ideologies.

How do you break through that?

How do you reach that common, that humanity that you're that we're all talking about here?

How do you get there?

- I think first of all, we have to have a common vision to know where we're going.

And if it's simply unifying and bridge building, then let's start with that.

And I think the next step is we have to do the work on ourselves.

Who am I, the good, the bad, the ugly?

Why do I believe what I believe?

Am I willing to dig into my even how, you know, my my community, my family, the values that were imposed on I need to even check the good, the bad and ugly with that and begin to do that work on myself?

When I'm able to do that, then I think I'm able to enter into conversations to have not only the hard conversations but to begin to know what I bring to the table at that point.

And I think a lot of times we just go in ready to beat down and debate and win.

It's not about winning and losing until we're all together and we're winning.

So I'd say it has to start with ourselves and doing that work on who am I?

Why do I believe what I be, where, what values have been instilled in me?

And then from there, moving forward with relationships.

So - The soul searching.

the honesty - We, there was a group of leaders that we led a conversation through Reese very recently.

And we did this thing called 3D Stories.

And we ask people to look at a formative time in their life and determine what was the style of that time and what was the story.

And so before we leaned into and got ahold of all the issues that we were there, we just talked about our history.

We talked about the fact that hey, one person, they grew up on a farm and they were building houses with their family.

And other people were, Hey, you know what?

I was playing basketball in the city and listening to hip hop and all these different things.

A another leader said, you know what?

I'm the first person in my family that has graduated from college and went to high school because my parents were migrant workers.

And so all these different things came out and it created an atmosphere of connectivity and togetherness that gave us the momentum and the shift to build bridges.

So now we can be able to make those moves that all of us want.

- Rich, I know you're all - Right.

I just, no, I just want to hear from Alejandra and - Yeah, I do too.

- Yeah.

And then, then I'll be glad to go after that or whenever, but that's okay.

- Yeah, I think a lot of it when it comes into like getting into the politics and whatnot I think it separates us a lot, right?

I think what happens a lot of times is that we miss that human connection and we're just seeing what's being shown to us on TV and we forget the bigger picture.

We forget that there needs to be those connections there needs to be those understandings.

And when it comes to building bridges, it's almost a moment where you have to kind of step back and really know the people around you and understand that there are differences.

But how do you embrace those differences?

How do you educate your neighbor who may view them different because biases exist, right?

And how do we eliminate those biases or become aware of them at least, and then start to join into those conversations and be able to not just speak on it but actually educate them and be able to bring that back to the table to then take action, do something about it.

And I think that takes a whole community because one person can't fix what's going on.

- Yeah.

- So in sort of a little response in terms of what politics is, we're immediately defining it as electoral politics between these two political parties.

Which is, in my view, not what politics should be.

It really is needs to be based on ethics and principles because in many ways it didn't matter who is in power you know, fundamentally none of the questions get dealt with and they don't get dealt with because they are their leaders of a system that's built on individualism, that's built on materialism that's built on putting economics in command and uplifting the I of a dream speech is one thing but if we really look at, if we, I'm sorry.

If we look at King's 1967 speech beyond Vietnam a time to break our silence, which he gives a speech at the major church in New York.

And he says we need to struggle against the evil triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.

And if he lived today, he would be saying patriarchy.

He'd be saying environmental destruction and he would probably also even be saying ableism.

And then he says, we need a radical revolution in values.

His hope was, the challenge to all of us is what is this radical revolution in values?

And then says, America has been the most violent country in the history of humanity.

So when folks say USA USA at hockey games they ain't talking about the values we're I'm talking about.

And I worked in a plant for 20 years on the line 10 more years as an elected official had wonderful friends who were part of the Ku Klux Klan and hated my guts over the years.

But we learned to talk to each other.

But you know what?

They all still supported Trump 30 years later.

Because we don't have the deeper conversations.

It's not building bridges, it's getting to the foundation of what does it mean to be human.

And they all could agree one-on-one.

But politics is part of who we are.

- Does the political system need to shift?

Do we look at a third party?

Would that make any difference if you're looking at from from this view?

Would that, would that shift Anything in your mind - You want me to answer?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- I don't I think third parties are possible but it starts from the community.

It's one person at a time, one block at a time one community at a time beginning to envision.

And the book I have here is called Freedom Dreams by Robin DG Kelly.

Who talks about the history of America and talks about the dreams and the history of people finding a new future of what freedom is.

And we all talk about freedom as something that we achieve eventually but freedom is in the struggle to be free.

So I work with a group of people that are creating an eco-village on the east side of Detroit to reimagine housing based on universal design.

Right?

It has to come from the neighborhoods.

It comes from critical connections.

And it's critical connections that are political as well as human of how do we create the be loving community.

Not the beloved community as those as one but a be loving community.

And I think that's, I think we're all, we all feel that and we have different ways we contribute but it's not building bridges up here because the foundation is just mush.

- Well, I think, you know, I think the documentary showed that paradox where, you know, the family that was on the the road had this ideal.

This is what we want to accomplish this is what we want to do.

We wanna bring people together, not realizing recognizing that they had a lot of self-work that needed to happen themselves.

And you can see that there is a, an enlightenment and a greater awareness and understanding of, Hey, you know what?

I believe these things, I didn't know what I thought was going on, was going on.

And there's some introspection that I think was very refreshing to see.

Because like you said this is really about community.

This is about not just the ideals and all the different things that we can easily pontificate about.

This is about person to person.

We look at our own individual circle.

What does it look like?

What does it feel like?

What does the, our communities look like?

Because we live in a world that we say, you know what segregation and separation and all these things are wrong.

That was a part of a bygone era.

But if you look at what a good neighborhood looks like what does a good school look like?

What does a good environment look like?

What does a nice house look like?

Even though the signs are not there, we are still living in the aftermath and the momentum of those signs from years ago.

And so we have to accept the reality of that truth.

We have to say, okay, it's important for me to understand these things, learn new stuff but what am I learning it for?

You know, we talk about, we do this little rubric and we talk about learning, living, leading legacy.

We have to learn new things but we learn new things so we can live a different way.

And when we live a different way we can lead at a higher level.

And when we lead at a higher level we leave a legacy that transforms and changes things.

And so as we lean into that not just from an ideological standpoint but what does it mean not just for them, whoever them are but what does it mean for me?

- We have about a minute and a half, this went quickly so I will leave it to you.

And that is, how is it about removing politics from our lives or putting it on the sideline the partisanship to move forward?

What is that you see?

- To me it's simply relationships and seeing people for who they are.

Hearing stories and understanding and celebrating honoring stories towards the bigger cause and the bigger movement.

- I think it's not prioritizing politics over humans.

I think it's understanding what exactly is missing in our communities and how, what's the best way to advocate for it.

- Everybody, you get about about 20 seconds here each to wrap it up - We have to elevate the conversation beyond the points of polarization.

And let it be about people, about our communities and about our personal perspective and choices.

- Politics is not about electoral politics.

It's about how people come together collectively to govern.

We need a new concept of self-governing in our country that's not controlled by multinational corporations or politicians that are supportive of a system that was founded our enslavement.

And I'll stop there.

- All very good.

Thank you Denise Fase.

Thank you for joining us.

Alejandra Meza, Julian Newman and Rich Feldman.

Thank you all for joining us.

We truly appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again soon.

(gentle music)