Dignity Over Violence: A Unified Civic Response

The Opening

After a beautiful rendition of Amazing Grace, sung by Ben Karen, John Carroll, and Cameron Swallow of the Brave Angels music team, the Convening was opened by the new CEO of Braver Angels, Maury Giles. Maury noted that not only does he live about 25 miles away from where the assassination took place, he had good friends and family at the event, some even in the front row. So, he said "It has been an intense four and a half days." But he then pointed out that it has been an intense 18 months, during which many other episodes of high-profile political violence have occurred:  from the attempt on the life of Donald Trump and the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro and his family (whose house was firebombed while they were at home), to the successful assassinations of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

But, Maury went on to say 

We can assign blame, excuse violence as something maybe someone had coming or somehow is acceptable. And [in that way] we can really feed and fuel that fire.

Or we can take our own responsibility for this moment to act, instead of react, to exercise what I believe is our God-given agency. We have to choose the path we will take for ourselves and the society and the country we leave for our children.  ...

The theme of "agency" and "choice" was prevalent among many of the speakers who followed. So, too, was anger, fear, and a longing for hope, as Maury said at the end of his talk:

The challenge in front of us is real. People are angry. People are hurt. People are anxious. People are worried. But people want to feel hope.

He then introduced the first panel of speakers who were asked to address the question "How Did We Get Here." This panel, like the other two, had representatives from across the political spectrum, which is a core feature of most Braver Angels' events. Yet there was no finger pointing or arguing. Just a lot of people who were saddened, frightened, and wanting to find a better way forward. But the first panel was asked to look backward to "How Did We Get Here?"

How Did We Get Here?

Braver Angels' Monica Guzman opened the panel by asking "What lessons should we learn from what happened in Utah and the accelerated violence that led up to it?" She noted that many on the right were blaming the left and the left was blaming the right. And both were are insisting that it is the job of the other side to fix it. "What can we say to that?" she asked the three panelists: Manu Meel from Bridge USA, Jim Robb from Numbers USA and Keith Allred – National Institute for Civil Discourse.

Bridge USA works on college campuses, and Manu Meel reported that the students he had talked to after Charlie Kirk's killing "wanted to do something—they wanted to make something positive out of this terrible tragedy." The great thing about America, he said, is that "we always have a choice" and that choice has not been taken away from us.  We need to "remember that dialogue and pluralism are at the center of this country" We still have a choice about whether to pursue them, or to pursue further violence instead. 

Co-panelist Keith Allred from the National Institute for Civil Discourse echoed the same idea. 

Where does this go from here? And as Maury emphasized with agency, there's nothing predestined about where we can go from here. It could escalate further from here quite easily, or it could be a turning point where we rally together. That's on us. It's on us each individually, on us as organizations to exercise that agency and make a choice that this won't define us. And so where we went at the National Institute for Civil Discourse strategically was to relaunch the Better Than This Campaign that we first launched right after the Trump assassination attempt. ...

We need more of everyday Americans raising their voices and engaging, less ceding the stage to the extremists. [We need more] understanding of how we got here and and what's driving this. Anytime we have an escalation dynamic, a a vicious cycle like this, we know from psychology that in large-scale conflicts like this, one of the primary accelerants is a misperception —everybody sees the people on the other side as more extreme than they really are. We take those who are loudest and talk longest and we see them as being representative of the whole group. That's that's how the escalation dynamic gets going. Seeing the other side as more extreme than they really are. And then we feel justified in taking a more extreme response in a way that we see as defensive, but it looks offensive to the other side. And then we confirm their view that we're more extreme than we really are and we keep ratcheting each other up. That has happened across the globe and throughout time. But there are various times when we throw more accelerants on the that that fire. ...

The only way our democratic system of self-government can work, he explained, is if all of us take our "citizen role" seriously. 

If all of us take our role as we should, then it can be a pivot point. We can get a virtuous cycle going in place of the vicious cycle and we can have a republic that is reflective of us, [not reflective of the small group of extremists].

Although it has only been a short time, there is some evidence that this is happening. Keith observed:

The vast majority of us recognize everybody's contributed [to this escalation]. ...Those of us more in the middle, and moderates, and have been too quiet. We all have a role in this, ... When conflicts turn around, it's when people stop just pointing the finger at the other side, and they start to point the finger at their own side and say, "So, what can I do?" And I think that's where most Americans are. Even on social media and in the national press —which tend to go towards the extremes, yes, there's been a lot that's been reprehensible in that, but there's been a lot of fantastic op-eds, even on social media, every day.  I am hopeful that we will start to feel in a salient way that those who are with us in bringing the nation together vastly exceed those who want to divide us further.

 

What Can the Bridging/Depolarization Field Do To Help People Respond to this Moment?

The second panel was facilitated by Carolyn Lukensmeyer of the National Civic League, along with Kristin Hansen of the Civic Health Project, Vinay Orekondy of Better Together America and Andrew Hanauer of One America Movement. She asked what our field can do—what do we have to offer citizens at this time? She continued:

What can individuals do to support themselves? What What can we do interpersonally with our intimate friends and families? What can we do interpersonally with people we don't know? What can we do with groups and organizations? And what can we do with
institutions? 
 

Before she opened the conversation to the panel, however, she shared a map assembled over the last several years by the National Civic League's "Healthy Democracy Ecosystem Map" which shows over 10,000 organizations in the U.S. working to help support and strengthen U.S. Democracy. And of those 10,000 organizations, she said, 1500 are bridge-building organizations. So clearly there is a lot of bridging/depolarization work going on, but it is not particularly visible, and much more is needed. (If you want to find out what is going on in your state or even your city or town, you can search for that on the map and thereby figure out where you might get involved in existing organizations and activities.)

Kristin Hansen, of the Civic Health Project, responded to Carolyn by saying

Within the same hour that we learned the news that Charlie Kirk had been shot, my kids' high school went on lockdown because a real student with a real gun had threatened to come and shoot it up. This is what we're all living with every day right now. And because the root causes are so complicated, the solutions can feel very complicated too, if not completely out of reach. 

But that is not what this panel is about today. [Today we are] here to talk about what you can do. Today is not about feeling hopeless. It's about validating every single one of you who decided to dedicate a Sunday afternoon or a Sunday evening to this, who feel that you want to be part of the solution, that you want to understand the individual, interpersonal, and institutional dimensions of this. I'm going to kick us off with the individual [level]because that is where the journey starts for every single one of us. 

We have to decide, each of us in our own mind, in our own heart: "I want to be a bridger, not a divider." It's about deciding how we, each of us, wants to walk in the world, how we want to show up, the culture we want to create and build together. It's about deciding  that I want to adopt and model the ways of being that are going to cultivate bridges of understanding and not chasms of contempt. 

So, what are these ways of being? What are the attributes we should be striving for outrageously in our day-to-day life? [Among them are] 

• Admitting with humility that there's a lot we don't know about the world and especially about each other.
• Cultivating curiosity to get to know those others.
• Listening actively and intently to accelerate that learning.
• Assigning dignity, belonging, and respect to all and especially to those we have not yet had the good fortune to meet.
• Most importantly, resisting the temptation to succumb to the whirlwind forces, to the algorithms, to the provocateurs who want to whip us into a frenzy, who benefit most when we're divided from one another. 

Let me give one practical suggestion before I end:  turn off your social media and visit a different place online. Check out Conversation.US. This is the evergreen campaign of this bridge-building field and a place you can go as any individual who's listening today to find on-ramps, simple, easy actions you can take to begin to cultivate that individual mindset, that journey that we're urging you to go on because we need every one of you to be on the journey. Go to conversation. us and you'll see there are simple practical things you can do right now.

Vinay Orekonday of Better Together America followed Kristen, stressing that people should find like-minded people in their local communities. 

The way we get out of this, is to find each other. Not just online, where it's easy to scream at each other, but find each other in person.  That's how we get past the isolation, the disempowerment, the outrage. We stop allowing these emotions to be the norm. 
 

Vinay invited people to join Better Together America to get help forming a local "civic hub" of civically engaged and interested people. "The the stronger we are as a community on a local level, the greater our ability to do bridging, the greater our ability to solve problems together." Another benefit of local civic action is that it fights isolation, and fights the sense of disempowerment that gives rise violence.  And it helps build a shared identity of people who are FOR something, not just against something.  You have to be for something, Vinay said, to find power.
 

The last panelist in this second panel was Andy Hauser from the One America Movement, which works with about 5,000 faith leaders in the U.S. Andy stressed that people should help shape the actions of people in the place where they have the most influence: people in your own group. Though bridging divides is important, he said, "

The most important work happens within groups. It happens when we're asking the question "who do we want to be as a Christian, Democrat, Jew, Republican, whatever (you fill in the blank)."

Carolyn ended the panel by asking "how can we make this work more visible?" Kristin answered:

Don’t give up, be relentlessly optimistic. Your optimism will feed others’ optimism. Your discouragement will feed others’ discouragement.  Continue to project the voice of optimism into the country. Loving our enemies is the central challenge of our time and we all need to rise to it. 

Vinay said 

We need to get more organized than the poles [the extremists]. The poles are highly organized.  We need to get as organized [as they are].  We have to find each other, know each other, work together.

Andy saw this as a spiritual question. There are 110 million Americans, he said, who go to church, mosque, or synagogue, and 70 million more who say they believe in God and attend on a semi-regular basis.  We need to help the leaders of those communities to teach these bridging skills to their congregations, so their congregants are able to have constructive conversations with their political opponents, instead of hating them. That is "the work that all of us can do in whatever institution we belong to."

A Vision for the Future

Jacob Bornstein of Mediators Foundation and Better Together America facilitated the third and final session.  His questions were: what should society look like that transcends this political violence.  The discussants were Jennifer Thomas from Mormon Women for Ethical Government, Heather Blakeslee from FAIR & Root Quarterly and Alexandra Hudson from Civic Renaissance.

Jennifer opened with a wonderful piece of advice that came from her mom: 

When you get to a point that you find that you are faced with a mountain in your life that you cannot tunnel through, that you cannot walk around and that is too difficult for you to climb, you are left with one remaining option. That is the moment you have to grow to be bigger than the mountain. 

That little nugget of advice was so empowering for me. It's been such a driving thought in my life that whenever I found myself in front of something that seemed too overwhelming, I knew that I had in myself the capacity to grow. ...And I am sure that most of the people who are speaking tonight ... have grown… through a lot of diligent work to be bigger than the mountain. And what they are offering is the opportunity for their fellow Americans to do that as well.

And doing this work has quite literally transformed my soul. It's made me more open to understanding others. It's made me less judgmental. It's given me the skills to kind of transform how I engage with others. And .. I truly, sincerely, believe that everyone listening on this call has the capacity to grow to be bigger than the mountain that we face and that together we can actually make pretty significant change in our communities. 

Heather followed Jennifer and added that "disagreeing in public cannot be a death sentence."  Most people, she said, are afraid of disagreeing in public.  They don't want to offend people in "their tribe." But our silence is letting the extreme voices crowd out everyone else. 

When I have conversations with people in private, they will tell me much different things about how they feel than those things that they might say in in public. And so we have to get really courageous about that and start saying what we think. I think it is a fundamental thing that we have to do that. ...  I think we have to get offline and talk to our neighbors. 

Alexandra Hudson finished off this panel talking about the importance of dehumanization. She heard people lament Charlie Kirk's killing, but then go on to say, 

"but you have to understand where people are coming from, ... you have to understand the hurt that Charlie caused his words." No! A life was taken and that's condemnable. Full stop. No ifs ands, or buts, or qualifications of any kind.

Alexandra wrote a book The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, which has been adopted by a number of leaders from the local to the national level as a handbook to navigate our divided times.  One of the leaders who is using it convened a "National Civility Summit" in Carmel, Indiana.  

And the the goal of this gathering of of of local and national leaders is is not perfect agreement. The goal isn't to unite and compromise and come away with a a perfectly harmonized view of the world. The goal is to respect one another despite the fact that we will never perfectly agree. It is to rehumanize our fellow citizens and fellow human beings in this deeply divided time.

Jennifer added to that by saying:

I think one of the failures that we've continually experienced is is that everyday Americans expect somebody else to do the big swing. [They expect that someone else is]  going gather them all in and be the person that makes it all happen for them. I would like to pivot and say to every single person on this call, you have so much more agency, capacity, and influence than you realize. And you have the opportunity to exponentially grow that influence. It can start by reaching out to one person and then you invite four people over for dinner and then you decide I'm going to have eight people over in my backyard and then I'm going to invite 16 people to go vote at the same time I vote. There are lots of ways to do it. 

I would encourage every person listening to this call to do is to ask themselves, what is their vision? Not what is Jen's version or someone else's big vision of what America could look like, but what is your vision of the society you want to live in? Do you want it to be peaceful? Get down into the nitty-gritty, sit down at your desk, write it down. This is what I want my culture to look like. This is what I want my neighborhood to look like. This is how I want my state to function, or my congregation, whatever it is. And then ... you have your north star. You know what you're navigating to —you have your map. Find out what inspires you. Who are the people that you've seen transcend difficulty, who you've seen transcend and overcome adversity? Read about those people. Learn about those people. Study the qualities of their character that made them determined and disciplined. So, you've got a map, you've got a north star, and then you've got a sense of your own agency. 

And then I think the last thing I would ask and encourage everyone to do is really take some thoughtful time to ask yourself, what is your work to do? Every single one of us has a part to play in this. It's not going to be some big organization that's going to get us out of this, but the organizations that we've talked about on this call are going to make it a lot easier for us to do it because they're setting up spaces already in which we can come together. So, if you're not an organizer, find a group that you can plug yourself into. And then you've got everything you need to do to make this happen. Suddenly, it's all possible. You've got agency. You know where you're going. You know who's inspiring you to go there. You've set up a group of people that you want to work with and you've figured out what your work is to do. And I know that sounds really simplistic, but that is the pathway for each of us to exercise agency, control, and to make honestly a substantive and meaningful difference in the world around us. It's possible for all of us. 

The final thing that I would say is I don't know what the world is going to look like two years from now,  if violence is going is going to increase or decrease. But I do know that I am absolutely determined not to change my commitment to making ours a positive world. So, if that makes sense. So no matter whether the line goes up or down,  I, Jen Thomas, will do everything that I can in my capacity to in the world around me to push, push, push, push, push that violence down.

Maury Giles came back in at the end and emphasized the same idea:

One of the things I heard throughout all this is owning this ourselves. We have agency. We have more potential to impact than we think.  I'm reminded of a Victor Frankle quote "between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. 

We also have accountability. We have a commitment to the "we." It's not about being nice. We should just do that as humans. It's about leaning into our differences. It's a much deeper and much more courageous thing. ... [In Braver Angels] we call it "courageous citizenship." How are we going to make it real? It is the very real issue in our families and our communities. Find your people and make that change within that community. "We're the ones that we've been waiting for" is a useful theme. 

Maury went on to emphasize the importance of getting our message out 

to the everyday person who's not thinking about this every day. To the one who has family members who are upset and frustrated and engaging with each other in a very destructive manner. They need help. 

It's not about our organizations. It's not about us as people. It's about us as a collective and the Americans, the American experiment that we're all part of. I think that's so important as we work together to drive forward and lead this. There's so many different tools and things that we have in place. 

But we need to remember that the competition, the people that are doing this on the other side, that "conflict entrepreneurs," the industrial outrage complex has been  talked about, they have resources, they have lists, they have tools, and they're deploying it. 

We have the right message. We have the spirit of hope. Darkness never removes darkness. Hate never removes hate. Only light removes darkness. And only love removes hate. We need to move forward with that.

And he urged listeners to send in stories (to stories@braverangels.org) of how they, or other "ordinary people" they know are doing that, are practicing "courageous citizenship." The more we can share these stories, the more we can make this idea real, and the easier it will be to get more and more people involved. 

As a last, sad and worrying note. In panel two, participants were asked where they thought things would go from here and most said they didn't know. Things could get better or worse.  They seem to be getting worse. On September 24, a shooter in Dallas, Texas shot three people detailed by ICE at an ICE facility, before shooting and killing himself. And on September 28, a man drove a car into a Mormon Church near Flint, Michigan, set the church on fire, and shot at the worshipers.  At least four people were killed, eight more were wounded (one critically), and the church burned to the ground. The shooter also died in a confrontation with police.  The fears that violence is contagious seem to be playing out. Acting to stop this contagion, needless to say, is an extremely urgent task.

To see Guy and Heidi Burgess's thoughts on some of these ideas, please see Newsletter 388, particularly the further thoughts section toward the end.