Heidi: Hi, this is Heidi Burgess, and I'm with Guy Burgess. We co-direct Beyond Intractability. And we're very glad to have three people with us this afternoon who were all co- conveners of the TRUST network. We had a newsletter post about the network of months or two ago.

We're very pleased to have these three with us to tell us more about it. We have first have DG Mawn who is President of the National Association for Community Mediation. Then we have Prabha Sankaranarayan, who is President and CEO of Mediators Beyond Borders, International, and finally, Madhawa Palihapitiya with the Center for Peace, Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Their three organizations, and they personally, have co convened the TRUST Network, which we're really interested in because it strikes us as a real-world example of what we call massively parallel peace building. This is an idea that we've been writing about for a number of years. And we've heard from quite a few people that it's too grandiose an idea or that it's impossible, nobody could ever do it. And DG, Prabha and Mads proved that that's not true—they ARE doing it!  So, we're really eager to hear from you and find out more about what you're doing and why and how. So who would like to lead us off?

D.G.: I think Prabha should. She was the one who really started this. She and I went around for quite a few years trying to talk to people about the need to develop this and then finally in September 2020, she said “we can't wait for funders. We can't wait anymore. We must move now. And she brought in some great experts from around the world to help us look at this and now I’ll turn this over to you, Prabha.

Prabha: Co-convenor, I insist! Thanks DG. I was fascinated by your concept of massively parallel peacebuilding. And I completely agree. I think it's possible. I think if we didn't believe that it was possible, we wouldn't have embarked on what is clearly massive. So, in 2020, we took on the oldest democracy in the world [the U.S.]. Frankly, we saw the continuing signs of politically motivated social underpinnings of continued violence in this country escalating. And we clearly felt that the peacebuilding community, globally and in this country, had come of age enough to take this on. So, we started by putting out a call. I will say it was inspiring that every one of hose leaders, from FCNL [Friends Committee on National Legislation] to AFP [Alliance for Peacebuilding] to Peace Direct to Search [for Common Ground], all of them, including community-based organizations, including folks like the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, all of them [said “yes.] It was, I think, the right time and everyone felt the need. So people came forward. They just responded--about 25 directors of organizations and networks stepped forward when we said we think there is a need to form something together in order to tackle the issues in this country. And that was the almost explosive beginning of the trust network And I cannot thank enough the two volunteers who helped us, which is, I think, part of how we all —how MBBI and NAFCM operates, and I know Mads, we don't think of graduate students as volunteers, but the graduate students were a big part of it, as were volunteers from around the world. But Sunitha and Marcella, two MBBI volunteers at the time said, “tell us what you need.” And that began us. The first year and a half was a constant, ongoing, cycle of meetings, of gatherings, of learning from each other, of formulating what we needed to look like, of policy briefs and recommendations to the incoming administration. Advocacy recommendations and funding recommendations to the Alliance for Peacebuilding. Trainings of community organizations on early-warning, early-response [protocols], exchanges with international organizations. All of that happened in the first18 months. And what I can come back to now is to talk about is how heartening it is to actually see the multiple networks now moving forward.

So, to me, that was that was inspiring. And it is massive, because I don't think anything has been attempted in a democracy as large and as complex as this one. There are lots of examples of applications of some of these things we are talking about in smaller countries. This is probably the largest, but I'm going to turn it over to the historian in my group.

 Heidi: Well, before we move on, I just want to clarify, because we do have a very international audience, that we're talking about the democracy in the United States at this point. There are certainly challenges in many other democracies around the world, but the TRUST network has been focused on the United States. And we find that very heartening, because we have been trying to get peacebuilders, our colleagues, to focus on what's going on in the United States for quite a few years, and didn't get nearly as positive reception as you did. Maybe that's because we were too early. Partly, maybe because who we were, I'm not sure. But it's really good to see the peace building community get on this bandwagon now because we agree, it's very much needed.

Prabha: You know, the concept of ripeness may apply here, because certainly when DG and I went around to funders 5 years before this, with the same message, we did not get the same response either. So I think the moment in 2020 was one that was unavoidable for most people. And it also might have been the moment when others who had been attempting to do something individually finally found a collective space in which to come together.

Heidi: What was it about 2020 that you think made the situation ripe?

D.G.: I think for us, it was the experts that Prabha was able to give us access to a particular piece and national leader in Kenya, who came in and worked with our group and used her model for figuring out the volatility in the strength of a democracy. And in her form, I think, the United States was an F,  more or less, in almost every category. And having that dataset was able to help everyone really crystallize and remove the emotion and say, “looking at these data points, we really are in significant danger of losing our democracy. We can no longer wait. And again, that's because the access that MBBI and Prabha was able to give us to these experts that really was able to give fuel to my organization, to dedicate a significant amount of time, and then MBBII did volunteer time And Joe buck, who was at Kennesaw State at the time, dedicated significant amount of volunteer time as well, along with dozens and dozens and dozens of other folks.

 And that's what I think really moved it. The timing was right and because of this great international access, we're able to use a very simple tool to remove the emotion and very clearly draw the picture that if we don't act now, we may be missing the moment.

Heidi: So tell us more of the nuts and bolts of what you did to bring everybody together and Perhaps, even more importantly, what you're doing now, what activities are all these groups undertaking to try to turn the democracy situation around?

 D.G. I’ll do the first part of the question that I'm going to turn it over to Prabha in just a moment. What we did is all three of us who were the conveners at the time, Joe, probably and I, have different connections and different ways of engaging and that turned out really helpful to be able to talk to a person who could actually hear any one of us, first of all.

Secondly,  while we, as you know, have extensive national grassroots grouping and we really reached out to them through our connections., MBBI brought this international field of individuals that they have been working with for, I'm assuming, decades, so that when Prabha gave them the call, the response wasn’t “who are you?”, it was “I trust you, I've worked with you, let's talk about it,” and Prabha, I'm going to turn it back over to you to finish that answer.

Prabha: Well, so the third part of this, which brings Madhawa into the picture was Doctor Bach, who was at Kennesaw State University at the time, and with whom Madhawa had been working in his team of people. They literally showed up and said, “we are digital nomads. We monitor violence around the world. And we understand you're putting a platform together. We are here to help.”

And so they found a home. So, it was the national network of NAFCM, the international organizations with whom MBBI is connected, and then these digital nomads who had been doing early warning, early response work around the world. It was truly a moment of recognizing that we all have something to learn from each other. 

So, the person that D.G. was talking about is Alice Wairimu Nderitu, who is now the  Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide at the United Nations. She had used a tool in pre-genocide, Rwanda, which is what he was referring to, which was really based on a number of factors that indicate the strength or the lack thereof of democracy along a series of factors.

And so what we did at that time was immediately adopt the idea of an early warning and early response system. Now, that's a concept that those in the international arena were very familiar with, right? We've seen those in many different countries. On the United States, we have the Federal Emergency Management System that does early warning maybe for natural disasters. But that's not anywhere close to being comparable to the robust, possibilities of an early warning system. So, at this point, I'm going to ask Madhawa if he would speak to what they did.

Madhawa: Thanks for that. Yes. Around this time, I would say, mid 2020, I was looking at all the indicators that I've been trained in as a conflict early-warning person 22 years ago in Sri Lanka, through Nigeria, various engagements, and I was seeing the indicators of what turned out to be an insurrection and beyond.  When I got the call from Joe, he said, “are you seeing what's going on?” And I said, “hell yeah! Let's do something about it! So, we didn't have a lot of words to you share to convince people what was going on because we had read the tea leaves. And we formed a small group at that point, it was myself, Joe and two other conflict mappers. And we started monitoring through the media, through social media, what was going on a daily basis. And then one of my colleagues that University of Massachusetts, Boston said, “hey you know, do you know about Mediators Beyond Borders International? They are talking about an early warning system. And they're talking about monitoring elections. She happened to be a board member at MBBI and she introduced me to Prabha. And I told Joe, “you know, this looks like a great fit for us” and then we kind of joined at the hip, so to speak.

And initially that became the monitoring mechanism which expanded to capacity building, training, a vast network of people, and turning this into an opportunity to collaborate and build what you are calling massively parallel peacebuilding infrastructure. One of the realizations of that is the growing complexity of the problem -- and we talk about complex adaptive systems. That means we needed methodological pluralism, so not just one type of an organization, but multiple different organizations with multiple levels of skills, groups who were doing democracy work, groups who had experience monitoring elections, the sort of pure peacebuilding organization, et cetera, all kind of woven together through the central sort of nervous system of a community based early warning system.

And a lot of people were kind of alien to that idea at first. So, we had to train them on how to do that. And we looked at some of the existing assets and built on what was already there in those communities and identifying our community mediation center infrastructure as really one of the frontline infrastructures that are doing community based early warning and early action.

Guy: I'm curious as to exactly how this early warning process wound up working.  Are there cases where you did in fact have a warning to issue and how did that work? Did you work with local authorities? What kind of context or system was set up to actually use this information?

Madhawa: Yeah, that's a great question. There are several examples of that kind of partnership, collaboration with impact, what we call “data correction” or “warning to respond.” One of the classical examples is our networks alerting us to a particular problem. And we examine the data, collect the data and issue an early warning bulletin and people acting on it. That is the workflow of a typical early warning system.  One of the examples is in the TRUST network slack channel, one of the community-based centers that shared a report about a particular group that was operating within schools where it was creating a lot of tension in school board meetings. We investigated and found that it was part of a larger pattern of hate groups who were operating in various ways to bring together some sort of a situation where the existing mechanisms around education, and social cohesion could be threatened. We found that this was much more systemic [than the original report]. We found, for example, that some of the hate groups, or what we call domestic terrorism groups (they should have actually been called that) had grown exponentially within a matter of years. There was 70% growth in the Proud Boys, for example, and they were turning up in all kinds of places. And there was a strong correlation between these sorts of local agitations, these hate groups, and hate crimes. And later on, we were able to predict a strong correlation between these groups and domestic terrorists. And our predictions came true in several attacks.

For example, the one in 2022 in Buffalo, New York, there were very clear signs of hate group ideology you know, the replacement theory, and now we're seeing at least one incident in Florida where acceleration is cited and the two members of a hate group called Atom tried to attack the electricity grid.  The whole idea of “acceleration” as a means to bring down some of the social loaders so that there is a race war, that results in bringing down the order of social order that we now have.  And that to us means democracy. And as we have seen on January 6th, democracy, and our democratic institutions, can be more fragile than we think. So, our focus has been to try and warn our groups about some of these attacks, the ideology behind these attacks. Another incident was back in May 2022, almost a year ago, when we warned about these groups targeting LGBTQ, but particularly drag events. Unfortunately, later that year, there was a targeting attack in Colorado Springs, a drag event with many people who were killed. Some of these incidents have led to response at the local level, some have we have not been able to prevent some of these incidents. But I believe we might have had an impact, maybe having a small dent in some of these things. So, what we are focusing now is sort of building that data-to-action or warning-to-response gap. And this is one of the toughest things to do globally is to take this information, make it actionable, and have various stakeholders take action, preventative action. But we're still working on that.

There’s no silver bullet for doing that, so we are focusing on building this infrastructure, this sort of parallel multidimensional platform and promoting the methodological pluralism and celebrating that, but we have actually got to put more resources into this platform. This is one of the things that we are struggling with. 

And this is one of the really good examples of why your thinking about this type of platform is critical. Because we need to look beyond competition between organizations to collaboration, and working together, and tackling together with the methodologies we have in hand, this complex problem, which is multi-dimensional. So it's not just for the hate groups and hate ideology, it's the changing demographic landscape you know, some white working class youth who are being drawn into these groups, what motivates that, trying to understand and try to address some of these things.

So systemic structural changes that need to be brought about, policy changes, programmatic changes, building of the civic infrastructure, peacebuilding infrastructure, so many things that need to be done, and it's best to start collaborating. Not competing.

Guy: Could you tell us a bit about what your plans are for the next couple of years as the United States goes into another undoubtedly highly contested and dangerous election season?

D.G.: If I may, first, I did want to also add to what Madhawa had just talked about. And only the early warning system about getting early warnings, we need to talk about verifying. The validity of early warnings, particularly through our social media and main media channels. I just wanted to share two very brief examples as we had one city where there was a demonstration, someone shot and killed someone else in front of a reporter, and the reported had never seen someone be killed in front of him before. He certainly blew up his social media account!  And then what we were hearing was, “the city is about ready to fall apart. This is going to be violent.” So, we checked in with our centers serving that city and said, “what's really going on?” And they clued us in, there is no major thing here. There is no there, there. It was reporter reacting to something he had never witnessed before.

However, here's a there, there. Many of us vote by boxes. They pre-election vote and we don't vote on election day, and in those drop boxes around those drop boxes are many individuals standing, coughing, and spitting at people who are trying to drop off their ballot. This is pre-COVID shots and wellness, and so people weren't dropping their ballots off. We then through the TRUST Network, through our media partners, we were able to get the word out to the entire state saying “you have a nuisance ordinance. Why are you choosing not to use it? That must be the story.” Well, cities and law enforcement didn't want the media saying that they weren't enforcing their nuisance ordinance, and we were then told by centers throughout the state that magically these people who were spitting disappeared, and people were now able to access the voting drop boxes.  That would have blown up if people were not able to vote because of this. So, I wanted to give that very small example.

Another example is another city that was tense. They were recounting the ballots, if you will. And our center there worked with law enforcement to make it a party atmosphere. So, law enforcement was protecting those counting our center and volunteers showed up and they played loud music. They had hats on. They had candies to give out. And the protesters were there, saying the election is being stolen while listening to dance music and eating candies. So everyone talked. It didn't change anyone's mind, but no one was smashing a window. No one was harassing the people who were trying to count the votes.  The negative energy level went so down. That protest was something those people felt they needed to do. People felt the election had been stolen, let them protest. However, it wasn't threatening the ability to actually process the ballots.

 So I  do want to add that Madhawa’s point is very well taken. It is about early warning. It's also about how do we respond in a way that we're not responding to shadows. We’re responding to what's really going on. So I just thought those are two simple examples. And again, I would turn to Prabha to talk about our next three years, the other brain trust in this trio.

Prabha: So, it's taken, I would say, the last couple of years, to build the very basics of the infrastructure, the infrastructure that we are calling an infrastructure, a national infrastructure for social cohesion, and security. And that's because there is something unique here. You've heard me say this, but I will mention that what is unique in this democracy, while I recognize that this is an international audience that we might be speaking to. And if there are others who have something similar in their landscape, I would love to learn about it. But what we are very clear about here is that there are lots of ways of looking at the different parts of this massive movement that we are all trying to move in the same direction towards.

In the United States, there is a very robust structural reform sector, I will say. It might be called the democracy and governance sector, structural reform actors. These are well developed networks and organizations that are growing even more now that are focused on things like redistricting, rank choice voting, open primaries. So these are structural reform actors who are now a part of this massive movement that we are talking about. They are then working with the peacebuilders, the mappers, the analysts, the designers and interventionists for social cohesion and addressing divisiveness and toxic polarization. And then there's another sector, which is the large groups of social and environmental and racial justice actors. There are hundreds, if not thousands of them across the country. And so, connecting those also has become really important. And the fourth group, I will say, is the legal organizations. Those that are working on constitutional and legal reform.

So, what we have found to be somewhat unique is the intersection of all of these four sectors really getting interconnected and to a moderate point, seeing the complexity of what we need to do. And so, there are people working together in lots of different ways. What is wonderful is that some of the changes we have started to observe is more shared language. We are beginning to see some cross pollination of terms that were used in one field beginning to enter others. People who might have seen themselves as bridge-builders now working with structural reform actors, partnering with the Anti-defamation League, the ACLU, those who have been monitoring and making legal constitutional changes as well as leveraging of the social racial justice actors.

And I think there's a lot to be said for even just the intersection of the strategic nonviolence, civil resistance groups, and the peacebuilding groups. You know, Maria [Stephan] and Erica [Chenoweth] have written a lot about that. That was part of the reason why we wanted to see all these four sectors as intersecting here. We believed that if we can find network nodes, then we can connect those to have more leverage.

So, our goal with the TRUST network is not so much to keep working at the individual level, but to keep identifying networks that are coming together. Networks of each of these sectors. And that's going to take a couple more years, even as we build the national infrastructure. Part of our thinking of the national infrastructure is the Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act created an infrastructure of the community mediation centers that have gone through various iterations. There are 30 of them who are part of the local TRUST- plus centers who are seeing themselves as the credible conveners in communities. So, they could be connecting people at the local level. So that's another step. It is connecting the networks nationally, identifying more networks, making sure we are exchanging information, knowledge sharing, and training, and building language familiarization. Also at the local level, we could go community-by-community, ensuring that there are local hubs for what is possible. That's going to take a massive effort. And that's part of what I think being a part of some of those conversations about what needs to begin to happen at the local level and how that can be connected nationally and with learning space for what we have done in other parts of the world. Because we're speaking to people in South Africa, we're speaking to people in Kenya, we're speaking to people in Indonesia. It's truly, I hope, a learning community. We can learn from each other. We don't have the answers in any one place.

Heidi: I think all three of you have mentioned training at one part of what you were saying. Who's doing training on what and where?

D.G.: Well, I will say that when we first began, the TRUST Network was offering training every other Friday. On basic topics, on what Prabha just said:  how to create a common language amongst groups that have perhaps a similar desired outcome, but come at it very differently, very different practices. That was one of our trainings for all the TRUST-plus centers. They went through two days of solid training on how to use the system, what you're looking for, what you're not looking for. And then that's ongoing. They meet once a month for about 75 minutes of tune up, if you will, to make sure things are rolling right if they're having new people come on, we meet with them one on one.

And then, of course, the TRUST stakeholders meet monthly for an hour, again, for updates and sometimes it's a training. Sometimes it's more of a broader conversation. And then our data folks who are experts in those areas like modeling and others meet quarterly for about an hour and a half to two hours to talk about what the data is really saying, what are you looking at? How are you looking at it? So we are constantly testing the data, so we're not going to shadows. So that's sort of our big picture process that we've been doing with training for anyone who wishes to be a part of the TRUST network. And Prabha might want to add more to that.

Prabha: Well, I will just add that there are hundreds of trainings now going on. There's a real understanding of the need for de-escalation. I know that black women for positive change, for example, had been trying to advocate legislative change. And what they found now is that there are more people talking about de-escalation as something all of civil society might need to be aware of. So that kind of stuff is happening in lots of different places. There are hundreds of organizations now doing more trainings on collaborative processes, dialog processes, consensus building processes, how do we use those processes at the community level to engage people? How do we do what we might call mapping, community assessment processes, for identifying what are the strengths and needs instead of going into communities and saying, “here's what you need, really.” I think of it so more as an inside out rather than a bottom up because I don't think there is any longer an acceptance of that hierarchy. Libby Hoffman, I will say, has done a really beautiful job in her in the description of her work in Sierra Leone where she talks about building peace from the inside out.

 And I think of these local hubs as being those places that are at the heart of communities now beginning to convene. Like for example, in Pennsylvania, one of the centers is holding story circles. And those story circles are both an assessment tool to identify what people's concerns and wishes are, as well as social cohesion-building tools. So amazing stuff like that is happening.

And then there are models that community-based organizations in cities across the country have been implementing, that we are now beginning to raise up and shine the light on by saying, “can we learn from each other?” It may be that what worked in Allentown, Pennsylvania may not work in Louisville. But we can learn principles of practice from each other.

Madhawa: Let me add one thing to that. In terms of the TRUST Network's own trainings, we were the first to deliver a systematic training on early warning, early action, meaning how to collect data, verify data, who to send it to, et cetera. So, we were actually the first to actually offer and train every single week, I think, we were training for a few months, all of these various stakeholders on conflict early morning and early action.

Heidi: If somebody is listening to this conversation and they're thinking, “I want to get involved in this”. How can they do so?

Prabha: A couple of ways. One, help us fund this! We were very fortunate that some leaders in the United States who are now in the funding community. They were practitioners themselves. So Melanie Greenberg at Humanity United and Nancy Lindbergh, who's now at Packard. They stepped in and said, “we'll help.” So, we started with that. And that meant that we were able to have a manager who was able to respond to that kind of question. So, when people say, how can we help? We say, here's the website, sign up, because we can use community observers. We can use community responders. We can use social media watchers, and analysts. So, there are lots of ways in which all of us can become a part of this civil society network. So that's one of the key way. And the other is really to spread the word about this. Share maybe examples that people have used in other countries. We could benefit from that in other communities, uplift what can happen at the local community level.

What I would really love to see in a massive way: I would love to see community Foundations get involved in this. We have an incredible, extraordinary, system of community foundations in this country that have always funded community-based organizations. Think of how influential that could be if they funded 50 cities across this country to do this kind of work. At the same time, the momentum we could get if there was that kind of coordination for local work at building social cohesion. That would be fantastic!

D.G. I would also encourage them to get involved with one of the local TRUST centers in their community. They rely on us as the National Trust Center. But the volunteers are experts and people who care passionately about this. And they're also right there on the web page and easy to connect with. And the caveat that Prabha was inviting to the foundations of funding local communities. Please first, talk with those early doing the work in local communities and support them. There is no need in this country to create a new group doing this. There are many out there, calling themselves by many different names. However, they are focused on increasing social cohesion, stabilizing democracy and to make sure that our communities stay healthy. And so just wanted to make sure I put that caveat on that invitation.

Madhawa: I want to add to that real quick, that the problem that we're facing in this country --threats to democracy, threat to social cohesion, that stems from extremism both in the right wing and the left wing. Because we also have left wing anarchist groups like James’ Revenge who are causing trouble as well, this has become a global problem. And for your audience who are global, this is going on in Europe, even in Australia and New Zealand. So, it's a global problem. And it's also a shared problem, therefore. It's a problem that is shared by all of us at various levels of society. At various levels, in terms of whether you look at it at the national level, with the national infrastructure or at the state level or at the community level. I think the emphasis for us is starting bottom up. And that's what makes this massively parallel peacebuilding infrastructure--it is the real depth of people, if you look at it as sort of a bottom-up approach. Unfortunately, though, we have not been able to bring in enough attention to this or to frame this in a way that creates a sense of urgency.

For example, if you look at these attacks, which are really terrorist attacks, what we saw in Texas, for example, we are failing to call it what it is. There was an interesting article in one of the media where we actually, if it was sort of a international group or a particular religious group that was causing these attacks, we would have no problem labeling it as terrorism. So, we are having this problem of calling it what it should be called. And that is actually preventing us from recognizing the threat. And the threat is growing every single day. So, you have the massively parallel peace building networks, most of whom might not actually be identifying this threat. I'm talking about the religious community, the places of worship, the congregations, as you probably have heard, there was a day of hate towards the Jewish community and they have a lot of these interfaith groups who actually banded together [to oppose that]. We need more of that at the community level. We need to work across different organizational silos and boundaries between the community and the police, for example. So that massively parallel peacebuilding infrastructure needs to be woken up. And they need to participate in this globally because this is not just a U.S. problem. It's becoming an international problem.

Heidi: Well, we very much agree. One of the things we've been trying to do and I'm really glad to hear that you're trying to do it too, is to wake people up. Because I think there's this sense that, “oh, it couldn't happen in the United States. And we're exceptional and everything's just fine. Aren’t you folks who are worried a little bit like chicken little saying that the sky is falling?” And the data really show that we have a very significant problem.  I'm looking at the clock and realize that we only have about 5 minutes left, so I would like to give each of you a chance to say anything that you're thinking that gee, we should have asked you when we didn't. Prabha, go ahead.

Prabha: I just want to say if a Guy had a question, I don't know. I might have interrupted him, sorry.

Guy: I just have a question, and we really don't have time to address it, but is how successful have you been in building support from this effort from the conservative side of the political perspective or the political divide and what lessons you might have on how to do that?

Madhawa: I think we've had engagement with, I'm not even sure there's a conservative side anymore, but there is we have had interactions with people who I consider as a conservative, you know, ordinary folks who might identify themselves as conservatives. I think the commonality between all of us is that we don't want political violence in this country. We do not want to undermine democracy. We can have all kinds of political disagreements, all of these things, and there's ample space for disagreements, but we don't have any space for violence. Particularly political violence or trying to solve our differences through violence. And this is what I think bonds not just the left, but also the right with us. And that's why another reason why we're calling ourselves a trans-partisan network. Having said that, though, I think the kind of tools that we're talking about might seem more leftist or left leaning and perhaps might be a sort of mental barrier for some groups to start thinking that they could align themselves with us.

But I think that is a misnomer, understanding there is a lot of space in this trans-partisan network, as long as you feel that the threat of political violence and threat to democracy and our system of governance or social cohesion in this country is harmful. On that we need to all work together. So, in that, based on that platform, there is plenty of space for collaboration.

Prabha: Well said! Madhawa reminded me of one thing we keep talking about, which is really that it's our job to keep the complexity and to not reduce it to binaries. I think very quickly, stressed systems, resort to simplistic binaries to black and white. So I have stopped using red or blue or progressive or conservative, because I think the differences and commonalities we are seeing are far more complex than that, and the representation in the community mediation centers [show that]. I have been in conversations in rural Pennsylvania, which is very conservative, with the head of an organization who's working with her commissioners, and they are on board.And in the same way we're working with people in other parts of the country that might have voted in a particular direction on the during the elections. But I think our responsibility is to move beyond simple binaries and really hold the space for that kind of complexity and say, this work is hard. It's going to take time. We're in for the long haul. I don't think it's going to change quickly.

Prabha: And you know as an analyst, I would say, “disarmament” is a term I have used in other countries where there are more guns than people in the country. It says something about the potential for violence. In this country, if I talk about disarmament, I would be seen as somebody who doesn't understand the Second Amendment. So what we say as analysts about the indicators, and how we adapt that to this context, matters, but that means keeping the conversation at the complex level, and not simplifying it.

Heidi: Very good point.

D.G. I also think it's the words we use. Many times the authors of the words are from a particular partisan perspective. And when I think it's just from the community that I work with, I don't work with them and say, “we're going to help preserve our democracy.” I say, “we're going to help preserve our community and our republic.” To me, it is the same thing, those words resonate. And people there get very involved in the TRUST Network because the words we’re using are words that they define as our country, which is “community” and “our republic.” And so many times it really comes down to what Prabha was saying: talking with folks and hearing them, hearing the commonality of values we share and not get into this red/blue divide as Prabha laid out. I think it's meant to be simple, red, blue, so that we aren't able to sit down together and really figure out how we want to co-create. So thank you for asking that question that you weren't going to ask.

Heidi: Well, I want to thank you. And I want to honor your hard stop at 4:15. So this was a wonderful conversation we could continue for a long time, but we won't at least at this point.  So once again, thank you very much for taking the time to do this.

Guy: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Madhawa: Thank you for having us. We should have done this from the beginning.

Prabha:  I wanted to say thank you on the record also. For giving us this opportunity. Feels like space that is so hard to find sometimes.

D.G.: I echo that. Thank you, and that gratitude. To both of you.

Guy:  Well, hopefully, we can expand the circle a bit more.

D.G. Amen!