A Conversation with Joan Blades, Co-Founder of Living Room Conversations.

Heidi Burgess: Hi, I'm Heidi Burgess with Beyond Intractability. And I'm talking today with Joan Blades, who is the co-founder of Living Room Conversations, which is one of the leading bridge-building organizations in the United States. Joan also has a very interesting history in the progressive organization, Move On, and maybe some other progressive organizations that I don't know about, but we'll find out. So instead of having me tell you about Joan, I want Joan to tell us about Joan and tell us about your personal professional trajectory that brought you to do the kind of work that you're doing today.

Joan Blades: All right. Well, way back when, I wrote the third book about divorce mediation when attorneys were still arguing about whether it was ethical to mediate divorces. 

Heidi: The third ever book? 

Joan: Yes. I was the co-editor of the Family Mediation Association newsletter. And there was a book by two individual mediators who were wonderful that showed that mediation was happening all around the country in various ways. My theory was we needed an overview. So this concept of being able to empower people to make their own decisions and work together, even when there are differences, goes way back in my history. 

I can take a leap forward to a software company called Berkeley Systems with Flying Toasters and a game called You Don't Know Jack.  And in '98, after that company was no longer part of my life, I co-founded Move On with my husband. It was a one-sentence petition midway in the Clinton impeachment scandal. "Congress must immediately censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing the nation." You could love Clinton or you could hate Clinton, and you could agree that that was what was best for the nation. And it went viral in '98 when we sent to under 100 of our friends and family. Within a week, we had 100,000 people. That was unheard of at that time. This was very early. And that's how I got into politics.

Heidi: This is before social media even existed, isn't it? 

Joan: Yeah. I'm back from the time when there were software stores and things like that. So things have changed.

Heidi:  But to get 100,000 in, what did you say a week? 

Joan: Yep. 

Heidi: That's crazy. 

Joan: Well, we were six months into it. Everybody was sick to death about hearing about Monica Lewinski and Clinton. And it's like censure. Everybody thought it was just not acceptable. But it was also clear that it was political theater. He wasn't going to be removed from office. Move on to pressing issues facing the nation. We believed at that time that our Congress had a very important job to do. 

Heidi: I still believe it now. They just don't do it. 

Joan: Yeah. But we thought they still could back then. It was very exciting. We believed they'd get back to work. So that's how I got into this. On the initial MoveOn petition, we had Democrats, Republicans, independents, green party, you name it. This was a gathering place where a lot of people could agree. 

Well, after an election where we'd gotten millions of people to engage and get political for the first time in their lives, and pundits agreed that impeachment was unpopular, the House voted to impeach two weeks later.Our thought was it was a flash campaign. We're in, we're out, we get back to work. But it felt irresponsible to walk away at that point. So then we did the We Will Remember campaign. 

You asked about progressive organizations. As soon as you get involved in elections, that's an adversarial process. And I live in Berkeley. It is a natural place for me to be a progressive. That was okay, though my passion lies in finding that place where people can work together, because the concept of power-with is so much stronger than power-over. Power-over, you win a battle. But there's always the back and forth that is just this incredible long-term drain. We need to be in relationship to be able to succeed. 

MoveOn's next viral moment was actually another time when there was broad agreement. It was the Let the Inspections Work Campaign leading up to the Iraq war. There was an around-the-world vigil that had the New York Times reporting that perhaps there are still two superpowers, the US and world public opinion.  It still breaks my heart that that campaign did not succeed. But that is where I think we should be able to succeed —when we are aligned with each other and tapping into each other's best values.

The next organization I co-founded was MomsRising because there's a huge bias against mothers in hiring, wages, and  advancement. And my co-founder wrote a book called The F-word: Feminism in Jeopardy. And when I got to that, I went, "Wait a minute! You mean there's a huge bias against mothers, not just women?" And that clarifies all sorts of things.

It's a systemic problem that we have that causes this bias against mothers, allows us to begin to address it more effectively, and lo and behold, it's not that most people hate mothers. There's a lot of unifying characteristics for MomsRising. I love Mom's Rising. It's a wonderful organization and works on all sorts of things such as family economic security. We all want that. Now, that is something I am still connected to. 

But at the same time, climate change is an issue that I am passionate about. And in 2004, I was asking the question, "Why aren't conservatives concerned about climate change?" I live in Berkeley. I had to be very intentional about this.  I was part of a group called Reuniting America that brought together leaders from across the political spectrum. And it was really informative. I had a lot more understanding, and I made friends with people that see things very differently than me. A good experience. No, they didn't totally change their minds about things, nor did I totally change mine. But we found some things we could work on together. And I understood the obstacles better. 

By 2008, it was harder to have a conversation about climate with someone on the right, which was actually the inspiration for the Living Room Conversations, because I deeply believe that the grassroots are the most important, the foundation upon which our leaders stand.  And we have to create the space where they can lead. FDR was famous for saying, "You've convinced me. Now make me do it," or something close to that. That's what we got to do, right? It's up to us, ultimately. We have more power than we realize.

I wanted everybody to be able to have conversations with people that didn't see things the same way.  I worked with conservative and independent partners that are experts in dialogue to put together a simple format where people can have an intimate conversation with four to six people on a topic that is polarized.  I rapidly learned that you should have a conversation about energy and the environment, not energy and climate, because the people that don't believe in climate won't come to that conversation.

As time progressed, though, I came to understand that it doesn't matter that much what people talk about so long as they are gaining connection and affection for each other, right? My friend Jacob in Utah, climate was not on his list of concerns. But it got on his list of concerns, not because I'm brilliantly persuasive, but because he cares about me. And he has another friend that cares. We care about the people we love. Their concerns become our concerns to some extent. I don't want Jacob to be marginalized. I love Jacob. He's an amazing human being. We see things differently, but that doesn't make him any less wonderful as a person.

The faith communities talk about seeing everyone's divinity, and that speaks to me. I may not be part of the faith community, but for the secularists, seeing everyone's humanity, that is the core of this work. And once we do that, then things change and we listen to each other in a completely different way. That's the goal.

Heidi:  I've read that everybody is yearning for that kind of connection, that we're all feeling lost and confused and lonely. There's a huge loneliness epidemic. But at the same time, I think —and this is my own experience— I haven't read a study about it, but people are afraid of having these conversations because — my theory is — we've had so many toxic ones, that the assumption just is the next one's going to be toxic too, so I don't want to do it. I don't want to sit down with somebody who thinks differently than me because they'll attack me. I won't be able to defend myself. It'll be nasty. How do you get over that? 

Joan: There's a beautiful thing about intentionality. The Living Room Conversations start with a set of conversation agreements about respect and listening, being curious,taking turns. Basically, everything you learned in kindergarten. And people know how to do that. 

We have seen so much bad conflict. That's what the media focuses on. When we think about conflict in our families, we think about the bad conflict more often than not. But workplaces know that conflict is human and that when you have good conflict, when you have conflict that's healthy, you have better decisions, you have better relationships, you have a much stronger organization.

Healthy conflict is something we're not focused on, because our brains go to the fear and shock and all the things that send us to anger. But the reality is conflict is human, and it's great when we do it in a way that's healthy.  One of my favorite conversation guides, in fact, is on healthy conflict because getting to sit with four or five other people and talk about your experiences with healthy conflict reminds us all in a really deep way that we have choices. We can do this in a way that doesn't take us into that more destructive area. Now, we've had a lot of bad role models out there, and we still do. But we can make choices. 

Heidi: Is it easy to convince people of that?

Joan: Heck, no!  What's really lovely, though, is there are organizations and individuals that do this —  like libraries. Libraries have had to redefine themselves over the last 20 years, right? They're community places. And so we have lots of libraries that have monthly Living Room Conversations. And the patrons often help them decide which topic. We have over 150 topics. Faith communities are another example. Faith communities, are trying to stay together, and some of them are in areas where there are really significant political differences between their congregants. There's a community in Idaho that decided to do a monthly conversation, and they chose the hard conversations. One of the pastors there was at a table about guns and responsibility. Note, it wasn't gun control. It's not gun safety. It's guns and responsibility. There were two men at the table he was at that were ready to die for their Second Amendment rights. And there was a woman at that table that had been traumatized by guns, not once, but multiple times.

And in this group there were other levels of engagement there, they really heard each other. She heard about how these men thought about the issue. This is how they connected to their fathers and with their sons -- hunting together was a core part of their family culture, really. And they heard how she had been traumatized.  And the beauty of the Living Room Conversation, it's about us telling our own story with relation to the topic at hand. It's not arguing about talking points. It's really listening to each other. It's a listening practice. Did it totally change those people's views? No. Did it change the way they understood the topic and give them more appreciation that people could see it differently?  Absolutely. 

 Appreciating the complexity of a topic is really a key part of the goal. Things are not as simple as we like. 

Heidi: Does that expand out? I can see a narrow change where you say, "Okay, I understand where George is coming from." And given his family background, that seems really legitimate. But does it extend out to everybody in the NRA must have a good reason for being in the NRA, so I'm going to respect gun owners more generally? 

Joan: I can't tell you with certainty. I think every individual takes it in in their own way. It causes us to be more humble about our own viewpoint and appreciative that others might see things differently.

One of the things I like about the conversations is it's not two people. It's four to six people. So you're getting a bunch of different perspectives on that topic. And you're seeing there's a lot of diversity there. Forgiveness was one of our most popular topics for a number of years. And that is just a beautiful conversation where I think of myself as, "Yeah, I'm fairly far along. I've thought about these things, but I always find myself learning something new about myself, seeing another way to look at things with even more perspective. It's enriching and it's deep. I love the practice.

Heidi: I agree with you that it's really enriching on the personal level. The thing that I've always been concerned about with dialogue generally — not Living Room Conversations in particular, but all the folks who do dialogue is how or if it scales up. My early introduction to dialogue was from Seeds of Peace.  I never worked with them, but studied Seeds of Peace, which was an organization in Maine that brought together Israeli and Palestinian youth to spend a couple of weeks together in a camp in Maine. And they do in-depth dialogues, and they work together, and they get to be friends. And it was really transformative for those kids. And then they went back home to Palestine or Israel and told their friends about what they did and were labeled very often as traitors and got into big trouble. And pretty quickly, even though Seeds of Peace has always tried to maintain the contacts afterwards, the benefit really falls off quickly.  And Seeds of Peace, last I checked, was still going. I'm not sure, actually, whether it has survived after the 2023 attack or not, I should look into that. But I mean, they went for a long time, but they never really gained a foothold.

And so what I keep on wondering about is, is dialgoue individually transformative? And do those transfer? In the United States, as terrible as our situation is. It's way better than that (Israel/Palestine).. So we have a much more benign situation. Is it personally transformative and do those transformations last for the people who are involved? And do those transformations spread? So if people go to Living Room conversations and then they talk to their friends and their parents and their grandparents and their siblings, those people could conceivably either say, "I want to do that kind of conversation too," which would be great, or they might say, "Oh, I think I hear you. Maybe I should look at guns differently."

Joan: Well, I wish we had all sorts of resources so we could track our stories.  There's so many things I want to reply to in that question. First, is it scalable? I mean, I'm a founder of Move On, and so this (Living Room Conversations) was specifically designed so it's massively scalable. The conversation guide, the conversation agreements, it's so that 100,000 conversations could happen in a weekend if people chose to do it.

So making that choice to do it is key. You speak about an experience and going back. One of the reasons I love the faith communities, the libraries, the higher ed that do monthly conversations. It's a practice. And the more it is a practice, the more it becomes part of you.

That said, every holiday season, people ask, "What do I do at Thanksgiving dinner?" And the answer is often, you're not going to have everybody agree to behave in a certain way at a Thanksgiving dinner, but you have control over your own way of connecting. And so those conversation agreements are good, even if it's not something held by everyone. And it helps. Curiosity, asking good questions is just such a powerful way to connect with people. And people also say, "What about that really difficult person? They're not going to be able to do a living room conversation." I say, "Yep, you're right." It's like we know some people that would not be able to abide by the conversation agreements of taking turns. And we cannot change all of society at once, but we can change pieces of it.

Now, if someone changes their mind about something like climate completely, and then is thrown back into a community where climate is seen as a hoax, where she starts talking about it the same way I talk about it, the chance of them being ostracized is huge. We are primal beings, that feels like a death threat to us, right?  We have to be respectful of the reality we live in. 

Hence, this desire for a capacity to start down this path in a very loving way, honestly. The beauty of the conversations, it's not the destination.  It's an invitation in. It's an invitation to start connecting across differences. 

And we're talking mostly politics here, but we have technology and relationships conversations. Left, right, doesn't make much difference at all. It's all about age differences. And it's a beautiful conversation where you get to reflect on how has technology impacted my relationships? And in some ways, it's enhanced them. And in other ways, it's diminished them. You see people like this with each other all the time. People are not giving their full attention to each other, and that doesn't feel good. 

Heidi: Although going back to when you and I were young, there was always the image of the mom on the phone and the kid pulling at the mom's skirt. So we've been distracted for a long time.

Joan: Yeah, but not as well as we're distracted now.  The level of sophistication of the media calling for our attention. And "sovereignty" is a term that I had not used until the last year. But it's like we're talking about intelligences that are so much greater than our own, manipulating us.  We really need to be conscious on all sorts of levels. I'd love to go off on that, but I've got three other things that are probably more central. 

Heidi: The first thing I want to be sure to clarify and I'm quite sure I'm right about this, but I want to make sure all of our users know this. All your materials are freely available, correct? 

Joan: Correct. You do have to sign up to get to some of the guides. We have some that are out, but we've had such a hard time tracking things. We've said, "Okay, guys, sign up, please!" And then if you're an organization, we're now licensing, because if someone is leading 50 people, we want them to have the best product. We want everyone to have a good experience. So we want licensing so they get trained on how you do it with a group. Because how to do it with four other people, that's easy.

Heidi: Well, maybe not, but..

Joan: Well, if you follow the guide, I think it's pretty easy. And actually, it's a fun thing to do. I co-hosted a conversation with a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots years ago in my living room. And so political differences, we've self-sorted so successfully. If you have one friend with a different political view than yours, and they agree, then they bring two of their friends, and you bring two of your friends.  If you're having a really revealing conversation, I learned so much in that conversation with Mark and his friends. And we all did together. We found we were in complete agreement about three very important aspects of criminal justice reform, which gave us a platform on which to speak together in some contexts ——about too many people in prison, the war on drugs, it's not a success, we've got to use evidence-based practices.

There's so much common-sense action that we don't take because of our division. It's going to be such a gift to us all if we figure out how to work on the things we agree on, because we're not doing that right now.

Heidi: That leads me to wonder about how you see, for instance, Braver Angels' effort to move from just their dialogues into what they're calling Citizen-led Solutions. They've come up with the notion that you need more than dialogue. You need action. And so they're trying to move their constituencies to action. Do you have any similar efforts in existing or in the works? 

Joan: We want to be working more with Braver Angels. We have one specific tool that's available to all. And we have a lot of Braver Angels friends that use Living Room Conversations because they're very useful for inviting in new people, for inviting in missing voices. It's something people can take home with them. Brave Angels does all sorts of great work. In fact, in the op-ed, I wrote that's going to come out tomorrow, [It's now out, see link.] I'm citing the Braver Angels report on elections, trustworthy elections, because they did two years of really bringing together consensus points, hundreds of consensus points around how we all want this kind of trustworthy election and three principles that are just golden. That's hugely valuable. 

There's a lot of pieces to the bridging movement. And I think, generally, we collaborate pretty well. Living Room Conversations, they've been tested and found to have the outcomes we're looking for both in-person and by video. So we can do a lot and be of service in all sorts of different situations.

But we stick to our area of expertise. And it's wonderful working with partners. 

Heidi: Let's move on to elections. And I know you were very active in the 2024 election, which didn't end up as contested as many of us feared because Trump won. Now you're working on 2026 and 2028. Tell us what you're doing. And another aspect of this that I want to be sure that we get into is what everybody else can be doing to try to assure that our coming elections are both trustworthy and trusted, which are slightly different.

Joan: They are very different. We've had a campaign against trust in this country for a number of years now. And it's far easier to break trust than it is to build trust. So we've got serious work too. The good news is trustworthy elections is a shared goal for almost everybody. There are some malignant forces that are trying to undermine elections. But citizens want trustworthy elections across the political spectrum.

Heidi:  And do they define that in the same way? 

Joan: Well, I think the interesting thing is I think, in general, they define it in the same way if you look at the Braver Angels' three principles, but they're fearful of different ways of cheating. There's this story on the right about how the left cheats and a story on the left about how the right cheats. And we need to address those stories. 

One of the very best ways to address those stories is to go local and to really understand our local election processes because we have local control and power. And we want everybody to have local pride. We can see this train coming. We need to step up right now and make sure it stays on the tracks. I do not want to be in November going, "Oh, we should have done something." We know Left and right, are hearing these stories about how the election is going to be stolen, and we need to make sure that every community says, "We're going to do it right, and this is how it's done." And most people have more trust in their local elections than they do nationally.

We can do this in tens of thousands of communities so they can say, "We do it well here." And they can get to know each other better, making sure that they know their local practices. And if they have anything they think is less than perfect, they can try and make it better. All human endeavors are flawed, but they shouldn't be very flawed. And the beautiful thing is we also know that we can connect people across the country.

With AllSides and Newsweek, we had over 600 people have a conversation about Political Violence and the Community, a Living Room Conversation. And people were mismatched around the country. And then there was an analysis done where everyone's identity was not in it, but it showed what people talked about. It's amazing what we can do with technology now.

So we can have a community in rural Kentucky talking to a community in New York or California or wherever by video after they've done their local work and they're going, "We're good." And that human connection, when they talk to each other and it can be just six people or it can be 600 people from those communities. Then we can talk to each other and we can say, "This is how we're doing. This is why we feel good about it." And if there are any concerns, we can attempt to address them. But I'm sorry. We address those now, not in November. We've got months and months to do the right thing.

William Ury has a new book out, Possible. It talks about how you have to have a vision of what's possible. And the third side, I think, is a really important concept for reminding people that we have a role. There are two sides to a conflict, yes. But the third side is the context in which it exists. And the third side can have a huge impact on resolving conflicts. I want us collectively to be that. And the beauty of doing this together is this is classic peacebuilding. Once we have relationships around making sure our elections are something that we're all proud of, maybe we can also do a few things like improve our healthcare system, or I don't know, do a couple of good environmental things. Whatever people want the most. It's possible. 

Heidi: I'm hearing more of the left's concerns about elections probably than the righ'ts, although I think I'm aware of some of the right's concerns. But there's a lot of, I suspect, bipartisan concern, actually, that local election officials have been threatened with political violence, and a large number of them have quit, from what I read. And there's also concern that there has been pressure coming down from the federal level on local election officials to behave in particular ways. This is one of the things that I'm particularly concerned about. Is this something that can be addressed at the local level successfully?

Joan: One of the things you were talking about there was political violence. When election officials are threatened, that's political violence. And most communities don't want political violence.. And the only way you can address local issues is locally, most effectively at least. 

We have a  Public Officials  and the Community Living Room Conversation because it's not just election officials. It's people running for office. There are a lot of good people I'd like to see running for office who aren't because they're afraid for themselves or for their families. They're having a bad impact, which is a loss for everyone that we're losing good people in all sorts of spaces. School boards, for example. I think one of the very best ways that a community can inoculate itself from that kind of thing is to have these conversations about what kind of culture they want to have —to be intentional. It's sad that it's necessary at this point, but it may be.

Heidi: So what about Trump's threats to federalize elections? Do you think he can possibly do that? And is there a local preventive measure? 

Joan: I am not an expert.  I think the best thing we can do, though, is be doing the work locally and have people from across the political spectrum recognizing the value of that local election process. Because the people that are going to influence Trump are going to most likely be from his own party.

Heidi: Let me go way back to a question that I wanted to ask earlier and skipped, but it relates in my mind to what we're talking about now. We've gotten a lot of pushback, and some of our colleagues who are in the bridging area also have been writing about the pushback that they've been getting. And we did a newsletter that had the title "Fiddling while Rome Burns."  And our friends have kind of taken up that title. And we're all talking now about well, we're getting accused of fiddling while Rome burns, which means, in case our watchers aren't following me, that we shouldn't be engaging with bridging now. We shouldn't be working o bridging to the other because the other is no longer worthy of being bridged too. We have to fight them because they are so bad. They are so evil that we can't try to work with them. We need to fight. And anybody who is wasting their time on bridging is either at best, wasting their time, or at worst, capitulating and working against efforts to defeat evil. How do you answer that? 

Joan: I'm still on the board of MomsRising, and I'm proud to be a progressive. I'm going to vote for people that represent my values. We still fight the fight when it comes to the election. But if we're not doing peacebuilding at the same time— I've been seeing this wrecking ball go back and forth now for decades. We do not win the long-term battle. In the long-term we don't ever have peace. I'm a climate person. This is insane what's happening. We are now at a point where I just want to have an energy conversation because clean renewable energy is actually much more affordable than oil and gas. But to be restoring coal — it's pure partisan craziness in my mind. 

I don't want to be playing this game of power over, so I'm not going to make you feel horrible. I want it to be understanding that we have to figure this out together. The power-with versus power-over is such an important concept. And to think you can only do one — and not be working on the peacebuilding at the same time — is missing the long view. We have to think long-term as well as short-term. 

Heidi: I think that's key. You really have nailed it there, because so many people are, for instance, just focused on the next election. And if we can just win the next election, then everything will be fine. No, because it's going to keep on swinging. 

There was a physics professor here in Colorado who used to give a physics demonstration for kids. And he'd get a little kid up on one side of the auditorium, and he set a bowling ball coming at this kid. And everybody, of course, would gasp because pendulum doesn't go quite as far each time as they did the other time. It never quite hits the kid, but it's all very scary and funny to watch. And I've talked about politics as having a dysfunctional pendulum because a real pendulum doesn't go as far each time, but politics goes farther. So the political pendulum is going to smash the kid every time. And that's what we're doing. But everybody seems— well, not everybodyy—you clearly don't. But a lot of people are just looking short-term and figuring that we can just fix it if we win the next election. 

Joan: Yeah. Well, I did have that hope many times, and it hasn't turned out so well. So I am actively engaging on every front that seems productive right now. And right now, this work we're doing, I think, is essential. And I think all the different organizations in the bridging world have a huge role to play. When I say there's a local trust in elections conversation, that's a start.  But then we need Braver Angels and NCDD and National Association for Community Mediation and MWEG (Mormon Women for Ethical Government), all these different organizations helping it go the full distance.  We need long-term weaving together, not one conversation.

Conversation is just a way to start this ball rolling. And yes, then there's a next conversation nationally that we can help with. And we even have good evidence that those national conversations are impactful. But you never get it completely. You have to keep on working at all the different things.

Heidi: Well, we've got to keep on eating every day too, so.

Joan: Yeah. You got to eat every day, too. 

Heidi: So two more topics. We don't have that much time left, but two more topics I want to cover. One we haven't covered at all is your work with schools. 

Joan: Well, work with schools is in multiple contexts. We're partners with Allsides for Schools, which is news from across the political spectrum, which helps teachers who have been getting a hard time if they provide one side or the other. So Allsides is a gift in that respect. 

But then helping the kids have good conversations too, is also a part of that project. And understanding what bias is. We have a conversation about bias. We have all these conversations which are building the kids' skills for understanding the news, but also understanding how to have a good conversation that's respectful and productive. And you were talking about the loneliness epidemic. What better way to deal with a loneliness epidemic than actually having deeper relationships with other human beings? So that's generally high school, junior high area. Then we have a really good youth council at Living Room Conversations that's focusing on a variety of projects. And we have higher ed living room conversations. We're in universities and other higher ed institutions around the country. And these are licenses that are doing the bigger work. 

I love the story from Casper, Wyoming, where one teacher just started using the Living Room conversations because she wanted her students to be able to write about current events. And it spread to the whole school. And then it's now in the library in the town also. And there is a ripple effect, and I don't hear enough of how it spreads. I just really wish we had investigative reporters going out there and going, "Well, what happened next? And where did that go?" 

Heidi: Also, if I remember right, had a toolbox for school administrators to try to help navigate school board conflicts?

Joan: That's a partnership with National Association for Community Mediation. They have over 400 mediation centers around the country. And we know that schools have been having conflicts that are not productive and hostile in too many cases around the country. And so we, with them, developed a toolkit that includes living room conversations, but also they have their mediators there. So it's a multi-level project addressing what's going on, building skills and relationship and understanding so that they can address the issues in a productive way that's good for the whole community. It's really wonderful, and I can't wait for that toolkit to spread.

Heidi: It looked really good from what I was able to see of it. So there's an overarching question that goes across all of these domains we've been talking about, which is "what I can do." And by I, I don't mean Heidi Burgess. I mean all the people who are watching. Everybody I know thinks that the United States, if not the whole world, is going to heck .Everybody's very worried. And I hear it over and over again. I used to hear, "What can I do?" And now "I hear I feel so impotent. There's nothing I can do." So people really have given up on hope. We feel like victims and all we can do is watch everything disintegrate. And you and we and everybody else in the bridging community doesn't believe that, but how can we help other people get some sense of agency and figure out some useful things that they can do?

Joan: The good news is most people do have some community. I do believe that trustworthy elections is a great opportunity for us to connect locally and then nationally. We have over 150 guides. One of them is hope. So as one piece of advice, go on our website—Living Roomconversations.org. Find yourself a conversation guide that interests you. Find a few people to have this conversation with. Ideally, people with different points of view, but you could start easy and just go with friends. 

One of the best things to do is co-host if you want different viewpoints.  Then you get to meet a couple of people, and they get to meet a couple of people. But what is an issue that is really close to your heart? What does someone else want to talk about as well? Who do you miss that you don't get to talk to all the time? There was one mom here in the Bay Area whose mother was in another state during COVID and nephews in another place. And she hosted living room conversations with her mom, her mom's friends, her nephews for a year or more. And her mother was like, "When can we do it again?" And she feels like she got to take care of her mother and get to know her nephews in a way she never would have if she hadn't done that. So make it a way to stay in touch with people that you want to be in touch with. 

Heidi: So you're saying that it works over Zoom as well as in a living room? 

Joan: Yes. Absolutely. It's different in that it's Zoom. It's not a community project you're probably going to be working on. But if it's technology and relationships, it's very appropriate. And there's so many good conversations to have. It takes you deeper than you probably would go otherwise. And it's a way to get to know people that you're already close to in a more meaningful way, depending on the topic you choose.

But it should be fun. I'm way too serious. The reality is it's fun. We have a humor conversation. And we have a bunch of conversations that are paired with books and videos. Do a book club. Great idea. 

Heidi: One thing we've heard from other organizations, I was surprised. I even heard this at a Braver Angels meeting that I was at the other day. I thought Braver Angels was different, but that it's really hard to get conservatives involved in these conversations. Do you agree? Do you not agree?

Joan: The whole bridging space has had that to say. I live in Berkeley. I had to be very intentional to co-host with the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. I think there's been a lot of destructive behavior both ways and dismissing people. So there's hurt out there, and that is something that makes it harder. So one person at a time. And there are the extremes on both sides. They're not the first people you invite. 

I dream of a center of gravity that is about restoring norms of kindness and taking care of the community in a way that is good for all. The fact that we now don't know what is true and not true, it's really disturbing. It leaves people feeling a little bit hopeless because it's like I can't deal with it all.  Truth is one of our conversations, too. Respect. All these core values. Most people want to live in a world with a lot of trust. And healthy communities have high levels of trust. We've got to build it, and it takes more work to build it than it does to lose it. But the good thing is it's a good time building it. 

Heidi: Do you have a conversation on how to take care of your community, how to build a healthy community? Because when you said that, I thought to myself, wow, that's something everybody could gravitate around.

Joan: I think each conversation guide is focused narrowly, right? So you're talking...

Heidi: It's too broad?

Joan: Yeah, it's too broad, but we have pathways. So you might choose trust and respect and community values. So you could put something together. I'd love to work with some people on this, actually. It would be lots of fun.

Heidi: Sounds interesting to me. 

Joan: There are all sorts of conversation sets I'd love to do with others. 

Heidi: So is there anything that we haven't covered that we should have covered? 

Joan:  I'm sure there's an immense amount we haven't covered that we should cover, but I think we've done very well. 

Heidi: Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, and I really appreciate what you're doing. We've been writing about, as our readers know, power-with and power-over. And it's music to my ears to hear you say the same thing. It's so critical. And I, too, think bridging is necessary. I'm not nearly as much of a partisan anymore because it just felt toxic to me and destructive. And of course, our thing has been hyperpolarization and working against that. So we're much more firmly in the bridging area. But I respect and appreciate your point of view of being able to do both at the same time. I think that's really interesting. So you've given me a lot of good ideas, and I hope you've given our readers and watchers a lot of good ideas. And I hope that people will go explore some of your conversation.

Joan: Thank you so much for the conversation and for being a voice for bridging.