Periscope POLITICS
14 NEWSWEEK.COM
And that’s the key. These kinds of
divisions don’t have to be toxic. It’s a
profound metaphor about the power
of these community-based structures.
Bridge-building groups have net-
works within communities and the
capacity to ultimately affect broader
levels of change.
The Biden administration can help
us—at the community level, at the
state level and at the regional level—
to understand where the resources
are. I’ve been recommending a con-
vening of groups to map the ecology
in communities, in states and then in
regions of the country, where we start
to realize who’s there.Are Americans ready
for this kind of change?
Research on ending protracted con-
flict tells us that people need to be
sufficiently miserable with the status
quo. The accumulation of emotional
exhaustion that is everywhere, includ-
ing my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa,
[means that] people are ripe for some-
thing else. But they need to understand
what that something else is. They have
to have an alternative where they could
save face and move forward.
A report by More in Common,
an international group that studies
polarization, has found that people
are tired of the dysfunction. They see
a growing middle majority of what we
would call “exhausted Americans.” In
2016, after Trump’s victory, two-thirds
of Americans were exhausted, fed up
and wanted a way out. After the 2018
election that had grown to 86 percent.
A lot of people are miserable, and
that’s a good thing. They may be moti-
vated to do something else.SIMMER DOWN Constructive solutions
could serve to ease current political
tensions. Left: An argument at a pro-
police demonstration in California in June.Research on protracted
conʀict tells us that
people need to be
suɽciently miserable
with the status quo.“Talking With the Enemy.” They all
agreed to basically drop the rhetoric
and the vitriol and speak as honestly
as possible about what these issues
meant to them. Slowly over time,
they developed such respect for one
another that they really developed
these close emotional bonds, but
they also became more polarized
on the issue. The more they spoke
personally and honestly about what
it meant to the other, and the more
their relationships across the divide
became important to them, the more
difficult it was. But they learned to
work together to avoid violence in the
community. They learned to find com-
mon ground for young mothers and
funding work for young mothers. The
dynamic between them changed pro-
foundly, even though their attitudes
on the issue became more polarized.Are there any examples of
effective efforts of this sort in
the United States?
In 1994, a man named John Salvi
drove to Boston and opened fire on
two women’s health clinics and ended
up killing three women and injuring
many others. He was a pro-life zealot.
This was a time in Boston when rhet-
oric and vitriol around abortion was
at a fever pitch. Boston in particular
has a long history of pro-life and
pro-choice activism that dates back
decades. Then this event happened
where Salvi came in and shot these
women. It was a destabilizing rupture.
The mayor and the governor called for
talks and the archdiocese called for
de-escalation. But a group called The
Public Conversations Project, which
had worked in abortion, asked three
pro-life and three pro-choice leaders
in the community to come together
for a short period of time in dialogue.
They agreed to meet four times. It was
difficult, but it was worthwhile. They
extended it and ultimately engaged in
secret dialogues for almost six years.
In 2001, these six women came
out together and they co-authored
an article in The Boston Globe called APU^
*OMESʔ
AFPʔ
*E77<MARCH 05, 2021