A major goal of NCDD2016 is to lift up stories of how people across the country are Bridging Our Divides through D&D work, despite pervasive narratives telling us we can’t. So we wanted to share just such a story that NCDD member Jessica Weaver of the Public Conversations Project recently wrote about. The piece tells the story of women legislators who are resisting the urge to focus on the negative and instead look to solutions. You can read the story below or find Jessica’s original post here.

Shining a Light Beyond Polarization

We’ve all seen the headlines. Gridlock. Paralysis. Incivility. All the result of widening political polarization in the United States government, and also among its people. Like other aspects of identity, political ideology can be a dividing factor in our national conversation. We refuse to engage with the “other side” and reflect critically on our own views.

The science shows that polarization has indeed worsened – almost exponentially – over the last ten years. Pew Research also indicates that in addition to estrangement, this trend has seen increased venom and antipathy between liberals and conservatives. There’s evidence that this trend is worsening, and that it has had profoundly destructive effects on American governance and its public discourse. We know that story.

But at a women’s leadership conference a couple of weeks ago, I heard a very different story. Women from all levels of government – senators, state legislators, and city council members – came together to talk about their experiences, challenges, and lessons from careers spent proving they were worthy of hard-earned entry into a sector dominated by men. In addition to stressing the importance of building personal relationships across the aisle to operate effectively, several legislators had a surprising response to the inevitable question about the seemingly irreversible tides of polarization and incivility.

Image via Politico

Instead of bemoaning how partisan bickering had stymied their work, Senator Barbara Mikulski (pictured center above) was almost indignant. “That’s not the whole story,” she said, and argued that in fact this had been one of the most productive years for women in the Senate that she could remember. And she would know: Mikulski started a monthly bipartisan dinner group just for female senators that encourages relationships between women across the aisle, and creates mentorship opportunities between generations of politicians.

The exchange made me think about something we talk about often at Public Conversations: the danger of focusing solely on conflict, especially in binary terms. By rehearsing the narrative of polarization, we are at one level simply making reference to a political reality, but at another, are pushing a wheel over the same groove, in jeopardy of deepening the schism. The story is self-fulfilling, according to recent research out of University of California – Berkeley, titled “Self-Fulfilling Misperceptions of Public Polarization,” which concluded that citizens across the political spectrum perceive one another’s views as being more extreme than they really are:

“Thus, citizens appear to consider peers’ positions within public debate when forming their own opinions and adopt slightly more extreme positions as a consequence.” In other words, being inundated with information about polarization doesn’t make us more moderate, it makes us more extreme.

This is a difficult position: how can we acknowledge the realities of deep conflicts without reinforcing narratives that are devoid of anything else? The question isn’t just relevant for polarization or other identity-based conflicts; it’s a question about how to discuss humanity’s most destructive creations – hate, bigotry, fear – without letting negativity define the whole story. I think an important answer lies in choosing to “shine a light on the good and the beautiful,” in the elegant language of writer and Muslim thinker Omid Safi. He writes, “Why shine the spotlight on the hate? This is somehow part of our national discourse. Someone does something offensive and crazy, and we immediately advertise it. But I do wonder about the mindset of always being quick to rush to publicize bigotry against us — and forget about the many who rise to connect their humanity with ours.” He ends his reflection by naming specific people whose work he wants to “shine a light on.”

So, Senator Mikulski and your dinner companions, I want to shine a light on you. Perhaps more importantly, I want to shine more lights in this often black or white world. This isn’t a call to end conversations that are challenging, simply to make space for celebrating good work that is of equal importance in the stories we tell. As Safi concludes:

So, friends, let us stand next to one another, shoulder to shoulder, mirroring the good and the beautiful. Shine a light on the good. Applaud the good. Become an advocate of the good and the beautiful. Let us hang on to the faith that ultimately light overcomes darkness, and love conquers hate. It is the only thing that ever has, ever will, and does today.

You can find the original version of this Public Conversations Project piece at www.publicconversations.org/blog/shining-light-beyond-polarization

One of the most salient divides in our nation today that we will be focusing on during NCDD 2016 is the divide between the left and right sides of the political spectrum. Bridging the partisan divide, especially in an election year, is crucial work that many of our NCDD members have taken on, and we wanted to share the article below in which NCDD member Mark Gerzon of the Mediators Foundation poignantly shares lessons to be learned from their efforts. The original version of Mark’s piece appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and can be found here.

Four Ways to Fix American Politics

It’s not just young revolutionary Bernie Sanders supporters or angry-as-hell Donald Trump fans who want to “change the system.” It’s also the president of the United States of America.

The future we want “will only happen if we fix our politics,” said President Obama in his 2016 State of the Union address. “If we want a better politics, it’s not enough just to change a congressman or change a senator or even change a president. We have to change the system to reflect our better selves.”

But exactly how do we do that? The president did not say. And when William Jefferson Clinton in 1992 and George W. Bush in 2000 expressed the same noble sentiment, they didn’t tell us how either.

Our last three presidents did not tell us because they don’t know. They are products of the system and clearly are not going to reform much less revolutionize it. They have risen to the top of the leadership pyramid by playing the partisan game. Them telling us how to work together would be like an alcoholic telling us how to get sober: He knows everything about the topic except doing it.

On both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans are recognizing that they are in a long-term political marriage that needs help. But even if both donkeys and elephants want to repair their broken relationship, they still need to learn how. The primary causes of dysfunction that Obama identified – the gerrymandering of congressional districts and the tyranny of money in campaigns – are certainly real. But these and other causes will never be effectively addressed unless we stop restating the problem and start focusing on the solutions.

The good news is that we not only can bridge this political divide; in fact, we already are.

I have recently interviewed and profiled dozens of Americans who know how to solve problems across the divide. They are doing so in state legislatures and on Capitol Hill; in living rooms and town halls; between corporations and anti-corporate activists; with police departments and minority communities; and in almost every sector of our society. When diverse groups connect in constructive dialogue, they make progress on issues ranging from criminal justice reform to internet privacy to education reform.

Literally dozens of major initiatives have had concrete successes bringing Left and Right together to break down the partisan wall and find common ground. They have succeeded where Capitol Hill has failed. This movement to reunite America is gaining momentum because it starts with four fundamental shifts that are a vital part of fixing our politics.

From Confirming to Learning.
Anyone who thinks that political leadership means thinking that whatever we believe is automatically right – and anyone who disagrees with us is wrong – is not part of the solution. Simply confirming what one already knows is not leadership; it is an addiction to being right. The movement to reunite America is redefining leadership to be about learning rather than about being know-it-alls. (Check out Public Conversations Project, Everyday Democracy or Citizen University as examples of this shift.)

From Control to Relationship.
Particularly during elections, winning seems to be everything. “Controlling” the Congress and the White House appears to be the goal. But on the day after the election, whoever won or lost must forge a relationship with the opposition. Making relationships across the divide strong and healthy is today the key to accomplishing anything that endures. (Learn more from Living Room Conversations or the 2000-member National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation).

From Position-Taking to Problem-Solving.
America has a surplus of leaders with rigid positions and a deficit of leaders who solve problems. It’s time to reverse that imbalance. Across the country, a host of problem-solving organizations are gaining ground. (Examples include No Labels in Washington, D.C., to Future 500 in San Francisco, from the Village Square in Tallahassee to the American Public Square in Kansas City.)

From Endless Campaigning to Effective Governance.
The line between campaigning and governing used to be clear. Campaigns were brief preludes before Election Day, not never-ending tit-for-tat attacks that became a permanent part of civic life. But today campaigning is benefiting from unprecedented levels of investment, and governing is being paralyzed. Fortunately, from the offices of city mayors to state-level initiatives and even on the edges of Capitol Hill, red-blue coalitions are finding common ground on a wide range of policy issues ranging from criminal justice reform to education to defense spending. (The National Institute of Civil Discourse’s “Next Generation” project, for example, has convened across-the-aisle collaboration in scores of state legislatures.)

So we Americans do know how to work together. But we have to get past the soaring rhetoric from the right and the left about how they alone can “save America.” We have to get down to the real business of learning and applying boundary-crossing skills. If we actually want a “system that reflects our better selves,” let’s start with what works. Let’s take to scale the scores of projects where that is already happening.

You can find the original version of this Christian Science Monitor article at www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Politics-Voices/2016/0425/Four-ways-to-fix-American-politics?cmpid=gigya-tw.