Where We’ve Been.
We arrived so early to our concern about the political divide that we actually had to convince some naysayers that there was a problem at all. Back then there were maybe two or three organizations that were doing what has become known as “bridging” work. Now, the wonderful team at Listen First Project leads a group of over 500 organizations. If America is going to solve the wicked problem of our deep division, it’s going to take this kind of effort—with many citizens coming at it from different strategic directions. We think of them as The Calvary.
Yet The Village Square’s road is still one that is less traveled, for a few reasons. First, we intervene locally, where people live their lives. That’s where we can know each other as neighbors rather than two-dimensional political caricatures. We’re delighted to report that the world is coming around to our view of the importance of a hometown-based civic life.
Next, we think of the problem groupishly—aiming to move a whole hometown full of citizens toward embracing the power of hanging with people who don’t look or think like us. We think the fact that humans are deeply social creatures is overlooked at our peril, as we suffer from problems that are very group-based in their origin. Given the scale of the problem, we think the scale of the solution has to move more people than therapy-ish solutions that involve two people having a good heart-to-heart. Besides, our problem isn’t really a personal dysfunction so much as it’s a dysfunction of the groups inside our political system.
We intervene at a cultural level, upstream from the conflict. This approach is supported by academic scholarship and practice out in the real world of solving big problems. One example is that during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, having sat around too many conference tables without making progress, Catholics and Protestants gathered out in the real world and did real things together—they built community centers, strung Christmas lights. That turned out to have changed everything, as religious different neighbors begin seeing the “enemy” as a well-intentioned human being.
Finally, people have way too much to do to show up for something boring. We think of Netflix as our competition, so we work hard to make what we do fascinating. People are busy, and if we want to achieve scale, we’d better offer gatherings that don’t sound like an event planned by HR professionals with too much time on their hands.
Our approach shows statistically significant decreases in affective polarization and increases in empathy, respect and understanding, pluralistic norms and intellectual humility. As we’ve been vociferously asserting that we know something about solving this generational problem, it’s felt a little like we’re in a sequel to “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids”—and there’s been virtually no amount of jumping up and down that makes the giants see us. We understand why—the idea that a little hometown effort is how you solve huge national problems is counterintuitive, so it’s been a little hard to convince others to come our direction.
Where We’re Going (includes Denver).
Now we have really good news. While we’ve been learning these lessons in our hometown of Tallahassee, FL, turns out there were other groups coming to the exact same conclusions in other American communities. This last year we’ve found each other, and with support from University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, we’ve been gathering to fully understand—then share—what we’ve learned. National leaders and funders are beginning to listen and we’ve got a generational opportunity to bring our insights to scale.
As a group, we believe that a more hopeful civic future can be created by following five principles—it must be participatory, alive, proximate, relational and generational. We hope you’ll read the letter we wrote to understand those principles, and sign-on if you agree.
You are also cordially invited to join us in Denver on April 15 and 16 for a show-and-tell party hosted by our fellow innovative leaders from across the country. (Note that we’ll be doing a God Squad show-and-tell there!)
Your Part in It.
If you’re in a hometown with an organization like The Village Square, we hope you’ll get involved—these are all small mom and pop organizations that need your participation and financial support to stay alive. You may not find your local organization the perfect answer to our civic woes, but anything that brings people together from across differences is answering the call of our time.
If your community doesn’t have a place where citizens who don’t look or think alike gather, we invite you to consider taking a baby step in some form or the other. It’s easier than you might imagine. You can even start by simply inviting your political opposite to lunch. One group we worked with was a politically diverse group of local leaders who’d gather from time to time socially in what they called (we kid you not) the “No Name Civility Posse.”
Please do contact us if you want to talk more about these ideas (liz@villagesquare.us).
Meet our partners.
Please also meet the wonderful signatories of this letter we have proudly signed onto:
Savannah Barrett, Art of the Rural & Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange | Pete Davis, Join or Die | Kate Hanisian, YMCA of Greater Cincinnati | Ash Hanson, Department of Public Transformation | Darryl Holliday, News Futures & Commoner Co | Liz Joyner, The Village Square | Naudy Martinez & Evan Vahouny, Falls Church Forward | Adrian H. Molina & Evan Weissman, Warm Cookies of the Revolution | Sam Pressler, Connective Tissue | Daniel Stid, Art of Association Substack & American Enterprise Institute | Richard Young, Civic Lex
