Our Braver Angels
One of the joys of building the Forward Party these past months has been meeting and making common cause with other Americans who have realized just how divided our country is and are working to help change it.
How do you actually reduce polarization in real life?
“Listen to each other” or “Reach across the aisle” or “talk to different types of people” are some of the common prescriptions we hear, but the reality is it’s very difficult for any of us to take these actions in a lasting way, particularly in the face of market incentives and a fragmented media landscape. Organizations and resources are required to consciously bridge gaps, bring disparate groups together, and equip people with the tools to be able to forge genuine empathy.
One of those organizations is Braver Angels.
Braver Angels started with a workshop of 10 Trump supporters and 11 Clinton supporters in South Lebanon, Ohio in December, 2016. This was immediately after Trump’s election and emotions were running high. The workshop was structured by co-founder Bill Doherty, who had decades of experience as a family therapist.
That’s right, America needed family therapy.
This first workshop was enormously successful and gave rise to surprising relationships. Greg Smith, a former sheriff and evangelical Christian and Kouhyar Mostashfi, a Muslim Democratic official promised to visit with each other and work together. Word got out and more communities wanted the same kind of experience. A bus tour followed and Better Angels – since renamed Braver Angels – was formed.
This week on the podcast I sat down with John Wood Jr., the national ambassador for Braver Angels. John embodies many of the goals of the org and is an ideal bridge builder as a bi-racial former Obama volunteer who was also Vice Chair of the Republican Party in his hometown of Los Angeles.
John has been bringing people together for years. Said John about the recasting of Better Angels to Braver Angels, “In order to really develop a deep relationship of trust with you, especially if we are tribal opposites, it’s going to be important for me to demonstrate that I can put myself in your shoes, see things as you see them, and that I have some understanding of who you are and care . . . but it had long been evident to me that to really pursue this work into the heat of America’s tribal and political conflicts which is where it needs to go, it takes more than being empathetic; you really do need courage and bravery.”
Sitting down with John was uplifting. He noted how Braver Angels was originally named after Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural speech in 1861, which you might find familiar:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Will the better angels of our nature yet prevail? Lincoln’s words were spoken mere weeks before the Civil War broke out. That doesn’t make them any less important today. Perhaps the opposite.
We have our work cut out for us, and patriots like John are working as hard as they can to guide our country in a better direction. I hope the Forward Party can work with and fortify organizations like Braver Angels – it’s a time when both courage and real empathy are needed more than ever.
