Wisconsin group defies trend by drawing more conservatives into bridge-building efforts

Amna Nawaz:

A number of nonpartisan efforts to bridge political divides have sprung up across America, though they often attract more liberal-leaning participants.

Judy Woodruff recently visited Walworth County in Wisconsin to learn how one group has successfully engaged more conservatives. It's the latest report in her series America at a Crossroads.

Judy Woodruff:

On a recent Saturday in Milwaukee, more than three dozen people from across Southeast Wisconsin gathered to highlight their projects aimed at preventing violence in their communities.

Lisa Inks, Senior Director, Urban Rural Action:

I look around at all of you as community volunteers, as partners and co-conspirators in the really difficult work that is improving your community.

Judy Woodruff:

It's part of Urban Rural Action, a nonprofit that brings people together across political and geographic divides.

Maryann Zimmerman, Urban Rural Action:

We talked about some pretty hard-hitting topics.

Judy Woodruff:

These so-called uniters launch projects ranging from preventing election-related conflicts to helping rural residents access mental health resources.

Tyler Surface, Urban Rural Action:

Having a different outlook on how we respond to things was extremely helpful to our impact.

Protester:

Black lives matter!

Judy Woodruff:

Five years ago, this area made national headlines after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake in front of his three children in Kenosha, an incident that exposed deep political and racial divides.

Lisa Inks:

We were looking up purple states where the disagreements, the stakes of the disagreements were so high that temperatures were really running high.

Judy Woodruff:

Lisa Inks is a senior director at Urban Rural Action. As this group attempted to heal community divisions by bringing people together, they faced a common challenge, a lack of conservative voices in these spaces.

Lisa Inks:

I think that people feel that there's been a long history of being silenced or being dismissed or canceled, as some might say, for having a belief that is conservative. And they might be nervous, for good historical reason, that they're going to enter a space and be shouted down or dismissed. And we work really hard to facilitate a process where that won't happen.

Judy Woodruff:

One of the nation's largest bridging groups, Braver Angels, found in its most recent study that more than half of its participants identified as Democrats, while only 15 percent identified as Republicans.

Pearce Godwin, Founder, Listen First Project:

There's a fear that they don't actually want my perspective as a conservative.

Judy Woodruff:

Pearce Godwin founded the nonpartisan Listen First Project that connects some 500 bridging groups across the country, like Urban Rural Action.

Pearce Godwin:

We can't find a way forward together if we're not together. And that's why it's critical that we have a representative mix of conservatives and liberals and also across religious and racial and age and every other part of our society.

Judy Woodruff:

The coalition recently held its first in-person summit at the George Washington Presidential Library in Mount Vernon, Virginia. More than 100 leaders from across the nation gathered here to tackle challenges, including how to engage more conservatives.

Why do you think it is that more people from the left, from the center of the spectrum have been attracted than on the right?

Pearce Godwin:

It does just kind of resonate more with a typical, stereotypical liberal mind-set. A conservative might say, ah, this is nice. That's kind of kumbaya. Let's pass the peace pipe. Let's have conversation. And I think that sense has driven some of the unrepresentativeness of the bridging divides movement.

Judy Woodruff:

Rural Wisconsin's uniters bucked that trend by engaging more conservative leaders like Maryann Zimmerman, a mom of three and a school board member. She admits she was skeptical.

Maryann Zimmerman, Urban Rural Action:

I thought a lot of them were echo chambers. I thought they were echo chambers for liberals. And my worry was that they had great ideas and very little follow-through because they did not have buy-in from the other half of the population.

Judy Woodruff:

What did you say to them to persuade them?

Maryann Zimmerman:

I said, we cannot stay on Facebook and complain any longer. If we want to see a safer community — we talk about we want to have a great community, we want strong communities. Then we have to actually do something about it.

Judy Woodruff:

Zimmerman said her participation drew in other like-minded people. Having concrete goals to work toward, instead of just talking, also attracted her.

Maryann Zimmerman:

Their game plan and how it was very clearly laid out and they had actual action plans in place for how to effect change. That's when I said, OK, well, this is something I want to be a part of.

Judy Woodruff:

Those goals resonated with more liberal-thinking members too.

Tyler Surface:

We came to the idea that mental health is what we all wanted to focus on because it impacted us all greatly in some way with friends, family members or loved ones.

Judy Woodruff:

Tyler Surface joined the group, which he saw as extending his work with crime victims. He said brainstorming across political lines widened his way of thinking about issues he works on every day.

Tyler Surface:

When it came to specific resources of who should be involved, we were talking a little bit more about law enforcement, talking a little bit more about food pantries. We're talking about schools being involved, the libraries. And these are things that might have not come up to my mind immediately.

Judy Woodruff:

For Lisa Inks and others, the key to not turning conservatives off is also the language being used that can signal a bridging group's political leanings, even if they're nonpartisan.

Lisa Inks:

There are words that will immediately close off conservatives to what we're doing and signal, I think incorrectly, that this is sort of a left-leaning organization.

Judy Woodruff:

Like what?

Lisa Inks:

When we talk about words like equity and racism, those are unproductive words when we're trying to get people across the political spectrum.

Judy Woodruff:

Are there alternative words that mean the same thing, do you think?

Lisa Inks:

Well, we try and speak in an authentic way and say we bring folks together from all different walks of life, or we try to explain in sort of long form what it is we're doing that's not going to trigger certain snap reactions.

Judy Woodruff:

Maryann Zimmerman says the collaboration produced better outcomes and helped her appreciate perspectives she hadn't considered before.

Maryann Zimmerman:

For me, my local community is very important to me. At all costs, I would love to see, like, our local community and our local schools funded, and to not see that money go overseas.

I was talking with a member of our cohort, and they had explained that their spouse actually worked in an agency that was defunded, and it caused a lot of stress for their family to lose that income very suddenly. I didn't actually realize that there's a separate side of that issue, where when someone very suddenly loses the funding, that affects a family.

Judy Woodruff:

Tyler Surface said it helped him to better communicate across differences.

Tyler Surface:

It helped me be able to open up my heart to different ideas, compared to ultimately having my own biases about how we communicate with others. Before, I might have not given someone the chance, but now I give someone the chance to communicate with me.

Judy Woodruff:

So it had kind of a profound effect?

Tyler Surface:

I would say so. When we aren't communicating, misunderstandings happen. By having these conversations, it helped our program, and I think it could help many others with being able to actually promote less violence and ultimately promote more security with one another.

Judy Woodruff:

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Judy Woodruff in Walworth County, Wisconsin.