- I have friends who kept very different political views than I do.

I found, when the conversation would turn toward how things were in our country, I had to stop and say, "If we have this conversation, we will not be friends."

Because I will say things I can't take back.

- Yeah.

- I mean, I'm always ready to state the truth, state my truth.

- I can tend to fly off the handle quickly without stopping and thinking before I make my point.

- I really need to learn how to cope effectively with these conversations.

Because this is affecting me mentally.

I'm sure it is for a lot of people.

- [Group] Yeah.

- [Maryanne] Americans are more isolated now.

We are getting into our corners, our silos, our tribes, and we stopped talking to one another.

I think we're at a inflection point.

- I am so angry and so afraid.

And every single day I wake up to another headline, news story, something that makes me more afraid for my country, for my children's future, for where the world is going, for all of it.

We're at such a fraught point of not agreeing on values.

We're touching on core values on both sides.

It is very hard in that environment to find common, to engage.

- Yeah, it's really disheartening that America thinks that our divisions can't be overcome.

And that's what we're here for.

That's our purpose.

The first step is awareness of your anger.

It's not helpful to get, you know, being angry at the other side is really not helpful.

You can be critical of the other side, but how do you do that productively, civilly, and with respect?

The Braver Angels mission is to end depolarization in America, getting together and talking to one another, to stop treating each other as if we're enemies.

When we talk about the other side, what we tend to do are we end up stereotyping, we dismiss them, we ridicule them, and we talk with contempt.

We found it helpful to distinguish between get one up.

Positions and people: don't lump a person because they happen to be on one side too.

It's like, "Oh, you are a red.

You must think this about this issue."

You know, that's not necessarily true.

So separate that person from the position.

You can have huge disagreements with a position; doesn't mean that person on that side, or even if they hold that position, is really an awful person.

Okay, so what we're gonna do next is put you in groups of a three and share with your group: How do you resist stereotyping?

We'll get calls in from universities, junior colleges, a lot of them from churches where, you know, pastor will call and say, "I've got parishioners who aren't talking to one another now.

Can you come help?"

And it tends to be areas where it is more evenly divided, red and blue, out in the suburbs.

- But then are there any Republicans that I respect?

Yeah, there are.

Try not to imagine everybody on the other side as the worst of the other side.

- Everybody's an individual and has their own thoughts and ideas.

So anytime we put them, group them into something, I think we're not giving them full credit.

- I'm anti-Trump.

I mean, I wouldn't even say I'm a Republican anymore because there are so many things that bother me.

But I also think that when I'm talking to people who are lifelong Democrats, I don't have a chance to discuss anything If I am not like, "Oh, you did that.

Oh, you did that."

- Okay, can we come back to the front?

Okay.

You'll get more chance to talk.

I love the conversations.

We're gonna share as a group now.

Or not.

Yeah.

We also bring families together.

One of my favorite workshops is called Family and Politics.

And I moderated that between the election and Thanksgiving.

Very popular.

Our founder was a professor of marriage and family counseling.

The whole concept was built on, you know, if you can bring families together, can we bring the country together?

(door rattling) I need that.

When this opportunity first came up, I thought, first of all, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool political junkie.

And then I've spent my career in change management, bringing companies together, talking to people, hearing their concerns, hearing what they value.

Just seemed like, you know, putting my political junkie and the change manager together in one bucket.

I just went: "I can do that.

I can do that."

Maria, we're gonna leave the door open, so people just kind of come in.

But, you know, tell 'em where it's already going.

- Yeah, yeah.

Respectful.

- Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

- I don't mean to disrupt him.

- That's great.

- My role as the state coordinator, I'm just overseeing all the actions that go on in the state.

- So skills for disagreeing better.

That's what we're here for.

Yeah.

- Oh, I get more energy every day, every event that I go to.

It's just been so much of joy.

- Sorry.

- And I apologize to all the Republican people in the room.

- [Maryanne] My entire life is like how do we get everybody together and form that community?

- It might help me avoid certain phrases that would cause a conversation to blow up.

- I don't have a big family.

Let me get one more back here.

I was like a village kid.

You know, neighbors watched over me, extended family, grandparents.

And I just think I kind of learned to get along.

And, you know, I see the value in that.

You know, your world just grows when you can get along with everybody.

- First thing here is listen.

The idea is to turn your inner debater off.

Sometimes it's easy to listen for the holes in the argument, the things that came from the wrong news channel, so on, all that stuff.

Yes.

- Yeah.

I have a friend who calls that you're not listening.

You are reloading.

- [Facilitator] I love that (laughs).

Yeah, so don't reload in this one.

Yes.

In the back.

- A lot of people walk into Braver Angels thinking they're gonna learn how to convince the other side that I'm right and you're wrong.

And that's not what we do at all.

We have no right sides and wrong sides.

We just have two different perspectives.

And one of the big things we teach is always listen for concerns and values.

'Cause when you can find common values, that's where that common ground starts to grow.

- I went out with a friend for dinner who has an opposing political point of view, and I practiced some of these skills that I had learned then.

And at the end of the dinner, we both walked out and said, "We want the same thing."

- [Facilitator] Beautiful.

- They're our friends and our neighbors, and we need to figure out how to work together.

It's sharing perspectives.

I mean, how much more democratic can you get?

(soft music) In the city of Chicago where there's not a lot of reds, we're extra blue here.

At the end of the day, people are going back into their bubbles.

It's so important to get the red and the blue side together.

And reading somebody else's news is a fabulous way of being able to say like, "Oh, now I understand why you think the way you do."

Walk a Mile in My News is one of the activities that we've done.

And it's finding a red and a blue partner, pick a topic, immigration, healthcare, whatever, and we trade news sources and get together and just, you know, talk about it, compare facts.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- Come on in.

- Hi.

How are you?

- How are you holding up?

- Good.

Good.

This is a long day.

- Yes.

- When Suzanne and I got together, we found so much in common.

We started talking about free speech.

And turns out we're both radical free speechers.

And that instantly bonded us.

- So do you want to talk about informed consent for medical informed consent?

- Yeah, you know what?

I think that's a good one, only because there's a lot of stuff happening right now.

- There is.

Kennedy and his ACIP committee are primarily anti-vaxxers, which is not true based on their credentials and things like that.

But anyway.

- There was one, "The Atlantic" article for it, there were names of scientists in there that I've seen other news sources say, "Oh no, they're bad."

And "The Atlantic" article, which is a left, more left-leaning, saying, "No, these guys are legit."

You know, that was the thing that opened me up to, yeah, I'm gonna explore more of the news on the red side.

- Yeah, and the frustration that I feel with the representation in the media, how much of it is emotional-driven messaging as opposed to data-driven messaging?

- Yes.

- And so very quickly, you just don't know what to believe, of whether the truth is clear.

- And that's a good topic altogether, is like how do you decide who to trust?

- Yeah.

- And, you know, if you're interpreting it from a blue side or a red side, do you come to two different conclusions?

You still need to do your own.

- Yeah.

- And then- - You have to do your own thinking.

Oh my God.

(both laughing) - Yes.

- It really opens your eyes to look at how other people see things, where their views are forming.

We're not out to, you know, convince each other.

But it's to be curious.

- And I wouldn't be surprised- - We need to go back to that old-fashioned type of politics where we sit together, we solve problems; we say, "What's your perspective?

What's your perspective?"

You know, let's find how we can both work together.

- [Facilitator] Let me introduce you to Trey, the chair of that chapter.

- Oh, I would love to.

Since the day I became a member, that's been a mission to gather more of the red side.

We want to hear their voice.

They're important voices.

- I'm Lenny Slaney.

I'm the president of Chicago Republicans.

I'm joined with... - Sara Schacter, Braver Angels.

- And before we get the festivities tonight, let's please take a moment of silence.

- Braver Angels had a meeting planned with the Young Republicans, the Chicago chapter, and it had been planned for months.

So it just happened to fall on the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

We didn't know if anybody was gonna show up.

And twice as many young Republicans showed up as we expected.

The first thing I did was ask the state chair, you know, is everybody okay?

And he said, "We gave up going to a candlelight vigil, because we knew this was more important to be here."

- Thank you all for coming.

And it means a lot that, coming together.

At Chicago Young Republicans, we live in a blue city, in a blue county, in a blue state.

And what that means that we have to interact with and understand people who think differently than us, to live together, cooperate, and fulfill the American dream.

I want to thank you all for coming.

You are all extremely braver angels for coming out here tonight.

Give yourself a round of applause for daring to have your opinions challenged, as to learn something, something that is very hard to do.

- [Maryanne] So now we get into the workshops where we have reds and blues together.

And all they do is one side talks about what is it like to be red?

What is it like to be a blue?

And just sit there and listen to one another.

And then be able to ask those questions of curiosity to the other side.

- Alright, so we're gonna head into our discussions now.

And I'm just gonna read the first question.

How would you describe yourself politically, and what life experiences have influenced your values and beliefs about politics and public policy?

- I feel like I've always been a culturally conservative person.

And so we've always been very big on supporting businesses.

The way you solve crime and poverty is you give people jobs, you give them small businesses.

Small businesses drive the engine of America, what makes America unique.

- I am a native too of Chicago, Illinois.

And I grew up in a Democratic house.

Personally, when it came down to our household being accounted for, I didn't feel it, even though I supported them.

So I wanted to know what was on the other side.

Republicans are really trying to help the masses.

That's cool.

I love that.

- Yeah.

And what are just, follow criticisms of your own side?

What are reservations or concerns about your own side?

- I think, Democrat, like, you can't say anything that's going to offend.

The cancel culture snowflakey thing.

You know, free speech.

You know, let everybody say what they want.

You don't have to like it.

This is Braver Angels stuff.

As long as it doesn't incite real violence, then we're okay.

- I like that.

- I would say my issue will be religion.

If religion was taken out on politics, we'll have a lot more reasons.

- I actually agree on the taking religion out of politics.

I really appreciate that you said that, 'cause that's always been one of my criticisms.

The whole evening was just magical.

And we found things to agree on, a robust middle class.

You know, we shared what values were important to us and we found a lot of things that we had in common.

- I mean, I will say, it's really interesting to talk.

Most of my time is spent talking to other partisans.

All you hear is all the time you're like, "Oh, those libs are crazy.

Did you see that crazy thing that they did there?"

And I was like, I wanted to be part of this, because I thought it'd be good to build that communication, you know?

- Yeah.

I'm the same way.

We are in Chicago and this is really blue.

And when Sara said, "we've got the chapter, the Young Republicans," I'm like, "Yes, let's do this thing."

(laughs) The conversation part of it was supposed to last an hour, and people hung around for two hours after that, getting to know each other better.

- [Lenny] So are you a Cubs or a Sox fan?

- Okay, so that's a hard question.

(attendees laughing) (soft ambient music) - Alright, so today we are gonna mainly do a Walk a Mile in My News reunion.

The idea was to understand the other person's perspective better based on the news sources that they consume.

We spend the first part of the meeting having both members of the pair share the experience.

- You sent me several different like news roundups that you consume.

I don't know, like, I thought some of them were interesting.

- You know, surprise, surprise, almost all our sources are because almost all news media now is leaning left or leading right.

So that's no surprise.

There's very few down-the-middle news sources.

I was trying to find some, 'cause that's what I look for.

but even those are not perfect.

It was just a good reminder.

It's always good to talk to someone who's reading different stuff and has got different ideas.

- We had the easiest time asking questions of each other.

Like, we both are like very curious.

And so we just ended up asking a ton of questions, and then coming to the perspective that there was a lot of room for agreement and discussion.

- A lot of the articles we were reading were about like how politicized things get.

Can we now take the politics, you know, out of the news, and figure out when is it political, you know, leaning towards one side, and what is factual, and learning to parse those two things apart.

And it's up to us to put our big-girl and big-boy pants on and do our own critical thinking.

- Very often I find people leave their critical thinking skills, if they ever had any, at the door.

It just makes more sense to get a lot of different ideas from a lot of people with different perspectives.

- But that requires a level of open-mindedness and curiosity and willingness to engage.

And that is what has been missing, which is why this organization is necessary, you know, and others like it, right?

- You're right.

- You know, my view is that we need elites, we need people at the top of politics, culture, to promote this worldview.

- I will respectfully disagree that it has to come from the top.

I think it has to come from the bottom.

And we are it.

- It's the people rise to the occasion, and get asked to keep rising, that actually make the best leaders, rather than who can skewer the other side.

Did I shut down conversation?

(attendees laughing) (soft ambient music) I have to say, we are getting a lot of emails, especially with this spate of violence that's going on.

And it's everything from, I've got a lot of mental health workers, wanting to know how they can get involved.

Getting a lot more emails from schools.

So we're getting the kids off on the right foot.

And so this is where everybody's realizing, maybe we learn this stuff too late in life.

And here we are.

There are days when I want to give up out of exhaustion, but I don't, 'cause there's always something staring me in the face.

It's more important than me being tired.

- Even though you hear a lot of people say that there's so much divisiveness going on.

You see politicians fighting all the time and people fighting.

We feel like your generation is the ones who can see that there is a way to have these conversations in a healthier way.

Okay, so what are the topics that are important to you?

What really resonates for you?

Here's the topic that we're proposing: social media.

So let's look at the two sides of social media.

The people who feel this one are gonna go to this side of the room, and the people who feel this one are gonna go to this side of the room.

- I think it just negatively impacts, 'cause like think about how many people, like, there's people I know that have like committed suicide, solely because they've seen people do better than them.

'Cause they're like, "Man, I can't get my life together" like so and so.

And like stuff like that's just heartbreaking.

Like, I doomscroll.

Like, I do it every night.

I scroll on Instagram Reels for like two hours.

And like honestly, I feel terrible after it.

- All right, so Caden has given you some of his thoughts on that.

Maybe there was something out of what he said you can acknowledge, so we'll start with that.

- Yeah, I mean, like, I definitely agree that like people I know, for like a fact, like, people have killed themselves over people doing better.

But that can also just happen in real life.

Like, people can see in real life being better than them, and that will also affect them.

And like with social media- - Not necessarily.

I'm gonna stop you.

Sorry, 'cause, you jumped right in from acknowledging into your perspective, but now is not the time.

The purpose of this is to make Caden feel like he was heard, right?

Okay.

Start again.

- And then I also agree with what you said about doomscrolling and how that makes you feel.

Because I also doomscroll.

- But with the pivot, you're asking permission.

Now we'll go back to Caden and see if he says "Yes, it's okay to share."

- Okay.

- Okay?

- [Student] I've had a different experience of social media.

Is it okay if I share that?

- Yeah, go ahead.

- I feel like it like honestly impacted my life in a better way, because I feel like through social media I have made more friends.

And so yeah.

- There you go.

- Yes.

Let's give them a hand.

(attendees applauding) Here he is giving out little Post-it notes.

We'd like you to just write down one takeaway you can have from what you've learned today and put it on the board.

What do you think you will use when you leave here?

- Democracy in action.

Well, yeah (laughs).

I mean, isn't this what it's all about?

What's my role?

What can I do to fix this?

Because if we all do a little, nobody has to do a lot.

You know, we're in land of Lincoln, right?

You know, he needs to be our North Star.

Isn't this good luck?

We've had 250-year experiment, and so far it's worked pretty good.

And we've had a lot of ups and downs.

But, you know, it could go away.

I love this one: "I want to make more people feel comfortable and valued."

Love that one.

"Being open-minded to other people's views."

That's so huge.

Love, this one really touches my heart: "Let's learn to sit in discomfort."

"Less stereotyping."

ah, "Read and have conversations, including perspectives different from my own."

"We might be more similar than we think."

"Everyone's a human."

Love the little signature with the heart.

Yes.

"I want to get to know someone before judging them."

Yay.

"Help the unheard be heard.

Help the misunderstood be understood."

That's like a poem there, all by itself.

It made me cry.