Aaron Spading: My name's Aaron Spading.

I'm 32, and I live in Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which we call the seat of the anarchist party in South Minneapolis.

I live with my wife, whom I love very much here in this gorgeous place.

I am left of left.

Got involved in third party politics between 2010 and 2014.

We have been active with Bernie's campaign this year and have also done a lot of organizing with phone bank parties.

So we've got two cases of Peri coming?

Perfect.

Through middle school and high school, I was very involved in my church's youth group, and that was a big part of my identity.

But for many reasons, I started to question my faith as a Christian when I was in high school, and it was very problematic.

There's all sorts of stuff that I would miss about Minneapolis if I didn't live here.

There's just too many people here that I've learned too much from.

Man #1: Let my people vote.

Aaron Spading: I think that the generation that I belong to has done a lot of rethinking and given up on a lot of the things we were taught.

[laughter] Man #1: This is my Birdie Sanders tattoo.

[laughter] Alison: Should we eat?

Let's eat.

We've got a bunch of stuff.

It's mostly vegan.

Woman #3: Woo hoo!

Alison: And it's all veggie.

Aaron Spading: Living in Minneapolis has given me a lot of experience that I needed to have after growing up in a smaller town with less access to diversity.

[music] Aaron Spading: We moved to Chisago when I was four or five.

Chisago City is about 40 minutes north of Minneapolis by car, about 3 1/2 hours by bike.

[laughs] Chisago's definitely still part of my life.

I love being up there and taking a break from the city.

For a good part of the last ten or more years of my life, I've had very understandable tensions with the places that I came from and the people that brought me up there.

Wanda Spading: Kindergarten talent show.

He was very bright.

He was actually reading when he was three.

He was very dramatic.

[laughs] What I thought was really fun when I went through them is I had forgotten how many times you were in plays and drama and music.

[laughs] Aaron Spading: I was a good kid.

[laughs] Wanda Spading: That was from a church musical.

Aaron Spading: As a member of the evangelical church, it was you had the option of supporting a Republican candidate or you had the option of being a non-Christian and someone who was not expressing their faith correctly in their political beliefs.

As I got older and started to understand, that reality I guess didn't make total sense.

For me, the decision to go to Bible school was a decision to have a safe place to explore that reality.

Wanda Spading: Well, I think his year at the Bible college was -- he was going through a lot more difficulty than I realized for a long time.

Aaron Spading: When I didn't have the experience at Bible school that I wanted to, I moved to the university.

That's something that I wanted to talk through with my family, which wasn't an easy thing to do, and it was something that we each had to learn how to do.

Wanda Spading: I don't think it was about leaving the Bible school.

It was about choosing to leave the faith.

[music] Man #2: My granddaughter went to school with Aaron, and he knows her.

Aaron Spading: I hadn't seen her since high school.

I saw her at our five-year-- Man #2: She's a free spirit.

Aaron Spading: Yes, sir.

[laughs] Butch Johnson: I'm active politically.

I put up yard signs because I can try to help influence other people to realize that a lot of our problems today are the result of having Democrats in Washington.

And I've just been amazed that socialism is so acceptable.

Man #3: I have a hard time with that.

It's never worked.

Aaron Spading: What about the countries in Europe that do provide healthcare and college?

Butch Johnson: You think the government really is better at planning how to run a business and how to be successful, how to serve people than somebody like Pinky who's served people for 40 years?

Serving people is what the government is lousy at.

Aaron Spading: When I think about job growth and job creation, what built this community, I think about immigrants.

And when I think about which political party is defending immigrants, I don't think about the Republican Party.

And I also think about -- Butch Johnson: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up.

Do you make any distinction between legal and illegal immigrants?

Because we all love legal immigrants.

Aaron Spading: Where I live the communities are about 1/3 Mexican, 1/3 Somali, 1/3 European immigrants.

I have a beautiful neighborhood.

There's beautiful families that live all over the place.

Many of them probably didn't come here legally, but I don't blame that on them being bad people.

In my lifetime, the Republican Party has drawn so many young people away from them because they've told us to be afraid of Muslims, they've told us to be afraid of gay people, they've told us to be afraid of immigrants.

Butch Johnson: So you think it's only Republicans that would get a little bit apprehensive if they got on an airplane with a bunch of people dressed in Arab garb?

Man #2: I want to talk about the NFL, but nobody here wants to talk about it.

[laughter] Man #2: All they want to talk about is politics.

Butch Johnson: Probably one of the greatest threats to America is the breakdown of the American family and the welfare system that encourages single mothers and fatherless children.

And because the government supports that-- Aaron Spading: To be sincere, I think that you should get to know some of those people and say that to their faces.

And I hope that sometime we can move to a political environment where people in Chisago would see things in common with people in Minneapolis.

Butch Johnson: I'm saying, why?

Man #4: We're not going to solve it here.

[laughter] [music] Keith Carlson: Aaron Spading.

[laughs] Nice to see you.

Aaron Spading: Yeah, you as well.

Keith Carlson: Who did you have breakfast with?

Aaron Spading: Molly Savold's grandfather and Ace and Pinky and Butch and a couple of other guys that hung out.

Keith Carlson: Did you come to some sort of meeting of the minds on anything?

Aaron Spading: Absolutely not.

[laughs] I don't think I convinced any of them to caucus for Bernie.

Keith and I shared a political moment.

I don't want to out him as a leftie, but I think the transition between 2000 and 2008 was a lot of people wondering what was going on with the grand old party.

Keith Carlson: 2004 was the first year that I voted for a Democrat for president.

I did vote for George W. Bush back in 2000, but what disappointed me or changed my thought on him was the Iraq War.

Aaron Spading: I supported George W. Bush as a junior in high school, couldn't vote, senior in high school.

Went to Bible school and just had to endure the invasion of Iraq at a conservative Bible school where I was getting emails from student leadership praising God for the fact that we were going to war and watching the shock and awe in the cafeteria with people cheering, and it was just very crystallizing for me in wondering what was going on with this conservative platform that I had been somewhat indoctrinated to believe was my only political option.

[saw buzzing] Aaron Spading: What's up, buddy?

Jason Soderlund: Good to see you.

Aaron Spading: Good to see you.

What are you working on?

Jason Soderlund: I'm working on an eagle.

If there were any two people who couldn't wait to get out of this town, it was you and me.

Aaron Spading: I think when you say we were both ready to leave, I think it's because we both wanted to learn.

There's a lot of different forms of diversity in the world that don't exist here.

And that isn't necessarily because there's a deficiency here, it's just because there's a big, wide world out there.

Jason Soderlund: I think the things that we were missing, we went out and found.

[music] Aaron Spading: It's the 42nd Annual May Day Parade.

Woman #4: We want less jails and more community centers!

[cheering] Aaron Spading: This parade is literally my favorite thing that happens in the city every year.

The May Day Parade, that's part of my faith.

I realize that my faith is my life, and the way that I live it is different than the way that I might have imagined living it 20 years ago.

You'll never know, dear, how much I love you Please don't take my sunshine away Aaron Spading: I've considered spending more time up in Chisago for a lot of reasons.

For years, I went back expecting to have negative experiences.

I can sit across from people at a breakfast table, and we can spar over different ideologies, but we don't really want different things.

So we're going to do strawberry boxes, but plant spinach.

Interest groups, people of very specific mind have an interest in dividing America, and I think America has an interest in uniting itself.