Hosting Pew’s “After the Fact” podcast, I speak to a lot of amazing guests—researchers studying important issues, local leaders trying to improve their neighborhoods, people living lives buffeted by the challenges of these times. Last year found “After the Fact” interviewing people about what Utah Governor Spencer Cox called “the single most important issue facing our country—and maybe the most important issue we’ve faced in generations”: political and social polarization that has divided the nation.
We explored the stories and data that might point the way forward at a time when many of us are separated from neighbors and even family members. We visited cities across the country to speak with leaders who are trying to bring people together and find ways for us to disagree better.
As we begin a new year, it’s important to hear an important lesson we learned that might offer some hope: We have more in common than we might think.
At the core of how we can come together is one word: community. I liked how Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith America, defined it for us in one of our earliest podcasts: a “respect, relate, cooperate ethos amongst a group of people.”
The idea of community as a place also was a common thread across our episodes. Vincent Noth, executive director of Kinship Community Food Center in Milwaukee, said community is “about being able to go to a place and being known and being received no matter what.”
That food center is more than a pantry where people can pick up groceries. It’s a diverse, vibrant place where neighbors share meals several times a week, forming friendships and bonds. Frederick Riley, who runs the Aspen Institute’s Weave: The Social Fabric Project, calls what’s happening in Milwaukee “weaving”: “Different pieces of yarn or thread coming together to make one big thing,” he said. And that thing is community.
Riley was with us when we traveled to Baltimore to meet Michael and Danielle Battle. The small nonprofit that the husband-and-wife team founded is providing after-school classes to the kids in the Cherry Hill neighborhood, where Michael Battle grew up. And the juice bar they created is offering jobs for young people who might otherwise not find one. For a long time, Cherry Hill was one of the toughest places in Baltimore, but, thanks in part to the Battles, that’s changing.
This sort of community building is an essential ingredient to a successful democracy. And we all know there’s work to be done on that front: Six in ten Americans tell Pew Research Center that they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in the United States.
Strengthening democracy, we heard throughout last year, requires even more basic behavior than community-building. Pew Senior Vice President Kil Huh—who leads the organization’s work in the states on pocketbook issues and other concerns close to us all—told the podcast that we could “do a better job of listening to one another.” Pew’s executive vice president and chief program officer, Michael Caudell-Feagan, added: “We need to turn down the temperature and talk to each other, because working together, we can solve the problems that confront us.”
And, of course, they’re right. It’s hard to work together if you can’t even allow yourself to hear what a person with a different viewpoint is saying.
Still, getting people to listen to one another is really hard these days. But there are groups, like Monica Guzman’s Braver Angels, who are helping people to do just that, allowing them to feel better for it. She told our podcast that “when people have the courage to engage each other … the world becomes a little bit less of a scary place.”
And Peter T. Coleman, a Columbia University psychology and education professor who has studied polarization, offered advice on how to move beyond it. A good first step, he said, is to “turn to your own political group and try to have more candid and tolerant conversations in that group.” In other words, a little self-reflection might go a long way.
We are growing tired of this polarized state of being. And maybe that can inspire change: 65% of U.S. adults say they are always or often exhausted by thinking about politics, and about an equal share say Americans’ trust in each other is shrinking. But a much larger percentage—86%—told Pew Research Center that they believe it’s possible to improve people’s confidence in one another.
That means that if you’re looking to disagree better and be more civil, you might find more company than you’d expect. As Sister Mary Scullion, co-founder of Philadelphia’s Project HOME and a person of grace who has changed countless lives, told us, “Every single person can make a difference.”
Is this new year your turn?
Daniel LeDuc hosts The Pew Charitable Trusts’ podcast, “After the Fact.”