Episode 12: How to Citizen

Special preface regarding the shooting at the Trump rally on Saturday, July 13, 2024 [00:00]

Introduction & Welcome [01:33]  

Mónica speaks to the intensity and anticipation of the upcoming election, introduces Baratunde Thurston, and asks the questions “How do we build our civic power?” [03:06]  

Baratunde speaks to the relevance of stories [04:56]

• Baratunde: “We like to think of ourselves as these kind of machines that absorb ‘true facts’ and ‘physical reality’. And most of what we know about the world is a story that someone has told us about that world.”

Baratunde shares about the origins of his name [05:36]

Mónica offers Baratunde’s bio and asks him about his PBS television show, America Outdoors [07:28]

• Baratunde: “I am a communicator and a storyteller, and that chief mission and aim is to tell a better story of us, a story of interdependence, and I do that through stories of our relationship with nature, with each other, and our fellow human beings, and so how we relate across that full spectrum of the natural world of which we are a part, of the human world, where we’re trying to figure out our power and govern ourselves. And essentially, even if we don’t, most of us don’t engage with the word ‘democracy’, like how do we live together across all of our differences? And so, to actually get out amongst people in place. Without political agenda as the first entry point. Yo, what a blessing.”

Baratunde shares about an episode that was difficult personally, because it focused on shooting guns, and he lost his father to gun violence. [09:22]

• Baratunde: “…to go to a gun range and be with people for whom the gun is a central character and a positive one in their lives was really different. And so, I went in with my story but also went in with questions, and curiosity, and a little bit of excitement.”

Mónica inquires how he managed the tension of that experience. [11:25]

• Baratunde: “I entered with trust and support. I didn’t just roll up on a shooting range in Arkansas by myself, unprepared, and be like, ‘I wonder if I can have a conversation around the second amendment with people who disagree with me.’ Like this was not an academic foray, nor was it a solo foray, nor was it intellectual. 

Mónica asked what Baratunde learned from the experience of visiting a gun range. [14:37]

• Baratunde: “I learned about where things that I’m interested in and care about overlapped not only with things they care about, but that their relationship to firearms helps them demonstrate that care…Specifically speaking, I care about the natural world and our relationship to it… In many ways, they have a shared interest in preserving this natural world because their favorite activity depends on it… And the thing that I might have more of simply judged as like gun people becomes, nature loving, climate forward, gun people and so you just add descriptors, and it dilutes the weight on any single one and it complicates.”
• Baratunde: “The last thing I learned was, the power of the childhood experience. She was born into a set of behaviors and patterns and values and skills and attitudes that helped shape her, as was I. I would think it’s fair to say Kayle hadn’t met someone with my experience, with that level of personal experience. And she reckoned with it in a very human way.

Mónica reflects on how the validity of an opposing story of what is “good” can bring you to question your own story around what is “good.” [17:17]

• Mónica: “That is why it is so hard to bring stories into conversation with each other when they appear so opposed. Because what does it mean if my story is good and it is opposed somehow to yours…But I come to see that your story is good, too, then am I still good?”
• Baratunde: “‘Good’ is a dangerous word. It’s dangerous where it comes up in anti-racism and DEI stuff. Like, you want to be a ‘good person.’ So, you go along with this program. If you don’t, you’re a ‘racist’ and a ‘bad person.’ Who wants to be ‘bad?’ Nobody wants to be a villain in their own story. We’re all heroes. And so if the stories that we carry and share position others as villains, they will out of a sense of reasonable and logical self-preservation, reject that story…Unless we can rewrite and edit in such a way that we can share a story, we can both be protagonists, or we can trade off, we can costar in each other’s films, and we need a bigger story that can contain each of our characters, plots, and motivations, but that the film that we’re going for, the Oscar worthy film, is not just about you or just about me. It’s about how we interconnect with each other and form something a bit bigger.”

Mónica explores American’s relationship to nature, and how it might be a source of common ground, using USAFacts, a proud sponsor of “A Braver Way.” [19:14]

Baratunde and Mónica talk about an episode where Baratunde climbs a tree with an arborist named Dustin in Oregon, and stopped because of his deep sadness in remembrance of the lynching of his ancestors. [21:50]

• Baratunde: “I’m not one of these people who was shocked later to find out America committed war crimes, America led to the displacement and significant mass murder of indigenous people. None of that stuff shocks me, later in life. I grew up in parallel, learning about the Founding Fathers and the beautiful experiment of democracy and the Magna Carta and all that, AND the dark stuff…So, all that’s been like very aware, but in the moment it was like so embodied, like in my body, ‘I am an ancestor who’s up there’ and I just felt crushing, crushing, crushing waves of sadness for people who didn’t have a choice about how they ended up high in a tree with rope. And to acknowledge them non-academically, but in this involuntary embodied like traumatic moment overwhelmed me and caused me to pause.”
• Mónica: “There was a way you took power that came from something you were experiencing in a story that you knew that maybe no one else who was there with you had any inkling was going on. People’s jobs in regular conversation is to ‘go on with the plan,’ to please, to not interrupt, to not divert, to ‘not make it about me.’ There’s an expectation. We gotta keep the peace. We gotta just keep going. And a lot of people get stuck across the political divide or many others because they don’t know what to do to represent their own story when it is not the one being echoed around them and they don’t know where to begin.”
• Baratunde: “So, the first part is: I assert the right to my story in the moment. And then Dustin’s receipt of it, his reception of it, was that embrace. He welcomed this into his story. And allowed it, in a really practical sense, to replace a bit of the story we had shown up to tell…Because he recognized something else was emerging, and he hugged me…Embraces me with love and compassion. And it was the manliest thing he could have done in that moment.”

Introducing new media partners, KUOW and Deseret News [29:50]

Introducing “Braver Angels Trustworthy Election,” and the three core principles that came from that endeavor [30:24]

• Mónica: “They ended up reflecting three core principles. 

1. Voting should be easy, cheating should be hard. 
2. Every citizen should have an equal say in who will govern them. This is done through free and fair elections, and…
3. The American government will fail if candidates refuse to accept any outcome other than victory.”

Baratunde speaks about an interview he hosted with former President Barack Obama, and the ultimate connection between ‘the story of us’ and finding our civic power [32:06]

• Baratunde: “There is power for some in keeping our stories separate from each other. I think a lot of us bear the weight of the division in our land as like a personal failure or even a collective…we can’t do great things anymore. Because we’re so divided, we’re so at each other’s throats, and there is truth to that…But it is also true that our perception of our division is greater than the fact of it. And it is, I think, irresponsible to have a conversation about the division without acknowledging that there are those who profit from it. There is a strong incentive structure to amplify divisive narratives or isolate our narratives from each other so that we don’t see each other as connected because that cohesion and broader base of connection would undermine someone else’s power… if we can find stories that connect us, we can accomplish so much more together and exercise that power.” 

Baratunde shares about the origins of his podcast “How to Citizen” [36:16]

• Baratunde: “So, how do we tell a story that reminds us of our power? What if the best way to save democracy isn’t just to defend institutions that most people don’t believe in anymore across the aisle, but to embody it and practice it and carry it within us in ways big and small. That we have different ways of showing up and using our power and relating to each other that give us opportunities to find a shared story and get those big things done again. And if we can start doing that, even at small levels, then we’re weaving together some of this frayed fabric.”

Mónica shares about her mother’s desire to be acknowledged as a “citizen” and Baratunde shares a story of a community with anti-immigrant sentiments that rallied around an “illegal immigrant” because he was ‘citizening’ [37:39]

Baratunde speaks to the importance of exercising the muscle of citizenship [41:14]

• Baratunde: “One of the greatest threats to democracy is not merely demagoguery or, misinformation and some of these tactical expressions of it. It is complacency. It’s the mere assumption that we’ll always have it because we’ve had it. And that reliance on inertia as a binding agent is dangerous… This is a muscle, we’ve got to exercise it.”
• Mónica: “Everyone’s got their stories about who is responsible for destroying democracy today. And I have heard really compelling stories from a lot of surprising places, but meanwhile, those stories about how they are destroying democracy is keeping us from holding our democracy…from. practicing our democracy.” 

Baratunde outlines the “4 Pillars of How to Citizen” [44:01]

• Baratunde: “1 of 4: To citizen is to show up. It’s to participate. You assume that there’s something for you to do, and that this is not merely an outsourcing job to professionals, right? It doesn’t mean you have to run the meeting, but you gotta show up.”
• Baratunde: “2 of 4: To citizen is to understand power. This is heavily inspired by Eric Liu at Citizen University, who encourages us to become literate in power and not to see it as a dirty word, to understand its many forms and shapes. Physical power, financial power, power of gathering, sharing ideas, the power of attention, what we pay attention to, we give power to. So, if we pay attention, only the stories of negativity and division, we will get more negativity and more division. We are what we eat. So, understanding power and that we build it, it’s also not zero sum. It moves. There’s no permanent state of ‘the powerful’ and ‘the powerless’. That’s a story that serves people currently holding the power. But if you see it as dynamic and movable, then it’s up to us to figure out how we shift it, how we build it, how we move it and reallocate it. And it’s literally empowering.” 
• Baratunde: “Number 3: Value and commit to the collective. Now this is a scary one, ’cause I use the word ‘collective.’ Because it sounds like ‘collectivism,’ which rhymes with communism, which becomes socialism, which is ‘un-American.’ …Collective outcomes accrue to the individual. And we are all powerfully focused on our individual rights and freedoms in this country. It is our inherited legacy. We are also all fiercely proud to be a part of a church, a gun club, a watershed area, a valley community, a company, a sports team, a fandom, and when we act for the benefit of whatever other collectives that we identify with, we also benefit. It’s that transition to ‘we.’ So that’s number 3 is committing to the collective. 
• Baratunde: “Number 4 is: Investing in relationships – with yourself, with others, and with the planet around you…Relating, relating. All kinds of transactions can happen at the higher level, but underneath, we build on a relationship.”

Mónica and her conservative, “Red” counterpart, Braver Angels’ April Lawson, discuss the 4 Pillars of “How to Citizen” [46:48]

• April: “I think that Reds are great at showing up in certain contexts. I think they’re great at showing up in their neighborhoods, at their local schools, at churches, at, you know, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Like, the Reds that I know are super committed to the people around them…It’s just, if showing up only means showing up at like, I don’t know, a mayoral election, then maybe it doesn’t look that way.” 
• April: “I feel like on the left, there’s a lot of orientation towards dissent and critique and all of that, of where you come from. And on the right, there’s more like, you owe something to that place. That is a place that you belong, and it accepts you and you should be loyal to it in some ways.” 
• April: “The place where I think we probably have common ground is, I absolutely think that the people who contribute a lot to this country who don’t officially have that term “American citizen”– I really care about those people. And they…I think that our country needs to do right by them. And often that will mean giving them citizenship. And obviously our legal structure around that is all completely messed up. And I had pretty much everybody I think wants, like, a rational good version of that.”
• Mónica: “I think that the blue side is more eager to claim that power is quite fixed, that there is a hierarchy of power, whether it’s around certain identities– race, gender, are big ones, sexuality– so that if you are any less privileged of those, then you are permanently less powerful. And so in a way, even when you make progress, you don’t. And so, I’ve noticed the story on the blue side has a hard time editing itself to notice progress…I do also think that a strength of the blue side is to be really honest about the patterns of power that exist. They may not be permanent, but it’s also really important that somebody’s calling those out. And I think the blue side does a really good job of calling those out in at least certain spectra of difference.” 
• April: “Reds are skeptical of human nature. And so, we say ‘people are not that good.’ And then we say like, ‘okay, so if you want power, you’ve got to play the game.’ And then we’re pretty good at playing the game. Like the, you know, we understand that like Washington works a certain way. Money works a certain way. We’re not internally conflicted about that and the way that it feels like blues often are.”
• Mónica: “Many Reds have seen it is like, ‘the deck really is rigged.’ And so there need to be ginormous changes, ginormous. And if ‘burn it all down,’ sounds bad, then so be it. It still needs to change, and we don’t have any other levers we feel we can pull. So, we’re going to pull this one and root for serious disruption because maybe then, like my dad has told me, maybe then it’ll feel like what seems false and not serving this country, the way we think it ought to, it will go away.”
• Mónica: “Civic power– we have to be able to grow and express somehow with confidence what we’re feeling and and put it into that communal space and invite others to receive it. I loved his [Baratunde’s] language about receiving my story. He said that when the arborist embraced him it was like he received that story and he brought it into his own story.”
• April: “I think one of the reasons that these exercises get so difficult is that it’s not a simple story. It will never be a simple story. But it can exist. And we can feel it and identify with it and be in it and love it. And it can be big enough for all of us. But it only happens through actual relating.” 

Introducing our supporting partner, AllSides.com [1:09:07]

Closing song: “That’s the Way We Climb” by Judd Caswell [1:10:13]

Closing credits and invitation to reach out with questions [1:11:01]

Mónica Guzmán:

Hey y’all, it’s Monica. Before we get to today’s episode, I want to talk about this moment we find ourselves in. I’m recording this on Monday morning, July 15. This was a rough and scary weekend in our politics, a candidate for the presidency was almost killed. Reactions were and still are intense. 

One thing we believe on A Braver Way is that there are currents running under our politics and between us as neighbors and relatives and Americans that flow right into all those other things we want to fix. So when big events like this shake everyone, it makes us all the more committed to diving down deeper. 

Today’s episode will do just that with its exploration of the stories we tell and that we have the power to change. As we build next week’s Beat episode, which we hope can speak directly to this political moment, we want to hear from you. What are you not hearing other places that you’d like to hear from us? How can we help you stay grounded in this confusing time? What would be useful to you? 

You can reach us at abraverway@Braverangels.org. Or join our text line and send us a quick note. To get started with the text line, text the word “brave” to 206-926-9955. 

Now, back to the show. 

Mónica: 

What do you do when the beliefs inside you come into conflict with the beliefs around you?

Baratunde Thurson:

No one was prepared for what happened. Totally like the energy totally shifted because I felt something incongruent and named it. 

Mónica:

Today we are diving into that question to help empower each of us to stand up for our own story and make sure it can be part of a bigger one. 

April Lawson:

It’s not a simple story. It will never be a simple story, but it can exist and we can feel it and identify with it and like, it can be big enough for all of us. 

Mónica:

All that and more is just ahead.

(music up and under)

Welcome to A Braver Way: a show about how you can disagree about politics without losing heart.

I’m Mónica Guzmán, your guide across the divide to help you hear and be heard by people who confound you. Across this country, we are proudly conservative, liberal, independent, or just ourselves. And we don’t want to be at war here, we want to be at home. So, strap in. because it’s time we learn how to turn up the heat, turn down the fear and get real about things that matter with more of our fellow Americans than we thought possible.

Hey everyone, welcome to another day in America in 2024. Oh yes, in a presidential election year. Another moment in other words to remember that millions of us have the power to make a pretty big choice come November 5th.

And that’s making not just political life, but all of life pretty intense for a lot of us. When we choose our next president, we are going to give this person a whole lot of power. It’s staggering. It’s really hard for me to even imagine that. And when we’ve done it… it’ll be tempting to think that that was the most impactful thing we could do to shape this world around us, at least for the next four years. But it isn’t, not by a long shot. 

My guest today is someone I’ve learned a lot about when it comes to power. But he doesn’t talk about it in the way we’re used to hearing these days when it’s all about which groups have the most or the least power. The question I’m going to explore with him is: “How do we build civic power?”The influence and the might that we all have, and can easily forget we have, as members of a Democratic Republic. 

Now, before some of you roll your eyes, don’t worry. This episode is not a civics lesson. [laughs] Though, civics are great and wonderful and necessary. What my guest’s work lights up for me is a power that we all have that is more every day than the civics that we learned about in school..

It’s more personal and more alive.  Because his work shows that when you peel back the layers of the things that divide us, the things that keep us from exercising our true civic power, a lot of times it’s about stories. 

Baratunde:

I like to think about it as it’s humbling and liberating at the same time, to admit /recognize that we don’t live in a world of tangible, objective, universally discernible facts. Now we like to think of ourselves as these kind of machines that absorb true facts and physical reality. And most of what we know about the world is a story that someone has told us about that world. 

Mónica:

The first story that our guests shared with me is about something that’s pretty central to how he shows up in the world. It’s his name. 

Baratunde:

So, my name is Baratunde Rafiq Thurston. It derives from many different places around the world. Baratunde is based on the Yoruba name of Babatunde. And that name literally means “father returns.” It was the 1970s and Black people, many were trying to reclaim a lost connection to the continent of Africa. And in an attempt to reconnect with that loss, gave their kids African names, super, super Black names. 

Mónica:

Early in life, Baratunde found that the very American story he had about his name didn’t quite line up with the story that the Nigerians he met had about it. 

Baratunde:

So, they were like, they were confused. There was, they heard quickly, “Tunde.” Tunde is Nigerian, it’s Yoruba, Yoruba. Oh no, actually I’m not Yoruba, Nigerian, but my mom, your parents are from Nigeria. No, they’re not, where did you get that name? I tell this whole story about my mom and the civil rights movement and the pan -Africanist movement and the African slave trade and this book. 

Mónica:

So, these stories about what his name means and signifies, collide across cultures and generations, giving the young Baratunde one of his first lessons in how our competing stories cut to the core of who we are and how we handle our differences.

Baratunde:

They respect the fact that I have bothered to understand their story of my name and I’m not just out here being like Baratunde is the only way to be. I am the truth, and you know, and the Yoruba are the wrong ones! But I’m just representing me and recognizing them as a part of my story, and it makes it fun and they’re like cool cool cool.

Also. We have other fish to fry right now 

Mónica:

And all of that is just one chapter in Baratunde Thurston’s larger story. He is an author, an entrepreneur, a comedian. I happened to have met him in the tech scene, I don’t know… 15 years ago and boy, he’s a joy to be around. He wrote the New York Times bestselling book How to Be Black, ran digital for The Onion, the satirical news brand that’s been cranking out hilarious headlines since 1988, and was a producer on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. He leads the podcast How To Citizen, which we’ll get to, and is also the host of a wonderful PBS show called America Outdoors. And that’s where the story of our conversation begins. 

Baratunde:

America Outdoors, which airs on public television, the People’s Network, available to all by design, is a show where we celebrate our beautiful country through the lens of people who have a deep connection to nature. It’s focused on painting as broad a picture as possible of the people who are connected to this place. 

Mónica:

And you say in the intro, I’m all about telling a better story of us.

Baratunde:

Yeah. I am a communicator and a storyteller, and that chief mission and aim is to tell a better story of us, a story of interdependence, and I do that through stories of our relationship with nature, with each other and our fellow human beings. And so how we relate across that full spectrum of the natural world of which we are a part, of the human world, where we’re trying to figure out our power and govern ourselves. And essentially, even if we don’t, most of us don’t engage with the word democracy, like how do we live together across all of our differences?

And so, to actually get out amongst people in place, without political agenda as the first entry point.

Yo, what a blessing.

Mónica:

That’s it. And speaking of seeing the opportunity in the difficulty, there’s an episode where you went to Arkansas.

Baratunde:

Yes.

Mónica:

You meet Kayle Browning, who’s an Olympic trap shooter, and Anne Marie Doramus, who’s Arkansa’s Game and Fish Commissioner, and they take you to the shooting range and teach you how to shoot. So, bring us into that moment, because there was difficulty there. 

Baratunde:

Yeah. I don’t have a positive attitude toward guns. I have a general understanding. I understand the concept of the Second Amendment. I understand the concept of personal defense. And in both cases, I’m not, like, aggressively opposed. I don’t have guns in my life. I grew up in an environment in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s where guns were prolific and dangerous and where they affected me in a deeply personal way because my father was shot and killed. I was seven years old when he died. And there’s a seed planted there, of a deeply personal nature surrounded by the context of a city under siege of all kinds of violence playing out on a regular basis to the point where my mother moved us out of the neighborhood that we knew and loved strongly out of a sense of personal safety.

Me and guns have some challenges. And, and so to go to a gun range and be with people for whom ‘the gun’ is a central character and a positive one in their lives was really different. And so, I went in with my story but also went in with questions, and curiosity, and a little bit of excitement.

Mónica:

So, there was… there’s curiosity, there’s a sense of enthusiasm about what you might discover. There’s a spark there that you want to look at a little more closely. So tell us, you, you narrated in that moment that there was a lot going through your head. You carried your history in and I’m asking this because our listeners want to know what to do in those moments when they’re in that clash between something inside of them and whatever they’re being asked to do or asked to accept is hard. So how did you manage the tension between their very positive story about guns, which might inform their politics about guns, and yours, which was not so positive. Take us in.

Baratunde:

I entered with trust and support. I didn’t just roll up on a shooting range in Arkansas by myself, unprepared, and be like, ‘I wonder if I can have a conversation around the second amendment with people who disagree with me.’ Like this was not an academic foray, nor was it a solo foray, nor was it intellectual.

This was a literally safe space. 

Mónica:

And when you say safe space, by the way, what do you mean by that?

Baratunde:

I just mean that Kayle and Anne Marie already had some understanding based on my reputation, based on other stories I’ve told, this is someone who we can engage with this could be fun as opposed to this could be threatening. I mean there’s ways to engage with people around firearms, which are literally unsafe, right?

And these women were the opposite of that, and that calms my nervous system. And there’s, there’s militias, there’s all kinds of other imagery around. Like we weren’t dropped into a Proud Boys gathering. That would have been very different for me. and I would have had a different level of prep needed to engage with questions and humanity there…for instance sports for instance…

Mónica:

Mhm. But I’m noticing that you’re saying that you are open even to that.

Baratunde:

Yeah, I’m open to a lot of things, I think there are types of people out of a sense of service, personal curiosity, willfully put themselves in high tension situations.

I’m thinking of a man named Darryl. You’ve probably come across him. 

Mónica:

Daryl Davis. 

Baratunde:

I’m not Darryl. I’m not interested in going to a Klan rally. That does more to me than it does for me.

Mónica:

Yeah. And just to clarify for our listeners, so Daryl Davis is a well-known Black blues musician who ended up talking with members of the Ku Klux Klan and has something like 200 of their robes that they gave him after, through conversations with him, they decided to disavow those beliefs. So, a lot of this, a lot of us, let’s be honest, are not Daryl.

That’s a difficult, difficult thing…

Baratunde:

Yeah, so I respect Daryl and my name is Baratunde, so I show up a little differently. But with Kayle and Anne Marie, some of the things that help, we were gathered to participate in an activity first. We were not gathered to engage in a conversation or worse, a debate. And so this wasn’t an exercise in verbalizing.It was an embodied experience. And there’s a level of restraint and respect that come with just sharing space. They didn’t have to know anything about me other than I showed up. and they were so friggin welcoming that the story, whatever story I walk in with, takes a back seat to the one I’m in in the moment. You know, me and my father’s story and gun violence in America weren’t constant. I was trying to just be present. It’s what is it like for me to set aside some things for a moment, for a day in this case. And pick up this gun and see if I can hit that moving target. 

Mónica: And you said you were…

Baratunde: The answer is yes, I can. I can. 

Mónica:

You said you were willing to learn. What’s something that as a result you learned that you’re grateful you learned.

Baratunde:

I’m truly grateful that I learned that I have some talent with a shotgun. I think that is

Mónica:

You were amazing. You got a lot in a row.

Baratunde:

It was annoying to the crew because it’s part of the fun for the crew is like the host isn’t going to be good at the things. And in this case, I was above average. So that was part of what I learned. I learned about where things that I’m interested in and care about overlapped not only with things they care about, but their relationship to firearms helps them demonstrate that care. That’s high level. Specifically speaking, I care about the natural world and our relationship to it. I care about preserving an ecosystem balance. I care about, decarbonizing and keeping this planet habitable and I learned about the financial support from hunters that allows for preserves and protected areas to exist. I learned about the hunter perspective firsthand. I’ve read some things, but it’s very different to be out with people who get their meat primarily by going out and hunting it as opposed to hunting for a good price at the grocery store, which is my preferred method.

And so they’re closer to nature. In many ways, they have a shared interest in preserving this natural world because their favorite activity depends on it. And so we are actually very much, have shared outcome in mind and, some shared methods and then some different methods. And the thing that I might have more of simply judged as like gun people becomes, nature loving, climate forward, gun people and so you just add descriptors, and it dilutes the weight on any single one and it complicates I learned. 

And then the last thing I learned was, the power of the childhood experience. She was born into a set of behaviors and patterns and values and, skills and attitudes that helped shape her, as was I. I would think it’s fair to say Kayle hadn’t met someone with my experience, with that level of personal experience. And she reckoned with it in a very human way. I think you can avoid or not be exposed to the story of the harm of guns. That’s one category, or when you are exposed, it is presented with such extra judgment and interpretation and as threat that you have to dismiss it to preserve yourself. Right. So if my experience with firearms is true, then what does that mean for you?

Mónica:

For them, exactly. And this is, this, you nailed it! That is why it is so hard to bring stories into conversation with each other when they appear so opposed. Because what does it mean if my story is good and it is opposed somehow to yours,

Baratunde:

Yeah.

Mónica:

But I come to see that your story is good, too, then am I still good?

Baratunde: 

Right. Right. And that intrinsic identity and value. Good is a dangerous word. It’s a dangerous wod. It comes up in anti-racism and DEI stuff. Like you want to be a good person. So, you go along with this program. If you don’t, you’re a racist and a bad person who wants to be a bad person? Nobody wants to be a villain in their own story. We’re all heroes. And so if the stories that we carry and share position others as villains, they will, out of a sense of reasonable and logical self-preservation, reject that story.

Mónica:

Yeah, exactly.

Baratunde:

Unless we can rewrite and edit in such a way that we can share a story, we can both be protagonists, or we can trade off, we can costar in each other’s films, and we need a bigger story that can contain each of our characters, plots, and motivations, but that the film that we’re going for, the Oscar worthy film, is not just about you or just about me. It’s about how we interconnect with each other and form something a bit bigger.

Mónica:

The clashing of cultures that happened when Baratunde met Kaley Browning and Anne -Marie Doramus fascinates me for so many reasons.

(music up and under)

Baratunde buys his meat. Kayle hunts for it. But whether we’re meat shoppers, hunters, or vegetarians, whether we lean red or blue on guns or anything else, the biggest patch of common ground any of us will ever find is the one right here beneath our feet. This land that holds us in harmony or discord from sea to shining sea.

It got me wondering, is our connection to this common ground changing with everything else that’s changing around us? And are there other differences in America that find their root (laughs) in our relationships with the outdoors?

Instead of filling the blanks with my own guesses, I went to USAFacts and did some digging. 

USAFacts is a– nonpartisan nonprofit that’s out to guide people through the maze of public data from the nation’s more than 90,000 government entities. They do that by compiling the data and organizing it so it’s accessible and understandable to everyone, not just policy nerds, not just journalists, everyone. USAFacts is also a proud sponsor of A Braver Way.

The first thing I learned, searching USAFacts, is that nature is a booming business. The gross domestic product for agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting went up a whopping 78% nationwide from 2020 to 2022, when we add the latest figures, to $289 billion. It’s the biggest jump in at least 20 years. Pandemic related? Possibly.

But where In America do people like to get out in nature the most? USAFacts pointed me to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis that shed some light on that. Turns out there are just five states where the money people spend on outdoor recreation makes up at least 4% of that state’s GDP. Can you guess what they are? Based on 2020 presidential election results, three of these states are red states and two of them are blue. Give up? It’s Montana, Alaska and Wyoming. Then Vermont and our Aloha state, Hawaii. 

Now, does more time roughing it on that shared common ground, and sometimes water, help us connect better, not just to nature, but to each other? You could ask the boaters in Florida, California and Texas. Those are the states I learned that contribute the most to the national boating and fishing economy. Now a skipper in politically red Galveston, Texas may not see say immigration policy the way a helmsman in blue San Francisco Bay would, but get them talking about how freeing and relaxing it is to be out on the water, and they might share a similar story. And maybe that’s a start. Thank you, USAFacts for the quick data plunge and now back to Baratunde. 

(music out)

Mónica: 

So, there’s another moment. 

Baratunde:

Yeah

Mónica: 

There’s another moment in the show, and this came up in the episode where you’re in Oregon, and you meet an arborist who uses ropes to hoist himself up trees, and this show is about getting on that common ground with people and their relationship with nature, so you are on ropes, and you’re hoisting yourself up a tree. And you tell the audience that things are going through your head. The audience watches you slow down, have to pause, take breaks. I’m wondering, “he seems really strong. Is he tired? What’s happening?” Can you walk us through this scene? It was really profound.

Baratunde:

Yeah, Dustin Marcello, was my guide’s name, beautiful human being, beautiful bearded American. We don’t talk enough about the bearded American demographic, but I think there’s, there’s room for more inclusion of that.

Mónica: 

(laughing) There you go, we need, yes. New affinity group!

Baratunde: 

Yeah, ‘cause it crosses, religious boundary and ethnicity and regionalism. But there’s, like beards across America. 

So, two bearded men, climb a tree together, an 80 foot tree, and I’m excited. I’m nervous. I don’t pursue heights often in that way. I didn’t grow up climbing trees, and I was open, there’s a theme here, and I had, support and I knew there were safety checks so I could afford to be more adventurous than I might on my own time and my own dime, and he was a lovely guy.

And so, in this case, Dustin had a story. About his relationship with trees, about a dramatic accident he had, and severe injury about how finding yoga helped him heal. And then from that, we’re going to go into this forest bathing healing ritual. 

And that’s not the story that played out. Very different story emerged and you’re right. I am pretty strong. Thank you for assuming that. 

Mónica:

I’ve seen some of the other things you’ve done on that show, man.

Baratunde:

I’ve, borne things, in life and in this show. But there’s some technical reasons why I was slowing down. But most of the reasons were emotional and psychological. And then we get higher up and I’m like, whoa, okay, natural height stuff, but I get over that. He’s so supportive. He’s right there. He’s right there. And we get a little higher. And there is… something was preventing me from moving forward. And it wasn’t physical limitation.

And then he was, he noticed the pause and he was in coach mode. He was in like; I’m Dustin and I help. He’s like the Lorax. I speak for the trees 

Mónica:

(laughing) Yeah. 

Baratunde: 

He’s out here trying to get people to have this beautiful relationship with these beautiful life forms. And he was like, you can do it. You got this. He’s just trying to gas me up. Gas me up the tree. And then it started to get clear.

No. No, I can’t. Like, I could, but I won’t. And the fog cleared on, what was creating this emotional response. And the physicality was like 10 percent of it. The other 90 percent was this deep memory and mourning. The sadness was mourning for the people who have been hoisted, into trees very much against their will, not as a part of some nature loving exercise, but as a part of a reminder of their less than humanness, their perceived offense, their transgression and the overwhelming power of a story of dominance to subjugate others and make them villains.

Mónica:

So, you’re talking about lynching? 

Baratunde:

Talking about lynching. Yeah. And I have come across, from childhood, from the very awake mother that I had, very conscious, very knowledgeable, who welcomed me into the American story with eyes wide open.

I’m not one of these people who was shocked later to find out America committed war crimes, America, led to the displacement and, significant mass murder of indigenous people. None of that stuff, shocks me later in life. I grew up in parallel, learning about the Founding Fathers and the beautiful experiment of democracy and the Magna Carta and all that, and the dark stuff.

Mónica:

Yeah.

Baratunde:

So, all that’s been like very aware, but in the moment it was like so embodied. Like in my body, I am an ancestor who’s up there and I just felt crushing, crushing, crushing waves of sadness for people who didn’t have a choice about how they ended up high in a tree.

Mónica:

Yeah.

Baratunde: 

With rope. And to acknowledge them non academically, but in this involuntary embodied like traumatic moment,overwhelmed me and caused me to pause.

Mónica:

Right.

Baratunde:

And stop. And to be able to say to Dustin, who is the most amazing human, no, I will not push myself.

Mónica:

And I have to pull one thread out of that, which is that you’re the host of a show. There’s a plan. It’s not even just Dustin’s expectation, your own expectation, but also the entire point of your being here and the assumptions made about how this is going to go. You…, there was a way you took power that came from something you were experiencing in a story that you knew that maybe no one else who was there with you had any inkling…

Baratunde:

Yeah. 

Mónica:

…was going on. People’s jobs in regular conversation is to go on with the plan, to please, to not interrupt, to not divert, to not make it about me. There’s an expectation. We gotta keep the peace. We gotta just keep going. And a lot of people get stuck across the political divide or many others because they don’t know what to do to represent their own story when it is not the one being echoed around them and they don’t know where to begin.

Baratunde:

Yeah. 

Everybody on location there, no one was prepared for what happened. Multiple tears. The energy totally shifted. And it was receptive. And I think because of the way Dustin and I both acted in that moment, because I felt something incongruent and named it and didn’t suffocate my own story and my own voice in service of someone else’s that was suddenly incompatible. And so it’s not, I didn’t go along to get along because I’m here to do this job and serve this other story. There’s something emerging, it needs to be heard. I need to pull the emergency brake and then let’s talk about it. And he helped me down here. Even when we were up in the air, he roped me, called it the arborist hug. And he just embraced me up there. And I almost lost all my marbles then.

Mónica:

Oh my goodness.

Baratunde: 

When, but the earth I knew could hold this.

Mónica: 

The embrace on the earth.

Baratunde: 

Yes, and that’s the second part. So, the first part is: I assert the right to my story in the moment. And then Dustin’s receipt of it, his reception of it, was that embrace. He welcomed this into his story. And allowed it, in a really practical sense, to replace a bit of the story we had shown up to tell.

Mónica:

Wow. 

Baratunde:

Because he recognized something else was emerging, and he hugged me. And I think that image I started this, started talking about beards, right? We are two bearded menfolk. We’re in tactical arborist gear.

We’re doing some manly man stuff. Paul Bunyan is in the house. I’m basically rocking with Paul Bunyan over here and Paul Bunyan weeps with me. Embraces me with love and compassion. And it was the manliest thing he could have done in that moment.

(Music up)

Mónica:

This season, we are proud to be partnering with two fantastic media organizations to help us reach more listeners like you. KUOW is Seattle’s NPR affiliate station founded with the idea that everyone should have free access to honest fact -checked information.

Deseret News is a multi -platform newspaper based in Salt Lake City committed to providing thoughtful reporting and insightful commentary from the Intermountain West. Help us by helping them.

Learn how at kuow.org /brave or deseret.com /subscribe. Thank you Deseret News and KUOW for helping us create bridges between communities and A Braver Way listeners everywhere.

(music up and under)

Leading up to the 2024 election, it seems like there’s not a lot we can agree on. But people from across the country, conservatives and liberals and independents alike, are telling us that they don’t trust our electoral system, often for vastly different reasons, whether it’s voter suppression and the peaceful transfer of power they’re worried about, or voter fraud and election security, the sense that something is broken is something they share. And now, they’re taking extraordinary steps to fix it.

Over the course of 26 workshops held around the country, 194 evenly balanced red and blue participants talked about what it would take to have trustworthy elections, fully, freely, and without fear. And they found 727 unanimous points of agreement. You heard me right, 727 across values, concerns, and solutions. And they ended up reflecting three core principles. 

1.     Voting should be easy, cheating should be hard. 
2.     Every citizen should have an equal say in who will govern them. This is done through free and fair elections, and 
3.     The American government will fail if candidates refuse to accept any outcome other than victory. 

We hope you will not only read “Braver Angels Trustworthy Elections” report, we hope you’ll tell your friends, neighbors, and elected officials to read it too. You can find a link to the full report. in our show notes. 

(music out)

Mónica:

So, I’m going to take us to another moment.

Baratunde:

Yeah. 

Mónica: 

You interviewed President Obama onstage. Now to, to our conservative listeners for whom Obama is maybe not, who you see him to be,

Baratunde:

Not the greatest president of all time, ever.

Mónica:

Yes, I just want to say, I know what it’s like to suddenly be presented with something that somebody said generously when that person represents something that you don’t look at generously most of the time. So, I invite, our listeners to, to just hold to that discomfort a bit. He, in conversation with you talked about stories, and I think made a link to civic power, 

Baratunde:

Mm. 

Mónica: 

… where he said, different stories meet, respect and recognize each other, that’s what we need, so that different people in America can get anything done at all. He noted that right now we don’t hear each other across America. We don’t see each other, and we’re all too comfortable with the idea that the other side must be idiots, can’t be reasoned with. He said, if we can’t break through that, he told you, we’ll never get to the wonderful ideas and amazing projects that are out there. So what I heard in that, in that conversation you two had was that if we can’t get our stories to talk to each other; we can’t receive them somehow in a way that, you’ve talked in the past about, we have to edit somehow, we have to make edits, we have to see the bigger story, we’ll never really wield the civic power that we have. What is the ultimate connection you see, between telling a better story of us and finding our power? 

Baratunde: 

Ahhhh. There is power for some in keeping our stories separate from each other.

I think a lot of us bear the weight of the division in our land as like a personal failure or even a collective failure. I guess we’re just not up to it anymore. Guess, we did that moonwalk, that was cool, and then ever since the moon landing and the invention of Velcro, we can’t do great things anymore. Because we’re so divided, we’re so at each other’s throats, and there is truth to that. It’s, to, it would be false and a bit gaslighting to suggest we are in this kumbaya state. But it is also true that our perception of our division is greater than the fact of it.

Mónica:

Yes.

Baratunde:

And it is, I think, irresponsible to have a conversation about the division without acknowledging that there are those who profit from it.

Mónica:

Yes.

Baratunde:

And that there is a strong incentive structure to amplify divisive narratives or isolate our narratives from each other so that we don’t see each other as connected because that cohesion and broader base of connection would undermine someone else’s power. And, so in, in the Obama moment for me, about narratives and seeing each other’s story was so powerful, literally affected my life’s work. Not that day, but teens of years prior, first encountering him and recognizing independent of his policy positions, what excited me most about him was his approach to the people supporting his campaign, seeing each other and not just seeing him, which is so ironic because he’s such kind of a cult of personality around him and feel like he got the most friendly press coverage and he was this rockstar and he was too young.

Some of that’s true. And he was always trying, in my view, to shift the spotlight and to shift the lens to us. What do we do? He’s like, I’m bringing all y’all with me to the White House. Structurally, that was a very hard thing to do. He didn’t succeed in nearly the ways I’m sure he had hoped to. But he planted a lot of seeds in people, and I was one of those people, to start to see, if we can find stories that connect us, we can accomplish so much more together and exercise that power.

The word citizen has a story connected to it. It is a formal story of in group, out group, of immigration policy and admission standards, of test taking and test passing or failing, and then privileges that go along with that act, with the project that I’m working on, How to Citizen, we’re like, okay, but what if it’s a verb? 

Mónica:

And by the way, for our listeners, this is, a podcast called How to Citizen that Baratunde hosts

Baratunde: 

So, how do we tell a story that reminds us of our power? What if the best way to save democracy isn’t just to defend institutions that most people don’t believe in anymore across the aisle, but to embody it and practice it and carry it within us in ways big and small. That we have different ways of showing up and using our power and relating to each other that give us opportunities to find a shared story and get those big things done again.

And if we can start doing that, even at small levels, then we’re weaving together some of this frayed fabric. But we got to create many more pathways to invite people in, to that story and not simply the story of, “I don’t like that politician. I don’t like that party. I don’t like those people.” We are the people, bro. And those politicians came from us. Like when you, they don’t grow on trees, they grow in communities that we raise them in. So, what are we doing with our storytelling to bind us in ways that produce the types of people and leaders that will keep us more united and keep us bound?

Mónica:

Yeah. and I’m excited to talk about the four ways that you think about how to ‘citizen’ in a moment. I wanted to mention a complicating piece to what you talked about with citizen as a noun, because I found, I find this so interesting and I often just get surprised, sort of, across the political divide myself, but I talk about my parents, they and I voted for different candidates quite a bit. It’s a real part of my story and why I’m doing what I do, and I talk about them, you know a lot! And I mentioned that they are Mexican immigrants. And one day my mom told me, Y’know Mónica, it would mean a lot to me if you found more opportunities to mention that we are also American citizens.

Baratunde:

Mmmm.

Monica:

And I found that really interesting. And in that moment, I wanted to argue with her. “But that’s not that important.”

But it’s important to her. It was something she worked hard for. I wanted to just submit that as… 

Baratunde:

I receive that– “go Mama Citizen.” 

Mónica: 

All our stories are very complicated, right? so I could see her, listening to your definition of citizenship, and maybe not wanting to receive it, like she 

Baratunde:

Yeah, no, she, ‘cause she worked hard for that paper.

Mónica:

Y’know what I mean?

Baratunde:

I get it. I get it. And I remember this tale from early Trump presidency and the, Muslim ban and the immigration, the, in more intense focus on us-them and border. And there was a story of a rural, and right leaning community, suburban actually, but suburban, very, Republican community. They had an undocumented member of their community, and he was such a prized member of their community, because he supported the Little League team, because he gave to the police and fire department, because he showed up to help with the version of barn raising that actually still happens today in terms of communal efforts.

And they’re like, “we don’t like illegal immigrants, but he’s our illegal immigrant.” And they’ve created a pot to get him a lawyer and try to help prevent him from being deported as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was starting to go like church to church in some cases and round people up and have them adhere to the letter of the law.

They’re like, but there’s a spirit here. And he was not a ‘citizen,’ but he was ‘citizening.’

Mónica:

Yes.

Baratunde: 

He was showing up, he was verbing the noun harder than most people born with the noun.

Mónica:

Oh, fascinating.

Baratunde:

And so yes, I absolutely honor and respect your mother’s verbing to earn the noun.

Mónica: 

Hmm. It’s a great way to put it, actually. That is a. wonderful way to put it.

Baratunde:

…And just being born into it is, not sufficient. We can see the effect of that, can’t we? Because this is, look, as a Mexican immigrant, right? One of the things I observe in America is, look, I come from a country where corruption… It’s everywhere, where 96 percent of homicides are unsolved, where true elections that could be in any way trusted are fairly recent. 

Baratunde:

Yeah. 

Mónica: 

And I, come here and I look around, and EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE, says everyone. EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE, says everyone. And I’m like, y’all should take a look around the world. We have things we can preserve, and we have freedoms. We think we ought to have them to use our power to participate. Some members of my family, I’ve never said this out loud, but some members of my family in Mexico, when I talk to them about politics in Mexico, all I see is resignation.

Baratunde:

Yeah.

Mónica:

They don’t feel any power at all. I want us to wield our power in this country before it’s too late.

Baratunde:

Use it or lose it,

Mónica:

We forget we even have it. 

Baratunde:

Yeah. and one of the greatest threats to democracy is not merely demagoguery or, misinformation and some of these tactical expressions of it. It is complacency. 

Mónica: 

Yeah. 

Baratunde: 

It’s the mere assumption that we’ll always have it because we’ve had it. And that reliance on inertia as a binding agent is dangerous. It’s dangerous. 

Mónica:

And to your point…

Baratunde:

This is a muscle. We got to exercise…

Mónica:

Exactly. 

Baratunde:

Or it atrophies. 

Mónica:

One of the ways we could lose it, because everyone’s got their stories about who is responsible for destroying democracy today. And I have heard really compelling stories from a lot of surprising places, but meanwhile, those stories about how they are destroying democracy is keeping us from holding our democracy.

Baratunde:

From practicing it

Mónica:

…From practicing our democracy. 

(music under)

When conversations reach this point of clarity for me, momentum, you know, when the clouds part, and I can see plain as day what is so ridiculously hidden to us so much of the time, that of course we have power in our society that this country my family chose to come to and invest in has some things figured out, some really good things that a lot of other countries don’t.

And that it’s worth our energy to hold our power, to understand that there are loads of ways to use it, to make sure the on -ramps to all that are plentiful. Practicing our democracy, our republic, our one nation under God, whatever language captures it best for you, that’s what this is all about. We’re all part of this country together. Like it or not, agree or disagree. And we have this inherently messy form of government, a constitutional democratic republic, to be precise, that requires some form of investment from its people to really work.

But all that wasn’t the end of our conversation. Next, we talked about what Baratunde calls his “four pillars of how to citizen.” Now, he and I both lean liberal, so, to better unpack how these pillars might land for folks with a wider set of perspectives, I wanted to bring in the one, the only, April Lawson, who leans conservative, to join in.

(music out)

Hey,  April, how’s it going? 

April:

Great, how are you? So good to see you. 

Mónica:

Yeah, you too, as always. So, we just heard from the brilliant… Baratunde Thurston on all kinds of things around our driving question: “How do you wield civic power?” And the part I really wanted to get your take on is what he refers to as the four pillars of how to citizen, citizen as a verb. So, are you ready to hear them? 

April:

So ready. Yes, ma’m. 

Mónica:

Let’s do this. (laughing) – 

Baratunde:

1 of 4 to citizen is to show up. It’s to participate. You assume that there’s something for you to do, and that this is not merely an outsourcing job to professionals, right? It doesn’t mean you have to run the meeting, but you gotta show up. 

2 of 4 to citizen is to understand power. This is heavily inspired by Eric Liu at Citizen University, who encourages us to become literate in power and not to see it as a dirty word, to understand its many forms and shapes, physical power, financial, power of gathering, sharing ideas, the power of attention, what we pay attention to, we give power to. So, if we pay attention, only the stories of negativity and division, we will get more negativity and more division. We are what we eat. 

Mónica:

That’s for sure. 

Baratunde:

So, understanding power and that we build it, it’s also not zero sum. It moves. There’s no permanent state of ‘the powerful’ and ‘the powerless’. That’s a story that serves people currently holding the power.

Mónica:

That’s right. 

Baratunde:

But if you see it as dynamic and movable, then it’s up to us to figure out how we shift it, how we build it, how we move it and re-allocate it. And it’s literally empowering.

Number 3, value and commit to the collective. Now this is a scary one, ’cause I use the word collective. 

Mónica:

Collective.

Baratunde:

And that’s a trigger. I should have done a trigger warning. I am so sorry. 

Mónica:

Wait, how do you see that being a trigger? I’m curious. 

Baratunde:

Because it sounds like collectivism, which rhymes with communism, which becomes socialism, which is un -American. 

Mónica:

Right, right. Okay. 

Baratunde:

And to my earlier point, we cannot defend a border by ourselves. We cannot stand up an entire economy alone. Collective outcomes accrue to the individual. And we are all powerfully focused on our individual rights and freedoms in this country. It is our inherited legacy. We are also all fiercely proud to be a part of a church, a gun club, a watershed area, a valley community, a company, a sports team, a fandom. And when we act for the benefit of whatever other collectives that we identify with, we also benefit. It’s that transition to we. So that’s number 3 is committing to the collective. 

And number 4 is investing in relationships with yourself, with others, and with the planet around you. And that kind of brings us back full circle to our conversation about my time in Arkansas. What made that moment possible and powerful was because we all entered with relationship first.

Hi, I’m Baratunde. I’m Kayle. 

Mónica:

Yeah.

Baratunde:

Relating, relating. All kinds of transactions can happen at the higher level, but underneath, we build on a relationship.

(music up)

Mónica:

All right, so how do these four pillars show up for reds and blues? April, you are a red. I am a blue.

So, let’s start with that first pillar: to Citizen is to participate.

April:

Well, it’s interesting because I feel like Reds, and I’ll just speak to Reds for this purpose, but I feel like we’re pretty good at all of these, but it might look different. I think that Reds are great at showing up in certain contexts. I think they’re great at showing up in their neighborhoods, at their local schools, at churches, at, you know, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Like, the Reds that I know are super committed to the people around them. However, they don’t necessarily, … I think there is frankly as disaffected as anybody else with regard to voting, for example. It reminds me of that Saturday Night Live episode a while ago about, you know, those disaffected groups on both sides who actually have a lot in common in many cases. So, yeah, I think Reds do show up. It’s just, if showing up only means showing up at like, I don’t know, a mayoral election, then maybe it doesn’t look that way. 

Mónica:

The question that came up for me that I was really curious about, see what you thought, is Baratunde says, or in the interview, toward the end, he said that just being born to it is not sufficient, but just being born to ‘citizen’ is not sufficient.

And I wondered, maybe because of the Reds I know, whether Reds would react a little more to that statment than Blues? 

April:

Yeah, no, I don’t love that way of saying it, and I don’t… It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly why, but I think there is something about being an American and being patriotic and loving your country and belonging here just because you do, not because of what you’ve performed or what you’ve earned or whatever. 

Mónica:

Or even how you’ve participated? Because I struggle with that. Because I think as a blue, I’m like, yeah, like there’s something about that feels right. 

April:

Really?

Mónica:

Should we just insist on that? 

April:

Man, that’s so interesting. I…I…There’s something about chosen versus unchosen obligations and communities that I think. I’m like pulling on my like philosophy in college to figure this out because I remember one of the ideas that I found really compelling when I read, you know, classic conservative thinkers in college was one about just unchosen communities and unchosen obligations and how important those are. And I feel like there’s like, you don’t choose your family, you don’t choose the town you’re born in, you don’t choose your country. All these things. And I feel like, and this is not intended to be a caricature, but I feel like on the left, there’s a lot of orientation towards dissent and critique and all of that of where you come from. And on the right, there’s more like, you owe something to that place. That is a place that you belong, and it accepts you and you should be loyal to it in some ways. 

Mónica:

What you said about families. We don’t choose our families and we don’t say you have to participate in a family.

April:

Exactly, exactly

Mónica:

We just say “you’re enough.” You’re my daughter, you’re my son, you’re my brother, you’re my uncle and that’s family.

April:

Exactly. And there’s almost a thing where you should be loyal to your country and your country should be loyal to you in return and that’s a priori. That’s not because of something you did. And I think one of the places that this shows up is, this might be a little bit controversial, but a, I guess, a stereotypical red view is that if you’re American, you ought to have sort of the first bite at social services. 

Mónica:

And by if you’re American, you mean if you have the noun “American citizen.”

April:

Yes, exactly. And I have to say, I agree with that. Like I feel like there’s something that makes sense to me in that. And I think that a lot of the resentment, some of the resentment, that you see among people who feel like others jumped in line in front of them comes from the, I think it’s a sensation of betrayal, almost like family betrayal, like you were supposed to care about me. I care about you. 

Mónica:

So that’s why you mean by your… “country should be loyal to you.” If you’re loyal to your country, your country should be loyal. And so therefore the “citizen noun” is a marker of a real privilege. I have to…I’ll note that 

April:

Please do.

Mónica:

I do think we have a contrast here. I don’t think I feel the way you do. 

April:

I can tell. 

Mónica:

But it’s not like I think, for example, I don’t believe that non -noun citizens should be allowed to vote. I know that in the last couple of years, that’s become a conversation. But that sense of privilege, I guess the question I have as a blue is like, yeah, but how far does that go? And at what point does citizening as a verb make one part of a community because of how one shows up?

April:

For sure. No, I love it. And I think for me, the central metaphor really is family. It’s, you know, you’re kid can be a screw up, but she’s still your kid. Like, and this other kid who she’s friends with can do everything right. But that doesn’t make her your kid. 

Mónica:

But she’s still not your kid. 

April:

Yeah. And however, sorry.

Mónica:

Yeah, I don’t know that I accept the family analogy all the way. 

April:

I will say that I think that that doesn’t mean that we have to say that no privileges are earned by and I… the place where I think we probably have common ground is I absolutely think that the people who contribute a lot to this country who don’t officially have that term “American citizen,” I really care about those people. And they…I think that our country needs to do right by them. And often that will mean giving them citizenship. And obviously our legal structure around that is all completely messed up. And I had pretty much everybody I think wants, like, a rational good version of that. 

Mónica:

Yes, I’m totally with you there. 

April:

So I think that people can earn their way in and I’m cool with that.

I just don’t think that we should abandon the kid who’s kind of a screw up right now. They’re still in the family like it’s not. 

Mónica:

I see what you’re saying. 

April:

They don’t have to do anything to be in the family… 

Mónica:

Right. Oh man. Okay, I think we could go on with this particular question for all the time we have because boy did we bring up a lot of really great stuff. So, let’s move to the second pillar and this one was “that to citizen is to understand power.”

April:

Why don’t you go first on this one? 

Mónica:

To the question of how it affects reds and blues, I will say I see on the blue side, and this has come up I think before with you and me on these check -ins. I think that the blue side is more eager to claim that power is quite fixed, that there is a hierarchy of power, whether it’s around certain identities, race, gender, are big ones, sexuality,right. So that if you are any less privileged of those, then you are permanently less powerful. And so in a way, even when you make progress, you don’t. 

April:

Mmmm. 

Mónica:

And so, I’ve noticed the story on the blue side has a hard time editing itself to notice progress. And that, I think that that’s a detriment when it happens on the blue side. I think that it holds us back from being empowered to doing the sort of editing that Baratunde’s talking about, you know, this beautiful collective edit where, look, we’re trying to build a society where more of us can be seen for who we really are, no matter what race or gender or whatever, like highly valuable thing on the blue side, not to say that it’s not also valuable on the red side. But I think if we see power as very fixed too often we’re going to forget our own individual power of in conversation or in other places.

But again, to complicate myself one more time, I do also think that a strength of the blue side is to be really honest about the patterns of power that exist. They may not be permanent, but it’s also really important that somebody’s calling those out. And I think the blue side does a really good job of calling those out in at least certain spectra of difference. 

April:

Well said. So, this one was interesting because I almost wonder if on the right there’s more variety in how we relate to power. So, I mentioned faith communities that there’s a lot about like let God handle it, let go and let God. There’s a lot of intentional surrender of power. The second thing that came to mind was, so when I lived in Washington DC, I had a lot of friends at the American Enterprise Institute, which is, think of establishment Republicans in suits. They have fancy lunches, they talk about fiscal responsibility, like, you know, those people. And frankly, the Republican Party is pretty good at understanding power in that way, I think. 

Mónica:

In what way? Can you articulate, when you say in that way, what do you mean? 

April:

I mean that I feel like reds, and I think this is because reds are skeptical of human nature, and so, we say people are not that good. And then we say like, okay, so if you want power, you’ve got to play the game. And then we’re pretty good at playing the game. Like the, you know, we understand that like Washington works a certain way. Money works a certain way. We’re not internally conflicted about that and the way that it feels like blues often are. But the third type is, is the disaffected, right? There’s a real rise in the political force of people who believe that the deck is rigged. And they also believe the power is pretty fixed.

Like the people you were talking about, because it really is a burn it down kind of approach, like, I don’t like government, get rid of the government, if he makes the government dysfunctional all the better, like, it’s a very, yeah, it’s different. 

Mónica:

Yeah. Yeah. And I’m, I’m hearing my parents’ voices, you know, in the sense I hear you and I, the way my parents see it, the way, the way many, many reds have seen it is like, the deck really is rigged. And so there need to be ginormous changes, ginormous. And if burn it all down, sounds bad, then so be it. It still needs to change, and we don’t have any other levers we feel we can pull. So, we’re going to pull this one and root for serious disruption because maybe then, like my dad has told me, maybe then it’ll feel like what seems false and not serving this country, the way we think it ought to, it will go away. And so, boy, there’s a whole lot there.

All right, so the third pillar in how to citizen is to value and commit to the collective. Super curious to hear what you thought of this piece with reds, blues and all of it. 

April:

All of it. Well, the first thing is I’m really glad that Baratunde offered that trigger warning. The first time I heard the word collective, I was like, collective. (laughing) – 

Mónica:

So, he was right!

April:

Oh yeah.

Mónica:

Oh okay, ’cause I didn’t immediately catch it. 

April:

Oh yeah. And it took me a second to be like, oh wait, this is– what he means. He means community. He means local group. He means a bunch of stuff that I like a lot. That word is such a barrier that I, oh, I don’t know. I like wish we could use a different one because I feel like there’s, and I also think that there’s this idea that the right is the more individualistic of the two. And I don’t necessarily think that’s true. I just think that 

Mónica:

Really?

April:

Mmmhmm.

Mónica: 

Okay, say more. I’m surprised you say that. I thought you were just gonna be like, yeah, of course, the right tends to be more individualistic. 

April:

You like individuals and you like groups. I know. No, no. I think the reason people think that is that we think about it in relation to the government. So, like, the right is much more about like, let’s not have the government involved because we don’t want to have that be our group. Like, I, a friend of mine talks about his dad in Mississippi, who like, you know, watches Fox News all day every day. And like, if they see about it, hear about a disaster on the news, they will drive there, they will like get in their cars and go. They’ll like buy a bunch of water bottles, you know, get whatever supplies they may have and literally show up to help people. And so, I feel like that’s how that shows up.

Politically, it can show up as individualism because there is this sense of you got to take care of yourself, don’t wait for a handout, don’t wait for the government. But that doesn’t at all mean that reds don’t value the collective in this sense. It just means that, that they don’t want the government to really be involved in it.

Reds are more comfortable with collectives. And this actually almost goes to the family thing with collectives that are kind of fixed. Like, I feel like blues. have this, like we’re all in a community, one great big, amazing giant magical community. And I sort of love that about them. And also, I’m very comfortable with communities that are like, no, you weren’t born here, but you can be part, you can be here. But like, it’s not the same as if you were born here. And see, I see you narrowing your eyes again. 

Mónica:

Well, I just made the connection to what you were talking about fixed power. and power that moves. Fixed communities and communities that move. 

April:

Yes. Well,

Mónica:

you’re talking about that a bit. 

April:

And I don’t want to, I don’t want to misspeak. I think that Reds are some of the most welcoming people you’ll find.

By the way, brief aside, can you hear my dog? A little. I can fix that. She dropped a bone behind something and she’s like attacking it with full force. Give me just a second.

Monica:

You bet. Go for it. 

April:

All right. We feel better. The obstacle has been removed. The bone has been acquired. Anyway, so back in the zone.

So, I don’t want to, I want to be careful. I’m not trying to draw a caricature and reds are incredibly welcoming. Like the best churches and other religious communities, you know, because they’re so warm, like you walk in and you immediately are embraced. And I think that it’s, if you’re like on the blue side there’s this idea that if anybody isn’t automatically allowed into a community that that’s bad and I don’t think that’s so much there on on the the red side. I think you know, it’s okay to be part of some things and not part of others and…

Mónica:

Right

April:

…for those to come with different trappings like it’s okay for the Boy Scouts to just be for boys. kind of thing. 

Mónica:

Well, this is a great, great point of contrast on community. I’m so glad you brought this up. This is fun. 

April:

Okay.

Mónica:

Wow, interesting. You know, I think what blues are, and I would say this is very good, very concerned about, is that if you draw sort of fixed lines on community and say it’s okay that there are so many communities with fixed lines, let’s have them all be fixed lines. There won’t be some people with no communities. It won’t be fair. And it won’t be right. 

April:

Hmm. That’s fair.

Mónica:

And so if we had, I would say, if we had…if we could be confident that there’s enough to catch us all, which sounds like a Pokémon, gotta catch them all. But if there’s enough to catch us all, then fine. But because of those patterns that exist, I think we know that there isn’t. Or at least we blues intuit that there wouldn’t be.

And so, we have to have, I think blues would say we have to have some community. with very porous borders where we are constantly asking what the right criteria are. 

April:

I totally hear the concern about what about the people who fall through the cracks. Because there are those people, and it is not fine. 

Mónica:

It is not. And this comes back to power, right? Because the blue side is really conscious of the groups who don’t, who aren’t naturally in fixed communities that one could say have the most dominance or power. This is at least the blue theory, which I do not immediately reject. And so that’s the theory, I think, behind that. There’s one more, there’s one thing I wanted to pull out that Baratunde said, and it’s because of that tension between the individual and the community, the individual, the community, and the… the beautiful story that he told from Oregon, my goodness, how profound and devastating and beautiful that was to listen to.

And I kept thinking in that moment, I do worry that sometimes if you value the collective, the community, what that can mean is that you might not know what to do when your story that you… carry, maybe just yourself, is suddenly incompatible with the assumptions and stories around you. That’s where leaning in on the power of individualism can be quite cool and to find strength in that. Because what he did, he saw that his story was incompatible, that something was going on. He knew that probably no one there had any clue what was in his mind.

And there were all these assumptions, and the show must go on, and all this stuff. But he found that power to say, “this is where I stop and I have to come to the ground before I explain why, if I even want to explain why.” And so that felt to me like it’s one of the kinds of power of the individual that so many of us feel we can’t exercise or that we won’t be allowed to or that we will be judged so harshly.

So, we hide ourselves and like civic power we have to be able to grow and express somehow with confidence what we’re feeling and and put it into that communal space and invite others to receive it. I loved his language about receiving my story. He said that when the arborist embraced him it was like he received that story and he brought it into his own story. 

April:

Absolutely. Oh my gosh, Moni, we’ve talked for so long about what does it mean to write a story that we all wanna be part of, right? About who America is, who we are, all of that. And that seems like exactly how you do it. You are sufficiently honest that, and if you’re on the other end, sufficiently open, that that story can be part of your story. And I’ve just loved that part. I think also that in my experience, people do that. If you are honest with them, not always, right? Not every person. But that is so much more likely to happen if you tell the whole thing. I don’t think there’s an obligation to do that, just that it is actually how we build the answer,

Mónica:

Yes! Which brings us to the fourth pillar. His fourth pillar is that, how to citizen. You invest in relationships, citizening by investing in relationships. So you were saying that there’s something about, oh gosh, could you say it again? 

April:

Yes, I mean, you’re right. It’s a perfect segue. In fact, we’ve already sort of gone there that like being willing to, or being, we could say, able but I also think it’s willing like you have to take a risk and like go ahead and say it and tell the whole story not just the Cliff Notes that make it safe because that’s the only way that people will build the sort of two protagonist or seven protagonist or however many like hero stories and that’s the thing we all want to be part of and it’s I think one of the reasons that these exercises get so difficult is that it’s not a simple story. It will never be a simple story. But it can exist. And we can feel it and identify with it and like be in it and love it.

And like, it can be big enough for all of us. Like that’s, but it only happens through actual relating. 

Mónica:

I want to bring to you a question that I got recently at one of my sort of talks at universities. And not going to do justice to how eloquently the question was put by a student, but it was basically about some of us aren’t such articulate communicators. It’s really difficult to carve out for ourselves these paths that can lead people to kind of, you know, just kind of sculpting carefully. And Baratunde is excellent at this when you watch this episode. It was a very, very, fluent with the power that language has to build these spaces and exercise this kind of, this very difficult kind of empathy. But I mean, I know that that’s not a requirement, I know it.

But I think a lot of people think it is, that you have to be just really good with words and really… just on the ball for these things. I think we forget what we already know. We assume we have to read textbooks and take workshops, but this is actually the language that we are equipped to be most fluent in is each other. If we just take the time and the opportunity to be open enough, not just to share our stories bravely, but to receive theirs. 

April:

Totally and I honestly see no particular difference between reds and blues on this. I think it’s this is a human thing. I just think that this is a thing that most people know without being taught and it’s unfortunate that somehow, we are taught that there are certain ways of talking that are like worth listening to and other ways.

Like, it seems to me that it’s more about voice than it is about language. People will say it’s about language. It’s sort of like how people are get really blocked about spelling. Like, if you’re a writer, but you can’t spell, people will just stop writing. It’s like, no, that wasn’t the point!

Mónica:

That shouldn’t matter. It’s technical. It’s technicality. 

April:

Yeah.

Mónica:

Well, once again, April, I feel like we have taken quite a tour.

April:

Yeah.

Mónica:

Thank you, April, as always. 

April:

And thank you. This was great. I loved it. 

Mónica:

Before we move on, I want to tell you about one of our supporting partners. Have you ever been in a conversation where you felt misunderstood for your beliefs? Or seen a news article that misrepresented your side of things the way you see it? Allsides.com helps people get outside their filter bubbles. So we appreciate differences of opinion and find something closer to truth. It’s politically balanced newsfeed serves up news from the left, center, and right, all side by side, so you can spot what you think is bias and think for yourself. Spotting bias is not easy, but as a long -time journalist I can tell you, they’ve made something of a science out of it.

Their newsfeed is powered by over 1,400 Allsides media bias ratings that rely on the judgment of everyday Americans, not one elite group. They also host conversations to help us communicate across divides. Check out the newsfeed and help rate media bias yourself at Allsides.com.

With that, I’m ready to send you brave souls back to your worlds with a song.

(upbeat music) 

It’s called “That’s the Way We Climb” by Judd Caswell, a songwriter and performer and a Braver Angels volunteer. Take a listen. 

(song)

♪Looking at the mountain and it seems too steep to climb. Looking at the mountain and it seems too steep to climb. It takes a lot of courage and it takes a lot of time But one foot in front of the other One foot in front of the other. That’s the way we climb ♪ 

(music under)

Thanks everyone so much for joining us on A Braver Way! If this episode sparked questions or you want to share with us, trust me when I say we can’t wait to hear them. You can always reach us at abraverway@braverangels .org or join our brand new text line to check in throughout the season from right there on your phone. To get started, just text the word “Brave” to 206 -926 -9955. That’s 9955.

A Braver Way is produced by Braver Angels and distributed in partnership with KUOW and Deseret News. We get financial support from the M.J Murdock Charitable Trust and Reclaim Curiosity and count USA Facts as a proud sponsor. Our senior producer and editor is David Albright. Our producer is Jessica Jones. My disagreement buddy is April Lawson. Our theme music is by the fantastic #1 Billboard Bluegrass Charting Hip Hop Band, Gangstagrass. A special thanks to Ben Caron, Don Goldberg, Gabbi Timmis and Katelin Annes. I’m your host and guide across the divide, Mónica Guzmán. Take heart, everyone. Until next time. 

(music up)

♪ And looking at yourself seems there’s nothing you can do ♪ 

♪ Looking at yourself it seems there’s nothing you can do ♪

♪ But if you do the best you can, well I will do it too ♪ 

♪ And we’ll lean upon each other, lean upon each other ♪ 

♪ Lean upon each other, that’s what we can do ♪

 ♪ And at the distance, it seems too far to go 

♪ at the distance, and it seems too far to go 

♪The road that leads to justice may be longer than we know♪ 

♪But what if one foot in front of the other One foot in front of the other One foot where that’s the way we go mountain and it seems too steep to climb♪

♪looking at the mountain and it seems too steep to climb♪ 

♪it takes a little of courage,it takes a lot of time. ♪ 

♪We’re going foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. ♪ 

♪That’s the way we climb. ♪

♪We’re going foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. One foot…♪