A Braver Angels PSA
Participants and observers in a Braver Angels workshop, focused on abortion, in Grants Pass, Oregon reflect on their experience and the influence of Braver Angels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWK3v_SNie8&
Braver Angels Dispatch
Reports from organizers, members and volunteers across the country
Dispatch: Some Thoughts from David Sable, and a Big Announcement for Braver Angels
Last Wednesday, almost 350 Better Angels members tuned in to the April BA member meeting, where a well-kept secret was finally revealed. But before the big announcement, a special guest joined us to discuss the state of social media. David Sable, a former global CEO of Young & Rubicam, a marketing and communications consulting firm, …
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Dispatch: Finding Middle Ground in Divided Times
She was showing me how to open her door. I was going to house-sit, and there was something glitchy about the deadbolt that had to be done just right. “Like this,” she said, miming the procedure. “Put the key in and turn to the right …” “No, Mom,” her young son interrupted. “You turn it …
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This Thanksgiving: Stay Curious and Kind, but Not Silent
It was after dinner – sometime during the mid-1970s. I was dancing around the living room when our telephone rang. My mom answered the call, which happened to be from my ballet teacher. Their conversation was serious and, oddly, unrelated to the upcoming dance recital. When my mom hung up, she sighed deeply and said: …
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Dispatch: One Year After the Kavanaugh Hearings
A year ago today, Christine Blasey Ford went public with a sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I can’t recall in my lifetime a controversy steeped in such bitter divisiveness. It felt like the nation underwent a collective root canal on a very raw nerve. Whether one believed Ford or Kavanaugh was …
Dispatch: Economic Nationalism Can Help Fight Social Breakdown
By an anonymous Braver Angels Member and Trump Supporter Ever since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the word “nationalism” has become connected to domestic terrorism. It is regularly asserted that domestic white nationalist terrorism is the greatest terrorist threat confronting our nation. The New Zealand mosque and El Paso shootings seem to …
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Dispatch: Diversifying With Idiots
What’s the number one problem facing our country? In an October 2018 poll by the Pew Research Center, the most popular choices included health care, ethics in government, drug addiction, gun violence, the federal budget deficit, and the gap between the rich and the poor. But, in my view, none of those is even close. …
Dispatch: To Decrease Polarization More People Need to “Come Out”
Political polarization has seemingly reached a boiling point. The last few years have given us a congressman shot at a pickup softball game, politicians and figures in the media receiving explosive devices in the mail, college students punched for their political views, death threats galore, and harassment of public people in public places. What can …
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Dispatch- Employing BA Methods in the University Classroom
By Joaquin Munoz I have been a Braver Angels moderator since the fall of 2017, when I trained under Bill Doherty to learn how I could help depolarize America. As a teacher, I was deeply drawn to developing skills of facilitating challenging conversations with people. As I completed the training, and began to facilitate Skills …
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Dispatch: Practicing the Braver Angels Way
Editor’s Note: This is adapted from one of Mr. Baker’s Facebook statuses, reprinted here with his permission. Mr. Baker is a member of the board of Braver Angels. My experience in social media has taught me that one of the most wrenching and painful things you can do is to try and get people to …
Dispatch: Where Are the John McCains?
I love John Wood. He’s become one of my best friends, conservative or liberal, within Braver Angels. If he decides in the future to run again for public office as a Republican, I’ll support him and vote for him. However, as a moderate blue, I disagree with his latest post, The Tweets of Wrath. Too …
About the Braver Angels Social Media Pledge
The social media landscape may be the Wild West of political conversation. But if we have some basic ground rules, and make an effort to bring our best selves to the discussion, it’s possible to raise the level of our discourse, and maybe provide an example that can start to move the needle—just a little bit—in the larger online conversation.
Introducing: The Braver Angels California Office
With your help, we can turn the passion our California activists and staff have into results on the ground, and help bolster the influence of an organization that we all love.
When Angels Argue Online About Violence
Why did discussion of a principle we all agreed with (non-violence) wind up polarizing us?
Braver Angels Super-Heroes
Molid, my Lyft driver, emanated an electric gratitude for life and all its blessings and his story reminded me of what is possible.
The Guy Behind the Tweets Speaks
Greetings from the social media desk as I, the lead social media manager for Braver Angels, step out from behind the pixelated curtain to write a quick dispatch.
Vision for the Los Angeles Better Angels Alliance
Here’s what our vision is for how to grow our Alliance moving forward.
A Better Angels Benefit – New Friends
I joined Braver Angels to help depolarize America – to help America. I am finding that in the process I am expanding my circle of friends – some red, some blue – and that is a real “Better Angles” benefit – that benefits me as much as benefits America.
Our Crown Jewels, Untended
A little walk in the woods in America’s National Parks could help remind us what we’re here for.
Sacramento Alliance Holds Media Panel to Increase Exposure
Why Hold a Different Kind of Braver Angels Event?
Better Angels Holiday Tips
The Holidays are stressful enough with busyness, gift buying, and too much family togetherness. But now many families are divided into red and blue political camps. Get these tips for avoiding melt downs during the Holidays.
Talking Across the Political Divide
Goals for these Conversations You learn about the perspectives, feelings, and experiences of someone you care about who differs from you politically. You have a sense of satisfaction about how you conveyed your own perspective, feelings, and experiences. You discover some common ground if it’s there. Expectations to Abandon That you can persuade the other …
Skills for Communicating Across the Political Divide
Better Angels co-founder Bill Doherty, in a talk to students and faculty at the University of Minnesota in Rochester, teaches and demonstrates how to talk with people who differ from you politically and how to depolarize conversations so that they can be more productive and less damaging to relationships.
Better Angels Skills for Thanksgiving Conversations
How to Stop a Thanksgiving Dinner Debacle Group conversations are like water: they run downhill—at the speed of the most argumentative or agitated family member. Here are ways to head them off. 1. Propose a no-politics ground rule up front “I’d like to propose that we not talk politics during our Thanksgiving dinner. Is that …
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