The Braver Angels organization hopes to teach voters how to bridge the partisan divide

by TOM FIEDLER

We begin this story by recalling relevant wisdom from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address:

“We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection,” the newly elected president said in March 1861 as civil war loomed. “… The mystic chords of memory … will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Safeya Carpano knows what it’s like to be born and to grow up in a country where democracy and the freedom to challenge authority are literally foreign concepts. Now living in Asheville, she’s an immigrant from Bahrain, which for two centuries has been governed by hereditary leaders claiming the divine right of kings.

I met Safeya in a South Asheville church hall, where she had joined with a bipartisan gathering of strangers who, like her, were troubled by the growing vitriol of public discourse and the barriers being erected that threaten friendships and ties to loved ones.

Safeya had an additional concern to share with the others that night, one that went above personal relationships: She fears for the future of American democracy and the fate of a country she’s considered the unassailable bulwark against the kind of one-person rule she recalled from her childhood.

But on this night, Safeya acknowledged she wasn’t certain the bulwark would hold.

“I never, never thought in my life,” she said, leaning toward the listeners seated around a large table and raising her voice, “that democracy would be so delicate.”

The better angels of our nature

Lincoln likely shared the same thought when he delivered the immortal phrase calling on the citizens of the young democracy – though bitterly divided on the issue of slavery — to listen to the “better angels of our nature” counseling friendship rather than partisan division. Though his words lived on, his hopes didn’t and the nation fell into civil war.

Safeya is among many Americans who share concern about the nation’s future. A survey by the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service in March found that 81% of its bipartisan respondents said they believe democracy is being threatened by the partisan rifts among voters. Pollster Celinda Lake said the polarized attitudes reflected a nation “remarkably close to civil war.”

The nearly three dozen people who gathered in the Skyland United Methodist Church hall with Safeya attended because of those rifts. They are members of the Braver Angels, a nonprofit, Western North Carolina group of Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters who are united by the concern that a poisonous political environment threatens to sever common bonds that hold the nation together.

In place of party labels, some have identified as Reds (the conservatives) and wear name tags in that color. A near equal number wear tags as Blues (progressives) and a few have a white tag denoting they have no firm ideology.

Each was assigned to sit at a large table where they mixed with others of different labels, which – they would learn later in the evening – would earn them the description of “braver.”

The participants greeted one another politely. But when prompted by the program’s moderator, many readily acknowledged that their polarized views on contentious issues – abortion, gun ownership, election integrity, immigration, and the venomous presidential campaign – have cost them friendships, business connections, and the love from and for relatives.

A simple, but daunting mission

This is the point of the Braver Angels, an organization inspired by Lincoln’s call to strengthen the bonds that tie Americans together as a national community and to muffle the toxic disagreements that often destroy relationships. The gathering in the Skyland United Methodist hall was hosted by the organization’s local “alliance,” one of seven in North Carolina and 111 across the nation.

Its mission is at once simple and daunting: To bridge the partisan divide in an effort to strengthen our democratic republic. But to the people in the church hall, that comes down to the very personal.

“I’ve got a really good friend, somebody I really care about, who is very pro-Trump,” said Vikki Trupin, a self-described liberal whom I met in the church hall. “But now we can’t get near each other in case something happens from a political standpoint that just might cause us to blow up.”

Tom Daily, a retired minister, co-founded the Asheville-based alliance of Braver Angels in 2019, attracted by its mission to foster “amicable conversation” among political opposites. Like other clergy, he’d seen partisan divisions affect his congregation. Braver Angels appealed to him as a place to learn, and then to teach, techniques to enable people to disagree without being disagreeable.

The initial group consisted of four Democrats (the Blues) and four Republicans (the Reds), which was just enough to affiliate with the fledgling national organization that launched after the bitter 2016 presidential campaign.

“In 2016 there were disagreements,” Daily recalled in an interview. “But the disagreements didn’t have the vehemence that I hear today from some people.

“Back then,” Daily continued, “I didn’t hear people saying that they would kill each other.”

‘Braver’ Angels

The organization incorporated under the name “Better Angels” because it found inspiration in Lincoln’s iconic phrase. But after a court ruled that the phrase is trademarked by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, the adjective “braver” was substituted for “better.” The change had the benefit of implying that a willingness to reach across the angry partisan divide was an act of courage.

The Western Carolina alliance’s growth has been slow and not without setbacks. The founding Red chairwoman resigned after facing criticism for her willingness to collaborate with Democrats, I was told, and she declined to speak to Asheville Watchdog about it. It now has 140 members with near equal numbers of Reds and Blues, and 450 subscribers to the organization’s newsletter.

Its mission of “attempting to revive the communal spirit of American democracy” has been embraced by other civic organizations, locally and nationally, such as the League of Women Voters, numerous churches and synagogues, universities, elected officials, and celebrities such as Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary.

Democratic State Rep. Caleb Rudow, an early member of the group, helped organize a Braver Angels town hall in Raleigh hosted by the University of North Carolina School of Government in the hope of stimulating bipartisanship in the Republican-dominated state Assembly.

It brought Democrats and Republicans together from the House of Representatives “to show us how to talk to each other on controversial subjects,” he said.

Rudow, the Asheville Democrat who is seeking to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards in the November election, said gatherings like this may help lawmakers see one another less as perennial opponents and more as colleagues with different views on how to serve the people.

“It’s one extra push toward friendship, and it’s all we’ve got,” Rudow said.

The local alliance offers several ways for people to engage across the partisan divide. For Braver Angels members who pay the $1 monthly dues, there are forums focused on a specific topic.

Unlike a debate, each participant opens with the phrase “This I believe” and is allowed to express an opinion without interruption. No other participant may challenge a speaker’s views and all statements must be made to the session moderator, not to another speaker.

“It keeps the temperature down,” said Alan Young, a frequent moderator who brings with him a background as a marriage counselor.

Seeking common ground

Several times a year the alliance organizes town-hall-style events open to anyone who accepts these ground rules: They must identify as a Red, Blue, or Other, and agree to work alongside participants professing opposing views.

This sorting and mixing of opposites is central to what Braver Angels literature calls “depolarizing” techniques, many of which are borrowed from counseling, corporate negotiation, and diplomacy.

“The whole premise,” said Trupin, a leader in the local group who has been trained in these techniques, “is to be able to find common ground with somebody who thinks differently than we do so we can become friends.”

“Then we can talk about things like football or the weather and not just be angry at each other.”

In Braver Angels gatherings these methods are applied methodically to guide political opposites to work together to find points of agreement on contentious issues – albeit sometimes on narrow points.

All members must complete a questionnaire answering such questions as, “Do I find myself assigning self-serving or negative motives to the other group?” or “Do I feel a rush of pleasure with friends when we ridicule those crazies on the other political side?”

They also are asked to measure on a graphic scale their emotional attitudes toward people on “the other side” along a spectrum of hatred to respect & admiration. And they must define “the other side” on that scale between the poles of They are enemies to They have a lot to contribute. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the left side of that scale is much more populated than the right side.

Based on these answers, moderators assign participants to the various discussion groups, always in the same proportion of Red and Blue.

Moderators are trained in the depolarizing techniques to try to prevent discussions from turning into arguments — a goal not always attained — and in enforcing rules of civil conduct.

Sherry Warner, the Red chairperson of the local alliance, told me that all interactions among participants must follow an overarching rule: No participant “can try to change another’s mind.”

“The purpose isn’t to convert someone,” she said. “It’s to understand why they believe as they do.”

The simple act of listening

A successful outcome often results from the simple act of listening respectfully to an opposing opinion. “Sometimes as you listen, you think, ‘This person isn’t as different from me as I thought,’” Warner said. From that, a friendship may grow.

Conversely, she said, a speaker who may begin speaking in aggressive tones, expecting pushback, often will soften the tone upon realizing that no challenge is forthcoming.

Daily, the Blue counterpart, said this reflects the goal of every gathering, “to create a space where people can safely say what they feel.”

“You can’t find common ground if you yell at people,” Daily said.

Among the community-building events the alliance organizes is one called a “This I believe” discussion. I was invited to observe one of these, which was held on Zoom and happened to be held two days after President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump met in what became a pivotal television debate.

I expected strong emotions from the opposing sides in the aftermath of Biden’s halting performance.

The evenly divided participants were invited individually by the moderator to express his or her reactions to the debate. Young was careful to alternate between Red and Blue participants and to apply the no-confrontation ground rule.

The Blues’ comments were mostly lamentations on Biden’s performance, with some predicting his reelection was doomed. One called the debate “a complete disaster” because, she said, Biden’s weak demeanor rendered Trump the winner by forfeit.

Then, unlike her teammates, she took aim at the Republican nominee. “All [Trump] did was lie,” she said.

To my surprise, none on the Red side expressed strong opinions about Biden’s fumbling. But neither did any show enthusiasm for Trump. “It’s like watching the final quarter of a football game and realizing that you don’t like either team,” a Red speaker said.

Warner, the Red team leader, said she also was disappointed in what she had seen from both candidates, but she tepidly rose to Trump’s defense, saying to the moderator, “I don’t think everything Trump said was a lie.”

Young closed the session with praise for the participants’ “honesty” and said it had demonstrated the “values of being able to speak in a very candid way so that each of us could understand where each one’s coming from.”

The Braver Angels alliance also organizes external training sessions where participants learn “how to disagree better,” methods enabling people with different opinions to disagree without being disagreeable. Corporations, church congregations, college classes, and social groups often take advantage of these trainings.

The gathering at the Skyland United Methodist Church in July had a different purpose in being structured as a workshop with a unique composition: Despite their political differences — or because of them — Reds and Blues were assigned to work together to address a contentious issue impacting the integrity of elections.

The question: Could they find some common ground?

Trustworthy elections

“Trustworthy elections” is one of several topics the organization encourages its local chapters to tackle in gatherings such as this one. These include race relations, religious divisions, Trump’s legal entanglements, immigration, voter suppression, abortion rights, gun control, and school book bans.

Safeya Carpano, Vikki Trupin, Caleb Rudow, and two dozen others had come to the church that evening to confront — literally — the roiling debate over what constitutes a “trustworthy election.”

Among the topics were ballot security, the peaceful transfer of power, confidence in the accuracy of the vote count, partisan gerrymandering, transparency of the process, and voter eligibility. Partisan lines on all these and other election-related issues are sharply drawn.

Trump continues not only to falsely claim that he won the 2020 election, he refuses to say whether he’ll accept the result of the 2024 balloting.

Yet, that night the Reds and Blues managed amicably to reach some agreement on steps that can be taken to build public trust in the process. A strong majority recommended that political gerrymandering — drawing election districts to benefit one party or the other — be abolished, in part by taking the power to draw district lines out of politicians’ hands. For the organizers, the outcome affirmed the efficacy of the Braver Angels approach to building civic community.

But even they concede that what works in a Braver Angels forum may not work in the broader electorate.

“The people that Braver Angels attracts are willing to listen to the other side,” said Warner, the Red co-chair. Daily, her Blue counterpart, describes the organization’s members as being “optimists by nature” inclined to seek solutions rather than to erect obstacles.

The limits of bridge building

Some issues, however, have proved to be too provocative for even dedicated Braver Angels members to address. Trupin told me she participated in a workshop on abortion rights at the Braver Angels national convention in July that revealed the limits of bridge building. The divided participants were challenged to find a response to the Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that might satisfy both the anti-abortion and the reproductive-rights sides.

Neither side budged, Trupin said, and tempers rose to the point that the moderator called a halt.

“I was proud of myself for not blowing up,” Trupin said, “but I left the session with my heart rate racing.”

The lesson she took away: “When you start talking about abortion, you’re hitting on people’s senses of morality, on their religious beliefs, not on their understanding of medical science,” Trupin said. “You can’t say to abortion opponents, ‘Here’s the empirical evidence,’ because for them it’s not about science.”

Todd Lester, who has organized several of the local alliance’s community workshops, said voters who refuse to consider the arguments of others are locked in “monocultures” where only the beliefs of “their tribe” are heard.

Disagree better

But even when minds aren’t changed and common ground isn’t found, Lester contends there is a benefit to the Braver Angels approach. When two people on opposite sides of a hot-button issue are able to disagree without becoming disagreeable, that is success, he said.

“It’s about learning to disagree better. We’re here only to change the way we look at each other, not to change our points of view,” Lester said.

Whether these efforts can stop or reverse the current dark mood remains unanswered. Membership in Braver Angels remains small, with the national organization claiming 54,920 participants, and 13,810 dues-paying members, including the 140 in Asheville, in 108 chapters.

And while the local alliance has ably recruited members from both major political parties, these participants are predominately white, have spare time, are well into or beyond middle age, and tend to represent the moderate middle of their parties.

The leaders acknowledge that their ability to break through the media noise with a positive message during a poisonous campaign will be difficult. “The media doesn’t seem interested in positive news,” Daily said.

But to an immigrant like Safeya, the organization’s mission is worthy of support. She became a U.S. citizen in 2001 and marveled at the nation’s resilience through such crises as 9/11 , wars in the Middle East and, until 2021, two peaceful presidential transitions from opposing political parties.

For that, she credited voters’ confidence in the nation’s history and governing institutions. That’s no longer the case, Safeya told me in a written exchange in which she expressed her fears for her adopted country’s future.

“In these past eight to 10 years there has been an erosion of the guardrails that keep our institutions strong,” she wrote. “And when the people in position to protect our democracy are the ones who are eroding it, it shows how fragile and delicate democracy is.”

Lincoln would understand.

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Tom Fiedler reports on politics and elections, and was a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter and executive editor at The Miami Herald. To show your support for this vital public service to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/