Speaker 1: What's the Wednesday, April sixteenth, we are dropping our third
Speaker 1: story in this week of citizen ing, this how to
Speaker 1: Citizens story sprint, and this one is about division allegedly.
Speaker 1: So I was talking with John Alexander. We have like
Speaker 1: a group chat going with me, him, Elizabeth and Shira
Speaker 1: to run this little sprint, this project, and he hit
Speaker 1: me with a note that I want to weave into
Speaker 1: the setup for this story. And he's like, look, there
Speaker 1: is this nationalization of the story of division, and we
Speaker 1: have these big old.
Speaker 2: Headlines about how divided we are.
Speaker 1: But when you zoom in at any local level, in
Speaker 1: any community, you find people who trying.
Speaker 2: To live together, trying to work it out. And that's
Speaker 2: what this story is today.
Speaker 1: I mean, we are obviously divided, but I remember some
Speaker 1: of you may remember Tim Phillips episode of How the
Speaker 1: Citizen audio podcast where he talks about these consistent studies
Speaker 1: that we think we're more divided than we are. We
Speaker 1: think the quote unquote other sides hates us more than
Speaker 1: they do, and that's a perception challenge.
Speaker 2: It's also a manipulation.
Speaker 1: Experience that there is benefit to someone from making us
Speaker 1: think that we're not aligned here. So part of what
Speaker 1: we need to do is drop down a level, get
Speaker 1: literally closer to the ground, closer to where we live, locals,
Speaker 1: where it's at.
Speaker 2: And I mean I remember when I was even doing.
Speaker 1: Campaigning for Obama local, it was much harder to be
Speaker 1: you know, talking trash on people's front porch, like to
Speaker 1: their face, and so the coarseness of the dialogue that
Speaker 1: is so easy to perform on social media and at
Speaker 1: a distance, you know, slinging mud at states far away,
Speaker 1: at Washington, It's just harder to do that in community.
Speaker 1: People you see at the market, people you see when
Speaker 1: you drop your kids off at school, and that those
Speaker 1: zones have been infected with that.
Speaker 2: Same poison of division.
Speaker 1: And there's an antidote, which is investing in relationships. That's
Speaker 1: one of the big pillars of how the citizen. Those
Speaker 1: who've been on this feed for a while know that
Speaker 1: we repeat it ad nauseum. If you're new, we got
Speaker 1: one of these principles of citizen as a verb is
Speaker 1: to invest in relationships with yourself, with others and the
Speaker 1: planet around you. And once you establish relationship, it's just
Speaker 1: harder to demonize and vilify and see someone as an enemy,
Speaker 1: even as they may still be your opponent, even as
Speaker 1: you may still have real disagreements. So that's the spirit
Speaker 1: of today's offering. I think the story is shorter than
Speaker 1: my setup for it, but I'm just going to use
Speaker 1: this audio feed to provide a bit more context and
Speaker 1: lay the ground for what you're about to hear. Please
Speaker 1: go to story howtositizen dot com. Join the email lists.
Speaker 1: We will do some kind of summary wrap up thing.
Speaker 1: We're dropping an update every day to drive to these stories,
Speaker 1: their video stories. So you're obviously on an audio feed
Speaker 1: here in this and you can find those video stories
Speaker 1: linked right from those email newsletters. They are linked in
Speaker 1: my own substack newsletter dot baritunday dot com.
Speaker 2: Be very easy.
Speaker 1: I'll keep them archived there, and they're linked on social
Speaker 1: media on LinkedIn for me and John, and on Instagram
Speaker 1: for me, baratun Day for how to Citizen the account,
Speaker 1: and for the citizens guy plural that's John. So giving
Speaker 1: you a lot of places to engage. Please comment, please share,
Speaker 1: Please lift up other examples where you see people building bridges,
Speaker 1: building deep relationship across division to move the community forward,
Speaker 1: and in today's case, that community it's for the cheering
Speaker 1: it's about school boards. So enjoy and I'm liking this
Speaker 1: voice memo mode.
Speaker 2: No big studio, no big.
Speaker 1: Mic, just talking louder than I should into my smartphone.
Speaker 1: Let's get smart. We'll deal with all the noise and
Speaker 1: the nonsense in a real good way.
Speaker 2: Love.
Speaker 1: If we only see stories of how divided we are,
Speaker 1: we're going to be divided.
Speaker 2: That's the national story.
Speaker 1: But when you zoom in on any community, you find
Speaker 1: people trying to live together, neighbors who want to be neighborly.
Speaker 1: This is the story of two neighbors who built relationship across.
Speaker 2: Their division as members of the school board.
Speaker 1: This local story is happening all over the nation, which
Speaker 1: kind of makes it a national story.
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder why you're not hearing it more.
Speaker 3: It was very contentious. There was a lot of tension
Speaker 3: on the school board, to the point where the communication
Speaker 3: had really broken down and the board was not able
Speaker 3: to address the shoes that school boards need to address
Speaker 3: and make the kinds of decisions they need to make
Speaker 3: because they couldn't have hard conversations in a productive way.
Speaker 3: I had been on the board for like five seconds
Speaker 3: and he was like, yep, you're gonna be the brig
Speaker 3: builder us. Like Lance, that's a lot of pressure in here.
Speaker 2: We've got some different viewpoints on some things.
Speaker 1: When I realized over the courts of time, maybe our
Speaker 1: viewpoints wasn't as far apart as what I thought.
Speaker 3: Lance and Steph were both participants in our Uniting to
Speaker 3: Prevent Targeted Violence in South Central Pennsylvania program. He would
Speaker 3: not characterize himself as a liberal, although he leans liberal
Speaker 3: on a lot of issues, particularly the kinds of issues
Speaker 3: that tend to face school boards. Steph is also a
Speaker 3: community member in Chambersburg. She would characterize herself as conservative.
Speaker 3: In our Uniting for Action programs, we intentionally teach the
Speaker 3: community members who are participating to develop active listening skills
Speaker 3: and to explore each other's perspectives across difference from a
Speaker 3: perspective of curiosity. They built this really enduring relationship such
Speaker 3: that when Steph was elected to the board, the existing
Speaker 3: board members expected that she would join the right leaning contingent,
Speaker 3: and Lance was already on the sort of left leaning contingent,
Speaker 3: if we can call it that. But they refused to
Speaker 3: buy into that narrative. They resisted this intense pressure really
Speaker 3: to polarize and to demonize, and were able to really
Speaker 3: shift the dynamic on the school board to make it
Speaker 3: much more productive.