David Eisners's List of the "Urgent Responsibilities of Bridgers"

In Newsletter 339, David wrote that "bridging work — bringing people together, building trust, finding common ground and pursuing shared goals — is critical to putting out the fires of Rome, so long as change-makers are also speeding down the other parallel lanes of effort." (The "fires of Rome" referred to our question about whether we were "fiddling while Rome burns.") The "other parallel lanes of effort" David listed were structural reforms, recruiting and electing more responsive politicians, remaking  institutions in more trustworthy ways, building intolerance for divisiveness, better including the voices of people who have lost faith or feel "they don't belong," and building citizen led-deliberative and decision-making frameworks. (This is shortening David's lengthier descriptions. You can see his full list here.) But, David pointed out, in order for any of these other activities to be successful, they need to use bridging strategies to carry out their work. Therefore, David argued, "It is incumbent on us bridgers to continually infuse all the other elements of the renew-democracy ecosystem with the approaches, skills and best practices that bridging offers to increase their odds of success."

In his P.S. which we published in Newsletter 339, David added:

To my list of the urgent responsibilities of bridgers at this moment, I should have added that we [bridgers] serve as a critical portal for ideas on each side to be heard, understood, and considered by the other. Both the Trump-oppositional pro-democracy community and the community championing Trump’s actions and agenda are too angry and inflexible to excavate value from the other. Yet each must learn from the other’s perspective if we are to get out of our quagmire. The Braver Angels Way asserts correctly; “All of us have blind spots and none of us are not worth talking to.” Yes, the shouts that "now is not the time for moral equivalency" ring in my ears, but if bridgers aren’t playing that two-way portal role right now, who will? 

Guy and Heidi's Response to David

My (Heidi's) first reaction was complete agreement.  Certainly many people on both sides of our ever-widening divide are so angry that they are unwilling to hear the other side out. Bridgers can certainly do much to encourage and help us to start talking again. But are they the only people who can or will? 

Right now, the answer might well be "yes," but it is almost a tautology, because people who reach out to the other side, actively listen to the other side, or work with people on the other side to accomplish a common goal, are, in a quite fundamental sense, bridgers — even if they don't call themselves that. Other people who sometimes act as bridgers include journalists who take care to help us understand all sides' views of an issue, educators who do the same, and even disputants  who try to learn about the concerns of the other side in order to negotiate and then jointly pursue some mutually beneficial way of addressing common problems. 

While it is true that too few people do this, some do, and they provide models for "the rest of us." 

Journalists of note include Isaac Saul and his team at Tangle, which we wrote about in Newsletter 329. They send out a daily newsletter that covers one primary story each day, sharing what they see as the best statements that the right and the left are offering about the topic, and then sharing "their take," which often tries to meld the best ideas from both sides, (although sometimes they are pretty much entirely on one side or the other) Allsides.com does something similar, although they generally cover more topics in less depth than does Tangle.  Also notable is the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) which focuses on providing "rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems," covering what the response is, how well it worked (and why). In addition to doing such reporting themselves, they train others to report in the same way. They report that they have trained 57,000 journalists who are now using SJN tools, as well as 610 news outlets.  Now, this isn't necessarily bridging reporting, but if the focus is on solving problems, rather than on how one side is good and the other side is bad, it too helps us get out of our hyper-polarized views of current events. With their ability to reach mass audiences, these efforts also provide a workable model for overcoming the scale-up problem that has historically limited the impact of bridging projects.

Although a lot has been written about the progressive bias of many institutions of higher education, and, indeed, many K-12 schools as well, some efforts are being made to provide "bridging education." The example we find particularly interesting (though still controversial) is the new University of Austin, which focuses directly on academic freedom and intellectual pluralism.  Another prominent (and also controversial) effort in this regard is the set of principles articulated in the 2014 University of Chicago "Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression." 

Other examples of educational bridgers are James Coan and his More Like US co-founders Dane Erickson and An Schocket, who are seeking to bring the message that "we are more like 'the other side' than we think we are" to secondary schools (middle schools and high schools) because those institutions have widespread influence that can share that message to a much larger audience that is possible with individual dialogues. They have created a fifty-minute lesson plan on "the perception gap" which they are distributing to as many teachers and schools as possible.  Other "educational bridgers" are the Civic Health Project, which helps colleges and universities reconcile their commitments to free speech, academic freedom, inclusion, and belonging, the Heterodox Academy which "advocate[s] for policy and cultural changes that ensure our universities are truth-seeking, knowledge-generating institutions grounded in open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement — because great minds don't always think alike." and Bridge USA, a "multipartisan student movement that champions viewpoint diversity, responsible discourse, and a solution-oriented political culture."

And lastly, there are people in all sorts of different roles — faith leaders, community leaders, health workers, social workers, coaches, youth group leaders — I could go on and on — listing people who work with a diverse constituency who can model active listening (and related skills) and help their clients do the same. 

As we were discussing this post, Guy wondered aloud "what was the 'secret sauce' of bridging?"  Heidi quickly answered "active listening and respect." (I long told my conflict skills students on the last day of class that if they only remembered two things from my course in 5 or 10 years, I hoped those two things were "respect" and "listen." If you treat people with respect and genuinely listen to them, it won't solve everything, I explained, but it will almost always make things better.)

Guy's answer was essentially the same, although he phrased it in a way that it echoed the Braver Angels' saying David quoted above. Guy said, "The secret sauce of bridging is treating people who say things you disagree with respect, assuming that they have ideas that are worth paying attention to and considering — even if you disagree." He went on to say, "We need to recognize that these are tense, emotional times. People often get really angry. They say hurtful things and uninformed things and unbalanced things. They operate on and make statements based on information sources that offer different and often contradictory images of objective truth. So part of the 'secret sauce,' Guy said, is giving people a pass when they do that. "Even if somebody says something that's over the top and not reasonable in some way, don't just immediately discount everything else that they have to say." There is likely something of value in their views, and we should be open to hearing it — even if all it does is help us understand why people do things that we might otherwise see as outrageous and indefensible. And if we do listen, Heidi adds, then maybe they will become more likely to be willing to listen to us.

Yes, mediators and facilitators are experts at doing that, and they can help us do it too.  But we can't all have mediators and facilitators traveling with us wherever we go.  We must learn from them and use their skills ourselves. Almost everyone who has participated in a well-run dialogue will report how refreshing and stimulating and surprising and uplifting it was.  It gives people hope that not all is lost. So why don't we take those skills, that hope, that surprise, and start using them ourselves so we, too, can become bridgers? 

Finally, as we try to do this, it is important to recognize that, even within the bridging context, there are a variety of roles that we can play. To build on the bridging metaphor, we might decide that we want to join the group of people we call "bridge builders" — those who construct and maintain the bridges that allow people from one side of the political divide to visit with those who live on the other side. We might also decide to focus on the fact that bridges are of little value unless there are people who are actually willing to cross those bridges. To help overcome this, we might decide to be a "crosser" and join with those adventurous spirits who are willing to take the risk of traveling to a different and somewhat scary place.  

Or, to encourage more people to make the crossing, we might decide to act as a kind of "travel agent" who specializes in arranging enticing, rewarding, and enjoyable itineraries for those willing to make the trip. Or, if we have more in-depth knowledge of people on both sides of the divide, we might be able to serve as "guides" who can help participants get more out of their bridge-crossing experiences. Also, helpful would be "welcoming committees" — people who go out of their way to make it clear to travelers that their visit is genuinely appreciated. Finally, for those cases where people see the bridge as too daunting to cross, there may be value in creating (as we suggested in Newsletter 329 intermediary "islands" on which people from competing perspectives can start figuring out how they might be able to move away from conflict and toward a more peaceful and positive relationship.

Photo Credit: Guy Burgess.  This is a picture of a bridge being built in Yellowstone National Park over the Yellowstone River.  

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Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.

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