((PKG)) BRAVER ANGELS
((TRT: 06:27))
((Topic Banner: Braver Angels))
((Producer/Video Editor: Lisa Vohra))
((Camera: Philip Alexiou))
((Map: Washington, DC))
((Main characters: 0 female; 1 male))
((Sub characters: 3 female; 12 male))
((Blurb:
We look at grassroots led organization trying to help people talk across their political differences and put civility back into U.S. politics.))
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((Courtesy: Braver Angels))
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There’s a yearning in the society to remember who we are and what we can be together. Civility is not simply good manners appropriate to the circumstance. Civility is also the inward desire to do good to your opponent.
((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
Braver Angels is the nation's largest, fully Red/Blue [conservative/liberal], grassroots-led citizens organization committed to helping Americans across the political spectrum find the value in each other and manage their political divides amongst themselves
((Ciaran O’Connor
Chief Marketing Officer))
((John Wood, Jr.
Director of Media Development))
in ways that are productive and not destructive and have their politics but still be able to maintain their relationships with their fellow citizens.
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((Voice of Ciaran O’Connor
Chief Marketing Officer))
I was a vice chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County. I was a Republican nominee for Congress before that.
((Voice of John Wood, Jr.
Director of Media Development))
And I worked for the Obama campaign, I worked for the Hillary campaign.
((Ciaran O’Connor
Chief Marketing Officer))
((John Wood, Jr.
Director of Media Development))
Now we’re here before you today, Depolarizing America.
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((Courtesy: Reuters))
((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
The 2016 Election was kind of the catalyst.
Honestly, we could have probably set up Braver Angels at many other times in the last 25 years, and it would have been just as important and just as useful as it has been in the last six years.
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But all that being said, the unique kind of down to the person and impermeable kind of cultural division that the 2016 election did not create but certainly did
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reveal to a lot of people.
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God bless our president, Donald Trump.
((Courtesy: Braver Angels/Reuniting America))
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((Jean McVey
Republican))
The day after the election, I called my friend and no return call.
((Angela Brown
Democrat))
I want to understand how a country that voted for Obama twice went so far to the other side. I want to understand…
((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
In the last weeks of 2016 and the first weeks of 2017, Bill Doherty and David Lapp and David Blankenhorn, our founders, cobbled together
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about a dozen Reds and a dozen Blues, a dozen people who'd voted for Trump,
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and a dozen people who voted for Clinton
and brought them together in the small town of Waynesville, Ohio,
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to hold a workshop on their thoughts and feelings and opinions about what had just happened.
((Keith Johnson
Republican))
Most of us are not racist. This is an unfair accusation.
((Jorge Vila
Democrat))
There are a lot of Blue folks, liberals who are very hard workers and who make a lot of very strong contributions to society.
((Courtesy: Braver Angels/Reuniting America))
((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
Civil discourse work, what some people call bridge building work or bipartisan work.
The need for it is not so much a question of finding solutions as it is attaining a way of just being able to live in a complex and polarized system.
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((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
All over the United States of America, there are local Braver Angels chapters, Braver Angels alliances, activists and volunteers and a few staff, doing work with institutions, doing work with citizens around the country. At all levels of leadership, Braver Angels has to have
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equal Red, Blue representation, and we stick to that very, very, deeply. Aside from that, we’re working on bringing young people in more closely. We're working on bringing working people a.k.a. [also known as] people without college degrees is the way we normally frame that.
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We're working on bringing people of color in more closely.
((Participant))
If you’ve never been to the inner cities, you’ve never helped a Black child, you’re a hypocrite and you have no business out there protesting, if you’ve never helped anyone at all in our communities. And people like me are really…
((Debate Chair))
All right, I’m going to ask you to wrap up, unmute and…
((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
The Braver Angels debate is a very safe space because we're not trying to get anybody voted as the winner or voted as a loser.
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((Participant))
It seems like we think that all racial disparities are due to racism. I’m not so sure about that. That might be the case.
((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
We're not trying to get to any particular resolution of the problems.
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We're not trying to vote on a way to solve those problems. We're trying to get to a situation where everybody, with all points of view on any particular subject, can feel like they have a place to say what they believe, and more importantly, can feel where they have a place to be seen saying what they believe and understood by people who don't agree with them, who won't agree with them but who have everything to learn from them and who they have everything to learn from, too.
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((Courtesy: Braver Angels))
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((Luke Nathan Phillips
Debate Chair))
Resolved, ‘Guns Keep People Safe.’ I’m looking for a speech in the affirmative.
((Participant))
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s a complex topic. So, I wrote down my thoughts.
((Participant))
Everybody deserves the right to have a gun. No, that’s not true.
((Participant))
Taking guns away from law-abiding citizens is not the way…
((Participant))
I have eleven nieces and nephews and they are never growing up in a world where someone isn’t often and randomly getting shot at…
((Participant))
The assault weapons thing, that’s a made up term, made up by gun control activists to scare people.
((Luke Nathan Phillips
Debate Chair))
And with that, the speaker is thanked. Thank you very much Madam speaker for closing us out.
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((John Wood, Jr.
Podcast Host, Braver Angels))
You’re watching the Braver Angels podcast.
((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
The Braver Angels podcast and Braver Angels media has been one of our longest running, most successful, I guess you might call it public diplomacy projects that does interviews with a variety of different kinds of people.
((Courtesy: Braver Angels))
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((John Wood, Jr.
Podcast Host, Braver Angels))
If there’s not always a ready compromise sort of available place to meet in the middle that leaves both sides feeling satisfied, does it mean that the work that we are doing is incapable of bearing any fruit?
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((Guest))
The notion that we have to be ends-based, is, I think, part of the problem.
((John Wood, Jr.
Podcast Host, Braver Angels))
Yeah.
((Guest))
We’re in a society right now where the immediate question…
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((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
Moderation of certain things in your habits definitely is part of what depolarization is all about.
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((Luke Nathan Phillips
Director of D.C. Project, Braver Angels))
Moderation in your opinions, moderation in your principles, moderation in your convictions is not what depolarization is about.
And it's possible to be an extremist in all kinds of different sects across the American political spectrum, in every party and every ideological grouping, and still be able to look at your fellow Americans, who might have completely different conceptions of politics than you do,
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((Zoom))
and still be able to treat them like your fellow American citizen and help them find value in each other.
((Courtesy: Braver Angels))
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((Ciaran O’Connor
Podcast Host, Braver Angels))
We want folks, from the far left to the far right, to feel that they can come to Braver Angels and express themselves freely and fully.
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