5 ways to find common ground during the holidays

I set out nearly three years ago to travel the country and talk to as many ordinary Americans as possible to understand why we are so deeply divided.

This year, the America at the Crossroads team and I focused on communities where people are trying to bridge those differences.

This holiday season is a good moment to share some of the technologies we’ve heard about.

If a difficult conversation arises before dinner is served, these may be lessons you’ll want to try for yourself.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of them. We’ve summed it up in five tips.

1. Act, don’t react

There is a lot to be angry about. But David Lapp, co-founder of the national group Braver Angels, says we need to resist that temptation.

Speaking in his hometown of South Lebanon, Ohio, Lapp told me that we need to have the courage to do what others cannot do. It begins with action, not reaction.

“You have to look inward, and you have to be willing to take some personal action instead of just being sorry that you know the news or being sorry for the other side,” he said.

“You have to be curious and actually interact with the people on the other side,” he added.

Lapp gathered a group of citizens with opposing views on immigration and found far more agreement among them than anyone had imagined.

2. Make it local

Watch the clip in the player above.

Much of the national news is filled with conflict, controversy, or politicians pitting themselves against each other.

Journalist Jim Fallows had advice for getting people to open up: Avoid national politics.

“It kind of immediately ends the conversation,” he said of national politics. “People either live in one camp or another. If you ask them: ‘What is the story of this city? Are the children moving in or moving away? What is happening to the port? What is happening to the water supply?’ They are the experts and you can learn from them.”

Fallows and his wife, writer Deb, toured the country in a single-engine plane several years ago, telling the stories of different communities.

I met them last January in San Bernardino, California, near where Jim grew up. We found a passionate boxing coach determined to provide after-school activities for teens feeling isolated and without options.

3. “Tell me more”

Watch the clip in the player above.

On the other side of the country, in Northampton, Massachusetts, professor and activist Loretta Ross told me that after years of yelling at people she doesn’t agree with, she’s realized that asking a few simple questions can go a long way.

“Tell me more.” These are the three most important words you can use in conversation, she said.

“If you add your honest sense of inquiry, you can have a conversation with anyone,” Ross said. “I swear, people love to tell you about themselves if you give them an invitation. And you’re having a conversation, instead of fighting. It’s that easy.”

Ross sat down with me in July to talk about her latest book, Connected: How to Start Creating Change with Those You’d Rather Unmake. She outlines the approach she developed after a difficult childhood, followed by a life of fierce advocacy for reproductive justice and feminist theory.

4. Don’t try to change thoughts. Open them

Watch the clip in the player above.

That was advice from Wilke Wilkinson, a former truck driver and manager of a trucking company in rural Minnesota. He was angry about lockdown rules and federal government mandates on masks and vaccines during the Covid pandemic. He said that Washington had exceeded its role.

Through Braver Angels, Wilkinson met Dr. Francis Collins, former head of the National Institutes of Health and a key figure behind many of the states against which Wilkinson rebelled. After many hours of difficult conversations, they found common ground on their approach to dealing with people with whom we disagree.

“You don’t try to change thoughts, you just try to open them.” Wilkinson said. “We need to get out among communities again. We need to talk to our neighbors. We need to engage our family members in uncomfortable conversations, but understand that you can approach a controversial topic in a non-controversial way.”

Collins said he and Wilkinson had reached the point of “spending time understanding each other’s point of view, not that we completely agree on everything.”

“I think he’s wrong about these things, and I’m sure he thinks I am,” Collins added.

Collins and Wilkinson sat with me around the dining table in Collins’ home outside Washington, D.C., last spring. She never knew that not so long ago they were on bitter opposite sides of the coronavirus divide. Today, they are good friends.

5. The highest votes do not represent the majority

Watch the clip in the player above.

In Bowling Green, Kentucky, we visited a community that uses artificial intelligence to — of all things — help people find common ground.

Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google, has an ambitious mission to “research and develop tools to address the world’s biggest challenges.” The company pitched itself to local leaders who wanted to understand how citizens wanted their community to change and grow, but were having difficulty getting their perspectives across.

Jigsaw helped create an AI-based survey that dramatically increased civic engagement. CEO Jasmine Green told me what motivated her and Jigsaw to help.

“When most of us don’t participate, the people who do participate are usually the people who have the strongest opinions, and they’re probably the least informed, the angriest, and then you start to get a caricature of what the other side is thinking and believing,” she said. “One of the most important things we can do with AI is figure out how to help us stay in the conversation together.”

More stories From the Crossroads team: