Grounded Conversations

 

A free 2-hour workshop where we’ll look at what it actually takes to have a meaningful conversation across political difference without biting your tongue or losing your temper.

Free · Friday, September 25 · 5–7 pm ET

Save My Seat

You know something most progressives are spectacularly ineffective at? Talking about politics with the right-wingers in our personal lives.

We get so distressed at their views that we get tongue-tied, distant, argumentative, or judgmental. I know I do. But these conversations are a unique opportunity to make the world a safer place.

What if we were good at them?

What if we knew how to listen when the people in our lives got going on their right-wing ideology, and then knew what to say in response?

What if we could love them and see them and get them and then (!) have them get us and see some of what we see? 

What if we could move them a little further away from the edge and decrease the potential damage that is being done by their viewpoint

What if that was possible?

It actually is. And we’re going to take the first step this Friday, September 25.

We’re going to share, just among us progressives, how frustrating, sad, and scary it is to see movements for hate come so close to our lives.

And then we’re going to try our hand at some skills I’ve identified that can open up a space in a conversation where others can hear our values and perspectives, no matter how different from ours theirs may be.

I’m Alice. I was raised to debate.

I grew up in a family of skeptics.

My dad talked back to the television. As a family, we had disdain for religion, for advertisements, for peer pressure, for anything you were supposed to just believe.

My brother called me an idiot often, but if I fired back a well-constructed argument, he would listen long enough to answer.

I got really good at constructing arguments.

I was awful at sports and only so-so at chess and bridge. Debate became the only competitive activity in the family where I had any chance of winning.

But there was a problem. I’m also attracted to peace.

But there was a problem. I’m also attracted to peace.

I loved it, in middle school, when Dear Abby would say, “To understand everything is to forgive everything.” I started to wonder what the bullies were thinking.

In college, I read Getting to Yes and learned about conflict mediation.

In my 20s, I read How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk and learned about active listening and I-messages.

In my 30s, I got trained in Nonviolent Communication and saw how powerful it is to have your needs and values acknowledged. I began to suspect there was another way.

What if I started having conversations based on openness, curiosity, and responsibility, even with people I disagree with? I started practicing dialogue methods in all kinds of conversations, starting off with the easy ones and working up to really difficult (genocide vs. self-defense anyone?) – until I became the person other people ask how they can handle an upsetting conversation.

 

Would you like to have that superpower?


Friday, September 25 · 5–7 pm Eastern · Free

Save My Spot