There are many groups working to lower the temperature of civic discourse. They include Braver Angels, a group that sponsors in-person and virtual events designed to debate some of America's thorniest issues in a civil manner.
Lincoln County resident Sue Lani Madsen is the red co-coordinator for the group's Washington chapter.
"I like a good conversation that's not quite a fight but is a really good debate, and that's what drew me to Braver Angels," she said.
Recently, SPR's Doug Nadvornick talked with Madsen about her engagement with the group and what it's trying to accomplish.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Sue Lani Madsen: What's kept me there (with Braver Angels) is that otherwise I would be a little cynical about the future of the country, so this is where I balance my political commentary because I still have very firm opinions that I share with people, but I balance that with recognizing that we also have to listen and talk with each other if we're going to live in the same country.
Doug Nadvornick: A couple of weeks ago, Madsen and two other Red-leaning Braver Angels members took questions at a Seattle forum entitled, “Break Out of the Blue Bubble.”
SM: We invited a lot of folks, it was mostly in the Ballard area, to come and ask a panel of three of us any questions they wanted to, questions of curiosity about what things look like from a conservative perspective. It was an opportunity for each of us to describe how we had come to our political philosophy. We didn't get into issues so much. We did have a fairly good little conversation about gun safety. I liked the way that the person who asked the question put that. One of my responses to that was, as we have put more regulations on guns, we're affecting legal gun owners. We're not really affecting gun safety. I was able to give a couple of examples and people were nodding their heads and realizing, okay, well, that makes sense from that point of view where you're coming from. We need more of those kinds of conversations.
DN: Madsen is the Braver Angels red co-coordinator for Washington. She says the organization is looking to do more events around the state leading up to the election in November.
SM: I have a partner who is the blue co-coordinator. At every level of leadership, Braver Angels has been very careful to manage that balance. It's the only way to really be – I call it not nonpartisan, but cross-partisan, recognizing that people have biases. We have interests. We have partisan interests, but we also have overlapping interests.
What drew me to it was actually after the 2020 elections, in 2021, I read about a debate that was coming up, a Braver Angels debate, and the topic had been so contentious that there were even some members of the board of this organization that I was just learning about that had actually left the board because we can't even touch that. It was on election integrity and the 2020 election. So I went. I listened to this on Zoom. Anybody could pick up that off of the Braver Angels YouTube channel now. I listened to that debate and was just impressed that it was possible for people to stick to their guns, to explain how their experience played into how they saw the situation. Everybody learned a little something. Well, I can see why you see it that way. It was just – it was really – instead of a fight, it was a conversation.
For the communication skills that a lot of Braver Angels workshops really focus on, it's remembering to ask questions of curiosity, not asking gotcha, not making statements or speeches in the form of a question but actually saying, how did you come to that position? What in your life tells you that that – gives you that point of view and that perspective? Then you can get to people's stories, and then you do learn something.
I would say that as someone who writes political commentary, every time that I understand the other side, the point of view from the other side, it helps me refine and clarify and sometimes strengthen my own positions. In any negotiation, you always want to know and be able to make your opponent's argument as well or better than your own. So I find that invigorating.
Now, that's not what everybody gets out of it, but for some people and especially for some folks that I've met who have come in from the progressive side in Washington state, a very blue state, there's a lot of folks like some of the ones in Seattle we talked with. They've never met a conservative. We're like a unicorn. For them, it's a sense of relief that you're just a normal person. I have to stop myself from chuckling a little at just being – if all I do is just show up and be normal, it changes minds as a red-leaning member of Braver Angels and I've met some wonderful people who come from that blue and progressive side. It makes me feel better too to know that there are people that would like to listen.
So now let's figure out what's in the way of us having really good conversations in our legislature, in our communities about the common interests that we share.
DN: So is there some sort of teaching aspect in terms of Braver Angels as to this is how you should approach a conversation like that?
SM: There are a number of skill-building workshops and communications. Some of the background came out of the marriage and family counseling arena. Very well-grounded in solid academic understanding of how you teach people to do that. And then there are opportunities and forums for exercising that.
Braver Angels had a Citizens Initiative on Trustworthy Elections, which came out with a report with a long list of things that people agreed on. This is a list that people from both sides, all sides, had to agree on. All of these things are things that should be done in order for more trustworthy elections. One of them was requiring ID and proof of citizenship to vote. That's a very popular idea.
What we're hoping to do this next year in Washington, Braver Angels, is take that long list, find two or three that are applicable specifically to Washington's elections law, and get red-blue pairs to visit legislators with those recommendations, explain where they came from, and see if we can get some movement on that.
What we need is we need more people who are willing to have that conversation to say, I can't have everything my way, but here's how somebody else wants things, here's how I want things, here's where our common interests are. We'd like you to work on that. We need that raging group of civic-minded people to support legislators, give them cover to do the job that most of them are really trying to do.
DN: One thing I noticed going to the Braver Angels website is you can arrange to have a one-on-one conversation with somebody from the other side. Can you tell me about having one-on-one conversations with people you don't know?
SM: That's funny you should ask that. I just accepted an invitation to a one-on-one conversation that we had yesterday, a red-blue conversation, very classic Braver Angels setting. There is a script for that to make sure that you're going back and forth and explaining your experiences that you bring to the topic. I find those really very, very interesting. I try to take those invitations whenever I can find the time, just because we don't have a balance in the membership. We have a balance in the leadership of Braver Angels, but the membership is more predominantly blue than red.
One of the other ones is I've done rural-urban. There's lots of things that can create barriers and boundaries, and that's one that I really am passionate about. That's one that I have more trouble controlling my hackles when somebody says something unintentionally dismissive of the rural perspective.
DN: Another thing I found, the use of AI. If you want to practice your skills, you can create your own persona and have a conversation with somebody using artificial intelligence maybe just before you have one of those one-on-one conversations.
SM: Yeah, I think that's an interesting thing. I haven't tried that out, but for people who are really struggling with that communication issue, I think that's a great practice tool.
DN: Are you finding progress in people having conversations, or are we as polarized as we have been in 10 or 15 years?
SM: Wwe're still pretty polarized, but we're going to have to come out of that. I mean a piece of that has been driven by President Trump. He elicits strong emotional responses, but he's only going to be around for a couple more years. I mean we have to keep going. And at that point, there's going to have to be a reckoning, really. We're going to have to – okay, we can't – we've just lost that division. Now how are we going to start working together again?
One of the other things we have, and this is going to be – depending on the timing and the funding, anywhere from four to eight months out, we're looking at a bus tour to have listening sessions around the state and to really break across the cascade curtain. There's already been this kind of a tour in Utah and Minnesota have done this, so we have a pattern for that. We have a grant request in to see if we can get some funding to help with that.
We really want to get people out of their bubbles. It's a lot more common for people who live in a red bubble, like I do. I live in a red county that is the mirror image in a lot of statistical ways from King County. But people in Lincoln County do get out. We come into Spokane. People go to Seattle. They have relatives in every place. It's a lot easier for us to break out of that bubble, but there are people in Seattle that are like they have just simply never met anybody. They've not been out of a metropolitan area, and I really want to help folks break through those boundaries.
