(spirited music) (spirited music continues) - The organization, Braver Angels, describes itself as the nation's largest cross-partisan volunteer-led movement to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic.

Braver Angels now has a chapter here in our area.

We are joined by David Pittman and Bill Poorman.

They are co-organizers of West Central Illinois Braver Angels.

Gentlemen, thanks for coming in.

We appreciate it.

- Oh, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Bill, tell us a little bit about the history of this organization.

I know it's nationwide.

- It is.

- Tell us how it started.

- It's reasonably young.

It started in 2016.

They organized a group of people who were political polar opposites in a small town in Ohio and got them talking to one another.

One of the defining features of Braver Angels is that they have reds and blues.

Those are their labels.

You can also have others.

But what they try to do is get reds and blues in the same room, in a structured format, talking to one another.

They did the first workshop in 2016, and as you say, it's grown since then, now nationwide.

There is one other downstate group like ours of Braver Angels.

There's a couple up in Chicago area.

And now we're trying to bring it to the Peoria area.

- Now, how did you find out about it yourself?

- I'm gonna let David talk to that.

He found that.

- Well, I belong to a number of social justice protest groups in the area, and, at one of the meetings, I've voiced some frustration that all we were doing was trying to stop the bleeding.

We weren't really getting to the heart of the matter.

And while there's a great deal of skepticism, someone did mention, "Well, have you heard of this group, Braver Angels?"

A little bit of Google work, and I started talking about Braver Angels to a few people.

And while I met a lot of skepticism, one of the skeptics was a little bit less skeptical than the others, And that was Bill Poorman.

(Mark laughs) - Now, how did you know each other before this started?

- Bill and I go back about 15 years.

I'm one of the organizers of the Donovan Sculpture Garden up in Donovan Park.

A private-funded effort to work with the park district to put sculptures into Donovan Park.

Bill was kind enough to give some of his many media skills to us for that.

We've worked on four other projects.

Moffatt Cemetery, a long abandoned cemetery down on the south side.

We worked with several very talented people to put up some memorials to this now forgotten-no-more site.

- Now, I know Braver Angels kind of prides itself on being even, you know?

They want a specific amount of reds and specific amount of blues.

You know, 50/50 if possible.

I think maybe they'll settle for 60/40.

Now, are you two on opposite sides of the spectrum, the political spectrum?

- We are not.

I wore my blue jersey today.

So, I lean blue.

Though I think in blue context, I would probably land as an other.

David, I'll let you speak.

- Well, I voted for Republicans and Democrats and Independents in my 40 plus years here in Peoria.

I've co-founded the Peoria Area Green Party.

I've been to a lot of libertarian meetings in the area.

I find myself so far left to Bernie Sanders that I'm almost red.

And, to me, the notion of defining people in terms of blue and red is a handy but not terribly accurate tool.

It certainly doesn't work for me.

I'm a big environmentalist.

It's my passion.

I could see policy rewritten to support that.

I'm a cautious economics person as well, and I believe in cutting back a lot of the federal government.

- Well, you sound very open-minded, which is something we don't see a lot of these days, unfortunately.

It seems like people are just, "I'm this, and he's that, and there's no meeting in the middle."

Let's talk about the tenets of Braver Angels a little bit, because as I understand it, it's about getting people together to talk, but not trying to sway the other person towards your views.

Is that correct?

- That's right.

One of the unique features of Braver Angels, you are not there to change the person's opinions.

You are not there to change the person's mind.

But you are changing how you feel about the person.

So one of the things that they are trying to counter is the large stereotypes.

You know, David alluded to it.

You kind of need these handles, reds and blues, and I think we all understand generally what those mean, but very few of us really fall hard into one camp or the other.

We're complex people.

And so part of the effort is to get past those stereotypes that are so common in so much of public life and really get to know people as individuals and tease out commonalities if they're there.

But at the very least, tease out respect for one another as part of the process.

- You recently had your first meeting.

Tell us how that went and what went on at that meeting.

- We had an outstanding turnout.

I'd hoped for 15 to 20.

We got over 30 people.

We had television coverage, which was pleasant.

I know Peoria really... (indistinct) I know Peoria really well and always know that when a new restaurant opens, there's gonna be a big crowd.

Six weeks, six months later, not so much.

I suspect that Braver Angels publicity is at a very high point.

And from here on down, we won't see quite so much coverage.

But the idea itself is extremely interesting, extremely exciting, and timely.

Everyone is frustrated.

Both those on far conservative and far liberal sides are tired of where we are.

You know, the frustration that I speak to is mimicked in farmers, politicians, all of us.

We need a better way.

- So in talking to some of the people that attended your first meeting, give us an idea of what their reasons were for coming, what they hope to accomplish.

- People who spoke up afterwards in this one, but also others, is it's usually family, right?

So that there's something with their families or their relationship with a spouse or a child or something like that that has gone wrong.

That's a very common story, and we saw that the other night too.

- Due to political views?

- Yeah, yeah.

Like, I can give an example from sometimes they do national online events as well, but you still get put together with people from the opposite color.

And in my case, I was in there with a woman who identified as red.

She was from Washington or Oregon, I can't quite remember now, but she talked about how she can't speak to her kids anymore.

Like, that relationship has completely broken down.

And that, in fact, she has had her tire slashed.

- Wow.

- So when you're in that kind of environment, it pushes you to say something's fundamentally wrong, right?

And we have to fix it.

But similar sorts of stories came out of the event the other night.

- I remember one woman who spoke about her frustration at work, where she has good friends on both sides of this political Grand Canyon and how she could talk to this group and this group separately, but she couldn't bring them together.

And so she was hoping to discover some communication skills that would allow her to begin in the workplace to have some of these conversations.

- It seems like these days, and we'll talk some more about social media, that people on social media who give their opinions, they are dug in.

They don't wanna hear the other side or can't hear the other side.

Do you see that too these days?

I mean, we're old enough.

We remember there was no social media.

And maybe you worked with somebody who you were good friends with who could have been the opposite political stance as you and you just would never know.

- Well, I'd say if you go way back, the two things you didn't talk about were politics and religion, right?

And now that's all, basically, that gets talked about in these social media spaces.

Yes, there's some individual niches, but politics is a huge one.

And then you combine that with the anonymity, right?

Where people aren't out there as themselves as you might have been in the past.

You're just out there as some nameless person.

And, yes, it gives tremendous license to engage in the combat, the warfare, the tribalism.

And I think that is a lot of what we see on social media.

- I also think there's a lot of affirmation of your point of view when you only listen to certain outlets.

You know, whether it's the liberal public radios or the conservative Fox News, it's comfortable.

People are telling you what you want to believe.

There are very, very few outlets that are attempting to go to the middle.

And I would hope that as groups like Braver Angels grow and people vote with their dollars, that we'll see more outlets trying to move towards the center again.

Social media is the unique component.

It's worth remembering, of course, that in central Illinois, we've got a long history of respecting other people's views.

You know, you see that in the politicians we've elected from Everett Dirksen to (indistinct) to Ray LaHood Sr.

I mean, so many people who we elected to office walked across the bipartisan divide during their time.

Almost a hundred years of trying to do that, and now it's not allowed.

- I wonder if it's because, you know, people feel like they have to be strongly on one side or strongly on the other, and that it's kind of a... There is no moderate position anymore.

Anyway.

- Well, I think I would add to that kind of going off of the social media conversation is, increasingly, all you're fed is that the other side is evil, right?

And if that is all you hear, that the other side is evil, well, you're not gonna explore much, are you?

Right?

You're not gonna say, "Well, wait a minute, What do they have to say?"

You're not interested in what they have to say.

So we kind of need to work against that... Well, that profit incentive.

You kind of hinted at it, right?

There are people who are looking to divide us either for power or profit or just their own weird pleasure, right?

And we have to work against that whole system that seeks to divide us.

And it does.

It's a challenge 'cause it feels good.

- Yeah.

- Right?

And you have to push against that as an individual.

- So give us an idea of, are you gonna be holding meetings once a month?

Is that the goal?

- Yes.

- So walk us through what a typical meeting might be like in the future.

- We have a wide variety of options, thanks to the National Organization.

We could do something as unstructured as the meet and greet that we did last two weeks ago.

We could do a 90-minute workshop, where we actually go through the process that we're talking about doing, where we divide people per their choice of red or blue and go through the actual one-on-one conversations.

We could host debates, one of my personal favorites.

The idea that in a very highly structured fashion that emphasizes politeness, we talk about some the harder issues, whether it's budget or immigration or cost of living.

You know, ways that we can continue and expand the dialogue that are respectful and hopefully educational, so that the participants leave saying, "I think I know how to do this a little better."

It may take them two or three or 10 times.

I'm a slow learner myself, but that's our hope.

- Well, and that is the name of one of them, is "Disagreeing Better," right?

So you really are supposed to come away with skills that I know how to do this better.

I would say there's kind of three buckets.

One is what David described, where it's like a structured debate style event where you're really expressing your opinions, but highly structured, right?

So it was to avoid the chaos and ranker.

The other bucket I would say is pure skills.

So, like, what we're leaning toward for our first event is something called "Depolarizing Ourselves."

And what it is, is a lot of the source of depolarization is not the head to head that we do with the other side, whoever the other is, it's with our own people, right?

And we have conversations with our own side where we spend the whole time demonizing and running down and degrading the people of the other side 'cause it feels good, right?

And you need a set of skills to get beyond that.

So that's an example of like a skill building.

And then that other bucket is what they call convening.

This is the most challenging.

That is when you truly get people who have stepped forward, self-identified as reds and blues, and get 'em into a room together in a structured way and listening to one another.

So, broadly speaking, that's the umbrella of the programming, and we're gonna see what we can make happen.

- So you can see we bought off a lot.

- Sure, yeah.

(group laughing) - This is not gonna go easily at all.

- And it's all quite simple.

- But it seems like the people who would be interested in doing this kind of thing would be more open-minded people instead of someone who's dug in.

- I think my hope is to grow the crowd of people interested.

And that will be a little bit at a time.

It'll be seeing a snippet of this or hearing something in an, seeing an ad in an Elmwood Newspaper.

It'll be maybe, as I mentioned, at a farm bureau meeting.

And as we begin the process, we're looking very much for a co-read.

Someone to sit at this table who is strongly conservative and able to say, "Here's what my church members say.

Here's what my friends say."

So that it's not just this friendly, easygoing what if.

We make it the real.

And that, to me, is the real thing.

- You know, we mentioned that the point of this isn't to sway people from one side or to the other.

But if someone comes and doesn't matter what they are, says, "This is what I believe, and this is why I believe it."

'Cause a lot of times we don't hear about why you believe something, just that you do believe something, is the hope that the person with the the opposite opinion may say, "Oh, okay, I still don't agree with your opinion, but I understand why you feel the way you feel."

- That would be wonderful, yep, if they came away from an event like that.

And they might even find agreement on principle, not on policy, right?

'Cause policy is the things that government actually chooses to do, and there's all kinds of disagreements about that.

But if people can agree in principle that, yes, something is okay, I hesitate to come up with any specific issue because any given issue is gonna code one way or another, right?

Red or blue.

And we can try specifics if we want, but if you can get agreements on principles and values, then you have something to build from.

And I think that would be an enormous takeaway from some of these events.

- I'm assuming before you started this, you looked at other chapters around the country or maybe even around the state to see how they operate and how things work their way.

In other groups, are there ever politicians, professional politicians involved?

Do you even want that for your group?

- Well, everyone's welcome, right?

- Let's say, I mean- - It really does target everyday citizens to begin with.

And I would say that that's our focus as well, to begin with, is we're trying to get everyday citizens.

Because, in a sense, to use a political word, we need to build a constituency for this kind of approach to politics, right?

A depolarized approach to politics.

Politicians are caught up in the same system, right?

In all the same incentives, but we're not gonna turn anyone away.

- Probably.

- But you're not, you're not necessarily sending out invites to the county Republican party or the county Democratic party?

- No, but I would love to sit down with Representative Weaver, for example, and say, "What do you think of this idea?"

"Who do you know that might be interested and willing to help us with this?"

"What church members do you think might be interested?"

I'm especially interested in working with churches to find ways where that group that already has a certain degree of trust among themselves is willing to take it to another step, so that within the church itself, we might establish one of these sessions that we were talking about.

I would sit down and talk about Braver Angels with anyone.

Having been a politician and knowing far too many of them, they're so passionate, they're so convinced of their own invincibility that I hesitate to put them in a room with a lot of other people because I think they're going to tend to overwhelm.

- Now, all of this said, I mean, we're gonna talk to political organizations as part of the process.

- Bill and I, obviously, don't agree on everything.

- Well.

No, it's... So I wanna talk about what is essentially a national problem with the Braver Angels.

Model, we have the reds and blues.

And honestly, nationwide and locally, finding reds is challenging.

- Why is that?

- We're not real sure.

Right?

But it is challenging.

So we'll have to reach out to parties.

This has kind of been, we've been socializing amongst people we know and doing some outreach, and that is part of an outreach plan, absolutely, to reach out to political parties eventually.

But we are really dialed in, as part of that, the real goal would be to do this red recruitment, right?

To find people who self-identify as red, who are willing to be part of the group.

That goes toward, this is kind of technical, but it goes toward us forming what they call a chapter, which is an alliance.

The idea is alliance of reds and blues who are both committed to depolarization.

To form that alliance, we need those reds, and we are ready to hear from people.

- If you do get that, or I should say when, I think it'd be successful.

When you get that alliance formed and you have the equal number of reds and blues, what's the game plan then in terms of broadening out and getting to more people?

- Today, Peoria, tomorrow, the world.

Or maybe Pekin.

- Or Galesburg.

- Or Brimfield, Elmwood, Galesburg, Knoxville.

That is to say these small, intimate gatherings I'd love to see happen throughout the West Central Illinois area, which is our chosen down demographic.

- Yeah, tell us a little bit about your area, because you did mention Chicago and Champaign have chapters.

So what area are you all covering?

- Well, we call it West Central Illinois.

So that includes a view of the Mississippi River, and it goes probably as far as Bloomington-Normal.

It goes maybe as north as far as I-80.

That's our tradition, right?

- Yeah.

- And as far south as either Springfield or below Springfield.

We don't know yet.

We're too new.

Clearly, we need to take one baby step at a time, and all of that conversation happens after we feel confident that we've got something to brag about here in Peoria.

- I do think there's an outreach component, like you've already talked about though.

Sometimes it's just taking this show on the road to all of these places.

To churches, to Rotaries, to other groups.

And even if an event is simply presenting this idea, that's part of the process, right?

Because there is another way.

We all see every single day on our phone, every single minute, the divided way of doing things.

We figure just by spreading the word and going and doing, really, any kind of event, we're saying, "We can pull back from this."

There is another way.

We don't all have to go down this awful path that more and more people talk about, which is civil war, right?

More and more people are using those words.

And no, it starts with denying that as a reality.

Okay, well, then what do you do?

And Braver Angels might not have every single answer to that process, but at least the message is there, right?

That there is another way.

- [David] That's why I'm here.

- Yeah, me too.

- And looking at other chapters and, you know, the national movement, have you seen or heard about examples of people coming to these meetings that maybe they weren't dug in, maybe they were, but their minds were not changed, but clarified after some meetings or some workshops?

- Well, you hear the stories.

(laughs) So we're starting here locally, right?

I'm not sure that we have one of those successes off of one meeting.

But certainly nationally, you do hear those stories, right?

About, like, there's trainings and various things that you can do where they brought what they call a Red-Blue Workshop.

This is one of those convenings that I was talking about.

And you hear the people through a very structured process.

It's very elaborate.

But at the end, they're like, "Okay, you know, I'm glad I came today.

I was skeptical, but I heard some things that I might not agree with, but at least, okay, you are not an awful person."

So there are successes, but- - One of the- - It's not an overnight thing.

- No, it is not.

- One of the people that came to our meeting asked the very same question.

And he kind of put it in the question of metrics.

"How do you measure this?

And I would think that we have a lot of anecdotals, but we really don't have any kind of database that can answer your question in a way that says, "Look how we're making a difference."

- Well, I would think interest would be one factor of success.

People who are interested in learning how to become more tolerant of the other side.

That seems like a success to me.

So, you know, if you have more people coming to your meetings, pat yourselves on the back.

- Yeah, (indistinct).

- (indistinct) grows.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Or more meetings, right?

- Sure.

- More events in various communities and locations.

The more invitations we get, we have someone exploring us to come to their church group in Taswell County right now.

- Sure, yeah.

- Working with this pastor.

The more and more events we can do like that, the more the message gets out there.

So maybe it's not like one, we're not gonna fill the civic center, right?

But that's not how this is gonna work, right?

It's gonna be small lighting of the candle in many places, I think.

- And I think now is probably one of the best times to do this.

You said it started in 2016, and we know what happened in that era when it comes to politics.

And things seem to be getting even more divisive since then.

It's been 10 years.

- Yeah.

- So a group like this seems like it's a good time to pop up.

- Historically, I would offer that we should expand our timeline a little bit.

For me, the mid-1970s was kind of key.

That was when the contract with America first came to the United States attention and a new style of a congressional representation occurred where it was, leave no prisoners, conflict, confront, destroy the enemy.

You know?

Those militaristic terms were things that were abhorrent to the House minority leader at the time.

A central Illinois representative, Bob Michaels.

And he couldn't tolerate it.

He refused to tolerate it.

His successor refused to sign the contract with America and was ostracized for almost his entire political career.

So what we're dealing with took a long time to get started, and it'll be as the Crosby, Stills & Nash people say, "A long time gone."

So we need to accept, at least I needed to accept, this is tiny steps, but it's in the right direction.

- Gentlemen, we are about out of time, but- - I can't believe that.

Say no.

- It's flown by faster than those two-minute morning show interviews.

Tell us about how people can learn more about West Central Illinois Braver Angels.

- Sure, we are on Facebook right now.

Just search "West Central Illinois Braver Angels."

Also, you could email us at wci, so West Central Illinois, braverangels@gmail.com.

That would be a way.

Just contact us directly.

And we are on the state website, but I'm not sure whether Google has crawled that yet.

So, Facebook might be a good way to find us for now - Facebook it is.

Well, gentlemen, we appreciate your time.

David Pittman, Bill Poorman, best of luck with this.

It's gonna be interesting to see where it goes from here.

- Great.

(indistinct) - Thank you very much.

- Thanks for coming on.

And thank you for joining us.

If you would like to share this interview with a friend or family member, maybe someone who's dug in, just go to wtvp.org and check it out.

You can post it on social media, and we will see you next week.

Have a good night.

(spirited music) (spirited music continues) (spirited music continues)