That is the sound of a political discussion. To be more precise, it is the response portion to a film focused on political conversations.
This week, KDNK hosted three election events called the Above the Noise Initiative around the valleys in partnership with The Post Independent, The Sopris Sun, and Rocky Mountain Public Media. Over 60 community members attended the three days of events, many expressing in a poll that they see most political debates to be “polarized, mean-spirited, and dominated by a few loud voices”.
Participants first watched Undivide Us, an hour-long film created by PBS to address growing nationwide concerns over political polarization. Reflections on the film include the repeated surprise that only 21% of Americans describe themselves as being unable to engage in conversation with people who disagree with their views. Others were impressed by the method of conversation used in the film, where interviewees were asked to describe the case for another person’s point of view, rather than just answering with their own argument.
"Polarization is both a mental issue and it's greatly exaggerated, right? Because we often have pretty bad caricatures of the other side, right? And often the loudest voices are the most polarized. I do mostly local issues, right? I work a lot with city managers, so I talk to them often. Like, who's going to walk up to that microphone at city council?
Often people that see the issue in a particular way, they're so sure they're right. Uh, and we have lots of processes that, you know, people that are in the middle, people that see the different sides, people that have been struggling, there's often not a place for them to speak. Uh, so we, and then you add on top of that our brains that we, we want them, right?
We want to kind of see what we're, we focus on the best intentions of our, our side, uh, and kind of make the worst assumptions of the other. And then that becomes a negative feedback loop in lots of different ways. Uh, one of the things that they mentioned, uh, is that in the Hidden Tribes report, it's not. It's a really interesting report.
I will link to it on the resource page if you like, or if you just Google it, it's by a group called More in Common. They do some really good work of just kind of finding common ground. Often, and unfortunately, a lot of the research is, well, what are our differences? How can we frame things to get our site to win?
A lot of the, you know, all the political money and sometimes national media. There's a lot of different resources that I highlight on there that try to do the opposite. It's a good type of report. It's hard to, it might be hard to see, but they kind of mentioned it. In a survey of the United States activists are about 6% percent were conservatives. And we have that side.
So this middle is the part which we don't really hear much."
That voice is Martín Carcasson, who is a professor with CSU’s Center for Public Deliberation, and offered context to attendees for how the human brain is naturally more inclined towards conflict rather than calm discussion of difficult topics.
In an exercise facilitated by Carcasson, attendees were asked to rank a set of values according to their personal importance.
Several participants each night astutely noted that they shared some of their top or bottom values, even if their personal definitions may differ for words like “Freedom”, “Justice”, “Community”, and “Security”.
When asked if they could add a value to the list presented that matters to them, participants spoke from the heart - Compassion, Integrity, Play, Creativity, Love, Belonging, Connection, Empathy, Tolerance, and Respect were all mentioned repeatedly.
Many residents expressed interest in finding opportunities to engage more community members of more diverse backgrounds in future conversations. It is important to note that all three evenings a majority of attendees were white and predominantly women.
This fall, similar events will be held throughout Colorado, although Glenwood Springs, Carbondale, and Rifle were the first. More information on the Above the Noise Initiative is available at: RMPBS.org/Above-The-Noise
