September 13, 2022 • 29 mins
In this episode, we talk with Melissa Weintraub, founder & co-executive director of Resetting the Table. Resetting the table focuses on building dialogue and deliberation across political divides, focusing on seemingly intractable differences that are breeding distrust, a lack of empathy, and marginalization. To learn more about Resetting the Table, and to view the film Purple – which uncovers humanity beneath our national conflicts - go to resettingthetable.org/purple.
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(00:00):
Welcome to News In Context, I'mGina Baleria.
In this episode,we talk with Melissa Weintraub, founder
and co-executive directorof Resetting the Table.
Resetting the Table focuseson building dialog and deliberation across
political divides, focusing on seeminglyintractable differences
that are breeding distrust,a lack of empathy and marginalization.
(00:22):
As part of their work, Resetting the Tableproduced the film Purple,
which uncovers the humanitybeneath our national conflicts.
You can watch Purple
and find out more informationat rresettingthetable.org/purple.
This is Civity Week on News In Context.
Civity features people who are buildingrelationships to dismantle inequities
(00:43):
and strengthen communitiesgrounded in respect
and empathy.
Welcome, Melissa.
Tell me about resetting the table.
How did it come about and what are thegoals that we work to strengthen democracy
(01:06):
through collaborative deliberation andacross political silos in American life?
We do intensive facilitation and convenertraining, dialog and decision
making forums on contentious issuesand a host of other programs.
We brought more than 29,000 Americanstogether from a sweeping
range of backgrounds and viewpoints,many of them clergy, campus professionals,
(01:29):
journalists, otherswho act as societal conveners.
That that's our target audience,our primary target,
people who are organicallybringing together diverse constituencies,
helping them to do that well,and to build a culture of dialog
and deliberation in their communitiesand in their institutions.
Our overall vision,our overall goal is to rebuild
a shared sense of we and American life
(01:52):
without papering over our differencesand supporting the recognition
and care inside collaboration
with our counterparts, particularlyour political counterparts.
That's our focus and their humanityand aspirations and needs.
And we see that as critical to violenceprevention, restoration
(02:13):
of social cohesion and social fabricin the U.S., creative problem,
solving the capacity to move forwardas a shared democracy, etc.
is a lofty goal and it's hard.
When you say bring the we back,how do we do that?
How do we actually get at that challenge?
Yeah, is a big problem to crack.
There's a lot of root causes and variablesto get across from how media functions
(02:36):
to geographic and ideological sortingdoes all the ways that people
are separate from people who are differentthan themselves in America today.
And all of the problemsthat that creates in terms
of mutual incomprehension and that becomesmutual vilification and dehumanization.
And so often.
And so there's a lot of a lot of waysand a lot of the work that we do.
(02:58):
It was pre-COVID in person,and it was a lot about breaking open
stuff, patterns of communicationand helping people
into empathy and recognitionfor each other's
lived experiences for each otheras moral and political lenses
just coming into those aha momentsof how people actually see things.
We were always frustratedwith questions of scale.
(03:19):
We reached about four or 5000 peoplea year and that kind of
in-person programingthat's now become virtual programing,
which is why we have movedinto content creation,
as well as training journaliststo try to do work at a bigger scale.
That's changing, overcomingsome of the perception gaps
that we have of each otherand these kinds of cartoonish caricatures
(03:41):
that we have of our counterparts,changing some of the storylines
that we have about each otheras restoring hope, about who
our counterparts are because of that,that vilification and dehumanization.
You talked about seeing examples of,Oh, this isn't how I should view at all.
You're actually a living, breathing,full human, something I didn't say
(04:02):
is our organizational origins were focusedon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
and I can tell more of that storyat the launch of our work on us.
Red, blue, purple and rural urban dividestook place in rural Wisconsin, in Iowa,
and the heart of the areathat flipped in the 2016 election.
Obama to Trump like
there were more counties that slept therethan anywhere else in the country.
(04:24):
And we brought a team of 36 facilitatorsand interns
with us to do a listening campaignin a whole series of dialog forums there.
So our interns were coming from schools,kind of deep blue enclaves,
progressive bubble institutionslike Oberlin and UC Berkeley and Brown.
(04:44):
I think it's not an exaggeration to saythat for many of them the program was
as much of a cultural exchange programas one taking place around the globe.
One of them said somethingthat's always stayed with me, she said.
I feel like I've just been conditionedto only understand
and relate to stereotypes of virtuallyall the perspectives I'm hearing
rather than the perspectives themselves
(05:04):
and their own internal logic,let alone the human beings behind them.
That kind of embodiesthe perception gaps that we bring with us.
I'm just there's so much projection
on virtually every issue from abortionto guns to the role of government.
There was a kind of awakeningand just seeing the political landscape
very differently from listening to people,you know,
which is somethingthat we need to be trained to do.
(05:26):
And then we need to be initiatedinto opportunities to do in America
today to understandwhere other people are coming from rather
than just project onto them or assumptionsabout where they're coming from.
Yeah, and you said earlierthe idea that when we don't understand
or when something feels unfamiliar,
we might become uncomfortable with itand then vilify it.
And so bringing people togetherface to face can really
(05:49):
I mean, it can be scary at first,but it can really help defuze that
that tendency we have as humans.
I mean, it's a human tendency.Oh, it's unfamiliar.
I'm going to be cautiousand then I might go down a road that's
that's not very healthyas far as how we engage.
Some of it is about thiskind of re humanization.
Some of it is about people being seenas they wish to be seen
(06:10):
and the ways that that is healingand is relieving.
Often people just have breakthroughs ofinsight and a has
we had a regular workshop
earlier this week where several peoplewho are coming from conservative
standpoints,realized that they didn't understand
Black Lives Matter,
that they had been like kind of coming in
with all of these assumptions of BlackLives Matter that were just false.
(06:32):
And a lot ofthat was also fed by conservative
media portrayals of the protest,which has know
dehumanize zationand have been a very mirror image way.
And it just took creating an environmentin which they felt like
they were being seen as themselvesand so they could become less defensive
and more receptiveand overcome their own confirmation
bias and motivated reasoningto take on new information and ideas.
(06:55):
And we just, one of them said, I realizedI had no idea what Black Lives
Matter was coming into this,and you just taught me something.
And then a few others pipe down and saidthat it had a very similar experience.
We aren't often explicitlypushing people toward
collaboration, like actuallyworking together to solve problems.
Like our work is about establishingthe relationships and the communication
(07:16):
and those kinds of inside breakthroughsthat allow people to discover
if they want to collaborate.
And then we kind ofhand them off to others.
But a lot of collaborations emergefrom the programs that we do.
You know, for example, we did a program or
unified workshop in Texasthat included people
who are working at municipal governmentson different sides of various divides.
(07:39):
And we had people who were working onthe gun issue coming at things
from very different perspectives.
They thought that they werediametrically opposed coming
and there was a lot of kind of,you know, we're coming from like
we are just going to clash and escalateand we actually talk about this.
But what they realizedwhen they went towards their differences
and investigated them was supportjust a core part of our methodology
(08:01):
that they agreed about 98% of the picture
and the report that they could do togetheron the gun issue, on gun policy
and preventing gun violence,and that the 2% that they disagreed
about was actually worthtackling and investigating
because they were learning thingsfrom each other.
So that's a very commonkind of experience.
And in the workshopversion of what we do, people
(08:22):
realize in part by going towardstheir differences is not unavoidably,
you know, fearlessly with supportthat they agree about far
more than they thought they did.
And they can work together and they cantake the part that they disagree on.
They can simply learn from it or becomepartners and exploration around it.
These issues can seem intractable,and often
there are emotions and strong heldnotions that go along with them.
(08:46):
So how do you build trust and connectionwhen these elements exist?
I think that progressives tendto be a little startled
by the way that conservatives experience
this sense of embarrassmentand being shut down.
It's really important to name
and acknowledgethat, particularly in the last four years,
(09:06):
that so many progressives have feltjust like completely
threatened and under attack,like the populations that they care
about, marginalized populationslike lives are at stake.
This isn't just about politics.
People's very identitiesand existences are at stake
and are vulnerableand are being threatened.
And so this isn't just a matter of debateor exchanging opinions,
(09:26):
like there are real things at stakeand basic rights are extinct.
So it's
I think when people are in that mindset,which is completely understandable,
then when conservatives talkabout like having relationships
cut off and feeling like they're vilified,there is a kind of so be it.
Like you deserve it,
(09:46):
you know, or you're do it,you know, you're doing it to yourselves.
And we have to be honest.
And I'm not I don't care
if it's like I'm shutting you down or I'mcutting off this relationship because
you are
participatingand like you're shoring up systems
that are threatening my life,
my very life and the lives of the peoplethat I love and care about.
(10:08):
And then there also is a sense,I think, among progressives that
that people are having a kind of
wanting to redirect attention
or distract attention to themselves, likethey just don't want to give up power.
And so they're talkingabout their own persecution.
I think that there is a lot of ways
that, you know, blind spots are calledblind spots for reasons.
(10:30):
Hegemony is called hegemony for reasons.
And I find that in today's America,despite
all of everything that I've just said,which is really important
to give recognition to, progressivesare really not aware of their own hegemony
over a lot of institutionsof American life,
like the degreeto which the mainstream media and academia
and the entertainment industry
(10:52):
just so many of the kindof cultural engines of American life
and the intellectual enginesof American life,
I do disparage,mock and demonize conservatives
and as well as just purple peopleand a lot of people
who are in flyover countrywho don't identify
with progressive politics,so called flyover country in quotes.
So all that is to say,like there's a lot of work to do on
(11:15):
and kind of in every direction.
You just said somethingreally interesting.
The degree to which progressives
have positions in the hegemony,in the hegemonic structure.
And I was thinking that that is trueto an extent, but I also was thinking,
Gosh, that's funny because people of colorand women feel shut out
from the narratives of the mainstreammedia or of Hollywood or of academe.
(11:38):
Like how difficult is it
for a person of color to really geta tenure track position in acting
so I'm like, wow,there is actually potentially
this point of connection where actuallyit's happening to both groups.
Progressive group would think, Oh,mainstream media is predominantly owned
by conservative voices.
Conservative,
but yet the conservative side would say,well,
(11:59):
it's predominantly peoplewho believe a certain thing
that are on the air who are talking,who are out in public.
And I think there's a lot of fascinating
conversation to be had in that space,because I think
neither side accepts its pieceof the of ownership in that space.
There's been some studies that have shownthat the groups
that are most distrustful of mainstreammedia are conservatives,
(12:21):
libertarian and Christianswho are more right leaning Christians,
rural people and people of color,essentially, like all of the groups
that don't feel like,
first of all, thatthey have representation in the newsroom
and that even if they have representation
in the newsroom that it's cosmeticrepresentation, maybe it's tokenizing,
but it doesn't actually impactthe stories are told.
Who interviewed and how they're heard,
(12:42):
and that the stories of their communities
are not actually givenaccurate representation.
So that's that's what drove us intowanting to work with journalists,
because there is for sure an intersectionbetween communities of color and
and rural and conservative.
So let's talk about your workwith journalists.
I would love to hear moreabout how you're how resetting the table
is approaching this and a little bit moreabout your work in the NEWSROOM space.
(13:06):
I think journalism had a wakeupcall in some ways after 2016.
And I think that this is to some extentreenacting Now, why were the polls so off?
Maybe we're operating in a bubble.
Maybe we don't know everythingabout what's happening in this country.
We don't have their finger on the pulseof everything that's happening.
If this was so shocking to us,who came out of left field for us,
we walked away from that experience.
(13:28):
We thought, what if journalists could be
societal mediatorsinstead of fueling conflict?
Like journalists are positioned to be ableto do exactly
what mediators tried to do,which is to capture disparate parties
accurately on their own terms,to be able to give people accurate,
(13:49):
empathic, generous representationas opposed to spinning people
as the worst possible versionof themselves to be able to crystallize
and capture the faultlines and differencesin America today.
What our national conflictsreally about what's underneath.
I guess if our conflicts play outin their kind of the soil,
how could we get underneath that soil intowhat's really growing?
(14:12):
What are the motivations, the concerns,the humanity, the aspirations, what's
underneath those conflicts as they'replaying themselves out, as they escalate?
What if journalists were doing thatlike mediators do?
And that would change
how we see each other and it would help usto just be actually informed citizens
and building a shared democracy,which is the role that we think the press
could play.
So that was our vision.
(14:33):
You're listening to news in contextimaginable area.
We're talking with Melissa Weintraub,founder and co-executive director
of Resetting the Table.
The very skillsthat we teach our facilitators,
which have to do with being able
to excavate, meaning like what'sreally underneath what people are saying.
Being able to capture it accurately.
(14:53):
Being able to crystallize differencesin a way that every party would say,
Yes, that's it.
We thought, What if we could helpjournalists to do that better?
That's the mirrorthat journalists should be holding up
so that people say, I understandall of the contentious issues.
I understandwhat we're really fighting about.
I understand what's at stake at that.
I understand the people on the other sideof of of those issues.
And I'm not just seeing themas cartoonish caricatures.
(15:14):
What have you discovered?
Well, I'll say the successful pieceand then I'll say the challenging piece.
And what we realizedthat we're up against.
So the first training that we didwas with the Solutions Journalism Network,
and it was with
a group of really prestigious journalist,Pulitzer Prize winners, etc..
You know,
one of the things that we realized isthat there is this kind of a growing field
(15:35):
of community listening forumsand such among journalists.
But journalists have never actuallybeen trained to listen.
So some journalists justthey were gravitated to the profession
because they were good listeners
and they alreadyhad the skill set of this disposition.
But mediators are trained to listenand work at it and build it as a muscle.
And we train facilitators intensivelyfor months, if not years, to be able
(15:59):
to do something like listen to someoneand then capture what they just said.
And we would put before this
in this roomand this was true in other rooms as well.
And evangelical pastor sayingsomething and say, what did he just say?
And they had no idea what he hadjust said.
They could not they couldn't capturewhat he had just said without distortion
and without incorporatingall kinds of their own filter.
(16:21):
They couldn't they were editorializingin the process of just trying to capture,
like a very simple translationof what had just been said.
So that's something that should just bepart of training of journalists
across the board.
This is only one piece,but it's it's an important piece.
There's really a systemic issuethat most national media
professionals are living in an urbanand liberal concentrated areas.
(16:43):
As you see, this is one of the thingsthat really drives me.
I know that there's all kindsof representation issues, but we saw
we came to see through our workin the rest of the U.S.
that this wasthis was one of the major systemic issues.
And that's what happens is
because journalists are operatingunder a tremendous time pressure,
(17:04):
because the business model rewards
clickbait and anxiety provoking headlinesand simultaneously they have no time
to, as you were saying,to build relationships,
to build relationships with sourcesbefore they need the source.
They take all kinds of shortcuts.
What we've come to seeas drive by journalism,
(17:25):
they are this kind of paint by numbers
approach that creates all this flattening.
So what does that what does that mean?
It means they want to find
someone who opposes the governmentshutdown.
They go to a shutdown protest
and talk to the loudest person therebecause that's a shortcut.
How do I find that person?
I haven't built relationships to be ableto hear all the different reasons
(17:45):
people might be criticalabout what's happening.
So I go to a shutdown protest, or ifI want to find someone who supports Trump,
I go to a Trump rallyand then we get this kind of mindless,
faceless mobs and standing behind Trump
that when there are so many nuances
of why someone choseto pull the trigger for Trump
and then yet again in this election,we have so many people saying,
(18:06):
how could this be?
And how could 50% of our closeto 50% of our population
have voted for Trump and having no ideathe answer to that question?
And journalists
are just doing a tremendous disserviceby not answering that question.
And a lot of it has to dowith how journalism is practiced
because of the time pressuresand like the lack of building real trusted
(18:26):
relationships with a diversity of peoplewho are coming at things
with nuance and differencearound those questions.
Yeah. And also,I would say in addition. Yes.
And the beat structure that used to exist,a lot of the corporate owners
because of that, because of the timeand the resource pressures,
the beats had to kind of get cut.
(18:47):
And every journalist becamea general assignment reporter.
So those relationshipsthat you would naturally build on a beat
you don't get to anymoreand you're just out covering the story,
then that story, then this.
And it is a pull here,pull there, get it on.
A lot of journalists,I my myself included, you know,
three stories a day done. It's great.
I mean, I'm sure you've heard all of this,but you're right.
(19:07):
That really is problematicwhen we're trying to inform the public,
especially about issues that areso important to the very democracy.
And then add to thatthis growing distrust,
which is, again,feeding a horrible feedback
loop, has led people to sources
that are, you know,absolutely not reputable,
and yet they're speakingto the source in question.
(19:29):
And that's really, really powerful.
And so you're right.
It's so importantto be able to listen, as you say.
And you brought upI love your distinction because it's true.
Journalists listen, they're tenacious.
They want to get the story,but they don't listen.
As a mediator listens.They listen in a different way.
And that's reallya really interesting distinction.
I really love that.
But this idea of,you know, the fractures in our society
(19:51):
and we only see them getting bigger.
And I actually wanted to ask you,what did bring you here?
What how did your journey bring youto resetting the table?
I spent 25 years working onthe Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
working on that conflict.
I came to see how when huge factions
come to see oneanother as like in their gut as other,
(20:14):
an enemy to the point that they saythere's no talking to them.
They can only be vanquished,they can only be squelched.
And these kind of blanket generalizations
about another peoplewithout really knowing who they are.
But that often breedsall kinds of harm and violence.
And 2016 began to see those same trendsessentially happening here
(20:37):
and realized that we may be degeneratinginto that level of social conflict,
that level of intractable social conflictand even violence,
and that that toolkitneeded to be brought here.
You know, I'll say like more personally,
I I've always been a kind of dialog
fiend.
(20:58):
Like dialog has been my way of lifefrom the time I was a small child.
Like I grew up in a smallish town
in the cornfields of central Illinois,
very much red country
dominated by megachurches and one ofthe only Jewish families in that town.
anti-Semitism was aliveand well in my town and in my childhood,
(21:20):
and there were crosses put in our frontyard and many people praying for my soul.
But that in some ways placed my experience
closer to that of earlier generations.
A lot of people
in my generation didn't have such visceralexperiences of anti-Semitism growing up.
Peoplereacting to those kinds of experiences.
(21:41):
But I reacted by kindof becoming a spokesperson
for the Jewish people by default, really,I think, enjoying
representing and connecting to peoplewho didn't have other
Jewish people in their livesand having them come to understand
a lot about my story, my commitments, my,my people's history, etc.
(22:02):
Also seeing the harmsof not doing that, like how when people
don't have those kinds of encountersthat can transform them
well, seeing the transformativepotential of such human encounter
and the harm that can ensuewhen people live in a vacuum
of having such experiencesand such encounters.
I learned the importance of translation
and engagementacross difference and transformative,
(22:25):
like the transformative potentialof human encounter, essentially of human
interaction across differencesas ways of confronting any social ills.
And how many of the issues and problemsthat we face
come from people lacking empathyand care for what others are experiencing
in relation to those issuesand just how important it is time to build
(22:46):
that empathy and care that has driven,I think, my whole life's work.
And I spent reallyall of my early adulthood
and professional life doing variousforms of dialog and deliberation
connected to social change,so that initially a lot of that work
was in African-American and NativeAmerican and Latino communities.
(23:07):
And I got involvedin the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I'm sure you know, of all of this work.
The studies on empathy
are Some of the studies I find mostfascinating are that when we have empathy
for our in-group, it can leadto lack of empathy for the outgroup.
So where do we go from here?
What is the what is the workthat still needs to be done
and how is resetting the tablegoing about tackling this work?
(23:29):
There are so much workthat still needs to be done.
I think we're at the beginningof a 40 year cycle or so, you know,
I mean, like this is this will be the workof the next generation as well.
We are very broken.
The Democracy Funders group
just released a rubric of three different
(23:50):
pillars of relating to the work
that needs to be done around democracybuilding that I found really helpful.
They talked about how there's the workof protecting democracy,
and that looks like protecting
voting rights and preventing politicalviolence and electoral transparency.
And there's the work of rebuildingdemocracy and a lot of the bridge
building initiative and dialog workand electoral reforms.
(24:12):
A lot of that fits into that pillar.
And then there is the work of sustainingdemocracy.
Ultimately,
that's about transformingthe way media happens and national
service programsthat get people out of their ideological
and geographic silosand political silos and racial silos
all of the above to cross lots of linesof difference in American society.
So a lot of what I'm thinking about nowis this moment
(24:36):
in American lifereminds me a lot of the early 2000
and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,where we were just
first waiting for violenceand then the violence was happening.
And there were all of these these kind ofsingle stories about the other population
that were
vilifying and dehumanizingall Palestinians are terrorists.
(24:57):
All Israelis are military imperialistswho want to just violate human rights
and care for no one's sufferingbut their own like these
these very damaging assumptionsand everyone
kind of hungeringfor recognition of their own hopes
and concerns and longingslike their national aspirations
(25:18):
and recognition,is really at the heart of that conflict.
And at the same time saying like,they will never recognize my
right to exist or the fundamental wrongsthat they've committed.
And the time reminds meso much of that time.
And one of the things that
I learned through working onthat conflict is to show and not tell
the work that that I ended up doing aroundthe Israeli Palestinian conflict.
(25:40):
Instead of telling Israelis and AmericanJews, Palestinians are the demons
you think they are just bringing peopleon the bus
to meet with Palestinian activistson the ground and to realize Palestinians
are not the demonsthat you think they are?
I don't have to tell you,if you meet with them
and you stay overnight in their homesand you listen to their stories
and you experience the policiesthat you support as they impact them,
(26:01):
like that's going to change you.
And so I think something reallysimilar needs to happen in the US
instead of saying they're not the demonsyou think they are,
this is why we've turned to filmand why we're trying to impact journalism,
because there can be showingand not telling through film and through
journalism.
If we get journalists on boardwith relating to their own others better.
(26:24):
Yes, so true.
Certainly the Palestinians as the minoritygroup without the power are being hurt.
But I would also argue that the Israelisare being hurt, too,
because they're holding on to this feelingabout feeling threatened or feeling
negative about something.
Whereas if we can communicateacross these differences and divides
(26:44):
and give each other humanity, we can letgo of some of that and become whole again.
Yeah, I mean, I thinkI think what you're talking about is
the heart of truth and reconciliationwork on some level.
And ultimately there is an element ofeveryone has to confront their own,
their own history and their own complicity
in their own implicationto be able to be liberated.
(27:06):
But it's not just the oppressed
that needs to be liberated,but the oppressor as well.
I will say thatboth in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and in terms of the political dividesin the US,
I think of itas more of a system of conflict
than an oppressor oppressed or persecutedvictim dynamic.
Even though there is asymmetries of power.
And it's importantto recognize the asymmetries of power,
(27:27):
there's also a system of conflict at playin which the very ways
that each each sidekind of seeks to protect itself
from the other in the way that it seesthe other is exactly what perpetuates
the worst behavior.
It's like each side is inspiring the worstbehaviors of the other, in part
through their perceptionsof who the other is, which is precisely
(27:47):
what's happening now in the US as well,and what happens in every conflict spiral.
You know, my husband, who's
also the co-founder of Resettingthe Table, has worked in criminal courts
and these are the dynamicsthat happen in criminal courts.
You are you talk to one personand the other person
seems likethey're utterly vile and monstrous.
And then you talk to that personin an entirely different story emerges
and each side justifiestheir own worst behavior
(28:12):
in the name of self protectionbecause of who the other is.
And now that's what has happenedin the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And I see that happening.
Thank you to my guest, Melissa Weintraub,
founder and co-executive directorof Resetting the Table,
to learn more about resetting the tableand to view the film
Purple, which uncovers the humanitybeneath our national conflicts.
(28:34):
Go to resettingthetable.org/purple.
This is Civity Week on News in Context.
Civity features people who are buildingrelationships to dismantle inequities
and strengthen communitiesgrounded in respect
and empathy.
Music in this episode includes
(28:55):
Spring Fling by Track Tribeand the Heist by Silent Partner.
In addition to hearing News In Contextevery Friday at 8:30 a.m.
and 6:30 p.m.
on KSFP 102.5 in San Francisco,you can hear it on Spotify, Stitcher,
Apple Podcasts, iHeart Media, Google Play,
Google Podcasts,Pod Bean, YouTube and Pyrex.
(29:16):
We're also on Facebookand Twitter @newsincontextSF and
on Instagram @newsincontext.
And you can find links to all of thatat newsincontext.net.
I'm Gina Baleria, thank you for listening.
Welcome to News In Context, I'mGina Baleria.
In this episode,we talk with Melissa Weintraub, founder
and co-executive directorof Resetting the Table.
Resetting the Table focuseson building dialog and deliberation across
political divides, focusing on seeminglyintractable differences
that are breeding distrust,a lack of empathy and marginalization.
(00:22):
As part of their work, Resetting the Tableproduced the film Purple,
which uncovers the humanitybeneath our national conflicts.
You can watch Purple
and find out more informationat rresettingthetable.org/purple.
This is Civity Week on News In Context.
Civity features people who are buildingrelationships to dismantle inequities
(00:43):
and strengthen communitiesgrounded in respect
and empathy.
Welcome, Melissa.
Tell me about resetting the table.
How did it come about and what are thegoals that we work to strengthen democracy
(01:06):
through collaborative deliberation andacross political silos in American life?
We do intensive facilitation and convenertraining, dialog and decision
making forums on contentious issuesand a host of other programs.
We brought more than 29,000 Americanstogether from a sweeping
range of backgrounds and viewpoints,many of them clergy, campus professionals,
(01:29):
journalists, otherswho act as societal conveners.
That that's our target audience,our primary target,
people who are organicallybringing together diverse constituencies,
helping them to do that well,and to build a culture of dialog
and deliberation in their communitiesand in their institutions.
Our overall vision,our overall goal is to rebuild
a shared sense of we and American life
(01:52):
without papering over our differencesand supporting the recognition
and care inside collaboration
with our counterparts, particularlyour political counterparts.
That's our focus and their humanityand aspirations and needs.
And we see that as critical to violenceprevention, restoration
(02:13):
of social cohesion and social fabricin the U.S., creative problem,
solving the capacity to move forwardas a shared democracy, etc.
is a lofty goal and it's hard.
When you say bring the we back,how do we do that?
How do we actually get at that challenge?
Yeah, is a big problem to crack.
There's a lot of root causes and variablesto get across from how media functions
(02:36):
to geographic and ideological sortingdoes all the ways that people
are separate from people who are differentthan themselves in America today.
And all of the problemsthat that creates in terms
of mutual incomprehension and that becomesmutual vilification and dehumanization.
And so often.
And so there's a lot of a lot of waysand a lot of the work that we do.
(02:58):
It was pre-COVID in person,and it was a lot about breaking open
stuff, patterns of communicationand helping people
into empathy and recognitionfor each other's
lived experiences for each otheras moral and political lenses
just coming into those aha momentsof how people actually see things.
We were always frustratedwith questions of scale.
(03:19):
We reached about four or 5000 peoplea year and that kind of
in-person programingthat's now become virtual programing,
which is why we have movedinto content creation,
as well as training journaliststo try to do work at a bigger scale.
That's changing, overcomingsome of the perception gaps
that we have of each otherand these kinds of cartoonish caricatures
(03:41):
that we have of our counterparts,changing some of the storylines
that we have about each otheras restoring hope, about who
our counterparts are because of that,that vilification and dehumanization.
You talked about seeing examples of,Oh, this isn't how I should view at all.
You're actually a living, breathing,full human, something I didn't say
(04:02):
is our organizational origins were focusedon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
and I can tell more of that storyat the launch of our work on us.
Red, blue, purple and rural urban dividestook place in rural Wisconsin, in Iowa,
and the heart of the areathat flipped in the 2016 election.
Obama to Trump like
there were more counties that slept therethan anywhere else in the country.
(04:24):
And we brought a team of 36 facilitatorsand interns
with us to do a listening campaignin a whole series of dialog forums there.
So our interns were coming from schools,kind of deep blue enclaves,
progressive bubble institutionslike Oberlin and UC Berkeley and Brown.
(04:44):
I think it's not an exaggeration to saythat for many of them the program was
as much of a cultural exchange programas one taking place around the globe.
One of them said somethingthat's always stayed with me, she said.
I feel like I've just been conditionedto only understand
and relate to stereotypes of virtuallyall the perspectives I'm hearing
rather than the perspectives themselves
(05:04):
and their own internal logic,let alone the human beings behind them.
That kind of embodiesthe perception gaps that we bring with us.
I'm just there's so much projection
on virtually every issue from abortionto guns to the role of government.
There was a kind of awakeningand just seeing the political landscape
very differently from listening to people,you know,
which is somethingthat we need to be trained to do.
(05:26):
And then we need to be initiatedinto opportunities to do in America
today to understandwhere other people are coming from rather
than just project onto them or assumptionsabout where they're coming from.
Yeah, and you said earlierthe idea that when we don't understand
or when something feels unfamiliar,
we might become uncomfortable with itand then vilify it.
And so bringing people togetherface to face can really
(05:49):
I mean, it can be scary at first,but it can really help defuze that
that tendency we have as humans.
I mean, it's a human tendency.Oh, it's unfamiliar.
I'm going to be cautiousand then I might go down a road that's
that's not very healthyas far as how we engage.
Some of it is about thiskind of re humanization.
Some of it is about people being seenas they wish to be seen
(06:10):
and the ways that that is healingand is relieving.
Often people just have breakthroughs ofinsight and a has
we had a regular workshop
earlier this week where several peoplewho are coming from conservative
standpoints,realized that they didn't understand
Black Lives Matter,
that they had been like kind of coming in
with all of these assumptions of BlackLives Matter that were just false.
(06:32):
And a lot ofthat was also fed by conservative
media portrayals of the protest,which has know
dehumanize zationand have been a very mirror image way.
And it just took creating an environmentin which they felt like
they were being seen as themselvesand so they could become less defensive
and more receptiveand overcome their own confirmation
bias and motivated reasoningto take on new information and ideas.
(06:55):
And we just, one of them said, I realizedI had no idea what Black Lives
Matter was coming into this,and you just taught me something.
And then a few others pipe down and saidthat it had a very similar experience.
We aren't often explicitlypushing people toward
collaboration, like actuallyworking together to solve problems.
Like our work is about establishingthe relationships and the communication
(07:16):
and those kinds of inside breakthroughsthat allow people to discover
if they want to collaborate.
And then we kind ofhand them off to others.
But a lot of collaborations emergefrom the programs that we do.
You know, for example, we did a program or
unified workshop in Texasthat included people
who are working at municipal governmentson different sides of various divides.
(07:39):
And we had people who were working onthe gun issue coming at things
from very different perspectives.
They thought that they werediametrically opposed coming
and there was a lot of kind of,you know, we're coming from like
we are just going to clash and escalateand we actually talk about this.
But what they realizedwhen they went towards their differences
and investigated them was supportjust a core part of our methodology
(08:01):
that they agreed about 98% of the picture
and the report that they could do togetheron the gun issue, on gun policy
and preventing gun violence,and that the 2% that they disagreed
about was actually worthtackling and investigating
because they were learning thingsfrom each other.
So that's a very commonkind of experience.
And in the workshopversion of what we do, people
(08:22):
realize in part by going towardstheir differences is not unavoidably,
you know, fearlessly with supportthat they agree about far
more than they thought they did.
And they can work together and they cantake the part that they disagree on.
They can simply learn from it or becomepartners and exploration around it.
These issues can seem intractable,and often
there are emotions and strong heldnotions that go along with them.
(08:46):
So how do you build trust and connectionwhen these elements exist?
I think that progressives tendto be a little startled
by the way that conservatives experience
this sense of embarrassmentand being shut down.
It's really important to name
and acknowledgethat, particularly in the last four years,
(09:06):
that so many progressives have feltjust like completely
threatened and under attack,like the populations that they care
about, marginalized populationslike lives are at stake.
This isn't just about politics.
People's very identitiesand existences are at stake
and are vulnerableand are being threatened.
And so this isn't just a matter of debateor exchanging opinions,
(09:26):
like there are real things at stakeand basic rights are extinct.
So it's
I think when people are in that mindset,which is completely understandable,
then when conservatives talkabout like having relationships
cut off and feeling like they're vilified,there is a kind of so be it.
Like you deserve it,
(09:46):
you know, or you're do it,you know, you're doing it to yourselves.
And we have to be honest.
And I'm not I don't care
if it's like I'm shutting you down or I'mcutting off this relationship because
you are
participatingand like you're shoring up systems
that are threatening my life,
my very life and the lives of the peoplethat I love and care about.
(10:08):
And then there also is a sense,I think, among progressives that
that people are having a kind of
wanting to redirect attention
or distract attention to themselves, likethey just don't want to give up power.
And so they're talkingabout their own persecution.
I think that there is a lot of ways
that, you know, blind spots are calledblind spots for reasons.
(10:30):
Hegemony is called hegemony for reasons.
And I find that in today's America,despite
all of everything that I've just said,which is really important
to give recognition to, progressivesare really not aware of their own hegemony
over a lot of institutionsof American life,
like the degreeto which the mainstream media and academia
and the entertainment industry
(10:52):
just so many of the kindof cultural engines of American life
and the intellectual enginesof American life,
I do disparage,mock and demonize conservatives
and as well as just purple peopleand a lot of people
who are in flyover countrywho don't identify
with progressive politics,so called flyover country in quotes.
So all that is to say,like there's a lot of work to do on
(11:15):
and kind of in every direction.
You just said somethingreally interesting.
The degree to which progressives
have positions in the hegemony,in the hegemonic structure.
And I was thinking that that is trueto an extent, but I also was thinking,
Gosh, that's funny because people of colorand women feel shut out
from the narratives of the mainstreammedia or of Hollywood or of academe.
(11:38):
Like how difficult is it
for a person of color to really geta tenure track position in acting
so I'm like, wow,there is actually potentially
this point of connection where actuallyit's happening to both groups.
Progressive group would think, Oh,mainstream media is predominantly owned
by conservative voices.
Conservative,
but yet the conservative side would say,well,
(11:59):
it's predominantly peoplewho believe a certain thing
that are on the air who are talking,who are out in public.
And I think there's a lot of fascinating
conversation to be had in that space,because I think
neither side accepts its pieceof the of ownership in that space.
There's been some studies that have shownthat the groups
that are most distrustful of mainstreammedia are conservatives,
(12:21):
libertarian and Christianswho are more right leaning Christians,
rural people and people of color,essentially, like all of the groups
that don't feel like,
first of all, thatthey have representation in the newsroom
and that even if they have representation
in the newsroom that it's cosmeticrepresentation, maybe it's tokenizing,
but it doesn't actually impactthe stories are told.
Who interviewed and how they're heard,
(12:42):
and that the stories of their communities
are not actually givenaccurate representation.
So that's that's what drove us intowanting to work with journalists,
because there is for sure an intersectionbetween communities of color and
and rural and conservative.
So let's talk about your workwith journalists.
I would love to hear moreabout how you're how resetting the table
is approaching this and a little bit moreabout your work in the NEWSROOM space.
(13:06):
I think journalism had a wakeupcall in some ways after 2016.
And I think that this is to some extentreenacting Now, why were the polls so off?
Maybe we're operating in a bubble.
Maybe we don't know everythingabout what's happening in this country.
We don't have their finger on the pulseof everything that's happening.
If this was so shocking to us,who came out of left field for us,
we walked away from that experience.
(13:28):
We thought, what if journalists could be
societal mediatorsinstead of fueling conflict?
Like journalists are positioned to be ableto do exactly
what mediators tried to do,which is to capture disparate parties
accurately on their own terms,to be able to give people accurate,
(13:49):
empathic, generous representationas opposed to spinning people
as the worst possible versionof themselves to be able to crystallize
and capture the faultlines and differencesin America today.
What our national conflictsreally about what's underneath.
I guess if our conflicts play outin their kind of the soil,
how could we get underneath that soil intowhat's really growing?
(14:12):
What are the motivations, the concerns,the humanity, the aspirations, what's
underneath those conflicts as they'replaying themselves out, as they escalate?
What if journalists were doing thatlike mediators do?
And that would change
how we see each other and it would help usto just be actually informed citizens
and building a shared democracy,which is the role that we think the press
could play.
So that was our vision.
(14:33):
You're listening to news in contextimaginable area.
We're talking with Melissa Weintraub,founder and co-executive director
of Resetting the Table.
The very skillsthat we teach our facilitators,
which have to do with being able
to excavate, meaning like what'sreally underneath what people are saying.
Being able to capture it accurately.
(14:53):
Being able to crystallize differencesin a way that every party would say,
Yes, that's it.
We thought, What if we could helpjournalists to do that better?
That's the mirrorthat journalists should be holding up
so that people say, I understandall of the contentious issues.
I understandwhat we're really fighting about.
I understand what's at stake at that.
I understand the people on the other sideof of of those issues.
And I'm not just seeing themas cartoonish caricatures.
(15:14):
What have you discovered?
Well, I'll say the successful pieceand then I'll say the challenging piece.
And what we realizedthat we're up against.
So the first training that we didwas with the Solutions Journalism Network,
and it was with
a group of really prestigious journalist,Pulitzer Prize winners, etc..
You know,
one of the things that we realized isthat there is this kind of a growing field
(15:35):
of community listening forumsand such among journalists.
But journalists have never actuallybeen trained to listen.
So some journalists justthey were gravitated to the profession
because they were good listeners
and they alreadyhad the skill set of this disposition.
But mediators are trained to listenand work at it and build it as a muscle.
And we train facilitators intensivelyfor months, if not years, to be able
(15:59):
to do something like listen to someoneand then capture what they just said.
And we would put before this
in this roomand this was true in other rooms as well.
And evangelical pastor sayingsomething and say, what did he just say?
And they had no idea what he hadjust said.
They could not they couldn't capturewhat he had just said without distortion
and without incorporatingall kinds of their own filter.
(16:21):
They couldn't they were editorializingin the process of just trying to capture,
like a very simple translationof what had just been said.
So that's something that should just bepart of training of journalists
across the board.
This is only one piece,but it's it's an important piece.
There's really a systemic issuethat most national media
professionals are living in an urbanand liberal concentrated areas.
(16:43):
As you see, this is one of the thingsthat really drives me.
I know that there's all kindsof representation issues, but we saw
we came to see through our workin the rest of the U.S.
that this wasthis was one of the major systemic issues.
And that's what happens is
because journalists are operatingunder a tremendous time pressure,
(17:04):
because the business model rewards
clickbait and anxiety provoking headlinesand simultaneously they have no time
to, as you were saying,to build relationships,
to build relationships with sourcesbefore they need the source.
They take all kinds of shortcuts.
What we've come to seeas drive by journalism,
(17:25):
they are this kind of paint by numbers
approach that creates all this flattening.
So what does that what does that mean?
It means they want to find
someone who opposes the governmentshutdown.
They go to a shutdown protest
and talk to the loudest person therebecause that's a shortcut.
How do I find that person?
I haven't built relationships to be ableto hear all the different reasons
(17:45):
people might be criticalabout what's happening.
So I go to a shutdown protest, or ifI want to find someone who supports Trump,
I go to a Trump rallyand then we get this kind of mindless,
faceless mobs and standing behind Trump
that when there are so many nuances
of why someone choseto pull the trigger for Trump
and then yet again in this election,we have so many people saying,
(18:06):
how could this be?
And how could 50% of our closeto 50% of our population
have voted for Trump and having no ideathe answer to that question?
And journalists
are just doing a tremendous disserviceby not answering that question.
And a lot of it has to dowith how journalism is practiced
because of the time pressuresand like the lack of building real trusted
(18:26):
relationships with a diversity of peoplewho are coming at things
with nuance and differencearound those questions.
Yeah. And also,I would say in addition. Yes.
And the beat structure that used to exist,a lot of the corporate owners
because of that, because of the timeand the resource pressures,
the beats had to kind of get cut.
(18:47):
And every journalist becamea general assignment reporter.
So those relationshipsthat you would naturally build on a beat
you don't get to anymoreand you're just out covering the story,
then that story, then this.
And it is a pull here,pull there, get it on.
A lot of journalists,I my myself included, you know,
three stories a day done. It's great.
I mean, I'm sure you've heard all of this,but you're right.
(19:07):
That really is problematicwhen we're trying to inform the public,
especially about issues that areso important to the very democracy.
And then add to thatthis growing distrust,
which is, again,feeding a horrible feedback
loop, has led people to sources
that are, you know,absolutely not reputable,
and yet they're speakingto the source in question.
(19:29):
And that's really, really powerful.
And so you're right.
It's so importantto be able to listen, as you say.
And you brought upI love your distinction because it's true.
Journalists listen, they're tenacious.
They want to get the story,but they don't listen.
As a mediator listens.They listen in a different way.
And that's reallya really interesting distinction.
I really love that.
But this idea of,you know, the fractures in our society
(19:51):
and we only see them getting bigger.
And I actually wanted to ask you,what did bring you here?
What how did your journey bring youto resetting the table?
I spent 25 years working onthe Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
working on that conflict.
I came to see how when huge factions
come to see oneanother as like in their gut as other,
(20:14):
an enemy to the point that they saythere's no talking to them.
They can only be vanquished,they can only be squelched.
And these kind of blanket generalizations
about another peoplewithout really knowing who they are.
But that often breedsall kinds of harm and violence.
And 2016 began to see those same trendsessentially happening here
(20:37):
and realized that we may be degeneratinginto that level of social conflict,
that level of intractable social conflictand even violence,
and that that toolkitneeded to be brought here.
You know, I'll say like more personally,
I I've always been a kind of dialog
fiend.
(20:58):
Like dialog has been my way of lifefrom the time I was a small child.
Like I grew up in a smallish town
in the cornfields of central Illinois,
very much red country
dominated by megachurches and one ofthe only Jewish families in that town.
anti-Semitism was aliveand well in my town and in my childhood,
(21:20):
and there were crosses put in our frontyard and many people praying for my soul.
But that in some ways placed my experience
closer to that of earlier generations.
A lot of people
in my generation didn't have such visceralexperiences of anti-Semitism growing up.
Peoplereacting to those kinds of experiences.
(21:41):
But I reacted by kindof becoming a spokesperson
for the Jewish people by default, really,I think, enjoying
representing and connecting to peoplewho didn't have other
Jewish people in their livesand having them come to understand
a lot about my story, my commitments, my,my people's history, etc.
(22:02):
Also seeing the harmsof not doing that, like how when people
don't have those kinds of encountersthat can transform them
well, seeing the transformativepotential of such human encounter
and the harm that can ensuewhen people live in a vacuum
of having such experiencesand such encounters.
I learned the importance of translation
and engagementacross difference and transformative,
(22:25):
like the transformative potentialof human encounter, essentially of human
interaction across differencesas ways of confronting any social ills.
And how many of the issues and problemsthat we face
come from people lacking empathyand care for what others are experiencing
in relation to those issuesand just how important it is time to build
(22:46):
that empathy and care that has driven,I think, my whole life's work.
And I spent reallyall of my early adulthood
and professional life doing variousforms of dialog and deliberation
connected to social change,so that initially a lot of that work
was in African-American and NativeAmerican and Latino communities.
(23:07):
And I got involvedin the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I'm sure you know, of all of this work.
The studies on empathy
are Some of the studies I find mostfascinating are that when we have empathy
for our in-group, it can leadto lack of empathy for the outgroup.
So where do we go from here?
What is the what is the workthat still needs to be done
and how is resetting the tablegoing about tackling this work?
(23:29):
There are so much workthat still needs to be done.
I think we're at the beginningof a 40 year cycle or so, you know,
I mean, like this is this will be the workof the next generation as well.
We are very broken.
The Democracy Funders group
just released a rubric of three different
(23:50):
pillars of relating to the work
that needs to be done around democracybuilding that I found really helpful.
They talked about how there's the workof protecting democracy,
and that looks like protecting
voting rights and preventing politicalviolence and electoral transparency.
And there's the work of rebuildingdemocracy and a lot of the bridge
building initiative and dialog workand electoral reforms.
(24:12):
A lot of that fits into that pillar.
And then there is the work of sustainingdemocracy.
Ultimately,
that's about transformingthe way media happens and national
service programsthat get people out of their ideological
and geographic silosand political silos and racial silos
all of the above to cross lots of linesof difference in American society.
So a lot of what I'm thinking about nowis this moment
(24:36):
in American lifereminds me a lot of the early 2000
and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,where we were just
first waiting for violenceand then the violence was happening.
And there were all of these these kind ofsingle stories about the other population
that were
vilifying and dehumanizingall Palestinians are terrorists.
(24:57):
All Israelis are military imperialistswho want to just violate human rights
and care for no one's sufferingbut their own like these
these very damaging assumptionsand everyone
kind of hungeringfor recognition of their own hopes
and concerns and longingslike their national aspirations
(25:18):
and recognition,is really at the heart of that conflict.
And at the same time saying like,they will never recognize my
right to exist or the fundamental wrongsthat they've committed.
And the time reminds meso much of that time.
And one of the things that
I learned through working onthat conflict is to show and not tell
the work that that I ended up doing aroundthe Israeli Palestinian conflict.
(25:40):
Instead of telling Israelis and AmericanJews, Palestinians are the demons
you think they are just bringing peopleon the bus
to meet with Palestinian activistson the ground and to realize Palestinians
are not the demonsthat you think they are?
I don't have to tell you,if you meet with them
and you stay overnight in their homesand you listen to their stories
and you experience the policiesthat you support as they impact them,
(26:01):
like that's going to change you.
And so I think something reallysimilar needs to happen in the US
instead of saying they're not the demonsyou think they are,
this is why we've turned to filmand why we're trying to impact journalism,
because there can be showingand not telling through film and through
journalism.
If we get journalists on boardwith relating to their own others better.
(26:24):
Yes, so true.
Certainly the Palestinians as the minoritygroup without the power are being hurt.
But I would also argue that the Israelisare being hurt, too,
because they're holding on to this feelingabout feeling threatened or feeling
negative about something.
Whereas if we can communicateacross these differences and divides
(26:44):
and give each other humanity, we can letgo of some of that and become whole again.
Yeah, I mean, I thinkI think what you're talking about is
the heart of truth and reconciliationwork on some level.
And ultimately there is an element ofeveryone has to confront their own,
their own history and their own complicity
in their own implicationto be able to be liberated.
(27:06):
But it's not just the oppressed
that needs to be liberated,but the oppressor as well.
I will say thatboth in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and in terms of the political dividesin the US,
I think of itas more of a system of conflict
than an oppressor oppressed or persecutedvictim dynamic.
Even though there is asymmetries of power.
And it's importantto recognize the asymmetries of power,
(27:27):
there's also a system of conflict at playin which the very ways
that each each sidekind of seeks to protect itself
from the other in the way that it seesthe other is exactly what perpetuates
the worst behavior.
It's like each side is inspiring the worstbehaviors of the other, in part
through their perceptionsof who the other is, which is precisely
(27:47):
what's happening now in the US as well,and what happens in every conflict spiral.
You know, my husband, who's
also the co-founder of Resettingthe Table, has worked in criminal courts
and these are the dynamicsthat happen in criminal courts.
You are you talk to one personand the other person
seems likethey're utterly vile and monstrous.
And then you talk to that personin an entirely different story emerges
and each side justifiestheir own worst behavior
(28:12):
in the name of self protectionbecause of who the other is.
And now that's what has happenedin the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And I see that happening.
Thank you to my guest, Melissa Weintraub,
founder and co-executive directorof Resetting the Table,
to learn more about resetting the tableand to view the film
Purple, which uncovers the humanitybeneath our national conflicts.
(28:34):
Go to resettingthetable.org/purple.
This is Civity Week on News in Context.
Civity features people who are buildingrelationships to dismantle inequities
and strengthen communitiesgrounded in respect
and empathy.
Music in this episode includes
(28:55):
Spring Fling by Track Tribeand the Heist by Silent Partner.
In addition to hearing News In Contextevery Friday at 8:30 a.m.
and 6:30 p.m.
on KSFP 102.5 in San Francisco,you can hear it on Spotify, Stitcher,
Apple Podcasts, iHeart Media, Google Play,
Google Podcasts,Pod Bean, YouTube and Pyrex.
(29:16):
We're also on Facebookand Twitter @newsincontextSF and
on Instagram @newsincontext.
And you can find links to all of thatat newsincontext.net.
I'm Gina Baleria, thank you for listening.
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