Living Room Conversations: Transpartisan Dialogue with Joan Blades   HIGHLIGHTS
Channel: Front and Center with Steve and Michael
Date: 2021-11-15

Transpartisan Dialogue to Overgrow the Partisan Trance

“If we truly want peace in the Middle East, we must first have peace in the Middle West.”  -- Swami Beyondananda

For decades, we’ve been exposed to the meme, “visualize world peace.”  Well, maybe the key to transforming the world at large is to transform the “world at small” – a peace-building movement to bring together our red and blue tribes to sit in “sacred circle” and talk until they’re “purple in the face.”

That’s the approach this week’s guest, Joan Blades, is taking.  The co-founder of MoveOn.org, known for its partisan alignment with the Democratic Party, she has spent the last decade building “Living Room Conversations” to bring parties from both parties into heart-opening, re-humanizing dialogue, which she describes as “respectful discourse across ideological, cultural and party lines, grassroots engagement around allowing people at the community level to really connect.”

In this highlight condensation of the longer conversation (see below), Joan speaks of her involvement with MoveOn (which began, she says, as a transpartisan call to move beyond Bill Clinton’s impeachment), and the insights and influences that led her to co-found Living Room Conversations as a “listening practice to grow connection and understanding, a way to get in right relationship with those around us.”

You’ll find out why these conversations work, how they create “safety” for participants even as they discuss divisive issues, and hear success stories about how heart-to-heart connections have been made, and how these conversations have led to fruitful collaboration.  In contrast to mainstream media and social network platforms that sow the seeds of mistrust and separation, Living Room Conversations offers face-to-face communication to lift us off the political battlefield and onto the cooperative playing field – so left and right can come front and center to “face the music” and dance together.

Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/erGXsuDdXnqHG-MoOQpvGPEdhw4

https://livingroomconversations.org/ 

Learn about and watch the documentary: Social Dilemma
https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/
https://youtu.be/uaaC57tcci0

Learn about and watch the Black Mirror series:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror
https://youtu.be/di6emt8_ie8

“Courage” Our Front and Center Theme Song
http://www.danceawake.com/