Braver Angels working to bridge political divide in Sonoma County

It was a brooding and rainy Saturday in December, inside a bland library annex in Petaluma. On one side of a partition, repairmen worked to patch a leaky roof. On the other side of the partition, 16 people assembled to help fix a broken country.

They were attending a workshop organized by the Sonoma County chapter of Braver Angels, a national organization founded seven years ago to address America’s widening political divide — not necessarily via political compromise, but through the power of open-minded dialogue.

Some of the December participants were veterans of the group. For others, it was an introduction.

“You want us to identify as red and blue?” someone asked the moderators, Lou Zweier and Annie Chung. The answer was no, not on this day.

The topic of this particular workshop was Depolarizing Within. The goal: to get participants to recognize “the four horsemen of polarizing” in their own thought processes, and to avert those tendencies among peers within their political tribe. The villains were scrawled in marker on a tear-off sheet of paper at the front of the room — stereotyping, dismissing, ridiculing and having contempt.

The Depolarizing Within workshop is considered one of Braver Angels’ milder offerings. And indeed, there were no fireworks in Petaluma that day, no tearful hugs afterward.

In truth, it all had sort of a “Parks and Recreation” vibe, with earnest community spirit, role-playing exercises and lots of mnemonic devices. (LAPP: Listen to the person bashing the other side, Acknowledge what they’re saying, Pivot to a different line of thought and add new Perspective.) But everyone seemed to come away with both tools and motivation, a tiny step on the path to national reconciliation.

“In every workshop I have moderated, there are moments I have felt grateful, and hopeful,” said Zweier, one of the two moderators that day. “When I see people reflecting on themselves, and finding common ground with others they are different from, it fills me with hope and gratitude.”

The first Braver Angels event (it was called Better Angels then, a reference to a quote by Abraham Lincoln during his first inaugural address) was organized by David Blankenhorn, Bill Doherty and David Lapp in South Lebanon, Ohio, in December 2016. The United States had just elected Donald Trump president, and political rhetoric on both sides of the aisle was at a fever pitch.

More than six years after that first event, Trump remains a polarizing force. His recent indictment for business fraud by a Manhattan grand jury was celebrated gleefully by Democrats, and attacked as partisan overreach by Republicans.

Meanwhile, Braver Angels, buoyed by a flow of media coverage — it’s one of the few politically oriented organizations to receive favorable press from both the left and the right — has expanded to 92 chapters, and has conducted events in all 50 states. Braver Angels brought in nearly $2.7 million in total revenue in 2020, according to its Form 990 tax filing that year. Blankenhorn, the organization’s president, drew a salary of $200,000 in 2020.

Here in the North Bay, there is a regional Bay Area “super-alliance” in addition to the Sonoma County alliance, which has quietly been operating for about two years now.

The driving force behind the local chapter was Mary Munat, known by many in this county as Green Mary for her zero-waste campaign. One pillar of the Braver Angels model is equal representation of red and blue among leadership. Munat, a liberal, needed a conservative partner to form a chapter. She turned to her ex-boyfriend, Brad Brink, a transplanted Illinois engineer who had stayed true to his Republican upbringing.

“I never knew anybody other than Christians and Catholics,” Brink said. “I never knew anybody who did anything other than celebrate Christmas. Like, ‘What do you mean people don’t go to one side of the family on Christmas Eve, and the other side on Christmas Day? What do you mean everybody doesn’t watch the Super Bowl?’”

The abiding trust that bound Munat and Brink made them perfect candidates to jump-start the Sonoma alliance. The local chapter now has about 160 dues-paying members and 400 newsletter subscribers, Zweier said. He credited former chapter head Lani Slonim for much of that growth; she is currently taking a break from organizing.

Most members tend to show up out of curiosity and wind up finding meaning in the conversations.

That was the case for Chung, Zweier’s co-moderator at the Depolarizing Within workshop. Chung is a Braver Angels rarity — a purple voter, not aligned with either political pole. She joined after the 2020 election, upset by how divided the country remained and by the rampant demonization she saw in political discourse.

What surprised Chung was having to confront her own biases. She hadn’t realized moderates could be polarized, too.

“When I first went to a workshop, I felt I was going in with a better attitude than most people, because I was in the middle,” said Chung, a 64-year-old legal assistant who lives in Santa Rosa. “I began to examine my own views a little more. And I did see ways where I didn’t really want to listen to people. I was stereotyping, being critical. It’s not necessarily the content of what you believe, but how hard you cling to it.”

That stubbornness is at the heart of the Depolarizing Within workshop, which offers strategies for recognizing your own preconceptions, and talking to the angrier and more resentful people on your side of the political spectrum. There will be one in Rohnert Park on April 15.

Other workshops include Families and Politics, Race Conversations, Skills for Social Media and Red/Blue.

That last “experiential workshop” is where the rubber tends to hit the road. Unlike Depolarizing Within, Red/Blue demands an equal number of conservatives and liberals, bringing them together to untangle disagreements, reduce stereotyped thinking and discover common values.

That sounds pleasant enough, but Braver Angels can be hard work. Imagine being asked to embrace the validity of an enthusiastic socialist or a hard-core Trump voter — depending on your own political bent. Not everyone takes to the process.

“There are people who show up who are very charged and have a pain they want people to know about,” said Zweier, 66, who has a long background in education, technology and media. “And then there are the people who think we should be doing it differently. I’ll say, ‘Thank you, let’s talk about it afterward.’ But we will not allow the workshop to be derailed.”

In that sense, the Braver Angels moderators are the train conductors. They have to constantly channel the energy of participants in a positive direction. The moderators go through training that mostly consists of watching workshop videos.

“For me, the trickiest part is catching people when they’re veering outside a constructive way of communicating,” Chung said. “If someone gets triggered, or is reactive, you have to be able to catch it and steer them back. In a nice way, so they don’t feel like they’re being targeted or you’re scolding them.”

No one could recall a local workshop that descended into angry bickering.

In fact, everyone interviewed for this story had good things to say about their Braver Angels experience. That included first-timers like Chuck and Michele Beach, who drove to Petaluma from Walnut Creek to check out Depolarizing Within.

The Beaches were so taken with the concept, they are now attempting to start a chapter in the gated Rossmoor community in Walnut Creek.

“We have over 100 Rossmoor residents interested in bringing some civility and openness to political discussions, rather than being divisive,” Michele Beach wrote in an email. “We are not yet an ‘alliance’ in the Braver Angels parlance, but we have plans to host their workshops and conversations. We're very excited!”

Still, the local alliances have some challenges.

In Sonoma County, one of them is finding enough red voters to balance the ledger in this deeply blue region. Last November, the county once again cast its ballots for a slate of Democrats — 59% for Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta, 61% for Sen. Alex Padilla, 68% for U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson and 74% for Rep. Jared Huffman.

“Oh, yeah,” Brink said. “People try to fix me all the time.”

The Sonoma County alliance has done some outreach in an effort to attract conservatives like Brink. But leaders acknowledge they need to do more.

The other difficulty has been attracting young people. Gray hair dominated the December depolarization workshop, and organizers concede that’s the norm here.

The alliance has made presentations on college campuses. But these workshops are a time commitment — a half-day for Depolarizing Within, a full day for Red/Blue. They tend to attract residents who have fewer commitments, such as retirees.

That said, Sonoma County’s Braver Angels want you to join them, at least once, no matter your age, background, or views on immigration and drag queen story hours. They understand their movement is more of a trickle than a landslide. But they remain committed to the radical idea of treating political opponents with understanding and respect.

“I think I’ve learned to be more open to the other side’s way of thinking,” Brink said. “That we all have the same goal. It’s just different ideas of how to get there. The other thing is, what you hear and read about in the media is what comes from people on the extreme left and the extreme right.

“The bulk of people are in the middle. It’s really not as black and white as things are sometimes portrayed.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.