A country that's polarized is paralyzed. If we want any change in the coming years, we need to find a way to work together. However, you can't just unify people by holding hands and singing Kumbaya. No – rather than ignore or "put aside" our differences, let's use our different perspectives & interests & skills to tackle problems from all possible angles! For us to find common ground, we first need to find common goals.
This is the Common Project project.
Below, you'll find a list of projects, people, organizations, books, talks, movies, articles, and ideas that cross partisan lines to solve The Big Problems we face today. There's many such problems. And we'll need help from all sides.
version 0.1 - last updated mar 7th, 2017
#Poverty
###Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security [report]
Liberals & conservatives may feel like they have totally mutually exclusive values, but that's not the case. The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution gathered together some top experts across the left-right political spectrum, and had them talk with each other to figure out a plan to fight poverty. Sure, there were disagreements on the policy level, but when it came to moral values, it turns out they had a strong consensus on these three:
Creating opportunity, promoting responsibility, and providing security.
And from these core values, the AEI-Brookings team came up with a list of 12 key policies, to promote those values in American families, work, and education. Their report ends with the noble call once described by Abraham Lincoln: “to clear paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”
###MLK's Poor People's Campaign [historical organization]
Contrary to the last whole U.S. election, you can fight both racism and elitism. That's what Martin Luther King tried to do in 1968, with the Poor People's Campaign, which brought together poor blacks, poor whites, and poor Native Americans to march on Washington, D.C. and – by unifying Americans of all races – demand that the elites give economic justice for all.
Sadly, MLK was assassinated that same year, and the organization fell apart without his moral guidance and leadership. But I bring up this historical example as a role model of how we can unify seemingly-opposed groups around a common cause. Maybe now, after this last election, we'll realize that the fates of the urban (mostly-minority) poor & the rural (mostly-white) poor are tied together. As MLK once said, poor blacks and poor whites would be "natural allies", if it weren't for those in power pitting us against each other.
###Basic Income [idea]
One of the key proposals Martin Luther King made part of the Poor People's Campaign, was the idea of the basic income. (also called the citizen's income, a name I personally like better) Current welfare systems can accidentally create dependency, but not having any welfare can create a cycle of poverty that wastes human potential.
The idea of basic income is simple: just give everyone the same amount of money. No bloated bureaucracy, no convoluted vouchers, no means tests – just show me the money. The basic income can be big enough for you to live off it entirely and pursue your passions ("full basic income"), or small & just enough to help you through crises, but won't let you grow lazy ("partial basic income").
But basic income is NOT just an idea of the left! Alaska, a long-time "red state", has had a partial basic income for 40 years. Libertarian economists Milton Friedman & Friedrich Hayek have supported some form of basic income. Charles Murray from the conservative American Enterprise Institute has argued for a full basic income. Even U.S. Founding Father Thomas Paine – way back in 1795 – promoted a land-tax-funded basic income in the last pamphlet he ever wrote!
###Arthur Brooks: A conservative's plea: Let's work together [talk]
“When it comes to lifting people up who are starving and need us today, [...] we need to come together around the best ways to mitigate poverty using the best tools at our disposal. And that comes only when conservatives recognize that they need liberals and their obsession with poverty, and liberals need conservatives and their obsession with free markets. That's the diversity in which lies the future strength of this country, if we choose to take it.”
Arthur Brooks, the President of the American Enterprise Institute, isn't the caricature of conservative you'd expect. He's obsessed with how to help the poor. He's against materialism and conspicuous consumption. He's even said that conservatives should take up social justice, for Burke's sake!
Watch the above talk. Not only does he lay out a practical case for how markets (done responsibly) can uplift the poor abroad and here at home, it's a passionate case for how we can work together – how our intellectual & philosophical diversity is actually an asset, not a liability.
#Energy & Environment
###Whole Earth Discipline [book]
In 1966, Stewart Brand asked, why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet? He campaigned heavily to have NASA take a picture of our entire planet from space – which they did. A couple years later, the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970.
So, Brand's been a key player in the environmentalist movement from the very start. But now, Brand thinks the movement's gotten too partisan, too ideologically blinded, and his latest book, Whole Earth Discipline, hopes to set things straight. For example, he shows how nuclear energy, denser cities, and GMOs might actually be necessary to saving the environment – all heresies in the environmental movement.
This book is an "eco-pragmatist manifesto" that challenges the current political wisdom, in favor of what actually works.
###Carbon Nation [movie]
A climate change solutions movie – that doesn't even care if you believe in climate change. Like Whole Earth Discipline, it stays optimistic, yet pragmatic. It highlights solutions & reasons to support clean energy, that cross the same-ol-same-ol political lines. In the words of a biochemical engineer they interviewed for the film:
“Even if you don't give a damn about the environment, do it because you're a greedy bastard and just want cheap power.”
###The Green Tea Party [organization]
“I believe conservation is a conservative principle.” You wouldn't have guessed that Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party founder, would be one of the fiercest advocates for rooftop solar power. Not only that, she's fought against the anti-solar billionaire Koch brothers – and won.
Why does Dooley support rooftop solar? Partly to be a good steward of our environment, but also because rooftop solar – which lets you make & sell your own energy – embodies the principles of self-reliance, free markets, and breaking up big corporate monopolies.
Also, "Green Tea Party" is a pretty clever pun.
#Criminal Justice Reform
###Coalition for Public Safety [organization]
The ACLU and the Koch brothers, sitting together in a room, actually working together on something. Imagine that!
The Coalition for Public Safety brings together organizations from the left & right to fight mass incarceration, and make America safer. The left cares about mass incarceration because it exacerbates inequality and mostly hurts minority communities. The right cares about mass incarceration because its vicious cycle of recidivism creates even more crime, and is costing us $80 billion a year.
And so, even though these groups have their philosophical differences, it's admirable how they can work with those differences – not ignoring those differences – to rid our unjust system of mass incarceration, help people leave a life of crime, and keep American streets safe.
#Government Reform
###Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance [talk]
You know, Occupy Wall Street & the Tea Party actually had a lot in common. Sure they felt they were mortal enemies or whatever, but they were both upset over the same thing: crony capitalism – the cynical symbiotic relationship between Big Money and Big Government. (Occupy focused more on Big Money, the Tea Party focused more on Big Gov't)
Lawrence Lessig wants to end this mutual corruption. He knows that to change the players, you first have to change the game. That is, change campaign finance. Less power to lobbyists and monopolies and super PACs, more power to the people. In the above talk and his organization RootStrikers.org, he makes a call for all sides to strike at the root cause of much of our nation's economic/political inequality.
#Political Polarization (oh, how meta)
###The Righteous Mind [book]
This is the book that first got me interested in our political divides, and trying to bridge them. Jonathan Haidt gives a deep yet accessible dive into his & other's work on the psychology of morality – and how our moral disagreements can escalate into full-on holy wars, metaphorically and literally. I consider myself progressive-leaning, but this book helped me understand (and respect) people who just happen to be conservative.
###The Other Side [comic]
Disclosure: I made this. It's a short comic about the psychology of liberals & conservatives – according to a liberal, a centrist, and a conservative. In it, I summarize three political-psych books: The Righteous Mind (see above) by Jonathan Haidt, A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell, and Moral Politics by George Lakoff.
My comic isn't just a Cliff notes of these books – it's a call for us to get past our stereotypes of each other, actually understand where the other side is coming from, and heck, maybe find some common ground after all. Speaking of which...
###How Common Threats Make Common Ground [talk]
One way to bring people together, is to get them to freak out together. In this talk, Jonathan Haidt lists some apocalyptic "asteroids" that each side cares about. Progressives care about climate change & income inequality, conservatives care about entitlement spending & family breakdown. But – here's the trick – Haidt shows how our different sides' asteroids are actually tied together. (e.g. poverty causes family breakdown, and family breakdown causes poverty) That's why we need to work together: I help you deflect your asteroid, you help me deflect mine.
###7 Habits of Highly Depolarizing People [article]
This whole time I've been talking about finding common goals, common ground, common threats, but... uh... how do you actually go about doing that, let alone communicating it with the other side – or worse – your own side? Well, this article's got 7 concrete tips and habits for doing just that.
###Two Evidence-Based Recommendations for Civil Disagreement [article]
Yeah that title doesn't roll off the tongue easy, but what do you expect, they're academics. In any case, after reviewing the vast collection of psych studies out there, CivilPolitics.org has come up with two broad, strongly-evidence-backed ways to depolarize politics:
1. More in-person relationships. It's harder to demonize someone when you actually know them as a person first, rather than a collection of beliefs behind a screen.
2. Emphasize cooperative goals over competitive goals. Fuel can be useful, but only when it's inside an engine. Otherwise, it'll blow up in your face. Likewise, political disagreement can be the fuel for creative solutions, but it needs to be within the context of a larger shared goals and values. Otherwise, it'll also blow up in your face.
###Better Angels: Post-Election Healing [study]
Applying the two lessons above, the Better Angels project took a diverse group of 10 Trump voters & 11 Clinton voters, and made a stunning achievement – they got them to actually talk with each other, not just talk past each other. With a lightly structured conversation over the course of a weekend, these Trump & Clinton voters not only overcame their stereotypes of one another, but even found some common ground!
[END OF FIRST DRAFT]
If you have more cross-partisan projects to recommend (especially in categories I don't already have here, such as family breakdown, government debt, social justice, etc) please email me at [email protected]. Many thanks again!
For the energy section maybe David Mackay's "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air", it start's with two completely different perspectives by Goodstein and Lomberg and while people still come to very different conclusions on energy issues through this book it provides a great framework for thinking about and discussing these issues:
http://www.withouthotair.com/Contents.html
http://www.withouthotair.com/synopsis10.pdf