Now What? Fractured Communities
This year, our summer series centers around our new book, Now What?: How to Move Forward When We're Divided (About Basically Everything). We brought together groups of listeners who were on our book launch team to discuss how they’ve seen political conflict play out in their own lives. Over these episodes, we’ll share these conversations with you, along with some thoughts and strategies for how to navigate division in many different types of relationship.
In this final episode, we’re discussing workplaces and geographic communities. We may expect some conflict in these spaces, particularly if we live or work in diverse areas. However, expecting the division doesn’t make it any easier or less personal.
Thank you for being a part of our community! We couldn't do it we do without you. To become a financial supporter of the show, please visit our Patreon page, subscribe to our Premium content on Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, purchase a copy of our books Now What? How to Move Forward When We’re Divided (About Basically Everything) and I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening), or share the word about our work in your own circles.
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EPISODE RESOURCES
We can’t know everyone’s situation. But we do know that these organizations and many like them are waiting to serve you.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-4-A-CHILD (422-4453)
Family Violence Prevention Center: 1-800-313-1310
Families Anonymous: 1-800-736-9805
Gay and Lesbian National Hotline: 1-888-843-4564
Youth Crisis Hotline: 1-800-448-4663
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
The Trevor Project Hotline: 1-866-488-7386
These resources are all based in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, suicide.org will allow you to connect with hotlines in your country. Domesticshelters.org lists international resources to support domestic violence survivors.
TRANSCRIPT
Listener 6 [00:00:00] And so when we can take that step back and recognize that it's every child and not just my child being taken care of, then actually all of our children, including my child, will be taken care of. And I think that idea can certainly carry over in other aspects of our community and our society of that it's not just about me, but if other people are taken care of, I'll also be taken care of.
Sarah [00:00:31] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:32] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:34] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
Beth [00:00:49] Hello and thank you so much for joining us for our fourth and final episode in our summer series based on our book Now What? How to Move Forward When We're Divided (About basically everything) we have spent the series looking at our families, our partnerships, our friendships, our churches. And today we're going to go out just a bit farther and think about our workplaces and our communities. So still relationships where we are physically present and where we have less control over who is physically present with us and our relationship to them. So if you haven't listened to the rest of the series, we highly encourage you to do that because a lot of what we're talking about builds on itself. Just a reminder, we did not approach this as journalist. We approached it as members of the Pantsuit Politics community. So we ask our launch team for the book to share stories of personal conflict in their lives. And from those stories, we selected listeners to sit down with, and we recorded in small groups over Zoom. So you will not hear the full diversity of perspective represented in the United States in these conversations, what you will hear are some very generous tellings of actual difficulties that people are working through every single day. And we hope that no matter who or where you are, you'll find something in these conversations that makes you feel understood and less alone.
Sarah [00:02:15] Today, we're going to move on to work in communities. As we've said, these episodes have built on each other. We started with the most intimate relationships in our lives, with our family, our partners, our friendships. And we've moved further out. We went through church, and now we're going to talk about the people that we really spend a huge amount of time with every day, our coworkers and those community organizations. We're going to talk about school boards. We're going to talk about how we interact with our communities as business leaders. You know, all the complexities and differing levels of intimacy we have with all the people that we live with. I mean, even saying live with, that's such a small word when we're trying to say someone you live in a house with, someone you live in a town with. But those differing levels of connection and breaking it down based on that is how we organize the book. We think it's a helpful way to contextualize political conflict inside relationships, so we're going keep zooming out.
Beth [00:03:17] And as we do that, the stakes don't seem to lower, even though you think living in a house with someone is as high stakes as it gets. In some ways that's true. In other ways, when we start to talk about work, we're talking about money and livelihood and status and our ability to continue to live in the way that we want to and to feel like our labors are recognized and valued in some senses. When we talk about community, we're talking about tax dollars, which we can get very attached to. We're talking about the standards and rules under which we live. Programs that affect our families, our children, the water that we drink. So the stakes continue to be very high in these relationships. And I think today's conversations will bring, I hope, some eyes to see paths forward through those relationships where that feels optimistic that we have this much control at this layer of our life instead of it being only really fraught. We're going to begin with the workplace. We write in our book that showing up as a whole person at work is essential to your work being sustainable. It doesn't mean we have to love our coworkers like family. Sometimes that metaphor is used to justify some truly unacceptable workplace behavior. It does mean that we have to feel comfortable being who we are in the workplace, not like we're putting on a work suit and coming home and taking it off. But in actual workplaces, so many of us feel like showing up as ourselves is completely off the table.
Sarah [00:04:57] It's so hard because this is a relationship where we're not tied by blood. We're not really even tied by choice. And I think as we start to listen to this conversation, you realize how different it is and how many things we're talking about at once, because you're talking about your relationship with your coworkers, but you're also talking about your relationship to the job you're in and your relationship and understanding of work itself. You were pushed out of a job because of that kind of conflict we tackle in the book. And I'm just wondering, how has that left you thinking about how you interact at work moving forward. I loved how you said I keep thinking this will be the place, but these conflicts come up over and over again.
Listener 1 [00:05:50] Yeah. I mean, so that particular situation was definitely the first of its kind that I've dealt with. I'm maybe 15 years into my career post undergrad and it was definitely also a place that I thought I felt very safe to me. I had known the organization. It was an organization that I had worked with and or been a part of prior to being physically employed at. And so not only was it just sort of shocking in the sense of how I never thought I would be somewhere where comments of that nature were going to be made, but also sort of feeling disappointed and frustrated and angered that a place that meant so much to me-- like this was happening in a place that meant so much to me and sort of helped shape who I am or help, or I felt like it had shaped who I am. And it's definitely damaged my psyche in a way, because I think I enter spaces at any work workspaces now in fear that similar-- Not necessary similar situations in terms of that comment or those types of comments, but the reaction or how I might react and then the consequences around what could happen from my reaction or from speaking out about certain situations. So I have a very strong fear complex around entering new jobs in general because I want the culture to be different and I want it to be a space that I can enjoy and also grow and help shape the organization and move forward. But in like that time, I've yet to find that and hopefully one day.
Listener 2 [00:07:55] So what Alexandra was saying about being able to show up as her whole self and being able to be that way, I have the exact opposite in my profession where, like you said, there's two different sides. There's the back office side where I'm dealing with a lot of administrative and coworkers and that sort of thing, where I might be able to show up a little bit more authentically because I'm dealing with adults who can handle that. But when I'm standing in front of a classroom, I've only ever taught secondary and I teach English. So it's very specific in like the scope of what I'm teaching them. And as you might have seen in the news, that is the scope that is currently under attack in most states about limiting what literature we can expose children to and the types of conversations that we can have. And so I have to be very careful to be as apolitical as possible when talking through situations and different things that occur in literature with my students.
Beth [00:08:56] As I was listening to this conversation unfold and thinking about how whatever your job description is, who you are impacts your job so significantly. And that's what we have to bring our whole selves to work because we don't have another choice. We cannot check at the door concerns about what's really going on at home, or our deepest beliefs about what's ethical and good and right in the world. And we just impact our work by our energy, whether we like to or not. I don't mean to sound too woo woo about it, but two of us with the same resume skillset job description can show up and we're going to have a different effect on the workplace because we're different people. And that is true nowhere more than with teaching. So we included teachers in this section and the community section. But we want to talk about it here first as a profession that has some of the same and more complicated work concerns.
Listener 3 [00:09:52] I teach in Texas. I am a product of Oklahoma public education, and I'm actually moving back to Oklahoma this summer and I'll be teaching there. And both of those are very conservative, very red states. And I am constantly afraid that even though I know in my heart that what I'm doing is above board, the idea that someone else can come in and accuse me of things. More than ever, I've had things questioned. This year we read a short story called My Daughter the Racist. It's actually about a fictional woman and her daughter. And they never even say where they're from, but they're women of color. The whole thing is just basically that this girl she's kind of silly, she proclaims herself to be a racist because she doesn't like the soldiers who are coming into her country. And just based on the title, I filtered so many parents emails and had to explain this is not about racism at all, actually. And, honestly, my response was I just sent a PDF copy of the reading to parents because there's a fine line of how much do I need to defend myself and how much do I need to expect them to respect that I'm a professional with discernment, who knows what's appropriate. And that's really difficult in education right now. And that's where a lot of the fear is coming from, is people misinterpreting what's happening in our classroom.
Sarah [00:11:26] I would say if you have a bingo card for Now What you can fill in your pandemic square. But I think the whole entire bingo card would just be the pandemic at this point. And so, again, here we are at a different level of connection. And Covid is playing a central role in the stress on that relationships, on our way we're thinking about those relationships. Now, I will say this at work, very interestingly enough, COVID wasn't just a stressor or a negative factor, but it was that break. It was that moment that we talked about in the church conversation, but from a much more positive perspective, it was that break from the rat race-- to use a super overused term, kind of a cliche term, but it was that break from the schedule of work, of working that gave people a moment to think, wait, do I want to be doing this?
Listener 4 [00:12:26] I think that when the pandemic happened and we started seeing some of these changes in the workplace, my first thought was welcome to the party. These were things that I left my industry because of concerns about overall workplace being good for me as a person. And needing that recognition that we don't stop being human at the door and that as humans we all have different needs and different perspectives. And those are so valuable, even if they don't match the majority of the other employees experiences. So, if anything, I think that the pandemic and the effect it's had is valuable in the sense knowing that obviously we would all choose to just not have experienced this, but valuable in the sense that it gave everyone a crash course in introspection and forced introspection. Because I know for a fact that I would still be trapped in a career that I was convinced was supposed to make me happy, trapped in this place that I was told was right for me. And I wouldn't have left if I hadn't had a whole lot of therapy. And so I was getting that introspection ahead of time. And for people who never took that chance or didn't really see the need for that level of kind of self-exploration before the pandemic, none of us had a choice when we were in it. You had a whole lot of time at home alone, away from normal distractions, and suddenly people were realizing that their priorities were really a lot broader than just their workplace and how their workplace fit into their overall lives didn't have to look the way it has always looked.
Listener 5 [00:14:38] We're all working through this, the pieces of what you've all shared, but from a leadership lens. I think, number one, our path to COVID has brought us all together in our purpose. Now we are more value driven at a macro level. So that's a huge unifier, having a purpose and being united in that purpose either individual [Inaudible] motivation and just enjoyment in the workplace. Also how we all rely on each other, that's really been strengthened in a time of incredible need within a big agency with our partners. So that's positive. But I think that reckoning at the individual level, that's COVID and so much more. I mean, like everyone was-- you know, so much more. I think it's really individual to how we hold that trust. And I can't speak to every single one of the situations, but lead with our values, communicate incredibly succinctly, and just keep showing where we're going.
Listener 4 [00:15:56] Right. To have someone say, "I recognize how hard you're working. I know this has been hard going through the pandemic." I mean, I was starting a new career at the beginning of a pandemic, a career that is entirely based on client hours for pay. So my first check of 2020 was for $46. But I also at no point in that process regretted my decision to leave stable employment with generous 401k contributions and fully paid health care because I was getting so much of that being valued as a human being peace in this new path. I don't know how to say. It made it worth it, but also why should I have to quantify that? I wish I wasn't choosing between those. I wish I never had to even consider leaving my old industry because of those reasons. I mean, I'm happy where I am now, but I also know I would have been happy there if I had had the support I needed.
Beth [00:17:12] That last comment hit me so hard because it isn't always, do I want to be doing this? It's do I want to be doing this and am I in an environment where I can be doing this? We talk in the book about how workplaces are kind of like gardens, and you have to figure out if you're planted in a place where you can thrive. And sometimes we find that we could be a fantastic whatever we set out to be, except that this soil is not meant for us. And sometimes it could be changed and sometimes it can't and it's just really difficult. But I hope that if you are in a leadership position, you really heard that last speaker say, "I could have been happy there, I could have thrived if I had received the support that I needed."
Sarah [00:17:55] Yeah, when I think back to our metaphor in the book, I'm like, we should have kept gardens, but we should have noted that there is a groundskeeper. There is a groundskeeper on the property, that you're not just tending this all by yourself, you're not just tending your individual role, but that there is this place for leadership. Definitely true in the church context that we've talked about, but it came up over and over and over again in this conversation that the way that this was different is that there was a real role for the people in charge, the managers, the leaders, those that are playing an essential role and whose decisions affect all these other people.
Listener 1 [00:18:41] That also speaks to managers and not even managers at a functional level, but managers even at the top, like, how are they modeling that behavior? How are they showing the rest of their employees that it's okay to have these uncomfortable conversations. We can move forward beyond maybe not going to agree on something, but that's okay. Like, we're going to be better for having the discussion than continuing to potentially suppress or silence people who are willing to have a discussion or call people out when they maybe are bringing up or saying something inappropriate that they shouldn't be saying.
Listener 5 [00:19:33] I think asking a lot of questions. Really asking questions. And I think listening to this discussion that I'm left with is just we think about being mission minded organizations. There is such a danger in being too similar. And we're thinking a lot right now as we hire and as we build an organizational culture that if we ask about fit, we're really starting from the wrong place. We're not looking for fit. We're not looking for sameness. We're really saying what do you bring, but response to the work that we're here to do. And I think not being afraid of differences, I think is absolutely critical from a DEI perspective. If we try to bring in really different kinds of people with really different lived experiences, it's scary, it's hard, it's so challenging, but we are so much richer for our differences. And so I think asking really good questions and hopefully having values, but not interpreting that that means we're the same.
Beth [00:20:48] Sarah, even though the folks in our conversation had faced real difficulty in the workplace, I did leave that discussion feeling optimistic about the future of work. Because to your point, I think COVID broke open some of the gates around our discussions of what work is. We really can't go back now to work is work and home is home. It is melded now in a way that I think will permanently alter the balance. And maybe we'll have backlash and we'll try really hard to compartmentalize it again. But for at least the moment, it seems like we're considering what is the place of both of these things in the course of not just my life, but the course of a day.
Sarah [00:21:31] I agree. I did feel optimistic about this conversation more than the others, and probably because inside a workplace it is less amorphous. You can't sit down with your dad or your uncle and talk about processes, right? I think we often talk about those aspects of work as if they're stifling. But the truth is, they do provide a lot of helpful structure to think through what could help better. And we have just enough distance inside of our workplace where there's not as much intimacy, where there's not as much history as, say, a family or a marriage where we could talk about the processes, we can talk about sort of objectively or at least with a little distance, what's working, what's not. And there are people, leaders, managers in power to make some of those changes. So I agree. I think that this feels, to use a work term, more manageable.
Beth [00:22:26] I think part of what keeps work more manageable is that there are already mechanisms around which you're testing things in the workplace. And I hope that will bring that sensibility that maybe we would have had about a product or a service or a new process or a new software system to the relational side. Let's test what it's like to try out this new pattern of working remotely sometimes and being in the office sometimes. Let's test this new policy about how we spend our days to whom we report and how we report to them. And let's not feel like we have to decide for the future. That's the only thing that's bugging me in some of the writing about this issue. I think some of the writing suggests we did it this one way, and now we have to figure out the new way. And when you're figuring out the new way in a workplace, you can get really stuck and have just analysis paralysis-- to use annoying corporate language. So I would say that that testing spirit, being iterative about it would be a real plus. And then if we could carry that into some of our other relationships, I think that would be a real plus, too.
Sarah [00:23:34] Well, we'll talk about that next as we move to community.
Beth [00:23:52] We spent some time with teachers, as we talked about, in the workplace. But the public schools also sit at this very important intersection of civic concern. We have bodies like school boards where it's not the profession, but a service to the community. We have parents and community members as constituents, volunteer. So it was really important to us to have a discussion that continues to focus on education as well as other aspects of civic life, as we think about the relationships that mean a lot to us in our lives and where we have a good deal of power. So now we're moving into a realm where there is a lot of politics, but it is a politics that we can touch, unlike a lot of the politics that consume much of our time and energy. I want to go to Carla, who I know sits on a school board and has since 2018. I was thinking, Carla, as I was reading your comments about the theme in this chapter of the book that we want to shift out of being consumers to being contributors. Because I have been to school board meetings where people in the audience will kind of directly say, like, well, I'm a taxpayer. And it has that feel of I'm the customer and the customer is always right. So I'd love to hear how you've experience that if you have and what your perspective is on-- like, what is a healthier version of that relationship between elected officials and constituents?
Carla [00:25:21] We definitely have that always. I think that's always been there, even pre-Covid. But it was absolutely, absolutely, there during COVID because COVID was so hard on parents and everybody. It was hard for everybody across the board, but especially parents and especially parents of littles. I think obviously that was the population that was most impacted. And there was a lot of that happening during that time period because to their experience, we weren't right. We weren't serving them the way that they needed and expected to be served. And I think where we were able to somewhat turn the corner on that, or part of how I framed my thinking around that, was really putting out the call to understanding that we as a system cannot do it without every piece of the system. And that when we were looking at how do we get kids back in school full time, we needed more adults. It wasn't about physical capacity of our buildings. It was about adults in the building to supervise these kids who needed to be spread out. And so it really went into that call of you're not just a consumer here. You have to be part of the solution. And so a lot of the phone calls that I fielded from parents really stemmed around me talking with them. Eventually, if there was an ear to listen around is there any way that you can volunteer? Is there any way that you can be a lunchroom person, a sub like you and Sarah did?
[00:27:09] Any way that you can do that with the understanding we know you're not in it for the long haul and we're not asking you for the long haul. But we cannot meet your needs without you coming and being part of the solution for this. And so that, I think, has carried through a lot in my thinking when we're talking with parents and with different folks about what it is they're experiencing, even now afterwards, is that sometimes the invitation has to really be explicit in order for it to sink in with people, for them to really hear it and understand it. And we don't think that it needs to be because we're the folks that step up, that's kind of in our natures. And so we're waiting for somebody to volunteer. We're waiting for somebody to see a need and fill a need. And sometimes people need the invitation to just really be clear. We absolutely need you to help and this is how we need you to do it. The other aspect of it that really came through for me, and this was probably more protecting my mental health aspect of it, was keeping a very clear definition in my brain that our school board meetings held in public. That the public comment section of it is for them to share information with us or feed back information to us. But it's not an exchange. They don't have a vote in that situation. We are the people who have the additional information. We have the expertise on the situation and the weight of the situation and the full situation, not just your one child. And so that really keeping that standard for myself was really pretty important that our meetings are held in public. But it is our meeting and our responsibility. And I'm the person or the six other people and myself on the board. We are the people that really have that responsibility.
Listener 6 [00:29:16] I have noticed a similar experience in our own school board meetings of parents talking about their own children's experience, which I think is so important to recognize. But it's not about one child. And as I've been talking with people, too, and in my campaign and getting to know people, I've really recognized that I'm not really running for school board or want to be part of this process because of my children, but because of all of the children. And so when we can take that step back and recognize that it's every child and not just my child being taken care of, that then actually all of our children, including my child, will be taken care of. And I think that idea can certainly carry over in other aspects of our community and our society, of that it's not just about me, but if other people are taken care of I'll also be taken care of ideally. And it's become really clear when you're hearing people talk about their experiences and what they're worried about and how hard it is for people to take that step back and see the broader picture of how they're impacting the community and how the community's impacting them as well.
Listener 7 [00:30:30] I really agree with that idea that a lot of times people need a really specific need before they feel comfortable jumping in. And I think we all see people want to be helpful in so many aspects of life and people want to make a difference. And one of the themes that I've really appreciated about Pantsuit Politics, about the book, has been about when things get so big, how can we make it narrower and how can we make it specific just now? It wasn't what I was thinking I would bring up tonight, but it reminded me of I helped to run the Caring Bridge site for my parents when my dad was on hospice in 2019. And they were deep in their community, had so many people who would love to do anything but so hard to know what to do. And one of the real helpful powers of being on that Caring Bridge site was to say this small one thing, who can do this small one thing? And people appreciated it so much. And and to guide the love. Like in their circumstance, they didn't need a meal train filling their freezer. But my dad loved pie and my dad loved bacon. And so being able to say like, hey, if you want to put a piece of pie on their doorstep and just text them there's a piece of pie out here and they can come out and say hi if it's a good time or they don't have to. Or My mom also hated cooking bacon because it would make the house smell, so in the neighborhood it was like, if you're making bacon and you want to run two pieces over, that would be great. So much more than like a lasagna, you know. And so through that experience of helping people know how to support them, I really also appreciated that small and specific asks. Like, people fill it and it's powerful and it's doable. And I think it builds community.
Beth [00:32:39] Hayley, that makes me want to ask you what you've observed in living in a more rural environment and now being in a larger city. And I know you mentioned your more rural area was kind of purple leaning conservative, and you're in a very large liberal city now. And I wonder, just as you are hearing all of this conversation, what jumps out at you about those two experiences that you've had? And I wonder if you've noticed that you can more easily get involved in one place or just what you're noticing.
Hayley [00:33:13] I'm probably a little bit biased because obviously you don't choose where you grow up, but then you do choose where you end up living. And, for me, the city is a little more of my typical [Inaudible] more comfortable for me. But I do feel like I have a closer community of the people in my city because we kind of like find the right people for us and you have such a variety of people. For me, in the area I grew up in, the community is close knit because you couldn't not know everyone and it was pretty easy to know what's going on with everyone. It doesn't mean everything always goes to a level deeper. And I don't think that's everyone's experience, but I do think in a larger area, it's still very easy to find the people that need the help and to support them in whatever specific way they need. And I also agree with this specific idea in that, I think in this more micro area where people are asking for help through the Caring Bridge or when they're pregnant or things like that. I feel like one thing I've done is I like to really specifically tell a friend I'd really like to come do this thing, like, if they're not asking for the help. And I think if you just say, "Hey, do you need anything?" People want to say, no, I'm okay. Especially in Midwestern, everyone says "No, I'm okay." But if you say I really would like to bring you a meal or I'd really like to find some time this week to like do your dishes or do something. Maybe you picked the wrong thing, but there's also a better chance that they say yes. And I think in any type of community, you can at least try that and hopefully it's the right thing.
Beth [00:34:58] You mentioning that you chose this change and so the city feels right to you makes me think about the part of this chapter where we discuss how changes that you didn't choose can feel like judgment to you. And so I really want to go to our two teachers to ask about how you're experiencing that, if at all, because I know that you've got to be just constantly running up against changes that people didn't choose, whether it's in how we talk about our students and their identities or social emotional learning or how we teach history or just how we teach math, like all those changes that we didn't choose feeling like judgment. I would imagine you have a lot to say about that. You want to start, Anna, and then we'll come over to you, Alicia.
Anna [00:35:43] I found that interesting also because my husband is also a minister and so we did not get to choose where we live. We do a little bit, but ultimately we don't. So we live in a very red city, in a very blue state. And I am a left leaning moderate, probably isn't a [Inaudible] to say, which is a lot of conflict. But it's difficult because also to purpose I teach at a private school that this accredited through our local public school system. So you can process that as a lot of weirdness as well. But it's difficult because there's a lot of people who think they know how to teach. And there's a lot of people who think that teaching is not difficult and that teachers don't train and process and learn constantly new things about what we're learning or about what we're teaching. And so I think that's where I'd like to pump in the most. It's just like I've got a lot of parents who don't politically agree with where I'm at and that I've accepted that as a fact because I am different than most people. But my goal is to teach my kids to be decent human beings. That's really what I want. In every literature lesson I teach, like, the books I'm giving them is I want them to just think about people and not to be a jerk. Like, when joking I'll tell my friends my goal is that they leave eighth grade and they're not jerks, which is so much harder than you think sometimes to get those lessons through.
[00:37:32] I think I shared on my thing. I had to have a deep conversation with several of my [Inaudible] because they decided it would be awesome to write Let's Go Brandon on the top of all of their papers if they turned in to me-- just me, not any of the other teachers. And they just didn't understand why that bothered me or why that was an issue. And so we had a long conversation about how you can talk politics. I have no issues with you guys discussing your political opinions, how you feel about issues, but it crosses a line when we start to talk about people. Like, we can't make fun of our politicians as people. We can discuss what we think about what they do, but not who they are. We're not going to make fun of someone who stutters because they can't control that. We don't make fun of people's age because you wouldn't say that about your grandpa. So you're not going to say it about our public leaders. I don't know if it got through, but that's a lot of where I struggle. People think that we teach CRT and all of these things. We don't. That's not what middle schoolers do. It's not what elementary school do. It's not what high schools do. But those hot button words just get so big and scary. It's really hard to get to the truth of the matter.
Beth [00:38:53] Teaching people to not be jerks seems really hard when there are jerks all around us all the time. Like, too many of us have not learned that lesson for it to be an easy thing to impart. And I think that separation of talking about people from ideas gets so hard around candidates. I mean, Sarah and I have a harder time talking about candidates than anything else, because when it all gets distilled into a person and you still want to be talking about the ideas, but it is about choosing a person, it just gets really tricky. Alicia, I wonder what you have to add here and if you hear things that connect to your experience in what Anna said.
Alicia [00:39:38] Yes, well, first of all, I taught for 12 and a half years. I taught juniors and seniors. The last seven years, mainly seniors. I taught the social studies classes. And so I have not been in the classroom since 2015. I'd like to get back, but we moved to Phoenix for a little bit and then we moved right back next door to our old house when we came back two years later, which we love. But I kind of ended up in a school district and at a high school that I never really intended to. It was just as a social science major graduating and hoping to get a job. You were told to apply everywhere. And then serendipitously, I ended up at a very suburban school which I did not intend to, and I loved it. We moved to the communities after, but it's very Republican leaning. I had a lot of-- since growing up where I came from a Democratic leaning household, but went to parochial school and a very Republican city. And oftentimes I learned that it was just easier to kind of keep that quiet and not really expose that. And so when I started in this very Republican leaning school system, I actually worked really hard to try and not come across as liberal or Democratic. And, ironically, I had interned for the former Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who was a long serving Republican senator in Washington, D.C. in my junior year.
[00:41:18] And so I almost felt like that kind of gave me a little bit of like street cred because people thought, oh, she interned for Lugar, so she must be republican. Really it was just that he is just such a remarkable statesman and his entire program was so great. That was why I did it. But it kind of gave me a false sense of like, oh, they won't judge me or make assumptions with that. So teaching U.S. history and government and international relations, it was often tricky with some of the hot button issues. And it's hard because you have these kids and they're really young adults and they're getting ready to enter off into the world. And you feel like this is your last opportunity to have them learn to discuss, and learn to bring up issues and to be able to display them eloquently. But from the time I started in 2004 until 2015 and then definitely now, there's just been this real growing trend of trying to limit that by some parents and even some school members, because it's just easier to not have those conversations. And I think that it's really a detriment to our students because it's so important that they have exposure to multiple perspectives and multiple viewpoints.
Sarah [00:42:45] We are also present in our communities as business owners. This came up a lot. It kind of surprised me how often it came up. I'm an interesting business owner in my community, right? It's not like I have a storefront where I'm interacting with my community members regularly; although, there are lots of people in my community that listen. It's just a very different thing. But it adds this huge about how we see and interact with our fellow community members, especially if you live in a small town.
Listener 8 [00:43:13] My husband and I are a little older. I am a college professor. We're leaders in our church and it's all the same denomination in our community. And I know my husband writes columns, both one for our local paper and also wrote one for the farm magazines as well. He's been involved with leadership in the farming community as well nationally. But [Inaudible] wrote when the Trump administration came up, he just basically had about three columns asking people to just think about this for a minute. Let's just reconsider this. I mean, we're still registered Republicans, all of that, but people saw that and they just put all kind of other stuff on it. We got phone calls. One lady, particularly who we know, an older lady, left a message on our phone that we were baby killers and we were against religious freedom. He's been yelled at in town by people. We lost some business with our farming business because of that. And, of course, even within the agricultural community, which is wider, national and state, people just didn't want to have anything to do with us and only because he was asking people to reconsider. And it's dented some friendships as well. I think those have recovered a little.
[00:44:40] And I think the really sad part about it, I do actually understand the path where these people are from. There's kind of a terror of losing status because if we elect President Biden, then certain other people are going to take over the country and we are no longer going to be in power. You know, that's kind of the issue. But, like I said, we've just kept on doing our thing and we have had a number of people in the community approach us and say, hey, we really appreciated your point of view. Unfortunately, those people are terrified to speak up because they know that it's going to draw the same kind of thing to them. Yeah, but I think because we're leaders in the community, I think some people probably even see it as a betrayal that we're saying we're not going to hold the straight party line. But I know we've been terribly disappointed in some of the people we know in the community, some of whom we are related to. But we've been very disappointed in some of their ideas because it's certainly not what we thought we were taught in our homes and in our church.
Beth [00:45:52] That reflection on loss of status might be the most succinct explanation of what happened in the election than I've heard from anybody.
Listener 9 [00:46:02] Yeah. That concerned about losing status. I own a small business in my town, and I've just been so hesitant to talk about politics anywhere because I know where I live and I see the bumper stickers on my customers' cars and I see what they post on Facebook. And it's like, well, you guys can all boycott Disney and Disney isn't going to care. But if you all boycott me, I'm going to notice. And I know like in 2020 I felt like the stakes were like, well, if President Trump won a second term, it's like, well, I don't know if there's going to be an America anymore. So, like, I'll just put my cards on the table. And it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it was hard. Really hard.
Listener 8 [00:46:50] And we're mature and we are strong. We've had our business for a long time. I've been working. I just recently retired from full time teaching. I'm still teaching. But we're at the point in our lives where we really don't just care a lot, but we're not young starting out. And for a lot of younger people, you'll lose business over this and and you'll lose status in the community. You'll lose friendships. And small communities, if you're grown up there, we know all these people extremely well and they know us. But, yeah, it's a very powerful thing in a small community to stand a little bit. And this is just a little bit against the kind of trend.
Listener 10 [00:47:39] I think that the journey of our life is this slow patient-- like, the work of building community because it takes time to build trust. It takes time to get to know people. It takes time to allow the space for yourself to be known. And so it feels like that is the work of our life in building community is this slow patient piece of it. I think two things that really have stood out to me in this conversation, especially in thinking about that building of community, is how important it is to not feel like we have to have answers. That's one of the things that I've learned the most in the past few years as a mental health provider, as a mom of little ones. My little ones are second grade and under three. Like, there's just so much uncertainty and unknown and there's so much freedom in not feeling like you have to have an answer, but you can have a conversation instead. And that is very uncomfortable for people in my community. I live in a fairly rural area and people want answers and we want control. And so when I'm willing to ask a question to understand where they're coming from or not feel like I have to have an answer or they have to believe the same thing as me, it makes people feel really uncomfortable.
[00:49:11] But I've really learned to embrace and love the freedom of not knowing. That's also a big part as a mental health provider of how I go into a room with a new client. It's like I don't know where you're coming from, even if you look like me. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your story. And I'm open to hearing your story. Well, I guess, this kind of plays into whatever I said, that that sitting in the discomfort and being willing to to keep sitting in it when it's not comfortable, rather than letting go of it or ignoring it or avoiding it because discomfort isn't going to hurt you. I mean, it doesn't feel good, but it's not a bad thing to feel uncomfortable. It's something we can certainly learn from. So kind of the patient piece is the allowing in the making space because there's not really an answer into community and growing community.
Beth [00:50:10] Sarah, you were mentioning how business ownership came up a lot in this conversation and how unique our business is because we don't have a storefront. So I think about our business a little differently in relationship with community. As I take on community roles, leadership positions, I'm often thinking, is it going to be okay that I have like hundreds of hours of my voice on the Internet talking about everything in my life, my parenting, my politics. My participation in these community efforts will undoubtedly influence what I say on the show and what pieces of that can I talk about and not talk about? So I think that is just another illustration of how you can't silo any of what we've been discussing, that all of these aspects of your work and your politics and your life and how you show up in service to others.
Sarah [00:50:58] In your marriage, and your family, and your friends, and the friends you don't talk to anymore, they're all serving to inform how you see your community, how you see political conflict, how you see political issues, your political partisanship. And they don't always break down in the ways we want them to. And they sometimes aren't permanent, aren't intractable in the way that we define them as so inside our own heads. We thought we'd leave with this really great story from our community conversation.
Carla [00:51:28] So I think about our local newspaper publisher who when I was elected to school board in 17-18, I kind of thought, oh, cool, maybe I'll get to talk to him, or maybe we'll have some opportunities because they write about stuff and they don't get it right all the time. And so I kind of thought, well, maybe we can talk. And we never really connected. I had good relationships with their reporters, but we had never really connected. And then last year the campaign season was chaos, running for school board in the heat of CRT, where all of these nonpartisan elections all of a sudden became partisan. So I was part of that cycle. And so it's a local newspaper, but the publisher-- and it's family owned, it's been family owned for a couple of generations. But the publisher technically lives in Kansas City but comes to town a lot. So I was running into him places and we both knew each other by look enough to kind of do the, hey, how are you type of exchange. And one day I ran into him at the post office and he followed me out to my car and just started a brief conversation. And it was after one of the heated times, and so we talked and that was that. Then shortly after that, we ran into each other again and we just kept on bumping into each other. And so on Election Day last year, I was in the local coffee shop having coffee, and he came in and stopped and talked for a few minutes and wished me luck or whatever. I think I said to him after the election is over, I'd really like to sit down and talk with you.
[00:53:26] There's been some stuff over this season that I would like to talk through with you and just flesh out more. And so he was really agreeable to that. We exchanged phone numbers and stuff. So that night when the election results came in and I had won my seat, I got the 'must have been that chat in the coffee shop selection' text. And so, I said, "Haha! You're so funny. But really I do want to talk to you." And so we made a coffee date and we had coffee together the following week. And since that time, I think we've only met together in person a couple of times. But we'll text back and forth when there's an issue where there's a question, when there's something happening like in a neighboring school district that he wants to know is this how you would do it in yours or is this out of the ordinary or whatever, he'll send me a text. And it's awesome because that's what I hope people would do. And it goes both ways. There have been times where he's done something or written something or I'll have a question and I'll send him a note. In March, I became the director of our local food pantry. Changed careers completely. Wonderful midlife-- not crisis, but midlife change. And so I became the director of our local food pantry and have worked in social services all my life. But I'm not a subject matter expert on food and security. I'm not a statistics person necessarily. But if I'm going to do it, we're going to dive in and do it.
[00:55:13] And so he wrote two opinion pieces about food insecurity in our community, and they were really written-- he'll own it at this point, they were terrible opinion pieces. And it was there can't be that much hunger in this community. He had the vision of that hunger was starving children in Africa. And there cannot be hunger in the United States because there's obesity and there cannot be hunger in America because there's so much food waste. So he had a lot of really common misconceptions about it. So when I saw the first op-ed, the first thing I did was Google the FDA definition of food insecurity and text it to him. And his reply was, "Oh, you must have seen my op ed." Yep, I have. And so we texted back and forth a little bit that night, and all of the people in our community were on fire. You know, their keyboards and their fingers were just lit because people were so angry about this opinion piece and how wrong he was and how arrogant he was and all this kind of stuff. And I knew I had a responsibility to respond in some way or to do something in some way, because I'm representing that community and representing that need in our community. But that's not what I wanted to do. I knew that [Inaudible] him on Facebook or on social media wasn't going to solve anything. And so the people rolling into me with, what are you going to do or what are we going to do, I just kept on saying, "Just cool your jets, just hold on. Let's see. We talk." I've talked with him a little bit. Let's talk.
[00:57:03] And so he and I had been texting and he was really agreeable to it, to the conversation. It was fine. And really quickly I said I want us to do a face to face conversation. This is not like a let's text or let's do this on Facebook. It was a conversation that needed to happen. And so he came to our facility and did a tour. We spent about 45 minutes doing a tour of not a very big facility, but just lots of questions and lots of talk about what we do and why we do it and all that stuff. And then we sat down at the table in our break room for another 45 minutes or an hour and just talked and talked it all out. And at the end of that conversation, one of the things that he asked me was, what do you want from me or what do you want people to know? So we kind of did the what do I want people to know about food insecurity in our community? But then I was able to say, but what I want you to know is that it's okay to not know something, and that before you write about something or before you formulate your opinion about something, I wish you would have come and I wish we had had this conversation in front of that very first opinion piece, because you knew where I was. You knew what I was doing. And you know that I've got an open door policy with you or that we have that relationship and we could have saved you some-- it maybe it wouldn't have sold as many papers, but we could have saved you some community angst and done the messaging in a positive way.
[00:58:45] The beautiful part of it is that the third piece that he wrote was-- I mean, I think in the title it said Mea Culpa. Meaning he owned it. He said, I got this wrong. And you just don't see that very often. And so he didn't have to do that. He could have just moved on to the next thing. So I really appreciated that he wrote another piece about it. He wrote what he had gotten wrong. He wrote about what we were doing and what I wanted out of it more than anything. And what I feel like I learned from Beth and Sarah was that it was that long, progressive conversation, that long road for us to build trust and to be that example of we can have disagreement and we can sit down and talk about it and be adults about it. And it was really important to me as a school board member, as a parent, as a director of an organization that does rely on donors and community goodwill, that I conducted myself, in a way, in that whole exchange, that did not add fuel to this fire that we have going on in our nation and in our society. And that I provided an example to everybody that saw this of, hey, look at these two folks just sat down and talked. And it was not a win-lose. It's not a zero sum. That we both benefited from it. He benefited from it greatly. A lot of people gave him a lot of credit. I saw somebody send props to him and absolutely he deserved it because it's hard to say you're wrong. And I wanted that example to be what we got out of it as a community. The specific information about food insecurity was important to me, but almost more important was the fact that people saw that process happen, because you can generalize that to anything and that it can happen and it can happen here.
Beth [01:01:08] I am so grateful to Carla for this example of how we can impact each other so positively, so beautifully over time with this patient persistent work. And I'm grateful to everyone who spoke with us about work and community and everyone who participated in this entire series. It was so generous and brave of you to lend your voices to these discussions.
Sarah [01:01:29] As we sit here after four episodes and several hours of conversations with our listeners, I wish we'd done this when we were in the edits of the book. I have whole sections I'd like to add two chapters, maybe, perhaps whole chapters I would like to add to the book. It's not that I believe that we had summed up the complexity of political conflict inside human relationships, inside the pages of Now What. But it's just hard. It's when you learn something that sort of cracks it open for you. When you hear people say, I just thought we were going to be in it together, or I was just so heartbroken by the way they ghosted on me. And you just get all these other layers of understanding and empathy. I just kind of want to be like, wait, wait. I think there's something else I want everybody to understand. And, I mean, I hope we did that with this series.
Beth [01:02:16] I hope we did, too. I also hope the series is an example of what the book can produce, because we really didn't write Now What to be a how to. We did not sit down to say we fixed it, we got it. We understand how all of this works. And if you do these things, everything will be okay. We tried instead to prompt discussion.
Anna [01:02:31] That's our next book.
Beth [01:02:36] We did it to try to prompt the kind of discussion that we just had with these listeners. And for people who only know us as disembodied voices on the Internet to sit down and share with us as they did, I can only imagine what sort of beautiful, deep conversations might be generated if you use the book with people you already have relationships with, and we hope that you'll do that. Thank you so much again for being here with us. We'd love to hear your responses to these episodes. Keep sharing your stories, because even though we are ending this series, we are continuing our work as people who care about how we all relate to each other.
Sarah [01:03:10] Yes, every one of these conversations was a tiny miracle. I hope it was for the listeners who participated. I hope it's for all of you as you're listening. And if we can tell you anything, those moments of connection where you step out in vulnerability, where you name that you're heartbroken about something or that you need help and you form a connection with another human being, it is a little tiny miracle, and that's what we hope for all of you.
Beth [01:03:34] So thank you for being part of the constant miracle that this podcast is in our lives. We will be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week and can't wait to be here getting into the headlines with all of you. Until then, everybody have the best weekend available to you.
[01:03:58] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah [01:04:04] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.
Beth [01:04:10] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers (Read their own names) [01:04:14] Martha Brontisky. Linda Daniel. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hassler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. The Kriebs. Laurie LaDow. Lilly McClure. Emily Neesley.
[01:04:38] The Pentons. Tawni Peterson. Tracy Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Vilelli. Katherine Vollmer. Amy Whited.
Beth [01:04:50] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Ashley Thompson. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Morgan McHugh. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer, and Tim Miller.