The "One Big Family" Frame in 2015
By Susan C. Strong
As everyone knows, the
most fundamental crisis in America today is the fierce partisan divide we have
in government. This situation makes collaboration or cooperation in solving the
nation's problems across party lines appear
impossible everywhere. Appear? Certainly in national and state politics it's
real. But what about at the grass roots level? In 2014 The PEW Research Center
did a series of studies about where the real American people are these days.
(1) True, they found that the number of those adhering to the extremes has grown
since 1994. But their statistics also show that the majority of our people detest
partisan conflict and hold so wide range of views that politicians are
struggling to come up with messages to reach them all.
[blockquote]"The story of this Extended Family frame also implies a specific, historical American way of communal problem solving--nationally the operative descriptive words were 'bipartisan,' 'pragmatic,' 'solution-oriented,' 'common sense,' 'practical' 'pulling together,' 'teamwork,' many of which also apply at the local level, as does 'community building, ' 'finding common ground,' 'problem solving,' and so on.
The most important thing about this 'one big family' frame is exactly this way people focus on real problem solving together, looking at what really works and what doesn't, emphasizing what they agree on (saving public money, for example), having a shared goal they work for even if their reasons for wanting the result differ, working out a 'rough consensus,' yes, compromising here and there if the potential results are worth it, tolerating each other's differences as part of the traditional American respect for variety, individuality, and difference of views.
A vital part of this frame is also the way it acknowledges that we all hold, at least in principle, the same set of basic American Public Moral Values-- fairness, honesty, equal opportunity, democracy, freedom, and compassion--drawn from both religious and secular ethics." (3)[/blockquote]
Except
for replacing the word "compromise" with either "collaborate"
or " cooperate," this portrait of grass roots America is still true.
Of course, we did and still do have two very different family models at the
extremes, Lakoff's strict father conservative family type and the liberal or
progressive nurturant parent type. But he himself is the first to say that many
people still have both models in their repertoire--the
"biconceptuals" or "persuadables." Indeed, as the PEW Center studies
suggest, there is even more range in views out there than when Lakoff first
identified the two models in the 1990's.
All well and good you might say, but how can
grass roots activists use this information to help get our country back on the
right track, for all of today's urgent issues? If some politicians are having
trouble figuring out how to reach the variety of views out there, as PEW
suggests, how can we? Of course, we
progressives will continue to lobby, march, and engage in nonviolent resistance
in support of our concerns. But if we are going to get serious critical mass in
support of smarter public policy, we need to reach out further and deeper at
the grass roots level too. We must strongly challenge the assumption that "we
the people" are really that divided, using some of the PEW statistics above. Grass
roots Americans have been scared off talking to each other by the noise made by
media figures, politicians, and commentators. The people need to be reminded
that we Americans still share many important values. And they need proof that
they can still safely talk with each other about our problems.
And there
is proof. It comes from the documented work of a relatively new group called Living Room Conversations (LRC) founded by
Joan Blades and Debilyn Molineaux. They realized that if they could bring people with differing views together
for private conversations in a comfortable living room in someone's home, it might help. They went on to
create a safe, structured process that helps
guide conversation. Participants are
able to discuss a wide range of subjects in
constructive ways, topics like criminal justice, mental health, and childhood
trauma. (See their website for suggestions about how to lead conversations
about energy, immigration, money in politics, crony capitalism and much more.)
Their model has been adapted at the community and state level as well. Using it, people have found common
ground by really listening to each other's viewpoint
and experience. Being respectful
about the language they use is a big part of the
project's success too.
People who have tried Living Room Conversations are very enthusiastic about
it--everyone from a conservative Tea Party leader to a leader of independent voters
says that it's the kind of grass roots conversation our country really needs. The work LRC is doing confirms for the grass roots level
what Ralph Nader asserted in his recent book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the
Corporate State. Underneath the media megaphones and political opportunists
of the Right, there is a core of common sense Americans who want real solutions
to our problems. Of course, Nader was
talking about Congress, and right now curing them seems like a pipe dream. But
the Right always goes too far, and this new Congress is on course to make a lot
of Americans absolutely furious. Starting
right now, this is a huge opportunity to promote respectful grass roots, bottom
up dialogue about how we can really solve our problems in this country. It
would be great to see this kind of process go viral, in more and more real
grass roots places.
Of course, I know this kind of organizing is not what we on the left usually do. But if the co-founder of MoveOn can do it, so can the rest of us. Living Room Conversations and other citizen activation projects like it are important ways to feed the kind of deep, wide, powerful river of citizen re-engagement we desperately need.(4)
Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How to Get America's Ear. The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.
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