BERNARDSTON — Maintaining a conversation between people with deep disagreements is a skill. Luckily it can be learned, says Bernardston resident Susan Hackney, who will be leading a program called “How to Talk Across the Political Divide” at Cushman Library on Feb. 5, 6 p.m. to 8.
The program will teach four sets of skills for talking to others with different opinions, Hackney said: how to set up a conversation for success, how to listen so the other person feels heard and understood, how to talk and express opinions so others will understand, how to deal with difficult moments in conversations.
Hackney’s background is in mediation. Last summer, she heard about a Greenfield-based group called Community Conversations, whose goal is to promote constructive dialogue in the present political climate.
“There’s a failure in the culture to make mediation more widespread,” Hackney said. “I felt like this was a way I could contribute to what’s going on.”
The Greenfield group became involved with a national organization called Better Angels, which came together in the last two years with the goal of healing the political divide in this country. (The organization’s name comes from a line in Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural speech, which he gave just months before the Civil War broke out.)
This past October, the two groups hosted a day-long workshop in Greenfield for facilitating conversations between people with different political beliefs. In a structured conversation, the 11 participants unpacked the ways in which each political faction stereotypes the other, and then explained their own beliefs to one another.
“It was fabulous,” Hackney said.
This shorter workshop in Bernardston will teach the skills for having those kinds of conversations.
Space in the library is limited, so participants will have to register ahead of time at the library.