Through his Chair’s Initiative: Disagree Better, National Governors Association Chair Utah Governor Spencer Cox aims to elevate solutions to toxic polarization. At a convening in New Hampshire, Governor Cox welcomed representatives of several national organizations leading efforts to find common ground.
Two panel discussions featured strategies for correcting misperceptions and highlighting commonalities at the individual level, while a third focused on taking those one-on-one connection strategies and scaling them to the community level.
The panel featured:
- Uma Viswanathan, New Pluralists
- Ron Gunzburger, Story Corps
- Layla Zaidane, Millennial Action Project
- Andrew Hanauer, One America
Andrew Hanauer explained the inspiration behind the panelists’ efforts to foster connection that bolsters institutions. “What we need to be doing [is to] stand up those pillars of society that already exist, that already are involved in people’s lives so that they can be as healthy as possible.”
Hanauer’s organization, One America, focuses on faith communities. “When we think about any institution in American society that we need to be healthy – [such as] corporations, government elected…
