 and welcome back to the Matrix of Peace show brought to you by Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Police, and the CEO of Peace Through Commerce. Joining me today is our guest, Joan Blades, to talk about how to avert another January 6 catastrophe by creating trust in elections. Joan knows something about helping to avert a mass action like this. She is a successful political activist and the co-founder and past leader of moveon.org, a public policy group, and a political action committee. Because the results of the 2024 U.S. elections are going to be questions, Joan and her team at livingroomconversations.org offer a scalable, structured conversation tool that can begin to achieve some key outcomes that will lead to trust in elections. So with that, Aloha, Joan. Hello there. Great to be. Very glad to have you calling in, I know, from Berkeley. And just to review where we're going to be going today, what prompted you to start this initiative? We can see what's coming. We know that trust in elections is at a low, and if we don't do something now, we have every reason to believe that there's going to be serious trouble come November. So we have a short clip to bring into the room the reality of that possible outcome. And if Mike would play it for us, let's just go back to those days on January 6 when the election was contested. Okay. That was brought to us by the Library of Congress, that video clip, and it was created to send out, as people could see the 800 number there, a request that every citizen in the United States participate in finding the people who perpetrated that atrocity and bring us to justice. And that's the tail wagging the dog of where we want to be coming up this November. We don't want that. And you've been around the block, Joan, on helping people get to peaceful, intelligent resolutions of conflicting ideas and beliefs. And so can you talk to us a little bit about your background and what this trust in elections initiative is? It's a matter of really democracy, life and death to get this right this time. Around the block. It's hard to say which part of the block to talk about, but I think I'll talk about the living room conversations more than anything, because being from Berkeley and doing move on, I really had a point in particular around climate change where I went, what's going on? Why do people see things so differently than I do? And I had the opportunity to be intentional about meeting people that had very different viewpoints than I did. And so when we got to the point where it was less possible to have a good conversation with someone on the right, climate than it was in 2006 by 2010, living room conversations is an opportunity to talk to people and really hear them. So the exciting thing about trust in elections is fairness is a value shared across the political spectrum. Trust worthy elections are something that the vast majority of people want and elections are local. We are personally responsible for our local elections. We can do if we show up to do it. I don't want to be 10 months from now saying it wasn't right. I want to fix it now. So 10 minutes from now we can say to anyone that questions the integrity of the elections that our elections were fair and they were trustworthy. That's the goal. And the only way we can do this is if a massive number of citizens show up and own it. What's exciting is you can do the local piece, but there's not the technology to connect people across the country. So this is potentially the beginning of a really meaningful trust building project that would be so good for us as a democracy. But more than that, we need to build trust in each other regardless. After November, we need to continue to build trust because our trust in each other and our institutions in the media has diminished so dramatically. We need to turn that around. You know, you and I are sitting here talking about what seemingly is the impossible. And you love it. I know you're going to say bring it on. It has to start. Do you have any? I know that you have some metrics that have shown that your living room conversations initiative, which started how many years ago now? 2010. In 2010. So about 13, 14 years, you have a track record on making a difference and, you know, it can go to scale, right? I want the what we're going to show the viewers today is a day in the life of what it's like to have one of these dialogues, how to get involved, how to do it, how to invite other people into the room. But it isn't pointless at all. So what are some of your metrics, your results? The first I should describe a conversation. So you can write are typically four to six people. So they're intimate and they're very structured. They have three rounds. So that the introduction you get to get a sense of who the people in the room with you are, the content in the second round is about your personal relationship with that topic. And the end is just reflection and next step. It's not a debate. It's a listening practice. And in 2019, we did a research project that revealed that both the in person and the video conversations had the impact we were looking for in terms of making connections and having people be more curious and getting nuance and have to build some listening skill. As we think we want to be skilled talkers being skilled listeners, remarkably powerful. So, so, you know that it's working and it can go to scale. I know that people want to talk about this. So you've you've got to need people need to be talking about it. They want to be talking about it. And you have a very curated process that's been tried and true through living group conversations that you're now hoarding over to this trust and elections initiative. And so I want and I want the audience to know. I mean, I don't I didn't check with you about your political where you are in a political spectrum, but I want people to know where we're coming from where I'm coming from at peace to commerce is a trans partisan place. If that means anything to you that we're not we don't identify with any party. We identify with unity. And you know, one of our one of our beliefs is that values unite, but beliefs divide. And our work is to get towards this. You talked about it. Everybody shares the value of wanting to see elections that they can trust and use in your your positing that everybody shares that. So now what do they do to coordinate their beliefs, even if they're different? And so we just want people to know that we want to allow that listening component, wherever whatever perspective you're coming from, so that you can move into true dialogue debate. Yeah, not not not not that debate is wrong, but true dialogue. So she talked about the trust. Yeah, being trans partisan. I'm clearly a progressive. And but I have partners that are conservative and living room conversations was started with conservative and independent partners. The conversation guides are open source. So it may be you have one living room conversation a weekend, but we could have 10 thousand in the weekend, because it's open source and doesn't require a facilitator that conversation guide, hold the conversation in a really productive way. And we've been doing them in libraries. We've been doing them in schools, you know, in addition to living rooms and in faith communities. So it's a good thing for a community to build their connections. A lot of them do the monthly individuals do the weekly because they just enjoy that way of having a conversation that isn't that is deeper than your average front of the mill conversation. This does sound like the slow food movement applied to dialogue. It weren't it's and yet I do believe you're going to get we're going to get traction we need before November if we can catalyze these these these living room conversations on the topic of trust in elections widely. And you have I know you have a platform for local and national conversations. So let's get to the meat. We have we have an opportunity today for people to actually go through what it's about. So what I I know there's more to say about the opportunity how do you feel like we've covered it all. We also even have a slide to give people a chance to slow the slow this show down and take a look at the opportunity and the bullet points that you have there in slide four. Do you feel like we've talked about each of those or is there something else you want to highlight for. I think it's important for people to just realize that you have a lot of impact locally and you can make things happen when I had my first press and election conversations a couple of months ago. I was super pleased to find everybody at the end of the conversation talking about things they could do to make elections more trusted. And it's going to depend on the community you're in whether you know how far along you are. And the reality is we may think we know about our local elections and say yeah they're trustworthy but once you talk about it you probably want to get a few more details because if then you feel confident or if you have any places where you think wow we can do it a little better here you can make those changes so that then we can connect people across the country to talk to each other about why they believe their local elections are trustworthy. And that's you know it's the beginning of building it's not it's not the final destination there's all sorts of great groups that we already have listed on our trust and elections page at living room conversations that have more resources so do workshops if they need facilitation because you know six people is four to six people are really good number for having an intimate conversation but if you need to make some changes locally you may need someone to help with a larger group event to focus everyone and be effective. And there's a whole dialogue and deliberation community that would love to do that and mediators and that's this richness out there we just need to tap into it. And are some of those resources available on livingroomconversations.org and you go to we will give you the link within this show or we'll leave it in the breadcrumbs where the show lives online where they can go and there they can get a kit right they can download a kit you might be able to put them in touch with facilitators or they could read about resources for facilitation and bridging divides go ahead I can tell you want to scroll to the bottom of the page and they'll see there's numerous links to other organizations that have really good materials for trust in elections. Okay and I just want the viewers to know I think Newsweek covered a story on your trust in elections initiative you've gotten grants from Fetzer Institute which is very high is that right very high level. Highly respected folks there trying to make the world a better place and so for those of you who want to try this out you couldn't be in a more loving and wise I think support group to help you through this conversation and dialogue experience. Also what I like Joan about the platform if you meet weekly or monthly that allows for changing and events and changing and who's running and what the issues are it allows for the people to digest together these changes in the landscape that we are all working towards trust in elections. We have over 150 conversation guides and often people start with one conversation and it can lead to another you know we have a couple even linked on the conversation page because you know you may have to trust in elections conversation but then you may find that some of the people want to have that's my vote really manner conversation or a conversation about elected officials because you know we've seen that people that are elected school boards and people that are elected to help with polling in some communities they found that to be punishing we don't want to punish good people that show up to try and help their community can we make our communities resistant to that kind of behavior I think taking that ahead of time having that conversation and creating clarity in the communities this is the kind of behavior that we want this is the kind we don't want you know violence around elections is part of what we don't want right people to feel safe so in that regard we have a slide that we could share that takes people you shown telling us two steps of the process we want to kind of go over it again and how and then I'll look at how this process fits in the larger ecosystem of society through the lens of the matrix of peace so you want to do you want to just recap one and two and tell us a little bit about rounds three and four well um rounds one yeah if you have a very diverse group it's particularly important to get a sense of people's deeper values you kind of go oh we listen to each other when we feel connection to them in a way we just don't listen to each other if we're not connected and seeing each other's humanity and that's one of the things we've been having some trouble with is not seeing each other's humanity that's is actually very disturbing and for the topic it's like you trust your local elections you talk about if you trust why you trust what is trust to you it's a reflective process and as we listen to each other talk about it we often find that we deepen our own understanding of our own beliefs I find that again and again in living room conversations and the final round you know is toward it's just reflection and next step and this particular conversation really needs to lead to next steps which honestly thrills me as in this case I think we need to take some serious next step you know you started out by saying step one allows people to understand each other's humanity and that is a distinction between your move on dot org platform which wasn't at all that was just all uh internet right you you voted through internet and what happens with living not that one's better or worse than the other but in the way they're different by having these conversations you do meet people it isn't just blogging or twitter zx or it isn't just people doing anonymous faceless uh rant it's i stand up for living room conversations there yeah for move on move on did house parties they did oh i didn't know they did okay all sorts of in person as well as it's meeting people where they're okay wanted as an organizer i want to meet people where they're at right and the reason this project is a lot more challenging than any other i've taken on is because it's meeting people where they're at at a time when people have been trained to distrust each other gotten more and more anxious about talking across differences we're trying to bring down that discomfort and fear and nurture the we are in this together because we've stopped feeling that sense of in this together in too many cases and it's a much it's a bigger ask ask people to show up personally in this kind of conversation showing up with a group of people that agree with you doesn't feel very scary and that's really lovely and i love to do it that said i think we need to take this further step and i can testify that it expand it's expanded my world i've learned a tremendous amount you know people go on these very adventurous vacations think of this as an adventure because it is and we have all sorts of differences but we can find the connecting spots and move out from there so talking about where you are and finding the spots i want to go just briefly through where this work fits on a map of society that we've created a piece through commerce called the matrix of peace whole systems model of society and it's you're seeing it now and it's it's a traditional venn diagram and we're using the wisdom within it some people call it sacred geometry is what vends are the the discipline that they're coming out of and that there could even be formulas for co-creating the intersections that that are that represented by the venn diagram that there are the really formulas that we haven't completely discovered yet and by using a venn diagram to to visualize what peace looks like and what it doesn't look like might open up a whole new plethora of tools for us as human beings to step into the sacred geometry and what this the way it's constructed is there are three basic sectors of society all societies the public private and civil society sectors and you can call them community and laws and business it may be middle and developing countries but every every basic society with sort of three or more people it has these overlapping sectors and overlapping is the key when they do overlap they co-create what we believe are the necessary but sufficient conditions to societal peace and that is justice prosperity and sustainability and each of the intersectionalities of the sectors can co-create those outcomes or not and when you have all three justice prosperity and sustainability you then have those necessary but sufficient conditions to support societal peace and when you don't we'll look at the next slide when those sectors are not intersecting then you can't get to what we see the map changes there is no way to get to justice prosperity sustainability and the superordinate intersection of peace how do we get there we get there through that fourth component of the model which is the outside circle it's a sphere in a 3d sense called the consciousness sphere and within that sphere is embedded the values that we know unite the beliefs that can divide and and the emotions and the intangibles and where living room conversations and this trust and elections initiative platform lives on this model is working in the consciousness sphere helping move people from outside sector thinking silo sector thinking into the intersections of justice prosperity and sustainability and you don't get there automatically it really is through consciousness practices dialogue listening and the values that that that support so let's move forward and look at some of those values I think we have another slide here that that lists the values coming out of the well we have conversation agreements let's talk about that first so these agreements actually embody the agreements that you have listed through the kits that people can use it embodies those shared values so just in just a few minutes if you want to touch on a couple of them be curious and listen to understand which we start with that curiosity is incredibly if we can be curious without doing the judgment piece it opens us up and showing respect people don't you know you've lost the connection if you're not showing respect this is all about owning your part of the conversation I know so many people that have found these conversation agreements which people go into a conversation and they know how to do this this is basically what we learned in kindergarten and and they're good at it and it's a reminder and then they take it beyond their living room conversation into their lives in very productive ways I can't recommend the conversation agreements enough and there's a long form of them that goes into a more detail about it on the website but this is the essence of it right well and you know when they when they see these agreements it allow them to talk about that what is it what does that mean to you and show respect and suspend judgment and note common grounds and be authentic and welcoming purposeful and to the point and you know and own and guide the conversations those are just those are the shared values that help move people into what we call matrix intersectionality on the road justice on the road to prosperity on the road to sustainability sustainable behaviors and peace and we have just a minute maybe a half a minute to share conversation topics you raised some of them they're on the next slide on there's five bullet points there that start the conversation so what impact does trust or the lack of trust have on you or when in your life have you intentionally built trust how do you define trust and when you think about voting what hopes and concerns do you have for building trust and those are excellent excellent prompts of start these conversations and then we've got a final slide on citizen what people can do to get these conversations started if you could see that there I'm I'm going to have to be directive here because we're running out of time and you already said these conversations hundreds are happening today where people get together as friends through libraries through faith communities through national organizations like the League of Women Voters or Rotary these are natural affinity groups within which you're going to have different beliefs but hopefully shared values and we can build on that so uh any final parting comment Joan before I whisk us away and I want everyone to try this and then tell us about it because what will you learn we need to learn and then we need to share it with others we need your stories we need your your stories of how you impact your community we do so I do so everyone we'll have to leave it there you have been watching The Matrix of Peace show brought to you today by Think Tech Hawaii sorry I've got a little interference there I'm your host Phyllis Lease the CEO of Peace Through Commerce and joining me today is our guest Joan Blades talking about how to avert another January 6 catastrophe by creating trust in elections and you can do it only you can do it Mahalo Joan for joining us and Mahalo to our viewers for tuning in we will be back with another edition of The Matrix of Peace Aloha