Questions and conversation filled The Ashland Sunrise Project’s post-election presentation

By Meg Wade for Ashland.news

A standing-room-only crowd filled 160-seat Carpenter Hall in Ashland on Tuesday, Nov. 12, one week after Election Day, as community members joined The Ashland Sunrise Project (ASP) for “Building Post-Election Common Ground,” the last installment of its speaker series this year.

The program featured Mike and Emily Green, co-founders of Common Ground Conversations on Race, as well as Taylor Stewart, founder of the Oregon Remembrance Project, and was hosted by Tara Houston, community and engagement manager for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

The evening began with remarks from Stewart, who encouraged attendees to stay in relationship across lines of political difference: “For those who are disappointed by the results of the election, there is an urge for many of us to cut out the people in our lives who voted differently. Today, we want to push back on that urge and develop the skills to reach across our divides. Especially for the white people in this room, you are actually doing a disservice to your neighbors of color when you cut out other white people with whom you should be building bridges toward a more racially just community. Your neighbors of color need you to stay active in this struggle.”

Stewart went on to share what he described as “a first-hand experience of the lingering vestiges of a sundown town” in Ashland. Sundown towns were communities that excluded Black people and other racial minorities through a combination of intimidation, violence, and exclusion (“get out of town by sundown”). Sunrise Projects, such as the Ashland Sunrise Project, are intended to help communities reconcile with their histories and work to become more welcoming, inclusive places.

Reconciliation includes remembrance (understanding the harm that was caused); repair (putting an end to harm as it continues today); and redemption (creating good from a story of harm).

Stewart recounted how as recently as the weekend before, he was in an Ashland retail gift story when, he said, a pair of Latina women came up to him to say they were on the way out after noticing the same white clerk who had been following them around was now following Stewart. Stewart left with the Latinas.

“While the work of building common ground is on all of us,” Steward said, “for the white people in this room, this is especially your cross to bear — building bridges so that your neighbors of color can feel like they live in a community where they’re safe, respected, and like they can call that space their home.”

Mike and Emily Green picked up this thread, framing the purpose of the event:

“Today, in the aftermath of a hostile and divisive campaign season, the question we ask is: how do we build common ground between people who have been inundated with a massive amount of propaganda and traumatized by the electoral process on both sides of the aisle?”

In many ways, the Greens had more questions than answers for their audience that night, in line with their approach to engage in a “process of inquiry” that is more focused on seeking understanding than on creating agreement.

They offered up three questions to start: “How shall we treat one another? Does history matter? Does race matter?”

The first portion of their slide presentation argued for affirmative answers to the latter two, looking at generational shifts in time over the U.S., from the creation of the legal construct of race to the inclusion of Black men in the right to vote, to white backlash to this and other moments of Black progress. Within this, they focused on difference in voting patterns between white and Black women, the two largest voting blocks, asking repetitively, “Where did white women concentrate their votes?”

The third question, “How shall we treat one another?” set up the basis for what the Greens call “Conversation Journeys,” which they described in the second half of their talk. They use a variation of this question, framed as “What principles do we agree on that children should use in the process of how they should treat other children?” to create “a common frame of reference” for such conversations, and as a starting point to get to yet another question: “What do we envision for a future America?”

“If we ask people what do they envision for a future America, we will get a response that is more telling than if we ask someone why did they vote for a particular candidate or cause,” Mike Green said.

A “Conversation Journey,” for the Greens, is about using a “critical inquiry process to learn about the beliefs, needs and goals of others,” to seek genuine understanding rather than aiming to create agreement. To that end, they encouraged the audience to metaphorically “pack” for such a journey, bringing along “Curiosity — a genuine and sincere desire to learn more; Honesty — a willingness to engage in truthful fact-based dialogue, versus opinionated conjecture; (and) Critical inquiry – a process of asking fact-based questions that challenge conventional societal and personal beliefs.”

They also suggested a set of rules to guide such conversations, including: not arguing, not assuming, restating what was heard with precision, and having patience.

The audience had plenty of questions about this process, including exactly how to practice that patience in the face of statements from someone that could be triggering or provocative — for instance, what to do when people make statements about who “real” Americans are.

Host Tara Houston tackled this question from both a personal and historical perspective:

”My family is from Arizona and as someone with Mexican American roots, the concept of ‘America’ has always been interesting to me — we’re one of those families where the border crossed us. In most Latin American countries, ‘America’ refers to the continent — North, South, Central, all of it — not a country. So, my question for folks who have a particular view of what ‘American’ is, always comes around to how they define ‘America.’ Why is Americanness determined by the U.S.? It gives me a chance to engage my curiosity. Asking someone to consider the concept of Americanness would help me enjoy the conversation.

“I think it’s interesting to look back at times the U.S. has called itself the ‘United States’ and when it calls itself ‘America.’ Since our proper name is the ‘United States of America,’ why do we sometimes call ourselves the U.S. and at others America? It’s a fascinating question. Most often, when we’re evoking our ‘powerful’ colonialist image, American is used. When we’re evoking a sense of equality and openness we use United States. The mythology behind the terms is super interesting to me.”

After the event, audience members had mixed reactions about the usefulness of the presentation but appeared committed to continuing the process of working across differences to help their communities heal from racism.

“It felt like there was responsibility being placed on the white-bodied female voters in the room to somehow shift the perspective of that demographic as a whole, which is not necessarily something we have the power to do,” said an attendee who didn’t wish to be identified.

Jaelle Dragomir, a meditation teacher from Medford, echoed this comment, stating they thought “There was a lot of shame thrown at those who voted for Trump. A lot of shame towards “white women … I’m a white woman; there were many white women at the gathering. We voted against Trump. We should be beyond blaming and shaming as it is not what will heal the wasteland. There are so many conflated reasons why Trump won that just one reason seems, to me, unreasonable.”

Dragomir also thought that “it would have been good to have discussions with each other at the meeting,” but then said that “I trust next time we meet for Sunrise, we’ll delve more deeply into healing racism.”

Ingrid Edstrom of Ashland also plans to attend the next Sunrise Project event: “I liked the conversational tools … as a coach, I really love appreciative inquiry and generative questions. Showing up for these conversations and participating even when it’s hard and confusing and even when people disagree —that is the work. Learning the history even when it’s uncomfortable and hearing the lived experience of others that maybe I haven’t lived and can’t relate to, that is the work.”

Ashland resident and freelance journalist Meg Wade’s byline has appeared in Mother Earth News and other publications. Email Ashland.news at [email protected]. Tara Houston is an Ashland.news board member.