Latest / Arizona Unscripted / Episode 20: 🌵 Arizona Unscripted - Can a Conversation Bring Us Together?
Transcript
- Arizona Unscripted: Welcome to Arizona Unscripted. I'm your host Bart alongside my wonderful co-hosts Diane, Jim, and Catherine. From time to time, we'll also be joined by special guests from communities all across the Grand Canyon State. Arizona Unscripted is all about Arizona, its people, its places, its events, and the local issues that shape our everyday lives. From small towns to big cities, from hidden gems and great local food, to history, culture, and the challenges facing our communities. We're here to have real conversations with real Arizonans. Our goal is simple, to celebrate what makes Arizona unique while bringing together voices from every corner of the state. So whether you're a lifelong resident, a newcomer, or just someone who loves Arizona, we hope you'll feel right here at home. So grab a cup of coffee or something cool. Sit back and join us as we explore the people, places, and stories that make Arizona one of the most fascinating and best states in America. So welcome to Arizona Inscripted. And with that, I will pass this over to my wonderful co-host, Diane. Thank you, Bart. It is so great to be here with you today. And I want to introduce a really special friend and colleague of mine, Eric Robbins, in here from Pima. And Eric, we are so grateful to have you here with us today and looking forward to you share with us. I appreciate that. I'm excited to join you all. I was talking with Catherine a little bit about a project that we got going down in here. And I think it ⁓ broadly aligns ⁓ with what you've all been doing about trying to enhance community, ⁓ build connections across community, do what we can to reduce the divisiveness, you know, that's kind of poisoning this country. And and when I heard more about your podcast, ⁓ not only am I thrilled for your mission, but what we are doing, I think is closely. aligned with that. So I'm I'm excited to talk about it. Wonderful. Well thank you for being here. And also with us we have Catherine and Jim from Mojave County and we have Daniel and from Graham. Hi everybody. It's great to be here this afternoon. Hello. Good to be here. Good to meet you all. Well, shall I dive right in, Diane? Shall I tell you what we're doing down here? Please do. So this really came about ⁓ in a very organic way. ⁓ you know, there's a a couple of us that started getting together for coffee on early Saturday mornings because, you know, I'm I'm I'm older and I got cats and they get me up at five o'clock and after two hours of me talking, you know, politics and news to them, they want me to go do something else. Right. So ⁓ we started we started getting together, ⁓ just have coffee on Saturday mornings and you know, blow off steam and just have some community, right? And for the first couple of weeks that we did that, it was just a few people showing up, you know, kind of randomly and chit-chatting about this and that. And then over time, and it's it's really, I think, telling to the time that we live in right now, more and more people started showing up. And, you know, they had a variety of issues. There was really no one unifying thing except. People just felt like they wanted to do different. They wanted to do better, right? They wanted to be having communication with, you know, their neighbors and colleagues and face to face kind of stuff as much as they're comfortable with. And, you know, we're mindful and people, some people are wearing masks and that's fine. But, you know, we just had a chance to sort of dialogue stuff. It was really ⁓ very open ended for a minute. And then after several weeks, it started to sort of sharpen, you know, the point started to come up. ⁓ Why why is it so difficult for us to even have conversations with our neighbors? Why aren't we even talking to each other? And of course, I'm stating stuff everybody here knows, I think, and I'm sure all your listeners do, but I'll say it here just to put a point on it. You know, there are people who have a vested interest in keeping us fighting. There are people who have a very vested interest, literally financial, you know, the Latin quibono, right? Like who benefits from keeping us arguing with our neighbors? And As cliche as it sounds, there's more that unites us than divides us. And so we really wanted to focus on that, right? So long-winded way of saying we this group basically identified one of the problems is we don't communicate with our neighbors in a meaningful way. We don't ask questions, we preach to each other, everybody's got their own soapbox, everybody's offended, you know, to be disagreed with. And we wanted to break that model, right? And so what we've done, You know, and again, just grown up organically out of a group that, you know, it turns out this person used to own an ad agency and this person's a graphic designer. And this person, you know, happens to, you know, be multilingual and wants to help us reach into those communities and help further this message. And so we we came out with a commitment that we were gonna create some messaging, we were gonna fund it ourselves. It is not affiliated with any candidacy in any way. ⁓ you know, it's not meaningfully associated. There's no party loyalty tests associated with any of this stuff. It's literally based on a series of questions. And if it's okay, you know, with the group here, I'd kind of like to play along with it so you kind of get a flavor of that because I'm gonna I'm gonna speak a truism, you know, that gets floated around in different circles. And maybe you've heard some variation of this. The mind remembers a truth that it is asked to consider. More than a truth that is told. Right. And if that resonates with you, ⁓ then that that then the rest of this will too. So here's an example of what we're talking about. We wanted to put together a communication campaign. And when I say campaign, I mean signage, I mean radio ads, including in Spanish and in native languages, ⁓ including video clips that we're going to put on social media that ask community members to speak to certain questions about. kind of where we are civically. And so if it's okay, since we're all sitting here in the room, I'm gonna go ahead and play. Look, you're here, so you you're about to get co-opted, if I may. And let me try this because we have a coup we have three main questions that we want to start conversations with our neighbors with. Right. And so here's one of them. So I'll just, Diane, it's your, you know, I'm gonna pick on you to start with. Do you remember time When you were really proud to be an American and what was it? What specifically was it for you? Like what what what did that feel like for you? What's that? Go ahead. What do you got? 30 seconds or so. ⁓ I think that I would say like I teach political science. And so one of the things is when I start my classes and I ask students about what it means to be an American, and they fill up the classroom. With their individual experiences. And I'm like, that's it. That's it right there. And it makes my chest every single class makes my chest just fill up with this is why it's different. And this is why we fight. And and and like for you, like that's not only relevant and meaningful. I'm not trying to tell you what it is. I want to know. And it gives you a space to articulate that. And I'll get I would venture that across the space that the people listening go. Wow, that really lands for me, right? So and I'm not trying to get anywhere with it. I just, I just want to give that space to articulate. So so here's another one. And Catherine, you you you you dragged me into So I'm gonna play along with play along with you on this one. If we, if we were to change this country for the better, right? There'd be a lot of things that might change. People might have different things. What's one thing for you that you could go, if we if this country could do this thing better, I would be more proud to be an American. Like, what would that be for you? Well the first thing there's so many things, but the first thing that comes to mind is health care. It's the basic ⁓ issue of being able to take care of your physical body without loss of your life savings or having a family member have to quit a job to take care of you, for example, have to buy medications that come from out of the country because if you buy them in the country, they're five times as expensive. So that's the thing to me, healthcare. And I I just want to comment on what you said as far as really having the conversations when you actually care about what the other person has to say and you don't have a preordained response to whatever issue they're bringing up, that really is how you have meaningful conversations. You and your group are totally, totally onto something with that. So anyway, yeah. I appreciate that. And so, you know, and Jim and Daniel, I don't mean to leave you out of this. We can go on to this for a minute. So ⁓ but let me open it up for questions because maybe you have a couple. But what I want to just wrap with is I think that that framing of that coming at it with a question and to honestly give space to have that answer will provide us a way to connect with ⁓ you know, there's gonna be a certain portion of of our communities who are not gonna play this game with us, right? They're not gonna connect. ⁓ Then that's not our audience, clearly. That's, you know, we're looking for people who are hungry to connect. And I think there's a lot of them. ⁓ you know, that's been my grassroots experience. And as we've expressed this project to people, like we have been getting ⁓ grace and funding coming out of the woodwork of people coming like, I want to participate in this. Like, what can I do? And because it's not candidate related, it's not tied to any campaign limits, you know, it's it's a way for people to express themselves both individually with the conversations and with support for their community in a way that I think is is unique and is necessary. So I'll leave it at that. If anybody's got any questions, go ahead and and ⁓ let me open it up. So I have a question. So is this how are you actually implementing this idea? Yeah, great question. ⁓ so we broke it into four different themes, right? And ⁓ we we touched on a couple of them. What you know, what what what did it feel like for you, or what specifically did it feel like for you to be proud to be an American? What could Be improved that make you more proud. One of the other ones, and this is a very open-ended question. It may sound a little provocative, but we need to go into uncomfortable spaces. Is chat have you had enough yet? Like, is there something that you're really sort of topped out at a capacity? Like tipping over to the point of this is no longer news, this is becoming trauma, you know, because there is a lot of people in our country for whom that is true. And I think we need to go ahead and explore that a little bit, right? And then the last ⁓ element. That we want to talk about and give people a place to explore this is that empathy is not a weakness. ⁓ it takes a tremendous amount of courage, ⁓ you know, to be fair and to be kind and to be respectful of people you don't like. That's the hardest thing there is. and to do that in an emotionally mature way is a high bar. And the reason that some people attack that, in my opinion, is because that is the kryptonite to their worldview. It's not that empathy is actually a weakness. It's not that kindness is actually a weakness. They they don't like it. I get that. ⁓ but I think that's for different reasons. And I think we need to explore that too. So those are the broad themes, and we're trying to give people ways to explore that. So I mentioned we've we're putting together some signage ⁓ that we're putting out both as kind of yard sign, but in public spaces, ⁓ and asking questions. You'll see things like, you know, have you had enough yet? Or, you know, what does this mean for you? That kind of thing. We're also going to do some radio spots, some short, you know, 15, 30 second radio spots, kind of asking these questions and maybe framing some things for people, but to leave them with a question will be our goal. ⁓ and then again, the social media side of it. And then we're hoping, and this is a little bit, you know, downstream, that this is a continuous communication project that eventually we can start to lead people into events where they can connect with other people in their communities. And have these kind of conversations and sort of normalize ⁓ you know, being brave about some of the stuff that feels really awkward because we've been trained not to do this. Yeah. ⁓ but I think that's for strategic reasons. Anyway, I'm overexplaining. I hope that answers. No, I love this so much. I keep telling people when people are asking, you know, why are you having so much success with people coming out and showing up for each other? And I'm like, Because we ask meaningful questions and listen with the heart of a neighbor. And we've lost that, right? And that's what people are hungry for, just like what you're saying. So this is the first I've heard of your program. So I'm thrilled that Catherine knew about it and suggested having you on here because it resonates so much. I mean, we're up here at the northwest corner and you're down there in the south. And yet these are the same principles what hungry people are hungry for. And I love those signs, the enough, right? We've got a big banner that says all of this ends when enough of us say enough. And it just is, right? We have that power and we have the power to connect with each other. It's so important. So thank you for the work you're doing. I'm really looking forward to learning more about it. And I would love to see this just spread across Arizona. I mean, we've talked about road trips, we've talked about Cars and barbecue and all kinds of things that unite us. And this is this is so powerful. Thank you for what you're doing. My pleasure. I appreciate the chance to explore explore a little bit. And again, it it is sort of a simple thing, but you know, I'll I'll leave with this. A lot of the foundational things that make things work are quite simple. Arches are simple, they're strong because they're simple. Triangles are strong because they're simple. We oftentimes overcomplicate things. And so going right at this disconnect is is what our goal was. And to the way you put it was beautiful, ⁓ Diane, about, you know, a heart of a neighbor. I'm gonna ⁓ shamelessly steal that. So thank you. ⁓ yes, please do. You're totally fine. Because we're on the same wavelength. We'll keep you in the loop on this going forward. Thanks for giving me some time on it today. That's great. Jim and Dionyle, do you guys have questions for Eric? I see he does. Well, I think I think we should look into more of the money in politics that keeps us all apart. All the disinformation that gets put out there, there's some way we have to fight against that. And we fight against that when we're sitting at the same table, in my opinion. I keep telling people get offline and come up to the table. Because it's much easier to fight for each other when you're sitting there as neighbors. Sorry, Jim, go ahead. No, I I believe the same thing. ⁓ we we need to get together more often and talk about things. I remember back in the nineteen eighties or so in the early eighties, we used to always sit sit around and talk about politics and it wasn't a big deal. Now when you talk about it, everybody goes, ⁓ I don't want to s say nothing. I'm let's not talk politics, let's not talk the religion. ⁓ you know, we don't talk about that stuff. It's taboo nowadays. You know, it's funny you mentioned that, Jim, because I you know, I was raised, you know, again, I'm probably a similar generation. And and at at some point in my upbringing, that conversation about you know don't ever talk about sex, religion, or politics. And I remember as a young man thinking that that's the only thing that's interesting. What are you talking about? You just ruled out the best three topics and money. I keep telling people it was very strategic when we were raised to not talk about. Religion, politics, money, right? And personal things. Our bodies ourselves was groundbreaking because somebody there talked about it, right? Yes. And now we can afford not to. Amen, sister. Daniel, do have a question, brother? You look like you were leaning in there for a second. Well, I I was. It's partly because ⁓ I actually got ⁓ I don't want to call it triggered, but right off the bat, I was I'm so glad you didn't ask me why I'm proud to be an American because I went straight to what would make a person proud to be an American and am I seeing it? And that was it was a whole program on itself because I didn't have a simple answer for that. I know what I'm proud of about the promise of America. Sure. And that's where I got into a lot of distress. Fair. Right. And and and I think all the more reason to important to have that conversation to explore that and to find a path out of that. Cause when people are stuck in that frame, That's tough. That's a tough that's a tough path out. Would you agree? Yeah, because I'm I'm gonna, you know, it's it's basically it's gonna cause some real intense conversations if I answering that from where I landed. And so what makes me proud is when we express those promises. And that intention. And that makes me proud. And when I see us really making a real clear reparation, a real clear intent to address something that where someone else is in in pain. Those things make me proud. It's only as an American when it's expressing our constitution and our declaration of independence, primarily constitution for me, but and then I get proud. Very short-lived lately. Yeah. Well, and I mean you touch on a great point too. Like, I I I have this expression that, like, and again, not to get into any party business, you know, for political parties, because that's not what we're doing here, but like. Nobody should join a party because the party like the party should join the community. The party earns its right to serve the community by upholding those values, right? And and if a party can't do that, then they don't deserve to be supported, in my opinion. Right. And so this is like one of the reasons that, you know, historically I've, you know, I've been an independent in the past. I've, you know, I have issues with the Uniparty in this country. I do think that the up-down fight is much more crucial than the left-right fight. ⁓ and so anyway, I'm in the weeds. I got triggered too. But I I appreciate that, Daniel. Thank you for that. That's good stuff. and exactly the point, right? Like I'd rather have this conversation than than almost any other. So ⁓ I'll leave it at that. I don't want to run long on you. I know you got somebody else coming. Okay. Well, our next guest is Daniel, and he's here. ⁓ but I do I really think, Eric, that this is gonna resonate with people the way that it is for those of us that are here. ⁓ I would love to have you come back again and let us know it's how it's going, how people could do such a thing in their community, because I really think it's the answer. We used to do progressive dinners. I don't know if you all have done those, right? And you start at one person's house and then you go to the next one for another thing to eat or drink and then the next one. And The conversations and the connection that happens from when you start at the first one and people come in kind of apprehensive. ⁓ like Daniel is saying, ⁓ I don't want to answer that question. That's okay. Right. And then you look at where you leave at the end of that, and people ha are friends and they've connected with their information with each other, and it's so powerful. ⁓ I know I took a lot of public speaking classes and You know, we had table topics, right? And you'd pull it out and you'd have to answer the thing. And I think we really got away from that. But I think it really for me, I was like, Daniel, I'm like, I don't want to answer that. I want time to think about it. I'm a planner, right? But I would answer and then people would connect with that, or I would listen to answers and I would connect with their answer. And I really think there's so much value. And coming back to our values. So thank you for leading this here in Arizona. Is this just in Pima? Is this surrounding areas? It it started out really kind of local, but the people who attend our group are all over Southern Arizona. And we've been very clear like we have no border on this for our purposes. If people want to support this, and again, it's it's kind of a It's a little bit different angle for some people to get their head around. Like, what are we doing? Like, are you just asking questions? Is that a thing? Like, does that have real value? And I get that. I like I think that's a legitimate point. But I do think that we if I can make a somewhat oblique reference, and I know it's not good science, but it's a great concept, like the hundredth monkey notion, like if you continue to sort of seed the community mind ⁓ about a certain way of thinking, like I do believe there's a tipping point to that. I mean, it is. the basis for advertising and propaganda. So I'm pretty sure there's some validity there, right? But there's just I I I'm willing to just keep putting sort of soft messaging out to see if we can get the the tone to drift back in a in a civic way. And again, I it's okay for conversations to be difficult. They're the truthful ones are gonna be, but we have to have them. We have to normalize having them to begin with. So this is just a way for us to start. We're gonna keep pushing it. If it keeps getting traction, I'm going to take it as a mandate. If it loses that focus or that traction, I'll take that as a sign from the community. But right now, I'm a little stunned at how much people are jumping in to go. I'm in. What can I do to help and push it out? And so it seems to be growing exponentially. I'll keep you posted. I love it. Well, if you share information with us on how people can get plugged into that, we will make sure that we include that ⁓ below in the description on the podcast so people can get connected in. And please do come back and see us. Amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'll turn it over to you guys and Daniel. Thanks for giving me some time. All right, thank you. Thanks for being here. Than