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Mariah Levison is the Minneapolis-based co-author with Robert Fersh of “From Conflict to Convergence: Coming Together to Solve Tough Problems.” We talked with her about how the book came to be, some of its central messages, and how we can take a new approach to problem-solving even with people who don’t have the same viewpoint we do.
How did you get into the work of bringing together people to solve conflicts?
I can’t remember not being worried about conflict in the world. I was in my parents’ bedroom with the news on in the background and hearing terrible stories. I grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri, and there was quite a lot of violence there. Hearing every night this sort of litany of who got killed overnight, and then hearing about conflict in international settings, I was really disturbed. I thought I would someday like to contribute to addressing that.
For whatever reasons, it was always more natural for me to see that when people are doing things that are hurtful or harmful or unproductive, it’s usually driven by a not-very-effective way of trying to meet one of these basic human needs that we all share — for safety, security, belonging, and meaning. That gave me this sense that there’s a real opportunity to transform conflict. That if we can get past the behaviors, demands, and activities that aren’t always very constructive, there are real opportunities to meet more of people’s needs. It isn’t mutually exclusive.
That drove me to get into this work. I worked in community settings as a mediator, doing dispute resolution. I worked in landlord tenant court, where I saw that it wasn’t particularly good for landlords to evict people because then they didn’t have someone paying, and wasn’t good for people to be evicted. If they could figure out repairs or a payment schedule, they could figure out a way that met both of their needs. Then I went on to work at the state of Minnesota for a long time, taking that same approach. I joined The Convergence Center for Policy Research in 2022.
In the book you articulate the fact that polarization is often about people having different ideas about how to do something, wanting to avoid conflict directly with each other, so instead demonizing the other side and leaving it there. Do you think entrenchment has gotten deeper?
As a person who has worked in conflict resolution my whole career, I don’t think we were ever that good at resolving our differences. We just maybe suppressed more of them. We certainly are feeling very divided right now, and in some ways we are.
People have asked me if my work is getting harder, and for a long time, I would say, “not really, we get people in a room, and they pretty much — not easily, but reliably — build relationships, build trust, find things they want to do together.” It’s not to make everything kumbaya, but to make things better than the status quo — that everyone could agree on something better than where we are right now.
But the work has gotten harder because people are feeling more divided. I think there are big political and social drivers for that. There is growing inequality, increased immigration, the pace of change that is causing stressors. The role of media and social media is a driver of people feeling so divided. Money in our political system. A lot of things have come together to create the moment that we’re in.
What we focus on in the book is that the dominant narrative of our polarization, in large part, does not reflect experience. If people think about their day to day, people are still following the speed limit and helping neighborhood kids walk to school and taking care of their elderly parents. There is fascinating polling about how divided people are, but also how concerned they are about division, how they want to work together, how they want to find solutions. That is reflected in my experience.
When we convene, people often don’t want to come into the room. They come because they feel like they are stuck, or they might miss out on being part of something that might move forward without their perspective.
People usually don’t come excited to be there, but pretty reliably, they eventually feel good about being there — about understanding people in their nuance and complexity, and understanding the issues. They are excited to uncover the fact that they have high-level goals and values in common.
Often in sessions, we ask people to raise their hand if they’re against a strong economy, are against good schools, like dirty water. People agree on these things.
I’ll have people go around a circle and share the value that guides them most around the issue. There is a huge overlap: fairness, justice, compassion. When people realize that, there’s a pretty big sense of relief. We have this foundation, and where we disagree is on how we get there. Those disagreements are real, but they’re much more manageable. Those can be constructive disagreements that push our thinking to a higher level. Our issues are complex, and even though we might have ideas about how they should be solved, we may be missing something.
So yes, we feel divided, and yes, we are in real ways — but I think the narrative is obscuring a lot of shared values, shared goals, the desire to be in positive relationship, the desire to solve problems together.
How do we change the narrative of polarization?
I think there are structural reforms that would make our politics more effective, more collaborative, and ultimately meet needs of more people. When I first started, more policy makers were excited to have a group hand them a solution that stakeholders agreed on. That was a total win for them, because they didn’t have to upset constituents. Policymakers are humans — they don’t have expertise on everything.
That process is less the case today, because the system is not working as well. Things are happening at the end of the legislative process with giant omnibus bills. Parties are sitting on things that — even if there are wide swaths of agreement on — they don’t want to pass if the other party is in power, because they don’t want to hand them a perceived victory.
In addition to the structural challenges, which I think are very real and need addressing, at the deepest level I think division in our politics and in our broader society are driven by fears that are hardwired into us. Our tendency, when feeling a strain, is to quickly devolve into an “us versus them” zero sum thinking. That there is not enough to go around.
Our country and the world are going through rapid changes, so there are fears about trying to bring more people into the boat who weren’t there in the past. Are we trying to throw people out? Are we trying to build a bigger boat?
A lot of the work I do is about assuring people that it is possible to build bigger boats. It is possible to achieve shared goals and values in a way that meets the needs of many people in our very diverse democracy.
Could you walk through what you did with the Philando Castile conversations?
After Philando was killed [by a police officer in 2016], lots of people showed up at the city council, understandably very upset. The council realized they wanted to figure out how to handle the situation well. They reached out to local resources to figure out how to move forward as both a city and a community, on both the political and interpersonal levels.
Melanie Leahy, who is now a Falcon Heights city council member, was a leader in that process. She is a pastor and was committed to the process of healing. So, collectively, we designed two tracks. One was a traditional task force to look at policies around policing and inclusion. The other was a series of community conversations that became the main input into the task force — what the community wanted to see happen. We allowed people to talk, build relationships, and have space to process what happened. It led to meaningful outcomes.
None of these things solve everything, but on the policy level, the task force made a set of recommendations about policing and inclusion in the city. The City Council adopted all of those recommendations and worked to implement them over time. They changed their police contract. They negotiated different approaches and priorities. They dedicated funding to inclusion work, to having more community events. There were interpersonal opportunities to understand each other better. There’s a memorial to Philando — a celebration of his life. There were a lot of outcomes at different levels.
Could you also talk about the State Capitol and art process?
It was very contentious to decide to do a renovation of the Capitol. Governor Dayton created a task force. The committee developed a shared vision around art telling a diversity of Minnesota stories and helping people learn about government. They had two guiding values: 1) the Capitol is the people’s house, and it should be a welcoming and affirming experience, and 2) art should be used to grapple with difficult topics.
Folks on all sides agreed that putting art in a dark closet somewhere was not a great solution, and that we should wrestle with our difficult history — that not talking about it wasn’t the way to go either.
We designed a series of conversations across the state, including on reservations and in a survey. I was surprised at the volume of people interested in participating.
There were two paintings in the governor’s reception room that depicted Native Minnesotans. One in particular, the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, depicted a very difficult moment in Minnesota history that led to treaty promises not being fulfilled. Another, the Dakota War, led to the largest mass hanging in U.S. history. Difficult stuff.
The group originally was deciding between leaving it where it is — as history and art that should not change — to getting rid of it, outside the Capitol. In the end, the process led to a more complex solution, in a good way: take those paintings out of a place where there was no room to provide the context and move to their own room on the third floor of the Capitol with etched glass panels of description.
How have you handled pushback that certain people shouldn’t be at the table, because it creates conflict, or that the status quo works?
If you want to solve a problem, you have to get all the people there, or it’s not going to stick. Especially in today’s world, power is thinly distributed. People can go on any platform and make a lot of noise. People can sue. People can win an election, you can make substantial policy reform, and then the next election can undo all of that. For the sake of durability, you have to do the work of getting people invested in what the solution looks like, and that takes time. It’s not easy. It’s not always fun. Though, I would argue that in the end the work is rich and rewarding.
We did interviews for the book that included people who said that initially they didn’t want to be there. “I didn’t think anything would get done” or “I did not want to talk to these people.”
One guy had an anti-prison industrial complex background, and another guy had a leadership position at one of the biggest private prisons in the country. One didn’t want to sit next to the other. He almost moved the name tags, and call his wife to say “I don’t think I can do this.”
These two guys went on to do tons of work together. The advocate was able to pilot re-entry programs in a system that he wouldn’t have had access to. He came to see the man in leadership in the system as committed to re-entry work. They were proud of what they were doing together.
When it’s done thoroughly and carefully, and with skilled people, it more often than not works. And by works, I mean some relationships are built, some trust is established, some moving beyond the status quo is accomplished. Not everything is solved. Not everybody becomes best friends. But when it works, the solutions are often wiser.
There had been a long, super contentious process in Minnesota about custody. A group of fathers felt they weren’t getting a fair review in child custody decisions. They wanted to put a 50/50 presumption in law that [would presume shared custody]. Many people opposed it. But it went from a moms versus dads issue to the solution that a child’s health and development should be the number one decision-making factor. It had previously been the preference of the parents.
You often get wiser solutions from slowing down, taking the temperature down, digging into the nuances and complexities.
Policing around homelessness is another one. Police have insight about what’s happening and what those challenges are. They have to be on board to make changes.
What are solutions for success?
Taking time for people to get to know each other, to have food together, is important. I use a tool all the time that is in the book. We sit people in a circle and ask them a well-crafted question without any discussion until you’ve gone all the way around. Then we ask, not for responses but for reflections, on what people heard and what surprised them.
We also ask people to share a personal story that shapes their views. There are a lot of tools about how to have more dialogue, how we slow down. This helps to shift hearts and minds.
Vulnerability is one of the most powerful things to help people build relationships, to build trust, which is the foundation for solving shared problems together. Unprompted, most people aren’t going to do that, but with the right set of processes in place, people do it reliably.
When we bring people together in a thoughtful way, when we do circles with opening questions, when we set up conversation guidelines, it’s pretty reliable that people will start to disclose and share vulnerably.
It just takes the first person to be brave enough to disclose and be vulnerable and be real. Then it is a domino effect — not every person in the room, but it touches a lot of people. The power of one person taking that risk gives other people the courage.
This post was originally published on here
