Open Hearts, Open Minds #2: Ali Velshi Across America

So already, as I've been thinking about open minds and open hearts from a political, American-unifying perspective--not the only perspective from which to view them--I've been thinking a lot about the Ali Velshi's "Velshi Across America" series that ran every weekend during the last couple months. Each weekend, Velshi visited a different swing state and spoke to six voters: two who intended to vote for Donald Trump, two who intended to vote for Joe Biden, and two who either hadn't made up their minds or weren't planning to vote this year.

I watched almost all of these segments, so I got to listen in on what people "across the divide" were thinking in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina. 

The first thing that encouraged me in all these segments was the civility I saw--I didn't see any overt or more covert disrespect being exhibited, even though I could sometimes sense impatience and personal frustration in people's masked body language.

The second thing that encouraged me was the evidence I saw--I should say heard--that the participants were listening to one another--maybe because they were as interested in understanding others as they were in having others understand them; maybe because engaged civility requires listening, not just staying silent while others claim their slice of the air space.

As someone who taught for a long time in a  democratic alternative school that placed great value on shared decision-making and authentic exchange across difference, and also as a former teacher-researcher with Project Zero's Making Learning Visible Project, I've learned to look and listen for listening over the years. 

Carlina Rinaldi is a Reggio Emilia Educator

The silence of one person while another speaks may or may not indicate engagement; something said in response or at a  later time may be what reveals that the silent person was listening. 

In the actual moment when one or more are speaking and others are ostensibly listening, the evidence of listening often comes in what the next speakers say: "Like Bob said, . . . " or "I agree with Kelly that . . . , but even so, . . . " or "I can only imagine how hard it must have been for Juan to  . . . , and that's exactly why I think it's important to . . .."

This morning I was washing my breakfast dishes, again with my television turned to MSNBC. Again I was listening to Ali Velshi, and on my mind were the questions I'd raised the other day in my first Open Hearts, Open Minds blog. 

Velshi was talking about some aspect of the election when he made the following statement about the purposes of his reporting--maybe of MSNBC's reporting, too, but I'm not sure. I rinsed the soap suds from my hands and ran to get a pen and piece of paper so I could jot down the two purposes he identified, which I believe I captured verbatim: to bear witness, and to hold power to account.

But that clearly wasn't the purpose of what he had been doing with those swing state voters. Some weeks ago when I mentioned how much I was enjoying these segments to a college friend who knows Ali Velshi, she told me with some disappointment--I couldn't tell if she was disappointed or if Velshi was disappointed--that not one voter's mind had been changed as a result of these sessions. I told her that that mattered far less to me than that the voters had treated each other with attentive civility. 

I also told her that just because people didn't change their minds on that day didn't mean that they wouldn't or didn't change their minds later. As my Making Learning Visible and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School colleague Jennifer Hogue often used to ask, "When is learning?" Some students seemed to "get it" or "get something" on the day of we hoped they'd learn it; it clicked for others much later--and we were never quite sure why then or how, even though we used to ask about it. Sometimes it didn't click at all.

So there is journalism that hopes to open minds, to stimulate further thinking, and maybe even to change minds, and some of that journalism is even designed and produced by journalists who generally see themselves as bearing witness and holding power to account. Right before the election, Velshi did a follow-up news story about what he learned over his weeks of interviewing swing state voters in settings where they were able to hear one another speak. The last part of Velshi Across America: What I Learned From Speaking to Voters in 8 Swing States* says an awful lot about the possibility of bridge-building, which may sometimes be even more important than changing minds and votes.

* Velshi, A. (2020, October 31). Velshi Across America: What I learned from speaking to voters in 8 swing states. MSNBC. https://www.msnbc.com/ali-velshi/watch/velshi-across-america-what-i-learned-from-speaking-to-voters-in-8-swing-states-95074373941.[Note: all photographs contained here are screen shots of moments in that video.]