Arlie Russel Hochschild berrichtet in ihrem Buch „Fremd in ihrem Land – eine Reise ins Herz der amerikanischen Rechten“ davon, dass es viele zivilgesellschftliche Initiativen gibt, die Spaltung zwischen Menschen in den USA, die sich dem demokratischen oder republikanischen Spektrum zuordnen, durch Begegnung und intensive Gespräche zu überwinden.
Eine dieser Initiativen nennt sich „Better Angels“. Auf ihrer Website berichten die Initiatoren über den Start ihrer Graswurzel-Initiative:
„How We Started
A couple days after the 2016 election David Blankenhorn called David Lapp in Ohio to ask if he could bring a handful of Trump supporters and Clinton supporters together in Ohio for a weekend. Bill Doherty, noted family therapist and community organizer, developed a structure and program for that weekend.
In December, 2016, 10 Trump supporters and 11 Clinton supporters gathered in South Lebanon, Ohio, in what became the first Better Angels Red/Blue Workshop. The goal? To see if we could respectfully disagree and find any common ground.
The results were remarkable. We liked each other. We wanted to know more about each other. We wanted to keep on meeting. We wanted to help start workshops in communities all across America! Those reds and blues invited their friends to another workshop and helped to found the first Better Angels Alliance.
National Public Radio found out about us and devoted an hour to Better Angels. The word spread, and we started getting emails from people across the country asking, “Can you please come to my community?” We did a summer bus tour, starting in Waynesville, Ohio, and ending in Philadelphia, PA, visiting 15 communities. We followed this with a fall tour starting in Washington, DC, proceeding through North Carolina and ending in Nashville, TN. In addition to holding workshops, we trained 130 volunteers to moderate additional workshops in the future – and the geometric expansion was on!“
Eine andere Initiative heißt „Bring it to the table.“