Activists and mediators Roberto Patiño, of Venezuela, and Avila Kilmurray, of Northern Ireland, share hard-won insights on how to bridge divides and fight for democracy in a fractured country.
The results of the November U.S. election, and recent research, show that a significant number of Americans believe that the “system” is broken and needs to be fixed, or upended. A majority of Americans also live paycheck to paycheck. This economic squeeze – a high cost of living without good jobs and wages to match – is happening in a time of rapid cultural and demographic change.
A political environment like this provides rich material for demagogues to weaponize fear and anger into outrage and power. To fight back against such misguided actors, the leaders we need at this moment can’t continue to sell the status quo, but must genuinely respond to the needs and fears of the population on both sides of the divide.
Of course, the US is not the first country to face rising authoritarianism, political violence, and weaponized fear of others.
Roberto Patiño is a political activist and mediator from Venezuela, a country that transitioned from democratic to authoritarian rule when he was young. Twenty percent of the country’s population – almost 8 million people – have left since 2014 amidst economic collapse, government repression, and gang violence.
Patiño worked in impoverished Venezuelan communities for many years, feeding hungry children and providing alternatives to violence. However, as a pro-democracy activist, he left Venezuela to avoid arrest and other forms of persecution. Now in New York, he continues to work to bring democracy back to Venezuela, having founded several non-profits, including Mi Convive and the think tank Institute 2100.
Avila Kilmurray is a peacebuilder and activist from Northern Ireland. Like Episode 2 guest Monica McWilliams, she was a founding member of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. Originally from Dublin, Kilmurray moved to Northern Ireland in 1975 to work on poverty alleviation and women’s rights. For twenty years she served as the director of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland, building bridges and supporting community initiatives for Catholics and Protestants. She continues to consult on peacebuilding and human rights in Northern Ireland and around the world.
In the final episode of our mini-series, Patiño and Kilmurray share hard-won insights on how to bridge divides and fight for democracy in a fractured country—lessons that are incredibly pertinent for Americans in this challenging time.
Music in this episode by Gavin Luke, Wendel Scherer, Arden Forest, and Blue Dot Sessions.
Get Closer to the People: The Foundation for Sustaining a Fragile Nation
This is an AI-generated transcript
Roberto Patino: You need to be tough on problems, but soft on people. You can judge the problem. And you can say, we have racism in our society, and this is something that we need to fight. But when you think that, or you start a conversation by accusing people of being racist, They're not going to listen to you. You're offending them and they're going to think, how can I offend you back?
Tim Phillips: Welcome back to how do we get through this? I'm Tim Phillips. With my nonprofit Beyond Conflict, I've been working on resolving conflicts and supporting democracy around the world for more than three decades, and now I'm bringing that work home to the United States. On this show, we reach out to leaders from around the world.
Who shaped the course of history during times of great upheaval. We're asking the question, how do we as Americans get through this period of deep uncertainty, hold on to our democracy and the rule of law and build a future as a nation and a renewed democracy? In November, Donald Trump was elected for a second term.
He promises to radically reshape the federal government and the norms and institutions that govern this nation. An open admirer of authoritarians, now with broad immunity granted by the Supreme Court, his actions could have devastating consequences for American democracy. The results of this election and recent research show that a significant number of Americans believe the system is broken and It needs to be fixed or upended.
A majority of Americans, more than 60%, live paycheck to paycheck. This economic squeeze, the high cost of living without good jobs and wages to match, is happening at a time of rapid cultural and demographic change. Many Americans wonder where and how they fit into a changing country that they feel is leaving them behind.
A political environment like this provides rich material for demagogues and others to weaponize fear and anger into outrage and power, to fight back against such forces. The leaders we need at this moment can't continue to sell the status quo, but must really respond to the needs and fears of the population on all sides of the divide.
Of course, the United States is not the first country to face rising authoritarianism, threats of political violence, and weaponized fear of others. Roberto Patino is a political activist and mediator from Venezuela. When Roberto was 10 years old, Venezuelans elected Hugo Chavez as president, who ran on a platform of alleviating poverty and ending corruption.
While Chavez did launch anti poverty programs and connected with the base, he also consolidated power around the presidency and cracked down on the media and his opponents. Today, Chavez's successor, Nicolas Maduro still holds control over the supreme court, the military, the police, and many paramilitary groups.
20 percent of the country's population, almost 8 million people, have fled since 2014 amidst economic collapse, government repression, and growing gang violence. As a pro democracy activist, Roberto had to leave Venezuela to avoid arrest and worse. He worked in impoverished communities there for many years, feeding hungry children and providing alternatives to violence.
Now living in New York, he continues to work to bring democracy back to Venezuela. Roberto is the founder of several non profits including Mi Convive, And the Think Tank, Instituto 2100. Roberto, welcome to How Do We Get Through This. Thank you for joining me.
Roberto Patino: Thank you, Tim. It's an honor to be here with you.
Tim Phillips: Thank you. My second guest comes from a country that hit rock bottom, so to speak, but found a way to climb out. Avila Kilmurray is a peace builder and community activist from Northern Ireland. Like Monica McWilliams, who we heard from in episode two, she was a founding member of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition.
Originally from Dublin, Avila moved to Northern Ireland in 1975 to work on fighting poverty and supporting women's rights. For 20 years, she served as the director of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland building bridges and supporting community initiatives for Catholics and Protestants in that region.
She continues to consult on peace building and human rights in Northern Ireland and around the world. Ávila Kilmurry, welcome and thank you.
Avila Kilmurray: Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Tim Phillips: Roberto, I want to start with you. I just gave a very brief summary of the last 25 years or so in Venezuela, but I want to hear from your perspective.
What was it like growing up in Venezuela and what inspired you to get involved in politics and activism?
Roberto Patino: I was born in 1988, so 36 years ago. When I was growing up, Venezuela was already in a Very turbulent time. Venezuela became a democracy in 1958 and it was the country during the 20th century that grew the most in the world because it was transformed from a very rural society to a modern society when oil was found and there was a lot of immigration to Venezuela.
From other parts of Latin America and from Europe. Actually, my grandparents on my father's side came from Costa Rica to Venezuela. On my mother's side, they came from Switzerland. But by the nineties, the model had kind of collapsed because it was based solely on the export of oil and oil prices had come down.
And of course there was a lot of corruption. So there was a coup d’etat. Uh, this was led by Hugo Chavez, the coup d’etat. It failed. But, uh, he won an election in 1999. I was only 10 years old when that happened. And Chavez promised to bring an end to corruption and inequality. And he started concentrating power. And even though some things that he was saying were true.
that corruption and exclusion were unacceptable in Venezuela. He was generating more of it by also dividing society and promoting polarization to keep power. So in 2007, when I was a freshman, In Universidad Simon Bolivar, he decided to shut down the media and started going after TV channels, newspapers, and radios.
And as many other young people from my country, we decided to go to the streets. We decided to demonstrate. We decided to fight back. So the poorest segments of society would vote for Chavez. And the middle class, that people who went to the university, And had more opportunities were opposing him. So I come from a middle class family, but I decided I wanted to, to understand better.
So I created an NGO that does grassroots work and started going to, to communities in favelas, in Caracas, in barrios, as we call them. Without having an agenda, I just told them, look, I'm, I'm from the opposition. You've seen me because I had some visibility as a student leader on the media, you see me that I'm against Chavez, but I'm here to try to understand, to try to work with you and fast forward.
Uh, it's been already 17 years since I started my political and social activism. And we've created a model that it's not only training. community leaders to try to defeat that polarization. But we also had concrete results, such as creating the largest humanitarian program in the country that has served over 20 million hot meals to hungry children in Venezuela.
Tim Phillips: Well, thank you, Roberto. There's so much to come back to on that, but I want to go next to Avila. So Avila, as I mentioned, you were born in Dublin and didn't necessarily grow up in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but you were very close just over the border. And the question is, what motivated you to move towards that conflict, so to speak?
Avila Kilmurray: Well, and as you say, I went to college in Dublin and I got a scholarship to do my postgraduate in Australia in international relations. And I sort of made the mistake, 1975, coming home for a break from holiday. And actually it was a truce year in our 25 years of violence in Northern Ireland. Um, and I was, I was approached by the Quakers, by Society of Friends.
who always had a couple of people that did sort of backchannel negotiations to try and alleviate the, the sectarian attacks that were ongoing at the time. And they asked me would I take leave of absence from my PhD for a couple of years and support one of their, the people they had in Derry in Northern Ireland.
Which I did, and then after a year, my, my flat was blown up. So I decided I might as well sit there and see the troubles out. So I'm sort of still here. The quandary, if you like, that Northern Ireland gave was very depressing. You know, there was huge unemployment rates here. Long term violence. There was large scale imprisonment.
And really, it was a challenge to sort of say, look, you know, this conflict is very much based on historical alignments. on conflicting national identity. And I sort of set my mind to saying, look, what could we do to try and provide a nonviolent alternative? And a bit like Roberto, I actually made the decision to work within the sort of local communities and specifically to work in local communities that were from the Protestant Unionist Loyalist tradition.
Which actually would be the, the other community than the one that I would have come from, which was Catholic Nationalist Republican. And I reckon that it was necessary to know perspectives in order to get some sort of sense of where were the potential commonalities. So I made relationships really through working on community issues, very local grassroots level.
For example, I was part of a group of women who illegally occupied a public building. to establish the first refuge for women who were victims of domestic violence. Because we had been told by the church, by the authorities, oh, that's not an issue in Northern Ireland. Well, actually, running it illegally, we had 90 women and 300 children through that in the first year.
You know, so, issues that were, you know, very common, if you like, and got attention in other normalised societies, We're just ignored violence and particularly political violence. It absorbs all the oxygen.
Tim Phillips: First of all. Thank you. Avila I mean, this is why I was thinking that you and Roberto would be perfect, guests for this particular episode two weeks after the US election and I want to pick up what you just said and what Roberto said And I wonder if it was instinctive or strategic.
I'm sure I had a strategic quality to it But it sounds like instinctively You both realized early on that you had to reach across to the other side on that human level. Roberto, can you go back to what led you to do that, particularly at such a young age?
Roberto Patino: Sure. Part of the lessons for me, and it's a very difficult pill to swallow is that when authoritarians come to power, they usually are telling some truth.
Not everything they say is true for sure, but there's some true to what they're saying. That's why they have supporters. So accepting that there are things that they are denouncing, things that they they're prioritizing that are relevant for significant parts of your country. It's for me, uh, a starting point to open your ears.
I've always believed that the most important way to construct change is to build a majority. I truly believe in democracy. And if I want to build a majority, I cannot only speak to people that think the same way that I do, right? I need to convince others that there is a better way. I need to include others.
I could see it with my eyes. Yeah, you could see, well. People from the poorest segments of society are voting for this project. People in my university, people in the community that I grew up in are not. So there's something that we're missing here, right? And I need to understand what is that, and I need to be humble about it.
I need to go there and be willing to accept that I have two ears and one mouth. And that's the only way when you show respect, when you're humble, then people are also more open to hear you contradict their own perspectives. I had a very, shocking experience too. My sister was kidnapped. And this is something that had been very oftenly in Caracas back then.
Someone would get picked up randomly in the street and they would call the family and they say, you have to give us 500 or 1, 000 in cash in the next eight hours or so, we were lucky. And my sister was released. But for me, it was really shocking when I spoke to her that she told me that the people that had kidnapped her.
were about my age, and I was 18 years old. It really shocked me that I said, well, these are kids who are my age, from my own city. They're willing to do these kind of things, and I'm not doing that, those kind of things. Why is that? Right. And I wanted to understand, I couldn't just ignore it. So that's how I came, uh, to this idea of starting an NGO and working at the grassroots level.
Tim Phillips: Thank you. That's a very, uh, powerful story. And I want to go back to you, Avila, the same point, but as you mentioned, you're. The building or the apartment you're living in was bombed, so you're both describing experiences of personal violence in the place you live, but how difficult was it for you, Avila, to do early on that sort of reaching across, because it's not just a Uh, sort of a tactical sort of peace building, bridge building process.
It's, it's very human. It's very difficult in an environment like that at that time.
Avila Kilmurray: It was difficult. And the way that I sort of managed it, if you like, was to make connections with community workers that I trusted. Who are working in sort of the other community. So tactically, if you're like, I built a little reference group where you could always check out what you were going to say, what you were going to do, you know?
Cause even using the wrong word was open to misinterpretation. And I always sort of say if protracted violence takes the oxygen out of social issues and women's issues and things like that, the other thing it does is it, it simplifies, it does put people into binary categories. And actually, peace building and relationship building is about trying to re inject the complexity.
When people can shift in terms of identity or of priorities or whatever else. So that was really important. And again, I sort of went in on the basis of, look, you know, what can I do to help? I actually found that the most difficult thing for me was a bit being questioned by your own side. Even at the level of saying, well, if you're going across there to the other side, are you, whether unintentionally or not, leaking information or whatever else?
Because people were getting shot for not very much at that time. And the other thing is, very often when you're working across a very bitter divide, you really do have to bite your tongue. Politicians or civic leaders will very often go on the media to condemn this or to say, Oh, that shooting was carried out by scum and denounce.
If you're in it for the long term, you take a calculation about what you say, when you say it, and whether you say it quietly, which is very often the most effective way, or whether you say something publicly. And the other thing that I did find was that you could go into a situation where you may well disagree with and have a, have a conversation without alienating people, but still hold on to certain principles.
So you held to something around human rights inclusion. That, you know, you weren't going to get peace building by excluding people and equality. So holding to those principles meant that you weren't worried that you were selling out on yourself, but you were very conscious about how you actually talked about them.
Tim Phillips: I have to say, I love what you're both saying a friend of mine, John Della Volpe, who's a leading sort of Gen Z pollster just had a piece come out and which he writes the answer for Democrats isn't left or right. It's closer to the people. And it's I think exactly what you're both saying you also mentioned I think that violence can sort of suck the oxygen out of the room what happens here and I'm sure Roberto this has been happening in Venezuela there's also just political and social outrage.
Sucks the oxygen out of the room. It's hard to sort of navigate a space where things aren't normal anymore And that shuts people down and can I go to build off what you're both saying which is by Reaching across it's not to have dialogue. It's really to understand your fellow countrymen and women How do we get to this point?
Can I go To you Roberto? I think i've heard you and i've heard Avila say in the past that part of this Is to recognize that your country and your people are much more complex and nuanced than maybe you imagine at the outset, can you just talk about that?
Roberto Patino: Sure. First, I want to make a comment about what you just said.
The problem with authoritarian movements and with violence is if you take too long, in making that gesture of trying to build a bigger coalition. And if you play into the polarization game, the risk is that things just get worse by the minute. So as I was telling you, my, my, my theory of change always has been in Venezuela, that we need to be A majority, and we need that majority to express itself, uh, electorally to build change.
And that's what happened this year. But as you probably know, this result has been not recognized by the regime and they're using violence to suppress the Venezuelan people. So it's just a warning sign that if you, if things just drag on for too long, it becomes increasingly difficult. To really take all that back.
Right. So going reflecting on your question on nuances and specificities of different communities, obviously, for me, has been a journey. Of, uh, connecting with people, understanding, and it's something that Avila was saying that it's not just a rational process, it also has to do a lot with emotions, and it all has to do a lot with spending time with other people, having a concrete gestures, right?
It's not about having a very sophisticated discussion or, you know, writing a paper, it's about just going to the people. To where people are meeting people where they are literally and respecting their way of life and trying to, to show that obviously there are things that can improve. And that even though there are a lot of things to value about their traditions and their values, there's other perspectives as well that should be included and that we can all be better together, which is I think is the challenge.
Tim Phillips: Roberto, it can be difficult in a deeply conflicted society to go into a community where you're the outsider there is deep mistrust and the question is often asked who were you and why are you here in Venezuela you took a significant personal risk to organize anti poverty work and communities that supported the government a government that clearly saw you as a leader of the opposition and a threat. what was that like?
Roberto Patino: for me in Venezuela, an anecdote that really shocked me and showed me how dangerous Chavismo's narrative was. It was in the context of an event in which we were inaugurating a sports court that we have recovered for our community. One of the Chavismo leaders at that community approached me, looked me in the eye and said, Roberto, this is very nice, but are you really Venezuelan?
He was saying that because on TV, the national leadership of Chavismo had called me A CIA agent, a terrorist, someone who is not even responding to its own sense of trying to bring change to the country, but you're responding to some sort of international agenda. And I think this is increasingly common.
Authoritarians all the time are claiming that there's a cabal of people, international globalists who are behind things, who are, you know, Trying to pull the strings and to go against the people. And that's why authoritarians are there to protect. So the only way that I think we can deactivate that narrative and really promote a constructive and inclusive narrative is to be there because these guys said that to me.
But the rest of the community was there supporting the work that we were doing, and they didn't allow him to sabotage that event. In a democracy, when someone sells a revolution, part of our lesson in Venezuela is that it's probably a scam. You know, it's just giving more power to a very small group of people.
Change is difficult. Uh, adaptation is difficult and it takes time and it takes effort and it takes from people who aspire to lead and who are trying to mobilize that change. It takes a lot of understanding. That you need to, to find those common threads and that you need to try to build a better narrative.
Avila Kilmurray: I agree with Roberto on that in terms of finding those common threads and sometimes actually trying to introduce threads that perhaps are outwith the antagonistic dialogue that is actually going on. I mean, for example, we all are fed up probably of opinion polls. Fortunately, all the opinion polls that are carried out in our situation.
I or whether you're in favor of a United Ireland, or whether you're in favor of staying part of Britain. The border issue, if you like, the constitutional issue. Well, actually, recently, the organization I work with, the Social Change Initiative, applied, got money to apply the World Values Survey to Northern Ireland.
And that's actually looking not at the constitutional issue, but at people's values. And actually, what came across was that the values were much more cross cutting than, you know, than polarization would suggest. Around the type of society that people actually wanted to see, and that then creates the space for more dialogue and discussion.
Tim Phillips: Avila, could you just talk a bit more about the common values that came out of the survey? And I'm interested in that from Roberto as well. Let's try to make it very concrete. What are some values that people in a deeply divided society can agree on and serve as a basis to work together?
Avila Kilmurray: Well, some of them that we were asking around was in terms of getting information or hearing information.
Who do you trust? You know, they didn't trust politicians, irrespective of who they were. They didn't trust the media. Actually, what they trusted was, you know, was the voluntary community sector, was some of the civic society organizations, and ironically, academics, which actually took me by surprise. We also asked them in terms of attitudes towards You know, LGBT, which in our case, certainly when I was, uh, working first in Northern Ireland, being gay was still illegal.
There was no reproductive rights. Attitudes had changed on that. We also asked about, you know, attitudes towards more equal pay, sort of more equity in terms of society. And people had much more come and go on those sort of issues. Then as I say, the constitutional issues that automatically divided them because it has always divided them.
Roberto Patino: Yeah, on my experience, we built a narrative for this last electoral process that we won massively around the idea of family reunification. So a common narrative. Tragedy of Venezuelan society, regardless of your social class, of your age, of, uh, region of the country has been forced migration. So the idea of having a common aspiration, the aspiration of reuniting the Venezuelan family.
The, the aspiration of being together again, I think was very powerful in, in finding common ground with people. And when I see the US electoral process, I see, for example, very interesting things. I saw that in a lot of States, even Republican States that went for Donald Trump, the initiatives on abortion won the majority vote, right?
So, so you're seeing there that there's space to construct a narrative that can be. More inclusive, because how do you square that circle? If you stand from a position of criticizing the voters of Trump, a lot of people would say they didn't vote for Kamala because they are, they're misogynists. They couldn't vote for a woman.
Wait a minute. They're voting for an abortion initiative at the same time. So that, that. doesn't seem to be coherent, right? Right? Those two facts. So there's something there that probably you're missing. So if you stay in your own, you know, room and your own house and just criticize the other without trying to really understand why, why did you vote it that way?
You didn't support Kamala, you supported Trump, but you supported this initiative. There might be some space to find common ground to build something to the future, right? To build a more constructive political Dialogue and process.
Avila Kilmurray: Yeah, I agree with that, you know, because I think the trouble is social media has fueled us, we are very much now in our own bubbles and it's actually comfortable in your own bubble.
And very often, particularly sort of the, if you like progressive people, you know, they, they sort of adopt, even in terms of language, a language that doesn't really resonate with a lot of people's lived realities. And I would sort of say, look, rather than asking people. Who are in that situation, who are the sort of progressive, left, whatever you want to call them, I don't know, a liberal.
Rather than asking them to pack their knapsack, spend some time actually finding who's there. Who are the people that are already working in those communities? Who very often probably are outside a lot of the networks and the bubbles and the systems. It's a bit like the demand among some people, oh, you know, we need to defund the police.
Well, actually, if you're talking to people living in very poor areas, they may want a different type of police, but they don't want to defund them because they're the ones that actually have to put up with attacks and being robbed. So, you know, a lot of the sort of the progressive demands are so far away from people's lives that actually it doesn't commute, you know, and I always say what we really need to do.
And we had some race riots in Belfast this summer. Rather than just getting out and having another counter protest, you need to knock the door in number 10 to find out what Mrs. Murphy is concerned about, that she doesn't see herself as a racist, but she's concerned because her married daughter hasn't got a house or whatever because there's a housing shortage.
And then have the conversation to say, well, actually, blaming a sort of an immigrant family who have come in is not the way of dealing with that. It is actually a demand on government. My favourite story is actually from the South where there has been anti immigrant feeling. And some of the, in inverted commas, far right activists came into a rural town to protest and to try and organise protests against the housing of immigrants.
Who was the most effective messengers? The ladies of the Tidy Towns Committee. Who really objected to far right activists coming in from outside, claiming to speak for their town. Trampling on the daffodils that they'd sown to make the town look prettier. And being on the media that had made that their town looked unwelcoming.
So they all were happy to go on the media and say these people should stay at home and go away. And we're a welcoming community. Now they're totally unsuspecting allies. They're not the people that, you know, you would pick up on a sort of an organizing meeting, unless you actually know that's the, you know, they're there in that community .
Roberto Patino: I just, some ideas that Avila's comment just ignited in me. So one, you need to be Tough on problems, but soft on people, you know, so sometimes people just go directly into judging the other, right? And you can judge the problem and you can say we have racism in our society and this is something that we need to fight.
But when you think that, or you start a conversation by accusing people of being racist, they're not going to listen to you. You're offending them, and they're going to think, how can I offend you back? So that's one thing. The second is, I completely agree on finding and empowering the people that have more credibility Let's say informal authority, right?
In our experience with the soup kitchens, those were the natural leaders of the community would tend to be women. So of course we went into parts of Caracas and then Venezuela who were very Chavista, very pro regime some years ago. And then we started the soup kitchen program with the leadership of the community who are women who care what, what do I care the most about?
I just became a father. I have a newborn. She's three months old, right? There's nothing in the world that's more important to me than my baby and my family. And that's a very human thing. So if my baby doesn't have the food she needs, Of course, I'm going to be desperate in solving that problem, and I'm going to welcome with very open arms anyone who's trying to help me with that.
So that's what happened to us. A lot of people saw that this is a program that it's for real, and it's giving us the tools for us to be the protagonist. So when Chavistas, the regime, came and tried to sabotage the program, thinking that they were attacking me, Oh, surprise. The communities were like tigers against them saying, are you're coming after us and after our children.
So that's what made this program bulletproof in a way. Right. And I created a space to convince people that there's a better way if we all work together. And yeah, I just, a. Reflection on the election here is that people are super upset in the U. S., like everywhere, with inflation. And that's why you see that incumbents everywhere are losing elections.
Inflation is political venom, because when people are living paycheck to paycheck, and they go to the supermarket, and eggs are more expensive, that's very upsetting. And then economists and elites will tell you, no, but wages are growing, and the macro, whatever, whatever. And you say, yeah, but a person who's living paycheck by paycheck, when their wages grow, they don't want to spend that on eggs.
They've been waiting for that wage to grow to spend on something else. So it doesn't matter if there was wage growth. So it's kind of, it's being close to the people and understanding that these are the problems that people care about.
Avila Kilmurray: Yeah, I agree with that. And, you know, and reflecting on our, our, our organization of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, we managed to get into the peace talks and we were elected as one of the parties to the peace talks, having set it up in, in six weeks, because we were looking to do politics differently and we were drawing on our experience in the community movement.
But the other thing that we didn't have time to do, which was a mistake, was is never forget that politics also starts local. So the local town council, and in your case, in fact, in America's case, there's so many elected officials at that local level to invest in building at that level as well and empowering people to actually get involved in politics that level.
So I think one of the struggles at the moment for many of us, is to actually re inject vigor into, if you like, a moral imagination about what politics is. How important it is and what it can be.
Tim Phillips: Can I just build off that, Avila, I like your focus on the word politics and not democracy, because politics is much more tangible.
We do it in our families. We do it in our neighborhoods, our communities. But democracy seems like this thing on a mantle that you think about either on the 4th of July or when it's under threat. We have stopped teaching in grade schools and high schools, civics, in the United States for a couple of generations.
And so, you know, democracy can be abstract. And then when you look at democracy, you think is to Roberto's point, is it actually delivering? What is it delivering to me when I'm struggling? And by the way, it's close to 60 percent or more of the American people live paycheck to paycheck. Pablo, you've said in the past, since the election, does the left right construct, is that the way to think about the road ahead?
Can you just talk a bit about that? I'd be curious too what Roberto says.
Avila Kilmurray: Well, my feeling about that is that, to be honest, particularly in the left, is almost being drained of a lot of content. You know, since we've moved away, if you like, in the late 80s from the sort of the, the global struggles that we had at that stage, which were much more ideological, some of the African struggles, whatever else, you know, and there's so many different fragmentary interpretations of what is left now, I think there still is a progressive politics, and for me a progressive politics is a more equal society, a society where there is mutual respect in terms of, you know, people's rights, human's rights and freedoms, that always has to be negotiated.
You know, there's no absolutes on that. And I think democracy still is important. But I think one of the problems is that democracy has been drained, if you like, of participation because our political parties, and not just in America, you know, in a lot of places, it's political management now. by almost political technocrats, and that then forms another bubble.
So, I think we need to be more imaginative around participative democracy, where people can feel, whatever about the conceptual framing, they can feel that they have a voice. It may not be in Washington, it may be at the local town or whatever else, but to give some sort of sense that, you know, it's like within community development.
We don't talk about doing something to people. We talk about doing things with people.
Tim Phillips: My grandmother, my mother's mother, was born in Ireland, and she used to say, when somebody would say, you have a voice, but do you have ears across the table? Are you hearing what's being said? And I think that's the other side of voice, right?
Is hearing what's being said, and also being discomfited. And recognize that you may not like what the voice you prioritize says, as we saw in this recent election.
Roberto Patino: Yeah, and I wanted to come in there because to have ears, you have to have credibility. And that's something that is earned. You have to earn that people hear you.
And that's only through working with the people, you know. Just as a funny exercise before this podcast to prepare for it, I said, I'm curious what Chat GPT would say if I ask, How to defeat polarization. And it just gave me very basic things that we've been discussing about. There's no magic formula.
There's nothing that you could, that you would learn from AI that you couldn't already read in any book that's been reading about it, or that we've been discussing in this talk. It's more about the work that you have to do. You have to put the time, you have to go, you have to speak to people. You have to, it's politics and it's negotiations all the time.
You're negotiating. On your own perspectives and hearing others and trying to incorporate their views. And it brings me to a very important point when we go back to the original question on the US and how to avoid the extreme polarization that can destroy institutions and so on in Venezuela. We had an overreaction by the opposition at the beginning that would say no to anything that Chavez would say just because Chavez was a problem, a threat to democracy, and he's authoritarian and so on.
So the problem with that approach Is that you end up being perceived by the people as two elites that are power hungry, only care about their own positions, and they don't care about solving our problems. So a big challenge for, I think, the coming years in the U. S. is going to try to understand that there might be some space on which you can work together.
And that you can actually move the needle and try to find some results. And a friend of mine who's a pollster told me once, if you want to predict the result of an election, look for one question in a poll. If people believe that the person who's running for office cares for someone that looks like me, someone that lives like me.
Because in the end, democracy, it's about representation. People are looking for someone who's going to represent me and my interests in power. And I think that's the key question that if you want to create a majority, you need to keep in mind.
Avila Kilmurray: Yeah. And generally what we sort of say is, look, you know, there may be 10 percent or 15 percent of people that really agree with you and will always agree with you.
There's 15 percent that you will never win, that will be completely opposed to you. And there's a whole group in the middle that shift depending on the events, depending on what the pressures on them, whatever else, the undecideds. And they then break up into various different sort of interests and clusters.
So again, it is, it's recognizing that it is more complex than the polarization of either you're for me or you're against me. And unfortunately, I think our electoral systems tend to actually sort of respond on that basis. But the work is in between times, in between the next election, rather than gathering all the money, because what, it'll be two years?
And then, you know, a disgusting amount of money spent on those elections that could be so better used in terms of answering some of these very real needs. You know, so I do think we need to think about Not throwing politics out with the bathwater. What, how we do it differently.
Tim Phillips: So Roberto, you said the one question that the pollster told you resonates, if I paraphrase is, what does that person think about somebody like me?
Do they see me? We, I think you both know, have done a series of surveys. One of them is the America's Divided Mind report, looking at the psychology that shapes us as Americans. And this was done in 2018 and 19. And one of the things we found then, and consistently since. The Democrats, Republicans, so those who describe themselves through those political positions consistently overestimate the gap they have between them on big issues of, you know, gun control, abortion, immigration on how much they think the other side dislikes them and how much they think the other side dehumanizes them and we did a study.
And asked, the first one was after January 6th, a few months later, do Republicans and Democrats equally value democratic norms and principles? And they pretty much did equally. But here's the kicker. Both sides, slightly more Republican than Democrat, said, if the other side is willing to violate them, then we will as well.
So we're living in a world where we make assumptions. That we have nothing in common. Can I ask you both a question looking forward and I'll go ahead I'll go back to you Avila that I heard you say not too long ago that It's not just the next election, which will be two years It's almost like go 10 years forward and say where do you want to be as a nation in 10 years and work back?
Can you speak to that? And maybe I'll just ask Roberto to respond.
Avila Kilmurray: Yes, because again, like Roberto said earlier on, I mean, change can be slow, or indeed, sometimes it can be very fast, in which case you need to be ready for both. But, I mean, certainly, I suppose, coming from my experience in Ireland, where actually potential change here, if there is a referendum in Northern Ireland where the majority of people want to join a United Ireland, We can be in a different country in, in, in 10 years time.
So, for me, in terms of looking at that possible 10, 15 year shift, I want to know not where borders are drawn, what type of society are people living in, and who can deliver that type of society. in terms of what I would see as a good society. I think that's really important. So, you need a long term strategy and then you need short term tactics.
And in terms of your short term tactics, you need to celebrate small wins. People need to see that they're actually getting somewhere, even if it's something small. And the last thing I always sort of say is, I quote Oscar Wilde, He says, always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.
Roberto Patino: Yeah, in terms of, of vision, I think it's very important and it's very important to do it on a collab, collaborative fashion, right?
And in order for people to. You know, forget for a little bit about their, their day to day concerns. I think it's easy. The easiest and the best way is to connect it to something they care about. It's a, it's about grandchildren. It's about their children. It's about the next generation. What type of society do you want for them?
What type of sacrifices are you willing to do for them? We're living in a time of a lot of disruptions. We were talking before about AI, and we don't even know. All the consequences that this new information technology will have for societies. We're living in a time of Climate change. We're living in a time of demographic challenges in many societies.
So there's very, um, strong trends that can be opportunities or could be threats. And I think when you go into that framing and you Take a step back and say, well, if we're living in all these changes are happening in the world, do we have time to waste by doing small pity fights? Or can we find some common ground and try to move forward, uh, in the things that we all care about?
And I think that there might be some space in the U.S. to have open conversations about what that means and what people from both sides are willing to do to reach out to the other and understand that a country and a society, a group of people is as strong as it can stand united.
Tim Phillips: Well, I mean, I want to thank you both.
I remember, uh, our mutual friend, Monica McWilliams said, and I'm sure you were there, Avila, at one of the first, uh, times sitting at what became the Good Friday negotiations at the negotiating table. And I think Monica said, when you and the Women's Coalition mentioned the word compromise, you saw not just on the right of Ian Paisley, but on the left of Jerry Adams, contract.
And the Women's Coalition came back The next time and use the word accommodate, we need to find ways to accommodate each other. And I can imagine their body language changed at that moment because just in that millisecond framing of the word accommodate. Is a space and I hearing you say Roberto, the word common ground, which we often use, I use it all the time as you said it, I thought it's really about what are the common needs that we have.
It's like the reframing because in a hyper polarized environment, just saying we have more in common. Let's find common ground. A lot of people discount that because they don't see anything's changed, but just that reframing of the language. What are the common needs we have? And it strikes me. It's like the word accommodate that within that is I can express.
What I as an individual or family community need and I think that's one of the things I take away from this conversation Really sitting back and in that humbleness and saying what do people need? What is that voice they expressed in the election? And as you said Roberto It's not to put everybody in a category that they're racist misogynist horrible people in those deeply red states a lot of people a lot of women who voted for Donald Trump also voted for abortion access It's not really a paradox.
It's just they made a different choice. It's more nuanced. Is there anything you both want to add? Anything in hindsight and the days and weeks ahead?
Avila Kilmurray: I think obviously there will be a period of grieving, elections, particularly American elections. I mean, heightened involvement, sense of engagement, whatever else.
And people get so hyped up in terms of their candidates and that's understandable. But I think then after that, it is important then. To take a step back and to say, what can we do in terms of our value base, not just in terms of the next election in two years’ time, but of that sort of longer process that it will take to, to build engagement.
And there was a civil rights activist, a woman called Flo Kennedy, who once said, freedom is like taking a bath. You have to do it every day. So what do you do on a day to day basis? to keep things moving, to keep things going, and not to get despondent, because change does happen. And as Roberto says, you know, people aren't completely set in different categories, or certainly the majority aren't.
And we also are looking at another generation coming up who will have their own ideas about what are their priorities in terms of society, and giving them space as well to express them. But to keep a sense that change can happen, That politics in its broadest sense is important, but that's what the importance of, you know, the aspirations, if you like, being grounded in people's lived realities.
Tim Phillips: Thank you, Ávila. Roberto?
Roberto Patino: Yeah, I fully agree with Avila. I think democracy is a work in progress. It's a process. It's not a state in which you are. You just need to continue the fight to, for a more inclusive, stable, prosperous society and seeing from not being an American. I think the probably one of the most important questions that needs to be addressed, and it was, uh, obviously very prominent during the campaign is the immigration question to the US, which is a fundamental part of your identity as a country, but definitely you have a broken system.
You have a broken narrative, and hopefully how hot the topic has become can allow for an honest conversation on how can you really solve that? Uh, and I hope everybody. Puts their best to be able to open up opportunities for win win for everybody.
Tim Phillips: As we wrap up, one thing is clear. Bridging divides isn't easy, but it's essential. It's essential because we need to understand the people who share our country with us and have a voice and vote in shaping our collective future. Avila and Roberto faced opponents across their divides, but they also found allies.
Maybe not allies on every issue, but allies nonetheless who shared some foundational concerns and interest. As Americans, we live increasingly apart from each other, both physically and in our online lives. This separation can reinforce the worst perceptions of others across our divides, and it limits our own self-awareness.
Like Avila said, it's comfortable to be in your own silo or bubble, but living in such a bubble limits your understanding of your own side too, and your own capacity for change. Not engaging the people who think differently from you is to live in somebody else's algorithm, where you only hear more of what that algorithm thinks you want to hear.
In this series, we've heard from people living under authoritarianism, during violent conflict, And under apartheid, each of our guests recognized that their society had hit a kind of rock bottom. They asked themselves in their worst moments, how did we get here? And the first step to answer that question was in understanding all the people around them, and not just those within their group.
And we know this is really hard to do. It's weighted with so many emotions, fears, and uncertainties. But it's the only way out engaging with those outside your group expands your knowledge, your community of allies and expands the possibilities for real positive change. Talking with Avila Roberto left me with a lot to think about.
And here are three lessons that I think relate especially to the challenges we now face in the United States. Takeaway number one, challenge your assumptions about the other side. That includes challenging even the concept of the other side. Thinking that there are only two sides to any conflict or issue is to limit your awareness of the people around you.
And the avenues for change, thinking in binary terms may simplify the world, but it doesn't serve you in the long term, listen and try to understand the people with whom you disagree. And then you realize there's more to their identity than who they just voted for. I like what Roberto said about being tough on problems, but soft on people, listen with respect and try to understand the problems people who disagree with you are dealing with in their daily lives.
Takeaway number two. Go local. If you're asking yourself, how did we get here? Then it's time to leave your comfort zone and better understand the country you live in. One really useful way to do that is to build authentic relationships, not around politics, but around common needs and concerns, as Roberto did in helping to start food kitchens in some of the poorest communities in Venezuela.
Or as Avila did by engaging in working class loyalists or Protestant communities who would have seen her at the outset as the enemy, being a Catholic. When you authentically engage with communities and help local leaders and citizens address their basic needs, concerns like employment, housing, healthcare, then they become your allies and often your biggest supporters.
Be there consistently, build relationships, and earn their trust. That's what Roberto was able to do in Venezuela. For example, in the United States, it's clear that there is a disconnect between the values traditionally espoused by the Democratic Party and many Americans who are struggling economically.
Instead of trying to make policy based on what they think people want, Roberto and Avila dedicated themselves to figuring out what people are struggling with and what they themselves prioritize. Decades later, Avila Kilmurray is one of the most trusted people in both Protestant and Catholic communities across Northern Ireland.
Takeaway number three. There are many more core values that are shared across divides than people assume. In Venezuela's last election, Roberto's party built a narrative that focused on reuniting families. This was a unifying platform in a country where so many people have been displaced and it cuts across lines like class and race.
In Northern Ireland, Avila's organization conducted a poll that asked about values rather than political opinions. And they found a lot of agreement on issues like LGBTQ rights and pay equity. When people are asked about highly politicized issues, like whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom, or they should unify with the Republic of Ireland, it's easy to get stuck on one side or the other. A similar question in the U. S. could be asking Americans if they prefer an open or closed border with Mexico. But if we can identify values that are more popular across political divides, Like access to affordable health care, for example, we can find room to make progress even in a country as deeply divided as ours.
This is not to ignore the fact that many of us have values that we feel are under threat. But when we find that there are some values, more values than we imagine, that we share with others, then it gives us a basis to engage.
How do we get through this is a production of Beyond Conflict. It's produced by Andrea Muraskin with help from Ashley Milne-Tyte. We had additional help in this episode from Jasmine Ramsey. Summer Heidish does our marketing, and I'm Tim Phillips. Thank you for listening to this mini podcast series. If you enjoy these conversations, please subscribe, like, and download wherever you get your podcast, stay connected with Beyond Conflict on social media to hear much more about new projects, webinars and ways to get involved. W
e're planning to launch a longer series in 2025, where we try to answer the question, where do we go from here? Again, with guidance from leaders abroad. We'll also invite historians, behavioral scientists, and Americans who are working to sustain and reimagine our democracy.
You can find all of our social accounts in the show notes. You can also sign up for our email list at beyondconflictint.org/contact, and together we will keep this work and these conversations going.
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