Anand Giridharadas

A riveting insider account of how activists, politicians, educators and citizens are working to change minds, bridge divisions and save democracy The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people's minds to enable real change. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk. People increasingly write each other off instead of seeking to win each other over. Debates are framed in moralistic terms, with enemies battling the righteous. Movements for justice build barriers to entry, instead of on-ramps. Political parties focus on mobilizing the faithful rather than wooing the sceptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalition are labelled sell-outs. In The Persuaders best-selling author Anand Giridharadas takes us inside these movements and battles, seeking out the dissenters who continue to champion persuasion in an age of polarization. We meet a co-founder of Black Lives Matter; a leader of the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of colour; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; and an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer. As they grapple with how to "call out" threats and injustices while "calling in" those who don't agree with them but just might one day, they point a way to healing, and changing, a broken society.

Winning Hearts and Minds in a Divided Age

The Persuaders

Katy Watkins

The tendency to write off is rooted in the assumption that differences of identity are unbridgeable, that people are too invested in their privileges and interests to change, that the failure to achieve change in the past predicts failure in the future, that people and their opinions are monolithic and strong rather than complicated and fragile, and therefore the purpose of politics is to protect yourself from Others and galvanize your own instead of trying to reach across.

The stakes of this writing off were high: some of the most dangerous and antidemocratic movements of our time had managed, in spite of those features, to make their causes appear welcoming and make newcomers feel at home, whereas some of the most righteous, inclusive, and just movements gave many the feeling of being inaccessible, intractable, and alienating.

She told them that before they worry about those they were trying to win over, they should look at themselves. "You have to be in a loving, healing space to call anybody in," Ross told me. "You can't do it from anger, because it's just going to end up badly. So you have to assess why you're doing it. What's your motivation? Are you trying to help this person learn, or are you actually trying to change them?" It was a striking distinction—helping a person learn versus trying to change them. When we speak of changing someone's mind, winning someone over, aren't we attempting both at once? Not for Ross. "You can't change other people," she told me. "You can't even change the person you're married to. You can help people. You can expose people to different information and help them learn—if you do so with love."

"My act of persuasion, my persuasion mission, was not Vote for me instead of voting for Crowley,' " Ocasio-Cortez told me. "My mission of persuasion was, 'You should vote in a primary election for the first time in your life, and here's why.' My whole message was tailored to persuade people to show up, that this one could actually matter. "My strategy and my opening argument," she continued, "was, "You matter, and we have taught ourselves, and we have accepted, in so many ways, conscious and subconscious, that we don't matter, our lives don't matter, our input doesn't matter, our opinion doesn't matter, and so we're just going to try to survive.' My argument was, "We can't live like this anymore, we deserve better, and you matter. And because you matter, you not turning out decides this election, and you turning out also decides this election in a different direction, but you're making a choice. I want you to know that you matter to me.'"

"My job is to bring up things that everyone's trying to talk about which powerful people are trying to quell," Ocasio-Cortez told me. "It's also a different understanding of what my job is from others'. The reason I have the freedom to do this is because I have given up attachment to this idea ofa future in politics, which has been very liberating. I literally came in, and I said, 'You know what, if it's one term, it's one term. Let's roll.'

"The right wing has named and claimed freedom for a very, very, very long time," Shenker-Osorio told me, “and I have argued that it is just utter stupidity for the left to let go of freedom."

We can try to answer people's concerns with facts and information. And their fears about gay people, and about their church being forced to do something, and their righteous indignation about lefties pushing things on them—there's no answer we can give that dispels these fears. They're actually in a place where they're wrestling with some deeply seated emotions. The thing that actually made a difference was inviting them to talk about their lives, and then things they've experienced and their stories, and sharing our stories."

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