Better Angels is a nationwide, grassroots organization that encourages alliances to be formed at the local level. (Photo from Better Angels)
GRANVILLE – A group of local citizens have such concerns with the current political climate in the United States of America that they are taking steps locally to effect change.
Granville resident, John Meiklejohn, along with his wife Sarah, felt that it was time to take the initiative to help stop the polarization that they believe is occurring in America. As a result, the Meiklejohn’s began the idea of forming a Better Angel’s group in Granville.
Better Angels is a national, grassroots organization, made up of a bipartisan network of leaders that are focused on decreasing polarization. A division of two sharply and contrasting groups that have their own opinions or beliefs, polarization is an issue that John Meicklejohn thinks could be solved with the emergence of a Better Angels group.
“The spirit of it is a recognition that America has really lost its way to a degree in becoming very polarized,” said Meiklejohn. “It’s sort of like we have these two parallel nations and they can’t talk to each other.”
In order to create the Better Angels group in Granville, Meiklejohn hosted a workshop in order to allow interested people in the community to learn more about the organization and become involved. The one-day workshop took place this past February and from that Meiklejohn knew the next step was to have those people attend a meeting to see who would like to form an alliance.
There were at least 15 people that signed up to be a part of the Better Angels alliance at the recent meeting. The idea behind forming a Better Angels alliance is to have a close to equal number of conservatives and liberals. Needing team leaders on the group, John and Sarah Meiklejohn agreed to be the Blue or Liberal team leaders while Southwick resident and Select Board Vice-Chairman Russ Fox is the Red or Conservative team leader.
“Part of the purpose is to cultivate our capacity to listen to points of view that are different from our own,” said Meiklejohn. “We have a lot in common when we get past the arguing.”
Fox agreed with Meiklejohn and wants to promote stability and civil behavior in these discussions.
“Nobody’s there to change anybody’s mind,” said Fox.
In fact, Meiklejohn and Fox have already established guidelines for the Better Angels group, which are as follows:
- Make an effort to listen with an open mind and a non-judgmental attitude
- Let each speaker finish their thought
- Ask open-minded questions,
- Speak for yourself from own experiences, not influenced
- Coming together, looking for common ground, not changing people’s opinions
- Want people to step forward and then step back, don’t dominate the conversation, let everyone have chance to talk
- Refrain from inflammatory speech
Examining topics on the local, state, and national levels, the Better Angels group will have a number of things that they can discuss however, at this point it’s not exactly certain what will be talked about.
Despite that, Meiklejohn did note an idea from Fox that could be something the alliance could talk about. Whenever municipalities receive calls on a statewide issue, they usually have to go to Boston and hire lawyers to take with them in order to discuss the matter. Due to the trip to Boston costing a lot of money and time, Fox would like to have a dialogue with local officials to see if teleconferencing can occur between municipalities in Western Massachusetts and the state instead of heading up to Boston.
“To me, that would be the perfect kind of issue for the alliance to start with,” said Meiklejohn.
Meiklejohn has the desire to expand the Better Angels group beyond Granville and is looking to have workshops in Southwick and eventually expand to other communities.
“It brings in more ideas, more perspectives, and resources of what we might be able to do as a group in terms of influencing some local or state issue that we decide on a bipartisan basis that we’d like to address,” said Meiklejohn.
If anyone is interested in joining the Better Angels group that is now in both Granville and Southwick, or you’d like to attend a workshop or meeting, contact Meiklejohn at [email protected].
