Navigating politically difficult conversations as a bike or transit activist
If you can’t get to yes, at least gracefully get to “maybe” or “no” (and move on)
OCT 23, 2023
Talking to strangers is a key part to winning the changes you want in your community whether that’s a bike lane, a bus stop benches, or a pedestrian plaza. However, talking politics with strangers and people you know can quickly make for a challenging conversation. Before we can detail how to navigate a difficult political conversation, let’s first look at what is the purpose of a political conversation and what can make that conversation difficult.
Throughout my career, I’ve worked with people across the political spectrum on a range of issues and I think it’s vital to keep in mind that political conversations have a purpose. Whether you stumbled into one with a neighbor or purposefully sought it out with a decision maker, political conversations have a purpose. From my experience, that purpose is either achieved or abandoned and political conversations tend to escalate until either happens.
The purpose of a political conversation can be any combo of these three things:
Get someone to do something specific (e.g. sign a petition, go to an event, make a donation, vote a certain way, or stop doing something)
Affect how a person thinks about a topic
Build a connection
These all flow into each other but are distinct purposes. Knowing which of these is the destination and which of these are the path to that destination will make your conversation go smoother.
For example, if you are friendly with a fellow bus rider and know that you both want the bus stops to have benches, then it is pretty easy to get them to sign a petition calling for benches at bus stops. If you don’t know them, but have a petition about bus stop benches, then it’s pretty easy to use that to make a connection.
When you find yourself having a difficult political conversation, I recommend remembering which of those three goals you are aiming for and why.
I find that a political conversation is easiest when it has a natural endpoint or “offramp.” Generally, that is either trying to get someone to take a specific action or to agree with you on an idea. Political conversation offramps allow you to either exit by getting to a clear “yes” or by getting to an understanding that you won’t get to a yes. Either way, the political conversation can end rather than endlessly escalate. Political conversations get difficult when either party provides no option for an offramp. When they just meander around, or endlessly loop, that’s when conversations can intensify and really go off the rails.
Let’s look at the bus stop benches conversation as an example. When you have a petition you are trying to get people to sign, you have a very clear offramp. They either sign it or don’t. Pretty straightforward. It gets complicated if they are unsure about whether they want to sign it and instead if they want to have a big debate with you about the topic first. But, when you are petitioning, you don’t have to get into a debate. If you need 100 petition signers and this particular person wants a debate, you don’t have to waste your time trying to win them over. There are tons of other people out there who will likely sign if you ask them.
It might feel odd, but it’s perfectly ok to say to yourself, “I don’t need to convince THIS person, I just need to get more people to sign this petition,” and then gracefully exit the conversation.
When you advocate on bikes or transit issues, a pretty common example of a political conversation going off the rails is when a person goes ballistic on you for daring to suggest something that challenges car-dominance. This might be a stranger in real life, a rando on the internet, a politician or someone close to you. When that happens, it is pretty clear you aren’t going to get them to do the thing you were asking about (at least not yet). But you can still alter how they think about the issue and/or build a connection which will help pave the way for future discussions. The key is to still have a realistic destination in mind.
I couldn’t think of a clever image to go with this post, so here is the jack-o-lantern I carved the other day. Best eyes I’ve ever carved!
At that point, guiding the conversation to a reasonable place of mutual agreement or recognition that agreement won’t happen, can be tricky. It is a learnable and practicable skill and to do it you need to 1) understand the potential impact of who you are talking with as well as their beliefs and 2) create a conversational frame that encompasses your stance & their stance which you can use to guide the conversation to an endpoint.
That can sound a bit complicated so let’s take a look at the bus stop bench example again.
You want benches at bus stops and this other person disagrees. They aren’t signing your petition but you have decided that they have the ability to potentially impact the issue so it is worth engaging with them. Maybe they are a community leader whose opinion is well-respected so you don’t want them going around hating on the idea or hating you since they’d turn off potential allies. If they feel intensely negatively, they can maybe even turn folks against the idea. Because they have the ability to impact your campaign, they are worth engaging. Now your goal should shift to either altering how they think about the issue or building a connection so that ideally they soften their stance.
Which means you need to understand what their stance is and why they have taken it. Assuming they are arguing in good faith, this is fairly straightforward as they will tell you! Maybe they don’t want bus benches because they think your city should invest elsewhere to help support local businesses. When it comes to having a smooth political conversation, it is pivotal to understand why they have taken their stance. That enables you to have a values-based conversation. It’s easy to find disagreement, but highlighting where your values align with others is what creates opportunities for agreement.
Now you can create a conversational frame that encompasses your stance & their stance – and you can use that frame to guide you both to an endpoint. Now you can talk about the role bus benches have in supporting local businesses. Once you identify shared values and discuss your solution as a vehicle for those values, you are much more likely to build a connection and potentially alter how they think about the issue. Maybe you win them over and they sign the petition. Or maybe you don’t, but at least the conversation can wind down and exit gracefully.
At the end, maybe the best you can say is “thank you for your time, it was interesting chatting with you about (shared value) and how (your solutions) help.” And maybe that’s it. Hopefully they end with saying something similar and graceful. They might also choose to end with an attempt at a cutting remark, in which case, move on and let them have the last word.
Maybe you didn’t win them over and you didn’t even get them to neutral. That’s ok. Maybe all you did was soften their stance a bit so they won’t oppose you as vociferously as before. Or maybe you both drew a clearer line in the sand and now you know further conversation on that point with them isn’t worth pursuing. Or maybe you just learn that they think you are foolish and that they won’t lift a finger to help or hinder your efforts. All of that is fine because it allows you to move on. You can now move on with clearer understanding of the other person, their way of thinking, their political capabilities, and of where you can productively spend your efforts moving ahead.
You can’t win them all, and in politics, you don’t need to. You just need to convince and mobilize enough folks to win what you want. That means recognizing that while your passion may be infinite, your time and energy aren’t. Learning how to navigate difficult political conversations gracefully and efficiently will help you put your limited resources where they can do the most good. If you do that, in the end you might not win the person over….but you can still win.
Want help devising a strategy and building the skills in your campaign for better transit and or safer streets? I’m here to help! Whether you want a 1-on-1 training session or a group workshop, let’s talk. Email me at Carter@carterlavin.com to set something up. Here’s a bit about what training sessions are like.