Storytelling program coming to Fresno aims to bridge divides: ‘It’s hard to hate up close’
.png "Central Valley residents will have the opportunity to participate in a new program called “One Small Step,” where Americans from opposite sides of the political spectrum hold deeply personal and nonpolitical conversations.")
This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.
Austin residents Amina Amdeen and Joseph Weidknecht met at a rally at the Texas State Capitol building days after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. Each represented opposite ends of the political spectrum: Weidknecht was sporting a bright red “Make America Great Again” hat and Amdeen was wearing a Muslim hijab, a traditional head covering.
The two couldn’t have been more different. But they found an ally in one another when an anti-Trump protester snatched the hat off Weidknecht’s head. Amdeen saw what happened and quickly stepped in to intervene. She retrieved his hat and the two sparked up a conversation.
“We couldn’t be further apart as people and yet it was just kind of like this common, ‘that’s not OK’ moment,” said Weidknecht.
Their stories were recorded and shared with the public as part of a new program called “One Small Step,” where Americans from opposite sides of the political spectrum hold deeply personal and nonpolitical conversations. It’s part of StoryCorps, a national nonprofit dedicated to recording, preserving and sharing American’s stories, and is an effort to help bridge the political and cultural divides separating the country, according to StoryCorps founder and president Dave Isay.
Central Valley residents will have the opportunity to share and record interviews as part of the One Small Step program, Isay announced Thursday. The Fresno region was selected as one of four areas across the county to participate in the program, along with Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Richmond, Virginia and Wichita, Kansas.
“We are thrilled to be working in Fresno and in the Central Valley to show the rest of the country what it’s like to have the courage to listen,” Isay said. “One Small Step is not about arguing with each other. We put strangers together not to talk about politics, but just to get to know each other as human beings under the premise that it’s hard to hate up close.”
The Central Valley was chosen because of its diversity of different people, values and beliefs. The goal is to help people spend “less time shouting at each other and more time listening to one another,” Isay said.
More details about the Fresno program will be available soon, including when it will launch, according to Stacey Todd, One Small Step director.
StoryCorps project aims to bridge political divides
The program builds off of a pilot project that was launched in Fresno in partnership with the local NPR affiliate, Valley Public Radio, in June 2021. Two strangers with different values and beliefs are paired together for an online, 50-minute conversation. They discuss commonalities and ask each other questions like: Who was the kindest person to you in your life? What were your parents like? And, how do you want to be remembered?
With participants’ permission, interviews are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
“We think our most dangerous enemies are our neighbors. We’ve gone from disagreeing with one another to hating one another and we can’t remember why we like each other anymore,” Isay said. “The dream with One Small Step is that we are able to help convince the country that it’s our patriotic duty to see the humanity in people with whom we may disagree with politically.”
Partisan divisions among Americans have only grown wider in the past 20 years, especially on political beliefs related to gun control, immigration and race, according to a 2019 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
And while partisanship is growing wider, more Americans are also saying that having political conversations with those they disagree with is “stressful and frustrating,” according to a separate Pew Research Center survey conducted in September 2021. About 59% of adults surveyed in the study said they find political conversations stressful, up from 50% in May 2019, the study found.
Fresno selected for project based on its diversity
Sonia Mehrmand helped launch the pilot version of One Small Step at Valley Public Radio in June 2021. She said the Valley is a great place for the program because it is home to many different groups of people, including farmworkers, refugees and military families, who all “carry so many different histories with them.”
“The Central Valley is like this microcosm of the diversity of thought that exists throughout all the U.S., but it’s really all kind of just concentrated in one place, which is pretty remarkable,” she said. “And those are stories that need to be heard and need to be told.”
As a producer for One Small Step, Mehrmand helped coordinate a conversation between new foster parents and a farmworker advocate. She said she was moved by the conversation because both parties displayed “so much care for their communities.”
She’s excited to see what future stories will be told as the project develops, she said.
“The beauty of StoryCorps and their mission is that they believe that everyone’s story has value – and that’s something that’s resonated a lot with me,” she said. “This project restored my faith in humanity.”
Those who are interested in participating in the program can do so by filling out a questionnaire. Listen to One Small Step segments on KVPR 89.3 FM or online at kvpr.org.
This story was originally published January 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Storytelling program coming to Fresno aims to bridge divides: ‘It’s hard to hate up close’."