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Better Angels Documentary Film Screening and Issue Fishbowl

Depolarizing Politics and Building Community

Depolarizing political conversation in the Rockford Area. Presented by Rockford Public Library and Better Angels as an 815 Choose Civility initiative.

As the 2020 Election Year opens, there's a lot of stress among family members and friends about the current polarized public conversation. Turn the election year into an opportunity to gain new skills in communication and relationship building by learning how to depolarize political conversations in your friendships and and community relationships.

Please join us for a screening of the documentary, Better Angels: Reuniting America. Launched in 2016, Better Angels is a bipartisan citizen’s movement to unify the divided nation, seeking to build ways for Americans on both sides of political issues to effectively communicate, participate together in public life, and influence the direction of the Nation. 

After the screening, you will have an opportunity to observe a Better Angels technique as a panel of "blue" leaning community leaders, organized by Illinois State Representative Maurice West and a panel of "red" leaning conservatives, organized by former Winnebago County Board Republican John Guevara engage in a "fishbowl" style issue discussion, facilitated by Better Angels. 

You will leave the event with hand-outs and helpful hints for depolarizing dinner table political conversations and a schedule of skills workshops for community members in 2020.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.  – Abraham Lincoln, 1861

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