NEW YORK — In state capitals, lawmakers attend workshops on how to avoid demonizing their opponents. On a college campus, students re-enact hard-fought debates that led to great compromises at the country’s founding. Even a summer camp is aiming to give children the tools to show respect in the face of disagreement.
Americans alarmed and disheartened by a coarsened culture and incivility in politics are fighting back with a range of initiatives around the U.S. to restore some semblance of decorum.
“It’s incumbent on us to be the adults who push back against what we’re getting in the popular culture and the political rhetoric,” said Mary Evins, who directs the American Democracy Project for Civil Learning at Middle Tennessee State University. That’s where students have staged classroom role-plays of compromises from the 1787 Constitutional Convention, assuming the parts of the Founding Fathers to act out the give-and-take required to reach agreement on crucial but difficult decisions, such as how large and small states would share power.
“There’s so many people with a difference of opinion,” said Brendon Holloway, who participated in various Democracy Project initiatives at Middle Tennessee State, including voting drives. “It’s really important to bridge the gap.”