We are Crossing Party Lines.

What we do is get regular people together to talk about real issues with curious minds and open hearts. How we do it is by teaching and modeling the skills that allow us to:

• Listen politics rather than argue.
• Talk from experience rather than a desire to win.
• Transform conflict into collaboration.
• Celebrate the progress members make towards mastering these skills and building community around respect and appreciation for the diversity of thought that is and always has been the foundation of our country.

Why we do it is because we love our country and truly believe that the more people come together to talk, face-to-face, about the issues we care about, the stronger our country will be. Let me explain:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” –Albert Einstein

Crossing Party Lines exists because Lisa and Kareem decided to try Einstein’s advice and think about talking politics from a different angle. They set aside all the rhetoric that attempts to explain our current situation (fake news, failings in our educational system, greed, socialist agendas, etc.) and considered another possibility: that differing views make our country strong. Over the past three years, Lisa and Kareem have facilitated more than 250 meetings of Americans with a wide range of social, fiscal, and political perspectives. This experience has convinced them that we need many perspectives in order to understand the complex issues we have faced in the past, face today, and will face in the future. For some, the idea that our current mix of political perspectives is a good thing takes a lot of getting used to. Some people may even respond to this idea with outrage, distrust, or condescension. If you’re one of those people (or even if you are not) we invite you to check out this cartoon from theoatmeal.com, which does a much better job explaining these types of predictable reactions reaction than we ever could.