Columbia residents sporting blue, red or purple name tags came together Tuesday night to discuss homelessness solutions with others from across the political aisle.
The mid-Missouri Braver Angels hosted the meeting. The group’s goal is to fight political polarization through discussing tough topics.
The meeting followed a structure with timed segments dedicated to discussing the issue within groups where people aligned by their politics, then sharing solutions with other groups and asking clarifying questions.
“If someone had been listening from outside, they wouldn’t have known which tables were red, blue or purple, because the same sorts of questions were being raised at all the tables,” said group co-chair Cynthia Gardner.
Groups started by offering short- and long-term solutions. Some short-term suggestions included treating homeless people with more compassion, encouraging more community members to volunteer, and figuring out why Columbia has a high homeless population. Some suggested offering services for homeless people could attract more unhoused Missourians to the area.
A popular long-term solution is something already in the works: a “one-stop shop” for homeless services, including food, housing, mental health and employment resources.
Columbia non-profit Volunteer Action Center broke ground on the Opportunity Campus earlier this year, which includes just such a homeless shelter and resource center. The resource center is set to include a medical clinic and space for partner agencies that offer other services.
Some attendees also emphasized their feeling that homeless people should be held accountable for using the services they receive to better themselves.
The meeting ended with each participant sharing what they learned.
“I think that the comments at the end really tell the story,” said Lynn Malley, who helped lead the meeting and has been part of the group since its inception late last year. “We had three or four people say: ‘interesting to me, there really wasn’t a lot of difference between the reds and blues and how they thought about this.’”
“That’s really the underlying premise of Braver Angels,” she said.
Liberals and independents outnumbered conservatives, so participants split into two blue groups, two purple groups and just one red group. Gardner says the lack of conservative participation is because of a lack of trust.
“Many conservatives feel like in the past, they have been asked to share their opinion, or to come to a group to share, and what they find is that when they get to the group, really the point was to try to explain them into a different way of thinking,” she said. “We don’t expect anyone to change their beliefs just to see people with different beliefs as humans.”
Local attorney Joy Jackson was one of the few conservative attendees. She said the meeting’s makeup is a reflection of the area.
“It is a population where there are more people who tend to lean towards the liberal side than the conservative side here in Columbia, it’s a college town,” Jackson said. “But that doesn’t mean that we can’t all get together and work towards solving these issues.”
The meeting was almost exclusively attended by older adults.
“It’s the older people who have time to get involved,” said Steve Weinberg, a member of the group’s leadership. He also noted that two younger people who typically attend couldn’t make it on Tuesday.
Gardner said her group is hoping to build connections with both conservatives and younger people.
“I would love to have a campus group, or across universities all within the city, of young people because I think that also would be very, very enlightening to us, sharing across different generations what the different views, the different experiences have brought to different ways of looking at our political opinions,” she said.
The group has meetings every month and is hosting a “Depolarizing Within” workshop in September.
“It will be an opportunity to take a look at yourself and see how you might be contributing to that conversation that’s going on nationally,” Malley said. “How you could change your input.”
