Among Us

(This piece originally appeared as a commentary for VTDigger

I walked into the Statehouse a few weeks ago for the first time in about seven years, and talked to legislators and lobbyists I knew.  It sounded like “We the People” have changed quite a lot in that time. What lobbysists told me about many of the folks they deal with, legislators and advocates and the rank-and-file citizens alike, reminded me of my kids’ favorite videogame, Among Us, where teams throw imposters out of an airlock, into space. 

Let me explain. 

The Statehouse climate bothered me, because it resembles very strongly what I spent about ten years of my life working toward, in unions. 

In labor organizing, we practiced "Change through Conflict" in that world, and with good reason. "Collective action" is the radical force-multiplier that allows those with less power and dignity to get more of both. Sometimes it's totally organic, sometimes it's more or less manufactured, but no matter what, if people are taking action, there is something going on that's real to them. If you don’t believe that, go try and organize collective action around an issue that doesn't connect. 

In the union world, collective action happens with groups of people, and there's a whole legal framework that leads to an election. After leaving the union side, I've spent years working on the management side, in organizing campaigns, as the fellow often called a 'unionbuster.' According to federal regulations, the title is 'Persuader.' 

Neither is apt, but whatever you call it, I've spent thousands of hours talking with employees in high-conflict, highly polarized environmentsenvronments.

The specter of an election date creates a natural escalation of feelings in voters on both sides. The tension in the workplace rises, depending on the voters and the situation. Sometimes it becomes extremely tense. People on both sides of these elections feel the way they feel for their own reasons. 

This is true without regard to what the employer does, or how many attorneys and consultants and persuaders and organizers and unions come around, or what the issues are at the workplace. People just see things differently. There is no pixie dust for either side.

When tensions are very high and the voters are sharply split over real issues, it's hard for the people in those situations to see past the election date to The Day After. People go to work and there are the co-workers who the day before were wearing other colors with other buttons, and even though one side has just won, and one lost, they both have hard feelings, and there they both are, day in, day out. 

In that situation, people on both sides have to live with the consequences of how they treated each other during the campaign, for better or worse. Sometimes relationships are mended, and sometimes they are ruptured permanently. After enough time has passed, a few people on opposite sides sometimes come around to accept that reasonable people looked at the situation and took a different view. That is, in fact, what happens in life all the time, on every issue we care about.

Now we come to Among Us. In the real-life variation, the people you throw out of an airlock just come right back in through a trapdoor and form a team of their own. They are ready to rumble, and they know what the stakes are. 

What you hear in those conversations between people who were on opposites teams during previous organizing campaigns is that pretty often at least one of them really listens to the other person and truly sees where they are coming from and how they came down on the side they did. Sometimes one person says they'd make a different choice if they had it to do over again, and sometimes not.

When I hear these conversations, they happen because two people have already gone through their own Among Us tournament, and neither wants to do it again. I consider the fifteen years I've spent around organized labor campaigns as time with a season pass to the professional Among Us circuit. I, too, have’ve had enough.

I'm moving away from it, and spending my energy working toward a game I think is better: Respectful Engagement. It's a solve-the-mystery game. When you find someone who comes down differently on an issue that matters to you, really try to find out how they got there. Both of you will win, and neither goes out the airlock.

I’ll give you a phrase that works wonders for opening space in a conversation: “I see it differently.” Repeat that until you’re both playing Respectful Engagement. It’s a more rewarding game.