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A new Falls Church City group is trying to give residents and students practical tools for navigating political disagreement without sacrificing respect, relationships or honest debate.

The We the Neighbors Initiative held its first public event March 18 at Mary Riley Styles Public Library. About 30 people, including Meridian High School students and adults, attended the panel discussion and workshops on fostering “Dialogue Across Difference.”

Falls Church parents Allison Stevens, Komal Bazaz Smith and Olga Ioffe-Kasher organized the initiative. All three have children who attended the city’s public schools.

The panel featured Noah Bopp, founder and head of the School for Ethics and Global Leadership; Meridian teacher Jared Peet; Falls Church City Council member MaryBeth Connelly; and Meridian senior Cailyn Murphy.

The group’s mission is to strengthen community ties and democracy through meaningful, respectful conversation. Organizers said growing polarization has made difficult discussions harder at both the national and local levels.

Bazaz Smith said the problem is not simply that people disagree. Many lack the skills needed to work through those disagreements while continuing to respect one another and cooperate as neighbors.

She said organizers hope to bring training into classrooms and the broader community while supporting, rather than duplicating, work already underway in Falls Church schools. The initiative is exploring partnerships with Citizens for a Better City, the Falls Church Education Foundation, Falls Church City 250 and Falls Church Forward. Organizers also hope to participate in the July 3 Civic Jam.

Bazaz Smith traced the group’s origins to concerns among parents who watched political polarization intensify beginning around 2015. They later heard accounts of students labeling classmates according to political or social categories, prompting them to consider a more community- and student-focused response.

The initiative could eventually lead to student clubs, teacher partnerships and training programs in smaller community settings, she said. Its organizers want the first gathering to become the beginning of sustained local engagement rather than a one-time event.

Learning to disagree productively

Bopp led the evening using a curriculum called “Growth Discourse,” which the School for Ethics and Global Leadership has refined through years of classroom practice.

The school runs semester-long programs for high school juniors in Washington, London and Johannesburg. Bopp said Growth Discourse has become an increasingly important part of its curriculum and has been used with schools, companies and nonprofit organizations.

He opened the discussion by asking attendees to describe American political discourse. Their answers included “polarization,” “divisive,” “toxic,” “hot,” “chaotic” and “acrimonious.”

Connelly drew on her 12 years of City Council experience, saying collegiality and compromise are essential to solving local problems. Council members sometimes must build alliances with people they would not ordinarily consider political partners, she said.

Murphy focused on echo chambers, including social-media feeds that repeatedly show users information aligned with their existing views. She said students can also attack a person’s character instead of addressing that person’s position, making classmates reluctant to express unpopular opinions.

Peet, who teaches history and Theory of Knowledge at Meridian, said productive discussion has become more difficult because people struggle to agree on reliable facts and increasingly distrust expertise. He distinguished dialogue, which can help people understand one another, from debate, which often produces a winner and a loser.

Both Peet and Murphy warned against reducing people to a “single story,” a concept associated with author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Murphy said students should look beyond a position they oppose and ask what experiences or ideas produced it. She suggested teaching discourse skills in 10th-grade government classes, where students might be more receptive than during homeroom periods.

Connelly urged participants to seek common ground even with political opponents. She cited Give Day initiatives as an example of people with different views cooperating on goals they all value.

Curiosity as a bridge

Panelists also shared personal examples of relationships that crossed political or ideological lines.

Bopp described his family exchanging baked goods with Trump-supporting neighbors on Capitol Hill despite displaying opposing presidential campaign signs. The gestures helped preserve a relationship in which conversation remained possible.

Peet recalled advice from a friend who encouraged him to become curious when strangers initiated conversations instead of quickly retreating into his headphones. Peet later applied that lesson during a taxi ride in Chile with a Venezuelan driver as news emerged about the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro following American bombing attacks.

Although Peet initially worried that the driver might resent him for being American, he asked questions and found they could have an open, informative conversation. The experience reinforced his belief that curiosity can turn an uncomfortable encounter into an opportunity to learn.

Murphy said she had been advised to select college roommates with similar political views. She ultimately decided she did not want to dismiss people because of their politics or the accounts they followed online. As she prepares to attend the University of Miami, she said she wants to understand classmates arriving from different regions and backgrounds.

Connelly described finding unexpected common ground with an ideologically opposed council member when both supported balconies in mixed-use developments. They jokingly called themselves the “Balcony Corner.” She said kindness and personal contact, including sharing meals, helped her recognize that she did not dislike any council colleague even when their views differed sharply.

Meridian senior Jack Kreul said students need more opportunities to develop these skills. Although Falls Church and its schools generally lean liberal, he said students will encounter a far broader range of political opinions after leaving the community.

Testing the limits of speech

The discussion also examined whether civil discourse requires boundaries.

Bopp used the example of someone painting a swastika on a wall as conduct most people would reject, while acknowledging that many cases fall into less obvious territory.

Peet described a conversation with an Israeli friend who questioned why the United States permits pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses when Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. Peet, who is Jewish, pointed to the protection of deeply offensive expression as a cornerstone of American law and cited the 1977 case involving the National Socialist Party of America and Skokie, Illinois. He added that the same expression would not necessarily be allowed in his classroom.

Students also need room to make mistakes and occasionally say ill-considered things, Peet said. If classrooms offer no opportunity to stumble and learn, students may stop participating altogether.

Murphy said conservative students at the generally liberal Meridian High School may feel silenced, while liberal students may struggle to hear opposing views on issues such as abortion rights. Students who express minority positions can be socially shunned, she said, even though they should be permitted to hold those views.

At the same time, Murphy argued that some restrictions are necessary. She cited a swastika drawn in a school elevator as an example of conduct that should not be treated as acceptable expression.

Workshops put dialogue into practice

During the workshop portion, audience members moved to different sides of the room to show where they stood on four spectrum questions.

One prompt contrasted the idea that intent is all that matters during difficult conversations about identity with the position that impact is all that matters. Participants placed themselves between those poles and explained their choices from the extremes or the middle.

As people heard one another’s reasoning, some wrestled anew with their own positions. The exercises prompted exchanges among students and adults and gave attendees a chance to practice the skills discussed by the panel.

Afterward, Murphy said she had been nervous but grateful for the opportunity to participate. She plans to study politics and hopes to continue this kind of work in college, with the goal of helping create communities where people can hear opposing ideas without feeling personally attacked.

Hal Lippman, president of Citizens for a Better City, supported the organizers’ effort but questioned how its methods would hold up in extreme real-world situations.

He pointed to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and asked how civil discourse could work when confronting neo-Nazis carrying weapons and intending harm. His concern underscored one of the evening’s most difficult unresolved questions: whether dialogue can bridge every divide, or whether some threats place cooperation and conversation beyond practical reach.