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8 ways to find common ground

Gridlock plagues Washington. Polarizing soundbytes get constant play in the 24/7 news cycle. The culture wars rage on. But these Monitor op-ed writers suggest there’s more common ground than meets the eye. Here are eight powerful perspectives on the possibilities for meeting in the middle.

2. Occupy this: One of my friends works on Wall Street. One camps in Zucotti Park.

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Daniel Weeks writes: 

I’m mad about what happened on Wall Street...and what it means for America today. But I also have trouble seeing my friend and the other bankers I know as part of an evil cabal plotting against “the other 99 percent,”... 

Weeks then poses some hard questions:

To my friends camped out in Zucotti Park, I’d ask: In what ways do you also profit from Wall Street’s “excess”?

And:

To my friend at the Wall Street firm, I’d ask: In the long run, have excessive leveraging and subprime lending been worth the human toll?

Then:

Finally, to the politicians who (mis)represent us: Are you making good on your stated commitment to serve the needs and interests of all your constituents when you take part in an electoral system where the wealthiest among us fund campaigns and seek access and influence in return?

Weeks concludes: 

In Americans’ clamor for rights – and in our need to be right – Wall Street workers and occupiers alike may have lost that crucial companion – responsibility. Bankers, protesters, politicians, and bystanders must act ethically in their personal and public lives. And that begins with you and me.

Daniel Weeks is past president and policy adviser at the bipartisan group Americans for Campaign Reform. He blogs at www.danielweeks.com.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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