The radical act of choosing common ground

To achieve lasting change sometimes requires the hard, even radical, choice of partnering with people you'd least expect. Justice reform advocate Nisha Anand shares her story of working with her ideological opposite to make history and save lives -- and urges us all to widen our circles in order to make progress with purpose.

In 1994, the Violent Crime Control
and Law Enforcement Act passed.

You probably know it as the crime bill.

It was a terrible law.

It ushered in an era of mass incarceration

that allowed mandatory minimums,

three-strikes laws,

the expansion of the death penalty --

it was terrible.

But it passed with bipartisan support.

GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich,

architect of the Republican Revolution,

led the way --

signed into law by Democratic
President, Bill Clinton.

Also in 1994,

I was a senior in high school
when this bill got passed,

and you were likely to find me

on the streets protesting
any number of causes ...

including the crime bill.

So that's what makes this picture
all the more surprising.

Newt was not on the top of my
"Favorite Person in this Country" list.

But this picture was taken in 2015.

This was the start of a movement

that would pass a bill
called the First Step Act.

The "New York Times"
called it the most significant reform

in criminal justice in a generation.

You know, 1994 Nisha --

on-the-streets activist --

might be disappointed in this photo --

some of you might be too.

But standing here today I'm not.

This is what I'm here
to talk to you about today.

This is radical common ground.

And I'm not talking about the kind
of common ground where --

you know, we can talk
about how much we love springtime

or "puppies are super cute."

And it's not, you know,
compromised common ground.

This is common ground that's hard.

It hurts.

It's the type of common ground
where you will be ridiculed and judged.

But it's the type of common ground
that can secure human freedom.

It can save lives.

And it's the type of common ground
I was born to find.

It's in my DNA.

My dad was born
during the partition in India.

After the Indian independence movement,
the country was really divided

between people who wanted
to keep the country together

and those who wanted
different independent nations.

And when the British left,

they just decided to draw a line,
the partition and make a new country.

This started the largest forced
mass migration in human history.

Fifteen million people trapped
on the wrong side of these new borders.

Two million people dead
during the partition.

And my dad was the youngest
baby in a Hindu family

on the wrong side of the border.

and like families all around
the border on both sides,

they went into hiding.

And I was told when I was little
about the story of my family in hiding,

and one day when armed men came
into the house that they were hiding in,

searching for families,
my dad started crying.

And my grandma started shaking him.

And my grandfather, in that moment,

he made the choice that he'd sacrifice
his son in order to save the family.

But luckily, in that moment
he stopped crying.

My grandma, she shook him
and he stopped crying

and I'm here today
because he stopped crying.

But I'm also here today

because of that Muslim family
that took us in.

They also were held at gunpoint

and an armed man asked
if they were hiding anyone,

and they swore on the Quran
that nobody was in that house.

They chose in that moment
when the entire country --

everybody in the region,

you could hate people
who had different politics than you,

different religion,

you could kill people.

That was what was happening.

but they swore on their Holy book,

they chose the shared humanity

over politics of that day, and we lived.

And we survived.

And I start with this story
because often people tell me

that my mission for common
ground is the weak position.

But I ask how was that Muslims
family's actions weak?

Because of that, my dad
did grow up healthy in India

and he emigrated to this country,

and I was born here in the late '70s,

and like most first-generation kids
I was born to build bridges.

I was a bridge between
the old country and the new.

And just growing up, that's what I did.

I was a brown girl in the Black
and white South in Atlanta, Georgia.

I was like, on one hand,

the perfect Indian daughter --

straight As,

captain of the debate team --

but on the other hand,

I was also this radical feminist,

punk-rock activist sneaking
out of the house for concerts

and, you know, getting arrested
like, all the time for causes.

I was a mix of a lot things.

But they all live harmoniously in me.

Building bridges was just natural,

and I think all of us represent
a mix of a bunch of things.

I think we have that ability
to find the common ground.

But that's not how
I was living my life ...

at all.

I moved to the Bay Area in 2001,

and this was kind of
a turning point for me;

it was the start of the second Iraq War.

And I was organizing
with a bunch of activists --

of course --

and we were thinking that probably
we needed to expand our circle

a little bit,

that we weren't going to successfully
stop the war if, you know --

just amongst us.

So we decided we'd build bridges,

expand our circle,

and so the great, anarchist
versus communist soccer tournament

of 2001 was born.

(Laughter)

That's it.

That's how large my circle
was allowed to expand.

Building bridges with liberal Democrats?

Oh, no way, that was a bridge too far.

Local electeds?

That was a bridge too far.

And that was in 2001.

And I think you'll agree with me now.

In 2020 it's gotten even worse --

that division, that tribalism.

We won't sit down at dinner

with people who voted differently than us.

We, like, see a mean tweet
from our best friend --

a tweet that, like,
doesn't fit with our worldview,

and all of a sudden they're canceled.

The purity politics of the moment gone.

I sometimes wake up --

I don't know what we're going to do.

And people ask me
"how do we do that?"

But I know about common ground.

I feel like we can build those bridges.

But it's not easy.

I have a concept that I go back to,

and it's a concept that should
be familiar to everybody

since the beginning of human history.

It's the idea of the commons.

This shared place
in the center of town --

town square,

the quad --

but it's the place
where you come together,

your community,

and you can listen to people
on soapboxes with different ideas,

and you can be very different,

but you come together because you know
together we're stronger than being apart.

And today when I think of the commons,

I extend it to the resources
we all share --

collectively owned,

like the air we breathe.

I think of schools,

parks.

I think of the intelligence we share.

We can share in libraries or the internet.

And I think the internet's important.

In this digital age,

that shared humanity,

that access to be together in the commons,

is at our fingertips.

But we're not using it that way.

We're not coming together.

To choose that path towards the commons
and to be with each other,

you also have to choose love.

That's a hard thing.

But I know you can't go to the town square

filled with hate for the town.

You can't lead a people you don't love.

You can't lead a country you don't love.

And --

I don't think you can change the world

and say, "I'm only changing it
for the people like me,

my own circle of friends,

not for the people I hate, not for them."

It doesn't work.

It's a terrible strategy, it doesn't work,

but that's what we keep doing.

I see it every single day.

These silos are just getting stronger.

And you know,

your corner of the internet,

like Instagram or Twitter,

we're just in an echo chamber
talking to each other.

So I can be really comfortable in my
Berkeley Democratic Socialist commons

and talk to all of you.

And my dad can be in his bootstrappy
immigrant Republican commons,

and I can watch MSNBC

and he can watch Fox News

and we will not know the same things.

We won't have the same --

I mean, we won't live in the same world.

We may never know each other
or be with each other again.

And I don't want to keep going
down that path.

And I know we can get back
to a better path.

I know we can find our way to the commons,

and I know that because I had a first,
like, front-row, firsthand look

at the ability to do it

and do it on a large scale.

And so I want to get you back
to the First Step Act

and the criminal justice reform.

I interviewed for a job
with Van Jones about seven years ago.

And he's been a mentor and my boss,

and he's actually an inspiration
behind a lot of this in the speech.

And he told me that we were going to pass
bipartisan criminal justice reform,

and I laughed because I thought
that was an oxymoron.

I was in the streets --

go figure --

at the Republican
National Convention in 2000

in Philadelphia,

and we were protesting
the criminal justice system.

And there were no Republicans
on the streets with me at that protest.

I remembered the crime bill;

I lived through the tough-on-crime era;

I didn't see it.

But he saw it and he walked me through it.

He saw me and people like him on the Left,

who it's always been and issue
of dignity and justice,

that this system has been
racist since the start

and discriminating against poor
people and people of color

and it's an issue of justice and dignity.

So there we were.

But he also saw something different
from our colleagues on the Right.

The fiscal Conservatives,

they had an economic incentive to do it:

they saw a system that cost
the taxpayers a whole lot of money

and was getting terrible results

and it wasn't making
the communities any safer.

The Libertarian Right,

who believe in less government,

saw an expansion of government control,

an expansion of the police state,

mass incarceration is like,
antithetical to who they are.

And the religious Right:

second chances --

redemption.

These are values that they hold dear,

and the criminal justice system
can't see those anywhere.

And so there was common ground to be had.

And that's what we set out to do.

And under the leadership
of the formerly incarcerated folks

who have been leading this forever,

we built this bipartisan coalition
to pass criminal justice reform.

Eighty-seven senators voted in favor
of the First Step Act,

and yeah, President Trump signed it.

And because we were able to do that,

because we were able
to look at that shared humanity,

get over our distaste
for working across the aisle,

20,000 people have been
impacted in just the last year,

7,000 home who would
not have been home,

17,000 years of human freedom
restored just in the last year.

(Applause and cheers)

And Republicans and Democrats
in this election cycle,

almost all of them running,

are running on platforms
of criminal justice reform.

They are trying to bring this bigger,
stronger, bolder and more reforms

everywhere they are.

That was impossible
during the tough-on-crime era.

But I also look at this.

These are the people coming home.

In my office, we get a video
like this almost every day.

Thousands of people coming home.

And when people tell me
that common ground is the weak position

or that my love for the people

or my belief in our shared
humanity is naive,

or that if I work with folks
across the aisle

that I'm somehow getting
taken advantage of,

I just look at this:

I look at the people.

I say, "Say that to this --

to the folks coming home."

Say that to those 2.2 million people
that are still behind bars.

So now our challenge
is to make this possible

across a whole bunch
of other issues too:

human rights, immigration --

all sorts of things --

health care, mental health.

I think there's common ground to be had.

But it's not easy.

If you want change in a large scale,

you need large movements,

and that means
our circles have to be bigger.

And it's not easy being a Lefty
working across the aisle;

I certainly get
my fair share of hate mail,

but I think that that's exactly
the radical approach we need right now.

And so this is Jenny Kim.

She is someone who is dead serious
about second-chance hiring.

She wants to make sure

that formerly incarcerated folks
have a pathway to jobs

and that businesses make it
an amazing place for folks to work.

She's also the deputy
general counsel at Koch Industries.

K-O-C-H, Koch.

She is an amazing organizer,

and I'm proud to work
with her on this issue.

And an issue I care deeply about,

probably a lot of you do too -- climate,

which seems divisive,

seems like there's no common
ground to be had there.

I think there is.

Trump's own Department of Defense
this year released a report saying

that all future wars were going
to be wars about resources,

wars about climate.

And so yeah, I want to find
partnership with the military.

And I used to be the national director --

the national organizer
for the War Resisters League,

the oldest pacifist
organization in the country.

But if there's common ground
to be had there,

yeah, I'll partner with them.

It's not easy.

The approach means
we need to find love.

We need to get back
to that shared humanity

and that commons.

But I know this love,

it doesn't just get us through
Thanksgiving dinner.

It's the kind of love
that secures freedom,

changes the world.

But to do that,

I have to step into my courage,

and I want all of you
to step into your courage.

Just like that Muslim family

stepped into their courage
for my Hindu family all those years ago.

I think we can do it.

But it's a little bit uncomfortable.

If you are who I know you to be --

you know, someone who cares
about change and progress

and wants to see something
change in the world --

you probably want to know how

but you're also a little bit uncomfortable
about me standing up here

and celebrating these pictures
with Newt and Koch,

talking about partnerships
with the military.

I want you to feel those feelings.

I feel them too.

I don't enter into these
partnerships lightly at all.

My entire trajectory of who I am
has made me think

that it's not even possible,

but I know it is.

That feeling,

that discomfort,

that's preceded every major
breakthrough in human history ever.

That's that feeling
that comes before a moonshot.

And so I want to make you
even a little more uncomfortable.

I want you think about an issue
that you care deeply about --

something that you want to see changed
on a national or global scale.

Think big.

What would resolution look like?

On a large scale,

what would it look like
to solve that problem?

Can you get there with just
your circle of friends?

I know you can't.

The anarchist-communist soccer
tournament isn't going to help

bring about that change.

So I want to think about how
we can expand our circle a little more.

Where is there common ground to be found?

Can you think of any unlikely allies?

Strange partners?

Further than that,

who's in your way?

Who's stopping you
from finding that common ground,

and is there room for them in that circle?

I think there is.

I think we have to be able
to find it at this scale.

And it means that we're going
to have to step into that courage

and include people,

hold our vision so strong,

know that justice
and freedom is so important

that we're able to include more people,

love the people who might
not love us back.

And so I want to ask you:

who's your Newt?

Who's your Koch?

Who's the military in your story?

And I want you to find --

choose that common ground.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)