36 Questions for Civic Love
A few weeks ago, Lisa Yun Lee, Executive Director of the National Public Housing Museum, and I let our minds wander. We spoke of Covid-19 and how it had limited our daily interactions with our neighbors. We spoke of loss, and anger, and the murder of George Floyd. Having both been trained as facilitators, we spoke of the efficacy of dialogue, our frustration with dialogue, and the pitfalls, purpose and potential of dialogue in these troubled times. I pitched the beginnings of an idea and she left the call amidst the more urgent need to document the removal of a statue of Christopher Columbus.
In 1997, psychologist Arthur Aron explored whether intimacy between two strangers could be accelerated by asking each other a set of 36 questions. You might remember reading about his work in a New York Times article by Mandy Len Catron or a reference to that article on the television show, The Big Bang Theory.
Nurtured and refined through a series of ideation calls with Lisa, NPHM Program Director Tiff Beatty and artist Jen Delos Reyes, the idea was to adapt Aron’s questions for use in a new kind of social experiment, aimed at helping us fall in civic love. In language I wrote for the project, I described it this way - “Civic love is one’s love for society, expressed through a commitment to the common good. It is a belief in the idea that we’re all better off, when we are all better off. We manifest it through all kinds of actions - volunteering, marching, speaking against systemic injustice, making reparations - but the love itself is the emotional heart of the work.”
Last week, the NPHM launched 36 Questions for Civic Love, an interactive virtual event where Tracie Hall (Executive Director of the American Library Association) and Chef Paul Fehribach (James Beard nominee, Chef, and co-owner of Big Jones) asked and answered our first 12 questions and close to 100 participants paired off in virtual breakout rooms to ask and answer the full set of 36.
Participants chimed in from Denver, Rhode Island, Pittsburgh, Iowa, Seattle, Los Angeles and Seoul. They joined from across the NPHM’s home city of Chicago - identifying themselves by neighborhood. Midway through Tracie declaring that she had a full blown “civic crush” on Chef Paul and Chef Paul suggesting he and Tracie eat caramel cake together at a Chicago bakery, participants began to dream big, writing in the chat box that 36 Questions should become a television show. “I would watch it,” they wrote. “Same,” said another.
For various reasons, mainly online platforms being online platforms, I ended up partnered in a breakout room. My partner told me that she’s a long distance walker - over eight miles every morning - and that her high school was considered “funky,” coded language for the fact that it had the highest number of students of color in the area. She told me that she had visited the Arab American National Museum - where I had worked years ago - and that she loved it. She told me that the last time the police were in her neighborhood was that morning. That she sees them every morning. That they are always around.
We got through the first 12 questions before time ran out, both of us moving into better lit areas of our homes as the sun faded while we talked. And I smiled - a lot.
I wasn’t the only one. Feedback from participants consistently referenced a feeling of joy, and comments like - “Thank you for lifting us all,” abounded. My favorite was a participant who said that what surprised them most was, “how much people's spirit came through, warmest feeling on Zoom ever. Loved how we were from all over the country, because more and more keeping "local" reminds us how distant and distanced we are.”
And other comments stood out as well...
“I found myself thinking about the breadth of my life in a new way.”
I learned, “that I can find profound connections with others in even the most unexpected of places, and should try and approach everything in the future with that knowledge and openness.”
And perhaps most importantly a participant who vulnerably shared - “I have things to work on.”
So consider this my invitation - visit nphm.org/civiclove, download the toolkit and set aside an hour. OR organize an event in your building, on your block, or for your town. And if you need a partner? Email me. I’d love to have more things to smile about.