Front and Center with Steve and Michael

“If we truly want peace in the Middle East, we must first have peace in the Middle West.” -- Swami Beyondananda For decades, we’ve been exposed to the meme, “visualize world peace.” Well, maybe the key to transforming the world at large is to transform the “world at small” – a peace-building movement to bring together our red and blue tribes to sit in “sacred circle” and talk until they’re “purple in the face.” That’s the approach this week’s guest, Joan Blades, is taking. The co-founder of MoveOn.org, known for its partisan alignment with the Democratic Party, she has spent the last decade building “Living Room Conversations” to bring parties from both parties into heart-opening, re-humanizing dialogue, which she describes as “respectful discourse across ideological, cultural and party lines, grassroots engagement around allowing people at the community level to really connect.” In this conversation about seeing beyond the divide to recognize our shared values, Joan speaks of her involvement with MoveOn (which began, she says, as a transpartisan call to move beyond Bill Clinton’s impeachment), and the insights and influences that led her to co-found Living Room Conversations as a “listening practice to grow connection and understanding, a way to get in right relationship with those around us.” She also discusses the obstacles to “trust” conversations, including the role of social media in deepening the gap between the two sides, citing last year’s documentary, The Social Dilemma. In response to the defensive question coming from both sides “Why would I want to talk to THEM?” Joan offers plenty of good reasons, including finding our way forward together as a society – or, as the Swami puts it, “Hey, let’s put the CIVIL back in civilization.” You’ll find out why Living Room conversations work, how they create “safety” for participants, even as they discuss divisive issues, and hear success stories about how heart-to-heart connections have been made, and how these conversations have led to fruitful collaboration. In contrast to mainstream media and social network platforms that benefit from sowing the seeds of mistrust and separation, Living Room Conversations offers face-to-face communication to lift us off the political battlefield and onto the cooperative playing field – so left and right can come front and center to “face the music” and dance together. Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/_wXBMN40L18_6HkRPIig_2f0IO8 https://livingroomconversations.org/ Learn about and watch the documentary: Social Dilemma https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/ https://youtu.be/uaaC57tcci0 Learn about and watch the Black Mirror series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror https://youtu.be/di6emt8_ie8 “Courage” Our Front and Center Theme Song http://www.danceawake.com/

Part 2 of Conversation with Political and Community Activist Nancy Vogl “Not only do hot-button issues activate the base, they activate the basest of the base.’” -- Swami Beyondananda One of our missions at Front and Center is “finding the whole truth together”, and on a practical level it means unpacking narratives that have become too volatile to talk about. One such issue is “critical race theory”. To get a “bilateral” view of this hot button issue, we invited Nancy Vogl, who has journeyed across the political spectrum, from Republican to gay activist to evolutionary revolutionary to Common Sense Party advisory board member to offer her wisdom and perspective. As Nancy tells us, in the case of Critical Race Theory (CRT), there has been plenty of heat, and precious little light. She addresses the widespread belief that CRT, supposedly being taught in our public schools, appears to blame white people living now for what happened 200 years ago. That racism is endemic to the United States, no one can deny. And because people of color are easy to identify, they are more easily separated out. As a white kid growing up in a mostly-black neighborhood, I could take the subway to Manhattan and blend in. Not true for my black friends. As Nancy points out, it’s not CRT itself, but how it is being used to “foment divisiveness and fear.” She continues, “Nobody wants whites to feel guilty. And … people of color and those who've been marginalized by the predominantly male patriarchy want some acknowledgement that that in fact has been done.” The problem is, real conversations haven’t been happening. The issue – pro or con – becomes a political grenade to lob over the wall to the other side, that is used to gather votes or raise money. “And we'll have these conversations,” Nancy says, “when more and more people are tired of the polemics and the criminalization of another point of view.” If you’re ready for an incisive, compassionate, truth-telling conversation that will liberate you from the “binary” views on all sides, please tune in.

HIGHLIGHTS From Conversation with “Habits of Unity” Author Elaine Parke “Habits can be habit-forming.” -- Swami Beyondananda In these times of division, fear, misunderstanding, and confusion, those who are awakening to the “shituation” are asking, “What can I do?” Maybe the better question is, “Who can I BE?” For as Gandhi famously said, “Be the change you seek.” Could it be that the key to changing what’s out there is changing what’s “in here”? This week’s guest on Front and Center, Elaine Parke, has applied her 25 years’ experience in the world of advertising and marketing messaging, to design a unique, playful and highly-effective way to ground the “ideal” of universal values into the “real deal” of daily practice. Her book, The Habits of Unity: 12 Months to a Stronger America, offers a “habit-forming” practice to transform our largely unconscious habits of separation into a program and practice of what she calls, “intentional evolution” – evolving us from human to humane. And the secret to “more humane” is rehumanization, and kindness. Says Elaine, quoting Will and Ariel Durant, “Civilization is the slow progress toward being kind.” In this “highlight reel” of our full conversation with Elaine Parke, you will discover how she used her own childhood challenges to launch her into volunteer work and service, and how her 12-habits naturally emerged as a way for “political bystanders” to be that change they want to see in the world. Watch our highlights of our conversation here, and discover a simple and effective way for YOU to move the “upwising” forward. Website: https://www.12habits4allofus.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/12wonderfulhabits Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elaine-parke-mba-cs-cm-b69aa7/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elainedodi/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/12harmonyhabits Live Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/-XIHgyPc_FFttWkeKPtoDqO5rc8 “Courage” Our Front and Center Theme Song http://www.danceawake.com/

A Conversation with Author and Eco-psychologist Glenn Aparicio Parry “When we shift our’ c-ing from fear to love, we move from scared to sacred.” -- Swami Beyondananda Does America have a sacred purpose? Yes, says Front and Center guest Glenn Aparicio Parry, and that purpose can be found in the largely untold story of America’s Native American roots, and the influence these established indigenous cultures have had on our system of governance, and our sensibilities about rights and freedoms. In these highlights from our longer interview with eco-psychologist and author (Original Politics: America’s Sacred Purpose) Glenn Aparicio Parry, you’ll hear the story of how the first English settlers in Plymouth got a surprise greeting from Algonquin tribesman Samoset in March 1621, and how that Native influence persisted for 150 years. You’ll also hear about the remarkable meeting between Benjamin Franklin and Iroquois chief Canasatego on JULY 4th … 1744, that changed the course of history. Finally, you’ll learn how this forgotten history points us to our true “sacred purpose” – finding unity in diversity, not just diverse colors and genders, but diverse beliefs and worldviews, and how what Aparicio Parry calls “sacred mayonnaise” can bring out the most functional aspects of “progressive” and “conservative.” Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/h5QCQcDdBptu0UULzIUFS8GHBt8 You can watch the full hour interview below. To learn more of Glenn Aparicio Parry’s work visit www.originalpolitics.us “Courage” Our Front and Center Theme Song http://www.danceawake.com/

Front and Center Interview with “Habits of Unity” Author Elaine Parke “There’s no need to change the world. There is a better way. I say let’s toilet train the world, and we’ll never have to change it again.” -- Swami Beyondananda In these times of division, fear, misunderstanding, and confusion, those who are awakening to the “shituation” are asking, “What can I do?” Maybe the better question is, “Who can I BE?” For as Gandhi famously said, “Be the change you seek.” Could it be that the key to changing what’s out there is changing what’s “in here”? This week’s guest on Front and Center, Elaine Parke, has applied her 25 years’ experience in the world of advertising and marketing messaging, to design a unique, playful and highly-effective way to ground the “ideal” of universal values into the “real deal” of daily practice. Her book, The Habits of Unity: 12 Months to a Stronger America, offers a “habit-forming” practice to transform our largely unconscious habits of separation into a program and practice of what she calls, “intentional evolution”. She successfully implemented this program in Rwanda, and in systems like the Pittsburgh school system, and now she is bringing her wisdom and program to the world at large at a time when we most definitely could use “unity without uniformity.” The brilliance in her program is that each individual gets to embody and apply each helpful habit in their own unique way. Says Elaine: “I wrote this book because, like me, you may find it stressful to feel like a helpless bystander in this toxic era of division in America. If you really think about it however, national unity won’t trickle down to help us. It will ‘bubble up’ as each good citizen like ourselves add ‘our better.’” Watch our interview here, and discover a simple and effective way for YOU to move the “upwising” forward. Website: https://www.12habits4allofus.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/12wonderfulhabits Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elaine-parke-mba-cs-cm-b69aa7/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elainedodi/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/12harmonyhabits Live Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/yNAqxtUdyiqYzSqv_kXvpEoCmn8 “Courage” Our Front and Center Theme Song http://www.danceawake.com/

From Political Battlefields to Cooperative Playing Fields To introduce their new podcast, Front and Center, co-hosts Michael Maxsenti and Steve Bhaerman sat down for a Zoom conversation to discuss their own political backgrounds and evolution. Steve, who – as he puts it – spent his “deformative years” in Brooklyn, New York, grew up in a Democrat New Deal household, and has been a lifelong progressive. Michael, who grew up in Torrance, in Los Angeles County, was a member of SDS in college, but once out in the work world, became a “Reagan Republican.” To find out how their paths evolved and came to work together, please watch the video. They also introduce the podcast – its purpose and intention, the kinds of guests they will invite, and how and why the Locals platform is perfect for building the “sane and sacred community” needed to shift our focus away from the issues that divide us so we can develop a vision of “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/2xDACNC_Zl3qQsOM8-sMQUmekq4

Conversation with Bobby Austin, Neighborhood Associates “The currency of our evolved species, Humankind, is human kindness.” -- Swami Beyondananda "...you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in." ​-- Isaiah 58:12 There seems to be one thing everyone across the political spectrum can agree on – we are divided like never before. So, can this breach be breached? Can we put the “civil” back in civilization, and find that sane and sacred space where we can gather as one? This week’s guest, Bobby Austin, has spent more than a half century looking to repair the breach. Working with the Kellogg Foundation in a program for African American boys years ago, he realized that above and beyond all the problems and programs, the one thing that was absent – and needed most – is kinship. Since that time, he has promoted what he calls “public kinship”, which is really short-hand for the Golden Rule. Simple. But not necessarily easy. Rather than offering a top-down prescription, Bobby says the key to creating a common culture is “self-leadership”, and surprisingly includes music and the arts. What has he learned over the years? What does public kinship look like in the “real world”? Where does he find the most hope for the future? Tune in and find out! Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/6pyXV9p9P2NGDHicq1ryWvg2G00 To find out more about Bobby Austin, Neighborhood Associates, and Public Kinship, please go here: https://www.neighborhoodassociates.org/about-us

Our fundamental purpose and mission is summed up in our show title, slogan and subtitle … Front and Center ... ‘From Political Battlefields to Cooperative Playing Fields’ ... Writing Our New Story Together. We are facing and embracing the irony of our times. We seem more divided than ever, and yet there is a great desire to work together to face our evolutionary challenges. Our "beacon", is what Charles Eisenstein describes as "the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible." Steve and Mike will host conversations with leaders and inspirational ‘ordinary people.’ There will be: Visionaries, Heroes of the Heart, Illuminators, Solutionaries and Connectors. People who bring people from all sides together in purposeful dialogue so we can develop a shared vision of the world we want to live in. Through these conversations, Steve Bhaerman and Michael Maxsenti will work to deepen and expand our understandings to help us get off the battlefields and onto playing fields of collaboration and communion. There we can create the new story that our hearts know is possible. Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/06NuiOSMFU7JhExy6bjCyvqhh4M

A Conversation with Randall Paul Foundation for Religious Diplomacy What if the key to breakthrough is not getting opposing parties to agree – but getting them to disagree agreeably? To do so, says our guest this week, Randall Paul, we must transform opponents into “trustworthy rivals”. By creating “peaceful tension” among rivals who are both “critical and appreciative”, we find the “whole truth” together. A lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he offers his own vision of “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible”: “God wants this world here and new before heaven to be a place where people who have differences can thrive together, and where the best of all worldviews can be digested and used by all tribes.” Can we find unity in the heart, even as we fully express a diversity of beliefs? Tune in to find out. Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/G6-9SJBRf-rZRi4BOiJGHFmuQ70

Restoring A Common Culture Through Kinship and Reunion Conversation with Bobby Austin, Neighborhood Associates “The currency of our evolved species, Humankind, is human kindness.” -- Swami Beyondananda In these times of division and polarization, can our multifaceted, multicultural and multiracial society find a “common culture”? This week’s guest on Front and Center, Bobby Austin has made his life’s work “repairing the breach”, through kinship – which to him means living the Golden Rule. This is how, he says, “an unkind world dies and a new one is born.” Can we come together from different worldviews to encompass an ever-changing truth? Watch the conversation trailer here, and then the full conversation that follows. Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/BDX6VLqoxopky1RimbXTAKVS1Vo

The Indigenous Path to Take Us from Domination to Cooperation A Conversation with Indigenous Wisdom-Keeper Shawna Bluestar Newcomb Could it be that the chaos and confusion, the anger and despair, the shaming and blaming we are experiencing as a society now has a deeper root? Is it possible that we’ve gotten so used to domination as a way of being, that we mistake it for human nature? Our guest on Front and Center this week, Shawna Bluestar Newcomb, indigenous teacher and wisdom keeper, enlightens us about “the doctrine of discovery and domination”, the “invisible” system of beliefs our civilization has been living by for 10,000 years. She also presents what she calls the “Reverence code” which brings indigenous understanding into modern practice and offers a way to live in harmony instead of harm. Live transcript: https://otter.ai/u/79-MX14BC_cNkpnINdclI7FiF0c #ShawnaBluestar, #ShawnaBluestarNewcomb, #indigenouspeoplesday, #indigenouspeoplesday2021 #indigenouspeoples, #indigenous

The America That Almost Was …And May Yet Be Charles Eisenstein Speaks Out About Healing America and Why He Has Joined the RFK, Jr. Campaign “The two-potty shit-show has been detrimental to us all, and now we have a chance to bring it down in one swell poop.” – Swami Beyondananda Here is the paradox of our current “bi-polar insanity” and “two-potty” political system. The two political sides seem more intractably polarized than ever, and yet there is a political movement emerging from what Charles Eisenstein calls “the Transcendent Center”, a great “upwising” if you will, that seeks to bring us together around “the common moral agreements, and basic human impulses that actually could unite our country.” You may know Charles as the spiritual-political philosopher whose books The Ascent of Humanity, Sacred Economics, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, and Climate—A New Story are about transforming our civilization’s obsolete and “obsolethal” (i.e., both obsolete and deadly) story of separation, into a unifying “story of interbeing.” We’re calling our in-depth Front and Center conversation with Charles “The America That Almost Was …And May Yet Be”, after an essay he wrote calling on us to collectively heal the trauma of John F. Kennedy’s “interrupted dream” https://bohemian.com/a-dream-interrupted-1/, acknowledge we were lied to, and then pick up where JFK left off to bring about that “more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” Charles calls the JFK assassination a “mythic event”, where the official narrative is based on a lie, and that has over the past sixty years, “normalized deception.” “If you pretend to believe a lie, and you act as if it’s true,” says Charles, “then everything begins to disintegrate, and you will accept one lie after another after another.” That’s the “shituation” we find ourselves in. His mission is “healing America” so we can metabolize this trauma and begin to restore trust in our institutions by making them trustworthy. At the forefront of this mission, he says, is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presidential campaign, which he has joined as Communications Director and speech writer. This has been a risky and controversial move, so you’ll want to find out why Charles made it. Until now, Charles contends, we have passively allowed our political choices to be dictated to us – dividing us into “opinion tribes” that serve the current power structure. We have been diverted by “identity issues” based on our differences, so that we fail to focus on the “identical issues” that unite us – for example, the chronic illness epidemic that of all the candidates, only RFK, Jr. is willing to address. “We don't have to accept the way the politics has been,” Charles says. “We don't have to accept the choices that are being offered to us. We don't have to accept the menu that we are given, we can write a new item on the menu, or we can discard the menu entirely – and offer a new set of choices.” Regardless of who you plan to vote for – or not vote for – in November, find out why it’s ESSENTIAL for Robert Kennedy Jr. to be on the ballot in every state, and to have his voice heard on the debate stage as well. As for the question, “Can he win?” Charles substitutes a more pertinent question: “Are we the people READY for him to win?” Are we ready to disrupt politics as usual, and take command of our own political destiny? We can give Swami Beyondananda the final word: “Now is the time because it is too late to do it sooner.” LINKS KENNEDY Featured Videos covering his policy positions and much more; https://www.kennedy24.com/news-videos Robert F. Kennedy for President https://www.kennedy24.com/ ___________________________ California voters, please click on this link for instructions on how to update your voter registration to help us get Bobby on the ballot: We the People Party https://www.kennedy24.com/ca-ballot We The People: California Party Registration FAQ https://www.kennedy24.com/we-the-people-faq ______________________________ “Can RFK Jr. Really Change the World?” The Future Of The World Depends On Us with Charles Eisenstein https://youtu.be/k8hmvkMtwDg?si=HtdDxIMcoJ10j6SZ RFK Jr. Advisor Charles Eisenstein on Peace The term "American interests" doesn't mean what the elites think it does. They cast it in terms of a global struggle for supremacy. But our real interest lies in peace, health, and broad prosperity. https://youtu.be/FVOSN9-aFN4?si=35hPoBqS3KiSKai8 Charles Eisenstein https://charleseisenstein.org/ Charles Eisenstein on Substack https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/ _________________________________ RFK Jr.’s ‘How I See The State of Our Union’ (9 min) https://youtu.be/A0yvc2Qhn5E?si=RsKheyH3NTwe3_Zw Meet the REAL RFK, Jr. Documentary FREE link https://www.youtube.com/live/hfJR4DF_MYU?si=dFXYIf6tyO8XXvel RFK JR Podcast IRS: Pro-Pharma Anti-Health How the government, particularly the IRS, looks at exercise and diet versus weight loss drugs and other pharmaceuticals is discussed in this episode with Calley Means and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rfk-jr-podcast/id1552000243?i=1000649109153 _____________________ Why Biden and Trump Supporters Should Vote For RFK Jr. https://youtu.be/S0EZQaXp2U0?si=z_iL_BsiIhyf0kx1 Ross Perot and the ‘Spoiler Effect’ (10 min documentary FiveThirtyEight show) ‘https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/the-ross-perot-myth/