How to Talk to People Who Disagree With You

About this episode

Dr. Melina Abdullah grew up in Oakland, where her mother's front porch doubled as a classroom for the neighborhood. She's been organizing ever since, and she teaches, writes a weekly column, hosts a radio show and has spent two decades studying how people actually lead. She sits down with Kelly Cheeseman and Pia Arthur on the difference between leaderless and leader-full, why she quotes Ella Baker's line that strong people don't need strong leaders, and what she calls womanist leadership, which she wrote her dissertation on. Then the conversation goes somewhere else. What AI can't do, why she thinks spirit, love and art are the things that make us human, why she stopped being quiet about the voice that guides her work, and what she learned from her mother about talking to your kids for three hours at a time. In this episode:• Group-centered leadership instead of leader-centered groups, and where the idea comes from• Alice Walker's purple and lavender line, and why one image does more than a paragraph• Why she asks what her intention is before she agrees to speak to a hostile room• The oppositional student who emailed her four years after graduating• What she does when the work gets heavy, including the dominoes in her bag• How a story travels now, and why independent media and social changed who gets covered• Bullhorn, microphone or keyboard, and which one she'd pick New episodes of Well Said. Watch on YouTube, listen wherever you get your podcasts. Chapter Timestamps00:00 Intro00:54 The front porch classroom in East Oakland02:34 Gary, Indiana and who gets news coverage05:09 Ella Baker and group-centered leadership06:17 Womanist leadership08:27 Running for vice president with Dr. Cornel West10:05 What the campaign showed her about the two-party system12:48 What Dolly Parton meant to her16:18 What AI can't do18:16 Why she stopped hiding the voice that guides her23:34 Staying grounded on planes and in airports27:04 Parenting by talking to your kids31:29 Love at the center of the work37:23 The three things everyone can give40:08 Rapid fire and speaking to a hostile room44:12 Bullhorn, microphone or keyboard