Depolarizers > Polarization

2024's Word of the Year highlights a need for depolarizers.

ICYMI, Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2024 was “polarization.”

As Americans watched members of our two parties rip each other apart last election cycle, I’m sure that comes as a surprise to no one.

Last year – “the year of polarization” – Welcome launched its first podcast, The Depolarizers. On it, we’ve had guests help us understand the history of polarization in America, those across the country and around the world who are effectively reducing polarization, and the ways in which we can all individually work to depolarize our country.

Episode Five guest Didi Kuo laid out polarization and partisan politics plainly: “Partisanship [is] just something that describes how you participate in politics. You’re not doing something more noble if you are nonpartisan. And if we have goals that are partisan, that’s also fine. That’s just what politics is. The partisanship that I think people feel so alienated by, and it’s understandable, is since the 1990s, we’ve seen a real rise in partisan polarization. And what that means is the two parties used to be more closely aligned or able to find agreement on different policy areas. And then they diverged.”

And while polarization was the word of 2024, there were still some good-news stories that validated our thesis that polarization is not law: Congress quietly passed several big bipartisan bills addressing gun violence, infrastructure, and postal reform. And, notably, all of Welcome’s Win the Middle slate over-performed the top of the ticket, exhibiting Republican and independent support for Democrats.

Our brand and mission is depolarizers – the word we hope will be Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2028 (a girl can dream, right?). Depolarizers cultivate relationships and earn trust across party, racial, gender, and other lines to achieve shared goals. Any two people will share views in common and still have areas of disagreement. While polarizers seek to focus on those areas of disagreement to create divisions they can exploit, depolarizers seek to make change by finding common ground.

Consider a simple gesture on Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s X feed this year. In a Washington State tradition dating back to 1972, Rep. Perez hands off a silly painting the most junior Washington House member must display in their office to Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Republican, and Rep. Emily Randall, a Democrat. Marie remarks in the post that she’s, “excited to work alongside them on a bipartisan basis for folks across our state!” Small bipartisan gestures and traditions like these help depolarize Congress.

Rep. Perez also made a buzz on social media last year after fixing Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx’s car. The two had worked together on a bipartisan bill to keep AM radio in newly manufactured vehicles.

In the same way you don’t protect democracy by just talking about it, but practicing it, you don’t end polarization by talking about it. You end polarization by actively depolarizing.