This TED Talk features domestic peace advocate Joan Blades and technologist and activist John Gable,

recorded live at TED Women 2017. Do you have politically diverse friends? What do you talk about with them?

I'm a progressive. I live in a town full of progressives. And 15 years ago, I didn't have any conservative friends.

Now I have a wonderful mix of friends, and they include John.

I am not a progressive.

I'm a Republican who grew up in a Republican family in the conservative South

and even worked in Republican politics locally and the national

level. But the last 24 years I've been in technology and living in a very progressive area.

So I have a lot of progressive friends, including Joan.

So I was born in Berkeley, California, a notoriously progressive college town.

And I live there now.

In 1998, six months into the Monica Lewinsky Clinton impeachment scandal,

I helped co-found MoveOn.org with a one-sentence petition.

Congress must immediately censure the president

and move on depressing issues facing the nation.

Now, that was actually a very unifying petition in many ways.

You could love Clinton or hate Clinton and agree that the best thing for the country

was to move on.

As a leader of move on, I saw the polarization just continue,

and I found myself wondering why I saw things so differently

than many people in other parts of the country.

So in 2005, when I had an opportunity

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