This is the fourth piece in the Blueprint for Belonging commissioned papers and conversations series, "New Organizing Strategies for California’s Future." It features Miguel Hernandez of the Orange County Congregation Community Organization.

The Orange County Congregation Community Organization (OCCCO) is a faith-rooted, community-led organization in Orange County, focused on developing everyday leaders to organize for systemic change. OCCCO works alongside congregations, families, and youth on a wide range of issues, with the crosscutting goals of advancing dignity, equity, and belonging for all. 

Miguel Hernandez has been the executive director of OCCCO for 12 years. He was born and raised in Santa Ana, CA, the son of immigrant parents, Feliciano and Maria Luisa Hernandez, who are from Zacatecas, Mexico. Committed to social justice, Miguel focuses on developing resilient, faith-driven community leaders in low-income communities of color. He has worked closely with the faith community in Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, and Santa Ana since he began volunteering with OCCCO in 1993. Miguel holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and a teaching credential from California State University, Long Beach. He lives in Santa Ana with his wife and two daughters. Recently, he and the OCCCO team have led long-bridge canvassing efforts in Orange County.

This conversation with Miguel was in dialogue with Josh Clark, OBI’s Senior Social Scientist.

Josh Clark (JC): Our teams at OBI and OCCCO have been working closely with each other for a number of years. Most recently, we’ve been engaged in projects to bridge divides in OCCCO’s home – Orange County, California.

When I look at OCCCO’s work, the organization has always been a bridger. You bring together youth and elders, people strongly motivated by their faith and others who have no particular religious identity, people of different racial and ethnic identities. But in the past couple of years, OCCCO has been leaning into the idea of building long bridges. At OBI, when we talk about “long bridging,” we mean bringing people to a point of recognition and respect across – and in the face of – quite wide identity divides, in order to overcome dehumanizing or problematic assumptions about one another. 

Can you briefly describe how long-bridging work has looked for OCCCO?

Miguel Hernandez: Sure, and for OCCCO, it really has been an evolution. It’s been an evolution in our practice, specifically in regards to [door-to-door] canvassing.

We’ve always been, at our core, an organization with bridging as part of what we do, like you said. That’s because respecting the dignity of everybody is central to who we are. But I think for us, our journey has been going from the deep canvassing to long bridging as an evolution in our thinking. The idea of building relationships across differences was not new to us. But it was really helpful to have partners in OBI who had the ideas around long bridging perhaps more clearly articulated.

So as you know, we did a long-bridging pilot in Anaheim Hills. That was our first opportunity to  really systematically do long-bridge canvassing, speaking with residents across a geographic divide that is well-known locally, and that also often includes socio-economic and other divides. And we got the opportunity to be intentional in how we approach conversations on the doors in a humanizing way, thinking about the bridge building as central. That’s as opposed to persuasion; and that’s a big difference.

I think we took hold of the practice and just realized how important it is to be intentional as an organization to reach across differences, whether political, racial, class, geography, or faith. We saw how important that was to getting us to a transformational place – yes, we're doing canvassing, but we're going to focus on bridging, and that means that the persuasion part is not going to be central to our conversation. It also means thinking about how we intentionally and meaningfully connect with folks that we normally haven’t talked to. It’s true that it’s always been part of our makeup and our DNA to cross lines of difference, but recently we stopped to ask ourselves, “Okay, are we able to bridge with this particular group of people? Are we actually leaving people in this area out? Do we need to have a strategy for this other group?” And so forth.

JC: So you just made a few different distinctions that I think are really important to unpack a little bit. You mentioned deep canvassing. It’s true that a lot of times when we talk about long-bridge canvassing, people often say, “Oh yeah, I know that. That sounds like deep canvassing.” 

Long-bridge canvassing does borrow some of the practices of deep canvassing, but there are also real differences. There are small differences, and then what I think is the biggest difference is another thing that you just raised. In deep canvassing, yes, you have long conversations that involve open-ended questions, personal storytelling, and active listening. But the metric of success in deep canvassing is always around persuasion. It doesn’t start there, like maybe a political canvasser would in a traditional script. But that’s where a deep canvassing program wants to end up – changing people’s minds on an issue. That’s not the case with long-bridge canvassing. 

If it’s not persuasion, what are the goals you have for conversations when OCCCO canvassers are knocking doors in Anaheim Hills or anywhere else where you feel there’s a wide divide?

Miguel Hernandez: Yeah, something I’ll say first that’s interesting is OCCCO has canvassers who have done both, and based on our debriefing, it seems that now those canvassers tend to prefer when they’re doing bridging. In part, it’s because they don’t have to hold onto this pressure and expectation that they have to change a certain number of people’s minds. Instead, they’re there to relate, to humanize, to connect. We’ve had examples where people that they talk to are a bit tense when they first engage them in conversation, and then slowly [the residents] realize that our canvassers are not there to convince them or persuade them on anything. They’re there genuinely to listen and to connect as human beings, and to really understand one another. That’s something the resident may not have experienced before across these divides.

Now that idea of meaningful connection and humanizing, for some folks, they might think that’s not enough, as far as a goal. But I think, especially in today’s polarized and fragmented society and politics, and our overall civic culture, that needs to be a major goal. Hopefully folks doing organizing are reexamining it.

When we talk about bridging in this way, I want to be clear that we're not leaving our values behind. In fact, we’re focusing in on some. We are focusing on being curious – curious about the other person and who they are. Curious about how to relate. And this really helps, I think, change… So, you can say that our goal isn’t to necessarily change hearts and minds by persuasion. But I think there’s more of a natural, human process that happens when you're just genuinely curious about each other. And you let that curiosity grow into something new that you didn’t realize before. That can make for important change. 

Also, it’s important to say, it’s not one-directional. It's bi-directional. That’s a key part of the goal, that everyone is changing. In a way, the canvasser and the resident, or the people on different sides of the divide, you’re changing each other’s hearts and minds. It’s not one person convincing the other of something; they both are becoming open to the other.

Finally, long bridging is about leadership formation as well for our folks, and for the organization. We’re learning through these conversations, things we might not have known to ask. We’re not just checking the box of whether or not people said, yes, they agree with us, but instead, we get to ask ourselves, “What did we learn about that community that we didn’t know before? What did we have assumptions about before that, at this point, we realize aren’t true?”

JC: Right. I like what you said about how there is a more complex way of thinking about persuasion. So we started with this idea that the metric of success in long bridging isn’t how much you change people's minds. But! But, you also mentioned, people’s hearts are probably going to change somewhat when they have this type of meaningful experience. Maybe even their minds will change a little. I was talking to my colleague Mansi Kathuria about this recently. The long-bridging conversation is one where you aren’t actively persuading. But you’re having these conversations with people, they open themselves up, and you open yourself up. And it’s almost like you’re putting yourself in a situation where you can, sort of, persuade yourself.

Miguel Hernandez: [laughs] Yes, I agree. It’s that sense of vulnerability, I think. You’re open to something new. And again, the bi-directional sense of change, that you are both somewhat changing each other, is really important. That’s really humanizing one another, and draws out that common connection of humanity, rather than the idea that we each have certain beliefs that we don’t agree on and there’s no way of connecting across them.

JC: Right. When I make this distinction that bridging isn’t persuasion, I also try to be clear that I’m not trying to say bridging should replace practices of persuasion in all cases. Most social change work is going to have a place for persuasion – for explicitly trying to change minds. But it’s important to recognize that bridging is distinct, and to understand “its place,” so to speak, in the work of building a better democracy and society. How did you come to the conclusion that OCCCO needed to add long bridging to your repertoire, your set of tools, for work related to democracy? 

Miguel Hernandez: As a faith-rooted organization, we hold the belief that everybody has intrinsic dignity. And so upon reflection, thinking about our practices, and considering deep canvassing and long bridging, we realized that there were important parts of long bridging that really made that intrinsic dignity come through. Quite often, we have beliefs, but don’t have the tools or practices to carry them out. And OCCCO is always trying to learn and constantly improve ourselves and the organization. So we really felt like this [long bridging] was a practice that helped us live into our faith-rootedness as an organization. And so, we began practicing it, and learning about it, and especially as we did our long-bridge canvassing in Anaheim Hills, we saw the differences very clearly. We saw the stories and the conversations we were having, and said, “Yes, this has to be a central element to our practice, to our own development, as well as the development of others.” Both our faith and our democracy are dependent on this humanizing practice of bridging. They’re dependent especially on long bridging, when you consider the need for reaching across major differences of race and politics and geography. This really has to become part of who we are in order to tackle huge problems that we just seem not to be able to move forward, like around immigration, around housing, etc.

There needs to be trust for tackling those problems, and there’s such a difference between persuasion and bridging when you look at the trust that can be formed. If you can persuade someone and get a “yes” on something, that's great, and I think you can count that as a success. But to us, we also want to ask: “Is it building trust?” We see long bridging doing that, and so long bridging will facilitate being able to tackle some of these bigger questions and issues.

JC: I am thinking back to how you said that some of your canvassers prefer to do long bridging over traditional canvassing scripts, or over deep canvassing that seeks to persuade. And you talked about the need to build new tools and new practices for long bridging – it’s a different way of doing things. Sometimes we hear that canvassers can also start out kind of scared to do long bridging at first. What’s different about the way that you go about preparing canvassers to do long bridging, with the differences it involves from other forms of canvassing?

Miguel Hernandez: Yeah, there can be fear, and I have to say: Definitely, if you are going to canvass in places and with folks that you usually don’t talk to, there is a risk of hostility. There’s going to be risk involved in it, both emotionally and potentially physically, that folks need to be prepared to think about and process. But, you know, there’s no guarantees anytime when you're canvassing and knocking on doors.

Specifically on long bridging, we are still in the early stages of making this a more consistent part of our work. But we do a few things to prepare canvassers. I have to mention that our lead canvasser, Blandy Morales, who truly believes in long bridging, has led this work. In our preparation of canvassers, one of the things that has really helped is our work on narrative strategy and how that informs our scripts. So, the unconditional belonging narrative is something we use as a guide to develop our scripts. That has helped the canvassers from the get-go see, even just by reading the script, that this is something different. And it’s not a persuasion endeavor. They see in the script, “Okay, this is what I’m trying to do, and how I am going to relate to this person – how I can try to connect. I don’t have to be defensive.” It’s showing [the canvassers] how they can show up.

We do heavily work on ensuring that canvassers are prepared emotionally too, and that this is about curiosity. We stress that they need to take emotional health and self care seriously. They’re not being pressured that they should be reactive or counter what folks might say when they knock on doors. Instead, they should be thinking about taking a breath and being able to respond in a way that is really about listening. The focus on a mindset of curiosity is really key as we prepare our canvassers.

Finally, the debrief and following up with the canvassers is really important, to discuss and see if there are particular issues coming up. We want them going out in a healthy way, and not feeling overly pressured to get X amount of conversations.

JC: So that allows them to approach each door with patience, and not feeling like you need to hit certain numbers, which we often hear is the way a lot of campaigns are run.

Miguel Hernandez: Yes.

JC: Especially in electoral campaigns or Get Out the Vote – funding is often very driven by those numbers. 

Miguel Hernandez: Yes, correct – by [door-]knocking numbers, and, I mean that creates pressure to drive up numbers and have such-and-such knocks. With long bridging, we emphasize [instead] the quality of conversations and the depth of conversations, rather than the quantity of conversations. I mean, we do want to have a large amount of conversations, but our emphasis in our training is definitely on the quality of conversations, the depth of conversation, the connections. We don't say, “Hey, after 5 minutes, 7 minutes, you need to go to the next door.” No. We want to hear about the stories that you have that are deep, emotional, and transformational. That’s what we care about. That has to come through in trainings, and like I said, Blandy is great about being able to communicate that in our trainings to canvassers.

JC: Do you remember at all how long some of the longer conversations were when OCCCO was in Anaheim Hills talking to residents there?

Miguel Hernandez: I think the longest one was around 20 minutes. Not a lot of them were that long, but some were close to 20 minutes, and, you know, standing in the doorway with a stranger for 20 minutes is quite an accomplishment. Being able to do that in meaningful ways – it's an accomplishment.

JC: Absolutely. So, you said earlier that long bridging is a way OCCCO is living a lot of values that are rooted in the faith tradition and commitments that OCCCO has as an organization. This made for kind of a natural fit or complementarity. I wonder if you can say what you think long bridging can do for the field of civic engagement or for community organizing as a whole. What’s that larger goal that’s going to really strengthen the field?

Miguel Hernandez: Yeah, I think of it always in terms of both our community organizing field as well as our civic culture. I think long bridging as a practice in organizing can really foster the foundational connection necessary to build a civic culture and bring people to the table where transformation is possible. Often we talk about building power. I think it’s really important how we build power. If we’re talking about building power, we often say it’s important to think about whether it’s building power over or building power with people – even folks who we may not agree with. I think long bridging enables us to look at power in a way that is about building power with.

I don’t think we’re necessarily giving anything away that way either. We often feel like we might be giving something away, without anything in return. I don’t think that’s true. We’re trying to, in many ways, reset the stage. To reset so that we can have conversations – and difficult conversations. We want to bring people to the table, people that you usually don't talk to, to work alongside you and engage in conversations where you don’t necessarily agree, but you're able to move forward a conversation. That hopefully moves toward policy and structures that really benefit everybody. I think that’s part of the goal: that we're able to create a culture that considers everybody’s needs and everybody’s dignity in our decisions. And I know that’s probably very lofty goals, especially thinking that any one thing can do that. But I think the idea of bridging is such an important missing element. And I think we can oversimplify it unless we actually are practicing it.

JC: Yeah, it’s lofty in a way, but it’s also a really important reminder. Often people who have been subjected to repression and exclusion at the hands of those who have held power for a long time, we know (or suspect) that those who have power hold onto it very jealously, in part, because they fear that they might be on the other end of domination if they lose that power to those who they’ve harmed.

Miguel Hernandez: Yes.

JC: And, maybe long bridging is in part about those of us who are trying to make changes in power, to change power structures and systems themselves, to help remind ourselves that that isn’t what our intention is going to be, if and when we hold power.

Miguel Hernandez: Yes. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Also, there’s so many dynamics that involve relationships with different power dynamics. Whether it's a family dynamic or neighborhood dynamics, internal organizational dynamics – I think that this approach of persuasion and, I would say, power over tends to be most prevalent. So by developing this practice of bridging, you’re pushing forward the idea of building power with. Or as you mentioned, it’s communicating that your goal is not to dominate or have power over the other person, but to humanize and connect so that we can move forward, hopefully together, meeting everybody’s needs and their dreams. I think that’s key, because I think so often our assumption is, like you said, “Hmm, what are they trying to do here? Are they trying to just get positioned in a way where they’re going to dominate me?” That’s something that, because of our current culture, is always in the back of our head.

JC: This conversation we’re having, I feel it has really started to intersect with another piece of shared work between OBI and OCCCO, which is on this idea of “unconditional belonging.” So I wanted to ask a last question where you say a little bit about the connection there between long bridging and unconditional belonging. 

As background for the reader, when we call for unconditional belonging, that’s about recognizing people in their complexity and their multiple dimensions of who they are, and not reducing anyone’s inherent worth or dignity to, for example, how much they “serve the economy,” or how they’re “good for me.” It’s the idea that no one’s belonging should be contingent on any of that. If it is, then it’s actually so fragile that that person isn’t even really enjoying belonging. That’s why we say belonging needs to be unconditional – free from conditions. But how do you see the connection between bridging and unconditional belonging?

Miguel Hernandez: Yeah, it's so important. For us, I think it’s been so important that we’ve been working on strategic narrative as well as long bridging, and I think they go hand in hand. I often wonder whether or not our long bridging work would be successful without the unconditional belonging narrative work we did first. Because even though we at OCCCO already had present those ideas of bridging across differences, and curiosity, and humanizing folks, the unconditional belonging narrative gave us a much clearer understanding and guidance of how we want to look at people, how we want to show up and approach people. It’s been so valuable in doing that.

Thinking from a standpoint of unconditional belonging, incorporating it in our long-bridge canvassing, helps us go into talking to folks from a more non-judgmental and an open-minded focus. It also helps us catch ourselves, too! We catch ourselves in how we’re thinking about responding to people, and provides a sense of, “Okay, I am going to try to respond in a way that follows these principles of unconditional belonging” rather than just reacting. Because we still carry with us the habits of those ways of debating or trying to counter a point. But if you have a narrative to ground yourself in, you can rely on that instead, to really live into the bridging practice.

To me, they are really intrinsically connected – our faith rootedness, the practice of bridging, and the unconditional belonging narrative. They all go hand in hand. They’re different; but they’re ways of operationalizing and living out our values. They help us constantly remind ourselves that we’re trying to humanize and connect and relate to other people.

We often still think in terms of the structure of stories, and there being – each person is a victim, a villain, or a hero. And if someone is saying something we disagree with, we place them and figure out how we’re going to respond. That doesn’t lead to curiosity. You decide, “This person is definitely wrong, and I need to tell them how they’re wrong.” It can be really hard not to go there, especially if we see the person as having privilege or power. But we also know that every person has multiple different dimensions and identities – not just privilege – and they might be hurting in ways too. So we need to lean into that curiosity, even when it’s hard.

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Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in these publications are not necessarily those of the Othering & Belonging Institute or UC Berkeley, but belong to the authors and interviewees.