In a tiny California town, one man discovered firsthand how politics takes over your brain — and how you can get it back
Gary Friedman is a Jedi Master of conflict management. He has helped more than 2,000 people work through all manner of unpleasantness, from ugly divorces to corporate meltdowns. After the entire San Francisco Symphony Orchestra went on strike, canceling 43 concerts, he and his colleagues helped them come together with management and reach a new contract. He’s trained thousands of lawyers, judges and therapists around the world, and taught negotiation courses at Stanford and Harvard.
That’s how it came to pass that Gary Friedman, at age 71, drove his forest-green Mini Cooper to the county elections office and filed the paperwork. He ran for a five-year term on his local Community Services District Board of Directors, a five-member council in charge of area roads and water management. He promised a new way of doing politics. “I am committed to bringing a tone of respect, enthusiasm and openness,” he wrote in his candidate statement.
The playground at Muir Beach, located just outside of the community center, where Gary’s board meetings were held. | Courtesy of Amanda Ripley “This is a chance for a real change,” he said, “for everybody to be involved.” When someone asked about his experience managing water, Gary responded honestly. “I don’t know that much about water, but I know I can learn,” he said, his wavy white hair blowing in the sea breeze.
One member of the so-called Old Guard, a man named Hugh, had been Friedman’s neighbor for 23 years by this point. He’d actually hired Friedman to mediate a property dispute with another neighbor, years before. So Hugh had thought, initially, that Friedman would be the ideal person to serve on the board. “There’s nobody I would’ve trusted more with this job,” he told me.
He also established volunteer subcommittees, open to any and all, in hopes of bringing more residents into governing the town—just the way he’d brought the full ensemble of musicians into the room in his work with the San Francisco Symphony. There was a subcommittee for community engagement, for audits, for trails, for roads, for everything that might matter to the residents.
The feeling of winning can make the victorious side feel more aggressive, not less. Winning at just about anything, even a game of dominoes, tends to boost testosterone, researchers have “Gary felt that Muir Beach was too dependent on me.” He hadn’t even known there was a new water subcommittee until after it had been formed. “I felt a little put off,” Hugh said. “I felt like I had useful skills.”By summer, the board meetings were getting more tense. Hugh considered moving out of Muir Beach entirely. He told his grown children that he just didn’t like the feeling of the town anymore.
It was around this time that Friedman and his allies proposed doubling the water rates in the town. It was, in Friedman’s view, a matter of facing facts. Muir Beach hadn’t raised its water rates in seven years, even though water management costs had increased. Friedman was prominent enough that he could have been lecturing around the world, writing more books, and taking on lucrative cases. Instead, he had chosen to devote a good part of his time to work—for free—to help his tiny town. Where was the gratitude?
Gary walking near his home in Muir Beach, California, with his dog, Artie. | Courtesy of Trish McCall Friedman felt trapped. “The feeling of hatred coming at me is a nasty feeling,” he said. “Especially when you’re walking the dog, and you know people have said things about you that are not true, and you can’t counter them, because if you counter them, you’re giving life to them.”Friedman’s grown children tried to intervene.
It sounded like a theater of the absurd. Friedman had refused to put the items on the agenda, and so the board couldn’t talk about them— because they weren’t on the agenda. Friedman was cornered. Just two years ago, in this very same space, he had talked about bringing the magic back to Muir Beach. His family had beamed back at him from the audience.
The election defeat gave Friedman just enough time and space to realize what had happened to him. How far he’d fallen from his own ideals. There was a lot of noise in his head and plenty of blame to go around. But eventually he realized that what he’d wanted most of all was to help his neighbors understand one another, even when they disagreed, so they could make conflict useful and still solve the problems that could be solved. But pressuring people to adopt his worldview was never going to work.
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