On the long drives between stops, I asked the researchers about their views and what they had been hearing around the country. They admitted that some of the things they had heard had shocked them. In South Florida, Hale told me, a local chamber of commerce official had calmly asserted, "We don't have any Muslims here, and that's a good thing, because Muslims are trouble."
Hale, a tall woman with a breathy voice and a mop of curly red hair, had come to Wisconsin fresh off a silent Zen meditation retreat in California. She had spent her career building organizations and training activists to work for social change. Instinctively warm and curious, she easily struck up conversations with strangers and often ended interactions with hugs. Hers was a politics of empathy, she told me. "Whether you're talking about nonviolence or feminism, it's really the same idea: Everybody matters," she said.
When she heard views that challenged her sense of empathy—Muslims were bad, welfare recipients were leeches, women should not have careers outside the home—Hale reminded herself that she was there to listen, not to judge. "People have said stuff I was surprised to hear them say out loud," Hale told me. "But we have to learn from that, too. Whatever they believe is true, because it's true for them."