When ideology builds barriers between neighbors what happens when empathy begins to break them down?
Central Florida Public Media and StoryCorps are bringing together strangers with differing political views for guided One Small Step conversations.
Sydney Kinne, 24, has long held conservative values, but said when the ICE raids began in January, she was forced to reconsider where she stands on certain issues.
Ethan Elhajj, 22, also grew up with conservative values, but said after the events of January 6, 2020, his politics began to shift left.
“I was a Trump supporter, but after January 6 and seeing everything that had happened, I started taking a much closer look at not just Donald Trump, but also at my own beliefs and what I was supporting, and really kind of evaluating if that is something I wanted to support,” Elhajj said. “I came to the conclusion the answer was no, and that was my first break from, like MAGA politics, and it’s been a progressive shift since then.”
He turned the question around to Kinne, asking her about her beliefs.
“I would say, though conservative, this year, in January, my ideas, my perspectives, opinions, started really changing. I always had a very strong opinion, this is what I believe when it comes to immigration and our border policy, and this is just not changing, because this is my truth,” Kinne said. “Well, you know, that changed, and so I'm kind of in a weird place of lone-wolf figuring it out.”
“I really respect that,” Elhajj said.
Meet Sydney Kinne
Kinne’s journey began in a small Ohio town and took her across the globe, she decided not to go to college and instead taught dance and ministry around the world.
“We were never raised in a political house, we were always strictly just a faith based church,” Kinne said. “My parents were pastors, I was involved in ministry, so we never talked politics.”
Kinne said it wasn’t until Trump hit the campaign trail in 2015 that things changed for her.
“When Trump started making the scene into politics, calling out Obama, we started noticing it,” Kinne said. “Very quickly my family got extremely involved in politics, very much of a 180 from what we usually were.”
After moving to Florida, she said she became an outspoken conservative voice online, gaining over 150,000 followers and partnering with Turning Point USA’s influencer program.
“I started showing up to so many Trump rallies. I traveled all over Florida doing interviews,” Kinne said. “I worked with Trump's cabinet members so I was very involved in his administration and just campaigning for him in general.”
Kinne said she remained in full support of President Trump and his administration until the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids began earlier this year.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, in the first 50 days of Trump’s second administration, ICE made more than 32,000 enforcement arrests.
“I have a lot of friends that are first generation American, and so they're definitely being they're feeling the pressures of that and watching that happen is affecting me, because I feel for them,” she said.
Kinne said her family still holds firm to their conservative views on border and immigration policy, leaving her in a state of limbo as she figures out where she stands.
“My family's still very conservative, and that's been a lot of tension and conversations,” she said.
Meet Ethan Elhajj
Elhajj is a second-generation Arab American. He’s currently a senior at the University of Central Florida studying psychology.
“I really enjoy learning about how people work, and it's not just on an individual level, but also kind of the sociology perspective for how people operate in mass,” Elhajj said. “There's a lot to explore in this world, but I think people are the most interesting topic.”
While January 6 marked the start of Elhajj’s shift toward left-leaning politics, the October 7 attack in Israel sparked another turning point.
“Watching the fallout from that on both sides, it made politics a lot more personal to me. I have family still in Lebanon, we have family friends in Palestine,” Elhajj said. “My parents did mission work in Israel for a while, trying to kind of bridge the divide and go and just as Christians bringing light to the area.”
However, Elhajj said he believes what we ended up seeing was a genocide.
“It’s not as disconnected as it is for other people. For me, it just kind of brought to light that there is a lot going on in the world, it's not just about American politics and domestic things,” Elhajj said. “The moral struggle of realizing that I'm personally paying for it out of my paycheck, and that it kind of rocketed me into, okay, I need to find a way to get involved.”
That realization shaped his next steps.
“At first I was like, I'm really gonna focus on trying to be a psychologist in the Middle East. I'm gonna go learn Arabic, try to work with Doctors Without Borders, maybe try to find a role in the UN where I can have some sort of influence on this,” Elhajj said. “From there I saw a lot of other issues and I'm like, I think I just want to be in politics in general to help make things a little bit better that way.”
While he’s not overseas yet, Elhajj is currently running the student organization of Rising Voices Collective, advocating for working class issues like healthcare access, across the state of Florida.
The Takeaway
It didn’t take long for Kinne and Elhajj to reach the topic of the Israel-Gaza conflict, and after Elhajj shared his perspective, Kinne openly shared hers as well.
“A genocide is taking place, and you cannot turn a blind eye to that,” she said. “If you're turning a blind eye to that I feel like I have no other option but to say you're making a decision to turn your back on a human life, and if you're pro life, what are you doing? We say we're pro life, but what only when it's in the womb? We care less when they're adults. We care less because they look different than us.”
The tension in the room lifted and Elhajj seemed surprised that they agreed on something so big.
“It is refreshing, to say the least, to see someone that had a similar progression, an appreciation for a lot of right wing values and Christian values, while also acknowledging the genocide and how bad that is. That's not something that we see enough of,” Elhajj said.
The conversation turned to what they hope for the future of America, if they set politics aside. Kinne wants to live in a more accepting world.
“I would love to have an America that is way more full of radical compassion, but not a type of radical compassion that allows anything and everything,” Kinne said. “It's a common phrase, America is a melting pot. I disagree. I think America is a salad bowl, like there's ingredients, a melting pot is you boil everything down into one singular vibe, and I think that's good, but I think there's beauty in diversity, and America is full of diversity.”
“I really like that look on things, and also, I'd never thought of anything like the salad bowl analogy,” Elhajj said.
“What about you?” Kinne said. “Politics aside, what kind of America do you want to see for the next generation?”
“I want to see us be the nation I was told about growing up. One where we fight for freedom for everybody, and we all have these unalienable rights handed down to us from the founding fathers or God or whatever,” Elhajj said. “ I feel like I was raised with a very idealistic view of America. I mean, we're the wealthiest country on the planet, we're the most powerful country on the planet, and I'm not seeing us use that wealth or power to bring good to Americans and the world, like we can.”
They ended the conversation on the same note.
“I want to hand down the America I was told about, power back to the people,” Elhajj said.
“Power back to the people,” Kinne said.
