Making our way to a better future, together—Part 2
Our greatest hope lies not in “strongmen” but in forging relationships across divides
“Advocacy is great, and policy change is necessary. But they are not sufficient.
We have to solve the problems our communities face every day
from gun violence to the impact of climate change.
To do that, you have to work across differences.”
– Joe Bubman,
Founder and Executive Director of Urban Rural Action
No matter who wins the election in November, we have our work cut out for us. The forces that catapulted Trump to the White House, gave birth to MAGA, dismembered the Republican party, jeopardized the peaceful transfer of power, and resurrected Trump as a candidate in 2024—are not going to magically disappear.
As long as we the people live in groups divided along demographic and ideological lines, we will be at risk. For decades now, these groups have grown increasingly closed and insular within and more distant and hostile across. It is this trend—this growing closer within and more distant across—that makes polarization so toxic that roughly 47% of likely voters are hoping to elect an autocrat to make America whole, while roughly the same percentage are looking to deny him that office for the same reason.
It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of this election for our future as a nation. At the same time, we must never forget that our salvation as a democratic people ruled by law does not lie in elections alone. It also lies in more and more of us working across lines of difference to transform the forces that led us to this moment in time. It lies in more and more of us joining and supporting the efforts of people like Joe Bubman and organizations like Urban Rural Action. Their story will help you see why.
A new story takes on an old problem
I’ve known Joe Bubman for years as a friend and a former colleague of my husband’s at Vantage Partners, a consulting firm with its roots in the Harvard Negotiation Project. While at Vantage, Joe negotiated a secondment to the international, non-governmental organization Mercy Corps in 2011, working with teams in Kenya and Guatemala. He then joined Mercy Corps full-time in 2014 to advance the agency’s global peace-building efforts. The work was gratifying, and he had no urge to leave, but after the 2016 election, Joe and others on the Peace and Conflict team at Mercy Corps grew concerned:
“We came together the day after the election to grapple with what had happened. It wasn’t just the outcome that concerned us. We were seeing in our own country the same dynamics that fuel violent conflict in East Africa, West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America: the political polarization, the divisive rhetoric from our elected officials, the declining trust in neighbors and institutions, the misinformation and disinformation, the tensions between social groups, the easy access to guns.
“It's a long list, but it occurred to us: Might we be able to apply the same peace-building approaches that work in these other conflict zones here in the United States? We wanted to know: if we bring folks together across differences to work together to solve problems—as we did in these other places—might we be able to build the kind of enduring, trusting relationships that transcend some of the deep societal divisions tearing us apart.”
In 2018, confident the same approach would work here, Joe founded Urban Rural Action, where the following two initiatives are bringing Americans together across geographic, generational, racial, and partisan divides, each one reinforcing the other:
Community action programs that recruit, select, and train “Uniters” to work in diverse teams of seven to help four contiguous counties in four states problem-solve together, including south-central Pennsylvania, southeast Wisconsin, Southern Oregon, and Arizona.
Collaboration skills workshops aimed at emerging leaders, nonprofits, small- to medium-sized businesses, and schools to strengthen their ability to talk constructively across differences, manage interpersonal conflict, handle difficult emotions, analyze complex societal challenges, and design community interventions.
As a fellow traveler into the often-dark world of intergroup conflict, I couldn’t help but wonder: How has Joe sustained himself these past 13 plus years? His answer is instructive for all of us, even if his orientation likely comes more naturally to him than it might to others of us:
“I've always been an optimist and a problem solver, a let's-just-move-forward person. So while there's a lot of pessimism and despair at times, and also fear, I try to put those out of my mind or on the back burner, so I can focus on what I can control.”
Among his fears is the potential for violence around our upcoming election:
“The division in our country is deepening and toxic polarization is worsening, and so the potential for targeted violence is increasing in the lead up to and aftermath of the election.”
Given his orientation, this growing division and polarization present, not just a threat, but an opportunity for Joe to do something positive:
“Whether that's strengthening the skills needed to navigate difficult conversations, or participating in a community awareness briefing, or being aware of the signs that someone could become violent, or getting trained in de-escalation techniques to defuse situations at the polls, or supporting community efforts to contribute to public safety.”
To keep his eyeballs above the water line as we get closer to the election, he only consumes news that satisfies his appetite for learning and problem-solving:
“I want the news to be useful to me. If I'm learning something new about somewhere in the world that I know little about—say, an analysis of the US posture in the South China Seas—that’s interesting to me. But if it's just, ‘Oh, here's the latest demand that this leader made, or here's the latest attack by this group,’ that's not useful and doesn't serve me. It’s more likely to lead me to despair and to distract me from the focus of my work.”
Like me, Joe is convinced that:
“In our multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-generational, multi-ethnic society, it is both possible and necessary to build relationships with people who are different from you.
“There are lots of opportunities, organizations, and frameworks that can help people—not just talk or complain about issues—but solve problems with those different from you.”
Ultimately, Joe hopes that
“. . . more and more people will get involved; that they won’t view people who voted differently as the enemy, but rather as fellow Americans or fellow Wisconsinites or fellow Pennsylvanians, fellow Oregonians and Arizonans.
And then, sometime after the election, rather than retreating into our corners and only associating with people who voted the same way, I hope we repair our social fabric. I hope we connect with people with whom we strongly disagree but with whom we must ultimately work in order to move our nation forward.”
Moving our nation forward
As Joe’s story and thousands of others like it show, we don’t need to start from scratch in our efforts to move beyond polarization, repair our social fabric, and rebuild our democracy.
A new American story is emerging—one that embraces the multigroup nature of our democracy. As documented in Remaking the Space Between Us and this newsletter, hundreds of thousands of citizens are already building relationships across divides while working together to solve common problems in locally rooted, nationally connected groups and organizations.
Their collective efforts are remaking the space between us: opening up the narrow mental space within groups and closing the social and physical distance across groups.
The reason is as simple as the problem is complex: When people work together on common problems, their real-life experience—unmediated by the press and politicians—complexifies their beliefs, narratives, and stereotypes of each other, allowing them to close the distance across groups, to reduce polarization, and to solve problems they desperately want to solve.
At a time when our democracy is under attack,
this movement is rising up to protect our body politic
against threats within and outside our nation.
Although their story goes largely unnoticed by a media that leads with what bleeds, it is gaining momentum and coalescing more and more. Bridge-building networks like the Listen First Project, the New Pluralists, Citizen Connect, the Horizons Project, and others are bringing organizations like Urban Rural Action together into a citizen-led movement that embraces the multigroup nature of our democracy and seeks to rebuild it on a more collaborative, less adversarial foundation.
Our job—yours and mine—is to extend their reach, accelerate their efforts, and amplify their impact, so we can move forward as a nation.
Want a better future? Check them out, get involved, offer support.
As reggae musician Jimmy Cliff said, you can get it if you really want, but you must try, try and try, try and try. You’ll succeed at last.