Week Two: Bridge Builders
“Bridge builders believe in accountability. They believe in challenging people’s beliefs because you can’t build a bridge without ensuring that the structure is anchored to a firm foundation of truth.”
Our second summer 2021 series is focusing on the challenges and opportunities facing those who are seeking to reunite our divided nation. In this second week of the new series, we consider how some people can function as “bridge builders” bringing together people of difference in meaningful ways. In a recent interview for the nationally syndicated “The Bottom-up Show” hosted by Rob Kall, USA Today’s Nathan Bomey talked about his new book Bridge Builders: Bringing People Together in a Divided Age (Polity, 2021).
For Bomey, what “bridge builders” don’t do is as important as what they do, “… bridge builders are countercultural. They do not accept buzzwords. They do not use labels. They choose nuance over caricature because they realize that boxing others in also boxes themselves out of the possibility of forging meaningful connections that can lead to genuine change.”
The video at the link below runs a little less than an hour.
To Learn More:
An essay Nathan wrote on Bridge Builders for the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy is available at the first link while the book itself is available through the second.
Coming Up In October
Nathan Bomey will be back with us live on Thursday, October 14 at 7pm when he will visit with us about a new documentary on Detroit’s historic municipal bankruptcy based on a previous book of his, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), and his award-winning reporting for the Detroit Free Press.