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Bridge Builders

Colleague Activities
Braver Angels
Braver Anges seeks to diminish the growing partisan animosity which now threatens the United States. Theywork to bring Americans together to bridge this divide and strngthen our democratic republic.

BI Article
Nealin Parker Talks about Search USA's Efforts to Reduce Polarization and Tension in the United States
Heidi Burgess and Nealin Parker talk about how Search for Common Ground is adapting its pathbreaking international peacebuilding work to healing divides in the United States.

BI Article
Katie Hyten Explains how Essential Partners is Taking Dialogue to Scale
Essential Partners has figured out both how to scale dialogue to the community level (if not beyond) and to make the relationship improvements dialogue engenders sustainable over the long term.

Colleague Activities
Essential Partners
EP gives people the means to strengthen relationships, deepen belonging, and renew hope in their communities through dialogue and other communication and collaboration tools.

Colleague Activities
Livingroom Conversations
LRC connects people across divides and within communities to build understanding through conversation.

BI Article
Ted Wetzel's Disagreement Fitness
Democracy only works if people understand how to work through disagreements constructively. "Disagreement Fitness" is a way to strengthen such skills.

BI Article
Responsibilities of Bridgers -- And The Rest of Us
David Eisner observes that bridgers serve as a critical portal for ideas on each side to be heard, understood and considered by the other when they are too angry to listen to the other on their own. Are bridgers the only people who can do that?

BI Article
Bridge-Building in Times of Hyper-Polarization: An ACR-EPP Webinar
A report on the webinar Guy and Heidi Burgess did with the Environmental and Public Policy Section of the Association for Conflict Resolution, focusing on how environmental and public policy mediators might be able to help strengthen U.S. democracy.

Related Folders
Weak Societal Integration
Robert Putnam is famous for his book Bowling Alone which documents the break down of social ties in the United States. Societal integration is essential in keeping societies together. Without it, it is easy for both internal divisive actors or external enemies to ferment strong enough conflicts to break a society apart.

Related Folders
Integrators
Integrators focus on reaching out to those who feel alienated from and left behind by the larger society — people who have lost so much hope that they are falling victim to the various diseases of despair.  Especially worrying are those who have crossed the line into destructive nihilism where they are so resentful of the larger society that they want to do all they can attack and destroy it

Colleague Activities
Bridge Alliance
An organization of organizations that are actively working to bridge the partisan divide that is undermining democratic institutions.

Colleague Activities
Livingroom Conversations Resources
We've highlighted LRC before, but haven't focused on their excellent resources for the times we get together with family and friends.

Colleague Activities
Listen First Project
Listen First enhances the impact, visibility and voice of the interpersonal bridge building field by aggregating, aligning, and amplifying the efforts of 500 #ListenFirst Coalition partners.

Colleague Activities
National Coalition or Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD)
A network of innovators who bring people together across divides to discuss, decide, and take action together effectively on today's toughest issues. NCDD serves as a gathering place, a resource center, a news source, and a facilitative leader for this vital community of practice.

Colleague Activities
Parallel Networks
Parallel Networks is dedicated to combating polarization, hate and extremism in the US and abroad. Founded by a former Al-Qaeda member and the NYPD officer who arrested him.

Colleague Activities
Police2Peace
Police2Peace is a national nonprofit with members from the activist and police communities. Its mission is to unite police departments and communities around programs that uplift and heal them.

Colleague Activities
YOUnify
YOUnify is a nonprofit project which works to (1) reduce polarization and cultural division by uniting people from business, philanthropy, impact investing, non-profits, government, inter-faith, arts , media, and grassroots organizations working to problem solve together.

Colleague Activities
BridgeUSA
BridgeUSA is a youth-led nonprofit organization that creates spaces on high school and college campuses for open discussion between students about political issues.

Colleague Activities
A Tale of Two Karens
They are political polar opposites, but through Braver Angels, they're forging a path toward productive conversations, and even friendship.

Colleague Activities
Empathy Circle Game
The Empathy Circle Game was created to enrich listening and communication skills through a series of engaging in-person group activities.

Colleague Activities
Conversations That Matter
A free guide from the Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom to inspire conversations about values based on their "guidelines for life."

Colleague Activities
Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding
Podcasts highlighting the experiences of international religiously-motivated peacebuilders, plus many more text profiles of religious peacebuilders with descriptions of their work.

Colleague Activities
With no waitstaff, menus or regular hours, this café isn't your average coffee house
A restraurateur provides the opportunity for meaningful interactions with people whose paths may not otherwise cross while learning something new --- and maybe gaining a new perspective or even a friend.

Colleague Activities
The New Pluraists: Meet the Field Builders
Profiles of people doing new pluralism work.

Colleague Activities
What Healing Looks Like: Meet the People Working Across Difference to Build Stronger Communities
A description of the 32 Healing Starts Here initiatives funded by the New Pluralists in 2022.

Colleague Activities
The Building Civic Bridges Act
A Congressional Act introduced by a bipartisan coalition to establish a pilot program within AmeriCorps, focused on building relationships across lines of difference, led by a new "Office of Civic Bridgebuilding."

Colleague Activities
Collaborative for Compassionate Civic Engagement: the Civics Corps
The Civic Corps is made up of community college students apply Maslow's human needs theory to host intergenerational dialogues and help community organizations meet their civic missions.

News and Opinion
Danya Rumore: To disagree better, we need to increase our conflict competence
In response to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox's "Disagree Better" Initiative, a quick and readable summary of what "disagree better" means in practice.

News and Opinion
My Friend, The Zionist
A rare look at what an in-depth conversation between friends who have been divided by an extraordinarily deep, and perhaps unbridgeable, conflict looks like.