In today’s polarized climate, working across our differences to solve tough problems can sometimes feel hopeless. To address this problem and to offer citizens a way to become involved, The Listen First Project has created “The Bridge-Building Innovation Showcase.” As the title implies, this innovation program selected five teams of Americans from across the country to work across differences to tackle significant problems in their own communities.
The projects these citizens addressed differed depending on the assessment by each group as to what problems they could effectively focus on in their community. The teams in each community felt so strongly about the importance of bridging divides in service to their communities that they completed the work in time allocated outside of their day jobs.
Today, we feature the problem identified in these five communities plus the action taken and the secret sauce that each group found to turn ideas into action.
Tillmook, Oregon
- Problem Identified: The need for financial education and empowerment.
- Action Taken: As part of UR Action's Uniting for Action on the Oregon Economy, we worked with Financial Beginnings Oregon to develop a plan to train volunteers and offer financial literacy classes through community partners and area schools.
- Secret Sauce: They humanized the topic of financial literacy by showcasing local heroes' journeys from financial frustration to financial freedom.
- Video presentation by the team
Lexington, Kentucky
- Problem Identified: The need for a network of people engaged in creating community resilience in the face of climate change.
- Action Taken: Recognizing that conversation is a powerful tool to effect change but that conversations about climate change can be intimidating, they facilitated conversations between community members in ways that generate genuine connections between people.
- Secret Sauce: They managed a yard sign library full of positive messaging to stir conversation!
- Video presentation by the team
Muskegon County, Michigan
- Problem Identified: A lack of housing and safe places for youth to gather.
- Action Taken: Upgraded a city park, revitalized a high school field, created a community center, and helped youth learn how to build houses.
- Secret Sauce: They engage the rest of our community to ensure our actions align with their vision of bettering our surroundings.
- Video presentation by the team
Franklin County, Pennsylvania
- Problem Identified: Targeted violence can occur when we lose sight of each other’s humanity. Our current political division increases tribal ways of viewing each other.
- Action Taken: Through UR Action’s Uniting to Prevent Targeted Violence in South-Central PA, we’re working to expand Franklin County residents’ awareness of resources currently available to meet basic life needs.
- Secret Sauce: They realized they all had a desire to address violence by collaborating with people with different perspectives, and that starts with active listening.
- Video presentation by the team
Emporia, Kansas
- Problem Identified: The Hispanic community is experiencing poor health outcomes due to unequal access to health information and services.
- Action Taken: As part of UR Action's Uniting for Action on the Oregon Economy, we worked with Financial Beginnings Oregon to develop a plan to train volunteers and offer financial literacy classes through community partners and area schools.
- Secret Sauce: They humanized the topic of financial literacy by showcasing local heroes' journeys from financial frustration to financial freedom.
- Video presentation by the team
Louisiana
- Problem Identified: Incarcerated Louisianans suffering from unconstitutional, non-unanimous convictions without a judicial remedy.
- Action Taken: They formed the Unanimous Jury Coalition and succeeded in mobilizing Louisiana voters to abolish a Jim Crow era law in LA that allowed non-unanimous convictions.
- Secret Sauce: The built out the largest ballot initiative campaign in Louisiana's history with some of the most conservative Republicans and most liberal activists leading the movement, together speaking to values that resonated with people across the state.
- Video presentation by the team
Last month, the participants from the above groups came together for the 2023 Bridge-Building Innovation Showcase. The event featured the community member teams showcasing their efforts and offering citizens from across the country the opportunity to learn about these important initiatives and to engage in conversations as to future opportunities in their own communities.
The Bridge-Building Innovation Showcase proves there is a solution to the toxic polarization that is dividing us as a nation. The Listen First Coalition 500+ organizations are working daily to bring Americans together across divides to listen and understand each other, to find common ground, and to make bridge-building and collaboration the norm in America.
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Trump is traveling to Long Island to tour law enforcement facilities in Nassau County and rally support for local Republican candidates ahead of the upcoming midterm elections
Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself
Is it possible that our President has simply not traveled enough?
Born and raised in Queens and attending Fordham University in the Bronx, Donald Trump has no record of traveling outside New York until he was over 20, when he transferred to a college in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. Were his formative years amiss, then, in his learning about other places and other people?
Is his view akin to the famous New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg, an illustration of the United States with New York City as the epicenter of the country and the Hudson River the border of the known world? We can now at least add Washington, D.C., and Mar-a-Lago to the map of “the realm.”
Our President has now traveled some, but what we recommend is another kind of travel. Not a state-sponsored trip or a venture to scout locations for future Trump Towers. This would be a genuine travel experience, enriching and eye-opening, showcasing other cultures and ways of living.
It will extend far beyond viewing military parades, hobnobbing with such “understanding” world leaders as Kim Jong Un, or taking tea with the King.
WHERE, then, should the President go? As Elon Musk’s Starship spacecraft is not yet ready to take passengers to Mars, perhaps he could explore our own vast country?
Maybe he could travel to “flyover country,” the farming states, where his ying-yanging tariffs and trade restrictions have played havoc with rural economies. Or possibly to California, number one in homeless U. S. citizens, and while there, regale homeless veterans (approximately 32,500 nationwide) with tales of his brave exploits invading and bombing foreign countries.
Or he might tour the Great Lakes, and rename the other four?
WHEN should he go? This will be tough, as he is very busy building his ballroom and renaming bodies of water.
How about a trip in early November, around the midterm elections? Despite the long-discredited accusation of widespread voter fraud, it would be reassuring to know he might be so caught up divvying out ladles of soup in a soup kitchen somewhere that he wouldn’t remember to deploy the military for “election security.”
HOW will he travel? He should definitely not take his Qatari-donated, newly renovated 747, especially after last time, when he had to be smuggled off clandestinely in a catering truck. It’s unlikely any traveling companions, like the Secretary of State or of the Treasury, are going to fall for the ruse a second time. Besides, we may need those people. No more decoys!
Perhaps the President could fly commercially, although this likely would expose him to undue suffering. Without gold bathroom fixtures and maple wood floors, the trip will be no “Luxury Experience.” If only he still had his “Trump Shuttle,” bought with a massive loan he later defaulted on, saying then, “I’m smart. I got out at a good time.”
Considering the potential pitfalls, maybe it’s best the President travel incognito, disguised perhaps as an elderly woman wearing a lot of bronzer.
Wherever, whenever, however: our President needs a vacation.
Moreover, we need a vacation from him.
If the President refuses our travel suggestions, here’s another idea:
Let’s get him a pet! He has never owned a pet. As we know with our children, pets teach essential life lessons: compassion and empathy; they instill a sense of responsibility. There is a well-established connection between those who can care for a pet and those who can care for people.
So, which pet should we choose? A puppy? A kitten? A boa constrictor?
Imagine, the President may even decide he likes having a pet. After all, what is more obedient than a well-trained dog, besides possibly the Cabinet? And what is more docile than a sweet kitten, other than plausibly the Supreme Court?
The President may even become more mellow with a pet afoot and less likely to slap tariffs on our allies, or attempt to annex our neighbors, or bully our Congress. (Realizing, of course, a bully requires active participation from the bullied to maintain his status.)
Maybe we should do both: get the President a pet and devise a travel plan for him. (Do you think we could possibly convince him to leave his phone at home?)
Let’s go for it! After all:
Travel far enough, you meet yourself. (David Mitchell)
And for our President, that would likely be the most profound discovery of all.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."