How bridge builders are getting offline and solving problems in local communities. And you can too.
Civil society organizations are crucial to peacebuilding efforts, in the US and around the world. That includes nonprofits, school boards, churches, membership organizations and charities. A number of international peacebuilding organizations launched local programs in the United States after the 2016 election revealed heightened levels of polarization and dehumanizing rhetoric that mirrored what they'd seen in countries with ongoing violent conflicts. Now we have about 10 years worth of experience, and data from this kind of work to learn from.
Do Americans even care about bridging political divides? When people attend an event where they come to see the humanity in their opponents and learn how to disagree better, do they take those lessons home to their communities? Are these efforts scalable, or do they just reach a small number of people? Does it reduce polarization when you bring people together just to talk about polarization...or should there be a particular goal in mind? We attempt to answer these questions this episode with two guests.
Lance Walker is a barber and a community bridge builder in rural Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He's a Black man and father of mixed race children, a veteran, a small business owner and a self-described "disciple of Christ." After building a reputation for facilitating conversations across a variety of political views at his barbershop, Walker co-led two projects aimed at preventing identity-based and political violence in his area, organized by the nonprofit bridge building organization Urban Rural Action. He also served on a highly polarized school board.
Lisa Inks is the Senior Director of Evidence and Learning for Urban Rural Action. Previously, Inks worked at Mercy Corps for 10 years, serving in positions including Director of Conflict Management Programs in Nigeria and Director of Peace and Conflict Programs, where she led global peacebuilding and violence prevention strategy, program design, implementation support, and thought leadership. She is based in Indianpolis, Indiana.
LEARN MORE:
Wisconsin group defies trend by drawing more conservatives into bridge-building efforts - PBS Newshour, October 2025
200 miles from where Trump was shot, ordinary citizens combat political violence - The Christian Science Monitor, July 2024
Central Pa. community group prepares plans to tackle identity-based violence in their communities - WITF, June 2023
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions.
[00:00:00] Lance Walker: I thought I was pretty cool because I had this barbershop. I'm dealing with different aspects of society all day long. I think I navigate that space pretty well. And you do whenever you only have to see them for 20 minutes. It's a little bit harder whenever you're trying to steer this ship or you're trying to go a certain direction, and ideological stuff is getting involved, political stuff's getting involved, possible, uh, uh, religious, gender, I mean, all sorts of things.
And I learned, learned a lot about myself, that I wasn't as unbiased as what I thought I was. So now I'm at the table and I, I wanna honor my word. Okay, Lance, you got some work to do on yourself, too
[00:00:43] Jamil Simon: Welcome to Beyond Polarization, a special series from Making Peace Visible about the dangers we face in the United States from extreme polarization and what we can do about it. That voice you just heard was Lance Walker, a barber and a community bridge builder. Before getting involved in bridge building, Lance made a bit of a name for himself by cutting the hair of people with very different backgrounds, and at the same time, giving everyone a safe space to voice their opinions.
A few years ago, he was invited to participate in a local project called Uniting to Prevent Targeted Violence, organized by the nonprofit Urban Rural Action. Lance lives in rural Franklin County, Pennsylvania, where 60% of registered voters are Republican and about 20% are Democrats. The area has a small Black population and a growing Latino community.
Big national debates over things like racial justice, DEI, and guns hit home here. Urban Rural Action is a nonprofit organization founded in 2018 with a mission to bring Americans together across divides and to tackle the country's most urgent challenges. In this episode, we're getting to know Lance and Urban Rural Action as a window into grassroots efforts to combat polarization in the civil society sector.
That includes nonprofits, school boards, churches, PTAs, places where people can volunteer, like rotary clubs and veterans groups. So if you've been following this series and wondering how you can get involved, this episode is a good place to start. Lance Walker, welcome to Making Peace Visible, and thanks for being part of the Beyond Polarization series.
[00:02:25] Lance Walker: Thanks for having me.
[00:02:26] Jamil Simon: Lance, I want to start in your barbershop. You described it as a kind of a public square, and you even joke that when there's a controversial subject, you like to pull the pin and roll the grenade. Joking aside, civil discussion about politics is actually something you take very seriously, and that's rare these days.
Take us inside the shop on a day when one of those conversations gets going. Who's in the room? What happens?
[00:02:51] Lance Walker: Yeah, actually right before I got on this call, we had a really good discussion. But on an average day, uh, the makeup of my clientele used to be about 40% Black, 40% white, and 20% Hispanic. And within that makeup, as far as the racial makeup that we have, obviously all of the age ranges.
It's mostly men. I do some women's hair, but it's, it's mostly men. And the conversations, because everybody has a different life's experience that are coming from these different walks of life, I get a chance to really delve into some, uh, some topics and issues that people see things differently. You know, we're all a sum total of all of our yesterdays, and so I'm going to see something totally different than what you're going to see it because your life's experiences is gonna cause you to see things that way.
So whenever certain topics come up, I try to navigate those topics and let everybody feel that their voice is heard and that their input is, is valid. Even if I disagree with it, I think that we need to come to the table. I think we need to talk. I think more dialogue is needed than less, so I try to provide, honestly, a safe space where people can talk.
I make sure that no topic is off the table for discussion.
[00:04:02] Jamil Simon: And you, you live in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and for those listening, Chambersburg is in southern Pennsylvania, not far from Gettysburg. Like you said, you cut hair for all kinds of people, young and old, conservative and liberal, different ethnic backgrounds, so you get to see a real subset of the community on a daily basis.
What do you love about your community, and what are your biggest concerns?
[00:04:26] Lance Walker: I'll start with the good first. What I love about this community is whenever there is a need in this community, because of the different spaces that I have, uh, I used to be on the school board. I was on the school board for five years.
Uh, I started off on the board of my church about 10 years ago, then I moved on to... I'm still on this board. It's called Network Ministries. It's a after school para-church program. Then I went to the, the hospital. I was on the board, one of the committees at the hospital. Then I ended up on the board at, um, one of United Way's boards and, and then the school board.
[00:04:53] Jamil Simon: You're one well-connected guy.
[00:04:56] Lance Walker: And it's funny you said it. So by me being in those different spaces and seeing how people interact with one another, how people give and everything, when there are needs that take place, and then my men's group at church, when there are needs there, I, I see people roll their sleeves up and come with, whether it's, whether it's finances, somebody may- their house burnt down and they need clothes.
Chambersburg, this area is, it's a very charitable place when it comes down to people whenever they see, you know, certain needs and, and, and different things. On the other hand, Chambersburg is a very closed community. When I first moved here 20 years ago, this is obviously from, from some of the things as far as my observation, but also from people who lived here before I did, and they were telling me, uh, one person who said that they were, uh, they were Catholic, and when they moved in this area and they mentioned to some people that they were Catholic, they, they had gotten shunned.
Now, this is over 40 years ago, but there's not a heavy Catholic presence here in Chambersburg. And so I've seen those types of, uh, closed things. I hear conversations about, uh, immigrants, mostly Hispanic, and, and just the way people speak. "Oh, that, that Mexican guy." Well, everybody's not from Mexico. I'm right- I'm 20 minutes from Gettysburg.
I was at a meeting one time and, uh, I was just trying to explain to people What it's like for me living here in Chambersburg, not being from here, but living here and, and the dynamic of my family, because my wife is white, my children are obviously biracial, and some people were trying to tell me, "Well, racism is really not a thing here, and it's not happening, and it's not going on."
And I said, "Well, let me give you an example of what my life is like." I said, "You know, there are times that if I'm going certain places or whatever, I, I, I check and make sure whatever's going on." I said, "Are y'all aware that y- we have s- some white extremist groups that gather every year in Gettysburg?" You know, I said, "And, and this is the thing, and for you, that might not matter, and that may not be on your radar."
I said, "But the last thing I need is to be traveling somewhere, and I've got my wife and my kids with me, and we end up in a space that's not safe for us." I said, "I would almost guarantee you, if Black Lives Matter was coming to Gettysburg, you all would know about it, and you would probably be talking about it, but the fact that we have white supremacist groups that meet on a regular basis in the Gettysburg area and you don't know about it, I get it, because it doesn't affect you."
[00:07:22] Jamil Simon: Maybe invisible to you.
[00:07:24] Lance Walker: Yes, but for me, it's not, because I have my foot in several different spaces that I have to make sure that we're, we're safe. So that's kinda the dynamic of I love it here. I, I, I don't wanna live anywhere else. I'm fine where I'm at right now, but I also know that there are challenges, and I'm, I'm up to whatever I can do to use this barbershop to affect positive change, that's what I'm gonna do.
I'll be 60 here, and at this point in my life, when I hand this torch off to the next generation and to my kids, it's gotta be burning brighter than when I got it.
[00:07:52] Jamil Simon: Well, let's zoom out a bit. You said that the 2016 election prompted you to rethink your own personal relationship with politics and political disagreement, and you went through a kind of soul-searching process.
Can you tell us a little bit about that transition?
[00:08:07] Lance Walker: Yeah. And at this point, I don't even like to use the word Christian because I think that's, it's gotten a bad label, and rightfully so for some of the things that people who are claiming to be Christian, uh, some of the things that they're saying and doing.
At this point, I choose to be, uh, identified as a disciple of Christ. I'm not perfect, but I try to live by, you know, the things that I say i- in, in the red letters, you know, in the Bible and the things that, that Christ did. And, uh, I was at dinner one time and I realized I was sitting there thinking about this certain candidate, and every time I would see this candidate, they were sickening to me.
I was having dinner by myself and in the middle of, like, as I'm chewing, I literally felt this presence saying, "Hey," you know, God like saying like, "What are you doing?" Because I'm sitting there thinking about this person. And what I realized was for months and months I had stripped this person of their humanity, the way I thought about them, the way I looked at them, the way I saw them, and that's, that's not the space that I'm supposed to be in as, as a believer, as a disciple of Christ.
And I realized I had been there for a while. Then I started to think about this person and I was like, "What if I got a chance to see that person in person, meet them with their family, with their spouse, with their children, with their grandchildren, and see how they interact? If I had an opportunity to have a conversation with them, would I still hold them in that same light or would I be actually be able to reintroduce their humanity into that conversation?"
And it's easy for us to see somebody on TV and have a certain disgust and disdain, and I can have a disgust and disdain for their actions I'm not allowed to strip them of their humanity. What I'm not allowed to do as, as a disciple of Christ is to not see the Imago Dei, the image of God who they're made in.
And so that was whenever I- things started to turn around for me and I started to realize, like, I've been in a bad space here, head space and heart space.
[00:09:56] Jamil Simon: Well, you were quoted in an article in The Christian Science Monitor a couple of years ago saying that when it comes to your politics, you're sick of being put in a box.
Mm-hmm. So let's not put you in a box.
[00:10:08] Lance Walker: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:08] Jamil Simon: How would you describe your own political views at this point in time?
[00:10:12] Lance Walker: Um, honestly, I heard it said, "Our politics is not what we think. Our politics is what we do." I can tell you all day long, and we, we see this all the time from politicians, "Oh, blah, blah, blah, such and such," but then they turn around and don't do, follow through on the promise or do something opposite of what.
So you can tell me all day long, "Oh, I'm a Democrat," but I, I do this. Or you can tell me all day long, "I'm a Republican," but your actions were totally different from what you were saying. I think at the end of the day, we're all an amalgamation of those things. I think it's a misnomer for us to put ourselves in that box 'cause if you talk to me on one subject, you'll be like, "Oh, Lance is a liberal."
You talk to me on another subject, you think, "Oh, wow, this dude's as conservative as, as they get." And so that's why I refuse to, I refuse to get in a box. For me, if it aligns with my core values and with, you know, the, the scriptures and, and, and Christ-likeness, then I can get behind it.
[00:11:06] Jamil Simon: Well, you know, Lance, we invited you to the podcast today because of your community work with Urban Rural Action, which is a nonprofit organization with a mission to bring Americans together across divides to solve problems.
When people ask you what it's all about, what do you say?
[00:11:24] Lance Walker: I, I've partnered with them twice. The first one was uniting to prevent targeted violence, and then the second one was uniting to prevent political violence. But the first one, we had to commit to a year and a half of coming together with people from different walks of life, different sides of the aisle politically, gender, the whole nine.
Uh, it was about trying to literally quell and quash the targeted violence. It was violence that was specifically directed at people. Not random acts, but, uh, where people were targeting, like the LGBTQ club in Orlando or the, uh, the synagogue in Pittsburgh, the shooting that took place.
[00:11:58] Jamil Simon: And things were pretty tense in the summer of 2020 around Gettysburg.
That summer, tensions escalated after false reports spread online that Antifa activists were planning to burn flags and damage monuments. What do you remember about that period?
[00:12:14] Lance Walker: I, at that time, I, I co-chaired the district attorney's board to squash this racial stuff. When all that stuff went down, it was scary because I saw the vitriol.
I saw, living here in rural America, knowing some of my customers, not, not that my customers were doing that, I know the conversations that we have around guns. And I'm not some, like, oh, get rid of the guns type person. I've, I've been in... I was in the military, and I went through the state, Pennsylvania State Police Academy, so I've been around weapons.
I've used them. But it wasn't, it wasn't so much people having them, it was the conversations that were surrounding them because it really turned into, you could tell people were getting amped up and worked up, and it's like, man, something's liable to happen here. And I've got a lot of friends, I've seen a lot of people, a lot of different things, when it comes down to, oh, we're going to protect this or you had this, kind of this situation with, uh, Kyle Rittenhouse.
You know, those types of situations, that could happen anywhere USA, if we're being honest, and especially here whenever you're in a rural place where guns are very much a part of everyday life because it's a hunting community, and you have a lot of gun enthusiasts. And again, I'm not against guns like that, but when people are amped up and hyped like that, it's a scary thing.
[00:13:31] Jamil Simon: Well, that's what's really interesting. I mean, when you began, your group began thinking about prevention, you ended up focusing on important ancillary issues like social iso- isolation and mental health and access to community resources. How did you make the connection?
[00:13:49] Lance Walker: Well, so when we started off, we thought, well, housing is, is a thing, and I'm sure people who are living on the streets, there's a certain level of desperation and despair.
And I, I, I hope I'm not disparaging people who are homeless to make them sound like they're criminals or they're, they're gonna go out and rob you or do this, that, and the third, because that's not the case. But we know that whenever you're put in extreme situations, sometimes we'll do, you know, things that we under normal circumstances we wouldn't do.
That turned out to be a lot heavier than what we thought because those spiderwebs into so many different areas, whether it's mental health, whether it's, um, pharma, military veterans, um, whether it's finances, whether it's the size of your family. There's so many things, and so we refocused and we got with this area.
It's called the, uh, TATM, TATM team, Threat Assessment, Threat Management. And that team, it was the district attorney, uh, state police, local police, school resource, uh, officers, veteran program, mental health, and other housing programs. So there's about six different entity that came together. Now we didn't, we did not do that.
We partnered with them to try to, you know, whatever it is that we could do to help, you know, move it along and push it and get, you know, get, get some sort of traction. And I literally heard the district attorney say, he said, "You know, the, some of the policing that we've done, we can't continue to do it, that we can't continue to lock people up because number one, it, it's not feasible.
It's, it's not financially, it's fiscally irresponsible. What if we take some of these resources and put it towards not locking people up or meeting where they're at?" Before we ended the program, there were several calls that we had heard that the police got called, so now they were involving, uh, mental health, and some of these people, from what I understand, were coming along with them.
So that way it's not just the police. 'Cause the, the officers, that's a big ask of a officer to show up but doesn't have the training in mental health type assessment analysis or whatever, or somebody who happens to be a veteran. So now you can send somebody from a veterans association thing and say, "Hey, look bro, I've been there.
I was overseas too," and talk them off that ledge so it's not a- an incarceration deal, but we get them the help or the, into the spaces that they need where they can truly be helped rather than just locked up.
[00:16:01] Jamil Simon: You were appointed to the Chambersburg Area School Board in November 2020, and then you ran for a seat in 2021, and you won both Democratic and Republican nominations in the primary before winning the general election.
The board had become deeply divided along ideological lines. What were some of the issues of contention on the school board, and what did the conflict look like from where you sat?
[00:16:26] Lance Walker: I've only been in this area for 20 years. I think I've been around long enough to know and see, but I also, I also speak as an outsider.
This was a closed community. It's very, very conservative. There wasn't a whole lot of Black and Latino population compared to what it is now. And anytime there's growth, there's always gonna be growing pains. There's always going to be, they're not used to this or that or these people or, you know, whatever the case is.
From my estimation, what I've seen is, you know, Chambersburg is, you know, a little rural area, a lot of farming and warehouses. The biggest industry here, biggest maybe th- I guess three industries would be the, the school district, the hospital, uh, Letterkenny Depot. We have a, we have a Army depot here. But I just found it to be a, a closed community that, you know, if you're not from here, people can- they, they recognize and see it.
And during the time that I was on the school board, I was on the school board during the pandemic, during the, the Colin Kaepernick-type stuff, and the, you know, the racial stuff. When you don't know and don't recognize, it's hard for you to grasp something. Unless you had an experience or listened to somebody who's had that experience and you're close enough to actually hear them and find them credible, you're more than likely, you know, object in motion tends to stay in motion unless it's acted upon by an outside force.
Unless you have that, that altering experience or somebody who you're close to has that altering experience, and you can hear what they have to say-
[00:17:48] Jamil Simon: And listen to them.
[00:17:50] Lance Walker: Yes. One of the issues that came up several years ago, one of my colleagues, before I left the board, he had mentioned, he said, "Hey, we need to hire more Black and Hispanic teachers.
The Black and Hispanic population has grown." And some people said, "Well, we don't just hire teachers because they're Black or they're Latino." My estimation is, yeah, you do. There is this mindset of, especially when it comes to, like, DEI or, or whatever, people think that, oh, you're giving them a job and they're not qualified for it.
Well, no, we know what the qualifications are, and if you hired that person, they have to have that qualification. If you say you have to have a college degree and a teacher's cer- certificate, you're not going to the, to the local pool hall and saying, "Hey, who wants to, who wants to be a teacher?" They have to meet the requirements.
At that point, yes, so yes, you do hire in that space and, and for that reason.
[00:18:40] Jamil Simon: And let me ask you this. Has the bridging work that you did on the school board lead to improvements in the schools, in your opinion? Um, I know it can be a slow process, but...
[00:18:50] Lance Walker: I, I would, I would like to think so. I would like to think that we did.
We, we brought something to the table that was positive, that helped smooth, maybe smooth some things out w- on, on the school board and some of the directions that we went in. Yeah.
[00:19:11] Jamil Simon: This work has so much to do with building trust. I mean, you have a built-in trust-building mechanism as a barber, you, but you can't get the whole community in your chair. Working with Urban Rural Action provides a kind of an opportunity to apply your skills in a larger arena. Do you feel that way?
[00:19:31] Lance Walker: For sure, yeah.
E- even the, like, the introspective work that I had to do when I thought, "Oh, no, I'm, I'm sitting pretty good. I, I, I'm already doing this," you know, and that, that, that was arrogant, as if I couldn't learn more- ... or whatever else. Well,
[00:19:43] Jamil Simon: we forgive you.
[00:19:44] Lance Walker: Thank you, sir. I, I, I need that every now and then. I think that some of the, uh, the conversations that we, we had on how to go about, to be more curious, to ask more questions, to get, to delve deeper, and I don't always do that well, because in the barbershop setting, it can get raucous at times.
Sometimes you have to jump in. You have to get in where you fit in. You, you know, and sometimes it can, it can seem rude, but that's sometimes the, the culture of the barber shop and, and people. So the conversations will literally, they will move and, and, and meander along, and then sometimes they will be just as jagged and, and, and crisscrossy.
But you have to read, read the room, read the conversation, and get in where you fit in. And so, um, I don't always ask the best questions, although I do say that a excellent question will beat a good answer. Not because a excellent question gives you the answer, it makes you dig deeper for an excellent answer rather than just the good answer.
[00:20:42] Jamil Simon: Well, that's great. You mentioned in a email to our producer that you hope to inspire others to seek and spread peace, and given our mission, that's kind of music to our ears, you know? But it's interesting when people do the kind of work you do, in other countries it's referred to as peace building. In America, this kind of work doesn't get much attention.
You often hear the term bridge building. Is that how you'd describe what you're doing?
[00:21:09] Lance Walker: Yeah, 100%. Actually, when I started that, I told them, I said, "I wanna be a... Not wanna be, I am. I'm a bridge builder and a wedge destroyer. A bridge builder and a wedge destroyer." Well, well, how do you do that? Well, getting next to people.
Getting, getting... And it's messy. It's messy. What I've learned, and this is a valuable lesson that my mother taught me and my, my, my brothers and sisters. My parents split up right after I was born, um, and I was the youngest, and my mother's faith is what kept her. But we went through some, some really bad and horrible stuff at times.
You know, my, my dad, my father wasn't At the time, he was not, he was not a good person. He was not, you know, acting as such. It was of, you know, affairs and other women and, you know, we, we saw all this. But my mother, because of her faith, th- this is the type of stuff that I saw my mother do. I wasn't allowed to speak bad about my father.
He would promise, "Oh, I'm gonna come by and do this. I'm gonna take you to dinner. I'm gonna..." And, and, and there were, you know, he wouldn't show up, and there were broken promises. And I would be upset when he wouldn't show up. And then I would start, you know, saying stuff that, you know, my mother would, my mother would literally stop me and say, "Hey, the Bible says you're supposed to honor your mother and father, and the stuff that you're saying is not honoring of your father right now."
And the next thing I know, we're standing in the living room in a prayer circle. I had to pray for him. I wasn't allowed to, like, talk bad about him and do that kind of stuff. I mean, she let us vent, but, like, as far as being disrespectful, even though he was being ultimately disrespectful, and I'm saying that to say my mother constantly came back to the table for my father.
Uh, so much so that I was in the ninth grade, my dad ends up hitting rock bottom. It was a, it's, you know, gets arrested, just all kind of things, and he turned his life around. He gave his life to the Lord, started living for the Lord, and, um, my parents ended up getting back together in my 11th grade year.
My dad today, he's an ordained minister. When he turned his life around then, he never looked back, and he's a totally different person. And I don't think that he would have had the reception coming back had my mother been like, "Ah, that no good father of yours. He's, you know, he's-"
[00:23:10] Jamil Simon: Exactly.
[00:23:11] Lance Walker: So I was taught to come to the table, and I, we're, not when I say taught, that was shown to me through her actions.
And so I think if you're gonna be in this type of work, you have to, you have to know that I've gotta be resilient, gotta be resilient, and I've gotta, I have to be positive and, and understand and know that I've gotta come back to the table. That th- these little seeds that I'm planting, I might not see the results of it right now, but if, if I plant seeds, I'm gonna get a harvest.
It depends on what seeds I plant. If I'm planting weeds, well then guess what? You're gonna get weeds. Right. You want corn and planted strawberries and whatever else, then plant good seeds and you'll get that also.
[00:23:46] Jamil Simon: Lance, I wanna ask you one more question. It's clear that you've put a lot of time and energy into being a uniter and a bridge builder.
What would you say to someone who wants to get involved in bridge building work but doesn't have the kind of time or bandwidth that you have?
[00:24:01] Lance Walker: Wow, thank you for that question. That's a great question because I would be way, way out of line if I did not mention my wife and, wow, man, I'm getting a little emotional here.
The space that she gives me to do this. We are two opposite ends of the spectrum, and she knows that this feeds me, and she gives me the space to do it. If it wasn't for her and that support, I would not be doing, you know, any of this stuff. Thank you, honey. But I would say everybody has their own space and their own lane, but I would tell anybody that if you're looking to make a change, first and foremost, start with introspective work on yourself.
Do the introspective work on yourself. Number two, have integrity. Integrity matters because integrity will get you into spaces that it doesn't matter whatever type of accomplishments or, or notoriety or whatever else that you have, once you get into that space, if you don't have integrity, people will recognize that, and they won't wanna deal with you or won't want you back.
So keep that integrity to the forefront. And small things, start with small things. That's, that's what happened with me. And people will recognize it. These spaces that I'm in, I did not pursue them. I got pursued into these spaces, and I believe, uh, this is just my belief, I think that it was because I was trying to hold myself at a level of integrity in a space that when people saw, hey, man, that's a guy that I wouldn't mind having on this board or wouldn't mind partnering with and doing things with.
You know, w- write a op-ed, be sincere about it. Volunteer. I, I'm big on volunteering. When people see and know that you don't mind rolling your sleeves up over the things that really don't matter, per se. I started this volunteering and doing things when nobody was looking, and the reason why I'm on this interview today, it started with those small things like that, that, that moved me into the spaces that I'm in.
If you can't go into those spaces and have... You know, meet people right where they're at, you know, whether it's, it's homeless, going to the homeless shelter and, you know, volunteering in those spaces. If you can't do that, you're gonna have a hard time moving up and doing it sincerely, 'cause people know when you really truly care about them.
And so there, there may be some boards that, that, that are looking for board members. Ask around, and once you get into those circles, it b- it becomes easier. Well, I hope that answered some of the questions, yeah.
[00:26:15] Jamil Simon: I think it answered it beautifully, Lance, and, uh, it's been a real pleasure to talk to you. I really am grateful for your time.
So thank you very much, Lance.
[00:26:27] Lance Walker: Well, thank you all for having me.
[00:26:34] Jamil Simon: Making Peace Visible is a member of the Democracy Group, a network of podcasts united around the goal of helping listeners understand what's broken in our democracy and how people are working together to fix it. Here's another Democracy Group podcast that you might like
[00:26:52] Ad: Hi, this is Nancy Bynum at the New Faces of Democracy podcast.
Grassroots groups today are at the frontline of the battle for our democracy, powering activism that is transforming our political landscape. Join us at New Faces of Democracy for conversations with ordinary people doing extraordinary things, using their skills and talents to stand up for democracy.
With action steps to help you get going, I hope that these conversations will inspire you to take action, guide you to communities that can help sustain you, and perhaps even give you hope
[00:27:24] Jamil Simon: The bridge building organization that Lance worked with, Urban Rural Action, was founded in twenty eighteen by American peace builders who had worked overseas in conflict zones.
They were part of a cadre of peace builders who, following the twenty sixteen election, saw a need to bring their peace building work home and launch programs in the United States. Now we have about ten years worth of experience and data from this kind of work to learn from. So let's zoom out Do Americans care about bridging political divides?
When people attend an event where they come to see the humanity in their opponents and learn how to disagree better, do they take those lessons home to their communities? Should there be a particular goal in mind, a problem that can only be solved by working together? We've invited Lisa Inks, the senior director of evidence and learning for Urban Rural Action, to help us answer some of these questions.
Before joining Urban Rural Action, Lisa worked at Mercy Corps for 10 years, serving in positions including director of conflict management programs in Nigeria and director of peace and conflict programs. Lisa Inks, welcome to the show.
[00:28:34] Lisa Inks: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:28:36] Jamil Simon: Lisa, I understand you've been involved in Urban Rural Action since it was founded.
Can you tell us a little bit about its origin story?
[00:28:44] Lisa Inks: So the founder, Joe Bubman, and I both worked in international peace and democracy work at an organization called Mercy Corps. And around the mid 2010s, we started noticing, as did many Americans, that a lot of the conflict drivers we were working on abroad, like toxic polarization, decreasing trust in institutions, and media mis- and disinformation, were rampant and increasing here in the US.
So Joe decided to spin off, if you will, from International Peace Building and see what approaches we could adapt and apply here to the US.
[00:29:25] Jamil Simon: And to help us understand what Urban Rural Action does, please take us inside the beginning of a Urban Rural Action meeting. Uh, let's say you're in a room in a public library or community center for the first of one of your regional meetings.
You assume you have people who disagree in the room. I mean, after all, that's why they're there. You're the facilitator, so how do you start?
[00:29:48] Lisa Inks: Great question. I think I'll take us just a couple step backs to how we even find the people who are gonna come together into the room. So when we start a hub, which is our Uniting for Action hubs that you mentioned work in urban, suburban, and rural communities, we work with local leaders, our county coordinators, to recruit people who represent different ideological perspectives, people from different racial and religious backgrounds, socioeconomic, and they talk to them one-on-one, share different messages that will resonate with them around why it's valuable to come together to take collective action, even with people they disagree with.
So there's been a lot to actually get people to that room, and that commitment usually includes nine months of in-person gatherings of the cohort of uniters. Those are the community members And then a lot of meetings and community events along the way so that they can actually make a difference on a problem that they've identified in their community.
My colleague the other day just said, "They come for the action, and they stay for the connection." But that first gathering is always really intentionally designed, first of all, to be fun. We don't want people to feel like bridging differences is like eating their broccoli. We want them to loosen up, to be vulnerable together, to be silly, so we have a lot of games and activities.
On that first gathering, we usually do a blindfolded chocolate truffle tasting competition or something else like that. And then we introduce a shared language of constructive conversation and practice those skills.
[00:31:32] Jamil Simon: Yeah, I think, you know, when people have fun doing something, it's easier to keep doing it.
[00:31:37] Lisa Inks: Exactly.
[00:31:38] Jamil Simon: What are the urgent challenges Urban Rural Action is concerned with?
[00:31:42] Lisa Inks: I think on a higher level order, you know, we are interested in increasing social cohesion. The fabric of our society is eroding, and part of that's around trends in isolation and loneliness, and part of that is people are less willing to interact across difference and geographic sorting, et cetera.
I mean, the second thing we are trying to tackle is increasing civic participation, including making sure that people who are historically not represented in civic action and civic programs are more and more active. And then the other objective we have and the other pressing challenge is this loss of trust in institutions.
For us, I think part of that is recognizing that institutions haven't always been trustworthy, right? So how do we actually strengthen them to be more responsive to the communities they serve? However, that's different than what uniters are often focused on at the local level. They'll focus projects on tackling housing and homelessness issues, for example, in their communities, or lack of mental health resources.
And there's all of these issues that are really tangible that really affect their lives that actually people agree on. They agree it's a problem. They agree on a lot of the solutions. And so we just facilitate a process where they can move forward based on that agreement.
[00:33:04] Jamil Simon: Can you tell us about the effects of polarization on one of those geographic areas where UR Action works?
[00:33:11] Lisa Inks: Yes, absolutely. So I think we're all really familiar with the national media narratives that are polarizing and conflict entrepreneurs, if you will, at the top, who are gaining influence and traction by pulling us apart and dividing us. Unfortunately, polarization at our national level is trickling down to the local level and preventing local leaders who maybe once agreed on how to fill the potholes, that issue is now being politicized, and they're less able to take action together.
So we do see that. We see pockets of community members and leaders who have not spoken, who have not collaborated on sort of basic local issues. And then I think there's this effect on kind of the psyche that you're seeing all of these social media posts that are ugly and hateful and divisive, and you start to project that onto your neighbors, or you believe then that that's how people who think differently than you behave, even if that's not really translated yet to real life.
So then people are less likely to wanna come together unless it's accidental, unless they're already coming together in places of worship at, you know, the local Y, other sort of third spaces, and we wanna capitalize on what's already happening and, and prevent that sort of slippage of further division.
[00:34:38] Jamil Simon: Urban Rural Action is a small and relatively new organization. Is your approach different from some of the larger NGOs that do this kind of work?
[00:34:46] Lisa Inks: I think our approach has, because it's always been rooted in this collective action and this idea that we can't just talk, right? Talking can be nice, but that's not going to solve all of our problems.
We are now, I think, part of a larger trend in the sort of US peace building space of recognizing that we need something concrete for people to rally around, work on, show the benefits and fruits of cooperation. I think one thing that's different from us is we go deep, not wide. So we work in seven hubs.
We have no plans to expand and, you know, do this everywhere because it requires a lot of deep familiarity and trust with the local partners we work with, and it requires communities sort of knowing, hey, this is an opportunity we have to engage across differences year after year.
[00:35:37] Jamil Simon: And how are the hubs organized?
[00:35:39] Lisa Inks: Each hub is led by two co-directors. Ideally, those two co-directors represent pretty significant differences themselves. And then each county is facilitated by a county coordinator, like I mentioned. And in each county, we have a community partner who is a local service provider that's already trusted and embedded in the community.
UR Action really provides the scaffolding for the process. We facilitate gatherings, we do the connection bridge building, the process for enabling people to analyze a complex challenge, design a project, and then implement the project The partners are sort of the home for that project, so they take it on, it advances their mission, and then they sustain it after the project is over.
And then the uniters themselves are the ones making decisions around what to do and why and how.
[00:36:33] Jamil Simon: And what kind of projects do they work on?
[00:36:35] Lisa Inks: It really depends, and it varies pretty widely depending on what the uniter's analysis was and what they decide. So for example, in Southern Oregon, the last couple of program cycles have focused on housing and homelessness, and one of the project teams decided to create a community garden.
They then actually were able to link that up to a local resource service that then was able to get grants to expand the garden and create a food bank next to it for people who are unhoused. In other places, uniters will, for example, raise awareness around mental health resources that might be scarce and people might not be aware of.
We've had uniters focus on preventing political violence, so uniter team in Pennsylvania around the 2024 election cycle, they created a set of lawn signs against political violence, and they got people to put those signs up next to the candidate of their choice. So it was sort of this cross-partisan effort to try to prevent more political violence.
So yeah, it's, it's a grab bag. It's really fun to see what they come up with.
[00:37:48] Jamil Simon: How do you measure the impact of these projects on reducing polarization?
[00:37:53] Lisa Inks: So one thing we see, for example, is, and I'm taking a finding from South Central Pennsylvania, where there was a 35 percentage point increase in uniters who said they're comfortable having friends who are in a different political party.
So we look for kind of changing relationships. We also look for increased trust and cohesion. So we saw in Southern Oregon a 28 percentage point increase in people who generally believe their community is cohesive. We see increase in belonging and feeling emotionally connected to their community, and I think that's really critical for any sort of depolarization work.
[00:38:32] Jamil Simon: That's really important.
[00:38:33] Lisa Inks: I, I'm an evidence and learning person- ... so I aspire, we aspire to have, you know, much bigger sample sizes and be able to do randomized control trials the way we were able to do in our work abroad. But one also thread we're really trying to pull on is we know it's really important to understand and then demonstrate the link between programs like this that bring people together across differences to take action and some of our huge meta problems, and I'm thinking specifically of social and political violence.
And we do see an increase of u- uniters who reject social and political violence. That's a thread we really wanna pull on. And that atmosphere of support for violence Is so critical to actually enabling that violence to happen. And so the more we can change those attitudes, change those norms around violence, I think the, the more successfully we will be actually attacking the dangers of polarization.
[00:39:33] Jamil Simon: And unfortunately, we're living in an environment where some of the, some of that impetus is coming from above. What is the political breakdown for participation in U- as far as liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican?
[00:39:45] Lisa Inks: We aim for a pretty even split of conservatives, progressives, and people in the middle, and most of our programs achieve that.
I think the, the peace building space in the US is famous for not speaking to conservatives and for getting a bunch of progressives together to talk about how great peace is. And w- where we have really worked hard to buck that trend or to try not to fall into that trap is our team is ideologically mixed.
And so we believe if we can't do it ourselves, A, we can't expect community members to do it, and B, we need people who can speak the right language, who can talk to people about their concerns, their hesitations, why they aren't just walking into a lion's den, right? Why this is a genuine effort to bring different perspectives together.
Learning to listen, having some intellectual humility, knowing that there may be something you're missing, that's a change we hope most Uniters go through, and it's probably one of the hardest.
[00:40:49] Jamil Simon: You mentioned earlier that one thing that participants in UR Action programs learn from participating is that they actually agree on a lot when it comes to what the problems are in their communities and possible solutions.
When arguments do happen on these teams, are people disagreeing over politics or ideology, or is it about something else?
[00:41:11] Lisa Inks: I would say 99.9% of the time when there are disagreements and conflicts on project teams, which is frequent by the way, because that's part of the hard work.
[00:41:23] Jamil Simon: The nature of the beast.
[00:41:24] Lisa Inks: Yeah. But almost always, those disagreements or conflicts are the result of personality differences rather than ideological differences. That's not to say people... I mean, people have vastly different ideological differences, but they're able to come to an agreement on a s- very small local solution that just, I think, demonstrates how much there is on the table that people agree with.
And when they have a challenge working together, and we, we have tools to help them manage those conflicts and work through that, it's usually just people being people.
[00:42:10] Jamil Simon: As I mentioned before, the Urban Rural Action mission statement says you wanna tackle the country's most urgent challenges. I mean, you could argue, and some scholars have, that the more effective way to influence large groups of people is to work through elites or people with big followings in politics or even celebrities.
Is this kind of grassroots, small-scale work enough?
[00:42:33] Lisa Inks: I would first say that I think all complementary efforts are needed. So we need people working on political reform, changing the incentive structures of politicians, changing all types of the sort of infrastructure of democracy that we have, and that's really important work.
And I think there is this pressing desire and need among people in communities now to push back against the hate and division that they see. So there's this really interesting report from More In Common that came out last year called The Connection Opportunity, and it really showed that a vast majority of Americans want to come together and work across differences, but they don't know how.
They don't feel like they have opportunities to do that, to show that they actually can make a difference by working together with someone they might disagree strongly with. There are people like our organization that are doing this explicitly. There's community organizations all over the country that have been doing this for a long time.
There are all of these bright spots, and I think if we can together keep doing the work and also uplift the narrative of how Americans are maybe not as divided as it might seem if you turn on the news, then we can actually influence some of those higher-level processes.
[00:43:53] Jamil Simon: Lisa, there was a study that came out last year by a group of political scientists.
They looked at 77 interventions to reduce affective polarization. They included both in-person and virtual interactions, and they found that the effect of these interventions on the participants was really quite small, and the impacts faded over time. What's your reaction to this research?
[00:44:19] Lisa Inks: I'm familiar with some of the meta-analysis on showing some of the shortcomings of interventions that are aimed at reducing polarization.
A lot of that evidence is based on sort of lab experiment type work, right? So it's not necessarily reflecting what a lot of community organizations who are embedded in communities doing sort of deep work over time are doing.
[00:44:47] Jamil Simon: Probably hard to measure too.
[00:44:49] Lisa Inks: It is really hard to measure, and we're, we're doing our best.
I mean, one thing, having worked in the international space that I'm really struck with is just the difference in scale in terms of the level of investment. So what I could do with a team in Nigeria with $6 million, I'm trying to do with $200,000 here. I think that the, the industry is, is catching up, right?
And realizing, hey, this is sort of a hyper problem, that if we don't focus on polarization, we're not gonna be able to solve a lot of our other problems. But we're in sort of early stages, which makes it hard to get the numbers, to get the evidence, to be able to invest in meaningful evaluation. I'm really hopeful and optimistic around what sort of robust evaluations will show at the grassroots level when community organizations are investing over time in depolarization in a deep, meaningful way.
And I completely agree that engaging elites and grass tops and leaders is really, really important for changing those norms. That realization is what caused us to initiate a new type of program. So in addition to the uniters work we do, we have a nascent program where we bring institutional leaders together, and these are elected officials or other sort of leaders of different institutions.
And they come together and they will also build relationships across difference, but they will then work on reforms in their institutions, and they will work on messaging together, and they will collaborate across their own differences and then have that percolate in the community. So I do think both things are really essential.
[00:46:36] Jamil Simon: What kinds of things is Urban Rural Action doing to prevent election violence?
[00:46:41] Lisa Inks: This year we have a new program called Conservative Leaders for United America, which is that sort of grass tops local elites focus type program. And they are coming together nationally, but also in some of our hubs to design ways to prevent election-related violence.
And so for example, in Arizona, they're putting together an Arizona Together ad campaign to try and reach as many people as possible across partisan lines to promote peaceful civic participation. In Wisconsin, they have a reconciliation project that includes local history-themed Family Feud style game on political violence, and trying to engage the community in different ways.
We'll be doing some kinda national virtual events among conservative and other leaders, engaging people who have directly survived political violence so they can talk about the impact that has had on their lives and their families.
[00:47:39] Jamil Simon: Well, where do you see the field of bridge-building headed in the next 10 years?
[00:47:43] Lisa Inks: One thing I'm really encouraged about is here in the US, how deeply married bridge-building and peacebuilding and democracy strengthening are. And I feel like it's already well understood how essential peace is, and working together across differences is to upholding our democracy and civic health. And so I guess I see an expansion of the way we think and talk about democracy.
I would love it if in 10 years peacebuilding is a word that everyone uses here in the US.
[00:48:22] Jamil Simon: Absolutely.
[00:48:24] Lisa Inks: Not just abroad, but that it's really recognized as, like, an essential sector. We're not there yet.
[00:48:31] Jamil Simon: I mean, there is unquestionably a strong relationship between peacebuilding and democracy. They both involve cons- building consensus, they both involve dialogue, they both involve listening.
But democracy we've heard a lot about, but peacebuilding is really the nitty-gritty practice of democracy in some ways, you know.
[00:48:52] Lisa Inks: Oh, I like that framing. Yeah, I think it's time for peacebuilding to have its day here.
[00:48:57] Jamil Simon: I could not agree more. Well, that's a great place to end on this wonderful interview, and I appreciate your insights.
Thanks very much.
[00:49:06] Lisa Inks: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:49:13] Jamil Simon: You can learn more about Urban Rural Action and about Lance Walker from our show notes. This episode was produced by Andrew Muraskin and Faith McClure. I'm Jamil Simon. Emmy Todd helps run our social media program, and you can find video excerpts from these interviews on our social media. We're on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn at Making Peace Visible.
Please say hello and join the conversation, and if you like what you hear and wanna support our efforts, make a tax-deductible donation at makingpeacevisible.org/donate. We'll see you back here for the next episode on September 29th. Thanks so much for listening