Bridging Urban-Rural Divides with Joseph Bubman

After the 2016 presidential election, and the deep divisions in American society that it highlighted, there was a boom in efforts to build bridges and facilitate dialogue between people of different backgrounds and political beliefs. Today's guest was similarly inspired, but the approach he took was a bit different than most. Joseph Bubman spent years doing peacebuilding and conflict resolution work around the world, and in 2016 he asked what it would look like to use some of those successful peacebuilding practices here at home. This led him and his colleagues to launch Urban Rural Action. They started by focusing on bringing together urban and rural communities, but the work quickly expanded to address the many ways that we are divided by race, religion, age, class, politics, and geography. In this conversation, Joe talks with host Paul Kuttner about his experiences abroad and the lessons he carries with him from that time. He describes how he began translating peacebuilding practices to the US context, and the limitations of initiatives that focus only on dialogue, without also creating opportunities to build capacity and take action. Joe tells the story of his organization’s evolution, from early experiments into a what is now a network of local hubs across the country. And he shares some concrete tools and frameworks he’s picked up along his journey. Learn more about Urban Rural Action at https://www.uraction.org/ Read about the work Mercy Corps does around the world at https://www.mercycorps.org Joe was inspired early in his career by the books Beyond Machiavelli by Roger Fisher and Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. Read a summary of intergroup contact theory at Simply Psychology. Visit Braver Angels (formerly Better Angels) at https://braverangels.org/ ———————— To subscribe to this podcast, visit https://partnershipwork.org or your favorite podcasting platform. You can also join our free Substack newsletter at https://partnershipwork.substack.com/ Partnership Work is an independent podcast, produced with the support of Urban Media Arts in Malden, MA. Visit them at https://urbanmediaarts.org/ The music for this episode was Hazy Reflections from the NFL Music Library on APM Music.