Workshop: Othering & Belonging Institute

Long Bridges: How We Rehumanize One Another Across Big Divides 

What it is: This interactive workshop will help participants understand, develop, and implement innovative strategies through which organizations can meaningfully bridge "long" racial, ideological, or urban-rural divides. The workshop is grounded in experiences and lessons from Bridging for Democracy (B4D), a project initiated by the Othering and Belonging Institute, in partnership with leading community organizing groups across six states. As part of B4D, these groups identified communities they had previously avoided engaging with, and designed and carried out intentional bridging campaigns to foster listening and mutual recognition. Workshop participants will hear from leaders of these efforts, and learn, practice, and develop plans to implement their own long-bridging techniques. These techniques enable people to rehumanize one another, build regard, and envision an inclusive “we,” even without the need to agree on issues. 

What you’ll learn:

• Understand how to develop and implement long bridging.   
• Use different formats and approaches to connecting across long divides that allow people to recognize one another and build regard, without erasing differences or needing to agree on issues.  
• Explore a framework on social fragmentation, democracy, and long bridging.   
• Gain skills and new ideas to implement bridges in your specific work and context. 

Facilitators: DeAngelo Bester, Executive Director, Workers Center for Racial Justice; Dr. Joshua Clark, Senior Social Scientist, Othering and Belonging Institute; Mansi Kathuria, Field Strategy and Research Analyst, Othering and Belonging Institute

About Othering and Belonging Institute: The Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley advances groundbreaking research, policy, and ideas that examine and remediate the processes of exclusion, marginalization, and structural inequality—what we call othering—in order to build a world based on inclusion, fairness, justice, and care for the earth—what we call belonging.