A Letter from the Founders:
Announcing the LA Bridge Builders Collective
Los Angeles is no stranger to the polarization, derision, and mistrust that characterizes so much of our national political climate. Indeed, some of the most urgent topics facing LA today, such as homelessness, redistricting, policing, and more, have been defined by contention and entrenchment. We saw these dynamics in full display in October of last year when a leaked audio tape of four LA leaders gave voice to racism and toxic intergroup mistrust.
The Los Angeles Bridge Builders Collective is here to say: it doesn’t have to be this way.
Moved by the 2020 protests against the murder of George Floyd, six leaders in Los Angeles have been meeting regularly for 2.5 years to think about how we can use our collective expertise to support the city we all love.
We are all “bridge builders,” or practitioners dedicated to building individual and collective capacities to resolve conflict, work across differences, and lead empathically and effectively. In our work, each of us has seen firsthand the transformative power of bridge building skills and spaces to challenge division, polarization, and animosity. We have supported police officers and community members to build new understanding after a charged exchange. We have watched Latinos and Black Americans, Muslims and Jews, and Republicans and Democrats build mutual respect and resilient relationships. We have broken through rancor to facilitate brave and honest policy conversations about racial equity, homelessness, and public safety with multiple stakeholders.
We started the Los Angeles Bridge Builders Collective (LABBC) to help make this work more visible, more accessible, and more supported. We want LA leaders – elected officials, funders, educators, and others – to understand that this field of practice exists, and that “bridge building” skills are not only helpful in addressing some of our most pressing challenges, but essential.
Our first step as a group is to map out this field – in order to do the above, we first need to know who is doing this work in LA. What resources do we have at our disposal? Where are the gaps? The LABBC Bridge Builders Map is a usable, filterable map of the practitioners and organizations in LA who offer this expertise.
We want this map to be a resource for elected officials, organizations, and others who are looking for bridging resources, as well as for funders interested in supporting local bridging work.
We also want to make sure we know about the different bridge building efforts across the city. If you know any organizations or practitioners that you believe fit this description and would like to be part of the LA bridge building map, please have them fill out this short interest form.
Together we can make LA a model for what it means to build bridges across lines of difference.
Sincerely,
The LA Bridge Builders Collective Founders