Bridging The Divide (Trying)

Reflections from GBH's Media Summit

A few weeks ago, T.J. and I drove down to Boston to attend a media summit hosted by GBH—one of Boston’s public radios stations and a member station of NPR. 

The summit was titled “Bridging The Divide in 2025.” Like many public gatherings of professional storytellers and civic workers, the goal was a convening of minds to address the chasm-turning-crater of divisiveness and distrust in our society. The topics were predictable as was the conversation, but that does not devalue the importance of coming together to publicly interrogate the societal challenges consuming so many of us.

There are two highlights I want to share. The first was meeting Dr. Carla Hayden, the (now former) Librarian of Congress. The Library of Congress is the oldest government-run cultural institution in the United States and Carla was the first African-American and first woman to hold the job. She was appointed in 2016 by President Barack Obama.

On the first day of the Summit, she sat in conversation with American legal scholar Professor Martha Minow who is a powerhouse in her own right. Martha has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981 and served as dean of the school for nearly a decade. Their conversation, which  revolved around books and archives (digital and physical), took place at the Boston Public Library, which also boasts many firsts: it was the first large free municipal library in the United States, the first public library to lend out books, the first to have a branch library and the first to have a children’s room. 

At the end of the conversation, someone in the audience asked if Carla would finish her ten-year term, alluding to the slew of firings we’ve seen this year in the federal government. She responded respectfully, with a version of “I hope so.” 

The following week, According to the New York Times, she was fired with merely a two-sentence email. 

Like so many of us, I’m painfully sensitive to the clean sweep of good people that the Trump Administration is firing in pursuit of divisiveness in this country, but this one felt extra personal. 

After Carla spoke on stage, T.J. and I were lucky enough to have a brief conversation with her during the opening reception; she was sitting at a table with her mother who was more than 90 years of age. Carla was generous with her time, answering our questions and showing enthusiasm about a new project we’re working on (more info on that at a later date). She even gave me her card, noting that there might be collaborative energy there. As much as hearing her speak on stage was interesting, it was this short conversation that made learning about her so inspiring and her firing feel so personal. 

We left that first day feeling energized and enthused about work, which is a hard feeling to come by when you mostly work at home, staring at your computer, having digital correspondence with people far away, all while wearing the same pair of yoga pants day in and day out. Being in-person mattered. Shaking hands mattered. Smiling at each other mattered. 

Day two of the Summit was held at GBH studios in Brighton (a neighborhood of Boston I lived in during my twenties) and brings me to the second highlight of the summit: hearing my friend Kenny Andejeski speak on a panel about engaging younger generations in civics work.

Last year Kenny joined me on the Along The Seam podcast where we talked about the work he is doing with his organization, why[here]matters. He shared, “I’m really focused on social cohesion… How can we actually create the conditions for people to coexist in a really effective, engaged way? Not in a passive way.”

One of the ideas that has always drawn me to Kenny’s work is his belief that we become the stories we tell ourselves. Another version of this idea was echoed at an earlier session about bridging the religious divide where Timothy Head, who is President & CEO of Unify.Us, spoke about how so often in society, “We tend to find what we are looking for.” What both ideas communicate to me is the reality that if we live in a world that we treat as divided, it will increasingly be so. That puts a lot of power in our own hands to be part of changemaking. 

The panel about engaging the youth was one of the last sessions of the Summit and disappointingly the room was not filled as much as it should have been (which the host called out). Certainly the age skewed older in the crowd of attendees for the Summit in general, and my cynical side suggests that perhaps the high-powered professionals felt there weren’t as many networking opportunities in a room focused on the younger generation. There was so much conversation throughout the two days about “the young people” (which I’m unsure is a bracket I fall into anymore as a millennial) and one would have hoped that the entire room would have been flooded. Young people are our future (cliché but true) and also will be the most-severely impacted by the divisiveness our politicians and mainstream media are helping stoke.

I can’t say that after two days of networking and learning I’m any more hopeful or smarter about the state of the world and our social divides. But what felt profound is that, from session to session, there was a resounding conclusion I heard about first steps. Despite being a group of people who mostly make our living through or with screens, all signs pointed back to: if you want to make a difference in your community, if you want to bridge the divide, if you want to be one of the people to help heal a deeply hurting nation, you have to leave your phones behind. You have to go outside. You have to be with people, especially those who you don’t understand. You have to be in the same room. As one attendee with whom I had a short conversation put it, “you gotta walk towards the bumper stickers you disagree with.” 

This is easy to talk about, but really hard to do. 

I’ll end this reflection by saying this: a day after the Summit, it was announced that the Trump administration would cut funding to public media. Both GBH, the host of the summit, along with WBUR, one of the other prominent public-media stations in Boston, have contributed greatly to my own professional growth. Both put me on the radio in my twenties to talk about the work I was doing with my grandmother’s story. This was before We Share The Same Sky was a book or a podcast. The interest and belief that local reporters had in my work was profound for me. And it’s because of these stations that I started producing podcasts. 

Local public media has always shown up for me, as a kid and as an adult. When I think back to my childhood (sans cable) and to the programs that influenced my young life, it’s the PBS shows that I remember. To this day, my love and appreciation for Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow, This Old House, and Antique Roadshow is deep. I certainly left the Summit with some ideas flowing and new people to know, but mostly I’m left with this lingering debt of gratitude to those who have kept these stations going for all these years and who are dedicated to keeping them funded for the next generation.