Guest Blog: Community is a common enterprise
Re-posted from Oak Park Public Library >
April 9, 2019
As he travels across the country and the world as president of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, Rich Harwood said he finds a deep yearning for more connection. From Alabama to Israel, in Ohio and Michigan, people are wondering, “Do our lives matter? Will I be seen and heard? Does hope still matter?”
“Without hope, tomorrow doesn’t make any sense,” he told community members gathered in the Main Library Veterans Room on Thursday, April 4. Oak Park was the first stop on his two-year national speaking tour, “Finding Dignity, Hope, and Community in America Today.”
In a time of divisiveness and toxic public discourse, he called on those in the room to “get on a path where we tap into the best within us”—to get off the sidelines, to find out what we share in common and actively build on it, amid our differences and legitimate grievances.