From the Campaign Trail: What Two Women in Fresno Have to Teach Us About How We Build Together
I’m writing this note on a plane heading home from our first “Enough. Time to Build.” campaign event in Fresno, CA. Among the many profound experiences I had on this trip, I find myself thinking especially about two women I met. They each have much to teach us about how we can build together as Americans.
I was in the Central Valley to keynote the United Way of Fresno and Madera Counties Prosperity Summit. Soon after I finished my speech, a woman raised her hand to ask a question. She spoke only Spanish. She was sitting about eight rows off the stage—close enough that I could look directly into her eyes and feel her deep emotions immediately envelope me, even though I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
Then the interpreter began to speak; standing there, I could feel my eyes well up with tears. The woman’s question was actually an observation. She relayed that when she watched me up on stage, she assumed my life was filled with all good things. I am an older White man, the featured speaker, dressed in a pressed blue suit and a starched white shirt.
But as she heard me explain my childhood illness and the lifetime of challenges it has created for me, she said she now saw me as connected to her. We shared a sense of struggle, pain, hope. She told me she was grateful for me being there and for speaking so honestly. She wanted to thank me.
This woman made an observation that is so central to our ability to move forward as communities and a society. Do we really see and hear one another? Are we willing to know each other’s lived experiences? What assumptions and biases do we each hold—based on something like a hat someone is wearing, a slogan on their t-shirt, or a bumper sticker on their car?
Which brings me to the second woman. She also did not speak English, and the same interpreter was with her when she approached me. As she spoke in her native Spanish, her voice and face conveyed both a time-worn sadness mixed with fervent perseverance.
As a community leader, she said that neighborhood residents had lost trust in outside organizations that come into their community, promise to listen, and yet only impose programs on them. She went on to say that residents had lost trust in her as their local leader because of this. What should she do? she pleaded.
With pen in hand, she began to carefully write notes as the interpreter reflected what I suggested to her: (1) She should meet with these organizations and not ask them for anything, but rather insist on engaging in a conversation about what a real relationship rooted in trust would look like; (2) If that conversation met her expectations, she should invite them to come to the neighborhood with her, not to tell people about the organization’s programs or supposed solutions, but only to listen to residents about their shared aspirations and concerns for themselves, their families, and their community; (3) If the organization was willing to work on these aspirations with the community, invite them back; and (4) For those organizations not willing to openly and authentically work with the neighborhood, tell them they are not welcome until they change their ways.
This second woman was a determined leader of her community who needed to find a practical path forward. The residents she aimed to serve want real hope, not more broken promises.
Both of these stories offer us a glimpse of what it looks like to move forward and build together. The stories ask us to think deeply about who we think of as builders. We come from different walks of life, speak different languages, have different backgrounds, and wear different clothes. The reality is that we are all builders. And we need everyone.
As human beings, we are meant to go together. We won’t agree on everything. But we must see and hear one another. We must honor one another’s dignity. We must recognize the potential in each other and our shared humanity. We must unleash our individual and collective strengths to build—brick by brick, neighborhood by neighborhood, individual by individual.
I am undertaking this campaign amid a very contentious election season because I believe so deeply, and so damn profoundly, that we urgently need a civic message that calls us to reclaim the public square from the loudest, most divisive voices. Then, we must Turn Outward toward one another and build together. Join us.