Let’s face reality: the underlying change we need in our country today is not likely to come anytime soon from Washington, DC or many of our state capitals. Nor will it come from simply electing a new batch of elected officials that insist on pursuing a divisive and polarized politics. People in communities must step forward if we are to create the lives and communities—and the nation—we aspire to.

In September of 1964, King visited the Berlin Wall and spoke about “breaking down the dividing walls of hostility” that can separate people from one another. As MLK Day approaches, and our nation is mired in a seemingly endless impasse over building a wall on our southern border, I can’t help but think about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s urgings to tear down the walls that stand between us.

Just last week I was in Israel and visited the West Bank city of Bethlehem, where a young Palestinian man, Noor, took me around. As we turned a corner in the city, all of a sudden I confronted the wall that separates the West Bank and Israel. Up close, it is huge, imposing, cold and haunting. Here in the U.S., the federal government shutdown enters week three, locked in a showdown over a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. I wonder, what is the meaning of such walls?