社区黑料

This is part of our Community Cultivator series, which highlights how innovators across all sectors build and sustain global communities from the ground up.

From where David Brooks stands, the State of the Union is a long, long way from sound. The author and longtime New York Times columnist notes disturbing increases in suicide, depression, political polarization, opioid overdoses and mass shootings. They are all symptoms of what he sees as the underlying cause: 鈥淲e are experiencing an epic level of alienation,鈥� he says.

The national crisis of the past few years coincided with a personal crisis that found the newly divorced Brooks questioning the value of what he does to earn a living. Merely writing about the crisis鈥攅ither one of them鈥攄idn鈥檛 feel like an adequate response, which is why he teamed up with the Aspen Institute earlier this year to launch . Now, he and his colleagues travel from town to town, where they ask one question: Who鈥檚 trusted?

The people they鈥檝e encountered along their journey are known as Weavers. 鈥淢ost are very normal,鈥� Brooks says. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e nothing like Mother Teresa.鈥� He mentions such enterprises as:

• , a moving company in Salt Lake City, Utah, that trains and employs formerly incarcerated women and men ()
• , a faith-based nonprofit in Shreveport, Louisiana, devoted to restoring the foundation of safe and caring communities
• , a multicultural congregation formed by volunteers and homeless people under a bridge on Interstate 35 in Waco, Texas
• , a national community-health program that empowers first-time moms
• , a Chicago-based organization focused on child development policy and professional skills.

He also highlights , a teen education and empowerment organization, which Brooks credits for his own awakening to the power of civic involvement. presents videos showcasing these and other examples. What do they have in common? 鈥淲eavers are geniuses at forming relationships,鈥� Brooks answers.

Brooks found that Weavers are hungry to meet people like themselves, and they need support to make the transition from a single-person operation to a full-fledged nonprofit. As he wrote in , 鈥淭his is a movement that doesn鈥檛 know it鈥檚 a movement.鈥� Teachers are weavers, too, and that鈥檚 why Brooks and his team are planning a Weavers in Schools initiative.

Weavers operate at the local level. Repairing the culture is something that happens in and church basements, and fitness clubs. Brooks hopes that celebrating their work will spark a national movement that will shift cultural norms and, ultimately, hopefully, repair society. Weave facilitates appearances on TED Talks, SXSW, NPR and other forums in the hopes of inspiring more people to initiate projects of their own. A documentary is in the works.

Brooks is not the only one who鈥檚 noticed something rotten in our national discourse. (This might be a good time to mention that our conversation took place a few blocks from the White House.) He applauds all the many one-off and ongoing efforts people have told him about dedicated to dialogue, including dinner parties that bring conservatives and liberals together. Deborah and James Fallows are on a similar journey, for example, with , which identifies an 鈥渆merging pattern of American reinvention.鈥� Brooks says Weave鈥檚 focus is emotional and moral rather than legislative, though he notes that public libraries are a venue that both campaigns have found to be fertile.

鈥淧olitics is downstream from culture,鈥� Brooks theorizes. One thing he鈥檚 certain about: There isn鈥檛 an app for this. The solution is not technological. Technology is efficient, but smart phones and their ilk preclude deep communication, upholding instead the opposite: ego, status, comparing what you have or do with others. 鈥淚t鈥檚 no coincidence that every Weaver limits technology,鈥� he says. AOKDC, for example, forbids phones at the dinner table.

Brooks views Weave as a means of activating one of the most promising levers available to bring people together. 鈥淢arriage rates are declining,鈥� he says, 鈥淩eligious affiliation is waning, but civic organizations are growing.鈥�

The Weavers represent a homespun (so to speak) solution to national and global social divides. Brooks has spent much of his career analyzing how conservatives and progressives approach problems. Conservatives, he says, aim to fix the system by building up marriage, while progressives鈥� solution has been to 鈥渃reate a village.鈥�  Brooks finds value in both approaches, though he finds the latter a little more persuasive.

Traveling the country in search of Weavers has exposed Brooks to amounts of trauma and heartbreak beyond what he anticipated. Overdoses. Repeated incarceration. Gun violence. One persistent evil has been what he calls 鈥渕ale cruelty,鈥� in the form of abuse and abandonment. These experiences have confirmed Brooks鈥� belief in the theories of British Psychiatrist John Bowlby (1907-1990), pioneer of and author of , which affirms: 鈥淭he provision by both parents of a secure base from which a child or an adolescent can make sorties into the outside world and to which he can return knowing for sure that he will be welcomed when he gets there, nourished physically and emotionally, comforted if distressed, reassured if frightened.鈥� (Brooks disputes the 鈥渂oth parents鈥� part. 鈥淚t just has to be one person,鈥� he says. 鈥淯sually, it鈥檚 mom.鈥�)

According to Brooks, becoming a weaver doesn鈥檛 require an advanced degree or a super power. 鈥淵ou just have to know someone deeply and extend care.鈥�