You know, David Blankenhorn was smart enough to reach out to Bill Dirty, who've been a long time friend and collaborator with him, just say, you know, Bill, what do you think about this idea?

The simple version of it is that Bill just said, okay, let me get involved in this because otherwise this could go wrong. Yeah, exactly.

And so it was one of his most sort of anxiety inducing projects, and this is person who's a master of crafting space for, you know, empathy.

But he did it, and the event was so powerful that he had a dozen or so people on each side.

Came into the conversation very much suspicious of each other, came away from it, just sort of loving each other across the divisions.

Yet two individuals who started a fairly famous friendship from that, fellow named Greg Smith, former small town sheriff, construction worker, evangelical Christian, just voted Trump and Kulia Armistashvite,

Iranian immigrant leader of the local democratic central committee, and just voted for Hillary Clinton.

And there's a moment in that first workshop where Greg wanted to ask Kuliaar a question, and he approached him and he said, well, actually, I guess he was delivering the statement.

He said, I can tell you, he said, my problem with Islam in four letters.

He asked, I, before he got to that last letter, Kuliaar sort of gently interrupted him, he said, my friend, I know what you're going to say, he said, but my religion has been hijacked by people who don't share my values.

He said, can she think of people in your religion who may have hijacked your religion too?

And Greg, you know, step back and thought about it, you know, people burning crosses on the lawns of, you know, black folks in the name of Jesus Christ and realize, oh, yeah, I absolutely can think of people who hijacked my religion.

So at the end of the gathering, Greg and Kuliaar stood up and formed the group that they'd made a promise to each other.

They're going to work together to bring people together across these divides.

Kuliaar was going to pay a visit to Greg's evangelical church, and Greg was going to pay a visit to a service at Kuliaar's mosque.

And so, you know, this was one of many inspiring stories that came out of that first workshop.

This week on Forward National Ambassador for the largest grassroots depolarization organization in the country, Braver Angels, John Wood Jr. This week on Forward.

It's my pleasure to welcome to Forward, the National Ambassador for Braver Angels, John Wood Jr. Welcome, John.

Andrew.

It's so great to be able to see you in person, man. This has been a minute coming. I'm really happy about this.

Yeah, I've been far too long. I'm super excited too.

I have to say you look like a celebrity, but I'm not sure which one. So you know, what do you get, my friend?

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