New Builders initiative looks to fight polarization by encouraging collaboration and alliances
A coalition that includes entrepreneur and philanthropist Daniel Lubetzky, actor Liev Schreiber, journalist Katie Couric, and director of the Muhammad Ali Center Lonnie Ali announced Tuesday that it would launch Builders, a nonprofit global initiative ...
NEW YORK — Adam Luke remembers entering the first meeting of what would become the Citizen Solutions pilot project thinking, “Oh god, this is going to suck.”
A self-described “educated redneck,” Luke was one of 11 Tennesseans with widely divergent views on gun rights selected by the project to discuss potential recommendations to reduce gun violence. He has fond memories of his dad checking him out of school when he was in first grade to go deer hunting and has long considered himself a gun rights supporter, saying, “Firearms have always had a positive influence in my life.”
Luke, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says he wanted to represent that point of view as well as address the needs of those looking to curb gun violence.
“The reason why I came to the table was that I’m so tired of the idea that we can’t do anything, that there’s no way forward… that the citizens of America are incapable of being able to communicate with one another,” Luke said. “That’s what I wanted to be hostile against.”
That desire to work together, to address a problem, and to fight polarization led the Tennessee 11, as they called themselves, to develop a slate of laws that could reduce gun violence in their state. It also led the coalition of artistic, political and philanthropic leaders behind the pilot project to believe it had enough merit to be expanded.
That coalition — which includes entrepreneur and philanthropist Daniel Lubetzky, actor Liev Schreiber, journalist Katie
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