The Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) works to support local community resilience in the United States through two main efforts, building on expertise from political and elections work around the world. First, BDI uses different tools and methodologies to track demonstrations and political violence in real time so that local communities and national organizations will be better able to address issues before they escalate. Second, BDI works to build an expansive picture of peacebuilding across the country, to highlight existing work while developing new avenues for coordination and support. BDI has an immediate focus of mitigating political violence in the US by supporting a more coordinated response around the 2020 election, while ultimately supporting longer-term solutions to societal polarization.
US Crisis Monitor
US Crisis Monitor is a joint project of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and BDI that aims to provide the public with real-time data and analysis on demonstrations and political violence across the United States.
Bridging Divides Map
The Bridging Divides Map is a resource for community building organizations and individual leaders to increase their network, coordinate, collaborate and focus resources to areas of highest impact. It includes over 3,000 organizations working tirelessly to build community from the local to national level.
News & Resources
The overall number of demonstrations decreased compared to the week prior. Demonstrations associated with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement decreased nationwide. However, in New York, demonstrations increased following the release of body-camera footage depicting the detention of Daniel Prude, a Black man, by officers of the Rochester Police Department last March, which ultimately resulted in his death.
Earlier in 2020, the Bridging Divides team conducted interviews in Dahlonega, Georgia with the goal of helping community members tell their own stories of resilience. Toward that goal, BDI outlined four broad observations of local community response to two events from 2017-2019 in an initial Case Study focusing on the community response in Dahlonega, Georgia.
The number of demonstration events spiked by more than 40% compared to the week prior. These demonstrations were primarily driven by the Trump administration’s handling of the United States Postal Service (USPS) ahead of the election. Demonstrations associated with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement also increased following a number of officer-involved shootings in recent weeks.