"Hope in the Cities has provided a map for the future," says former Virginia governor Tim Kaine in his foreword to Trustbuilding: an honest conversation on race, reconciliation, and responsibility, by Rob Corcoran, which is published this month by University of Virginia Press.
Kaine, who is chairman of the Democratic National Committee, writes that Hope in the Cities, which Corcoran helped to launch, has “moved what looked like an immovable barricade” in Richmond, a city starkly divided along racial lines and “congenitally resistant to change of any kind.” Governor Kaine will speak at the national book launching event at the Library of Virginia in Richmond on March 15 at 5:30 p.m.
Trustbuilding offers the first comprehensive review of three decades of work by countless individuals who have taken extraordinary steps of reconciliation in a city that was once a major slave trading center, the capital of the Confederacy, and where state leaders urged Massive Resistance to integration.
Martha McCoy, executive director of Everyday Democracy, a leading national organization promoting community dialogue, calls it “a visionary, compelling account of healing and change.”
According to former Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders, Trustbuilding is a “soberly inspiring book about citizens who have struggled to find respectful and productive ways of relating through dialogue across the racial, social, and economic differences that dangerously divide us.”
The publishing of Trustbuilding signals the start of a series of forums and workshops in cities across the U.S. this year. Certainly its theme is relevant to America’s social and political climate. A hallmark of the Richmond process is its success in reaching across political and cultural boundaries.
Corcoran claims that building trust is essential for building healthy communities. “The most-needed reforms . . . require levels of political courage and trust-based collaboration that can only be achieved by individuals who have the vision, integrity, and persistence to call out the best in others and sustain deep and long-term efforts.”
Trustbuilding is unflinchingly honest about the difficulties of mobilizing communities around racial reconciliation. It includes studies from Portland, Oregon, Dayton, Ohio, and other U.S. cities, and it highlights efforts at honest conversation in South Africa, France, and the U.K.
Corcoran also draws on the experience of his three sons as white minorities in Richmond’s schools, takes direct aim at the shame of what Jonathan Kozol calls “America’s educational apartheid,” and explores the challenge of creating healthy, integrated public schools.
The book blends narrative and social commentary with methodologies developed by Hope in the Cities. Corcoran writes: “Creating space for change is an art in which we are all learners. It requires skills of the head and the heart.”
John Moeser, senior Fellow at the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Richmond, says Trustbuilding is “written with such clarity and such skillful use of the first person that it will appeal to the general public as well as to scholars, community organizers, group facilitators, and people interested in personal transformation and social justice.”
Corcoran believes Richmond’s story matters, “because societies everywhere are confronted with the need for reconciliation between communities traumatized by histories of racial, ethnic, or religious division as well as economic disparity.” Trustbuilding “provides a practical framework of action for concerned citizens everywhere who are anxious to heal divisions and to build healthy, welcoming communities.”
For more information about the book and to contact Rob Corcoran about speaking and workshop engagements go to Trustbuilding
