Building Unity and Preventing Extremism: “21st Century Conversations” After the Newtown Tragedy

How does a community best respond to something as horrific as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting? The great suffering of our time will push people toward fear and anger, which in turn fuel extremism and despair, unless we find ways to transform suffering into compassion and a desire for unity through cooperative problem solving. “21st Century Conversations” is a model that aims to achieve these goals. Developed as a resilience building program at the request of the Mayor’s Office in New York City after 9/11, 21st Century Conversations is a model of grass-roots community resilience that uses the wisdom of the world’s great spiritual traditions applied to the best of what is known about trauma recovery and resilience science. Implemented in Newtown since the 2012 tragedy there, this workshop shares the basic principles of its interfaith resilience building model along with practical steps to be taken to build resilience in your community.