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Morning Joe had a long segment today about The Builders Movement, an organization of which Muhammad Ali’s fourth and last wife Lonnie is a co-founder. She attended ‘Vanderbilt University,’ from where she earned an undergraduate degree in psychology in 1978. She later earned an MBA degree from the ‘University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA), with a major in marketing. She explained how she is attempting to to continue the work her late husband believed in through a new organization.

On MSNBC she not only described what the organization hoped to accomplished but her husband’s post boxing legacy. Young people today may not even know about Muhammad Ali’s boxing career let alone what he did when he retired at the age of 39. For example he met with Saddam Hussein in 1990 to arrange the release of American captives, and he flew to Afghanistan in 2002 as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

This is from a website about what he did after he retired.

Mr. Muhammad Ali was a visionary humanitarian and peace activist who committed his life to enhance the quality of people’s lives, alleviating suffering, and recognizing human dignity.

He possessed the guts and commitment to make the world a better place, assisting people all over the world in their efforts to achieve freedom, justice, and equality. Before winning his first world heavyweight boxing championship in 1964, Ali gave up the money from his fights to help those in need while he was still a young athlete.

Later in life, Ali worked to promote peace as a Goodwill Ambassador and Messenger of Peace for the United Nations. Throughout his life, Ali utilized his celebrity to draw attention to suffering across the globe, fight for peace, and to raise the voices of those who were previously ignored, particularly young people.

You can read their goals in more detail on their website. Here are a few screen grabs:

The proverb “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” comes to mind when I hear and read about organizations like this.

 The phrase dates back to the 16th century. It appears in a book during that time by John Heywood called A Dialogue Conteinyng The Nomber in effect of all the Prouerbes in the English Tongue, 1546. (Reference)

“A man may well bryng a horse to the water, but he can not make hym drynke without he will.”

I like this version better because it refers to the horse having the will to drink.

As applied to this and other groups which focus on endeavoring to foster diaglogue between those with opposing and conflicting beliefs and enabling each side to have a deep understanding, even empathy, for ther other side’s viewpoint requires each to, like the horse, have the will to partake of the water.

I looked at the “Builders In the News” section of the website to see which media besides MSNBC was covering this story to get an idea who was learning about it.

You’ll notice that Fox News had a story. It was “Recurring ‘Shark Tank’ entrepreneur Daniel Lubetzky launches movement to combat culture wars: ‘Starts with Us’” from June, 2022. Fox Business also had this segment.

The coverage was on media unlikely to reach the MAGA audience.

The is much more about people knowing about this organization. It is about the organization achieving their goals. Those who will engage in the activites meant to equip “citizens to overcome hyper-partisanship and toxic polarization with courageous curiosity, compassion, and problem-solving” (to use their words) are already well on their way to achieving this goal. Very few if any of them have deeply held entrenched views supported by their peer group and leaders.

What I’d hope for is that there would be a trickle down effect whereby someone holding toxic views and is opened minded enough to work with this group, hopefuly an opnion leader in their peer group, is able to persuade someone they know who trusts or admires them to reconsider their own toxic views. In the best case they might also join the group. Then that person might do the same with people they know, and so on.

Lonnie Ali, with a BA in psychology and an MBA in marketing, should know how diffcult it is to sway people from deeply held beliefs enhanced by confirmation bias which play into their fears and predjudices and are shared with their peers and people they look up to. The three issues the website addresses are the toxic politics in the United States which could lead to the loss of our democracy, the Middle East conflict which has already cost thousands of lives, and Ukraine’s fight to remain free which of course has already take a huge toll on life there.

Hopefully the Builders Movement can not only lead horses to water but can encourage them to drink:

Image AI generated from FreePix