Can Sharing a Meal Heal America's Divide?

**Michael Smerconish** (0:00)
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Courage.

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I learned it from my adoptive mom.

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Hold my hand.

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You hold my hand.

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You can't imagine the reward.

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Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the US.

**TC** (0:46)
Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

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Ditch the clowns on the left.

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And the jokers on the right.

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And join Michael Smerconish right here. In the middle.

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This is The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (1:00)
I've got a note for new viewers, new listeners, and it's this. When you hear reference to the Mingle Project, you wonder what might that be. The Mingle Project is shorthand for my effort to bring about common experience, to try and reintegrate our society. The political divide that we face, I think, is in large part because we've disassociated from one another in a world driven by technology. And in a word, we need to mingle. Each day I see stories that relate to societal disconnect and the need for common experience. And I flag several a week. We post those on the mingle page in sort of our library section. And from time to time, I highlight where I think appropriate news that speaks to the issue that I'm raising.
I saw something in The Washington Post over the weekend. I was embarrassed because it's Philly based, and I didn't know of the story. I didn't know of the group. I didn't know of the work. I'm about to remedy that. But it is the ultimate mingling story. So before I welcome a special guest, let me just read from what Tim Craig published in The Washington Post over this headline, Over Shared Meals, Philadelphians Write a Recipe for Citizenship.
Dateline is Philadelphian. It says this, The sound of 100 voices speaking various languages bounced around the Catholic school gymnasium like a basketball.
The diverse group of Northeast Philadelphia residents, some whose families have been here for generations, others brand new to the country, gathered for dinner to discuss how to unite communities. The conversations many carried out through interpreters were designed to coincide with the nation's 250th birthday in a city where immigrants helped build the nation and officials believe they are needed now more than ever.
Harris Sokoloff is the event moderator, then quoted as saying, We are here to break bread together at a time when the nation is deeply divided over immigration, diversity and citizenship. Good food leads to good conversation and we believe what you have to say about being a good neighbor is important. It's called the Breaking Bread, Breaking Barriers Dinner, one of 22 community meals scheduled in seven of the city's most diverse neighborhoods this year. A hundred people from each neighborhood are invited to attend three dinners in the area, plus a final event that will bring together all 700 participants. The Welcoming Center is a nonprofit that supports the immigrant community. They sponsor the events, which are funded by $575,000 in city grants. Well, the president and CEO of the Welcoming Center is Anuj Gupta. And he joins me now. Anuj, nice to see you. I'm happy to be reacquainted with you. I'm embarrassed that I didn't put two and two together. We were having a word offline when we realized we know each other previously. And it's good to see you and to hear more about the Welcoming Center. So tell me about this initiative, because it's everything that I talk about here in the abstract, except you're actually doing it.

**Anuj Gupta** (4:16)
Thanks Michael. It is good to see you again. And thanks for the opportunity to talk about this project. So we actually started this project in 2016 when I served as General Manager of the Reading Terminal Market, an institution I'm sure you're familiar with. And as the recent GM at the time, this is in the mid 2010s, of the market, the market was in the middle of a fast changing Philadelphia. We were growing and diversifying at a pace we hadn't in nearly 100 years. And it was predominantly through immigration. And so this book, which I'm holding up for anyone that watches on YouTube, this is called The Cosmopolitan Canopy. It's by a sociologist named Elijah Anderson. He wrote this in 2011 It's about five public spaces in Philly. One chapter was about the Redding Terminal. And what Dr. Anderson writes about is that he saw a level of civil interaction take place in the Redding Terminal in a way he didn't see in other public spaces, across race, across income, across religion, whatever otherwise separates us.