Building a Longer Table
Sep 16
Written By Hilary Adams
What if we built longer tables, metaphorically and in real life, and invited new and unexpected people to pull up a chair and join us?
Julie Castle, the Best Friends animal sanctuary CEO, wrote a letter in the March/April 2020 edition of the Best Friends magazine titled Building a Longer Table. She wrote about how the efforts Best Friends are making in their “programs, our beliefs and positions, our tactics to solve problems can’t remain static.”
Castle used the metaphor of building a longer table to invite more people and shelters to sit down to dialogue and problem solve, with the goal of no-kill in every US shelter by 2025.
In a time when we are increasingly divided in our politics, when we are being asked to not gather in person for health and safety reasons, when we are living much of our community and social time online, the idea of building a longer table is very…