Breaking Bread in a Broken Hour

How Dinner Tables Can Heal America’s Deepest Divides—One Conversation, One Neighbor at a Time

In the hours after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the country feels battered, exhausted, and, yes, divided in ways that test the American spirit. The headlines feel relentless, the rhetoric more poisonous by the hour. Yet, walking through my neighborhood last night, I found solace in something as simple as the glow of porch lights and the sound of laughter drifting from backyard dinner tables.

There is a remedy for the times—a radical act, hidden in plain sight. It’s the kitchen table, spread with steaming bowls and stories.

It’s the invitation to neighbors, both those we nod to and those we avoid. Some of the most authentic conversations I’ve ever experienced didn’t happen in boardrooms, or on television, but with hands wrapped around coffee cups and voices growing louder and softer with each course

We are wounded people, living in a wounded hour. It’s natural, almost instinctive, to retreat into our corners, to let grief and anger seal us off. But history reminds us: what unites us far outweighs the things that threaten to divide. When three women launched The People’s Supper in the wake of a bitter election, they weren’t pushing “civility” as some bland ideal. They were insisting on something braver—a pledge to actually listen, to see each other as whole and living, not just as a political label or target.

Their dinners—now numbering hundreds in cities across America—prove something essential: if you can move past the initial hyperventilation, the instinct to judge, you can start to hear. Not just arguments, but memories. Fears. Hopes. By night’s end, there were fewer answers, but more humanity at the table.

I’ve spent decades in rooms where sharp debate was an art form. But no matter how passionate the exchange, what mattered most was always the handshake, the shared meal afterward. That moment when issues became stories and stories became people. If ever there was a time to restore this tradition—hosting dinner parties, inviting honest debate, letting our homes become “brave spaces” for America—it is now.

Is dinner together going to save democracy? Not in one night. But it can soften hearts, plant seeds, and restore the trust that our politics seem determined to stamp out. So set the table tonight. Send the invitation. Open the good bottle and let the conversation flow. The American Table is not just an idea—it’s an urgent call to remember, to repair, and to rebuild, one meal, one neighbor, one story at a time.