Sam Pressler

Oct 31, 2024 | connectivetissue.substack.com | Sam Pressler

Shamichael Hallman is the Director of Civic Health and Economic Opportunity at the Urban Libraries Council and is the former Senior Library Manager of the historic Cossitt Library in Memphis, TN. He recently published a new book, Meet Me at the Library,which sees America’s public libraries as one of our best hopes for connecting across lines of difference and cultivating stronger communities.

Sep 25, 2024 | aei.org | Daniel Cox |Sam Pressler

Key PointsCollege graduates report having greater access to community spaces than do Americans with a high school degree or less. More than one in five Americans have no access to the 10 most common types of commercial and public spaces. In 1990, 49 percent of Americans with a high school degree or less reported having at least six close friends. In 2024, that number has dropped to just 17 percent. Read the PDF.

Sep 20, 2024 | americancompass.org | Sam Pressler

In today’s America, we’re sorting ourselves to death. The college degree has become the dividing line in American life, shaping not only our economic lives but our social lives, too. And it’s about more than just the credential. The intensely social, cohort-based experience of attending a four-year college is the driver of the sorting during the transition into adulthood. Americans who don’t attend four-year college (or join the military) have few structured, alternative pathways.

May 23, 2024 | connectivetissue.substack.com | Sam Pressler

Michael Wear is a writer, nonprofit founder, and former Obama White House staffer focused on cultivating public life to be “a forum for loving your neighbor.” He’s the author, most recently, of The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life and the Founder and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life (CCPL), a nonpartisan nonprofit with a mission to “contend for the credibility of Christian resources in public life, for the public good.” Michael...