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Bridge Michigan
Michigan’s nonpartisan, nonprofit news source

Meet Michigan's divided

With disappearing common ground, it becomes easy to demonize those we know little about, reducing them to disparaging and inaccurate stereotypes: the uneducated rural, the lazy urban, the narrow-minded Christian, the terrorist Muslim, the racist white man, the job-stealing immigrant woman. The growing gulf between groups makes it difficult to understand how others vote the way they do; and beneath that, the aspirations, fears or other factors that lead to those votes.
 
Bridge is following 11 Michigan people and families throughout 2017 to try to pierce the bubbles in which they, and the rest of us, live. We will check in on their lives throughout the year. 

Read their stories

Meet Dave and Sherri Frohriep from Newberry in the U.P.
Meet Aric Knuth and Jim Leija from Ann Arbor
Meet Tom Herbon from Troy
Meet Lisa King from East Lansing
Meet Ron Price from Holland
Meet Hussein and Mariam Charara from Dearborn
Meet John Hulett from Sunfield
Meet Wilfredo Diaz from Wyoming
Meet Cynthia Shafer from Harbor Springs
Meet Asandi Conner from Detroit
Meet Ben Shomo from Traverse City

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