Bob Woodson, an American civil rights activist and community development leader, detailed some of the principles that he has gleaned from decades of work to help heal and uplift America’s hurting communities in an interview with The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders. Woodson, founder and president of the Woodson Center, which has for four decades worked to bring training and funding to community-based leaders and organizations to support efforts to improve their neighborhoods, said that a core takeaway from his work is the importance of recognizing that, “in America, those bourgeois values of faith [and] family are still the most important foundation upon which we should build our lives and our nation.” He said one of the biggest barriers to addressing poverty in the most distressed communities in America—those plagued by poverty, crime, and widespread drug use—is elitism. “When I look at how society has attempted to render assistance to this …