Posts filed under 'Get Local: Tallahassee'
In case you were otherwise engaged Sunday, as I was, today’s a good day to take a look at
Mary Ann Lindley’s Sunday column:
The big unknown on Tuesday — and again in November — will be whether wild-animal politics, tooth-and-claw wars of words do work.
Will we be invigorated, gullible or ticked off enough to support the blunt candidates who play politics as a blood sport? Will they win — and then be expected to put aside latent bitterness and rivalries and work for all people, including those who supported their opponents?
My hunch is that the shouters and exaggerators will win in a few cases because it’s appealing to have someone tell us with great clarity what to think in a few choice, simplistic words.
Not simple, nor spare and nuanced explanations, but simplistic ones that feel therapeutic, save us time and are really an extension of the on-line world of fear and loathing.
In today’s culture of over-stimulation and given the infinity of information that bombards us, these mouthy gatekeepers show us an easy path.
They tell us how to neatly frame complex issues. They don’t ask much of me (“No, no.” I promise. “No taxes!”). They tell me who my enemies are. And they let me get back to my life.
It can all be quite seductive. And political experts insist it’s the only way to win.
And then there’s the Purple:
Last week, The Village Square, our local organization devoted to, as our mothers said, “keeping a civil tongue in your mouth,” was visited by author and former U.S. News & World Report journalist John Marks.
Marks wrote “Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture,” and his theme is that relentlessly demonizing the opponent doesn’t really enchant most Americans and that, rather than being rigidly red states or blue states, we ought to consider purple.
It’s still a passionate color; loyalty to principles need not be neutralized.
This other John Marks (not our mayor) isn’t calling for a beige state of mind, but a blending the best of both Democratic and Republican thought: compassion and self-sufficiency.
August 24th, 2010
The Village Square does not take positions on either candidates or referendums on the ballot. However, featured blog posts (like this one) may be submitted with your opinions, which we will post if there is real substance to it and it is executed with civility. You may also write your own op-ed on We the Wiki under whatever topic you please. Click on the Wiki square (just to the right) when you see it to go to related content on our Wiki. Coming soon to the Wiki: A candidates on the ballot section…
I deserve a pat on the back. If you see me somewhere around town, feel free to do so.
Only with this caveat should you congratulate me: I’m no darn do-good-er, no net-worker —just a normal citizen with a few ideas and a point of view.
I just submitted my application to be a community catalyst for the Knight Creative Communities Initiative. If you know me, this is a big deal. I’ve tried my hand at volunteering before with little success.
It takes a lot of stamina and a high tolerance for non-sense to volunteer in groups and on boards.
It also takes a belief in the good intentions of others and your ability to change things for the better. None of which I’ve had in a high degree. Like Garrison Keiler, who in many things I’m so unlike, I run away from committees of the well-meaning.
I don’t gainsay humanity or human will and possibility but have a measured respect for the bull-headedness of fate. So, this is a small concession to a rare tender-heartedness, an open mind. And my ego.
Since I’ve taken a stab at written things for a reading public, I’ve gained a real confidence in my opinions —though I really only have few, and my ability to express them. Some readers —okay, most will regret that I’d put such faith in that ability. But forgive me the vanity trip.
This is about improving this community for which all of us are obligated to pursue in our own way —by being wonderful neighbors a scout leader or cub manager, picking up trash, dining or buying locally, heading to B-Sharp, taking a trip to the Tallahassee Little Theatre or enjoying Lake Ella on a warm day with the sun set over orange clouds in the evening.
What got my me thinking along these lines is the noise of this campaign season. All these candidates grasping for the power of these complexity-filled public offices.
It’s getting nasty and mean —which sometimes, I’ll admit is fun and delightful —but between candidates for a certain city commission seat enough is enough.
Scandalous is an understatement for the rough attacks being administered by one candidate. Often enough such attacks can be an education to voters, highlight a policy difference, or shake a campaign from its complacency. But that’s not the case here.
He has been relentless in his prying and critiques of his opponent and the current City Commission but inexpressive about his own ideas.
From his campaign, we’d learned more about his opponent’s personal failings than we’d learn in a less competitive race because of his doggedness and inability to concede to decency. This harping on issues, some over 30 years ago in his opponent’s life, is wearying and beside the point. Obviously, there’s no substance behind this campaign.
A few of these candidates are in it mostly for ego and ambition —which is fine in proportion —but when its overweening it can damage public perceptions about politics which are already too low. Which brings me to another candidate.
There’s the sharp-looking, nicely built, and self-possessed young man but his commitment to this community is not exactly self-evident. It’s not good, if true, that this candidate hasn’t voted in any major election. Even for Barack Obama. I understand political disenchantment but this is an astonishing lack of interest in politics that can’t be explained away.
To which, I’d like to address one more race. This race is an example of power being sought for the right reasons —I can quibble about the ideology and results, and will, but this candidate has an authentic purpose. This candidate is tough, resilient, knowledgeable and has an obvious love of public policy (I once saw her in a public meeting with a novel on the environment) but the party apparatchiks are against her.
She’s compromised with Republicans on energy and environmental issues in order to squeeze her priorities in.
As far as I can tell, she’s as Democratic as they come, but her overwhelming preference for accomplishing things over the inactivity of floor speeches and amendment posturing is a signal to her party that she’s unreliable. Will Democrats learn?
To make a broader point: This is the problem with public service today. No acceptance of adult compromise or an adult way of being principled. No wonder we’re experiencing disillusionment and discontent from the citizenry.
In spite of the sad state of public affairs, anyone can make a difference, though it may be a bit more modest, in the various community organizations around town. Some of the candidates have done that in an exemplary way.
Although there’s not much remuneration in non-profit volunteerism, I’d take it any day over political office. First, because its modest. Second, because you meet an immediate demand and there’s more flexibility. Third, because you get the see the results sooner. In public service, this not always the case.
So, I’m happy to be making my small contribution. And hope others make theirs.
I’m a little sad, though, for our local candidates, whose greatest impact may not be in public office. But they’ll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars this year trying to get there.
Where’s the common sense? Somewhere hidden behind the ego, no doubt.
—
Chris Timmons shares his insights and conservative sensibilities in a featured blog for The Village Square.
August 6th, 2010
(If you would like to make a contribution, click HERE. To track our progress click HERE.)
TALLAHASSEE COMMUNITY COLLEGE PLEDGES $5,000 TO SUPPORT CIVIC DIALOGUE IN TALLAHASSEE
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (July 27, 2010) — Tallahassee Community College has announced that, in honor of former TCC President Dr. Bill Law, it will contribute up to $5,000 to The Village Square, a local nonprofit organization co-founded by Dr. Law.
The donation will support “We the People,” a project of The Village Square in cooperation with the Community Foundation of North Florida. The project won a highly competitive national John S. and James L. Knight Foundation grant to build informed and engaged communities. Through the two-year duration of the project, partners aim to build a vibrant virtual and face-to-face public square through unique topical forums and online problem solving with a tool called “We the Wiki.”
“As TCC’s president, Dr. Law was committed to nurturing the bond between the College and the people of North Florida,” said Dr. Barbara Sloan, TCC’s current president. “His help in founding The Village Square is yet another demonstration of his passionate belief in listening to and addressing the needs of the local community.”
The Village Square’s goal is to renew Tallahassee’s marketplace of ideas where good solutions rise from an informed citizenship and where abundant information can be channeled into constructive results. In 2006, former City Commissioner, now Ambassador to Portugal, Allan Katz joined Dr. Law in co-founding the organization based on their enduring friendship across the partisan divide.
The award from the Knight Foundation requires a community match of $50,000 by September. By involving the community, Knight aims to build sustainable solutions to local information needs. The Village Square has raised $40,000 toward the Knight Foundation requirement.
The TCC donation is structured as a challenge to the community to participate. TCC will match individual and organizational donations dollar-for-dollar up to $5,000 to assist The Village Square in reaching the goal by the deadline of September 1.
“TCC’s generosity keeps with their longstanding tradition of a unique and valuable contribution to the civic life of Tallahassee,” City Commissioner and Village Square Board Co-chair Gil Ziffer said. “We are lucky to have their leadership in our community.”
More information and a link to make donations to the project can be found at www.tothevillagesquare.org.
# # # #
Contacts:
Matt Littlefield
Communications Specialist
Tallahassee Community College
(850) 201-6437
Liz Joyner
Executive Director
To The Village Square, Inc.
(850) 264-8785
July 27th, 2010
Tamaryn Waters in today’s Tallahassee Democrat:
Thirteen passionate residents helped chip away at what they called a tunnel-vision approach that threatened to stall growth 10 years ago, especially when developers and environmentalists were at odds.
They banded together and created the Economic Environmental Consensus Committee, which then sparked the intergovernmental agency now known as Blueprint 2000. Nearly 70 people attended the 10-year anniversary event Tuesday at St. John’s Episcopal Church. It was hosted by the Village Square and the Tallahassee Democrat. Kevin McGorty, one of the 13, said some members would have liked to see some environmental projects salvaged, such as elements to Cascades Park Trail. But overall, he said the vision for Blueprint is still intact.
“I’m proud that the community took the leadership to say ‘let’s give this a try,’ ” said McGorty, director of land conservancy for Tall Timbers.
Blueprint is funded through a penny-sales tax approved in 2000 and implemented in 2004. It’s brought wider roads, bike lanes and storm-water improvements to sections of Capital Circle, along with neighborhood improvements.
Jim Davis, Blueprint’s executive director, said the signature project is finishing Cascades Park Trail, which should be done within three years.
“A lot of people thought it was never going to happen in their lifetime,” Davis said. “I’m here to tell you. Unless they plan on dying real soon, it will be here.”
June 30th, 2010
Tonight, The Village Square and the Tallahassee Democrat host Blueprint 2000: 10 years back, 10 years forward. (You can RSVP to attend until 1 PM today, after that… we’re ordering the pizza.)
Just for fun, we’re going to let you take a sneak peak at our We the Wiki today. We threw up a page on Blueprint 2000 which you can go to and edit (you must create an account to edit – you’ll receive an email to confirm your registration). Once registered, you can add information, relevant facts, challenges ahead, and you can even pen your very own op-ed.
The Wiki isn’t fully up and running. It’s missing a lot of the instructions that will come later. But we thought this was a good day to quietly let Tallahassee have a look.
June 29th, 2010
If you didn’t catch Meredith Clark’s column in today’s Tallahassee Democrat then 1. Shame on you, 2. Let’s remedy that immediately and 3. You’ll see right away why we like it so much (uh, it’s partly about us).
Here’s a clip, but don’t even bother to read it, head straight to the source to read the whole thing:
.. despite our differences of gender, income, race, religion (or none at all), partisanship or no party affiliation, etc., our community is our common thread. We live and love here. Some of us have deep generational roots, others are transplants, but for a time, we are committed to living alongside one another — an immediate tie that binds us amid an ongoing tempest of national demagoguery.
For too many Americans, the trend to brand ourselves as martyrs or warriors (and everyone else as the soulless opposition) during a period of perceived crisis is catching on. We talk in buzzwords and symbolic phrases, framing political debate in an updated “us against them” stand-in for our own reasoned beliefs.
On the national scene, the charge to “take our country back” is a puzzling one. Where has the country gone? Who has authority to retrieve it, and from whom are they taking it back? Equally troubling is the call for a “black agenda” from the president. He’s at the service of the nation, not beholden to any one segment. Can you imagine? The holy war that radical separatists have been prophesying for years would come to fruition tomorrow if President Obama stepped onto the White House lawn to proclaim an agenda “for left-handed people only.” And to say that “the will of the American people” is not being heard is to verbally strip citizenship from anyone who disagrees with you.
Who are these people, and when did they begin to think and speak for us?
Neglecting to truly think about what is said, implied and communicated when we fix our attention on the national political scene is eroding common discourse among everyday people. There are opportunities each day to restore it. Carefully weighing what we repeat, questioning what’s really being said and asking for an explanation on charges of anti-whatever sentiment is a revival of the democracy that makes our nation unique.
The Village Square presents these opportunities formally, but we can choose them privately — by tuning into more than one station, by refusing to barb conversation with words of flippant condemnation, by backing down in order to at least hear another view, and by (gulp) backing up when we find ourselves swept into hyperbole, fear and ignorance that ignores our own personal experiences.
June 11th, 2010
(You really should click on over to meet our Purple friends and read this there. John Marks, half the dynamic Purple due, will be coming to Tallahassee on August 19th for a super-duper cheap dinner event that you won’t want to miss.)
In Tallahassee we’re smack in the middle of a debate on a proposed human rights ordinance designed to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals from discrimination. Since we just kept opening our big fat mouths telling people from here to Kingdom Come that The Village Square could do a whole host of impossible things, we jumped into the frackas with a forum.
At our forums we don’t just casually eenie meenie to see who gets on our panel. In this sea of partisan fury, I’m looking for the exceptional panelist who can articulate his or her view with statesmanship. Then I assemble the speakers like a jigsaw puzzle into a panel that (I hope) can sing.
In the process of all this panel-finessing, I come to have sincere affection for each of my panelists, even if I just don’t see it their way. I like them because if I’ve done my job correctly, by the time they’re on my panel I’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
It would be instructive if everyone in our audiences could experience my growing affection for each of my panelists, since in it lies a lesson: People, assuming you understand their unique life circumstance, usually really make sense. That we can be completely different at the same time as we’re really exactly the same is what makes a hometown work. I think it’s an quiet triumph of the human spirit.
With a topic as apparently challenging to us as gay rights, we need the community glue that binds us to be holding.
Some of the culture war is what we sincerely disagree about, in our very hearts. But too high a percentage of it is noise; junk we made up, statistics we lied about, dishonest cutting and pasting.
The forum brought us a vivid demonstration of this when someone in the audience began reading aloud from the “Homosexual Manifesto,” which apparently had once, decades ago, been read into the Congressional record. But because he started with an excerpt containing big fat ugly word bombs in it we just cut him off.
But our Village Square motto is “facts matter” so I felt compelled to do a little post-forum super-sleuthing.
Turns out that the essay entitled “Gay Revolutionary” and renamed for effect was written by one gay man by the name of Michael Swift. A man with a pen does not an army of darkness make, no matter how much you want it to in order to support an immovable opinion you might hold.
But this distortion doesn’t stop with warping the scale of the “threat.” Michael Swift’s essay was, in reality, absurd satire, the author’s (poorly executed and obviously ineffective in retrospect) comment on how mistaken he thought the people who see homosexuality as threatening were. Stuff like: “We shall raise vast private armies, as Mishima did, to defeat you.” Approve of the essay or not, it is tongue-in-cheek to high heaven. And just in case you don’t do nuance, he wrote a disclaimer at the top of his essay telling us it wasn’t real.
But dang if his disclaimer was removed from the infinitely echoing reverberations of this essay across the internet toward its ultimate immortality as a sliced and diced weapon of the culture war, landing in many an unsuspecting inbox. (Here’s an example of where they’ve gone to the trouble of printing the whole essay verbatim with the tiny little omission of the disclaimer at the top, else you actually understand what you are reading.)
I believe that the person who read the excerpt from this satirical essay believed sincerely he was warning us of something true and big and looming. Instead he was just unwittingly recycling a lie. “Tremble, hetero swine” should have tipped him off.
If there is any hope we can understand each other (without running my panel-screening gauntlet), we’ve got to start with what is true. The very least we owe each other is an honest conversation.
I think the people we really are in our hearts – the ones where we turn the other cheek, love thy neighbor, walk a mile in their shoes – can do it.
Or we can let the highly paid professional contortionists have their way, you know the ones who will pick over the carcasses of our communities destroyed by their infernal racket.
Our choice.
(Photo credit. And in case you’re a youg’in the pic is of Orson Welles of War of the Worlds fame… another satire run amok.)
May 11th, 2010
From this morning’s Tallahassee Democrat:
“Regarding the proposed human rights ordinance, I urge fellow Christians to exercise respect and forbearance toward neighbors with whom they disagree. Christians who oppose this ordinance are not necessarily bigots, and those who support it are not necessarily heretics. Both sides regard their positions to be Biblical and in keeping with the requirements of faithful discipleship.
I disagree with Nathan Adams’ position that the First Amendment should protect religiously motivated individuals from laws prohibiting discrimination. I have vivid memories of “devout” Christians who believed racial segregation to be the will of God. Some Christians still have this conviction. Their deeply held conviction does not — and should not — make them exempt from the law.
However, I commend Mr. Adams for expressing his views with civility at the recent meeting of the Village Square. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12:10, “… love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”
I support the ordinance, and I honor those who oppose it without demonizing their opponents.”
BRANT S. COPELAND
Pastor
First Presbyterian Church
May 9th, 2010
May 3rd, 2010
Take-out Tuesday
LEON COUNTY HUMAN RIGHTS ORDINANCE
Tuesday, May 4 5:30 to 7 PM
(click on picture for more details
April 29th, 2010
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