About 150 people gathered on Tuesday night to better understand what’s at stake in the ongoing immigration debate on Capitol Hill.

“I think we needed to get the information out and I think we needed to understand what the issues at stake are,” said Temple Israel Rabbi Jack Romberg, who moderated the panel. “I think that you will find very few people who are truly anti-immigrant — I think more do not understand the depth of the issue.”

The panel and its audience were gathered by The Village Square at St. John’s Episcopal Church for “Immigration & the American Melting Pot.”

Read the entire story online at Tallahassee.com. Find information about the program and listen to an audio recording online here.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — It wasn’t really a dating scene.

But a non-profit here borrowed the concept of speed dating to allow a dozen officials and leaders to get some face time with about five dozen constituents Thursday.

Some participants quizzed leaders on water and air quality, budget issues, the homeless, development in rural areas, educational programs and police officers in schools. Others said little and allowed the leaders to share unknown facts about themselves or their stance on issues. Read the rest of the article at USA Today.


Watch the Video: HERE

It wasn’t really a dating scene.

Although, every seven minutes, a bell sounded to alert a dozen featured officials and leaders that it was time to switch tables at The Village Square’s “Speed Date Your Local Leaders” event Thursday night. The inaugural event attracted more than 60 people, all eager to pose questions and get face time with some of Tallahassee’s most influential people.

Read the entire article at Tallahassee.com

“City and county commissioners fielded random questions Thursday evening as nearly 200 attendees listened with keen interest. Residents, many watching the event live on Tallahassee.com, asked officials how they plan to foster more tolerance, preserve Tallahassee’s precious trees as development grows and address the community’s most dire needs beyond jobs and economic development.” Read the entire article online at Tallahassee.com.

In “Democracy in America”, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the uniquely American habit of “forever forming associations.”

There’s good reason for that. In a new country without a king, someone was going to have to make a few decisions.

Our first and strongest associations in America were with the people who shared a common geography and, amid many threats, likely a common fate: our neighbors. The town hall meeting was born early in our republic, and in one form or the other they’ve been happening ever since.

As metaphor, the town hall perfectly captures the very essence of the freedom we won from European monarchs – it’s the triumph of the common man over the sovereign. And, as a practical matter, it’s been how the business of American community has gotten done for hundreds of years now.

Even before electricity, muddling through local governance issues wasn’t likely our first choice on how to spend an evening. But now with the sheer volume of excitement we can experience from our couch, we’re less willing to suffer through the marginal entertainment value of the town meeting.

Today we’re also grappling with the consequences of rapidly changing technologies to a functioning democracy. While clearly offering a breathtaking array of new opportunities to associate with each other, we now know that an unintended consequence of the digital age is dramatically less direct contact with our neighbors, particularly the ones we don’t agree with politically. That’s a development with real danger to the underpinnings of democracy.

It was probably our founders’ biggest idea – and assuredly their boldest – that a diverse people could self-govern. Our nation became the first to embrace the “constant clashing of opinion” inherent to a people of varied interests. Alexander Hamilton wrote that conflicting opinion “promotes deliberation and circumspection, and serves to check excesses in the majority.” The framers constructed a government built on the notion that – not only could we muddle through our differences – we would actually protect our freedoms by the very act of disagreeing.

Now bunkered up at home with information sources that serve as a virtual amen chorus for everything we believe, we no longer embrace the power of diversity of opinion, and we can’t seem to tolerate some of the people we used to share town meetings with. Our decision to sit out the civic mix has left us unexposed to the broad range of thinking that is the lifeblood of healthy democracy. We are no longer having the conversations required to run anything as big as a country, or even as small as a one-stoplight town.

Lacking contact with our neighbors and inside an environment of “tribal” information sources, local disagreements tend to be seen simplistically through the prism of the divide on national issues, as skirmishes in a countrywide partisan war rather than the unique and complex local situations they usually are. It’s our national dysfunction taken root in hometown America, and it’s not helping us make good decisions where we live.

Thursday night – in partnership with the Tallahassee Democrat and Leadership Tallahassee – the Village Square will begin the second year in an annual series of local issue forums called “Our Town,” aimed at reviving the town hall in our hometown. Thursday’s offering will pair Democrat Editor Bob Gabordi with nine city and county commissioners to talk about Tallahassee. A week later on April 11th, you’ll have a chance to speed “date” leaders from across the community (at a table with six fellow citizens and we’ll treat for the pizza). Finally, you can learn about the latest cool new things in town with “Fast Forward Tallahassee” on Monday, May 6th. All forums are free, but require a reservation.

In his study of our democracy, Tocqueville argued that this unique American habit of associating was actually critical to our purpose. “In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.”

If we want a strong community, state and nation, the town hall is probably not optional.

We can’t promise you more fun than you’d have at home with remote in hand. But we can promise you’ll be keeping faith with the vision of our forefathers, as our hometown gathers with its colorful characters, varied grievances and occasional long-windedness – in the messy “clashing” on which our founders built a country.

Beats “Law & Order” reruns.

—————–
Liz Joyner is the Executive Director of the Village Square, an organization devoted to growing civil and factual dialogue on issues of national, state and local importance. You can reach her at liz@tothevillagesquare.org

The panel, made up of local community leaders in school safety, law enforcement, faith, education and law addressed an American culture that hinges on violence.

“Being an American community, we are addicted to violence, especially gun violence,” said panel member Rev. Brant Copeland. “We have invited violence into our culture. Why should we be surprised that we can’t protect our children from violence?” Read the whole article in the Tallahassee Democrat here.

“Living in America, I have long believed, is about the art of defending the rights of those with whom we most strongly disagree. Now, I would add, it is also the art of sitting down with and engaging in conversation with those same opinion holders.
We hope that is what we will do as a community Feb. 28 as the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com join with The Village Square to present a public forum and discussion on “Students, Safety and the Second Amendment.”

Read the entire post at Tallahassee.com and register for the forum here.

“In 2011, Newsweek published an article naming America’s 10 most dying cities. Most cities on that list responded typically: they amped up their PR campaigns and put out enticing tourism ads. But Grand Rapids, Mich. responded differently, thanks to one 22-year-old named Rob Bliss with an entrepreneurial spirit and a heartwarming love for his city. He staged a citywide lip dub to Don Mclean’s “American Pie,” and thus the dying city showed America that it was rising again. This sort of inspiring behavior was the topic of Peter Kageyama’s lecture at the downtown Challenger Center on Thursday evening, a lecture entitled “For the Love of Cities,” named for his book.” Read the entire article at the FSView website.

For many women, it seemed like re-litigating the last 50 years.

But author Suzanne Venker answered all the campaign talk about the “War on Women” with an op-ed titled “The War on Men.” She immediately found herself swept up in a firestorm like nothing she’d experienced. Americans clearly don’t see eye-to-eye on this topic.

Venker, author of three books including “The Flipside of Feminism” – which she co-authored with her aunt Phyllis Schlafly – will be a guest at the Village Square’s Dinner at the Square on January 15th. She’ll share why she thinks that feminism and the sexual revolution may have unleashed unintended consequences, with relationships between men and women fundamentally transformed and our families and children at risk.

Suzanne will join Staci Fox – who, as the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of North Florida, has been at the center of the political firestorm – and Rosalind Fuse-Hall of Florida A&M University, who has spent a career around girls as they become young women. These three dynamic women come from three entirely different places on where women are today.

“You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby? The Politics of the Feminine” is on Tuesday, January 15th from 5:30 to 7:30 pm at St. John’s Episcopal Church, downtown. The program is presented in cooperation with the Oasis Center for Women & Girls, which will share information from the recent Leon County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls.

Get more information and reserve your tickets online at www.tothevillagesquare.org or call 590-6646/email christine@tothevillagesquare.org.