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Village Square in the news

April 18, 2009

It’s a discussion about God with no flinching: Film captures two friends in deep conversation, and both will be in town for screening, dinner

By Sharon Kant-Rauch
Tallahassee Democrat Faith Editor

It’s a conversation President Obama would applaud.

Two men — one very religious, one decidedly not — sit down to talk with one another and try to find common ground.

But they’re not just any two men representing red-state and blue-state perspectives. They’re old college roommates.

The outcome is so provocative and profound that it’s made into a documentary called “A Purple State of Mind.” Today the men, Craig Detweiler and John Marks, will be in town for a screening of the film at the Tallahassee Film Festival. On Tuesday, they’ll speak at a dinner hosted by The Village Square, an organization dedicated to improving the civility of public discourse.

“Essentially they’re doing what we’re doing, but in a different way,” said Liz Joyner, executive director of The Village Square. “They are two close friends who don’t see eye to eye and they’re doing the hard work that needs to be done — having conversations and not flinching.”

The film includes four conversations that took place at four locations during the course of a year. There are laughter and tears, pointed questions and moments of anger, as each man struggles to convey his core beliefs.

Marks originally was not keen on having these conversations on film. As a former reporter for U.S. News & World Report and producer for Morley Safer at “60 Minutes,” he was much more comfortable as a presence behind the camera or byline.

Marks had contacted Detweiler when he started writing a book that would eventually be titled “Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind.” Detweiler had become a devout Christian while the two were in college and had remained so into adulthood. Marks wanted to talk to him about his faith.

Detweiler, a filmmaker and director of the Real Spirituality Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary, suggested that his students film their conversations. Marks reluctantly agreed.

After their first three-hour conversation, Marks showed the footage to an editor at “60 Minutes,” wanting to know if he found it interesting. The editor loved it.

“That’s when I realized that there was something there that could be a movie,” Marks said during a recent telephone interview from his home in Massachusetts.

The two men said their conversations didn’t change each other’s position on religion, but they did walk away with a better understanding of the other’s world view.

“I would hope people of faith come away (from the film) with a much deeper appreciation of the thoughtfulness of skeptics,” said Detweiler, who spent time as a missionary in Japan after college. “Atheists and agnostics aren’t necessarily dismissing God in a casual or off-hand way. These are thoughtful people wrestling with life’s biggest issues.”

Marks said Detweiler challenged him the most when he questioned Marks’ moral code in the absence of God. Although Marks believes that people have an innate sense of right and wrong — and don’t need a Divine entity to tell which is which — he feels it’s an important question. “Immense theological systems” have been developed by many religions in all parts of the world to deal with issues such as this.

“So I wouldn’t say I’ve solved the problem,” Marks said.

When the two men discuss their personal experiences — how Detweiler found Jesus in college and suddenly the grass was greener, the sky bluer and he wanted to share his newfound joy, or the moment when Marks was reporting in Bosnia and he lost all belief in a merciful God — they listen to one another with respectful silence.

Occasionally, the film shows moments of revelation. Marks said he began to lose his faith at Davidson College in North Carolina when Detweiler told him that “God doesn’t like artists because they ask too many questions.”

Detweiler doesn’t even remember saying it. In the telephone interview he said it was part of the “fragile nature of surety.”

“Here I am 20 years later and a practicing artist,” he said. “It’s a great cosmic joke.”

But during the film, the two men also get into it.

“He’s a violent God who murdered his own son to make a point … what are you trying to rescue here?” Marks asks Detweiler.

Detweiler wonders how Marks can get through something tragic like the death of a loved one without God and accuses Marks of moral relativism and making himself the center of the universe.

Near the beginning of the film, Marks sums up their differences.

“Christianity was liberation for you,” he said. “For me it was slavery.”

Despite their differences, however, the men continue to talk — and get closer. Today, when they show the film around the country, they sometimes find themselves defending the other one to the people in the audiences.

The men hope the movie provides an example of how people with opposing views can begin a dialogue. But they caution that it can’t be a one-time thing.

“If anything, ‘A Purple State of Mind’ is a testament to the need to listen over a long period of time,” Detweiler said.

Marks said he likened the country to a room where “nobody is going to leave.”

“We can kill each other or conquer each other,” he said, “or both sides can find a way to stay in that room together.”

Additional Facts
IF YOU GO

What: Tallahassee Film Festival screening of “A Purple State of Mind”
Where: FAMU School of Journalism & Graphic Communication theater, 510 Orr Drive, Suite 4003
When: 4:15 p.m. today
Cost: $5 at the door
Contact: Visit www.tallahasseefilmfestival.com

What: Dinner at the Square, featuring John Marks and Craig Detweiler
Where: St. John’s Episcopal Church, 211 N. Monroe St.
When: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday
Cost: $35 if ticket is purchased today, $40 after that
Contact: Visit www.tothevillagesquare.org/tickets or call 264-8785

February 18, 2009

Florida lawmakers hunt for ways to spur revenue growth

By Bill Cotterell
Florida Capital Bureau Political Editor

They can’t say the T-word in the 2009 legislative session, but two top Democratic and Republican Senate leaders agreed Tuesday on a polite euphemism for taxes as Florida lawmakers search for solutions to the state’s revenue shortages.

“When I look at the tax problems we face, the first word I really think of is the F-word — that’s right, ‘fairness,’ ” said Sen. Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, sending a spark through an audience of about 50 at a public forum. “I hope the revenue shortfall we’re having right now can be a catalyst to have Florida really not only take a look at our tax problem but also take action to permanently fix it.”

With estimates of the state’s revenue shortfall running close to $5 billion for the fiscal year starting July 1 — plus perhaps $500 million for the current fiscal year — State Sen. Dan Gelber said Democrats will be pursuing new revenue sources. He and Altman addressed the “Florida’s Fiscal Storm” forum separately, but both men used the same word for what the more conservative House leadership is certain to call a tax increase.

“I think the Senate is going to look at all revenues and nothing is off the table,” said Gelber, D-Miami Beach. “The term we’re going to use is ‘tax fairness.’ ”

It starts today in the Senate Finance and Taxation Committee, which Altman chairs. He said the panel will take up the state’s cigarette tax, which some lawmakers want to raise by as much as $1 per pack, along with a “streamlining” of state sales taxes so Florida can join more than 20 other states in a national compact for collecting the levy on “remote” sales like Internet and mail-order transactions.

“I would not be surprised if the Senate increases revenues by $2 billion, but it will be under the rubric of tax fairness,” said Gelber, a former House minority leader who is running for the U.S. Senate.

Democrats are outnumbered 26-14 in the Senate but the chamber is mildly more amenable to tax ideas more than the more conservative House. The lower chamber, also GOP-run, is more inclined to cut spending — which has already been reduced by about $6 billion in the past two years.

Altman and Gelber didn’t rule out further excruciating budget cuts. Gov. Charlie Crist will put forth his budget proposals later this week.

Altman said his committee will scrutinize sales-tax exemptions to see which ones serve a good economic-development or job-creation purpose

Dominic Calabro is president of Florida TaxWatch, which cosponsored the forum with a bipartisan civic group called To The Village Square. Calabro said the state should use the “tectonic shifts” underlying the tax structure as an opportunity to closely examine spending priorities and tax fairness.

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” he said. “We have an opportunity to bring some common sense to determining how we spend money.”

Originally published February 19, 2009 in The Tallahassee Democrat www.tallahassee.com

January 10, 2009

The Village Square creates a place for civilized conversation

Faith is the topic for Tuesday’s panel

By Sharon Kant-Rauch
DEMOCRAT FAITH EDITOR

When Pastor Rick Warren was invited to give the invocation at President-Elect Barack Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration, gays and others on the left raised a loud and vociferous chorus of protest about Warren’s opposition to gay marriage and abortion.

Some on the right were also offended — they say Warren isn’t conservative enough and shouldn’t share the stage with someone who supports a woman’s right to choose.

It’s exactly that kind of political polarization that Liz Joyner and The Village Square, the group she helped found, hope to break. For more than a year, Joyner has brought Democrats and Republicans together every quarter for dinner and what she calls “civilized” conversation — no name-calling and yelling allowed, just thoughtful, engaged discussion.

At Tuesday’s dinner, a bipartisan panel will tackle a particularly thorny topic: Faith in the Public Square.

“We seem to be living in a time when we’ve stopped talking to people we disagree with . . . and we aren’t having good conversations about things that matter,” Joyner said. “I think we can do better than that.”

On Tuesday, Joyner said, she is going to tell the panelists to fight like the Founding Fathers.

“Have a real discussion, but do it with civility and grace.”

The relationship between the co-chairs of The Village Square — City Commissioner Allan Katz and Tallahassee Community College President Bill Law — provides one example of the possibilities for dialogue. Katz, a Democrat, and Law, a Republican, have different views on how to solve social problems, but during periodic jogs together and informal monthly get-togethers, they’ve learned to respect and trust one another’s judgment.

“We come from different places, but we realized that just sitting down together with our talking points wasn’t going to get us anywhere,” said Katz, who will act as moderator for Tuesday’s panel discussion. “We had to be willing to really listen to what the other one was saying.”

Lea Marshall, a Republican who has attended all of The Village Square dinners, said she goes to listen to the speakers she supports. But she often comes away with some truth from the other side.

During the last dinner, for example, which took place before the election, one speaker said that people who believe that only “their guy” could save the country were verging on idolatry.

“That made me look at the election differently,” Marshall said. “The take-home lesson didn’t come from the person I originally went to hear.”

Ken Connor, one of Tuesday’s panelists, said it was important to create a calm atmosphere where people have a chance to listen to the merits of an argument. Connor, an attorney, is the former president of Florida Right to Life and the author of “Sinful Silence: When Christians Neglect Their Civic Duty.”

“If the volume is loud and the face is red, there is little opportunity to convince and persuade one another,” Connor said. “Sounds to me like what The Village Square is saying is ‘Look, we want people to have equal access to the marketplace of ideas.’ I think the outcome of that discussion will demonstrate that some ideas are better than others.”

Connor’s fellow panelists include:

W. Dexter Douglass, an attorney who has practiced Florida law for half a century, was the lead counsel for Al Gore in the infamous “Florida Recount” of 2000 and is a 16-year member of the board of the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind.

The Rev. Allison DeFoor, who served as vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida from 2002 to 2006, is an Episcopal priest who works in prison ministries and an environmental consultant who has served as director of the Florida Audubon Society and president of the Florida Land Trust Association.

Leo Sandon, a professor emeritus of religion and American studies at FSU, longtime religion columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat and ordained Presbyterian minister.

Additional Facts
if you go

What: “Faith in the Public Square”
Where: St. John’s Episcopal Church, 211 N. Monroe St.
When: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday
Cost: $40
Contact: Call 264-8785 or visit www.tothevillagesquare.org

Bringing politics and religion to the dinner table
Elliott McCaskill

The Village Square kicked off the new season of its quarterly dinner series titled “Dinner at the Square” on the topic of “Faith, Politics and Neighbors” Tuesday, Sept. 23.

The first dinner’s topic was “On Church State: Faith and the Founding Fathers,” a discussion of how the wisdom of America’s founders might help guide society during the rough times when faith and politics intersect.

Speakers at the dinner included David M. Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington D.C., and John Corrigan, who is the chair of the Religion Department at Florida State University.

Corrigan specializes in American religious history and religious conflict and is the author or co-author of a dozen books, including the forthcoming Religious Intolerance in America: A History of Hatred and Forgetting. He has taught all over the world, including at Harvard and Oxford and in Rome, Dublin and Florence.

Following the talks from the two speakers, guests were also invited to join an extended discussion on faith and politics following the dinner for an additional hour.

The Village Square is a public educational forum that seeks to improve the factual accuracy and civility of public discourse. Each year, the Village Square offers a new topic in its “Dinner at the Square” series in order to pursue constructive engagement between neighbors of differing political ideologies.

For information about more upcoming talks in the series, visit www.tothevilliagesquare.org.

Originally published September 25, 2008 in FSU News www.fsview.com

Non-partisan forum aims to address politics, faith
Village Square voices both sides on divisive issues of politics, religion
Antonio Cotroneo

The Village Square, a non-partisan educational forum organized by a diverse group of community leaders, will begin a new season of its quarterly dinner series “Dinner at the Square” on the topic of Faith, Politics and Neighbors on Tuesday, Sept. 23. The series will kick off with “On Church & State: Faith and the Founding Fathers,” a discussion, according to The Village Square, on how the wisdom of America’s founders might help guide us in the rough waters where faith and politics intersect today.

Guest speakers at the dinner will include The President of the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington, D.C. and former NATO Ambassador David M. Abshire, as well as the chair of the Religion department at Florida State University, John Corrigan, a specialist in American religious studies and religious conflicts. Abshire served on the cabinet of President Ronald Reagan and has written seven books, including his most recent A Call to Greatness: Challenging Our Next President. In addition he is a graduate of West Point, a Korean War veteran, co-founder of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the recipient of numerous honors and awards. Corrigan is the Edwin Scott Gaustad Professor of Religion and is the author or co-author of a dozen books, including the upcoming Religious Intolerance in America: A History of Hatred and Forgetting. He has taught all over the world, including at Harvard and Oxford, and in Rome, Dublin and Florence.

Against a background of excessive disagreements on evolution, school prayer and holiday celebration, the discussion will attempt to take an unbiased look at both sides of the divide on faith.

“We seek to improve the factual accuracy and civility of our public discourse, offering a new topic each year in our Dinner at the Square series in order to pursue constructive engagement between neighbors of differing political ideologies,” said The Village Square Executive Director Liz Joyner.

The dinner will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 211 North Monroe, located in downtown Tallahassee. Guests are encouraged to attend an optional extended discussion on faith and politics following the dinner, between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 and can be purchased online at www.tothevillagesquare.com/tickets or by calling 264-8785.

In addition to Tuesday’s discussion, The Village Square and St. John’s Episcopal Church will co-host a second lecture by Abshire on Wednesday, Sept. 24. The lecture will be on the topic of Abshire’s newest book and will be the first presentation in a unique series put on by St. John’s to benefit the needs of Florida’s state capital and educational community called Metanoia: St. John’s Spiritual Leadership Forum. The event will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church and Abshire will sign books following the lecture and hold a question and answer session.

There is no charge to attend, but because space is limited, a reservation is required. To make a reservation, contact Liz Joyner at liz@tothevillagesqure.org.

Originally published September 22, 2008 in FSU News www.fsview.com

Albert Einstein, The Village Square and our Energy Future
Liz Joyner, MY VIEW

There were actually some advantages to having a king.

If the kingdom had a problem, a good king could send for the most brilliant scholars in the land, commission them to scribble mathematical formulas into the wee hours, apply his royal intellect and issue an edict. Of course, there were the bad kings and the heads that rolled which, more or less, gets us to about where America starts.

As they went about the business of building a country without a king, our Founding Fathers had more than a little trouble dealing with each other. Democracy turns out to be a bit of a sloppy business, but the founders never had the luxury to simply not bother with the difficult conversations.

Fast-forward a couple of centuries and this democracy of theirs was in a world war, dealing with an aforementioned bad “king” and having more difficult conversations. One of them changed the world.

Having urged FDR to build the first nuclear bomb as the threat from Nazi Germany mounted, Albert Einstein later became haunted by the legacy of risks he knew nuclear power had left for us. To that end, he gave this advice: “To the village square we must carry the facts of atomic energy. From there must come America’s voice.”

We liked this advice so much we named our organization after it. We think it applies to all kinds of problems.

In April, we took Einstein’s charge ridiculously literally by bringing the facts of atomic energy back to “The Village Square” in the third Dinner at the Square in our series on energy. It turns out that in this next generation of America’s nuclear debate, some of what we “know” about nuclear power isn’t true anymore and some never was.

Next Tuesday we complete our series on energy with “All GEOpolitics is Local: Global Issues, State Law and Hometown Lessons.” We’ve reassembled leading voices from the coal debate, both pro and con: attorney Brian Armstrong, County Commissioner Bryan Desloge, City Commissioner Allan Katz and businessman Kim Williams.

They won’t be talking about coal.

Instead we’ve asked them to consider the energy future of Tallahassee beyond coal. They’ll be doing the sloppy work of democracy . . . having a real conversation among people who disagree.

According to a 50-year energy forecast by Shell Oil “never before has humanity faced such a challenging outlook for energy and the planet.” They imagine two energy futures that may unfold depending on what actions we take now.

Shell believes the “scramble” scenario, in which we fight for a diminished supply of oil and natural gas, can only be avoided with a “blueprint” scenario, in which “initiatives first take root locally as individual cities or regions take the lead.”

That’s people like us in towns like this one.

As Einstein and Roosevelt before us and as the founders before them, our generation has taken its place caring for the legacy of the republic and the future of the planet. If we are to fulfill this charge capably, we simply don’t have the luxury of relying as we have on petty television politics, slick slogans in multimillion-dollar ad campaigns and cherry-picked facts.

If we are guided by political ideology (left or right) without becoming informed, the chickens of our factual distortion will eventually come home to roost. And whether it’s in a french-fried planet due to global warming, an economy we damaged acting in needless panic, 100,000 years of improperly disposed nuclear waste, or a solution we ignored because of groundless fear, there’s a heck of a lot of roosting that could happen.

In 1936, Einstein wrote a note to be enclosed in a time capsule addressed “Dear Posterity”:

“If you have not become more just, more peaceful, and generally more rational than we are (or were) — why then, the Devil take you. Having, with all respect, given utterance to this pious wish, I am (or was) Yours, Albert Einstein”

Now it’s our turn to address posterity. A kind and intelligent ruler might not do a bad job deciding our energy future, but there is no king; there will be no writ from on high. We believers in democracy know it’s better that way, as long as we citizens of democracy do our job.

Originally published June 25, 2008 in The Tallahassee Democrat www.tallahassee.com

“All GEOpolitics is Local” appearance on NPR’s local program “Perspectives”.

Members of Village Square, Tallahassee’s grass-roots forum on pressing issues, is weighing the area’s energy options. Village Square members Liz Joyner, Brian Armstrong, and Kim Williams join City of Tallahassee Director of Energy Services, David Byrne, to discuss how best to keep the lights on in the face of rising energy costs and growing energy demand. Aired June 19, 2008.

Bipartisanship on the hustings
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post Writers Group

Americans say they’re sick of partisan politics, and some of them really mean it.

In Norman, Okla., and Tallahassee, Fla. – two university towns where football usually matters more than governance – local leaders weary of blood sport have begun taking matters into their own hands.

Next week in Norman, as the media hordes forget they ever heard of Iowa and descend on New Hampshire for the nation’s first primary, a dozen or so renegades from the major parties are convening a forum to develop Plan C. A third way. A bipartisan solution to business as usual.

Their immodest goal: To end divisive partisan polarization, create bipartisanship and bring the country together after the 2008 election.

Leading the charge are David Boren, Oklahoma University president and a former U.S. senator, along with former Democratic Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia, Charles Robb of Virginia and Gary Hart of Colorado, also a former presidential candidate.

Republican sponsors include former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former Sens. Bill Brock of Tennessee and John Danforth of Missouri, and Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

And yes, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be there, but he’s not running for president.

Other formers expected to participate include Bill Cohen, former secretary of defense, and former U.S. Sens. Alan Dixon of Illinois and Bob Graham of Florida. Also, Jim Leach, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa, and Edward Perkins, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Yes, this is primarily a forum of formers. In fact, only Hagel and Bloomberg are politically current, from which one may draw one’s own conclusions. Then again, former politicians may be the best kind. With hindsight comes wisdom and, having been there, done that, people formerly known as politicians have little to gain from speaking out except the rare reward of doing something for the greater good.

While these reform-minded formers are tackling national problems, their bipartisan counterparts in Tallahassee are acting locally through a relatively new Web-based creation called “To The Village Square.”

The square is the brainchild of attorney and City Commissioner Allan Katz, a Barack Obama Democrat who used leftover money from his recent re-election campaign to create the project.

He tapped as his partner Liz Joyner, a social worker and stay-at-home mom, (who also ran his last campaign), and recruited a bipartisan board whose members agree with two simple premises: facts matter; solutions should be bipartisan.

“If you say you’re nonpartisan, nobody believes you,” says Katz.

With that reality in mind, The Village Square aims to remind citizens of “The Big Idea” for which our ancestors spilled their blood – that Americans should be self-governing. The Web site, tothevillagesquare.org, explains that history in the context of today’s political dialogue, which “wouldn’t be tolerated between 5-year-olds at recess.”

“We’ve turned ‘talking’ over to professional polarizers on television who make seven-digit careers surfing this wave of hostility,” reads the Web site. “They warp what were once perfectly useful ideas, when understood in moderation, into black-and-white caricatures of ideas, so oversimplified they become effectively useless in solving real problems.

“These entrepreneurial yellers build for us such a fundamental misunderstanding of (and contempt for) people who think differently than we do, we’ve stopped bothering to listen to each other. … We’re spoon-fed slick (and expensive) commercials that sell us snake oil rather than provide the facts so basic to building the informed citizenry envisioned by our Founding Fathers.”

To that end, Katz and friends sponsor topical dinners ($25/person) to air local issues. Next week, while Boren and Co. are figuring out how to advance civil discourse at the national level, participants in Tallahassee’s Village Square will be dining with experts to discuss: “Energy Alternatives À la carte: Fossils and Sunshine and Garbage, oh my!”

OK, so you’re rewinding your videos that night, but somebody has to take this stuff seriously.

It’s not quite a movement, but both Boren’s initiative and the Katz/Joyner project suggest the stirrings of a necessary political backlash. Just as an unhappily married couple nevertheless manages to produce a lovely and beloved child, the ugly divorce of politics from the people may yet birth a very American revolution.

If Washington won’t lead the way, then Americans will simply lead themselves.

Born-again Americans. Now there’s a concept.

Kathleen Parker’s e-mail address is kparker@kparker.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/04/EDGFU8UH7.DTL

This article appeared on page B – 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Originally published January 4, 2008 in The San Francisco Chronicle, www.sfgate.com

Seeking Civil Discourse
By Liz Joyner, MY VIEW

According to an early report describing his Jan. 1 “World Peace Day” message, Pope Benedict XVI “launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom.”

Except that he didn’t.

He also didn’t characterize concerns about global warming as “scare-mongering,” words put in the pope’s mouth in the pages of Britain’s tabloid The Daily Mail. The misquote has since bounced all over the Web, with Fox News alerting online readers “global warming skeptics have (a) friend in the Vatican” and bloggers lamenting the lack of coverage of this big news in the “liberal mainstream media.”

Not to be outdone, the liberal blog Wonkette, assuming the quotation to be accurate, lowered the dialog to sump-pump depths proclaiming “The Pope sucks” and referring to him as a Nazi amidst a sea of other very bad words.

As is true of most thoughtful writing on complex issues, there was something in the pope’s message for everyone. But with more cherry picking of pope-quotes going on than at a cherry pickers convention, most seemed to have walked away from reading the pope’s message with their pre-existing biases firmly intact.

And by “reading” it, I mean not reading it.

It turns out that the Vatican has its very own Web site in all sorts of languages, quite handy when one is actually trying to understand the pope’s “World Peace Day” message.

While the message can only be understood as a whole, here’s a sample: “Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important that assessments in this regard be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions” He also wrote, “the problems looming on the horizon are complex and time is short.”

That crazy pope, he sounds suspiciously like a world religious leader.

Not being Catholic, defending the pope is new territory for me, but I say we all have an iron in this fire, as it is emblematic of today’s distorted “conversation of democracy.” Bad facts and bad tempers are wrapping their gnarly little tentacles around the decisions we make for our future.

And, we are making big decisions for our future.

Swimming upstream in this muck, The Village Square is trying to start a different kind of conversation, one that seeks out diversity of opinion and invites a conversation of substance and civility.

The Village Square, if you’re not yet familiar with it, is Tallahassee’s non-partisan public educational forum on matters of local, state and national importance. It’s dedicated to maintaining factual accuracy in civic and political debate by growing civil dialogue on divisive issues, and recalling the history and principles at the foundation of our democracy.

If our first dinner on this year’s topic “America’s Energy Future” is an indication of where this is going, we agree about a lot more than the talking heads give us credit for. Before our discussion on “The Economics of Power Generation 101,” one speaker humorously conveyed a warning that if Tallahassee’s liberal tree-huggers gave him too hard a time, he might have to resort to counting their SUV’s in the parking lot.

In the end, without any fistfights or SUV-counting, our speakers agreed on the following general guiding principles of the energy decisions before us:

1. Diversify energy sources to minimize economic risk, thinking “and” rather than “either/or.”

2. Make 50-year decisions despite four-year political terms.

3. Bank on correct principles rather than prophesizing long-term energy winners and losers; the energy future has defied accurate prediction.

4. When possible, let the market find the solutions.

5. No one size fits all: Seek local solutions to specific local energy demands.

6. Pay attention to scale when comparing power generation alternatives.

7. Energy independence is a national security issue.

We continue the conversation on Tuesday, Jan. 8 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. with “Energy Alternative a la Carte: Fossils and Sunshine and Garbage, oh my!”

The event features Susan Story, president and CEO of Gulf Power and Sam Kalen of leading national D.C.-based energy and environmental law firm Van Ness Feldman. Story is both the youngest and the first female CEO of a Southern operating company. Kalen represents clients on the cutting-edge of today’s energy issues.

We were hoping the pope could join us, but we thought we might need a larger room.

Liz Joyner is the executive director of The Village Square and may be reached at 264-8785 or liz@tothevillagesquare.org. Readers may visit the Web site at www.tothevillagesquare.org to find a more thorough description of the guiding principles or to buy tickets for the Jan. 8 dinner.

Originally published December 31, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com

Rezoning debate challenges the urge to be civil
By Liz Joyner, MY VIEW

Democracy seldom runs smoothly. Any veteran of middle-school history class knows that, as does anyone who has attended a school-rezoning meeting.

If you were snoozing during seventh grade and need a refresher, you might want to join Leon County Schools at the rezoning meeting for the new middle school at 6 p.m. today at Roberts Elementary.

At stake? Where my child and yours will attend middle school. I won’t be there, though, as The Village Square will be discussing its first “Local Roundtable” topic, economic segregation.

The Village Square came from the sense that politics, while it won’t ever be “beanbag,” has taken a notable turn southward of late. What’s missing is the local conversation between people who share Little League teams and drive carpools together, but don’t agree with each other politically.

Instead, partisan talking heads turn our neighbors into an evil “they” who have “special” interests, and probably hate America, too.

The Village Square thinks we can defy that trend right here in Tallahassee, by talking with each other instead of about each other. From those conversations come common sense and a measure of common purpose.

Of course, few things will test this civility concept quite like rezoning.

My very own civility may be at risk. We live in a pocket of Killearn, currently zoned for Raa Middle School, that may be rezoned to the new school. Rezoning would correct a poor feeder pattern that requires our kids to leave most of their elementary school friends to join a middle school full of strangers (middle schools are scary enough without strangers), only to return in high school to their former grade-school peer group, which no longer includes them.

Left with the short straw of the rezoning is Raa, which will lose a substantial number of its gifted and higher socioeconomic students. From what The Village Square has learned in our conversation about economic segregation, that matters.

Critically important to this conversation is the concept of a tipping point, which seems to exist both in school systems and neighborhoods. Schools absorb a certain amount of economic diversity successfully, maintaining a high quality of education for all students while providing additional benefits to help students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds achieve their potential. The many parents whose children have thrived in diverse schools such as Raa and Leon High know this firsthand.

But when the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch exceeds somewhere between 30 percent and 40 percent, the school risks tipping. Those families that have the resources to move, send children to private school or provide transportation for a child with a tuition voucher may leave the school. What’s left behind is a more challenged school that has tipped, and in it the students who don’t have options.

Also left behind is a higher bill for the taxpayer. We pay more than $9,000 annually to support a student in the recently tipped and under-enrolled Nims Middle School, compared with about $5,400 per student at Swift Creek Middle School.

Whatever the decision, it won’t make everyone happy. Nevertheless, it’s worth aspiring to have an informed conversation and remember that, as neighbors, we are partners in the ultimate long-term outcome.

We’ll do world peace next week.

Originally published November 8, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com

WFSU Perspectives on The Village Square

Originally aired 9/27/2007, click on link above to listen to program.

Tallahassee City Commissioner Alan Katz and resident Liz Joyner call an initiative by community activists to create a non confrontational forum where citizens cans discuss community-wide issues/problems “The Village [Square].” They invite expert speakers to facilitate informed discussions and brainstorming on issues like energy, economic segregation, and education reforms and so on.

Dinner, with a side of civic discussion

The Village Square, a newly formed nonprofit in Tallahassee, will open its first season of Dinner at the Square on Tuesday, Oct. 2 from 5:30 to 7: 30 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church on North Monroe. The bipartisan group, organized by a diverse group of community leaders, aims to improve the factual accuracy and civility of our public discourse.

The Village Square will host four dinners on a single topic of civic interest each year in a format that organizers hope will be both entertaining and informative. This season’s topic is “Powering Up: America’s Energy Future.” The discussion for the Oct. 2 dinner is “The Economics of Power Generation 101: Mother Nature, Common Sense and Turning a Supertanker.”

The first dinner will be catered by Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille. Participants may bring their laptops to fact-check during the discussion.

Speakers for the event are Peter Bradford, vice chair of Union of Concerned Scientists and former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Jim Rossi, professor of law and associate dean for research at Florida State University College of Law; and Jerry Warren, former CEO of Gainesville Regional Utilities.

Topics for the rest of the Dinner at the Square season are:

Jan. 8 – “Energy Alternatives a la Carte: Fossils and Sunshine and Garbage, oh my!”

April 1- “The Nuclear Power Debate, Version 2.0: What’s Old, What’s New, What’s Hype, What’s True.”

July 1 – “All GEOpolitics is Local: “Global Issues, State Law & Hometown Lessons.”

Originally published September 26, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com

Forum aims to fight divisiveness
Village Square dinner slated for October 2
by Julian Pequet, DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Tallahassee area community leaders announced Tuesday the creation of a community forum to combat what they called an increasingly uncivil tone of public discourse.

The forum, called the Village Square, grew out of Tallahassee City Commissioner Allan Katz’s 2006 bid for re-election and recent campaigns on a proposed coal plant and on a health-care tax proposal – campaigns that the bipartisan group’s members said were characterized more by political attacks than by factual debate.

“One of the things we hope we can do is bring light to some very important civic issues,” said Bill Law, the president of Tallahassee Community College and a co-founder, along with Katz, of the Village Square. “Shouting louder and vilifying people is probably not the way to get to the best participation and ultimately the best decisions in our community.”

The nonprofit forum offers two formats: four dinners a year that will be open to the public and monthly meetings of a panel of citizens that will follow a single topic through the year. The panel’s first topic will be economic segregation.

The $25 dinners, to be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 211 N. Monroe St., will also follow a single theme of local interest throughout the year. The first dinner is scheduled for Oct. 2. This year’s topic will be energy.

“We …. live in a time where we’re sort of breaking apart at the places where we disagree and avoiding the people with whom we disagree,” said Liz Herbert, the Village Square’s executive director. “We’re going to do the opposite.”

Tallahassee City Commissioner Allan Katz, co-chairman

Tallahassee Community College President Bill Law, co-chairman

Bryan Desloge, Leon County commissioner

Bill Montford, Florida Association of District School Superintendents

Laurie Dozier, Mad Dog Construction

Lyn Stanfield, Apple Computers

Father Melvin K. Gray, St. John’s Episcopal Church

Samuel “Buddy” Streit, Boys and Girls Clubs of the Big Bend

Lila Jaber, Akerman Senterfit

Virginia Wetherell, Wetherell Consulting Inc.

John Lewis, The Tupelo Group

Gil Ziffer, Ziffer Stansberry Advertising and Public Relations

Originally published May 9, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com

Square idea: civil discourse
by Chris Timmons, MY VIEW

On the front of The Village Square Web page, there’s an American flag woven with different shades of color and multiple design patterns which coalesce to make a grand view of e pluribus unum – out of many, one.

Also on the same page are words of wisdom from Albert Einstein: “To the village square we must carry the facts . . . from there must come America’s voice.”

Two community leaders have taken those words to heart, and have come up with a surprisingly civic-minded and thoughtful way to do that for this community with a new community forum called The Village Square.

City Commissioner Allan Katz and Tallahassee Community College President Bill Law have two aims here. One is to make typically divisive issues less so by getting people together to discuss and agree on the facts before meaningful solutions are found.

The second aim is to build a coalition for change that pulls from every view and talent of this community. Two reasons why this is necessary:

For a couple of years now, this community has confronted the twin challenges of diversifying its energy mix by joining a coal plant consortium in Taylor County and avoiding the calamitous social and fiscal costs of unaffordable health care by advancing a health-care tax proposal. It was inevitable that debate would ensue on both of these issues, and tempers would rise.

That was especially the case with the coal-plant issue. Ironically, Katz was one of the main offenders. Recall that City Manager Anita Favors-Thompson was accused of consorting with coal-plant proponents. Her accuser was Katz. He eventually apologized, but it wasn’t the brightest moment in local campaign history.

To avoid future acrimony, having a debate that is tailored toward a long view will enhance the quality of the solutions that eventually come up. The way the group hopes to do this is by holding annual dinners dedicated to a single topic, and monthly panel meetings of experts and community members on a single topic for a year’s time.

Mostly what this does is encourages a back and forth that allows people to buy into any solution, as opposed to just having random solutions thrown around and the process going nowhere.

Most importantly, it says something great about this community. Now that we have moved forward on a number of fronts – Gaines Street, downtown, energy, and myriad other things – community leaders recognize the value of keeping the momentum going without causing a rift among different community groups. The city’s long-term interests require that everyone buys into whatever vision the city has for itself. Group alienation will only deter, not help Tallahassee move forward.

This comes on top of another community project that is searching for new ways to push the community toward civic boldness and innovation: the Knight Creative Community Initiative.

With these two projects – two different projects, which have the same effect – the community is saying something that would surprise some longtime residents: Tallahassee is serious about creating a new image and a new reality. No more idyllic Southern town – no more small-town quaintness and small-mindedness.

The city has taken on a new mind-set, one of big dreams, of a vibrant and prospering community that attracts the best talent, and new industry, while retaining its charm. In the past, we heard that city-county relations made prospective businesses hesitate. No person wants to come in during a bad fight. So the logic of this new Village Square makes perfect sense.

While summoning up our greatest ideals, it also forces us to do the hard things that make communities great. In the deal, we get civic comity and a good conversation. Perhaps a solution or two. On the whole, not a bad deal.

Originally published May 12, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com

New community forum launched
by Julian Pequet, DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Disappointed with what they called the increasingly uncivil tone of public discourse, a bipartisan group of community leaders on Tuesday announced the creation of a new community forum called the Village Square.

The idea grew out of Tallahassee City Commissioner Allan Katz’s 2006 bid for re-election and recent campaigns on a proposed coal plant and on a health-care tax proposal — campaigns that the group’s members felt were characterized more by political attacks than by reasoned, factual debate.

“Shouting louder and vilifying people is probably not the way to get to the best participation and ultimately the best decisions in our community.”

Instead, the nonprofit offers two formats: four dinners a year that will be open to the public and monthly meetings of a panel of citizens that will follow a single topic through the year.

The panel’s first topic will be economic segregation.

The $25 dinners, to be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 211 N. Monroe St., will also follow a single theme of local interest throughout the year.

The first dinner is scheduled for Oct. 2. This year’s topic will be energy.

For more information on The Village Square, visit Tothevillagesquare.org.

Contact reporter Julian Pecquet at (850) 599-2307 or jjpecquet@tallahassee.com.

Originally published May 8, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com

City set to unveil Village Square forum
by Julian Pequet, DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Tallahassee leaders today are set to announce the start of a forum aimed at getting residents to agree on facts before taking political action.

The forum, called the Village Square, will offer two formats: four dinners a year that will be open to the public and monthly meetings of a panel of citizens that will follow a single topic through the year.

“The hallmark of each event is that it will be bipartisan and incorporate people who have divergent opinions,” said Liz Herbert Joyner, the executive director. “The goal is to at least understand what the important facts are. Very often, that gets lost in the debate.”

The idea grew out of City Commissioner Allan Katz’s 2006 re-election campaign. Joyner was his campaign manager.

“The theory is that if you don’t agree on the facts, the chances of solving problems aren’t very good,” said Katz, who co-chairs the board of directors, along with Tallahassee Community College President Bill Law.

The panel’s first topic will be economic segregation. The $25 dinners, to be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 211 N. Monroe St., will also follow a single theme of local interest throughout the year.

The first dinner is scheduled for Oct. 2. This year’s topic will be announced at 9:30 a.m. today at the Florida Press Center, 336 E. College Ave.

For more information on The Village Square, visit Tothevillagesquare.org.

Originally published May 8, 2007 in The Tallahassee Democrat, www.tallahassee.com