Imagine a place where thousands of diverse residents gather to talk about the problems in their community, state and nation—as they share a meal and celebrate what unites them in a world that’s determined to see them divided. They meet at Dinner at the Square to “Let Friendship Redeem the Republic,” where 170 residents dine with a conservative Catholic priest and liberal lesbian theatre owner as they dive into a discussion about the competing ideals of freedom and equality, enjoy each other’s company, and laugh that they have at least one thing in common (they wear a lot of black).
In this hometown, almost 500 racially and politically diverse residents meet once a year at a nightclub for Created Equal, to celebrate their local civil rights journey and to ask themselves what remains to be done. Crisis that tears other communities apart, like the excruciating death of George Floyd, instead have hundreds of these residents coming together—with their black sheriff, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney, white police chief, State Attorney, FBI liaison, president of the NAACP, Black community leaders, prominent faith leaders, and a nationally known advocate (Ben Crump lives here)—to understand what their hometown must now do. This community has gathered about 20 times a year for 18 years now. These neighbors now better see that their differences can be a strength, feel a growing rootedness to place and see their futures as interdependent.
In this time of deep division, loss and despair, when hometowns across America are struggling to hold citizens together in mutual tolerance, this community exists now in Tallahassee, Florida. If you’re among the lucky <1% who live here (or are visiting), we invite you to join us for one of the many events we host each year. If you’re elsewhere, we hope you’ll join us for our UNUM digital series or tune into our podcast. (If you’re elsewhere and Village Square curious, you should know our model is portable, so we hope you’ll contact us.)
As we’ve built connections across divisions, we’ve come to believe that living out a healthy, pluralistic ideal must begin and take root in our hometowns — it won’t (it can’t) happen online. We have direct experience that fixing our dangerous division starts small, in the hometowns we share and in the space between us as we lead our everyday lives. We’ve now had hundreds of conversations with tens of thousands of people. We talk in bars. We talk in churches. We talk across those 100 continuous tables in the middle of a downtown street.
Through all this talking we’ve discovered something truly remarkable: People are hard to hate close-up.
We hope you’ll join us soon.
