Join A Club.(the fate of America depends on it)
Below is a list of community groups we are currently offering! Check them out and sign up here for any and all groups you are interested in.
Interested in becoming a small group leader? We’re offering $300 stipends all year. Check out the details here.
Current Groups:
Difficult Discussions Group with Tom Taylor. This group is perfect for civic minded community members and group leaders who want to participate in and/or lead productive discussions on difficult topics. We will learn and share skills that can be used to transform anger and defensiveness into constructive collaboration.The Difficult Discussions Group will be led by Tom Taylor and will be held on 3 consecutive Thursday evenings from 5:30-7:00pm at St. John’s Episcopal Church starting July 18th. Sign up here!
The Righteous Mind Book Club: Join us on Mondays starting July 15th from noon to 1pm at St. John’s Episcopal Church to discuss Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.” This book club will be facilitated by Bill Mattox. Sign up here!
Writing Nonfiction for Fun and (Maybe) Profit with Randi Atwood: Are you persuasive? Do you say what you intend in the strongest, most convincing way? We’ll focus on the basics: how to construct an argument, choose compelling words, convey powerful emotions – and keep your reader intrigued enough to continue past the first sentence. Through a combination of fun exercises, tips and tricks, you’ll learn to keep your reader involved. We’ll read each other’s work, give feedback and work together to polish it to perfection. By the time the class is over, everyone should have a finished piece to submit, send or send. Meeting on Saturdays, July 20th and 27th at the Main Library from 10am-noon. Limited to 12 people. Sign up here!
Trail Walking with Kate Kile: Come join us for a Saturday morning walk in the woods! We gather the first Sat of the month at 9am and walk for about an hour. We’ve picked easier trails to accommodate all abilities and we especially love little humans and four legged friends. There are so many wonderful trail gems all around Tallahassee to explore together. Come breathe some fresh air, feel the forest carpet under your feet and make some new friends. Everyone is welcome! Sign up here!
The Anxious Generation Book Club: Starting this fall! Join us at lunchtime at St. John’s Episcopal Church to discuss Jonathan Haidt’s newest book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” This book club will be facilitated by Bill Mattox. Sign up here!
Positive Posse Group: Join the ‘Positive Posse’ Group to share love and light with fellow Tallahassee humans. We’ll be holding positive messages of love and light as encouragement to our community members. We have several signs available for holding or you can bring your own. Your sign must be positive with no angle or partisanship and readable from a distance. Sign up here!
Civic Stitch ‘n Bitch: Returning this fall with Liz Joyner, founder of The Village Square! Bring your knitting, crocheting, needlepoint, or a snack, or just an open hand to hold to a wine glass. One rule, we only “bitch” about the ways that our civics isn’t working for ALL OF US (it’s a countercultural mental exercise). We’re going to stitch up this ugly ole divide, whether it’s with yarn or relationships. Sign up here!
Thursday Think Piece Club (NOW AT CAPACITY). Hosted by Village Founder Liz Joyner and Village Square Board member Neil Skene. We’d love for you to join us to discuss a number of current think pieces starting with Jonathan Haidt’s recent Atlantic piece “End the Phone Based Childhood Now.” We are meeting up Thursdays, June 27th, August 1st, and Wednesday, August 28th at the Hummingbird Wine Bar on North Monroe. Sign up here!
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This year at The Square, we’re going to be starting a club. To be more precise, we’re going to be starting a club about starting more clubs. We hope we’ll see clubs popping up all over about every sort of thing—about walking + talking, stitching + bitching, about big ole thorny problems—or about nothing much at all. Jump down this page to see a few of the groups we’ve started already (some of them you can even sign up for). (You can also download our concept document here and add to our club-a-palooza brainstorming document here, including telling us about existing clubs that like all sorts of people to join them.)
“I’ve never been much of a joiner. We hear that a lot from new people that come in. But I think whatever your burn is in the world, there’s something out there for you.” —From the feature film “Join or Die.”
So why all this group-ish-ness afoot, you’re cleverly wondering? We think that hanging out with each other in our hometowns might just be how we’re going to save America (and ourselves). We’ve believed that since we were founded 17 years ago by an unofficial “club” of a few friends who disagreed on politics but liked each other anyway. Ask yourself how much time you spend really talking with friends or acquaintances who disagree with you ideologically? If you’re like most Americans, the answer is “hardly ever,” so how do you really know you hate “those people” so very much? Right?
And now, especially now, too many of us are sad and lonely and angry. We wonder when was the last time that some of our sad and lonely and angry neighbors were invited to join up to much of anything?
Healing what divides us in America doesn’t have to be a slog — it can be with good music in the background, a beer in your hand and laughter all around. We’re convinced that if we turn this experiment in self-governance around, it will be because we got up off the couch and joined something or other, preferably that included people who aren’t just like us.
“In the background of the American story behind the presidents and wars, recessions and boom times, scientific breakthroughs and social movements—are clubs.” —from “Join or Die”
Here are just a few of the clubs that popped up and built America: Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society, Detroit Athletic Club (and the Banjo Club at the Detroit Athletic Club), and (of course) Ben Franklin’s famous Junto, that met on Friday nights in Philadelphia to debate philosophy.
So—in this proud American tradition—here are our first clubs, below. Give Cassie a (polite) yell if you’ve got one you want to add to the list with your “Beautiful Dogs & Their Beautiful Owners Club” or your “Coffee Roasting Unicycle Club.” Give Liz a (friendly) holler if you’re just trying to figure things out and you want a little club-coaching.
“Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association. —Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America”
