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Join us for Created Equal

“We shall learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools. The choice is ours: chaos or community.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

“We shall learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools. The choice is ours: chaos or community.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

We wanted to take a moment to share why we think the annual Created Equal event that we’re hosting with Leon County Government on Tuesday, January 9th is particularly important to us. (The program is a part of the Club of Honest Citizens series that won a citizen engagement award from National Association of Counties.)

There has never been a more important time for communities to embrace this challenge rather than wait around for Washington to fix it for us (they’re not going to). This isn’t something the Village Square and Leon County can accomplish alone, of course, so we’re hoping to inspire citizens like you to join in.

“Created Equal” on Tuesday, January 9thth at the Moon (6 to 8:30 pm, program starts promptly at 6:30) will continue our focus on building civic connectedness across differences right here in our hometown with a program we’re calling “Local Stories” – an evening of stories about our lived experiences around race – across color, creed and ideology.

If you participated in Created Equal in previous years, you’ll remember the 5-Foot Challenge we jointly issued to you a challenge we’re repeating broadly this year in our community: What can you do to change the 5-Feet around you on matters of racial (or religious, ethnic or ideological) division? The answer can be as small as an invitation to lunch that stretches your personal social circle beyond your own race/ethnicity or as large as an effort to start a project or initiative. (For those of you contemplating a project, you can submit it to us for a chance at a $500 mini-grant to get it going.) We want to remind you of tools we created to help you gather across race and ideology like Book Club on Race and Jefferson Dinners.

We’d also like to invite you to participate in a forum called Local Color that is organized quickly as an immediate response to catalyzing events. As America grows closer to being a majority minority country, communities that thrive will be the ones that build institutions incorporating this diversity dynamically into the fabric of civic life. In times of turmoil, citizens in these communities will turn toward their neighbors rather than to angry, tribalized media sources that inevitably drive citizens apart. We aim to be one of these communities and hope you’ll join our efforts to create this “civic muscle” for our hometown.

Please join us on the 9th, maybe with a friend or two different than you are racially, ethnically, or culturally. If you can’t, please join us along the way when you can. Find the event online here. As always, thank you for supporting the work we do and call anytime @ 264-8785 with ideas, thoughts, opinions.