Consider seeking to secure 3 to 5 pairs of local leaders/citizens/academics willing to come speak in pairs, thus creating a local mini speakers’ bureau inside that community that can support future events. By designing pairs of speakers who either are or can become friends who are offered to each community as a pair, you’re virtually ensuring healthy dynamic successful events with a range of opinion represented (we’re also developing a resource that will help us potentially land a major NEH grant in Florida; we can show that we’ve begun this development and will continue it under the new grant). See the speaker pairs here to get an idea of what that might look like (we can even put your local speaker pairs up on this website too: https://respectandrebellion.com/speakers/)
A la carte menu of forum ideas (to be customized with Liz to the extent that is helpful to each location interested in any particular topic) Note that for all forum ideas your panel/discussion leaders can just be a couple respected community leaders; special knowledge isn’t necessarily required:
