Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. I'm Liz Joyner, and I'm the founder and CEO of the Village Square. What a group of us saw was kind of the early stages of what we're all feeling now, which is kind of a deterioration of the local conversation between people around important issues in favor of the tribal divisions that exist on national issues. And actually, it was after the coal plant debate that we had the sense people who were both for and against that we didn't really have a full, deep, real conversation about this community. And so that's what inspired us to start gathering and really valuing differences of opinion and spending time with people who didn't see it our way. I really am continually more inspired by our founding ideas, the best ideas that have ever existed to my mind in history. The idea that we hold these truths to be self-evident at a time when they weren't evident at all. Only in dreams, really. Only in people's imaginations. And that all men are created equal. And so yes, it was imperfect in so many ways then. And it's still imperfect today, but we have spent this time rising into it. And I think that that is the idea around which we regather and we continue when John McCain passed away. One of his last kind of his advice to us was that we live in a country made of ideals. And the continued success of our country is still the best hope of the world. And I really believe that. I believe we've guided the way before. And I think that the world's kind of a mess right now. And I hope we can find each other to start to guide the way again. I'm Liz Joyner. I'm the founder and CEO of the Village Square. You're listening to voices that inspire.