Seven of us attended the meeting on the 13th and made progress on several fronts. As we have asked participants to define themselves politically we spent several minutes discussing each other's perspective and acknowledging agreements and differences.
One of our goals is to establish a fairly short reading list of books that will aid folks in understanding different opinions and perspectives. So several selections were discussed. These have been posted on our blog; we invite you to add to the list by commenting on the post. We will review and revise the list with an eye toward creating a broad selection of concise material. We invite everyone to offer their recommendations (electronically or otherwise).
As this group has evolved our focus has narrowed and become more defined. In fact, at the last meeting we created a draft of what may become our mission statement. Below are the crude elements of what we've been able to agree on. It is a description firstly, of who we hope to be and secondly, the things we plan to do. Please review the draft and offer any re-wording or additions at or before the next meeting. We plan to adopt a final version then. (This has also been posted on our blog, so feel free to make any comments there).
Mission Statement:
"We aim to be a widely diverse group of people seeking to build common ground while respecting differences. Our goals are to 1.) Raise the level of dialogue, 2.) Promote common courtesy, 3.) Learn about and from each other, 4.) Examine political and social issues from every possible perspective, 5.) Discover other viewpoints and 6.) Provide avenues for community action."
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