Barbara Starrett and Sandy McNabb, PhD
On Feb. 23 at the SaddleBrooke Freethinkers meeting, 140 people listened to Richard Gilman talk about American Values. Mr. Gilman was past publisher of The Boston Globe newspaper, which won Pulitzer Prizes for articles under his leadership. In 2018 he was inducted into the UA School of Journalism Hall of Fame.
Mr. Gilman has collected data from different parts of the country on how people feel about American values. Surprisingly, in many areas, there is uniformity. His website ourcommonpurpose.com and his blog go into more detail.
Several of us who were at the lecture want to get a group of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats to meet and talk about how we can have a dialogue exchanging ideas, listening to each other, and seeing what areas we can agree on. We feel that getting people who respond to a newspaper article rather than calling friends will give a broader experience of participants. If you are interested in joining such a group, please send an email to saddlebrookefreethinkers@gmail.com. To make sure that the groups are balanced with an equal number of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats, at some point, we will need to know your political leaning.