"A Town hall meeting is an informal public meeting derived from the traditional town meetings of New England. Similarly to those meetings, everybody in a community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the responses from public figures and elected officials, although attendees rarely vote on an issue. In today's heterogeneous communities with large populations, more often, town hall meetings are held so that people can influence elected officials in their decision making or to give them a chance to feel that their voices are being heard.
There are no specific rules or guidelines for holding a town hall meeting. If the turnout is large, and the objective is to give as many people as possible an opportunity to speak, the group can be broken down into smaller discussion groups. Participants all hear an opening presentation and then group-up to discuss an aspect of the presentation. Each group appoints someone to summarize their group's discussion.
I'm from Atlanta, Michael Vick and all the hoopla surrounding him is an inescapable fact. I watched the ESPN sponsored "Town Hall Meeting" and was a little bit saddened by my neighbors. Take the leap to see why.
I have to admit that I wasn't feeling well most of the day and slept through the first thirty minutes of the show/spectacle. Perhaps in those 30 minutes someone said something that would change my view of the way people acted. But, without that knowledge the whole thing really bothered me. I couldn't tell if people where there because of Vick, Dog Fighting, Racism or what. It was odd.
I was a bit thrown off by the, what seemed to be, strong vocal majority who felt that dog fighting was being looked at too strongly. The sound bite from T.O. comparing Dog Fighting and Hunting is as well a thought out opinion as I've heard on the topic. I actually wrote a little bit on Dog Fighting, here. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I brought up our natural right and responsibility to cull the herd for a species' protection and our own dietary needs. I appreciate that T.O. can see hunting and Dog Fighting in the same light. He's right, killing for sport is wrong.
If you hunt for no reason other than to kill something, then you aren't any better than Vick and the "Bad Newz Kennels". I don't think that's the majority of hunters though. Even if the average hunter isn't thinking about controlling herd sizes, they do eat the meat. If they don't, then they are just as bad as Vick. All that to say this, Pit Bulls don't need they're herd to be thinned and no one eats the fallen dog. So, T.O. dog fighting is not the same as hunting, when hunting is done right.
Now, I've grown up with the inescapable fact of racism. I'm not Stephen Colbert, so I unfortunately do see race. Luckily, I am saved by grace so I don't view a person according to the color of his skin. I view them according to the state of their soul. Before I sound hypocritical, I am human, and I make mistakes. I've made snap judgments on just about every ethnicity, including my own.
With that said, I really feel like the ESPN debate and the debate on Vick kept going back to and keeps coming back to race. Shame on Atlanta. Shame on us for making an issue of law an issue of race. Shame on every African American who has panned any view opposing theirs because someone of another ethnicity said it. Shame on each white person who has made a more harsh judgment than they should because of Vick's race. Heaven will be multicultural, if you can't handle that, you need to reconsider your faith.
I really feel like the ESPN debate was a benchmark. It was a show of the present climate in Atlanta. If it felt like there is a divide, there is. If nothing else, it needs to be a catalyst for people who want to see that divide shrink. I don't know what that means, practically. I just know that we Christians have a long way to go to break through the stereotypes and racism of intercity Atlanta. Maybe we need to have a town hall meeting on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment