In honor of 9/11, a day of dialogue

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from the September 10, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0910/p11s02-lihc.html

In honor of 9/11, a day of dialogue

By Dean Paton | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

SEATTLE - A little more than a year ago, while working in the Netherlands, David Silver observed two things that changed the focus of his life - and, he hopes, could change the tenor of public discourse in America.

"I noticed in Amsterdam that the Dutch media were reporting on subjects I'd never seen in America," he says. "And when I'd go out and talk with friends, I noticed that they were all talking about things that mattered."

When he returned to the United States, he wanted Americans to have the same kinds of spirited yet polite conversations he'd had in Amsterdam.

The idea of Americans with vastly differing opinions engaging in constructive dialogue became a fixation for Dr. Silver, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Washington. One evening, as he walked past the construction site of Seattle's new central library, he had an epiphany: Libraries are free, he thought, and they exist in communities big and small across the country.

Not earth-shattering, as epiphanies go. Yet from this has grown the September Project (www.theseptemberproject.org), a national day of dialogue about democracy, citizenship, and patriotism - pegged to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Saturday, at more than 450 sites in at least 48 states and seven countries, Americans will have the chance to gather, discuss, remember, commemorate, and - ideally - rediscover the tradition of town-hall discourse, the opposite of shock talk radio.

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The catalog of events is as disparate as America itself:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0910/p11s02-lihc.htm