Hi friends,
From 2008-2016, hundreds of folks from the Town Hall community spent presidential and midterm election nights together in our Forum space.
That streak was broken in 2018 during our building renovation—and while it’s absolutely among the least significant losses of this time, it’s true that we at Town Hall are sad that we’re not spending this evening with friends and volunteers, in community, in our home. (Beyond community—I, for one, will miss emcee Edward’s reassuringly sardonic wisecracks tonight… He always made the best of good news AND bad–)
You can bet we’ll learn something important about our country tonight—or in the extended, figurative “tonight” of coming weeks, since NO ONE should expect this to be over before every vote’s been counted. But we’ll learn even more about ourselves “tomorrow,” the literal and the figurative and the years beyond, by what we do next. Tonight is a milepost on an ongoing road—a road we can cut toward justice, toward mutual respect, toward the best of human potential. And though tonight is an important, and dramatic, point in our story it’s tomorrow I’m most excited to see.
I don’t have to give you a last chance reminder to dash to your drop box—I’d bet there isn’t a single person on the Town Hall email list willingly sitting this one out. Each of our votes is a voice raised for a better world, and your voice won’t go silent tomorrow, as we all get back to figuring out what kind of community we want to share together.
Because that’s what we hope you get from Town Hall—a place and the encouragement to become more informed, more conscientious, more powerful in pursuing a more perfect community.
We like to say that Town Hall is a place to celebrate Seattle’s successes, and mourn its losses—and we’d give most anything to be able to gather you together again tonight. Coming together is how we feel strong—and it’s how we glimpse the best of human potential. But that’s for tomorrow.
You know, the figurative “tomorrow.”
With gratitude and affection,
Wier
