Bridge The Political Divide On Church Street Friday

Have you had enough of the campaign nastiness that surrounds so many elections—including the one that occurred in Montclair earlier this month? What about the inability of some people to listen to other points of view?

Montclair documentary filmmaker Julie Winokur certainly has, which is one reason she's launched an engaging project called "Bring It To The Table." It's an idea aimed at getting people talking about a variety of, sometimes, controversial subjects.

On Friday, the project will come to Church Street, across from Anthropologie, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Winokur encourages everyone to stop by, to listen, and to share their views. She also encourages people to support the project's Kickstarter campaign so that the Table project can go on the road. For more information, and background on the project, go here.

"We have some pretty fabulous rewards on Kickstarter, including a drawing we announced yesterday for two V.I.P. tickets to a taping of Real Time with Bill Maher, and a two-night stay at a gorgeous home in Malibu," she said.

Winokur said the project's seed was planted when her 17-year-old son called her the most intolerant person he knows.

"Apparently he doesn't know enough people!," she said.

Officially, "Bring It To The Table" is a video and web project that brings citizens together around issues that normally tear them apart.

As the Kickstarter website puts it, "somewhere along the line, politics replaced sex as the one thing in America we don't discuss in mixed company—even amongst friends and family. Democracy is founded on robust dialogue, and if we can't have conversations across party lines, democracy doesn't work."

"Bring It To The Table" seeks to address this problem by introducing a participatory online platform, community engagement campaign, and a series of webisodes aimed at bridging political divides and elevating the national conversation. The project is for those who are tired of hyper-partisanship and want to steer political discourse back into the hands of the American people.

The concept is simple. The project plans to go on tour across America, setting up in public places such as bookstores, bakeries, barbershops, schools and farms, and asking people to sit down and speak candidly about your political beliefs. No hysterics. No ranting. Just genuine discussion aimed at peeling away the stereotypes that dominate today's political debate, Winokur said.

The project also is launching a participatory website that allows for healthy discourse. The website connects a growing community of folks who want to post questions for those whose political views differ from their own. The people sitting at The Table will answer those queries, creating a dialogue loop. Throughout the Table Tour, videos will be uploaded from the road, inviting constructive comments from you along the way. The public will determine which line of conversations are productive or counterproductive, helping to shape and elevate the dialogue.

"Bring It To The Table" is a non-partisan project of Talking Eyes Media, an award-winning non-profit documentary company whose work has appeared in National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and on Good Morning America, CNN, Discovery, MSNBC, and PBS stations nationwide. 

Want to get involved? Check out the Kickstarter website. Donate to the campaign. Share the project via social media, and join the group in making politics an acceptable topic for dinner conversation again.

Engage in the project on Twitter: @2thetable 

Tweet using #2thetable

Stop by on Facebook: facebook.com/bringit2thetable