My dad used to go to coffee with an attorney friend and spend the entire hour complaining about the negative changes happening to our state. Colorado was changing rapidly in those days, and what was happening here seemed to indicate a deeper and more broad change in America's political landscape. One day, they stood up from their meeting, looked at one another, and asked, “So what are we going to do to change it?”
Shortly after that, the Legacy Project was born.
For the last 13 years, we have gathered men, couples, and young people from across the political spectrum to meet together and study history. We encourage people to hear the lessons of the past and then work to have civil discourse with the people they interact with. Each lesson, we watch a video and then discuss how we have impacted our community. It could be a conversation with a hairstylist about their required licensure, or it might mean leaving a gratuitous tip for a waitress. It could mean buying a young family a breakfast anonymously or paying for a flat tire of a person who needed help.
The Legacy Project is about changing our community—not necessarily our politics. My dad dreamed up this idea, which is partially responsible for my passion for creating and telling historical stories about our past, trying to make connections to our present, and creating pathways for our future.
This is lesson one. I will post these here over the next several days because I think they are incredible lessons that we should all understand and ask questions about. While not everything in this video covers the full scope of history, the presentation is intended to provoke thought and questions about our history and why America is a unique place in the history of civilizations.
I would love to hear your comments about it - we are trying to build this program up on a larger scale in the coming years, and if what we have done is intriguing, I would love to hear about it.
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