Call to Action: Tolerance and Diversity in Valpo
Stories appear every day in mainstream media about the negative in our community. Despite everything we cover being positive, we recognize that there are plenty of negatives in every community. There are jerks everywhere, as I like to say, there’s just a relatively low number of them in Valpo and other good communities.
Recently, what has gotten a lot of coverage are some incidents that tell a story about a lack of diversity, a lack of tolerance, and some jerks within our town. We here at ValpoLife don’t try to suggest that this vale of paradise is anything close to perfect. We do suggest however, that there’s a heck of a lot of people in this town and honestly in every town, that do enjoy interacting with others of all shapes, sizes, colors, political affiliations, men, women, old, young, city folks, country folks, even people from different counties for heck’s sake. So amidst many calls to action for serious debate and reasoned problem solving, which are all appropriate within the forums that they are hosted, we’re issuing our own call to action. We’d like to hear about every story that speaks tolerance, diversity, acceptance, partnership, give and take, and ultimately people that are different in some way, working together.
What are We Looking For?
These could be stories involving folks of different races, could be Democrats sitting down for coffee with Republicans, could be country folks having a meeting with developers to plan for better balance amongst their interests. It could be the big bully on the playground getting along with the little shrimp during recess kickball game, could be men and women getting together to try to understand each other a little bit better, could be liberals sharing a meeting with conservatives to talk about how to move the city forward, could be rival kids meeting with the teacher or counselor or pastor to figure out a way to get along better, could be a youth minster that brings kids of all shapes and sizes together in the common pursuit of their faith, or heck it could be two coffee shops or two car dealers working together in a community activity.
All we care is that we have the opportunity to tell the stories of where diversity does exist, of where tolerance does happen, of where kindness takes place and our feeling is there’s an abundance and a true eagerness, perhaps even an enthusiasm in some of the local media for bringing attention to what is wrong. We’re not here to say that those problems don’t exist as they do and there are folks far more knowledgeable than we are about how to work to resolve them.
We’re just here to bring some balance to the stories that don’t often make the front page news, the stories why each of us have chosen to live in this community, and the stories that hopefully inspire even one of us to recognize that the beauty of tolerance, the splendor of diversity, the enjoyment of kindness, and the peace that comes when folks work together rather than apart, is pretty inflammatory itself when folks work to keep the fire going.
So what is the story, photo, or event coming up that you want to share ? Where do you see different working in common ? What are the examples that we all can learn from ?
Pastor Perkins from the United Methodist Church in downtown Valpo passed along some information regarding the church's Nexus Youth Program. Click here to learn more about the program or check out the video below.
Connie Dickey submitted a story of diversity and tolerance about her son and a friend from work
My 19 year old son, Jake Evey (white), has special needs. He works part-time at VU in food services. While at work he became friends with a young black man, Chris Shep. Chris gave him his phone number and told him they could hang out some time. We invited Chris over for dinner and our entire family loved him—he stayed until 9 p.m. and hung out with Jake watching sports. We didn’t even give his color a second thought—I always tell my son it’s what’s in your heart that matters.
Contribute@valpolife.com to share your story.