Speak up! I can’t hear you.

BY ED FELIEN

This Fourth of July at Powderhorn everyone will have an opportunity to speak up and be heard. Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association and Southside Pride are co-sponsoring a speaker’s platform on the Tea House on the Lake. Before the age of Twitter and email, before radio and television, there was an American tradition that on the Fourth of July families would gather in the parks and playgrounds of the public schools and eat a picnic lunch while listening to speakers debate the important issues of the day. This was the principal source of information for most people about slavery, women’s suffrage and wars. Those speeches were the mass media and social media of their day. Today, communication is reduced to bytes and sound bites and 140 characters.
Well, this Fourth of July we’re going back to talking about big ideas, and we want everyone to participate. We want you to speak up and share your opinions with your neighbors. There will be an open platform from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Bring your picnic lunches and your lawn chairs. Politicians are especially invited, and officeholders should consider speaking at this event a solemn responsib-ility.
In order to accommodate everybody, we would like people to sign up. It
would be wonderful if candidates for the same office this fall could register early so we could match them and give voters a chance to compare ideas and aspirations.
If you want to speak and reserve a space on the program, please call Southside Pride: 612-822-4662 or email: [email protected]
You can speak on any topic and for any length, but we expect speeches will not go much over five minutes, and we reserve the right to harass speakers past that time if there are other speakers waiting.
Finally, speechifying on the Fourth of July!