EVENT RESCHEDULED: Due to inclement weather, the AARP Listens to Detroit Community Conversation has been rescheduled to Wednesday, February 24, 2010 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
You are cordially invited to participate in a unique kind of informal experience at an event in your community, hosted especially for AARP members and their neighbors, something we call a “community conversation.” AARP Listens to Michigan has been a series of such community conversations held across Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas and we are coming to your neighborhood to host another!
What’s there to talk about? Plenty. Most people by now understand that intense congressional and national debates around healthcare reform have been building towards a decisive moment, but has anyone asked you about any of it? Have you had any chance to hear from others who live, work and play nearby you about how the news and events on the issues have been affecting them?
At the same time, our State of Michigan’s budget crisis and exploding public revenue deficits have brought all our communities, municipalities and Michigan as a whole to question the future of our very way of life. They worry more and more about which of their future basic public services will continue. They even have begun to wonder if that starts affecting Michigan’s basic identity for the worse from a national leader families, professionals, leaders, industry and retirees wish to remain in or locate to to pursue of their American dreams. How have you seen that issue where you live? Where do you see it going and what do you think needs to be done?
Perhaps even more importantly, a deeper concern grows everywhere about partisan politics proving not only so divisive and paralyzing among politicians but distorting in the media, adding to what many people experience as cynicism and a hopelessness that their voices even matter, let alone will ever be recognized and heard. Are we all just “liberal” or “conservative?” Are that many ideas actually “left” or “right?” How many real problems out there in our daily lives are caused – let alone solved – by just “Democrat” or “Republican” solutions? Which of those political and media labels really describe you and your life, its needs, aspirations and concerns, if any?
AARP Listens to Michigan means it. We are coming to hear what you think and how you think about it. We will do three rounds of conversation in about two hours, based on the above topics, and write summaries of your comments and ideas. We then share those summaries with and solely to the AARP Michigan Office team and our National Office in Washington D.C. We do this as an ongoing effort to help speed the Association on its ongoing journey toward staying fully abreast of member and community perspectives and experience.
This is no “focus group” either. It’s a true conversation. We will be talking and listening to each other – for YOU and your neighbors are the “program” for this event, not AARP!
Anonymity is provided for those desiring it inside AARP and outside each community conversation.
So please join us. Your AARP community conversation will be held Wednesday, February 24th from 5-8p.m. at The Detroit Public Library, 5201 Woodward, Detroit, MI 48202 on the ground level of the library. A light meal will be provided, free of charge.
Space is limited so if you plan to participate in this FREE event, YOU MUST REGISTER BY calling 1-877-926-8300 to reserve your seat today! To assure people have plenty of time and space to express their individual concerns and ideas, these sessions are limited to 40 participants total. Those 40 people are then divided into three smaller groups to assure greater ease each other’s listening and give-and-take.
Finally, guess what: AARP Listens to Michigan has actually been fun for us to do and feedback we get frequently indicates the pleasure is mutual. They’ve become even more reliably and deeply meaningful as these opportunities allow us and participants to go beyond issues and attitudes into learning some about the lives and history people like you have witnessed and actually made. So please bring us your life story too, or at least a few of your favorite chapters! AARP Listens to Michigan looks forward to meeting and listening to you too on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 from 5-8 p.m.
