Thursday, January 27th, 2011

What are your opinions on:

• Same-sex marriage?

• Reproductive rights?

• The cause of the economic crisis?

Willing to share them and hear opposing opinions?

Then come to:

109 Avondale Place
Syracuse, NY 13210
Saturday, January 29, 2011
2-5 p.m.
315-727-8816 (if need directions)

For an Afternoon of Dialogue

Matilda Joslyn Gage had strong ideas about the issues of her day similar to these we face today.  She also had a commitment to listening to other’s opinions when they differed. She invited the anti-suffragists to a women’s rights convention, to share their ideas.

We are building the Gage Center on this principle of respectful dialogue—sharing and hearing—that is essential for the educated citizenry upon which a democracy depends. If we can’t hear opposing ideas, we never have an opportunity to examine our own.

COME EXPERIENCE THIS UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE AND HEAR IDEAS IN A SAFE SPACE

There will be three dialogue groups:
2:15
3:15
4:15

Facilitators will be:

• Diane Swords, instructor in the Intergroup Dialogue Program at SU
• Crista C. Gray, Graduate Assistant - Intergroup Dialogue Program
• Darius J. Smith, a sophomore majoring in Public Affairs with minors in African-American Studies and Information Studies
• Kristian Rodriguez, SU Engagement Fellow currently working with Intergroup Dialogue

Sign up for one to ensure your place at the table. Take part in one or all three. Topics for each dialogue to be decided on by the group.

And there’s more … a chance to visit, eat, and win a prize

Before or after your dialogue group, visit with others over tea and share with us your special recipe you would like to see us serve during our “Tea and Talk” tours at the Gage Home? Bring an example for us to all try. And gauge your Gage-IQ with the Gage Quiz and win prizes!

Please RSVP with the time you would like to take part in the dialogue. Contact the Gage office by phone at 315-637-9511 or email at foundation@MatildaJoslynGage.org.

Let us know if you are interested in carpooling from the Sears parking lot at Shoppingtown Mall.

P.S. Here is what Matilda Joslyn Gage had to say.  Come share what you have to say.

ON MARRIAGE: It is an infringement of individual rights, that either state or church should possess absolute control over this important relation, –one that enters the inmost life of the individual persons contracting it. The parties themselves as chiefly interested, should hold power over its forms.

ON REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: My blood always boils at advice from a man in regard to a family.  That, at least, should be the province of woman alone.  To say when and how often she chooses to go down into the valley of the shadow of death, to give the world another child, should be hers alone to say.

ON THE ECONOMY: And with prosperity there may come some temporary abatement of the stress of labor agitation.  But it will not wholly cease, because the principal cause of it is a great deal deeper than the immediate depression and collapse.  It is the immense and steadily increasing disproportion that exists between the condition of the rich and poor.