Jim Hilgendorf is the producer of America's Dialogue. He is also the author of three books, and the producer, along with his brother John, of the Tribute Series, a highly acclaimed series of travel and educational videos that are in homes, libraries and schools all across the United States, which have also appeared on PBS and international television.
Website,
www.jimhilgendorf.org
Jim explains:
About two years ago, I became very concerned about the problem of nuclear weapons, and decided to make a video about the issue. Around the same time, I came across an article in the September 14th, 1946 issue of the Saturday Review magazine - about a year after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima - by Norman Cousins, internationally known writer and advocate for justice, peace and a better world, who wrote:
"What the country needs today is a moratorium on its normal activity, habits, and general routine; which is to say, a moratorium on trivia in order to accquire a basic literacy on the questions of our time. Let us have a National Concentration Week, during which we can ponder not only the implications of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, moral and political, but the problem of competitive national sovereignty in an atomic age. Let all our communication and educational resources be mobilized for the articulation of a set of national values on which a platform for leadership might be built. If it did nothing else, it might at least enable the American people to recognize a crisis when they see one and are in one."
This became the idea for the first America's Dialogue. I traveled to Hiroshima and interviewed the Mayor of Hiroshima and two survivors of the Hiroshima bomb, interviewed other people around the country, and finally put together a video.
I thought that this idea of Cousin's, of a National Concentration Week when people could gather and begin to talk about the future of our country, was a wonderful idea.
I sent personal emails to about 10,000 individuals and organizations, telling them of the plan to hold national grassroots discussions the week of April 14-22, 2007. I placed the full 42-minute video on this website and on Google Video. DVDs were sent to those groups who requested them for showings and discussions; and during that week in April, many individuals and groups all across the country participated in the first America's Dialogue discussion.
To view AMERICA'S DIALOGUE I online:
CLICK HERE FOR PART I
CLICK HERE FOR PART II
A few comments from the first
America's Dialogue participants:
"Wonderful project. I will go as far as I can with promoting it here in the Rochester, MN. area. I know we have a mayor who is a member of the Mayors for Peace group. I thought the video was wonderful." - D.C., Rochester, MN.
"Here at our retirement community, we have a weekly video/discussion group on matters of social concern. We will surely use this DVD. We have one member who uses the same words you use, often saying 'We should be having a national dialogue on what kind of nation and world we want.'" - D.A., Santa Rosa, CA.
"This all sounds quite wonderful, just what the country needs. Please send me the video so I can get started." - E.A., Atlanta, GA.
"I just viewed the 42-minute video on your website and want to congratulate you on the work you are doing. I am a long time member of PSR and IPPNW and we have been working on framing the dialogue about the future of our planet and the incompatibility of our current choices with our own survival. I think you have done a great job in introducing a story which can teach all of us the way forward." - A.K., Chicago, IL.
"That was a powerful documentary. I even cried." G.G., Akron, OH.
"I've passed the DVD on to the social justice committee of our Unitarian Universalist Church. I'll pass it on to my daughter also at college in hopes that she can get a showing/discussion going there. Thanks for your great work. Hope it is seen by many." - D.P., Provincetown, MA.
"Your video is the best I've seen on the nuclear threat. I believe it will be well responded to by people on all sides of the issue. Yes, we need to make it happen now. Your goal of America's Dialogue is great." - K.F., Eugene, OR.