Press Release: 1st Purple America Values Forum - Broadcast Aims to Overcome Political Polarization

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Broadcast Aims to Overcome Political Polarization

Purple America Invites Political Leaders, Students to Re-Imagine America® in Televised Forum Sept. 11th

Cleveland, Ohio — September 6, 2011 — Politicians and students will debate “Getting to Common Ground and Greater Good” in a televised panel discussion airing in several major markets on the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The program kicks off Purple America’s national Re-Imagine America® campaign to foster civility and the non-partisan, core values Americans of all faiths and political parties share.

The program challenges Americans to remember and re-create the national unity experienced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.  Panel members include Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo 5), Chairman of the House Civility Caucus and Congressman Tim Johnson (R-Il 15) co-chair and co-founder of the Center Aisle Caucus and high school student-leaders Nicki Lee, Jarrod Nagurka, Ann Elizabeth Riddle and Naomi Waltengus.

Program moderators are Roger Sidoti, former principal of one of the 2010 "Best High Schools" in the United States according to U.S. News & World Report; and Stuart Muszynski, CEO of Purple America-Project Love® Remember the Children Foundation.

“We are more alike than we are different,” Muszynski says, who in 2008 traversed the country conducting almost 1,000 interviews with everyday Americans. “America’s values are neither red nor blue. They are secular and non-partisan. They belong to all of us.”  He notes that despite geographic, racial, political, economic and other differences, when asked about their values, Americans everywhere invariably said similar things.

The program will air Sept. 11^th in Washington D.C., Cleveland, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Orlando, Omaha and Seattle.  A broadcast schedule is available at www.purpleamerica.us.  Streaming video of the program will be posted on September 12, 2011.

The television broadcast is made possible by a partnership between Purple America, an initiative devoted to supporting civil discourse by exploring the common ground of values widely shared across America, and the National Education Association, which is supporting teachers in preparing the next generation with the skills to collaborate in imagining and building America’s future.

For more information, go to www.purpleamerica.us.

About Purple America®

Purple America is a national initiative of Project Love® Remember the Children Foundation, a character-building program that has trained more than 50,000 American teens and 2,000 educators to build a culture of kindness, caring and respect in their schools. Purple America’s mission is to unite America around twelve values, neither red nor blue, that form our common ground: Equality, Faith, Family, Freedom, Love and Respect, Self-Expression, Doing the Right Thing, Community, Giving Back, the Good Life, Opportunity and Success.

Project Love is a non-profit, 501c3 organization.

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Paula DePasquale
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