Gregg Early, director of a burgeoning speaker series at Fairfax County’s Mount Vernon Unitarian Church, has high hopes for the forum. Republican Rep. Tom Davis kicked off the firstevent in September, and Early expects to host Syria’s ambassador and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., among others, as part of the discussions on social justice on both the local and national level.
What do you hope to achieve through the speaker series?
We’re trying to create a community-building kind of forum, where we can take on issues and bring in our elected representative and sort of get back to the true meaning of democracy — having people meet their representative and having their representative directly respond to the questions of people who have elected them, or haven’t elected them, for that matter.
What issues do you hope to confront locally through the events?
We do a lot [related to] the Route 1 corridor, south of Alexandria to Fort Belvoir. There are issues with housing down there, there are issues with homelessness down there. Those are usually the local issues we try to go after. The community usually come in with some really good questions, and we’re never quite sure sometimes.
How about nationally?
Climate change, Iraq, net neutrality. Some of the church members have gays in the military as a big thing. Usually reproductive rights comes up, civil liberties, [domestic] spying, renditions.
What other potential speakers have you reached out to?
[Democratic Rep.] Jim Moran, who for scheduling reasons we have been unable to get. Our goal will be to try to get [Retiring Virginia Sen.] John Warner in. Once we move through our broader representatives, then we’ll move into different formats and forums to try to bring in other speakers that have some impact to the community at large.
