At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I want to make another (this time, URGENT) call for submissions to the American Values project. The image to your left is a collage of some of the photos I’ve already recieved. (Go ahead and click on the image. It’s a pretty impressive collection, if I do say so myself.) This project has taken on a life of its own recently, so I’m trying to facilitate the growth that it seems to be self-generating. We have almost 100 contributions already and– at the risk of allowing my reach to exceed my grasp– I’m aiming to get twice that many. That’s 200 contributions. It’s going to require some help from you, though.
Here’s the thing that I find amazing and humbling and inspirational: this little project has managed to create, almost out of nowhere, its own unexpected community. Most of the contributors so far are strangers to one another– many were strangers to me before they sent in their contribution– but now they’re all strangely, “virtually” connected. Connected to each other and, Sacrebleu!, connected to me. As you can see from their photos, they don’t have a lot in common, at least not obviously. They’re from all over the place. They value different things. They come from all kinds of backgrounds. But, for whatever reason, they decided to answer the call to name something they valued.
You can do it, too. All it takes is a piece of paper, a marker, and some sort of camera (or phone). No matter what you value, no matter what you believe or don’t believe, it MUST be the case that at some point you have raised a skeptical eyebrow to the rhetorical use of “American Values” and thought to yourself: Wait just a minute. That’s not right. So here’s your chance to correct the record and secure for posterity your place in the community of American evaluators. Click here for instructions on how to submit your photo.
If you’ve already contributed, take a minute to pass on the word to others. There’s a Facebook page for the project that you can link to and share on your profile. You can forward the original Vimeo or YouTube video to your friends and ask them to contribute. Or you could just ask people old school, face-to-face. It doesn’t cost anything, it doesn’t take much time or effort to help, and whatever help you can provide will be greatly appreciated.
Think you can’t come up with a value or a photo? You’re wrong.
You can.