Event aims to bring people together from all walks of life for an evening of fellowship and fun
For over 30 years Northeast Georgians have gathered annually for the Martin Luther King Day Peace Walk in Habersham County. This week, the organizers behind that event want to bring the community together for a potluck picnic at Pitts Park.
The event, scheduled for this Thursday, August 15, will offer people from all walks of a life a chance to meet and mingle and celebrate the true meaning of community.
“It came from the MLK march,” explains Denise Eller, a community resource specialist who is helping to organize the picnic. “Every year after the march we’d get together and say ‘Why didn’t we bring more people? ‘Why didn’t we include more children’.”
Eller and others hope to do just that through this first-ever summertime event.
While the idea has been brewing for some time, she says the real push for this week’s picnic came from people who know better than most the need for understanding across human divides.
“We don’t have to agree with one another about everything, we just need to remember that we are all kin.”
Dream Weavers and ARC provide opportunities and encouragement for developmentally delayed adults. Members from both groups annually participate in the MLK march. This year, Eller says, they were eager to launch another event aimed at breaking down barriers and bringing the community together.
“I’m very excited that adults with disabilities are the ones hosting this event,” Eller says. “They’ll make it more fun; they’re so excited!”
Julianne Wilson of White County works with Dream Weavers. She says the underlying theme of the potluck picnic at Pitts Park – fostering mutual respect and understanding among people from diverse backgrounds – is now more important than ever.
“I believe that in this time of great and too often violent division in our nation, our best hope for moving forward in a positive way is to come together in ways that foster dialogue and understanding,” Wilson says. “We don’t have to agree with one another about everything, we just need to remember that we are all kin.”
Eller agrees.
“Our vision is to bring people of different walks of life together to sit down to eat together. We’d really like to have conversations among people who don’t normally run in the same circles.”
The picnic will begin at 6 p.m. Thursday at Pitts Park located off of GA 197 North in Clarkesville. It’s free and open to anyone who’d like to attend. Organizers ask, if you come, please bring a dish and a tablecloth. Any color will do. The hosts want to set a table that’s as diverse as those who gather around it.
Plates, cups, utensils, and drinks will be provided.
“We really don’t have any way of knowing how many people are going to show up at this thing but we’re just going to do it anyway because it feels like the right time,” Eller says.
“We have so much potential as human beings – at our core, we all want the same things – to belong, to live our lives in meaningful ways, to love and be loved,” adds Wilson. “We have created what is – and it’s not working – so we must do the work together of creating something new.”
Thursday’s dinner is simply billed as a ‘fellowship dinner.’ There’s no set program planned but there will be an open mic on stage for anyone who’d like to speak. If it rains the picnic will be rescheduled for Thursday, August 22.
This article has been updated to reflect that the MLK Peace March has been ongoing for over 30 years
