Your Invitation to a Sesquicentennial Community Conversation
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Fall, 2007
Dear Minnesotans:
Welcome to one of many community conversations being held across Minnesota this fall to help develop a Sesquicentennial Plan for Our Future: Many Voices-One Minnesota. Your input is essential to building the core of this plan – your hopes, dreams, and commitments to Minnesota’s future. Next year Minnesota completes 150 years as the 32nd state in the United States of America. We have much to be grateful for, and we can look ahead to many opportunities, thanks to the wise investments made by Minnesotans who came before us over the past 150 years.
Minnesota has been called the “Civic State” because we believe in civic engagement to meet the challenges of today and the act upon the opportunities we see for the future. Despite political differences that go back to the founding of our state, with two different Constitutions – one a Republican version, and one a Democratic version – we have managed to work together over the past 150 years to build a state that provides one of the highest qualities of life in the nation.
Statehood confers upon each of us the right to live as individuals in a free country, and the responsibility as citizens to accomplish together what we cannot accomplish alone – to serve one another on behalf of the common good. That may take the form of citizen soldiers defending our country, or citizen volunteers serving on township boards, or groups like the Rotary and Lions Clubs helping their neighbors.
You are here today because you believe in Minnesota. You are like those wise men and women who came before us in past generations. You are willing to expend personal energy to share your vision, imagination, and leadership, to help give back to future Minnesota what she has given to you -- a safe and happy home in which to grow, live, work and play.
Minnesota is a vast and diverse state, by geography and by culture. It is a daunting challenge to capture all of who we are today, where we have come from, and where we are heading. That is the magnificent opportunity we have before us. We can, through the Sesquicentennial lens, connect people to learn from our past and prepare for future progress.
This is a once-in-lifetime opportunity to do something together, statewide, to honor a home we all love. Watch the Sesquicentennial website for updates on this process and other events and activities, at www.mn150years.org. And if you have friends and neighbors who missed out on the meeting, have them go to the website to fill out an online survey for the Plan for Our Future. Thanks again for your participation. We couldn’t do it without you!
Sincerely,
Jane Leonard – Executive Director – MN Sesquicentennial Commission