"By gathering local and state politicians of mutually opposed political persuasions under one roof and asking them to break bread together, The Village Square is supporting an ancient and durable principle of civilization: It's harder to hate the enemy face to face. In reasserting that principle, The Village Square isn't just promoting better government. It's helping to lay the foundation for a better America."                   ---John Marks, Journalist

The basics

Dinner at the Square is the foundational event offered by The Village Square.  Each year, there is a new dinner "season" announced.  Find examples of previous seasons HERE , HERE & HERE.  You must officially become a Village Square to offer the dinner series (Village Circle events can be offered by anyone, anytime, assuming you follow a few rules).

Neither a new problem or a new solution

From the early days of our Republic, legislators came to Washington and lived in separate regional boarding houses.  Far from the intended mixing of ideas from culturally and regionally diverse legislators, the psychology of the tribe took over.  While they came to town with preexisting differences between legislators from other regions, their segregation be regions widened the divide.  President Thomas Jefferson wrote that these legislators came to work "in a spirit of avowed misunderstanding, without  the smallest wish to agree."  Jefferson solved the problem by inviting a mixed region group of legislators to the White House for dinner no more than a dozen at a time, sat them at a round table to prevent squabbles on who rated the head of the table (and poured lots of wine, truth be told).