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Breaking Bread, Breaking Boundaries at First "Longest Table" Event

Tom Flanigan

A table longer than a football field along Park Avenue seated nearly four-hundred diners in downtown Tallahassee Sunday (10/4) night.  Mayor Andrew Gillum said the purpose of the "Longest Table" dinner was to bring the community closer together.

“To come together, shake hands, choose instead of judging, to be curious about each other.  And that’s what we’re attempting to facilitate tonight.” He told the attendees.  “Tallahassee is an amazing community, Leon County an amazing Capital County and what makes us so great are the people who reside in it, the people who make up this community each and every one of you.”

Leon County Commission Chair Mary Ann Lindley said she’d done her best to get into the spirit of the occasion by seeking out people she’d never met.

“You know, this is great.  I’ve been trying to avoid all of you I already know and just go up and find people who are strangers.  I went up to one woman and said, ‘You’re a stranger,’ and she said, “Well I’m not so strange once you get to know me.’ Well that’s what this is about, isn’t it? To reach out a little bit and it’s a little scary to get out of your comfort zone.”

That effort to break through comfort zones and reach across the city’s cultural, economic and geographic divides will continue.

City and County officials, along with representatives of The Village Square who helped organize the first "Longest Table" program will next enlist about one-hundred families in the city to have smaller dinners in their homes, also involving people unfamiliar with each other.