Freedom Forum to focus on gun violence

STOCKBRIDGE – As the national debate rages on a local museum will also be taking a look at the topic of gun violence.

Norman Rockwell Museum’s Four Freedoms Forums will return on Thursday, April 25, starting at 5:30 p.m. with a town hall meeting.

The forum will address the role of guns in our society, including gun rights and gun control.

This series of town hall style conversations are inspired by Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” paintings and explore aspects of democracy and important social concerns in a rapidly changing and increasingly global world.

The Four Freedoms Forums are free and open to the public. Featured speakers include Stockbridge Police Chief Richard B. Wilcox and Brian MacQuarrie, reporter for The Boston Globe.

Chief Wilcox has been a police officer in Stockbridge for 42 years, serving the last 28 as chief of police.

A student of local history, Chief Wilcox has maintained a long-standing family friendship with the Stockbridge-Munsee Nation, helping to preserve the local interests of the town’s original Mohican Indian settlement.

As a child growing up in The Berkshires, Chief Wilcox also served as a model for artist Norman Rockwell in 1965. A Trustee Emeritus of Norman Rockwell Museum, he has been affiliated with the museum’s board since 1984, providing critical counsel on personnel matters, security and disaster preparedness.

Mr.  MacQuarrie has worked for The Boston Globe since 1987 as a wide-ranging reporter covering topics from politics, to human-interest stories, to the war on terror.

After the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001, Mr. MacQuarrie spent weeks in New York City to report on the response and recovery.

Since 2002, he has traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq five times, including a front-line assignment during the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an embedded reporter with the Third Infantry Division.

In 2011, he accompanied the last U.S. troops to leave the Iraqi capital. He also traveled to Haiti immediately after the devastating earthquake in 2010 and is the author of The Ride, an account of the murder and fallout of the 1997 abduction and murder of 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley in Cambridge, Mass.

Upcoming Four Freedoms Forums:

•Youth, Identity and the Media
Thursday, July 25, 5:30 p.m.

•A Nation Divided: Getting Past the Impasse
Thursday, Nov. 15, 5:30 p.m.

•Social Media: Agent for Change or Flash in the Pan?
Thursday, Jan. 23, 2014, 5:30 p.m.

Posted by Kameron Z. Spaulding on April 18, 2013. Filed under Community Events,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry