Friday Night Lights

I read something this morning about Friday Night Lights, and it got me thinking about Greensboro.

Now, Friday Night Lights was supposedly a television show about high school football in a little Texas town called Dillon.

But it really wasn’t about football.

It was about community.

Dillon had rich people and poor people. Black people and white people. People on one side of the tracks and people on the other. People who agreed with each other and people who couldn’t stand each other.

Sound familiar?

But on Friday night, everybody showed up.

They sat in the same stadium. They watched the same field. They worried about the same kids. And for a couple of hours, whatever separated them became a little less important than what they shared.

There’s a line from the show everybody remembers:

Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.

But there’s another idea underneath the entire series that I think is even more important:

Everybody plays. Everybody matters.

And that’s got me thinking about what I’m doing right now in Greensboro.

I’ve started a project to interview 1,000 people about this city.

Not politicians.

Not just business leaders.

Not just people who agree with me.

A thousand people.

I want to talk to somebody living in a million-dollar house, and I want to talk to somebody wondering where they’re going to sleep tonight.

I want to talk to the college student at A&T.

The retired textile worker.

The restaurant owner.

The teacher.

The police officer.

The immigrant who just got here.

The person whose family has been here for generations.

East Greensboro. West Greensboro. North. South. Downtown.

Everybody plays.

Everybody matters.

And here’s what I’m beginning to wonder:

What if we’re not as different as we’ve been told we are?

Ask people about politics and you can get an argument in thirty seconds.

But ask people what they want from their community?

Things start getting pretty simple.

People want to feel safe.

They want a decent place to live.

They want a job that allows them to support themselves.

They want good schools.

They want healthcare when they need it.

They want their children to have opportunities.

They want to be treated with dignity.

And maybe most importantly, they want to feel like they belong.

That’s what Friday Night Lights understood.

Later in the series, Coach Taylor gets sent across town to East Dillon.

It’s poorer. It’s underfunded. It’s been overlooked.

And suddenly the show forces you to look at the town from the other side of the tracks.

The people you barely noticed before become the people you’re rooting for.

That’s an extraordinary lesson for a city.

Because every city has an East Dillon.

Every city has neighborhoods and people we drive past without really seeing.

Greensboro does too.

And if we’re serious about becoming a great city, then we can’t have parts of Greensboro that matter and parts that don’t.

We can’t have people sitting in the luxury boxes and other people who aren’t even allowed into the stadium.

We’ve got to start seeing the entire city as one community.

That doesn’t mean everybody agrees.

I don’t want everybody to agree.

That’s not democracy.

That’s not community.

A healthy community argues. It debates. It disagrees about development, taxes, policing, transportation, housing and a hundred other things.

But disagreement doesn’t have to mean we’re enemies.

We’re still neighbors.

We’re still raising our families here.

We’re still driving the same streets.

We’re still shopping in the same stores.

We’re still cheering for the same universities.

We’re still calling the same place home.

And maybe that’s the real purpose of these thousand interviews.

I’m not looking for a thousand people to tell me I’m right.

I’m looking for a thousand people to tell me what I’m missing.

Because I don’t think you can understand Greensboro sitting behind a desk.

You’ve got to go out and meet Greensboro.

You’ve got to listen to it.

And somewhere inside those thousand conversations, I think we’re going to discover something.

Not what divides us.

We already know plenty about that.

I want to discover what still connects us.

Because cities aren’t really buildings.

They’re not budgets.

They’re not roads.

They’re not governments.

They’re people.

And no mayor, no city council and no individual is going to transform Greensboro alone.

That’s another thing Friday Night Lights got right.

The superstar doesn’t win the game by himself.

Somebody blocks.

Somebody tackles.

Somebody throws the ball.

Somebody catches it.

Somebody drives the kid to practice.

Somebody washes the uniform.

And somebody sits in the stands believing all of it matters.

That’s community.

And that’s the Greensboro I want to help build.

A city where nobody is invisible.

A city where your ZIP code doesn’t determine whether your voice gets heard.

A city where we can disagree without giving up on one another.

A city where every neighborhood is part of the team.

Because maybe Greensboro doesn’t need everybody wearing the same jersey.

Maybe we just need to remember:

We’re all playing for the same town.

Everybody plays.

Everybody matters.

And if we can remember that, imagine what Greensboro could become.