Chchchchanges…

Today I went to the 2026 Greensboro Pride Festival, and I had one of those experiences that makes you stop and reconsider what you think you know about people.

I came here to continue my 100-person interview project for the Truth Party.

Four questions. Complete strangers. No political litmus test. No right answers. No wrong answers.

I just walk up to people and say, basically, “Hey, I’m John. I’m talking to 100 strangers about America. Would you mind answering four questions?”

And today?

Holy shit.

People want to talk.

I’m knocking off interviews left and right. People are practically volunteering. They’re smiling. They’re laughing. They’re telling me what worries them, what they hope for, what they think is wrong with the country and what they think ordinary people can actually do about it.

More importantly, they’re talking to a complete stranger.

Me.

And apparently today I’m the 69-year-old guy wandering around Pride with questions.

There are probably worse retirement plans.

But what really struck me was the contrast with another experience I had recently.

I decided that if I was really going to understand what people were thinking, I should talk to religious leaders.

That seemed logical.

These are supposed to be the people who spend their lives thinking about community, morality, compassion, responsibility and our obligations to one another.

So I went looking for them.

I visited a Baptist church. A temple. A mosque. Two Episcopal churches. Two Methodist churches. A Lutheran church.

I wasn’t asking for money.

I wasn’t trying to convert anybody.

I wasn’t asking them to join the Truth Party.

I just wanted a few minutes.

Four questions.

And I got turned away.

Everywhere.

Some places were polite about it. Some weren’t particularly polite at all. There were locked doors, security systems, waiting rooms, explanations and eventually some version of:

No.

And I understand some of that.

We live in a different world. Houses of worship have legitimate security concerns. Clergy have schedules. People are busy. Nobody owes some random guy with a camera an interview.

Fair enough.

But then I came to Pride.

And the difference hit me right between the eyes.

The doors were wide open.

Actually, there weren’t any doors.

Maybe that’s the point.

Here were thousands of people who, in one way or another, have probably spent part of their lives being told that they were different.

Too different.

Wrong somehow.

People who have been judged by how they look, who they love, how they dress, how they identify or simply because they didn’t fit somebody else’s definition of “normal.”

And what did I find?

A bunch of people being people.

Happy people.

Families.

Couples.

Friends.

People laughing.

People hugging.

People celebrating.

People willing to talk to some old straight guy who wandered into the middle of their festival asking questions about America.

Nobody asked me whether I belonged there.

Nobody asked me what political party I belonged to.

Nobody asked me who I voted for.

Nobody asked me who I slept with.

Nobody asked me to prove that I was one of them.

They just talked to me.

And that has become one of the biggest lessons of this entire 100-person experiment.

I started this project thinking I was going out to learn what was wrong with America.

Instead, I keep learning what’s right with Americans.

I’ve talked to young people and old people. People who look like me and people who don’t look anything like me. People whose lives I understand and people whose lives I know absolutely nothing about.

And again and again, once you get through the clothes, the tattoos, the hair, the politics, the religion, the race, the sexuality and every other category we’ve invented for sorting human beings into little boxes, something remarkably ordinary appears.

A person.

That’s it.

A person who wants a decent life.

A safe place to live.

A job that pays the bills.

Good schools.

Health care when they need it.

A future for their children.

A little dignity.

A little respect.

And maybe somebody who will actually listen to them.

That’s what I’m hearing.

And that’s what I found today at Greensboro Pride.

Which brings me back to something written 250 years ago:

“All men are created equal.”

We have spent almost our entire history arguing about what those words actually mean and, more importantly, who gets included in them.

Maybe the great unfinished American project is incredibly simple:

Everybody.

Not everybody who looks like me.

Not everybody who worships like me.

Not everybody who votes like me.

Everybody.

And here’s the strange thing I’m discovering after talking to all these strangers:

Talking to each other isn’t dangerous.

It’s the opposite.

It’s liberating.

Because every conversation destroys another assumption.

Every stranger gets a name.

Every stereotype gets a face.

And every once in a while, somebody you thought you had absolutely nothing in common with says something that makes you think:

“Son of a bitch. Me too.”

That’s citizenship.

That’s community.

And maybe that’s the whole damn point of the Truth Party.

Not getting everybody to agree.

Good luck with that.

It’s getting everybody back into the conversation.

So today I want to thank the people at Greensboro Pride.

You welcomed me.

You talked to me.

You answered my questions.

You reminded me once again why I started this crazy experiment in the first place.

I went looking for answers.

Instead, I keep finding people.

And today, the doors were wide open.

I especially like “I started this project thinking I was going out to learn what was wrong with America. Instead, I keep learning what’s right with Americans.” That feels bigger than Pride—it could become one of the central lines of the whole 100-person film.