Dear Editor:

I too am very concerned about the state of affairs across the United States of America, but especially in Georgia and particularly in Newton County.

It is obvious to me that continuing to talk past each other has gotten us nowhere except where we are this Jan. 9, 2021.

I would like to have the opportunity to actually communicate with my fellow Newtonians, not to try to have my ideas prevail, or to change my fellows’ minds, but rather to have a dialogue, person to person, human to human.  My wish is to reconstruct the social fabric that has been intentionally torn asunder so that those of us who claim to be followers of Christ can remember what loving our neighbors as we love ourselves means and the point of the moral of the Good Samaritan.

At the very foundation of each of us is a human being endowed with the gift of life from God.

Publisher Taylor Beck asked in his Jan. 9 editorial “What will it take for us to live out our namesake as the United States of America?” I am asking you if you are willing to help establish communication across our divided, citizenry holed-up in our comfortable, ego and ideology supporting cocoons?

In order to perceive our fellows as members of our society, we first have to acknowledge each other as fellow worthwhile individuals.

JJ Hayden

Covington