UPDATED: Stockbridge, MA, April 23, 2013—Norman Rockwell Museum’s Four Freedoms Forums series of town hall meetings returns on Thursday, April 25, starting at 5:30 p.m., with a look at the topic of gun violence. The forum will address the role of guns in our society, including gun rights and gun control. Featured speakers will include Richard B. Wilcox, Chief of Police, Stockbridge, Massachusetts; and Clarence Fanto, contributing writer/columnist, The Berkshire Eagle. Community conversation at the Four Freedoms Forums is free and open to the public.

About The Speakers:

Richard B. Wilcox is the Chief of Police for the Town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Wilcox has been a police officer in Stockbridge for 42 years, serving the last 28 as Chief of Police. A student of local history, 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, 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.

Clarence Fanto is a Berkshire Eagle correspondent who covers several South County towns as well as general topics. A native of New York City, he worked at three TV news networks and two daily newspaperss there before relocating to the Berkshires in 1987. At the Eagle, Clarence has served as Sunday editor, news editor and managing editor. In 2005, he became vice president of news and cultural affairs at WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

 

Upcoming Four Freedoms Forums:

•Youth, Identity and the Media  

Thursday, July 25, 2013, 5:30 p.m.

•A Nation Divided: Getting Past the Impasse    

Thursday, November 14, 5:30 p.m.

•Social Media: Agent for Change or Flash in the Pan?

Thursday, January 23, 2014, 5:30 p.m.

 

About Four Freedoms Forums: 

Town Hall Meetings at the Norman Rockwell Museum

Join us to share your thoughts on the most compelling issues of our day. This series of Town Hall conversations inspired by Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” paintings will explore aspects of our democracy and important social concerns in a rapidly changing and increasingly global world. Noted commentators will offer observations and inspire community discourse, with a reception to follow.

The tradition of Town Hall meetings has it roots in the founding of our nation where small New England communities would gather to invite citizen opinion and vote on matters of importance to the town. A town meeting is a form of direct democratic rule, used primarily in portions of the United States since the 17th century, in which most or all the members of a community come together to legislate policy and budgets for local government.

The Four Freedoms Forums are free and open to the public.