Arms Around America

What is Arms Around America and what are its goals?

Arms Around America is a project of Los Angeles-based theater group, Dan Froot & Co. We are creating book-length oral histories of families whose lives have been shaped in some way by guns, in South Florida, Montana and Los Angeles. We will then adapt some of those families’ stories into a podcast, and a live play to be performed in each family's home community and around the country.

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You can check out our current podcast season by clicking here. It's part of a project called Pang!. Pang! is based on the stories of real families around the country living with hunger or food insecurity. You can also see a promotional video about Pang! by clicking here. The process for Arms Around America will be very similar to Pang!, so you can get a sense of where this project is going.

By opening a window into families’ lives, we hope to explore diverse perspectives and foster dialogue around the complex roles that guns play in our society. We hope that this project can help us all learn how to talk to each other (rather than talking ateach other) about gun-related issues.

We are conducting oral histories of families and individuals around the country whose lives have been touched in some way by guns.
 

We feel that guns are a major issue in our country, and that lives depend on learning to listen to each other's experiences and perspectives.
 

There are plenty of statistics about guns. We would like to introduce each other to some of the people, and stories, behind the facts and figures.
 

We believe that telling our own and listening to others' stories decreases fear and increases respect and understanding, and that this can move us toward productive dialogue.

Who is involved in the project?