NPR Host Michel Martin Comes To San Diego For Border Discussion

San Diego is ground zero for the new board a while initiative you but yet, the mayor has made it a point to strengthen ties with counterparts across the border. Coming up in a couple of weeks is the perfect opportunity to join a discussion about how we relate to the border. NPR's Michael Martin, weekend host of "All Things Considered," will be hosting a weekend event that talks about issues dividing and uniting our community. She joins us now, welcome in to "Midday Edition." Thanks so much for having me. What do you hope this event will be able to add to the ongoing national confirmation -- conversation about the border and immigration? One of the things we have been doing, this is the third year that we have been posting online conversations, we have issues that are of natural interest but can go to places where we would tap into what I call the lived experience and expertise. For example, we went to Fort Collins, Colorado to talk about water. We went to Dallas to talk about football, ethics of football. And, for example, we went to Charlotte, North Carolina to talk about voting rights. We have been traveling to places where people are living the experience and people in other parts of the country are talking about, but people in these particular areas are living in and talking about it. What we are doing is tapping into the expertise that we have developed over the course of however long. Piggybacking on what we know, both kind of deepening in and having deeper conversations that sometimes people don't have a chance to have. Because they don't have a chance to be in a room together. We are giving the rest of the country an opportunity to listen in. No matter how far people live from the border, it seems that everyone has an opinion about this. I could ask, why did you pick San Diego to have the discussion? If you want to talk about the border or immigration, it seems there are so many places to go but San Diego is such a logical place to go for so many reasons. A lot of people will say we did not come to the border, the border came to us. Are parts of the country that were a part of Mexico. Generations to go. 1800s. The border moved. There were a lot of people that have a sense of dual identity. There are people who say the borders are a figment of imagination, politics and power. There is that perspective which is different than the perspective you might have if you live in another part of the country. We also have people who cross the border on a continuous basis. They continually go back and forth for business reasons, for family reasons, just in our conversation with our colleagues and partners, that's how we come up with these ideas together. We also collaborate on how the guests would be. We bring our expertise and they reported experience. Our reporter colleagues lived there experiences and we put it altogether. That's how we come up with these, frankly, you know, unique and interesting experiences. I just have to say it was a different kind of experience for those people. You panel, music, and a panel in time for people coming into the audience to give their input, too. We anticipate that we will have a border patrol agent for example who has been on the job for, gosh, more than a decade now. Almost going on two decades. We have a person that does business across the border. Like we were talking about earlier. Who works on both sides of the border. He has offices on both sides of the border. We have a travel show host. A reporter from KPBS. Jean Guerrero is going to be joining us as author of the men wire, crocs. One of the things I always want to mention is we have a parallel social media conversation. A lot of times when you go to the theater, people will say, put your phone away, turn it off. In these conversations, we don't ask you to put your phone away, we do ask you to put it on silent because we're having a live conversation for broadcast as well. But we also invite people to participate across different platforms. They can participate on Facebook, they can participate on Twitter. Basically we always have different perspectives represented so you can be assured that we will have different perspectives represented about what the border means, how the border should be maintained, if we can call it that, and, we also always incorporate some kind of artistic expression in our evenings. And we find that people really enjoy it. It is just a different way to talk about the things that are in the news. We also try to have people from different generations participate because one of the things that I think is not a criticism to say but is a fax, a lot of times, because of the way we live, we live in our own silos. So, we hangout with people we hang out with. Because of our work, we may kind of tend to reinforce our own views. One of the things that we do, that we are very careful to do is make sure that people from different perspectives have a chance to interact and share their views. And while that is not always accountable experience for everybody, we think it is an experience that everybody benefits from. We know this because people have told us afterwards that they just had a chance to hear conversations that they just don't have a chance to hear. Sounds like it's going to be a great evening. Tuesday night, May 2, 7:00 at the Jacob center for innovation in Euclid. We look forward to seeing us. Thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you so much for having me today.