"America in the World:
The Baton Rouge Perspective"

On Saturday, January 24, 2004, Louisiana Public Broadcasting, the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs in the Manship School of Journalism at LSU, and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation cosponsored "By the People: America in the World" Citizen Deliberation, a nationwide initiative of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.

The "By the People" project hopes to energize and enhance the national conversation on America's role in the world through a series of national and local broadcasts and events that demonstrate the relevance of foreign policy issues to local concerns.

Baton Rouge was selected as one of ten communities across the nation to participate in the "By the People" project. Randomly selected persons from East Baton Rouge Parish interacted in small group discussions, formulated questions and presented them to a plenary panel of experts. Topics under consideration were about contemporary United States foreign policy issues, specifically in relation to 1) United States involvement in the Middle East and 2) the nation's role in the international free trade system.