Dear Readers
READER’S DIGEST has long been neutral about politics, but one thing we will never be neutral about is niceness. In a democracy where free expression is the rule—and where the Internet, talk radio, and cable news provide enormous megaphones—niceness has never been more important. If we want to live in harmony along with our competing ideas, we need civility, empathy, and a sense that we have each other’s backs. Niceness is the glue that will hold us together.
Yet it’s not-niceness that’s on the rise. The bitter call-and-response of our political exchanges has long pummeled the promise of “E pluribus unum.” In a recent poll, 75 percent of Americans called incivility a “national crisis.” It’s no accident that Americans’ faith in their institutions is scraping bottom.
We created the Nicest Place in America Contest to counter that dynamic. We knew that the American spirit was alive in our neighborhoods, schools, and gathering places, and we knew where to go for proof: to our readers. You provided all the nominees for our contest, and your votes helped select the winner. And it is your winning stories we tell here (starting on p. 59).
They are about people who shine flashlights to signal good night to kids in a hospital, drive cross-country to pick up a deceased neighbor’s orphaned dog, and brave a storm to raise money for a family whose son has a brain tumor.
In Gallatin, Tennessee, our winning place, a police shooting of an African American resident spawned not a riot but a healing prayer vigil. Why? Because the community understood that “us against them” anger was outmoded in the openhearted place where they wanted to live.
Gallatin, like the other nine finalists, has created a culture that understands that the mystery of kindness is like the mystery of faith. You don’t know when it will be repaid, but you give freely anyway. More than anything, that willingness to trust connects our ten Nicest Places. The people who live and work and spend time in them feel like they belong. There’s no nicer, or more needed, feeling than that.