A town hall meeting is an American term given to an informal public meeting derived from the traditional town meetings of New England. Everybody in a town community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the responses from public figures and (if applicable) elected officials about shared subjects of interest. Attendees rarely vote on an issue or propose an alternative to a situation. It is not used outside of this secular context.
There are no specific rules or guidelines for holding a town hall meeting. If the turnout is large, and in a particular case the objective is to give as many people as possible an opportunity to speak, then the group can be broken down into smaller discussion groups. Each group, in that case, appoints someone to summarize discussion of their group. Many companies also have such meetings.
Famous quotes containing the words town, hall and/or meeting:
“I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world.”
—Frances Goodrich (1891–1984)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“Passing through here in 1795, Bishop Asbury commented, ‘The country improves in cultivation, wickedness, mills, and stills.’ Five years later, he held a meeting in the neighborhood and remarked that he thought most of the congregation had come to look at his wig.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)