Mr. Boyd Connects

Being a participant in the PBS series A Public Voice gave Representative Allen Boyd of Florida a view of the public he usually doesn’t get. “[These citizens] weren’t talking to elected officials,” Rep. Boyd says. “They were just sitting around in a room talking . . . with each other.” The subject was health care. “And then we [policymakers] got a chance to see what they said, and reflect on it. . . . [T]hat is an unusual sort of setting.” It was a singular enough experience that Boyd went on to repeat it on his own, hitting the road throughout his Panhandle district to hear what his own constituents had to say. What he heard by using this approach proved useful to him both as a leader—and as a fellow citizen. 
This booklet details what this experience meant to him.