Hoosier Hospitality is alive and well, and Joe Buser would like to see Putnam County take this ideal forward to encourage tourism to the region on a larger scale, so he has created a new promotional video called "My Putnam County."
The video is a localized response to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and, Buser hopes, the beginning of a series of video projects that aim to highlight what the greater Putnam County region has to offer.
When the bill passed, Buser thought "Oh my gosh, what have we done? Everybody is going to think of Indiana as just a place where we discriminate against people."
"That's not who we are and that's not acceptable," he said.
With "My Putnam County" Buser aims to highlight that everybody is welcome here.
Buser collaborated with locals within the county, Brian Boswell of Clean Slate Films (who is filming a movie in Greencastle) and even tracked down a Putnam County native who currently resides in South America to participate in the project remotely.
When Hoosier Gov. Mike Pence signed the RFRA, it spurred a nationwide backlash and included conventions, musicians and corporate entities backing out of engagements planned to take place in Indiana.
Tourism is not a new venture for Buser, who moved back home to Roachdale from Boston to found the not-for-profit Roachdale Revitalization Cooperative Alliance (RRCA). The RRCA aims to help beautify Roachdale, create growth in local business and encourage tourism not just through advertising but through creating local events such as the Rib and Blues Fest held in October.
"I had the idea of doing a video response, a Putnam County response stating, 'This is my county, and we are open for business. We do not discriminate here in Putnam County, please come and see us,'" Buser explained.
As part of the response, Buser is challenging the 91 other Indiana counties to create similar campaign videos and media to highlight "Hoosier Hospitality" at its finest.
"We just want to make sure that we stand in solidarity," he said.
While the video was created in direct response to the RFRA, it represents what Buser hopes is an ongoing project of short videos and media pushes that can highlight what Putnam and its surrounding counties have to offer.
"(The RFRA legislation) brought the idea up and thinking 'Oh my gosh, what kind of opportunities we might have missed?'" he said regarding plans to move forward with the video series.
"We want to say, 'No, we're here, we believe in freedoms,'" and that the county is more than happy to welcome travelers to the region.