All too often we underestimate the power and virtue of civility. You just want us all to be nice, folks say – as if there is anything wrong with that. But civility is about so much more than manners or mood. It is about so much more than politeness or political correctness. Civility is about…
We all have Thanksgiving traditions we have accumulated over the years with our family and friends. Somewhere in the mix, there is generally an appreciation for what is good in our lives – whether we express it overtly or not.
At the Institute, we always encourage folks to be involved in civic process and to build relationships with their elected officials. We encourage folks to become a resource and a source of support to our public servants. While many of us appreciate our form of government and the freedoms we enjoy, we don’t often say “thank you” to the many people who help make it all possible.
In our last post we asserted that, even amid the incivility and intractability of partisan gridlock over the government shutdown, at least both sides had agreed to fund active duty military personnel. But while it is true that American soldiers will continue to be paid, that fact alone does not tell the whole story of how the shutdown is impacting troops, veterans, and military families.
CBS News is reporting today on comments made by Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki that if the shutdown continues even until the later part of October, 3.8 million veterans will not receive disability compensation in November, and 315,000 veterans and 202,000 surviving spouses and dependents will see pension payments stopped. And it is reporting that already, the government shutdown has stalled the department’s efforts to reduce the backlog of disability claims pending for longer than 125 days.
In the interest of vivifying the consequences of the current government shutdown, here are some highlights from CNN.com’s list of which federal agencies and services are open, closed, and partially functional.
As a result of bipartisan stopgap legislation, active duty military personnel remain on assignment, and will continue to be paid. But only half of the nation’s 800,000 civilian Defense Department workers remain on the job.
Earlier this month, we announced an upcoming Civility Training Workshop in Atlanta, GA, organized by Institute member and civility activist LaRita Reid. The training was a civility-fostering, community-building success. And Institute co-founders Tomas Spath and Cassandra Dahnke have agreed to share some of their thoughts and reactions to what came out of it.
The month of August saw Institute for Civility in Government co-founders Cassandra Dahnke and Tomas Spath each featured independently in articles in The Boston Globe. Early in the month, reporter Peter Schworm sought comment from Cassandra about cases in which discontent has bubbled over into shouting matches and heated exchanges, screaming and table-pounding, at municipal…
Yesterday marked the fiftieth anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in which, on August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 marchers converged on Washington D.C. to call for an end to discrimination and a legal pathway forward to racial equality.
In the excitement preceding last month’s Civility Symposium in Washington, D.C., we here at The Civility Blog allowed one key story to slip through the cracks. Linton Weeks, political journalist and NPR correspondent, sat down with Institute co-founder Cassandra Dahnke to talk about the Trayvon Martin verdict, civility, and social protest.
The article, which appeared as part of NPR’s Protojournalist series, features Cassandra’s responses to questions of how to defuse volatile confrontation and how to weave civility into the national fabric.
Welcome to The Civility Blog. In this, our inaugural post, we hear from the founders of the Institute for Civility in Government — Cassandra Dahnke and Tomas Spath — about their vision for this space, and how it contributes to the larger mission of the organization.
