Civility Definition featured in Columbus, Georgia’s Ledger-Enquirer

ByAdam Zolkover

Last week saw the Institute’s definition of civility featured in Columbus, Georgia’s Ledger-Enquirer. As part of his November 22 column, The Word for Today, and for the Holidays, executive editor Dimon Kendrick-Holmes quotes it in full:

Claiming and caring for one’s identity, needs and beliefs without degrading someone else’s in the process.

And he comments astutely that it is as applicable around the Thanksgiving table — among relatives with whom one may have significant personal and political differences — as it is in Congress’ hallowed halls.

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Veterans, Military Families, and the Government Shutdown

ByAdam Zolkover

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.

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Government Shutdown, and the Consequences of Incivility

ByAdam Zolkover

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.

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Institute Co-Founders Featured in The Boston Globe

ByAdam Zolkover

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…

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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Fifty Years of Civility in Civic Action

ByAdam Zolkover

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.

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NPR’s Protojournalist Talks With Cassandra Dahnke

ByAdam Zolkover

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.

Debating Civility in Linux Software Development

ByAdam Zolkover

Think that civility in government is a matter only for senators and representatives? Think again. In the world of open source software, July saw a vigorous debate about the tone and tenor of Linus Torvald’s governance of the Linux kernel, one of the largest and most active collaborative software development projects today.

Originally started in 1991 by Torvalds, the Linux kernel is a key piece of code that powers computers around the world from the Internet’s largest servers to pocket-sized Android smartphones. Torvalds is known for dealing brusquely with the project’s contributors, often rejecting what he considers to be poor programming, publicly, in colorful and sometimes overwrought language.