Reclaiming Civility with Cassandra Dahnke and Tomas Spath

Episode Notes

Transcript

Cassandra Dahnke:

We’re all going to have bad days, we’re all going to hit a rough patch. We’re all going to have those times when moving forward just seems all but impossible. Getting angry about it doesn’t help. It may be a natural reaction that fight or flight sort of mode, but if you can maintain civility, you at least have a chance of going forward. And if you don’t, you don’t. And so it’s just a practical exercise in how to interact with other people.

Announcer:

That’s one of our guests on SideBar today, Cassandra Dahnke along with Tomas Bath. They’re the co-founders of the Institute of Civility. SideBar is brought to you by Monterey College of Law, San Luis Obispo College of Law, Kern County College of Law, empire College of Law, located in Santa Rosa and the Colleges of Law with campuses in Santa Barbara and Ventura. Welcome to SideBar featuring conversations about optimism in action with lawyers and leaders inspiring change. And now your co-hosts Jackie Gardina and Mitch Winick.

Jackie Gardina:

Mitch, I’m really excited about the topic that we’re going to talk about today as well as the people that we’ve invited to be guests on our show. We have struggled so much, especially in the last decade, to have productive conversations to solve problems, and a lot of that boils down to the lack of civility. And we have invited two people to speak today who has made it their life’s work to reclaim civility in our society. Cassandra Danke and Tomas Bath started the Institute for Civility over 30 years ago with the goal to help create a more civil society. And the Institute for Civility is dedicated to reducing polarization by facilitating dialogue, teaching respect, and building civility in both the public and private spheres. And I can’t imagine a more important mission than that right now. Cassandra and Tomas, welcome to SideBar.

Cassandra Dahnke:

Thank you for having us.

Jackie Gardina:

I think the first place we like to start these is we’re talking about organizations that are doing work in the communities where they live or in the country. We like to hear about what kind of led people to doing the work they’re doing. And you guys co-founded the Institute for Civility. So I’m kind of curious about your path that brought you together to start this organization. And Cassandra, I’ll just start with you. How did you end up starting this institute for civility with Temas?

Cassandra Dahnke:

Back in the 1990s, temas and I both worked at the regional governing body of the Presbyterian church down here in southeast Texas. It’s called the Presbytery of New Covenant. And our responsibilities were centered around social justice issues. Temas was actually my boss at the time. So in that context, we got to a place where we were taking groups of adults to Washington DC to advocate on various issues. Now, when people usually go to an advocacy conference of any kind in Washington, they go because they’re concerned about the issue. Everyone’s pretty much on the same page. The people hosting the conference tell folks what to say, and then the folks go out and carry the message at the respective congressional offices. We knew that in our context, trying to tell anybody what to say was not going to go down well. So we created our own conference.

We empowered the participants to choose the agenda. They selected issues as a group on what they wanted to talk about. We arranged briefings for them on Capitol Hill. We said, well, if you’re all going to go to a Senate office together or you’re going to this representative’s office together, then whatever statement you make needs to be one that everybody agrees on. And all of a sudden everybody just shut down. They didn’t get angry, they didn’t get verbally abusive or anything like that. They just shut down because they’d already spent several days sightseeing together, sharing meals together, becoming friends together. And all of a sudden they realized that the person that they thought was so nice had different thoughts about issue X, Y, Z. So that’s when Tomas and I looked at each other and figured out that for the rest of the conference, our job was to help people talk with one another and hear one another and help them figure out how to talk through these various issues.

And we spent a lot of time doing that. That’s when we became aware that at least in this country, I suspect it’s true in other places as well, that we don’t have the skillset to manage our differences in a constructive way. So we led this conference for about six years, seven years together, and then we were no longer at the presbytery, and I had spent two years searching for someone around the country who was addressing this issue at the grassroots level, and I could not find anyone. So we decided to step into the void. It was really Tomas idea to step into the void. And I said, okay, not something I ever anticipated I would do in my life. I never thought I would start a nonprofit, but together we did, and we called a mutual friend because you have to have three. So we called Rebecca and we started the Institute for Civility. So that’s how we started. It really came out of our faith journey, but we very intentionally set the institute up completely independent of any faith or religion or other group.

Tomas Spath:

The reason that we actually started this organization is because we were challenged by Representative Bill Archer. He called us into his office back in 1995 and he asked us if we knew what we were doing with these groups of people that we brought from Texas, and he said, you are the only one that brings me ideas. It’s true that we brought ’em ideas because we had our groups come up with a statement about whatever issue they chose that they wanted to share with their representatives. And those ideas were presented to him by both Republican and Democrats from Texas. And so we help people to dialogue and to understand each other’s concerns. And there were a few times when the group just couldn’t come up with a statement. And so we said, well, let’s do the same thing that they do in government. Let’s have a majority report. Let’s have a minority report. And that’s how we proceeded and that’s what we did. But we were challenged by Bill Archer to multiply ourselves because we brought ideas, which he said, were worth more than the millions of dollars that other people brought them.

Cassandra Dahnke:

When we started this, we naively thought it was going to be the easiest thing in the world. We thought we would have hundreds of thousands of members all across the country in very short order and be working full time for the institute because it seems so obvious to us that this is foundational to who we are as a nation and to who we are when we live in community. If you can’t talk with one another, you can’t do anything else. We were surprised. It has a learning curve every step of the way. It has been a fascinating journey. And had we known how difficult it was going to be, I’m not sure Tomas, if we would’ve done it or not, because there have been times through the years when either one of us or the other was about ready to throw in the towel. And then Lee Hamilton calling us up, and I should let Tomas tell this story, but when Lee Hamilton called him up on the phone,

Tomas Spath:

Oh, I was working in East Texas at the time, so I was in Texas in get a computer. And so she got a computer and I went to her home to set it up so that she could start working on it, and the phone rings and I answered the phone. Hello? And the voice on the other end was, is this the Institute for Civility? Oh, yes sir. I’m Lee Hamilton. I’m the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington dc I wonder if you would lead a conference in Washington DC in my building. Could I meet with you the next time you’re in town?

Jackie Gardina:

That’s amazing. We’ve been talking about the Institute for Civility, but I think it’s helpful if we start with a baseline to make sure everyone knows at least how you define civility and what that means for the work that you do. So Cassandra, do you want to start off with how does the institute define civility?

Cassandra Dahnke:

We came up with a definition that we find is now widely referenced. We define civility as claiming and caring for one’s identity needs and beliefs without degrading someone else’s in the process. So it’s not about going along to get along. It’s not about surrendering your particular convictions, but it’s about the way we claim those, why we claim those and how we claim those. It goes way beyond good manners, which is not to say good manners aren’t important because they are and they’re a great starting place, but it goes far beyond that and it’s hard work. It’s very hard work. It takes commitment, practice and patience, a lot of patience with other people and with yourself.

Mitch Winick:

What would you say are the greatest barriers to that right now? Because the American public is still the American public, we’ve got a very diverse population with all types of families of origin that is not new. That mix is still here, and yet it appears that we’ve taken a turn away from civility in public discourse. The people haven’t really changed. The history hasn’t really changed, but something has changed. And I know you guys have observed this over now several decades. What are your thoughts on that?

Cassandra Dahnke:

Some of it is that those skills and values that inform civility are not being taught and learned within the community as they used to be. Whether it is being part of a faith community, any faith community, being part of a civic club, all those memberships declining those sort of places that incubated these skills and these values are in decline. So I think that’s part of the problem. If you don’t value it, you’re not going to work for it. Of course, everybody sites social media and the anonymity that we all have at our disposal, and that is simply a means of communication. It’s not the communication itself. So while I do believe that’s a factor, and I know there are studies all about that, I don’t know that I would agree that it’s a cause, so to speak. I think there’s a real lack of civic education in this country helping people understand the importance of dialogue and how our government is rooted in that, at least in the political sphere.

I think that is at play. I think that just because things have been changing so much, so fast, people are unsettled and afraid. Sociologists who go back and study this, actually my background, my bachelor’s degree was in sociology can point to the fact that whenever there are times of great cultural shifts or technological advances that people get unsettled because they don’t know how to operate, they don’t have a new set of rules or norms for those contexts, and people get agitated and upset and you can go all the way back to, for example, when the telephone was invented and people were like, what am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to greet somebody? I don’t like it. I can’t see it. Not everybody embraced the new technology, sort of like today, some of us are slower than others. So I think those are some of the reasons, but I think there’s a lot of fear and a lot of anger

Tomas Spath:

Actually. I think that our society is learning about ourselves.

Jackie Gardina:

Like so many of the guests on this show, I went to law school because I wanted the tools to create change. If you have that same passion and you want to develop the necessary skills and knowledge in a nurturing environment built for working adults, join us at Colleges of Law with both in-person and online learning options. Take the first step to building a better future for you and your [email protected].

Tomas Spath:

When we started the institute, we launched it on April. We were in Washington dc. We visited all 535 congressional offices in two days. We dropped our cards, we sent the institutes around and thank you very much.

Mitch Winick:

What was Congress’s reaction to the Institute of Civility?

Tomas Spath:

There was no one that we visited on those two days that said, wow, this is a great idea. If anything, people looked at us in a funny way and said, what are you doing? You’re crazy. Get the heck out of here. We were told where to go because we all get along up here. We were told and advance that 20 years later, and now when we go and visit congressional offices, everybody knows we have a problem. Everybody acknowledges that we are living in days of incivility. And so I call that a win because we’re not alone. There’s a lot of people that are concerned about the lack of our ability to relate to each other. In that way, our society is making an advance because at least we’re aware. And my understanding is that when you’re sick or when you’re not well, you have to become aware that you’re sick because if you deny that you’re not sick, you don’t go to the doctor and then you get worse and worse and worse, and then you finally go to the doctor and you start getting your medicine. Well, we are starting to think that we need some medicine as a society, but we have a long way to go.

Jackie Gardina:

So in that context, how is it that you two remain hopeful?

Cassandra Dahnke:

I will say in one way, I agree with Chamas. When we started, people didn’t even understand why we were concerned. And as the years have come by now they understand and they get that it really is a problem. So I do see that as progress because I agree that the first step in addressing an issue is knowing that there is an issue. I stay hopeful when in a lot of ways when people call and arrange civility training because they really want to know how to do this better. That gives me hope. When we take high school students to Washington dc, we lead student legislative seminars and watching these young people go to briefings on these issues are really important topics that they’re concerned about and struggle together with civility as the ground rule to come up with their statements that they want to share. You can’t help but smile because you feel like we’re in good.

The next generation is stepping up. I guess I’ll say this as well, we are a membership based organization and we do that not just for income, although of course that helps, but we do it so that people have the opportunity to be a part of the change they want to see so that they don’t feel so isolated so they know they’re a part of something larger than themselves that is addressing the problem. Every check that we get that comes with a note, I save every one of those notes. There are some days when I live on those notes, but those words of encouragement fill me with hope because I know I’m not alone on this. I know Tomas and I are not alone on this, and when people come together, they can make incredible things happen. And so I see that happening. And one last thing I’ll say about this.

When we started the Institute for Civility, we literally were the only organization in the country addressing this issue. And over the years we’ve seen more and more and more organizations formed and growing. And so now we are part of, I don’t know, probably I’m going to guess between 50 and a hundred organizations in the US that have some program that addresses civility in some way. And when that first started happening, I was very stressed because I was like, oh my gosh, there’s competition out there. But I quickly learned, and Tomas helped me with this, that there’s more than enough work for all of us to do, number one, and we’re all approaching it a little bit differently so we all have a piece of the puzzle. And so now it’s exciting to know that there are other organizations out there that are doing good work as well. Again, it makes us feel not quite so alone in the effort. So that’s some of what gives me hope.

Mitch Winick:

Tomas, what are your thoughts? Are yours the same as Cassandra’s? I suspect you might have a slightly different take on what gives you hope,

Tomas Spath:

But what gives me hope too is the fact that she and I have hung together and we have worked through a number of issues and because we were able to work through a number of issues, we have a lot of stories to share about how to go about doing that. But we’re built together and I appreciate everything that is being done right now.

Mitch Winick:

One of the things that Jackie and I always ask on our programs is guidelines, directions, ideas that would motivate the listeners in the topic area. And you guys have already ahead of that. You have a book that does exactly that, reclaiming civility in the public square 10 rules that work. You’ve already written it down. And if I could share the quote from your website about the book emerging from an era of strategic divisiveness, this book is like a life preserver thrown to one who is drowning from the school board to the president. This is the Thinking Person’s User’s guide to American democracy. That alone makes me feel better. Tell us about the book and share some of those 10 rules with us.

Cassandra Dahnke:

The rules from the book come from our experiences on Capitol Hill, and so that’s how we chose those rules. And we have three rules on listening. Listen with your strengths, listen with your mind, and listen with your heart. And that just shows how crucial good listening skills are to being able to be in conversation and constructive conversation with other people. Listening with your strength is not multitasking. It’s giving the speaker your full attention. It’s staying focused. Sometimes it’s just a matter of being sure you actually can hear what’s being said. Listening with your mind is doing your homework, being sure you understand what’s being said, that you understand the concepts, the references, all of those sorts of things. And listening with your heart is being open to at least learning something. It doesn’t mean you have to change your mind, but being open enough to consider the other person’s point of view and the value that they bring to the table, whether you agree with it or not.

And we always say, if you’re not going to listen with your heart, then the other two don’t really matter because you’ve wasted your time and you’ve wasted the other person’s time. So you need to do all three. Actually, our very first rule is know yourself. Know why you believe what you believe. Understand where you are coming from so you’re in a better place to understand why somebody else could possibly have a different opinion. Do you believe what you believe because your parents taught you, because your peers have influenced you because of something you’ve read, because of a personal experience? You hear so many times that people who have changed their point of view because of a personal experience they’ve had recently, and it has shifted their perspective dramatically.

Mitch Winick:

Jackie, I want to take a moment to reflect that as we’re talking about optimism and action. Many of our guests say that they first started thinking about a career in public service while they were still in law school. And schools like yours and mine, Monterey College of Law provide an affordable, convenient way for working adults to attend law school and pursue these interests. Classes are taught by practicing lawyers and judges who prepare our students to serve their community in many of the same areas that we are discussing here on SideBar. For more information, go to monterey law.edu.

Jackie Gardina:

I’m imagining something that needs to be incorporated into the work you do now more than ever is information literacy. We have a hard time agreeing on facts, let alone an end policy goal. So I’m wondering in terms of that, do your homework, are you incorporating information literacy and making sure you’re getting the best information available as part of your training?

Cassandra Dahnke:

We don’t use that phrase, but we encourage people to seek out many different sources and to consider what those sources are and where they come from. That’s hard for all of us because we want to read and listen to people who think and believe the same as we do. Temas is really good at listening to multiple sides and seeking out other sources. I often point students to sources that are from outside our country, but that are commenting on our country as kind of another unique perspective. And I’ll be honest, AI scares me a little bit because it’s going to get to the place where you can’t even agree on what you’re both looking at and what’s real and what’s not real is going to become very difficult to know. So it’s only going to get harder to do your homework and to find any common ground from which to start a conversation. We’re going to have to work very hard.

Tomas Spath:

I was just going to add that in order to be effective, one has to be very persistent with what one wants to accomplish.

Mitch Winick:

Your journey started really with what we might perceive as a religious base, your faith and your philosophies and feelings based on faith and spirituality. And it might be easy for someone who is not faith-based to say, well, it’s easy for them. They had that foundation and they have now just taken that thinking into this broader concept of civility. But if I’m listening right now and let’s say I’m not a faith-based person, is that a detriment to my thinking that I could step in and embrace these concepts of civility in our society?

Cassandra Dahnke:

Short answer is no. It’s not a detriment. Civility is just practical. It just makes life easier. Whether you’re talking about an interaction when you’re buying something at a store or across your kitchen table or international diplomacy, it just makes life easier. We’re all going to have bad days. We’re all going to hit a rough patch. We’re all going to have those times when moving forward just seems all but impossible. Getting angry about it doesn’t help. It may be a natural reaction that fight or flight sort of mode, but if you can maintain civility, you at least have a chance of going forward. And if you don’t, you don’t. And so it’s just a practical exercise in how to interact with other people. And all the rules in our books are talking about that kind of practicality.

Tomas Spath:

That’s the point is that we need to not be afraid to build relationships with people that are different from us or people that may think in a different way. I think democracy depends on those kind of conversations. Our democracy is all about getting people from different places. When I go to Washington and I talk to the people that are employed there, they are deep thinkers and they help me understand. One of ’em said, the purpose of government is not to speed things up. The purpose of government is to slow everything down because in Washington DC you have people from Maine, you have people from California, you have people from Florida, you have people from Texas, and you have people from Hawaii. And guess what? They all think differently. And when we make a law, it affects every single citizen and we better make sure that it’s right. So that’s why it takes 10 years for something to get through the legislature, and I’ll never forget that because that’s what we need to reclaim in our society. It’s okay to have differences. They need to be there because we can teach each other. And so I have quite a few friends that are not religious people and they love me and I love them because we care about each other. It’s what we need to do as a society is find somebody that doesn’t think, sit and start.

Jackie Gardina:

Cassandra and Tomas, I think that’s a perfect place to leave our listeners with that drop of wisdom at the end there from both of you. So I want to thank you so much for joining us on SideBar today.

Cassandra Dahnke:

Oh, thank you for having us. Thank

Mitch Winick:

You. Thank you very much for sharing your time with us today and for these words of wisdom and guidelines. I think that’s very helpful. It’s exactly the kind of things we like to talk about on SideBar,

Cassandra Dahnke:

And thank you for the work you’re doing with the podcast.

Jackie Gardina:

What a wonderful conversation to have with two people who have dedicated their lives to trying to create the space for us to learn how to engage in civil dialogue. They have a website called the Institute for civility.org, and it has training material and other things that people can use to try to move this same kind of conversation forward in their own communities, in their own parishes and faith-based institutions or wherever it is that they might be having these conversations.

Mitch Winick:

Jackie, I love to promote their book Reclaiming Civility in the Public Square 10 Rules That Work. I believe it’s easy in these challenging times when there’s been a loss of civility on the floor of Congress, in the dialogue between politicians as well as between individuals within each community that we’ve just lost that train of responsibility to civility and they don’t give up hope. They’ve given us the guidelines that are as valid today and as important today as they were in the 1990s when they started this project, and I encourage everyone to look up their book, reclaiming Civility in the Public Square 10 Rules That Work.

Jackie Gardina:

Once again, I want to thank everyone who joined us today on SideBar, and as always, Mitch and I would love to know what’s on your mind. You can reach us at SideBar media.org.

Mitch Winick:

SideBar would not be possible without our producer David Eakin, who composes and plays all of the music you hear on SideBar. Thank you also to Dina Dowsett who creates and coordinates sidebar’s. Social media marketing.

Jackie Gardina:

Colleges of law and Monterey College of Law are part of a larger organization called California Accredited Law Schools. All of our schools are dedicated to providing access and opportunity to legal education to marginalized communities.

Mitch Winick:

For more information about the California accredited Law schools, go to ca law schools.org. That’s ca law schools.org.