CityViews 2/16/12: Civility Progress Report
Segment 1: Civility Progress Report
A year ago, Lt. Gov. Greg Bell, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker and a host of other community-minded individuals made a New Year’s resolution: to practice civility. The movement stemmed from the cutting remarks, nasty tone and polarization that pervades much of public discourse. So, how are we doing?
Guests:
- Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker
- Cynthia Buckingham, Utah Humanities Council
- John Kesler, Utah Civility and Community Initiative
On Friday, February 17, “Civility and American Democracy: A National Forum” by the Center for Civil Discourse will stream live from 6:30 a.m.-2:15 p.m. MST.
Segment 2: First-Person Stories
A new collection of personal histories celebrates the lessons we can learn from slice-of-life stories and on Thursday, we hear stories of dignity and wisdom from Utahns who have had some very diverse life experiences.
Guests:
- Paulette Stevens, Utah Chapter of the Association of Personal Historians
- Dave Homer
Paulette Stevens and other contributors to the book “One World, Many Stories” will be reading from and signing copies Saturday, Feb. 18 at 3 p.m. at Weller’s Book Works, 665 E 600 S, Trolley Square, Salt Lake City.
In my experience, I’ve been the target of speech-code enforcement in city-topic meeting. (To focus on the topic of civility, I’m not going to provide the exact example.) I uttered a word, but not a word of bigotry, to describe a type of people that engages in a commonly deplorable activity.
Immediately, two participants immediately “corrected” me, but I would have none of it.
In this regard, I hope that the effort for civility does not turn into speech-code policies whose enforcement in itself is hardly an act of civility.