[Unified Purpose] Cassandra Dahnke and Carolyn Zesada Ep. 24

Introduction

Daniella (D): Everybody, hello, welcome to Unified Purpose. You guys know what we do here, we share inspiring tales of compassion, we talk about resilience, community spirit. You know me, I’m your host Daniella, and I’m Penji’s partnership coordinator. We have great guests today. We have Cassandra and Carolyn Sassata from the Institute of Civility. I apologize if I butchered any of your guys’ names.
Cassandra (C): No worries.
Carolyn (CS): Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, guys. Very excited to have you and looking forward to a great conversation.
C: Our pleasure. Thanks.

Introduction to the Institute of Civility

D: So guys, to get the ball rolling and get us started, can you tell us a little bit about what the Institute of Civility is about, what you guys do, what you stand for, so that all of the viewers and listeners who maybe are not familiar with it can hear all about it?
C: I’ll kick that off. My colleague and I started the Institute for Civility in Government, actually back in 1997. We formed it, launched it in 1998. We’re a non-profit, and we really started it out of our experience of taking adults to Washington D.C. and discovering that when we disagree with one another, we really don’t know how to handle that very well. I spent a couple of years looking for someone across the country who was dealing with that, couldn’t find anyone, and so we stepped into the void and formed the Institute for Civility. Originally, we focused on government because that’s something that impacts all of us, and we can all have a role in it. Fast forward 20 years or so, and we dropped the “in government” part because we found that was really a stumbling block for people who thought we were political. We definitely are not political at all. We don’t take a position on anybody or any issue. We’re just about the process by which we live together in community, even when we disagree on anything from what we’re going to have for dinner to which country should do what. I mean, it’s applicable for everything, from across the kitchen table to international diplomacy. So we work on helping people understand how important civility is to that process and teaching them civility skills so that they can do it because it does require a lot of patience, intentionality, care, and practice. That’s what we do.

The Passion Behind the Institute

D: That’s so, so… something when we were looking, you know, we were obviously looking for nonprofits to feature on podcasts. When I was looking into you guys, something that really spoke to me was the aspect of international diplomacy and civility. I think those are terms that very frequently, few people are familiar with, but that people struggle with. To give you guys some background, I studied diplomacy and international relations as my college degree. So I didn’t start with marketing and business, it kind of just happened. But we stress that out a lot because when it came to negotiations, when it came to conversations and just like dealing with a lot of these things, they were huge things that came in. And I had never really seen a nonprofit that focused an idea on such a thing. And it inspired me to want to ask, what actually made you so passionate to dedicate an entire organization toward this topic specifically?
C: Well, mostly the shift in culture over time. Like I said, we started back in the 1990s, and nobody really understood why we were concerned. But having taken those adults to D.C., who got along great when they were sightseeing or sharing meals and became good friends, and then when they started discussing issues and found out they were on different sides or had different ideas, they didn’t get ugly or start yelling or anything. They just shut down. When you’re tackling issues, whether it’s within your family or within the community or the country or, as I said, international diplomacy, if you can’t talk with one another, you can’t do anything else. We have to be able to talk in a respectful and constructive way. So the trick is to take those disagreements that are a fact of life and switch them from stumbling blocks to assets, to opportunities, to ways to move forward. And I guess part of the passion comes from the fact that my colleague, my co-founder, who is not able to be with us today, but my co-founder, he and I found ourselves on different sides of many, many issues, and we were working together and we had to figure out how to do that in a collegial fashion. So, it was in the early 2000s when people came up to us and said, “This is a great idea, but my gosh, it’s hard. Will you teach us how to do it?” And that’s when we developed our civility training. So all along the way, we’ve been way ahead of the curve and we have some great programs, and our new program director, Carolyn Sassata, we are so excited to have her on board, and she’s going to bring some fresh energy, fresh ideas, and fresh perspectives to the table.

The Changing Political Climate

D: Oh, I didn’t realize I was muted. Sorry. Yeah, I think what’s really interesting about civility is that it starts from very small things, right? It starts from how the communication happens in your own home. And, you know, and then how that goes into, like you said, disagreements in the workplace, in friendships, and stuff like that. What I’m curious about is, with the political climate that has been happening for, I think, not just right now. I just think in the past few years, a lot of stuff has been happening regarding people being very divided, you know, like a lot of talks about free speech, how have you guys approached that change with society in terms of like the topic of civility? Because I think from then to today it’s been like so many changes and so much stuff has been sort of moving around and with all of the stuff that has been going on politically, I can imagine that navigating that is really difficult, and kind of the definition and the approach has to be constantly changing. How have you guys sort of been able to keep up with that?
C: Well, actually, the definition hasn’t changed. And our approach has only expanded and built on what we have already been doing. The political atmosphere doesn’t affect us so much in our work because we are not political. What we teach can be applied to politics, and we do have programs. I’ll let Carolyn go into that more in a minute. We do have programs that take place within the experience of civic engagement and in the sphere of how citizens can have an effect within the governing process and learn their roles. But that process doesn’t change, doesn’t have to change. If you’re talking about civility, that process does not change regardless of who’s in power or all the noise that’s going on. You focus on the civility aspects of it and your role, and you put those skills to work regardless of all the noise going on all around you. And so in that sense, the changes that have taken place have not impacted our work. It’s only made it more important than ever so that more people can learn those skills and understand how important they are.

Student Legislative Seminars

C: Our definition of civility is one that my colleague and I came up with when somebody asked us back around the year 2000, what did we mean by civility? And we said, well, we’ll get back to you on that. And so we very intentionally created this definition, which is civility is 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 gathering in a circle and singing Kumbaya and tampering down the differences that divide us. It’s about acknowledging those differences and moving forward in the midst of them. And so if you don’t mind, I’d like to invite Carolyn to talk about our student legislative seminars, which is just one of our programs that involves civic engagement, but one that really captures the imaginations of people and the participants.
CS: Thanks, Cassandra, and Daniella. So I had the opportunity to attend one of these student legislative seminars recently, and what they are is a five-day trip to D.C. And before that trip, we start by doing an orientation with the students where we walk them through some civility training and help them identify the differences in their perspectives. Then we ask them to collectively come up with three topics that they would like to address with their Congresspeople and their senators. So when we get to D.C., we get them briefings by subject matter experts on those topics so that they can be a little more educated on them and have a more full perspective. Then we work with the students to come up with something they can collectively agree on. And these are small groups of students, so, right, collective agreement is a challenge in any size group. But we really take groups of 15 or less, and we find that this is a great way to give a really solid quality experience to all of these students. So then they work together, they come up with their statements that they want to talk to their representatives about, and we really hold those statements down so that they’re prepared to send their message to their reps and their senators, and then we prepare those meetings with them.

The Importance of Civility

D: Amazing. I think the reason that I was asking you about that, the politics aspect, and you guys went to talk about this program, which is a great exemplification, is that regardless of how you feel about controversial topics, I think that’s where that civility aspect and how to have those discussions comes into play. It can be really important. I think we see a lot of people struggling to communicate their ideals, their opinions, what they stand for, and then having productive discussions with someone who doesn’t feel the same way, especially with things that are kind of like when it comes to legislation, when it comes to opinions of things like that. And I think sort of being able to teach someone from when they’re young how to approach this without it being into like these really big fights is huge. I think it’s probably one of the biggest things that we have to target, which is like the younger people, right?
C: Absolutely. And can I just say that’s part of the challenge of it. When the students have to work together to come up with decisions or to come up with something that they can all—even if it’s only three to five of them—that they can all three to five agree on, they recognize how challenging it is for our legislators to do the very same thing with bigger groups and stronger feelings. But teaching them to be able to feel like they have a voice and express that they don’t agree is everything.

Social Media and Civility

D: I wanted to ask because I think a huge thing that has influenced how we disagree and communicate with each other is the existence of social media. I think that kind of revolutionized the way that communication happens. I think early days of social media were not, the discourse was also different. Like I remember in 2012, where like people were fighting on Facebook comments. And people are still fighting on Facebook comments, but I think we see kind of things of more discourse happening like via videos and like on TikTok and Instagram and whatever social media comes after that. Has that affected the way that you approach this topic or how you work with young people? Because I assume like essentially young people are the ones that are more present in this whole thing and who are like, tend to be faced with these types of situations.
CS: Well, this is why we’re so happy to have Carolyn and her colleague, because they’re much younger than us and they’re much more social media savvy. So I’m going to throw that one at her.
C: Yeah, I wish our communications director was here. Her name is Talisa McCall, and she’s doing a fantastic job of helping us dive into all the social media realms a lot better and trying to leverage those more. But, you know, it’s challenging. And of course, I am the director of programs and development, so this is where I say it’s hard to do things without money. And so, you know, it’s always important to make sure that we’re pulling in financing and funding so that we can fully fund positions like Talisa’s. And right now, she’s part-time, but if we had her full-time, she’d be going crazy on all the social media. But, you know, I’m excited to look at leveraging interns and people like that to maybe help us with that. But I totally agree. We need to update some of those things.

Promoting the Institute for Civility

CS: Our website is instituteforcivility.org. Cassandra, help me if I get anything wrong. You can become a member there and subscribe to our monthly emails and quarterly newsletters. Find out more there. We do congressional student forums. That is one of the other primary programs that we have. So if you’d like to have a congressional student forum, we’d love to help you do that. And we’d love to have more student legislative seminars as well. And we do civility training all over the country. So just reach out if you’re interested.
D: Awesome, guys. And I will be adding the links to the description of the video so that anybody can easily access them so that all of this can be ready to go. Cassandra and Carolyn, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
C: Thank you for having us.
CS: Thanks for the opportunity, Daniella.
D: It was great having you guys. I will see you on the next episode. Bye.

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