Improving Public Discourse with Tim Shriver & Tami Pyfer

Dignity Index co-creators Tim Shriver and Tami Pyfer, talk about their hopeful and practical path to improving public discourse and strengthening our relationships and our country. Tim and Tami discuss the importance of dignity, the role of local leaders in fighting against what they call the “contempt industrial complex,” and where they see change happening every day – at school board meetings, city council chambers, and other community gatherings.

For more information, visit us at nlc.org.

Transcript

Melanie Fonder Kaye, Senior Executive, National League of Cities 0:08

Welcome back to Cityspeak. I am your host, Melanie Fonder Kaye, senior executive with the National League of Cities. Cityspeak gives listeners an insider's view of what local leadership in America means today and features conversations with government leaders and policy experts on the biggest issues and challenges facing America's cities, towns, and villages. We're bringing you a special episode of CitiesSpeak today, courtesy of our friends at the Massachusetts Municipal Association. It's a conversation with Dignity Index co-creators Tim Schreiber and Tami Pyfer talking about their hopeful and practical path to improving public discourse and strengthening our relationships. Tim and Tami discuss the importance of dignity, the role of local leaders in fighting against what they call the contempt industrial complex and where they see change happening every day at school board meetings, in city council chambers, and other community gatherings. This conversation is hosted by MMA Executive Director, Adam Chapdelane, and MMA Communications Director, John Willette, for their podcast called the 351. They're doing great work up in Massachusetts, and I hope you'll check out their podcast, which really digs in on municipal government issues and what makes great leaders tech. The 351 is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Tim Shriver 1:43

And if you look at all of the great positive changes in our country's history where dignity was expanded, where more people were included, it always started with people saying, I'm going to do it differently.

Speaker 5 2:23

Respect and trust is often absent from the public discourse.

Speaker 4 2:28

Yeah, and unfortunately, we've been seeing it enter the local government arena. But where we see a discouraging trend, today we're joined by guests who see opportunity.

Speaker 5 2:38

We're in the midst of our Connect 351 event at the Menino Center in Boston, where we convene to share ideas, draw inspiration, and prepare for the year ahead. And we have the pleasure of talking with the leadership of an innovative national nonprofit in the studio here. Leaders we turn to for ideas and inspiration around how to reduce divisiveness and restore dignity to public discourse.

Speaker 4 3:07

At a time when many feel like the glue that holds communities together is becoming weaker, our guests today have a mission to change that through their organization, Unite, where Timothy Shriver is CEO and founder, and Tami Pyfer is the Chief External Affairs Officer. Unite focuses on healing social and civic divisions in our country right now. Tim, Tami, welcome.

Tim Shriver 3:29

Thanks for having us.

Speaker 4 3:30

Thank you for having us.

Speaker 5 3:31

Tammy, let's start with you. Why does an organization focused on healing divisions want to look to local communities and appeal to local leaders?

Tami Pyfer 3:41

Well, you touched on it just a little bit. We've seen how some of the national toxic political rhetoric is seeping into cities. And I served on a city council for eight years. I know what that's like. And I've watched as those meetings have become more and more difficult to manage because of what's happening at the national level. We have a strategy that we like to call our grass tops and grassroots strategy. We know that when we look to national leaders or the grass tops, whether it be our federal leaders in the Congress, the Senate, the White House, or our governors, they have a big stage and they have a lot of people that watch and listen to them. We also have the grassroots strategy. That's in cities and towns and school boards and with community groups and faith groups. And what we're hoping to do is to create a movement of people who understand what they're seeing, that can recognize dignity and contempt and use that language that we're teaching with our index so that they start to shift the conversations in their community. They start to expect dignity from the people who represent them, who expect dignity from the people who inform them and who entertain them. I think the local city council and town leadership is in a unique position to be kind of a bridge between that grassroots and the grass tops, right? They're visible in their communities, but they still are in a position to make kind of some groundswell movement type building things happen. And so that's why we're here at your conference today and speaking to locally elected officials.

Speaker 4 5:21

I mean, I love thinking about local government as that glue, as that connective tissue. I also can't resist a tariff management joke for local government, but I I like it. I like it a lot. Tim, local government, at least in most of the country, has historically been nonpartisan. More recently, it's been harder to sort of like stay nonpartisan in the face of so many divisive issues, even in small cities and towns. How have you observed that change and how are you thinking about trying to tackle that challenge?

Tim Shriver 5:51

I think the important thing to remember here is that there is a huge constituency in our country starving for change. Hundreds of millions of Americans feel homeless, feel scared, feel unlistened to, feel cynical and pessimistic because they don't see people treating each other with dignity. They don't see public officials treating each other with dignity, they don't see that this happening at school board meetings, they don't see it happening on the news at night. They scroll through the news, they this none of this is good for me. And we're starving for someone, something, some place to be reminded that that's not the only option. Contempt is not the only option. And as Tammy just said so well, for many of us, when we look to our neighborhoods and our communities and our places of worship and our civic organizations, when we look to the Lions and the church groups and so on, we see people who actually want to work together. We don't see Republicans and Democrats, we don't see richer, we see collaborators, we see people who share a common purpose. We're having this conversation on the verge of a big snowstorm. So within a few hours, we're gonna see thousands and thousands of public works people working all through the night. Right. We're not gonna look out at them and say, who did you vote for? We're gonna look out at them and say, Thank you for helping us, thank you for coming when we were in need. And still the ambulance came when we were struggling. In the middle of the storm, someone came. This is what local government does for us. This is where the teacher shows up for the kid who couldn't get to school. And we're saying, My God, look, that teacher is amazing. So this is what our country is starving for. Our gamble here is that if we give people the language to express what they already want, they'll say, yes, oh, that's it. You know, sometimes in life you're you're looking around, you're going, I can't quite name what the heck is wrong here. I can't quite name what I'm feeling. And then someone gives you the word. Americans are looking for the language to talk to each other and to challenge each other to treat each other better. We're not waiting, but we are starving. So we think local government, local leaders, local educators, all these, you know, cops, emergency responders, firefighters, teachers, public works officials. These are the interface between most of us and our leaders. Let's remind ourselves to treat them with dignity. We don't have to agree with everything the school board does, but we don't have to insult. We don't have to agree with everything the town manager or the mayor or the city council does, but we don't have to demonize. And by the way, it doesn't work anyway. It just makes things worse.

Speaker 4 8:28

Right. I mean, and it it feels like you touched on this this morning in your remarks. It's a little bit of a battle between the contempt industrial complex and everybody else in America who goes about life probably being fairly kind and treating other people with dignity.

Tim Shriver 8:43

That's right. I mean, we have this huge messaging machine that's telling us to hate other Americans. And it invariably says, love your country and hate the people in it. All of us know there's something wrong with that story. But we're about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country, a country dedicated to the idea that all people are created equal, that we have inalienable rights given to us by our creator, that no one can take away from us, that we want to fulfill by making our country more perfect generation after generation, seeking greater and greater dignity for more and more people. We all believe that. And yet we turn on the news at night and you think to yourself, well, I should hate those sons of guns who live in that state, or I got to stop those people from having any power in our country because they're gonna they'll destroy the country. Who are those people? Well, those are Americans. Wait a minute. So we're all locked in this like that, wait a minute, this isn't making sense. We're gonna have parades, we're gonna have documentaries, we're gonna read speeches from the founding era of our country, we're gonna challenge the founders for what they did wrong and celebrate them for what they did right. And then, by the way, we're gonna hate the rest of the people in the country. No, no, no, no, no. That doesn't work. That dog won't hunt. So, you know, we've got to snap out of what the contempt industrial complex is telling us. They're monetizing our anger. The algorithm is monetizing our fear, partisan news is monetizing our contempt for other people and the other party, whichever one you're in, you're being hated on by the other one. Right. In almost the same language, by the way. I mean, when you start to see it, it's like, oh my God, this is this is amazing. I like to say we don't suggest that there is moral equivalence in all issues. People on both sides of the political aisle have passionate convictions that they differ with the other party in. Our view is good, that's democracy. Be passionate, but don't use the tactics for your passion that attempt to dehumanize and destroy other human beings. That's not that's not a good way to achieve your passion. So there may not be moral equivalence, but right now most of us see that there's tactical equivalence. Meaning most of what we hear about is people using the same tactics of dehumanizing contempt, which ironically make it impossible to solve problems, increase the chances of violence, and tear our families apart.

Tami Pyfer 11:04

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Something, Tim, that you had said this morning, the data that you put up about these top five or six issues that are dividing the country. But when you look at the data, like 80% of Americans, over 80%, agree on what the solutions to those issues are. We are being lied to through this contempt industrial complex, the media, the system, the algorithm. And when people understand that they're being lied to, or understand that people actually think more similar to you than you think, that changes the way you look at people. Even in city council meetings, when when you realize that, you know, 80% of the issues that you're facing, uh, or 80% of the people, even in the room, it's like, you know, that most of those people actually agree that A, this is a problem, and we probably agree somewhat on the solution. You start to see them differently and you start to consider the solutions that are being brought to you by the public works department differently, knowing that it's like, oh, this is gonna be a battle. I'm gonna, you know, I mean, I used to do this in city council meetings. It's like, I'm gonna gear up for this big battle because I would assume, you know, that the other people coming to the meeting were automatically against me because I had been, you know, just conditioned really to gear up for a battle. When when now it's like actually, people probably agree pretty much with the problem. And maybe the solution, something Tim likes to say is that disagreement isn't the problem. It's the solution. So having those different voices in the room that you can hear the different perspectives is actually part, that's good. That's healthy and it's part of the solution.

Speaker 5 12:37

So you mentioned this contempt industrial complex. And you see an opportunity to make progress at the local level, but is there hope for this sort of bubbling up? Like that's a huge, powerful sounding force. Yeah.

Tim Shriver 12:53

Well, you know, I was talking to a rabbi, asked me that question. I said, Well, we're kind of fans of that kid with the ruddy complexion who was handsome to behold. His name was David in the Bible, right? And he uh he famously can encountered Goliath. Look, the theory of change here is that culture changes when subcultures arise that show a different way. And if you look at all of the great positive changes in our country's history where dignity was expanded, where more people were included in the story of the country, when more people got their rights to vote, to participate, to contribute, to work, people with disabilities, getting the chance to work. It happened when more dignity, when the circle of dignity expanded. And all of a sudden people said, okay, yes, we can hire you, Mr. Smith, Mr. Ms. Jones. You have Down syndrome, but we'll find a place for you. We know you have gifts to give. That's the expansion narrative. It always started with people saying, I'm gonna do it differently. So each of us, this is where you don't have to wait for a presidential election. You don't have to wait for the midterms. Do what you need to do for the midterms. I'm all for whatever it is you want to do. But we don't have to wait to be countercultural in this respect. We can, as city managers, as city council members, as municipal officials, we can say, we're gonna do it differently. I don't care what they're gonna do. Let the president, let the Senate, let the Congress, let the administration, let the Democrats, whoever in Washington do what they're gonna do. We're doing it differently here in one of these 351 towns. I'm not Ben Afflack, Matt Damon, and Jimmy Fouts. I can't name them all. They had prompters. I don't buy it. But we're gonna do it differently here, because we don't want to live like that. We don't want to live yelling at each other. We don't want to live feeling unsafe in our own neighborhoods. We don't want to feel distrustful of every person. We'll challenge public works to do a better job or public education or police department. Yes, we will. We'll bring our grievances to the mayor, to the city council, and so on. We'll make it and that's how we make it better. Right. That's how democracy works. You're a CEO, you're a communications guy, you tell him things sometimes he doesn't want to hear in order to make him better, right? So he has to I'm I didn't mean to get personal there. You did earlier today. But that's how it works. That's how we grow. Uh it's not always pleasant to hear the other point of view, but it always leads us, challenges us, causes us to think differently. Okay, wait a second. What is she thinking? What is he trying to say to me? Oh, oh, I see. Okay, maybe that's a good. Oh, oh, yeah, there's a solution. And then before you know it, the public works department, the school system, the police department, the fire department, all these things, they got a little better because they listened to something that they didn't start thinking, but they were made smarter by listening to someone from a different point of view. That's democracy. I agree. I agree.

Speaker 4 15:46

So let's talk specifically about dignity. I'm curious, you know, in your early days, how you honed in on the term dignity. And then I'm curious for our listeners to learn more about the dignity index. You know, it's a really applicable tool. It's a it's something you can bring back to your community. But yeah, if you could start by talking a little bit about like what was it about that word that started to build this concept?

Tami Pyfer 16:08

Well, when I first came to the team, they had already been working on this project for some time. But in late 2020, early 2021, I'm this Republican from Utah reading Arthur Brooks, you know, a conservative Republican. And I was reading his book called Love Your Enemies, talking about uh contempt and how that we have a contempt problem. And if we want to solve the polarization problem, we have to solve the contempt problem. My Democratic colleagues in DC were reading a book by Donna Hicks called Dignity. And that term uh just really resonated with all of us as being kind of two ends of the spectrum. Donna worked in international conflict resolution for two and a half decades and found that dignity and recognizing and honoring the dignity in every individual was just the most powerful tool she had in her toolkit when she was mediating this conflict. And dignity, we talk about the language a lot. We talk about words like respect and civility, and a lot of organizations and states have civility initiatives, which is great. I'm glad they do. Uh, we talk about respect and needing to respect people. But dignity is a notch higher than civility and respect. Civility, I think, is a baseline. Respect, we believe, has to be earned. You can earn my respect. But even if you don't earn my respect, I still need to treat you with dignity. You have dignity. Uh, I can't give it to you, I can't take it away from you, I cannot treat you with dignity, but that's inherent. And that word seemed to resonate. I know it did with our team, and it has seemed to resonate with so many people. It's just it's a different, it's it's a different way of looking at ourselves. Tim mentioned teaching people this language, and I'll never forget one of the early presentations I made during the break. A woman said, I need to talk to you, you know, out in the hallway. And I was, I was worried that I had maybe offended her. You know, she wanted to talk in private, and and and she was crying. And I said, Is everything okay? She said, I I feel like there's been a target on my back. And uh she worked in education and she said, even family members, I feel like are out to get me. She said, You just gave me the language I need to understand what's happening. She said, I feel like my dignity is being violated. That's what's happening. She said, I've never known how to express that. But now that I understand that it's dignity, she said, I see things differently. Thank you for giving me that language. And she says, now I know how to respond differently. Now I know how to explain to people when we're having these discussions, how they're hurting me, because you gave me the language. And dignity is that language.

Tim Shriver 18:54

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting from a political perspective. When we polled this word, it did not poll well. Huh. Respect polled higher. So did civility. When you asked people to use the language that they would naturally use to describe some of these qualities, dignity is not at the top of the list. And so we looked at this, and a friend of mine, who's a pollster, Frank Lundz, he said, you got to change your work to uh respect.us. And so I said, so we we talked, I talked to him about it. And it actually made us double down on keeping the word that was less intuitive, less natural, less conversational. So people listening to this may be thinking, yeah, I respect people that are different, or I want to treat them well. We're not asking you just to respect people. We're asking you to respect their dignity. It's a different thing, right? So we're we're inviting, as Tammy just so elegantly shared, we're inviting people to tap into a different frequency here. This is not, did you do the right thing? This is not if you're being arrested for a crime, did you do the right thing? If you're being convicted of a crime, you did not do the right thing. Right. We are saying that even though you committed a crime or I committed, you will be treated with dignity. So we're asking people to tap into a slightly different frequency here. I can be fiercely opposed to what you believe in, but fiercely protective of your dignity. How do I do that? Tricky, right? This is this is why the index has been so helpful to people because it allows you to express disagreement fiercely and forcefully without violating dignity and maintaining to some extent that as a sacred space. So it's almost like a new skill, right? And I like to think it's the new superpower because the world is getting smaller, it's more diverse, we're coming from lots of different places, we're trying to navigate differences of religion and ethnicity and culture and hit history and storytelling, a lot of things that maybe past generations could have just sort of pushed under the rug. We don't do that anymore. We bring it out from under the rug. Our kids are gonna have to learn how to capture this superpower. Like I need to try to understand and treat you with dignity, but I also need to be able to express to you my truth. And I need to be able to speak my truth with force. Don't tell me to neutralize my passions. That's not helpful. Don't tell me to become a centrist. Oh, just split the difference. You believe strongly, A, but just why don't you compromise? No, that's not our message. Our message is a little different. Our message is hold on to the dignity of the other human being, see them, and use that as part of the way in which you express your position. It will make you more effective. So, you know, this is kind of uh a little bit intuitive, but also a little counterintuitive and a little bit challenging for all of us, you know. Uh, and I would just say for myself, doing this work has challenged me to live my life differently. I'm constantly thinking, oh, wait a second, now how do I do this? How do I hold this one, this family member? You know, this moment, this news story. Right. It's challenging. We think it's sort of Hidden issue of our time that we have to elevate. We don't necessarily have all the answers, but we have invitations to the conversations around how we do this.

Tami Pyfer 22:07

And Adam, I was just going to add to what Tim's saying. It's like, this is hard work and it's an ongoing process. This is a long game. This isn't, I'm going to come to your city council, I'm going to train you for 45 minutes, and everything's going to be great. This is an ongoing self-reflection, self-improvement. I struggle with certain people or certain issues that I bring it up, Tammy. Present company included. No, it's but it's like it's not the time to come. It's a challenge. And when people get involved, when when you say when you kind of sign up for this movement, just know that it's the long haul. It's going to take time to turn around the country in some regards when we talk about that and relationships that we have. But it's well worth the struggle. And I've learned a lot about myself and gotten better in a lot of ways and still have a lot of people.

Tim Shriver 22:59

Tammy, as you say, it's very true. Changing culture's always got a medium to long arc, right? That's just the way it is. You think of any big change. It didn't happen like that. Maybe the end result moved quickly, but a lot of people struggled. So culture change does take time. What's exciting, I think, for us is how many people get it right away. And people, I mean, I've talked to dozens of people just here as we're gathered here in Boston for this occasion. I've talked to dozens of people just in the last two hours. We get it. We're going to change. We're going to do this. You know, that was a three. I told my, I called my wife and told her she used and this is after just 10 minutes of exposure. Yeah.

Speaker 4 23:38

Yeah.

Tim Shriver 23:39

So there is both the long arc of change, but there's also the intuitive hunger of the moment. You know, I think in business they say, you know, sometimes there's a market demand, but there's no product. And then when you get the product, all of a sudden you're like, whoa, baby, we got it. You know, we hit the market right at the right time. There was market. The demand was there, and we put it on the shelf, and man, it's flying off the shelf. We feel a little bit like there's a huge demand. And we're we're not the only product, but we're part of a product that people are starving for. So they're like, oh yes, finally. So there's a quick movement here, too, in addition to the harder work that follows the initial insights.

Speaker 5 24:19

I want to sort of tap into a vein of some questions that you had, Tammy, in your Wiimo session about sort of practical applications. And our members work really hard to make their local communities hum. They're deeply invested in the work. And when the heat is coming at you, what is the best initial response? And I also want to ask, as a local leader, if you observe it, you're not the target of it, but you observe it. Do you have a role to play there?

Tami Pyfer 24:55

I would say the first response, uh, Tim talked about this a little bit is to take a breath when it's coming at you in particular. I think anyone that's been involved in politics has taken some arrows and sometimes from people that you thought were your friends and they're not anymore, and they're coming at you publicly. So taking a breath, taking breathe. Uh, there's other, you know, skills uh associated with that. Tim talked about turtling, where you go into your shell, breathe, have some positive self-down. I can do this, it's okay, and then regulate before you respond. What has helped with the dignity index is I see people differently. And I try to look at the understory of why they are so upset. What is driving their emotion and their sometimes hatred toward me, that sounds like hatred toward me. And being able to see people differently is part of that regulation, that self-regulation. And then respond in a way that you're listening. A lot of times people just need to feel heard. And I talked about this in the Wiimo session is a lot of times people come up to public comment, and because of the technology that we have and our minutes and our board agendas on a laptop and everything's on there, that sometimes it's something as simple as making eye contact with that person at the meeting, putting your computer aside, listening, taking notes, writing down what they're saying. I've suggested even, you know, briefly interrupting, saying, I'm sorry, I'm I'm taking notes. Can you repeat that so that people know that they've been listened to? And it's not performative. You should take notes, but when people see you taking notes, it's like, okay, they're listening. Someone's listening to me. And it helps you because you're taking notes. You can understand maybe the problem better. Those are some suggestions I have in a council meeting. I believe that we also have an obligation to stand up for people that are being treated poorly. Uh, we call it challenging contempt. And I gave an example of a school board meeting that I watched where a speaker in public comment was, you know, coming after a teacher in the district and saying some really awful things. And because of the legalities that we see in our meetings, you know, the lawyer says I can't say this, and the city attorney says you can't respond. It's not on the agenda. Yeah, that's true to some extent. But you can also say things like, I want the minutes to reflect that I disagree with what the speaker just said. I appreciate you coming to speak, but I disagree. And I want the record to reflect my appreciation for the teachers that we have in the district. I mean, being able to challenge it in that way, I don't think breaks any of the laws, but it shows that someone is speaking for that person being demonized.

Tim Shriver 27:35

Yeah, I disagree, is good is good language. And it's healthy language because of maybe where I come from or family and traditions I was born into. I was born in Boston and raised in a democratic family, progressive family, and so on. And people just assume, you know, I'm a woke psycho, liberal, whatever, that you know, the people, how are they characterize? What I found is when those questions come, almost every time the person ends up saying to me, No one's listening to me. They posted, but they didn't feel heard. They spoke, but they didn't feel seen. They challenged, but they didn't feel welcomed. Now that doesn't make their opinion necessarily my opinion, but it means that some of the anger is often coming from a place of deep frustration and even shame. I believe X and no one listens to me. No one fears. And fear and people, I'm shamed for it. I'm mocked by the other side for my beliefs. You know, think about it. If you were shamed and mocked and not listened to and not seen and not understood, you might get angry. And you might think that anger is your only now, that doesn't excuse hostile behavior or contemptuous behavior, but it helps us to understand that a lot of times the anger is coming from a place of simply deep frustration that they haven't been hurt. You know, saying to someone who's ready to cancel you, you know, I had this experience two weeks ago. A group did a 15 whereas proclamation condemning our work. And my I re I read Wait, condemning the dignity?

Speaker 4 29:11

Yes, yeah, I know.

Tim Shriver 29:13

Specifically. Specifically. So I read, I said, well, can we get in touch with the guys that that are the the chair of the committee? And it was like, yeah, well, maybe, but I mean they hate you. I was like, yeah, but I mean, we should at least talk to them. Yeah.

Speaker 4 29:25

Yeah.

Tim Shriver 29:25

And the next thing you know, the next afternoon, we're having a conversation, and the guy's like, yeah, you know, we shouldn't have done it, you know, maybe we could have done it differently, and we don't like this, but maybe we could talk about that. Let's have more conversations. And what you could have seen as a screed of really unpleasant language directed at us turned into a conversation. Now, are we going to agree? Unlikely. But really, I said, you know, think what you want to think, but condemning? I mean, we're trying to help the country here. I mean, we're we may not have the best solution, maybe you have a better one. But really? The guy was like, yeah, you're right. So this is the point Tammy was making earlier that we've been lied to a lot about each other. And when we don't know each other and we don't talk, the lie festers and the frustration deepens, and the screeds and the anger and the hostility and the contempt pour out. And a lot of times it's based on a lack of information and a lack of connection. You know, I don't know who said it, but we connect a lot nowadays, more than ever. How many friends do you have on Facebook? You have a 500, or you have 5,000, or you have 50,000. Oh my God, you have so many friends, followers, people who like what you say. How many people do you really communicate with? How many people really understand you? Quite low. A huge number of Americans report no.

Speaker 5 30:47

Yes, yeah. Connect has a different meaning than it did. Yeah.

Tim Shriver 30:50

So we're we're we're we're deceived a little bit into thinking we're feeling more connected and tethered to each other. We're not. Actually, the explosion of communication is actually, in many ways, resulted in an explosion of isolation. Right.

unknown 31:05

Yeah.

Speaker 4 31:05

You know, so much of what you're saying rings true. I I used to work as a town manager before I was in this role. And um I'm having memories as you're talking of, you know, getting that really challenging, potentially even sort of, you know, below five on the index email from somebody about, you know, it could be a very tactical or basic issue. Yeah. And the impulse is, I'm not going to respond to this. It's a jerk. Right. Yeah. But we did build a practice of giving detailed responses when we would take that time. Often that person who was quite angry would be appreciative. Yeah. You still might not resolve their issue, right? They still might be really angry that that sidewalk just can't get plowed or whatever it might be. Right. When we wouldn't respond. Maybe we were too busy, maybe someone was distracted. Yeah. Of course, we get a second or third, even more angry email. Exactly. Right. And then unwinding that. Exactly.

Tami Pyfer 31:56

It gets harder and harder to rebuild that relationship. Yeah. That's right.

Speaker 5 31:59

We want to ask if you can tell us what each of you have learned in this work about people who are there just to win arguments or have power versus those who are trying to find the best answer for as many as possible.

Tim Shriver 32:13

Well, the first thing I'd say is I don't think there are people on both sides. I think we move each of us in and out of those two modes. I think there are times in life where you just can't resist making a point and showing how foolish the other person's point is. And there are times in life where you don't need to make a point, you want to make a difference. So take any example, attacking the current president if you're a progressive, or the previous president if you're a conservative. A lot of people just sometimes said that felt good. I just called him every name in the book. You didn't make a doggone bit of difference to anybody in the world, but you felt better. Okay. Unfortunately, that is where it ends for many people. What we're all seeing, though, is that the country is awakening to that's not good enough. Making a point, demeaning the other guy, destroying the other party is not good enough. It's not good enough. And it results in a back and forth game of that paralyzes the country and makes us look foolish on the world stage and makes us feel rotten and makes our kids feel discouraged about the future. It's not good enough to make a point. We've got to recognize that this country depends on people trying to make a difference. So we say that dignity is a tool for problem solving. Because if you treat people with dignity, you have a chance to solve the problem. If you treat them with contempt, you are guaranteed to make the problem worse. When you treat someone with contempt, you make an enemy for your cause. So if you want to make a friend for your cause, the more dignity you give them, the better chance you've got. It's not a guarantee, but I can almost guarantee you that when you treat them with contempt, you make an enemy for your cause.

Speaker 5 33:46

And you're not gonna penetrate, you're not gonna get through to them.

Tim Shriver 33:50

I mean, we've seen that in the last several elections. I mean, the country uh, you know, people campaigning, spending hunt billions of dollars to destroy this politician or that billions. Yep. How many votes they move? Not even a three percent. Not even, not even, not two percent. They don't move anybody. What if all those billions of dollars were spent trying to elevate the story of people actually learning how to solve the problems and trying to challenge politicians to follow our civic leaders who are solving the problem of that sidewalk or solving the problem of the water supply, the energy supply, the infrastructure, the grid, the schools, the emergency responders, the healthcare system, all those things? People actually solving those. What if we spend billions of dollars finding the people doing the work and put them on billboards and said, Mr. Vice President or Senator or Congressman or president, uh, speak to this issue. We want to know why you can't do what Joe Jones is doing in Framingham or Waltham or Hyandis or Barnstable or, you know, that's not bad, right? That's all I got, though.

Tami Pyfer 34:56

He's just showing off now.

Speaker 4 34:58

Aaron Powell So let me ask you earlier, you talked about the grassroots and the grass tops and the local government being the connective tissue. If you had one takeaway, like one thing you'd ask local leaders to do, like what would be that first step? The members who are listening, people who attended today and listened to both of you speak, what would you what would you tell them?

Tami Pyfer 35:16

Aaron Powell I would ask them to give it a try, cautioning that it's not easy. And the first several attempts wouldn't because people do come at you. I was thinking when Tim was explaining that, how many public hearings I've been at where someone will get up angry about a project and call us every name in the book and you rotten, no good, you know, son of a gun, and you're doing this. I know you're gonna make a terrible decision, but I want you to vote no. It's like, wow, you just persuaded me. Like, no, I really want to do what you asked, right? But I would ask councilmen, first I would thank them for their for their work. This is really, really hard work. Honestly, God bless, you know, our elected officials, especially at the local level. But I would ask them to take a chance and then to have a little patience and and lead, you know, step into that leadership role that they're already in and and lead with dignity and see where it can land.

Tim Shriver 36:12

The first step that we found to be very practical is to spend three to five minutes with Dignity Index, pull it down off the web, look at it, read each level, score yourself once or twice, and then commit to training people who are your colleagues. Commit to learning how to raise your score. It sounds really small, larger scheme of things. We had so many things to worry about. How important is this? We think it's really important. Show people if you're on a school board, invite the other train, you know, invite Tammy to come and train your school board. Or we have trained the trainers where we're training people to train school boards or police and municipal and education departments and so on. Make a commitment now. You know, I closed today with a line uh Dr. King wrote in his extraordinary letter from a Birmingham City jail, where he said, you know, the question isn't whether we're going to be extremists. The question is are we gonna be extremists for hate or for love? There's nothing wrong with being an extremist. I would suggest we're a lot better off if we had extremists for love. So I would say to people, look, you're you're really busy. You don't have time for much. This is an important issue. Take it seriously. Spend 10 minutes thinking about and learning a little bit about dignity. And then if you're interested and you see the possibility, try to raise the quality of your rhetoric and invite others around you to do the same. And if you're if you're really interested, call us up and we'll come out and we'll offer some training and some workshops. We have uh lots of role-playing and fun activities you can do to challenge yourself and the unintended consequences, your home life might get better. Uh and I think our country has a better shot if more people understand that.

Speaker 5 37:49

And what's the web address?

Tami Pyfer 37:51

Yeah, I'm compelled to uh to invite you to join us on our website, dignity.us. And you can sign up, click, and you can get our newsletters every week. We write essays. We're probably gonna write about you guys next week. There's gonna be photos. Okay. It's it's a community. It's a movement. We're building a movement and we have a community, and they respond you know, every week. You know, this really touched me, or I used this last week, and thank you for mentioning this. But it you're part of something. And so we would invite people to join us. Uh, join the website, sign up for our newsletter, and track the movement, be part of the movement.

Speaker 5 38:23

Yeah. This has been such a terrific conversation, but we're at our last question now. And so we like to end every episode of this podcast with this question, which is what gives you hope right now?

Tami Pyfer 38:35

I'm gonna start on this one because what gives me hope right now is seeing the people I saw today. Again, I I've been there, and so I feel like a special connection. And I know how hard that work is. I know how rewarding it is and can be as well. But what gives me hope today is seeing our locally elected officials that like it is a thankless job, I'm telling you. But wow, you know, they're serving us and they make my life better personally and my home, and they're making the lives of people here in Massachusetts better. And I just thank God for them. That gives me a lot of hope.

Tim Shriver 39:12

I think this country is bursting with hope. Teachers in our country give me hope. Every time I visit a school, I was a teacher for a period of time. I have enormous admiration for what our educators do, so few resources, so much selfless giving. But right now, I'm also watching our political leaders. I'm watching how many of them are changing. People saying, wait a minute, we got to change. And we're seeing this on both sides. We're seeing it in governors and municipal officials, we're seeing in the National Governors Association, we have uh almost a uh uh ten governors who want to change, themselves are committing to change. You know, when you see your political leaders moving, you know they're starting to hear. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You know how politicians are. I grew up around politicians. Culture moves politics, pay attention. And when they see an issue starting to emerge, they want to get on it. We're starting to see that. It's baby steps. Some of it's inauthentic. Don't think I'm naive here. But we're starting to see baby steps that people are listening to Americans who are starving for a change. That gives me hope. I'm very confident because of it. Well, thank you both so much. Thank you. This has been an exception. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having us.

NLC 40:27

Thanks for listening to City Speak with Clarence Anthony. If you like the show, let us know. Share this episode with your friends, and make sure to subscribe. We're curious to hear what you think, what you want more of, and how we can improve. If you have feedback or an idea for a guest you'd like Clarence to sit down with, send us your thoughts at Cityspeak Podcast at nlc.org. Join us next month for a new episode. Like and subscribe here or wherever you get your podcast. See you next time.