Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Incivility… and a Remedy

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Demonstrators decry climate change at a Richmond Forum speaker event…. that had nothing to do with climate change, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline or Dominion Energy. Source: Virginia Student Environmental Coalition Facebook page.

The Richmond Forum brings high-profile speakers — from George W. Bush to Barack Obama in recent seasons — to Richmond. I’ve been attending the events for 20 years, and the audience is invariably respectful and welcoming to guests of all political stripes. That changed last weekend. As Executive Director Bill Chapman described the event, which featured astronaut Scott Kelly, in a missive to ticket subscribers:

After intermission, our program was briefly interrupted by two young women who staged a demonstration in the theater. Both are students who obtained tickets for the evening’s program, but are not Forum subscribers.

While free speech is a bedrock value of this series, we also cannot allow the disruption of our programs. Twice, the students were asked to take their seats, and when they did not, they were escorted from the theater. Looking at video recorded by the demonstrators themselves, exactly sixty seconds passed from the beginning of the demonstration until security began moving them from the theater. To many of you, and to me, it seemed longer. …

Also of great concern to me is the manner in which a few of our subscribers responded to the demonstration, including one man who shouted profanity from the rear balcony. (I did not actually hear this from stage, but it is widely reported in the program survey comments.) Incivility will not be tolerated at The Richmond Forum and poor behavior such as this will also be grounds for removal from the theater and revocation of a season subscription.

Chapman gave exactly the response he should have, and I expect that the overwhelming majority of Forum patrons will support him. As coincidence would have it, during the same event he announced an initiative that should combat the incivility he decried.

Richmonders have long understood that the ability to civilly articulate and debate ideas and points of view is critical to a functioning democracy. In that local tradition, we believe our region’s students should have access to strong speech and debate programs in our public schools. These programs teach research, critical thinking, construction of logical arguments, assessment of audience, self esteem, and engagement in world events–skills which build better students, better college candidates, better employees, and better citizens.

The Richmond Forum has provided a grant to Chesterfield County Public Schools to enable all eleven high schools to be able to offer speech and debate programs this school year. The grant will fund training for coaches, and entry fees and travel costs for tournaments.

And that’s just the start. Bravo! The counter-revolution against public rudeness, belligerence and incivility begins! Donors can contribute here.

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6 responses to “Incivility… and a Remedy”

  1. djrippert Avatar
    djrippert

    Fake civility is worse than honest incivility.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      now that’s a mouthful!

  2. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    I agree with DJ’s comment.

    Let me add that the fault for what happened at that forum lies NOT with those two rude young women students. They are irresponsible children. The fault lies directly with all of those attendees sitting in the audience whose peace, quiet and complacency was disturbed for 60 seconds. And had I been in that audience, I would have been equally complicit with those who were.

    Why?

    The young women students are misguided children. We, and everyone in that audience, have made those spoiled young women students what they are, irresponsible children. We have not only kept silent in the face of their rudeness and irresponsible behavior going on for years now, for years we have encouraged and enabled their rudeness, ignorance and irresponsibility. Our own gross irresponsibly toward our students continues in full force to this day.

    Why do I say this?

    The reasons and their causes, including our irresponsibility, are everywhere to see, and have been for most of this decade. For example, look around you at our behavior during the 2017 spring and summer in Charlottesville, and the earlier actions in 2016 that ignited those 2017 events.

    The truth is that those two young women students who disturbed us for 60 seconds in that Richmond forum were following the script taught by antifa rioters who were allowed and often encouraged by Virginia leaders to run wild in the streets of Charlottesville in 2017.

    And the truth is that those leaders in C’ville, leaders at UVA, and the then sitting Governor of Virginia, not only let those horrible events happen, but in many case, they actively encouraged and facilitated those events, including either the direct support of, or turning a blind eye toward, the Antifa “counter” protesters, who in fact were the primary instigators of the great majority of the violence that took place in C’ville over four major events of violence over 6 days and slews of lesser events, often supported by substantial numbers of faculty at UVA.

    And the truth is that many of Virginia’s leaders encouraged and/or turned a blind eye towards these events so as to milk these horrible events for all the political advantage that they were worth. And then used C’ville’s black police chief and hapless Klu Klux Klan, as scapegoats while also milking the equally irresponsible white supremacists for all they were worth, rather then engaging them to find a peaceful solution, a task that a young Muslim film maker readily accomplished alone. Indeed, the only honest and effective people of authority I can find on or near the scene of these terrible events are the many fine law enforcement officers (who were also abused and scapegoated by their own city and state), as well as many of Antifa’s innocent victims, plus that young film maker and the author of Hunton & Williams Report.

    And now everybody feigns shock at two young women student screaming for 60 seconds in a room of leaders in Richmond, after allowing and/or encouraging and then hiding the truth about several thousand rioters, and much rude, disgusting conduct in Charlottesville over an 18 month period.

    Even the ongoing study of these events at UVA has a distasteful odor about it, spending an obscene amount of money on”scholars” tasked to study only the events of August 11/12 when UVA has right in front of its nose the Hunton & William Report and has employed the man who wrote it, a report no one discusses because it is truthful.

    So, the best I can tell, UVA’ yet again uses and wastes taxpayer money, and tuition funds and other monies (that could otherwise educate students), to line its own pockets to investigate everyone and everything but itself for the awful events from the Spring of 2016 though September of 2017.

  3. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    In the ERA of Facebook, Twitter, and amped-up radio and TV and websites:

    https://incommunion.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/04/Pogo.jpg

    and it’s not just kids…….

    and anyone who thinks we’re going to become civil again – good luck on that.

    it’s not about those who will hold their tongues and be “civil”… it’s about the ones that won’t and we do have an goodly number these days – and yes they reproduce!

  4. Goochland Education Foundation Avatar
    Goochland Education Foundation

    To Reed’s point, I don’t blame the students. I blame the parents. Somehow, over the last 25-30 years, we’ve witnessed a shift from thinking that older adults offer ‘wisdom’ to now high school and college students holding that ‘wisdom’ all crammed in their 16-22 year old heads with no life experience.

    It is more than debate teams and public speaking though. It’s the social skills, as indicated on the graph Jim posted the other day. Young people do not have the social skills for the workplace or managing life as a whole.

    Goochland Education Foundation has been funding forensic debate teams in the Goochland High School for the past five years. We are now funding the high school students to teach the elementary school students basic public speaking skills. I’m thrilled we’re doing that. However, we need something far more fundamental than that.

    We’re so focused on STEM skills yet we need to push for teaching social skills ( now called soft 21st century skills) so when an employer hires a person right out of high school or college, they aren’t having to train that person those basic social skills. It’s disturbing – and strange – to find myself dealing with rude and narcissistic behaviors when paying money for a business transaction. Best examples lately that one can only laugh about: 1. customer service person (young woman) on the phone who decided she didn’t like the question I asked about upgrading my plan then hanging up on me and 2. server (young woman) telling us irritably ‘I only have two hands’ when we asked for something that wasn’t a big deal. I let both companies’ management know about the exchanges. They were both very apologetic. The first was quickly remedied to keep me as a customer, the second I will just go elsewhere but the owner said they would work on staff training (of course I’ll miss the staff (young man) seriously thinking that it’s okay to stand in the middle of the restaurant yelling out what dishes he’s holding instead of quietly going up to people waiting for their food to see if it was theirs). Thankfully we live in a country where we have choices and our wallets can decide.

    1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
      Reed Fawell 3rd

      Thank you so much for your wonderful, timely, and important statement about what you see going on with our youth, and those of our youth who you share your life and experiences with. I hope to follow up on your statement, add to it, if I can, either here or on related posts. Your voice is so important today. We need voices like yours to break our collective wall of silence about what we experience and see around us today.

      I hope you continue to post your comments on this website. And will for now post a comment I have posted here before:

      “Once we have taken up the word, it is thereafter impossible to turn away: A writer is no detached judge of his countrymen and contemporaries; he is an accomplice to all the evil committed in his country or by his people. And if the tanks of his fatherland have bloodied the pavement of a foreign capital, then rust-colored stains have forever bespattered the writer’s face. And if on some fateful night a trusting Friend is strangled in his sleep—then the palms of the writer bear the bruises from that rope.

      And if his youthful fellow citizens nonchalantly proclaim the advantages of debauchery over humble toil, if they abandon themselves to drugs, or seize hostages—then this stench too is mingled with the breath of the writer. Have we the insolence to declare that we do not answer for the evils of today’s world?…

      The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me. But it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph! Visibly, irrefutably for all! Lies can prevail against much in this world, but never against art…

      One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”

      –From speech by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to the Swedish Academy on the occasion of his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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