Opinion: Your Say on handling aggressive and threatening behavior at public meetings – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Find a strategy that will reduce division

As someone who spent many hours watching public meetings in my job as a journalist with KPBS, I am disturbed by the building tension and frustration I see happening at school boards and the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. Since retiring, Ive found myself focusing on the growing divides in our culture, as one after another, long-held pain bursts out of hiding and demands to be recognized.

Whether its Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement or LGBTQ+ rights, people are coalescing into groups with grievances that demand attention and retribution. Now anti-vaxxers and those against mask mandates are doing the same, gelling into group identities with like-minded folk and demanding to be heard. The challenge of our time seems to be how to stay open and not allow these separate group identities to cut us off from each other completely.

Rather than see public meetings curtailed or canceled altogether, there may be better ways for public agencies to handle all that raw emotion. The principles of nonviolent communication offer some ideas. Marshall Rosenberg writes that its a basic human need to want to be heard. The rising level of aggressive testimony suggests people dont feel heard.

It is very hard for public officials to sit through hours of raucous public testimony, especially if its aimed against them. But in many cases, the person on the dais may share core human values with the person testifying, like wanting freedom of choice, or caring about their childrens education. Before laying out their arguments for how they will vote, reflecting back what they heard and acknowledging where they agree are key parts of moving through conflict. In any disagreement, feeling heard can go a long way toward diffusing anger and frustration.

What we are up against is what Harvards Arthur Brooks calls the outrage industrial complex in which social media makes money off our attraction to outrage by catering to just one ideological side, creating a species of addiction by feeding our desire to believe that we are completely right and that the other side is made up of knaves and fools.

What we need he writes, is not to disagree less, but to disagree better.

Any strategy that will reduce the outrage and contempt that leads to higher walls and greater divisions is what we must find. Perhaps its requesting more written testimony that people can read at meetings or see online, or offering to let the public pre-record short videos of their arguments, rather than going live.

Our public officials are being tested. Its a phenomenon that is making good people think twice before running for public office. But acknowledging and tolerating the powerful feelings that run though our political lives today is perhaps the most important skill that any public servant can bring to the table.

Alison St John Inglis, Oceanside

Civility, like most things, is a team sport, and if team members know their positions and their roles and if they cooperate, they will usually succeed. Your premise, that we must address and resolve uncivilized behavior, seems to assume that we will always have these negative confrontations. In fact there is no place for the demonstration of hateful and threatening gestures at all. We need to end it, not adjust to it. We can disagree and debate, but when we spew hate, we lose the game.

We can all look into a mirror and ask ourselves to please act like a responsible person when interacting with other human beings. Beyond that it is hard to imagine any other way to get there. The two sides in this drama are right and wrong, not left or right or progressive or conservative or based on any isms. You cant solve bad behavior with new rules that you make up as you go along. Actions, not words, are what matter.

Where does this all come from, and why does the mainstream media obsess about it? Is it because, for some reason, it works? Surely we arent all inherently hateful, are we? How does it get into our system and how do we deal with those who get some sort of satisfaction in abusing others?

These same officials sitting before the public and taking this abuse were elected themselves. Remember those political debates and that endless stream of campaign mailers spewing hate and humiliation upon their opponent? Some politicians used that language to get our vote. They taught us.

We lived through the last presidential campaign, Democrats tearing each other apart in the primary, then the election where everybody regrouped and went at it again and then the worst kind of confrontation, physical violence, as seemingly normal people set out to physically harm their opponents all this inside the hallowed halls of Congress.

It really doesnt seem like there is a way out of this as long as mainstream and social media feed off the worst in all of us. We arent going to fix this breakdown in civility by passing more rules. That wont solve anything in this endless confrontation.

When law and order really does break down, it will be like the climate situation. It will be too late. When our time-tested institutions are dismantled, what will be left? Does anyone really want to go there? We need an attitude change, and we need it now.

If we are going to restore civility to our government, how about the political establishment taking a vow to run issue-based campaigns instead of aiming for the personal destruction of their opponents character? Its a sad commentary on all of us that negative campaigning works.

We simply must look into everything from the Magna Carta to Roberts Rules of Order for guidance on how to be civil, how to mind our words and our attitudes.

Honestly, how difficult is it to simply behave in public?

Gary Weber, Normal Heights

Parents have every right to show up to school board meetings and voice their concerns, per the First Amendment. Our school board meetings are arguably the first place we should 100 percent defend our First Amendment rights. Our federal government has recently gone so far as to build a pathway for some to call parents at school board meetings domestic terrorists simply because they are emotional about what is going on in the schools.

Do I agree that parents should be civil and at least try to be respectful in their tone and words they use when addressing school boards? Of course. The report we heard recently here in San Diego where there were wholly inappropriate comments being made by one gentleman needs to be investigated and possibly that person banned from meetings.

How many injuries have school board members endured at the hands of these domestic terrorist parents anywhere in this country? Zero. How many deaths at school board meetings? Zero. So, to insinuate that a school board member is in danger or cannot serve safely and effectively is quite a stretch. The videos that I have seen where parents attempts to express themselves to school boards are met with stone cold silence and no response reek of totalitarian privilege. Why do these school board members act like they hold all of the cards and have all of the power when dealing with peoples children?

I have an idea. How about if the school boards actually consider what these parents are saying at these school board meetings and work collaboratively with parents to structure the curriculum in the schools? What we have is an issue where the curriculum has gone so far overboard regarding race and gender issues that parents are frustrated. When their initial attempts to enact changes in school boards across the country was met with silence and zero effort to understand their point of view, that frustration turned to a situation where emotions started to boil over.

Is it crazy to suggest that our schools get back to the basics: Reading, writing and arithmetic? I dont need a school to teach my child about race and racism. I dont need a school to teach my child about genders, pronouns and sexuality. These are topics that should be discussed and dictated by parents and families and the cultures within those families, not a teacher who may have a view that is different from the norms and values of that family. We need to restructure school boards to where parents have access and a voice regarding the curriculum that is being taught, and parents at least feel like they have some input regarding what their children are learning. This will lower the temperature in these school board meetings.

E. Marshal Cox, Chula Vista

Donald Trump is the example that has contributed to this bad behavior. For more than four years, we witnessed the leader of our country act like a schoolyard bully name-calling, finger-pointing and making fun of anyone he disagreed with, or, more importantly, anyone who disagreed with him.

The man cannot even be respectful of the dead.

Everything that he says and does is about him. He so wants personal adulation he can only think of what he might not get.

This has not stopped with Trump. Politicians on both sides of the aisle want only what their own agendas are. Our society has become all about what I want. No discussion, no debate. If this continues, we are a doomed democratic society.

Faithful public discussion is imperative. Wake up, everyone.

Jennifer Roberts, South Park

Whats happened to the America we used to know? Civil disobedience is no longer civil. Its now acceptable to publicly act in unacceptable ways.

How did we arrive at this point where being rude, offensive, and bullying others is our new normal? One answer might be that anti-democracy rebelliousness is being fueled by disinformation, intolerance, and polarization across America. Is it fair to blame much of that degradation on the verbal graffiti created by politicians and newscasters?

At times, Americas political climate feels like a fairy tale with wicked witches casting evil spells. Sometimes, politicking is like an unhinged, never-ending nightmare, with politicians behaving like self-serving grifters on American Greed. Their lack of decorum and cavalier attitude toward their Constitutional Oath are major factors in the disintegration of standards such as The Golden Rule throughout society.

As for TV newscasters and radio talk-show hosts, theres a difference between informing citizens with news and using misinformation to stoke fears. Manufactured crises about cultural wars, election fraud conspiracies, and accusations of tyranny are keeping the turmoil roiling.

Unfortunately, the rancor being generated by multiple entities has spilled over into the real world. A frightening form of radicalism violence as a means to an end has recently entered the picture. County board meetings and local school board meetings (plus families of elected officials) are now subject to threats and disruption.

Public servants are the core of our democracy. This mafia-type intimidation this vigilante virus must be stopped before it proliferates. Posting rewards and announcing arrests without delay might alleviate that problem.

People have the right to be heard. They do not have a right to be unruly or threaten others.

The assumption that everyone knows how to behave is a false premise. All boards must adopt formal guidelines (eg., a Code of Conduct for Civil Disobedience) patterned after Emily Posts etiquette guide. Speakers at public meetings would be required to abide by that Code. Also, all boards must have a Sergeant of Arms to control disorderly conduct and remove disrupters from meetings. Anyone making threats must be prosecuted, fined, and jailed.

America is undoubtedly going through a cultural crisis. Unless we counterbalance the negative forces with positive solutions, the nastiest, rudest, most foul-mouthed factions will take over.

If one of the root causes of the problem has been the news media, then maybe its time for them to become part of the solution. Local stations could air broadcasts about the Code of Conduct. Also, the Code could be mailed to every postal address and/or be part of the curriculum in schools.

Citizens watching TV or listening to talk radio can make a difference by switching stations. Lowering the ratings, hurting broadcasters financially, will make newscasters feel the consequences of their behavior. Voting pretzel politicians out of office is another way to generate positive results.

Unless something changes, what happened on January 6 will only get worse. Our American family is broken. Its up to all of us to put it back together again.

Angela Tilaro, San Marcos

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Opinion: Your Say on handling aggressive and threatening behavior at public meetings - The San Diego Union-Tribune