To CCI Followers,
Regarding my latest email to you on Saturday, we have received a number of great responses and hope to get more. Thank you so much. These ideas will be in a future “share-all,” using your cities or states for attribution. So please continue sending them!
I also received an email from a correspondent questioning my use of “vehemently” when mentioning my adult children’s responses to Biden and Trump. I vaguely recall Googling the word to check the different meanings and somehow took it to mean “fervently” or some variant thereof.
My children aren’t on the CCI list, so this is not an issue for them. However, the lesson for me is to be more careful about the words I use. As for my kids, they have felt fervently about one candidate or the other, but to my knowledge there have been no disagreements among them. They likely value their relationships more than being concerned about each others’ political positions.
As for our CCI pieces, we strive to use language honestly and precisely. There are far too many cases of intentional and obvious “un-truthfulness” in today’s reporting, even in The New York Times and other major mainstream media. It is obligatory for us at CCI to tell the truth as far as we can determine it.
We have a near unique history being at ground zero in Russia from 1983 forward to today. We listened as ordinary Soviets shared their hardships and politics in the former USSR, then developed business training to help them survive during Yeltsin’s devastating 1990’s, followed in the 2000’s by even larger training programs for the emerging Russia with Putin at the helm. Today we are Zooming amid COVID and the evolving/devolving U.S.-Russia relationship. We passed CCI’s 37th Anniversary on September 16th. When our original group of citizen investigators took off to meet the “enemy” in 1983, we planned only one trip … and could have never imagined what the future would hold!
Thank you for your feedback today and during these challenging months ahead.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives