Local author, speaker and former Salmo village administrator Diane Kalen-Sukra brings her new book Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community and What to Do About It to the West Kootenay this week.
Kalen-Sukra will be kick off her book tour with a talk to the Kootenay meeting of the Local Government Management Association in Rossland today and another at the Rotary Club in Nelson tomorrow. She is then headed to bookstores Victoria before delivering a keynote address at a national conference in Kelowna for local government officials in early May.
CBC Radio’s Ira Basen calls the book “inspired and powerful…our democracy is in peril and this book delivers the right message, by the right person, at the right time.” Acclaimed governance expert George B. Cuff calls it “an absolute must-read for community builder. Wisdom for our increasingly uncivil society.”
“While it is popular to point fingers at the incivility and divisiveness we see in U.S. media, the sad truth is that Canadian communities are experiencing an increase in toxic behavior in the public square, whether it be at meetings, online, at school or at work,” says Kalen-Sukra.
“This toxicity is eroding our sense of belonging, community and well-being as well as undermining our capacity to collaborate and innovate together to address the critical challenges facing our communities today.”
Kalen-Sukra points to the growing infrastructure deficit, climate change, homelessness, mental health and addiction issues as examples of the challenges that call us to revive the art of living and working well together.
“For a democracy to be healthy and communities to be vibrant and resilient, we need to foster the type of culture that can sustain us,” says Kalen-Sukra.
The book empowers community leaders and citizens to be part of the solution by taking readers on a journey from Bullyville to Sustainaville, including an eye-opening visit to classical antiquity. The successful journey includes a renaissance of civic values and civic education as vital to fostering the type of culture that can sustain us, our democracy and our planet.
