On Saturday, a 20-year-old man fired multiple shots at a Trump campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania. One of the bullets nicked former President Donald Trump in the ear, causing blood to spatter his face. While there are many things we still don’t know about what happened, one thing is certain: This is a volatile time for our country, and the targeted violence at Trump’s rally (or other incidents to come) could trigger more widespread violence that, once unleashed, would be difficult to mitigate.
As the risks and reality of political violence continue to increase during the lead-up to the November election, it is easy for Americans to feel frightened and/or hopeless. Indeed, research shows that our polarized political environment has silenced many who have become cautious about engaging in political discourse. Yet, if our country is to escape the current toxic political cycle and build on our exemplary democratic values and reputation for welcoming diversity, it is essential for citizens/civil society to uphold those values and build a culture of peace. While democratic institutions are precious, we citizens can lead during this volatile time as peacebuilders.
Peacebuilders speak up against hatred and political violence, build bridges across our traditional divides, and engage in nonviolent action to create change. These actions, when done by a critical mass, will help us to break from our current toxic cycle, increase our collective resilience against attempts to divide us, and catapult us into a new cycle of social cohesion and relative peace. Here are five things all American peacebuilders can do.
- Be Patient as the Official Investigation Continues and Check Your Sources
To help prevent our country from further descending into the abyss, it’s important for everyone to be patient as the FBI continues its investigation. For comparison’s sake, after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, it took the Warren Commission 10 months of investigation before they determined there was no evidence of a conspiracy (and additional investigations have taken place over the decades). Hopefully, it won’t take that long to understand what happened on Saturday night. But we’re not going to know all the details immediately.
While we wait, we must be patient and take responsibility for the accuracy and quality of information we share with others. Disinformation spreads twice as fast as true information these days, with spikes during presidential election seasons, and can serve as an accelerant on the fire of divisiveness. Given the stakes, it’s worth taking a few minutes to check your sources before sharing information. When I come across a new or unusual clip or news source, I look for online reviews to better understand whose interests they serve and what biases they might have as I evaluate whether it is credible enough to share.
- Learn About Your Own Biases and Work to Overcome Them
Disinformation and sensational coverage of political events can trigger us personally and collectively. When that happens, the rational, cooperative part of our brains takes a backseat while the emergency response center takes over. When we speak passionately and act from our innate biases, as many have done in the wake of the shooting, there is a greater chance that we will hurt others—even unintentionally. Sadly, our partisan bias has been growing in recent years. A 2022 Pew studyfound that Republicans and Democrats alike see each other as more close-minded, dishonest, and less intelligent.
Being biased is a natural part of human physiology and experience. Yet we cannot let our biases—especially those biases that dehumanize whole groups of fellow citizens—drive our words and actions. Here are some online tests of hidden bias developed by leading universities. Given the role of bias in political polarization, peacebuilders are encouraged to identify our own biases and work to overcome them, so that we can be fairer and more balanced in the things we say and do.
- Choose to Heal Your Own Trauma and Be Joyful
Much (though, admittedly, not all) of the serious aggression and violence in our lives and society is due to being triggered by our own personal and intergenerational trauma. According to science, we are programmed to repeat our traumas until we heal them. That means we often replicate the aggression that we have experienced against ourselves and others until we make peace with the injustices of our lives.
When we learn to observe our own patterns of thought and behavior (including how they are influenced by our biases), we can learn how to slow down our conditioned responses and respond more intentionally in ways that do not perpetuate toxic cycles. The more we heal our deep-seated wounds and learn to slow down our instinctive responses, the easier it becomes to choose constructive engagement at the personal and political levels. The more we practice this, we can even learn how to choose our emotional responses in any given situation. By becoming less reactive and more joyful, we can help to mitigate violent conflict in our communities and engage in nonviolent forms of conflict resolution.
4. Promote Nonviolent Conflict Resolution and Help Talk Your Loved Ones Off the Ledge of Violence
Violence does not have to be part of our world. We can stand up against it and get better at using nonviolent ways to work through our differences and challenges. Recent research shows that nonviolent collective action is more successful in creating broad-based social and political change than violent campaigns. Promoting nonviolent approaches to conflict resolution more generally can help to stigmatize and prevent the escalation of violence in our communities. Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative is a non-partisan research initiative that works to mitigate political violence in the United States. If you’d like to get training and/or join a group that works on local conflict resolution, bystander de-escalation of violence, and community safety, you can contact one of the organizations in their state-by-state directory.
Sometimes working within our own families is the most important thing we can do. We have research showing that candid conversations with trusted friends and relatives can have an impact in pulling potentially violent individuals from the brink of active extremism. If you know of a young person who may be vulnerable to extreme ideologies, you can contact the Parents for Peace helpline at 1-844-49-PEACE. The trained professionals there may be able to help.
5. Help Build Bridges Across Our Divides and Do the Peacebuilders Challenge!
The U.S. is renowned for being one of the most diverse countries in the world. Despite the current polarization, our differences don’t have to divide us. Finding common ground and bridging our divides can enable us to leverage our collective strengths towards broad goals like strengthening our democracy, preventing violence, and building peaceful communities where everyone can enjoy life, liberty, and happiness. The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. Here is their evidence-based overview of why Americans are divided, why bridging divides is important, and how to do it.
Last but not least, to help us pull back from the brink, I invite you to do the Peacebuilders Challenge. Within the next week, take the initiative to reach out to someone who appears on the surface to be different from you. Maybe they have wildly different political or religious beliefs, speak a different language, or have different cultural traditions or holidays. Invite them to get together for a chat—in a public place if that feels safer. Then, while you are together, make it a point to listen carefully to learn new things about that person and find common ground that may be unexpected. Then, take a selfie of the two of you and post it on your social media account with a caption sharing something positive you learned about the person and what common ground you found, using the hashtags #peacebuilderschallenge, #peacebuildersunite, #unityindiversity, #bridgingdivides, and #diversityisstrength.
To help you get started and prepare, if necessary, The Rules of Civil Conversation is an initiative of The School of Thought, a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting critical thinking as a basis for communicating across divides. The site provides a list of rules conversation partners can commit to and utilize to increase the chances of reaching shared understanding (instead of exacerbating differences) through conversation. According to this initiative, we don’t always have to agree, but it’s important that we treat each other with respect and act in good faith.
This is an important moment for a critical mass of Americans to band together to build our collective resilience against further division and mitigate the risks of more serious political violence. This can be done by increasing our own commitment and stepping up to act as peacebuilders, working with others to de-escalate polarization and potential violence and build trust with those who may think differently on key issues. While elections can serve as a flashpoint for political violence, it is important to remember that there are always things we can do to build unity and social cohesion around us.
Ultimately, peacebuilders believe that violence derails us from the path of building more just, equitable, and peaceful communities. If we’re going to change the trajectory of our country, there will need to be a critical mass of peacebuilders. It’s something we’re all going to need to get better at. The sooner, the better.
Danielle M. Reiff is a professional peacebuilder who has lived and worked around the world promoting democracy, human rights, and peace. She is currently leading the Peacebuilders initiative in the lead-up to the 2024 elections to promote nonviolence, unity in diversity, and a peaceful transfer of power. She moderates the non-partisan Vote for Love Facebook group which provides safe online space for Americans to come together across our divides. You can learn more and sign up for the Peacebuilders email list at www.peacebuildersunite.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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