Amid a spike of political violence, leaders of civility initiatives have a message for Americans: Do not despair. It’s time to get to work.
The nation is still feeling the aftershocks of Charlie Kirk’s assassination on Wednesday. Mr. Kirk, whose conservative organization Turning Point USA amassed a youth following, was shot on a Utah college campus. He was speaking to an audience of men, women, and children – including his wife and their son and daughter. Civility experts worry that such instances of political violence are no longer abnormal.
“We’re now seeing a pattern,” says Maury Giles, chief executive of Braver Angels, an organization working to bridge political divides.
Why We Wrote This
The U.S. has entered a new age of political violence, evidenced by the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Those who work in conflict resolution say Americans need to engage in the hard work of seeing those we disagree with as fully human and worthy of respect.
The United States has entered another period of political violence, last seen decades ago. Like that era – which saw the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the attempted assassinations of Alabama Gov. George Wallace and President Ronald Reagan – targets range across the political spectrum. The solutions might sound boring, even fuddy-duddy-ish: respect for others, civility, a willingness to work together and listening to those with whom we disagree. Hundreds of individuals and groups are actively engaged in this work from Carmel, Indiana, to Fredonia, Kansas, to Washougal, Washington. And experts say that practicing those quiet virtues might be vital to saving civil society, and perhaps democracy itself.
“It seems like incivility is winning. It is always louder and more threatening, so it’s always going to get more attention,” says Amanda Ripley, author of “High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.” “It’s much harder to know these other encounters are happening – let alone track their impact. … These encounters matter not just because they knit the social fabric and reduce violence, but because they are the only thing we know of that works to create a functioning society with people who are different from each other.”
The current era arguably can be traced back to a baseball practice in 2017. Then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and three other people were shot by an anti-Republican gunman as they were getting ready for the annual Congressional Baseball Game in Alexandria, Virginia.
During the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, some participants attacked police officers with bear spray, flag poles, and their own shields. They also threatened to execute Vice President Mike Pence. In 2022, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was beaten with a hammer by a man who invaded their California home.
Last year, the first of two assassination attempts against Donald Trump killed retired volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore, who was in the audience at a campaign rally. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence was firebombed this past April. The following month, a couple who worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., were fatally shot. A former Minnesota House speaker and her husband were shot and killed in their home in June, and another Democratic state lawmaker and his spouse were wounded by the same assailant in a separate attack.
“Act instead of react”
Grave concern about the angry partisan divisions of our current era have spurred widespread efforts to inculcate civility in statehouses, schoolhouses, houses of worship, and the houses of neighbors with clashing lawn signs. The work of these individuals and organizations is low-level, quiet, and unflashy. Every day, seeds are being planted to cultivate a peaceful democracy. But more sowers are needed, says Mr. Giles. Countering political violence requires overcoming apathy.
“When you feel hopeless, when you feel out of control, when you feel you have nothing to do, we are trying to help people recognize that you have the personal agency to act instead of react,” says Mr. Giles.
Braver Angels has more than 120 chapters, which they term “Alliances,” across the country. Each of these citizen groups is constituted of an equal number of red and blue representatives. The organization’s focus is hyperlocal, concentrating on how to better engage with relatives, neighbors, and colleagues who think differently from you. They diagnose the issues that they believe are poisoning politics – and thus personal relationships – and try to find solutions.
“We’re trying to put the focus on, you are ‘We the People,’” says Mr. Giles. “You will see the change when you ‘be’ the change.”
It starts with learning about the human experience of people on the other side, seeking to understand how that shaped their ideological view of the world. Often, participants realize that they share similar life experiences. Then they work to find common ground. That produces solutions. It’s a matter of simultaneously building personal relationships and depersonalizing politics.
“Relationships change people much faster than facts,” Ms. Ripley says in an email. “But that doesn’t mean this is easy. Most people are not good at talking to people they disagree with. That’s because most of us never get any practice or training in how to do this – and we are literally bombarded with examples of people doing it terribly,” from reality TV to social media to the halls of Congress.
Conversely, when politics takes on a misplaced meaning it can bolster even a belief that taking someone else’s life is morally justified, says Alexandra Hudson, author of “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves.”
Ms. Hudson says that civility does not mean servility. It is often mischaracterized as learning how to be nice or more polite.
“[Political] agreement is not the point,” she says. “But we can disagree and still be friends. We can disagree and still respect each other. That fundamental respect for the personhood and dignity of others … is civility.”
Project Civility
Last year, Ms. Hudson’s hometown of Carmel, Indiana, was roiled by a contentious mayoral race that became so nasty, it garnered national coverage. A local councilman, Jeff Worrell, decided to take action to restore trust. He convened a town hall meeting based on the principles in Ms. Hudson’s bestselling book. More than 300 people showed up. Later this month, Mr. Worrell and Ms. Hudson are hosting the inaugural Project Civility National Summit.
Sometimes, the work to repair civic relations doesn’t involve high-profile speakers. In Fredonia, Kansas, it looks like a hot dog eating contest. Fredonia, a one-stoplight town of about 2,100 people, was riven by feuding during the pandemic. A low point was when county health officer Jennifer Bacani McKenney held a town meeting in the high school gymnasium. The topic? Mask mandates. Things got so heated that local police officers escorted Dr. McKenney out of the building because they feared for her safety.
Now, she helps organize a sausage-centric food and music festival every August to help promote community. Families run relay races using sausages as batons, toss sausages into cornholes, and dress wiener dogs (dachshunds) in costumes.
One symbol of the healing in the community is a food fight in which people wear hazmat suits – leftover supplies from the pandemic – and squirt each other with bottles filled with ketchup and mustard.
How to get the U.S. back on track
While everyone is fond of saying “this is not who we are,” and certainly it is not who we wish to be, U.S. history is unfortunately full of eras in which people who disagree politically have resorted to attacking their opponents. That ranges from the 1856 beating of Charles Sumner in the U.S. Senate, the Civil War, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan and the lynchings of post-Reconstruction America.
More recently, the 1970s were characterized by thousands of bombings in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco by left-wing terrorist groups. Even during the relatively politically peaceful 1990s, a right-wing domestic terrorist detonated a truck bomb in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
“When we stop thinking of others as fully human, deserving of justice and dignity, it is easier to do harm to them. That’s how political violence happens. That’s how civil wars start. That’s how genocides begin,” says conflict mediator John Sarrouf, co-executive director of Essential Partners in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mr. Sarrouf has spent decades teaching groups how to dialogue across differences, which, he says, can lead to deeper mutual understanding. It’s no easy task, given that he mediates conflicts over subjects ranging from guns to the Mideast. But Mr. Sarrouf contends the only way through this moment is to come together.
“What happens in conflict is the flattening of identities and somebody becomes just one thing or another, and we can marginalize or dehumanize them,” says Mr. Sarrouf. “We get out of this moment by turning toward each other, as full human beings living in community, and trying to understand the needs and concerns of others.”
Last year, a Marist poll found that 1 in 5 Americans believe that violence might be needed to “get the U.S. back on track.” That’s still a minority. Far fewer still are the number of people actually willing to pull a trigger. Yet those fringe actors have an outsize impact by creating fear among citizens and officials.
An individual fired hundreds of bullets at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta in August, killing a police officer. The alleged gunman was protesting the COVID-19 vaccine. In June, a man armed with a flamethrower attacked participants in a Colorado march on behalf of hostages held by Hamas. It’s not just lone actors. Ten armed men wearing tactical gear were arrested for attacking an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alvarado, Texas, in July.
Threats and harassment in political life are also becoming normalized, and accelerated, via social media, with death threats and doxing common to everyone from Supreme Court justices to county election officials.
“On top of that are political leaders who are often using these dynamics and exacerbating them by the way they speak about the other side,” says Shannon Hiller, executive director of the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.
For example, before a suspect was apprehended in the Charlie Kirk shooting, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina told reporters, “Democrats owned what happened today.”
Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric at the University of North Georgia, found himself targeted by Mr. Kirk and Turning Point USA. The group put him on its professor watchlist in 2016 because he opposed concealed weapons on campuses.
Even so, he still saw Mr. Kirk as a champion of free speech. And he was horrified by the activist’s death this week. Dr. Boedy sees it not only as a personal tragedy, but as a warning for America. “The death of Charlie Kirk from a gunman on a college campus is a flashing red sign,” says Dr. Boedy, author of “The Seven Mountains Mandate.” “If democracy is built upon debate and compromise and civility, then none of those things were present in the shooting.”
“Will we choose light?”
What worries civility experts is a hardening of attitudes. A belief, among some, that if someone on your side is a victim of political violence, then retribution is justified. Some are also tempted to blame the victims, as with the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO last year in New York.
Houston teacher Nichelle Pinkney experienced that firsthand this week. On social media, a family member appeared to be justifying Mr. Kirk’s death because of inflammatory statements the activist had made during his life. Ms. Pinkney pushed back.
“You’re saying that this was OK, because some of the things he said [were] not kind about Black people. But it’s still wrong,” says Ms. Pinkney, co-author of “Civil Discourse: Classroom Conversations for Stronger Communities,” which helps teachers navigate difficult topics in class. “You thought the assassination of Martin Luther King was wrong, right? Yes. OK. So, it’s the same thing.”
Ms. Pinkney, a Christian, adds: “Love is the most important thing. That means everybody can’t pick and choose.”
This week, teachers from all over the U.S. have been asking her how to talk to their children about Mr. Kirk’s killing.
Mr. Giles, the director of Braver Angels, is clear-eyed about the challenges America is facing.
Yet he also expresses optimism in the face of political violence. In part, it’s because the nation’s system has proved resilient to previous challenges. It’s bolstered by the millions of citizens who desire a healthier polity and who, he says – paraphrasing Lincoln – will call upon the better angels of their nature.
“Will we choose light or will we choose darkness?” asks Mr. Giles. “I believe in the human spirit; The American spirit will choose light.”
Staff writer Caitlin Babcock contributed to this report from Washington.
