When you live in Manhattan, long subway trips are part of your day. I used to ride all over the city, and if you hop an A train in Brooklyn and you’re headed home to Harlem, that can take an hour and a half.
So New Yorkers phase out. A book, a game on an iPad, headphones. Anything to pass the time. One night, I was tuned in to Carrie Newcomer, and I’d relaxed my eyes to the typical non-focus that we use so nobody thinks we’re staring. Only…there was something happening.
I noticed, first, the guy on my left, who was reading the Quran in original Arabic. He was Black, wearing a taqiyah cap, totally focused on his studies. When he turned the page, he flipped it backwards. My backwards. Arabic’s forwards.
Across from me was an Hasidic Jew. His head was tilted up toward the ceiling, and his payos swung gently on each side of his face as he jiggled one knee up and down with the vibrating train.
To my right, another man, I think an Old Order Mennonite, with a beard but no mustache, dark suspenders, and plain black trousers and practical shoes.
At that moment, the track changed on my iPhone and Carrie Newcomer started singing “Room at the Table.” I wept a little.
“There is room at the table for everyone…”
It’s a nice image. It’s also not always true. We sort ourselves into categories for many purposes, and often, that’s the right thing to do. We need groups for social contact, for teamwork, for a feeling of safety. Groups to advocate for a political position. Groups to arrange the Saturday night sock hop. Our social groups are essential when we experience accidents, impoverishment, and illnesses. They’re vitally important when we celebrate, too.
But some things require a broader network, and one of those is election violence prevention. As a reminder, “election violence” means physical violence, severe psychological violence, and destruction of property of monetary or symbolic value, either triggered by or intended to influence an election cycle. It may be committed by a minority of people, at least at first, but the conditions that make it possible are society-wide.
If we experience election violence, it won’t come from nowhere. It’ll happen because of some specific event—a speech, a riot, an announcement—that serves as a catalyst. But as chemists will tell you, a catalyst doesn’t have an effect if there’s no reaction already prepared. That is, the catalyst can’t set things off when its surroundings are simply not reactive.
In the language of peacemaking, a resilient community or resilient society is one that can absorb shocks—also called catalysts, or triggers—without becoming violent. The most resilient groups are ones with a wide and diverse network of connections. The Methodists know the Buddhists; the baseball team knows the Girl Scouts; the townspeople know the police officers; the factory workers know the university professors; the Republicans know the Democrats. They might disagree with each other—might even dislike each other—but they know each other to be human beings, and they all agree that “we don’t want violence.”
This doesn’t work if we don’t expand the definition of “we.” If we start under the assumption that “we” don’t want violence, but some of “them” do, then we are setting up the conditions for election violence because we’re making space for rumors to flourish. We’re feeding distrust and suspicion and othering. Depending on our choice of language, we might even be dehumanizing. This environment is where election violence comes from.
An enormous majority of people in the United States, regardless of their political affiliation, would agree with the statement, “We don’t want violence.” But sometimes our actions and words create the environment for violence anyway.
Think about what Jesus said in Matthew 5:21-24. “You have heard that it was said to our people long ago, ‘You must not murder anyone. Anyone who murders another will be judged.’ But I tell you, if you are angry with your brother, you will be judged. And if you say bad things to your brother, you will be judged by the Jewish council. And if you call your brother a fool, then you will be in danger of the fire of hell. So when you offer your gift to God at the altar, and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar. Go and make peace with him. Then come and offer your gift.”
In a way, Jesus was talking about the conditions for violence. Most of us are not going to murder anyone over the 2024 election cycle, and we’re not going to scream violent threats at someone or destroy an election site. Jesus, though, calls us to reconciliation over anger. Reconciliation is not the same as agreement. It is defined as “the restoration of friendly relations.” More loosely, we might call it restoring the conditions in which we are a resilient community, resistant to catalysts, unlikely to become violent even following political shocks.
Jesus also differentiates between being angry with our brother (in which case we will be judged) and calling our brother a fool (in which case we will be in danger of the fire of hell). To me, this indicates a difference between two forms of disagreement.
We might say to someone, “Your political position on this issue baffles and infuriates me.”
Or we might say to someone, “You’re either deliberately evil or else you’re an idiot.”
Jesus seems to indicate that the second version is worse, and people who study peacebuilding and restoration processes would agree. When we degrade a person, we are ascribing motives to them that may or may not be accurate, and we are creating conditions in which they are likely to fight back. When we criticize a position, we are indicating the possibility of ongoing conversation with the person who holds it.
We can’t prevent election violence by further widening the fissures between “us” and “them.” Both in election violence prevention, and in peacebuilding efforts more generally, we know that people build stronger networks (thus becoming more resilient communities) when they work together on a common goal. In this case, the common goal is, “We don’t want violence.” By starting there—and by agreeing to expand the definition of “we” to include anybody who agrees with that statement—we are creating conditions from which we can build peace.
This does not mean that we cannot continue to work in opposition on other issues. Two people can have any number of political disagreements and advocate strongly for directly opposing positions but still work together on election violence prevention. That’s because the practices that prevent election violence are legitimately non-partisan—and I’ll be writing about what, specifically, those practices are in my next blog. We can work together on nonviolence and work in opposition on other issues as long as we all understand the difference.
Friends have a long history of acknowledging the innate value of all people and the ability of each participant to bring something of value to the group. We practice this every time we enter discernment together. We have a head start specifically because we have practiced it so often—and so often failed—because trial and error is how we learn. What we must do now is commit to acting as though the truth is true. We must act as if we truly believe that everyone has something to contribute.
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Turning, Turning 