Freeing Ourselves From the Cycle of Rising Violence

Urban Rural Action’s Uniters come together to renovate democracy and make their communities more peaceful at the same time.

What is democracy good for? Why should we go out of our way to participate in it, build it, save it, or do whatever else the people in our inboxes keep urging us to do?

For these organizers, the answer is that democracy is the system of government most likely to give us peace — and to free us from the violence that can flare as hatred and division fester.

Uniting to Prevent Targeted Violence in Southeast Wisconsin has been bringing people together for more than a year, from all walks of life. Old and young. With and without college degrees. Folks living paycheck-to-paycheck alongside those with investment accounts. There are people with experience in the military or in the carceral system, and people of different faiths, ethnic backgrounds, and countries of origin. And there are participants with a wide spectrum of political beliefs and partisan affiliations.

All of them have some powerful things in common, however: They answered a call to join with others from their community to share how they had been affected by violence. And all agreed to listen with an open mind, with the goal of developing a plan to address the problem together. Britt Brill, one member of the group, put it this way:

“At its heart, this work is about making our communities safer and stronger — not waiting for tragedy to strike, but being proactive in love. It’s about being “peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) who build authentic relationships across divides…and say, ‘Division will not have the last word here.’”

Uniting to Prevent Targeted Violence was brought together by Urban Rural Action, a national, cross-partisan, nonprofit organization that has established four regional hubs — in Southern Oregon, South Central Pennsylvania, Southeast Wisconsin, and Central Arizona — since 2019. Each hub includes both urban centers and rural communities, and some “blue” and “red” populations of voters. People in each region feel friction because of those political and social differences.

Urban Rural Action works closely with service providers, organizations, and trusted leaders in each community, offering annual civic participation programs, workshops, and trainings. But the big event for each hub is an annual Uniting for Action civic program. Out of many interested community members, Urban Rural Action chooses a mix of participants to ensure that multiple viewpoints are represented. It then sets the topic of discussion — criminal justice, housing and homelessness, and targeted violence are examples – but that’s it. From there it’s up to the participants (the “Uniters”) to identify the causes and scope of the problem, and figure out a way to address them.

“We believe in civic agency,” said Joe Bubman, Urban Rural Action’s executive director. “If a room full of so many different people from different walks of life and different political leanings decides together to commit their time and energy to doing something, then it’s something we want to support.”

Twenty-eight community members in southeast Wisconsin have been selected to work across divides as part of Uniting to Prevent Targeted Violence in Southeast Wisconsin (UPTV) - May 30, 2024.

At each workshop, the first order of business is not business at all, but a game, such as community bingo: Participants submit little-known facts about themselves, and then you talk to everyone to figure out who matches each fact. You may be thinking that this sounds like silly “Kumbaya” stuff, but researchers have shown that fun and social contact are key to building bridges across social and political differences. In the Oregon hub, one participant who was new to the community reflected that he had never really felt like he belonged there until he had participated in the program.

The games help make it possible for a group of people to work together. They’re how you get past stereotypes of “MAGAs and Libs” or “those kids today vs. Boomers” and begin to relate as individuals.

Once you’ve built one bridge, you’ll feel a lot more confident in building more. Many Uniters also experience a real shift in attitude and communication that lasts long after the workshop has ended. A participant in Pennsylvania reflected: “I didn’t know how narrow minded I was still thinking, so to speak. I have been able to listen to understand and authentically hear individuals. I just don’t react now based on my own thoughts and experiences.”

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Each county team completes a project designed to address the program’s broad issue, led by a team of coordinators who organize regular meetings in person or on Zoom and keep the projects moving. The project improves the lives of people in the community, while also building the civic muscle of collaborative problem-solving. The team in Butte Falls, Ore., set up a community garden to grow fresh produce for the food pantry down the road. A team in Adams County, Pa., created informational resources to help people in the county jail avoid fees from getting their cars towed while they were incarcerated.

Each project is only the beginning, which is one reason I find this program so exciting. PBS clearly does too — Judy Woodruff did a piece about the Southeast Wisconsin group last month.

When I spoke to Bubman, I couldn’t resist asking about his own background, too. Did his political science degree help prepare him for this work? He said that his political science classes hadn’t necessarily taught him how to facilitate dialogues, organize events, or do other day-to-day practical aspects of his work. But they did help him develop a big-picture understanding of what he’s doing and why.

“When I say that we’re working toward a ‘peaceful and democratic’ world, I’m not actually talking about two separate things. I’m talking about a relationship between governance and nonviolence,” Bubman said. “Around the world, where there’s pervasive violence, it tends to be internal to countries, arising from disputes over political power, often overlaid by ethnic or religious divides, or repression by security forces that deprives people of a voice or violates their rights. Those are governance issues. If we in the United States lose our democratic system of governance, the threat of violence increases.

“A more peaceful society also contributes to a stronger democracy, but the reverse is also true: A stronger democracy contributes to a more peaceful society.”

A virtuous cycle, in other words. Talking to Bubman helped me see the connection between rising authoritarianism and rising violence, and to see the work of democracy renovation in a new light: If authoritarianism and violence rise together, so do democracy renovation and peace.