How We Can Work on Ending Political Violence

What are the top three things that should be done to end political violence? There are professionals that have answers for this. We should listen to them. But what are you going to do? For example, I’m thinking how I might apply what I am suggesting below to the local voting Precinct in which I live. How can I get together with my neighbors who are on the other side of the politics than I am and get to doing what I am suggesting here? Not sure. But take a look at what I am suggesting below and see what you think about where you live.

 There is a way to get to the top three, the three that the oppositions agree upon.

Start by not going to your corner and there shouting observations, or worse, against your cultural and political opponents. Don’t deride personalities or question motivations behind positions and policies.

Instead, start by questioning, debating, advocating and listening.

Of course this is key: who is at the table in this work? It cannot be people of the same political party or persuasion. It needs to be political opponents. On what level? Local, State, Federal? All three. Just government? No, NGO’s and Non-Profits too. What this means is that as various localities and entities muster for this task, they will want to reach out to each other and share their plans, actions, results, and perhaps join forces for cooperative actions. But the key thing to remember is cooperative actions will not develop first. We too often wait around for cooperation of groups/entities of different scales before any actual work on the level on which we are working actually gets done. Start with where you are. Opponents working together on the one goal of ending political violence. Then look around to see if there are others too.

 In this, then, first get to this: are we agreed on the goal of eliminating political violence?

Are we agreed?

Again, are we agreed?

This is the too obvious and too important question that must be answered but easily overlooked. It’s huge. There must be agreement here. Related, and done simultaneously, must be coming to a common understanding of what we mean by “political violence.”

Debate, question, listen. Come to an agreement on the goal. This is key.

Now, this: questions that will lead to three things to do. There will be more than three answers that come from these questions. So, it will take some hard-nosed prioritizing to whittle everything down to three things on which to take action. Prioritizing doesn’t mean what is not chosen now can’t be tried later. It means we have to start somewhere but not everywhere. How to prioritize? Debate, question, listen. And compromise.

Here are the questions to use:

-What needs to stop?

-What needs to start?

-What changes are we going to make?

Debate, question, listen. And compromise.

As we work on the questions we’ll see that the “what changes are we going to make” answers will likely have overlap with the “what stops” and “what starts” questions. No matter, just use all the questions to help shape three things to do. Again, there are going to be a lot more than three things. And some folks are likely to think that the three things decided upon should all come from the “stop” area or all come from the “start” area. Again, what to do? Debate, question, listen. And compromise.

Once the three actions are decided, take action. Management, resources deployed, communication and support relationships set up, accountabilities mustered, all of this kicks into gear.

Agree to get together and look at results. Give enough time to get something done but not too much time where things can lag. Three months? Other? Then ask the same questions: What stops? What starts? What changes?

 Then take action again.

 Get to work. Please.