By Susan Schrack Wood, Director of Communications, The League
In such a polarized time period, with so many forces working to pull people apart in order to garner “likes” and “wins” for competing agendas, it can be difficult to know where to even start in trying to find common ground that can unite us. While there is no single explanation for what causes political aggression and anger, polarization is a big culprit.
When political opponents are routinely portrayed as existential threats to “the country,” the moral constraints against harming them weaken. Violent metaphors get normalized and can prime people to act. We know that certain topics produce intense moral urgency and will often spark confrontations. The Associated Press has found that when controversial topics are front and center in the national media, it often ignites local politics and agendas. Organized extremist groups or individuals can take advantage of this and fan the flames of people who feel ignored or repressed. As tempers rise, violence and aggression increases.
The Pennsylvania Resilience Network is part of Common Ground USA and is devoted to violence prevention, particularly political violence. It operates on the concept that cooperative relationships are the key to civility. Their research has found that 99.9% of Americans, regardless of identity, do not choose acts of political violence and 87% are tired of political division. This suggests the majority of Pennsylvanians want to bring people together across dividing lines and transform conflict into collaboration. The Network pulls together diverse civil society leaders to prevent, defuse, and respond to political violence. The group defines political violence as threats, harassment, intimidation, and physical actions used to limit who participates in public life.
Will Fuller, State Director for The Pennsylvania Resilience Network, recently sat down with The League as part of a special webinar on Responding to Political Violence. He described three ways of looking at political violence: responding to incidences as they happen, diffusing potential incidences before they occur, and prepping the community beforehand to prevent tension from escalating into violence. While all three, response, diffusion, and prevention, are important for local government leaders to address, Fuller’s group is particularly focused on the prevention aspect.
“One of the things we stress more than anything when it comes to prevention work is to ask yourself the question, who are the people that either have the trust and the confidence of the community outside of government or who are the people who are on the opposite side of the political aisle from me who have the trust and confidence of the community?”
Fuller says once those trusted community leaders are identified, the effort should be made to build relationships immediately so that they are established and in place well before there is a need to respond to a violent act.
“We often talk about how it’s too late to exchange business cards over the earthquake. When we do that advanced work of building out those relationships, getting to know them, getting to know their families, what they care about, talking about the community that you love, even if you don’t agree on how to solve the problems in it, you’re coming from a place of care and concern for that community. And it’s important to have those relationships be live and active before anything bad happens at all.”
Fuller calls this a “Trusted Advisor Coalition” that is able to discuss volatile issues and works to understand and respect multiple viewpoints and contexts. He says it is an incredibly important part of the prevention effort, as well as a valuable tool for building cohesion and resilience in a community.
“Usually what we advise is to start with, you know, your small business owners, your faith leaders, your veterans, and your educators. Statistics show that right now, unfortunately, there’s not one any person or group of people that people in America trust. That trust is really diffuse and it’s low in institutions. But what we found is if you pull together a bunch of different places in the community and you get them talking with each other about how what we want to do to make sure our community is safe and a place of thriving and belonging for everybody, those relationships that are alive before the crisis can be drawn upon in it and actually come out stronger on the other side.”
For overworked local government officials short on time and resources, forming one more group or task force can seem overwhelming. Fuller says not to view this as a series of new things starting from scratch, but rather building on the assets you already have in the community.
“One example that I would give is to just think about the calendar of events in your community and the moments when people are coming together, uh the county fairs, the the public, you know, sports events, things like that that you know are already gathering places for the community across lines of difference. And ask yourself, how can I turn those into bridge building moments? How can I turn those into places where we lift up community values, where we remind each other of what we care about and who we are at our core, because those are the kinds of things that strengthen the bonds of a community before a crisis happens.”
This kind of prevention planning reduces the tendency for polarization. Polarization drives people apart and relies on the assumptions that people make about each other’s thoughts and beliefs. It’s one of the most powerful drivers of resentment, aggression, and violence. It relies on miscommunication and assumption of what people believe others think of them.
“What drives people further apart is not what ‘I think of you’ but rather ‘what I think you think of me.’ It’s called affective polarization. So that untested assumption about the other side is what drives me more to my side. When you get two people together on opposite ends of the political spectrum doing it or when you get a veteran, a community leader, priest, a rabbi, uh the superintendent, all of them standing in solidarity together, that sends a different message to everybody, including the folks that aren’t in our camp. So when you’re doing public events or when you’re responding to a crisis and you do that holistically, it picks at that division and it causes people to maybe move more toward one another and question that assumption. Uh maybe that’s not true. You know, maybe the other side does care about the community like I do.”
Article from the December 2025 Municipal Reporter | Responding to Political Violence Edition
