Defusing political violence in the U.S.

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Joseph G. Bock, Kennesaw State University ; Marta Poblet, RMIT University , and Per Aarvik, Chr. Michelsen Institute After a violent American election season, activists are trying to keep the peace using technologies and techniques more often applied in unstable democracies.
As inflamed supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, members of the DC Peace Team – a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that promotes nonviolent conflict resolution – were at Black Lives Matter Plaza, a few blocks from the Capitol, monitoring the convergence of predominantly white pro-Trump supporters and mainly Black counterprotesters.
When a white Trump supporter pulled a knife on a Black counterprotester, team members in bright vests approached the man, hands in the air, encouraging him to “slow down,” according to the group. Soon, he put away the knife, and friends pulled him away from the scene.
Five people died in the Capitol attack. But in this one incident, at least, violence was stopped before it could start. A DC Peace Team activist at Black Lives Matter Plaza on Jan. 6. DC Peace Team, CC BY From Kenya to Minnesota
Interventions by volunteers trained in keeping the peace when tensions are high have long been used to reduce election-related violence in the developing world.
After Kenya’s bitterly contested 2007 presidential election, which left over 1,000 people dead, Kenyan activists created an online map to monitor and try to prevent political violence. Their efforts inspired the development of Ushahidi – Swahili for “witness” – a crowdsourced mapping tool that shows peacekeepers exactly where a conflict is developing.
Ushahidi has since been used worldwide to document countless political problems and humanitarian crises, from violent incidents in the Syrian Civil War to sexual harassment in Egypt. In 2013 and 2017 Kenyan activists once again used this technology to predict and defuse potential violence before, during and after their presidential election.
Now, political violence is threatening democracy in the United States. The Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection was the culmination of a violent year that saw clashes between police and racial justice protesters, a right-wing plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor and death threats against election officials.
For humanitarian workers and crisis responders who, like us, have worked abroad in conflict zones, the scenes looked terribly familiar. In late 2020 we joined with other conflict experts – including both local community groups and global nonprofit organizations – to found the Trust Network, a nonpartisan group dedicated to detecting and trying to prevent political violence. Leaders of Ushahidi in their offices in 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya. Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images Conflict mapping in action
Online teams at the Trust Network gather intelligence on the activities and stated intentions of extremist groups gleaned from both think tanks and research institutes that monitor the violent fringes of U.S. society. Based on that information, we identify potentially violent outbreaks – whether at protests or political rallies – then mark the site on a digital map.
The map is shared with member organizations, among them the local conflict mediators that work on the ground to de-escalate violence at marches, demonstrations and the like. Physically inserting themselves between opposing groups, they talk to each side and attempt to persuade people to step back from violence…