America’s Political Violence Crisis

July 18, 2024 | Vera Bergengruen | TIME

One night in January, 15 people trudged into an arts center in Nazareth, Pa., for a political focus group. Democrats and Republicans, grandmothers and high school teachers, they gathered in a room still decorated with Christmas lights to discuss their concerns about the democratic process with a group called Keep Our Republic, a non-partisan civic organization that focuses on threats to the election system. Ari Mittleman, the organization’s executive director, has observed similar events across the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, so he expected the participants in Nazareth to express negative views about the 2024 elections, the candidates, and even the voting process itself. What Mittleman was not prepared for was a dark prediction that the panelists shared. …

“The one thing that unified Democrats and Republicans was the strong sense that this election will see political violence.”
-Ari Mittleman