Violence will not leave politics until justice enters it first. If we want fewer funerals, we have to build peace on justice, not on someone else’s suffering.

reaking the Cycle

If we are serious about preventing bloodshed, we have to stop treating each explosion of violence as a meteor strike and start dismantling the systems that make explosions inevitable.

To say “violence has no place in politics” while ignoring systemic harm is to defend the status quo, not peace. True nonviolence would mean dismantling the conditions that make desperate, explosive violence seem like the only option left.

This is where privilege hides: in the ability to see violence only when it disrupts comfort, not when it defines someone else’s daily life. For Black Americans living under the threat of police stops, for trans youth watching their healthcare disappear, for immigrants fearing the next raid — politics has always been violent.

The time to call for nonviolence is when the violence is systemic: when it is slow, quiet, and legal. Waiting until people riot or take up arms to demand “peace” is a luxury of those who were never being harmed in the first place.

“Violence has no place in politics.”

It’s a comforting phrase, but it’s almost always delivered too late, after the glass is already broken. It’s never said when the budget cuts are passed that close hospitals. It’s never said when laws are written to force pregnancies, gut voting rights, or criminalize protest. It’s never said when corporations... See more

But we can’t miss the bigger picture: when fear becomes the default setting of politics, everyone loses. When people expect threats as part of public life, they withdraw from school board meetings, from city councils, from running for office. That withdrawal is the point. Violence is not just killing people; it is shrinking the public square until... See more

ne side has built an entire political brand around permission for violence. When leaders call immigrants “invaders” and political opponents “vermin,” they aren’t just talking but issuing an open contract for someone, somewhere, to act.

Across all of these cases, the through-line is legitimacy. People no longer believe their governments will protect them, share power, or even keep them alive. When the ordinary avenues of change are blocked, some turn to extraordinary ones from torching parliament buildings to assassinating political figures.