Rebecca Cason has seen things and heard in recent years in the capital of Michigan and around her that she never expected them.
“It is a very strange time in our lives,” said Cassen, CEO of the company. Women’s Center in Lansening.
Last November, a group of people were arrested on a video of monitoring early in the morning, making fun of the “Black Lives Matter” brand in the center’s front window, with one of them relieving his free store. At the same fall, the women’s center employees reported harassment.
A few buildings below East Michigan Street, strange coffee, which supports progressive reasons in society, faced “” “The first amendment“Outside the store interface. Some weapons or cameras, sometimes slogans supporting President Donald Trump, are customers and employees who generally worry, Cassen said.
In many cases, Extremist activities Behavior In all parts of the United States over the past few years, the motive behind the deepening was Political partisanship The rebellion moved by information against responses on the Covid-19s. Recently, a violent reaction has increased against immigration and diversity initiatives, stocks, and integration of tensions.
Last year, and Southern Poverty Law Center documented 1,371 Hate and extremist groups A seed at the level of the country through a wide range of tactics, sometimes violent. Over the past few years, the group wrote that the political right has increased in a “authoritarian, parental Christian superiority Deotified to erode the value of democracy and comprehensive public institutions. “
Researchers at the American University Research and Innovation Laboratory, polarization and extremismOr the danger, say that in the online spaces, “hate clips”. (For example, Pasha Dashtgard, PERIL Research Director, explains that the platforms designated for male sovereignty are often anti -Semitic.
The ongoing escalation of PERIL employees and the Southern Poverty Law Center prompted approaching the problem from a different angle: dealing with extremism as a general health problem. Community consulting centers, resources and education It now works in Lansing, Michigan, ATHENS, Georgia, where it provides training, support, referrals, resources for societies affected by hatred, discrimination, parked ideologies and people exposed to extremism, focusing on young people.
The team defines extremism as believing that the individual group contradicts another identity of a different identity-ideology, race, sexual identity, or expression-which raises the logical reverse mentality of the United States in conviction that the decision can only come through separation, domination or genocide.
Researchers who study extremism say that with the federal government ending grants to prevent violence, state governments and local communities realize that they are alone. (Do not receive any federal financing.)
Aaron Flaangan, deputy director of prevention and partnerships at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that his organization and risks met about five years ago to study a joint research question: What is it required to create a developmental model at the national level to prevent youth extremism, which is rooted in societies and provides solutions for population confidence?
They have looked at a hostile model to combat German contracts for decades called the mobile consulting centers. The aim of this is to provide “all levels of civil society with skills and knowledge to recognize extremism” and engage in talks about their treatment, DashtGard said.
“We are not about to respond to a group of national people who are walking in your city?” Instead, how do you respond when your son or a member of your group crosses some of these extremist ideas? “
Michigan has always been seen Fertile land for extremism. Timothy McVy and Terry Nichols, convicted of the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was associated with a militia group in the state. Some men who were accused in 2020 in the plot The kidnapping of the democratic ruler, Grechen He had relationships with a militia group calling itself guards and Virin.
The state capital and east of East Lanseng, where Michigan State University is relatively progressive but witnessed a conflict.
Will Vercherauu has live memories from the first days of the epidemic: a pick -up truck rushes in the street in Lansing neighborhood, a confederation flag that fly from it, the bombing of music, and later based on a rolling protest that tramples the streets around the Capitol to protest on locking directions.
Including, society responded to these expressions of extremism. After the confrontations at Strange Matter Coffee, Verchereau, a member of the Board of Directors Safety CenterPeople who support and support the LGBTQ community said, that people gathered together to talk about “how they are safe in those moments, how to cancel the escalation when and place the place.”
The care initiative enhances such efforts. Centers offer tool groups that meet the needs of specific fans. Among them a Parents guide and care providers For online extremism, a Society guide for youth extremismAnd “Not just a joke: understanding and preventing intolerance based on sex and sex“
Flaangan said that the team views this public health model as separate from the complementary interventions of law enforcement. The goal is that the application of the law be as possible as possible – to reveal and address signs of warning warning before the police participate.
Resources help in identifying conditions that can make people more likely to manipulate by extremists, such as inappropriate behavioral health problems and weaknesses, including shocking or the loss of a member of his family.
Irene Buentep, a Lansing resident, witnessed that some of them wandered around the Capitol building in the Capitol building in the gate due to the orders of closure and concealment. It is accustomed to the public health approach. She said, “Providing people with proxy and strategy to move forward.” It is a way to guide energy “and you feel that you can already create a change with society.”
Lansing and Athens were chosen for several reasons, including their proximity to universities that can act as partners – and rural societies.
In the small town of Huil, 40 miles southeast of Lanseng, The demonstrators waived the Nazi flags Outside the production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in the American Legion Post.
In the nearby Dewit, the local educational zone suggested a small lesson in the pronouns for the first grade that included reading the photographer’s book, “They are mine for me: free!” The threats were followed against school staff and the officials canceled the lesson. Since then, the care team has helped provide support to teachers there in talking on controversial topics in the classroom and in dealing with skeptical parents.
“It is really important not to leave rural societies behind them,” said Flalandan. “They are constantly in America, and then they are often prevailed simultaneously for some of the most extreme or extreme political problems and challenges.”
The sponsorship team hopes to expand its program worldwide. Similar public health initiatives have been launched elsewhere, including Boston Children’s Hospital Shock and community center flexibility and Deep programThe Crime Committee is run by New York City citizens.
In June, a new tool, Access to the resource centerHe went directly, providing guidance to help prevent violent extremism.
Beit Simi, a professor of sociology at the University of Chapmann and a pioneering expert in extremism, sees an arduous task in the future, as extremism has become greater over the past 25 years. He said: “It is only a devastating matter.” “It is really amazing.”
Simi said that although there is a previous talk about the transformations in the Overton window, the group of ideas that are political acceptable to the prevailing society, “I would now say that it has been completely destroyed.” Violent extremists now feel “uncomplicated, with the support of a new administration with their back.”
“We are more dangerous now than anything else in my life,” Simi said.
Reverend Pipin Whitaker Fellowship Universalist in Athens, Georgia, which last year received a set of ammunition in the mail with no note. It adopts the framing of extremism, and the lack of awareness of it, as a issue of public health.
“If you have a germ there, people will not realize that if you wash your hands, you can protect yourself, and it is an actual problem, you will not enacted a basic preventive behavior,” Whitaker said.