United States

The United States finds itself at a time of instability and upheaval characterized by political and social divisions, record gun sales, and an increase in hate groups and violence against targeted marginalized communities.  

With this upheaval comes a need to reimagine safety and security. Nonviolent Peaceforce has partnered with local communities to offer the tools and methods of unarmed civilian protection to keep people safe, interrupt cycles of violence, and build bridges across polarized communities. 

NP’s work in the United States

Our work is grounded in the needs, strengths, and experiences of local communities. At the invitation of local communities, NP builds relationships with community members, leaders, and organizations to identify risks to safety and ways to work together to keep communities safe. We go beyond the statistics of violent incidents to ensure holistic safety, including how people feel in and experience their community. 

• Providing direct protection: Every day, people are harmed or killed in their neighborhoods, in schools, and at civic events or protests across the United States. Our protection teams show up in communities where we are invited to provide physical protective presence. We’ve ensured people’s safety at protests in Minneapolis and New York, de-escalating threats of violence at festive neighborhood celebrations, and provided protective presence and accompaniment for human rights defenders at the frontlines here in the United States. 
• Strengthening community protection capacities: We believe communities know best how to protect themselves and have the right to exercise protection in the way that suits them. We provide ongoing training, mentoring, and accompaniment to communities who have invited us to support their efforts to implement unarmed civilian protection methodologies. Such support includes trainings on de-escalation, situational awareness, digital safety, and how to build a holistic safety culture. In New York City, Asian American community organizations used the trainings to keep their elders safe from hate-based violence when walking to their local grocery store. In Minneapolis, we’ve trained school safety specialists to integrate nonviolence strategies into their work, and now we are working with schools to set up early warning early response systems to deter youth violence. In San Diego, we trained community organizations serving LGBTQIA+, AAPI, Black, and youth communities on how to assess threats, map capacities, and craft early warning early response protocols. 
• Healing from systemic violence and building long-term peace: At the root of all the work we do is the reality that systemic and cultural violence permeates so much of U.S. society. Collective healing is a necessary step on the path to peace. For example, through the Community Peacebuilders Program in North Minneapolis, NP hosts healing circles for youth impacted by violence. These healing circles allow youth to hold space to process their trauma and support each other in living a violence-free life. In rural Minnesota, we support community leaders in their work to build peace in the communities across divisive politics and beliefs. 

The future of NP's work in the United States

Violence has been baked into the DNA of the United States since its inception. From the enslavement of Africans to the genocide of Native Americans to the exploitation of Communities of Color, violence hangs over our shared history like a wraith. Despite this painful fact our communities have survived, through the sheer force of their resilience, resistance, and vision for a safer and more just world. And in doing so, they passed down cultural and ancestral practices and technologies that have guaranteed our collective survival and safety.  

NP, through our staff, community partners, and deep relationships, carries the work of building safety grounded in Unarmed Civilian Protection and the ancestral technologies our communities have created to protect and care for one another in the face of the violence of colonization, occupation, enslavement, and genocide. From the Community Peacebuilding work in North Minneapolis to the cultivation of community-led Safety Ecosystems in San Diego and New York City to co-creating a vision with national partners for a country where all communities are safe, NP will continue to meet this moment in U.S. history by co-building protection capacities, ensuring safety in civic spaces and interrupting cycles of violence.  

NP works towards a future where gun violence is no longer a lived daily reality, where hate crimes are only a shameful mark on our past—a world where those defending human rights and protecting the water, earth, and air are protected in their advocacy. We work towards a near tomorrow where safety no longer comes down the barrel of a gun rather it is cultivated and strengthened through profound connection, generative conflict and expansive community building.  

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→ Learn more about our work in the U.S.

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