Keeping Our Community Whole is a five-part series that explores how to strengthen our local community amid toxic and overwhelming national politics, while building a more inclusive and resilient Columbia River Gorge. Each column shares practical experience, local stories, and proven conflict resolution tools. The series is written for everyone, regardless of political views, who cares about maintaining a healthy, safe, and welcoming community.
Commentary: Our country and our communities are experiencing division and polarization. We have already seen flashes of political violence. It has to stop.
Commentary: We are stuck in toxic polarization. It is an “us versus them” pattern where the party becomes identity, losses feel existential, and compromise looks like betrayal. And it is exhausting. In fact, 87% of Americans are exhausted by how politically divided we are.
Commentary: Real security is not about who can dodge the risk of being picked up by masked agents on the street. It is about building a place where no one has to live in fear.
Commentary: A shocking act of political violence this year reignited debates about free speech. I write as someone who grew up in Germany. There, the line between free expression and speech that harms is not abstract but part of common sense. Germans learned, painfully, that words can prepare the ground for brutality.
