Bleed Together
Short story + suggestions for further reading and discussion.
February, 2025.
The woman in black and two children approach.
“I know her,” says one of the two other women standing in the elementary school parking lot. A long ponytail falls down one woman’s back, across the orange vest she wears over her winter jacket. “Her kid and my kid did Girl Scouts together.”
“She’s walking very slowly,” says her partner.
Both gatekeepers are wearing purple ball caps.
“I don’t know why she’s walking at all. They’ve got four wheelers and two pick-ups.”
“Or they used to.”
“Or her husband’s just off in the mess and took all the vehicles.”
“My ears are cold.”
The woman in the black coat and her two children, bags in hand, slush through wet snow. It’s damp and cold. She walks to the woman she recognizes. “I’m trying to get to the Jefferson School. It’ll be safer for my kids there.”
“You don’t need to go that far,” says the woman with cold ears. “You’ll be safe here.”
“Does it look like I’m talking to you?”
“I got it,” says the woman with the ponytail. Her partner nods. “We’ve known each other since Scouts, right Molly? My kids are inside, too. No matter which side, it’s safe in there for kids, and whatever people who bring em.”
“Who else is in there?”
“You’ll see. A few people. You just can’t take weapons in. They’ll check your bags at the door. And if you got any food with you, it goes to the kitchen and the cook volunteers fix it for everybody at meal time.”
“I don’t have any weapon. Chris took them and we haven’t seen him or none of em for four days.”
“You’re welcome here.”
“I said I’m not talking to you.”
The woman with the ponytail looks again to her partner and back to the woman in black, “You also gotta leave that attitude outside, Molly. Inside, you focus on kids, talk to other people about kids. We’ve got storytelling in the library and all kinds of stuff. Might feel like school in there a bit. Schedules and whatnot. We’re not doing this forever, just to keep kids out of harm’s way till they make some kind of agreement.”
“If there’s no weapons how come they’re here?” Molly points to members of the National Guard on the playground. “And there?” She points to the soccer field.
“There’s some police and some National Guard at each school that’s designated. It’s their kids inside too. They just mark the perimeter in certain places.”
“I brought some food. In that bag she’s carrying.”
“She can just take it to the kitchen. They’ll tell you when you get to the door. Go on inside.”
“Is Amanda in there?” one of the kids asks.
“She’s in there, sweetie. Go on in.”
The woman in black tells her kids to go inside, nods to both women and follows.
“Why’s she so negative toward me?”
“Well…”
“What?”
“It was her uncle you ran against. In the school board election.”
“Him? He was a crackpot.”
“He was also her uncle.”
A car nears, slows, stops, motor running. The man rolls down his window and wants to know where to park.
“Just along the road there,” says the woman with cold ears. “The policy is that we don’t want vehicles and whatever might be inside on school grounds. And we don’t check your vehicle.”
The one with the ponytail reminds him to take off his hat and put on the purple one. “Me I just leave all my red gear at home,” she tells him.
He takes his MAGAA hat and puts it on the dashboard. Make America Great Again Again. She tells him, “Same goes for if you’re Joe-Two-Four or whatever side you’re on, red, blue, whatever.” She reminds him that red and blue bleed together and make purple.
“I know,” he says, “I was at the training. Just wanted to know where to park. I brought a few boxes of pasta. Can I just leave them here and then go park?”
“Just put them here where we’ve shoveled.”
He unloads eight large cardboard boxes, cases of pasta. The two women help him stack the boxes. He drives away to park.
“That’s a lot of pasta.”
“Prepper.”
“Probably. Who are his kids?”
“I don’t know. I think they’re way older and out of school. Good for him for helping out.”
“I remember him when the resolution passed to designate the school.”
“Yeah, he knew something would happen.”
“Lots of you said so. I wasn’t sure.”
“It’s not as bad as I thought.”
“It’s bad in places though.”
One county away, a sheriff is demanding the Governor step down because of his stance on the Electoral College outcome. The sheriff is deputizing men and boys and mobilizing a caravan to come to the capitol. They’ve been gathering at the town ball field and another group has been gathering to block their way. There was gunfire in the night and it will escalate soon. National Guard will be sent by the Governor.
“Once it’s over,” says the one with the ponytail, “it’ll be good we had our kids in there together. Just trying to be kids and friends.”
“And us too.”
“And us too.”
“Once it’s over I’m having you over for a glass of wine.”
“Just a glass?”
“A bottle.”
They smile but don’t laugh. They look away and think privately. A small town, their kids in the same classrooms for years, they’d never talked before this.
“We should get some people knitting purple knit hats.”
“That’s actually a good idea. Could keep some of the kids busy, too. I know a lady with a ton of yarn.”
They’re quiet again.
The one with cold ears thinks of her husband in his office. “I’m still trying to convince my husband to come take a turn out here.”
“Yeah?”
“He says he’s too busy with clients.”
“Where at?”
“He does landscape architecture. But with a lot of security walls and high tech surveillance included these days. Mostly wealthy homes.”
“Good for them.”
“You told me but what does your husband do?”
“He’s town road crew. Actually, he should be passing by here soon to plow. Some towns are still working fine.”
The end.
Author’s notes, suggestions for further reading, and questions for discussion:
As a parent and school administrator, I’ve always felt compelled to imagine the worst — like a fire, a drowning, a fight, a weapon discharged in rage or despair. And then, with the bad thing in mind, it’s my job to work with others to prevent the bad thing from coming to pass. The places our children go must be places where they can be safe and thrive.
This story is not about a civil war. It is about distrust, social unrest, politically motivated violence, and people coming together to protect children. The purpose of the story is to invite conversations about dangers we face and how we can strengthen our local communities to prevent violence from happening.
“The time to stop violence is before it begins.” This is among the key conclusions in a 2019 report by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace on preventing political violence the USA. Another takeaway is that interventions to stop violence “work best from the local level upward, not the top-down.” This is because political violence “happens in a locality and people will draw on assets in their locality to prevent it.”
On the topic of violence prevention and community resilience, here are some suggestions for further reading and questions for discussion.
Social Unrest: The story is set after the 2024 election. It envisions a contested process in the Electoral College, leaving the legitimacy of the next president in dispute. Across the political spectrum, people are angry and afraid. Some people are taking up arms as a way to address their concerns.
- For further reading on what happened in January of 2021, and how the Electoral College process can be manipulated by officials at state and federal levels, see the 1.17.22 Letters From An American post by Heather Cox Richards.
- For further reading on how paramilitary violence in the wake of the 2024 election might arise, see “A dream of power, an awakening to destruction” by Timothy Synder, a professor at Yale on the left of the political spectrum.
- For further reading on why such violence — or worse — may be unlikely, and perhaps even dangerous to envision, see “Let’s Not Invent a Civil War” by Ross Douthat, a columnist on the center/right of the political spectrum.
- Question for discussion: Do you have any concerns about people in your region talking about or preparing for violence as a way to address local or national political concerns? Why or why not?
Law Enforcement: In this story, some members of the police and National Guard are deployed to protect children at school sites. This indicates that police and military are still responding to the chain of command that leads to the Governor and appointees. They are not taking orders from leaders of un-elected militias or paramilitary groups. One sheriff in this story has, however, decided to mobilize resistance to the Governor. What the US Military would do in the case of a contested Presidential election is a topic I didn’t include.
- For further reading on sheriffs who have ”built their reputations by defying state and federal laws,” also known as Constitutional Sheriffs, see this resource page from Marshal Project.
- For further reading on the importance of the law enforcement and military remaining separate from political factions, see “The Politicization of Our Security Institutions” by Rachel Kleinfeld. She discusses how “the principle of equality before the law erodes” when security forces “politicize and are seen as connected to one party or another.”
- For further reading about the US Military in the event of a contested presidential election in 2024, see this interview with with Paul Eaton, a retired U.S. Army major general or “What Happens When Our Military Starts Doubting Our Elections?” by a journalist and US Marine veteran.
- Question for discussion: Do people you know trust the police or military to protect them? What happens when people don’t trust the police or the military to protect them? If trust has eroded, how can it be rebuilt?
Safe-Haven: During the Cold War, schools were among the buildings designated as shelters in case there was armed conflict between the USA and the Soviet Union. Across the country today, from VT to California, schools are designated as community shelters in the event of an emergency. In this story, certain schools have been designated as safety-zones for children. Two characters refer to a municipal resolution that was passed based on concerns about potential political unrest. The story shows people from different walks of life and various political allegiances coming together to create a safe place for children.
- For further reading on what communities can do to build resilience in the face of concerns about violence, see “Building US Resilience to Political Violence.”
- For people in Vermont (where I live), information about requesting or petitioning that items be placed on a Town Meeting agenda can be found here.
- Question for discussion: Could you imagine your town designating a school as a safe haven for children out of concern that violent unrest might occur in the wake of the 2024 election? Is this something worth discussing in your community? Or is discussing such topics counter productive because it amplifies and worsens feelings of distrust and anxiety?
Local Community: In the face of danger born of distrust and division, one thing each of us can all do is join with people in our communities to solve problems, working together across our differences. As Erik K. Ward recently wrote in The Kryptonite of Common Ground, “our futures are embedded in our ability to hold on to our own identity while creating bonds through our differences.” Consider local government, local businesses, local labor organizations, local newspapers, local social-service organizations, local schools: What challenges are their leaders working on today, and how can we lend a hand?
- Inspiring stories of collaboration and community resilience can be hard to find in a media landscape that emphasizes pain and conflict, but we can find them. There are many recent stories of people organizing for a dignified wage — from the workers who make our coffee to our cereal to our tractors. Support for such efforts is rising across the political spectrum. There are stories in many states about new friendships between people of different races and religions as Afghan allies are resettled in our communities. In my state, there are rural general stores, vital to local life, saved from ruin by coalitions of folks joining hands. There are stories of mutual-aid efforts during the pandemic, so many “new forms of generosity” that one writer called them “numerous beyond counting.”
And so, one more question for reflection and discussion: What can be done in our communities to help our public and private spaces be places where all people feel dignity, safety and belonging? A web of community in which people of different backgrounds value and trust each other is among the best violence-prevention measures there can be.
To continue this dialogue with me, please visit the contact page on my website.
