Americans must reject the politics of division. Here’s why I’m running for Congress

It is time for the violence on our streets to end and the healing in our country to begin.

When Democratic politicians refuse to condemn looting and violence they are undermining the cause of justice. When Republican politicians encourage gun-wielding teens to do the job of the police, they are inviting violence.

Partisan dysfunction had already brought gridlock to government and turned our public discourse into a cesspool of false choices and endless hypocrisy. Now it is leading to a dangerous cycle of violence in American cities.

Let’s be clear. Acts or incitements of violence, looting, and destruction of property are not protest. They are crimes. No matter who perpetrates them.

Most police officers do their hard and dangerous jobs well. They do it with imperfect information, often requiring split-second decisions. Americans of goodwill must work together with law enforcement to help increase support, training and understanding because that makes us all safer. We should be just as supportive of this work as we are to rooting out misconduct or addressing racial disparities that plague too many communities.

The problem with our politics — and the extreme partisanship that too often defines it — is the relentless effort to score points by presenting almost every issue as a zero-sum game. Pick a side. If you aren’t with us all the time — you must be against us.

That’s nonsense.

The American people deserve leaders who appeal to the better angels of our nature — and refuse to dehumanize those with whom they occasionally disagree. Demagoguery has power, not progress, as its objective.

I decided to run for Congress because I believe we deserve better than we are getting. What makes America exceptional are the core values that unite us — Republicans, Democrats and Independents. There are problems we can all see with our own eyes through our own lived experiences. The right question for a democracy is not who to blame, but how to bring people together to fix them.

Instead, on nightly cable news broadcasts, on social media, and at election time, our echo chambers tell us that every choice is a binary one where for one part of America to win, another must lose. If you aren’t seated at the table, you must be on the menu.

What if everyone got a seat at the table? What if being a “representative of the people” meant representing all of the people — even the ones that didn’t vote for you?

This is what our framers intended. But too many political leaders are failing to deliver. Even as they decry mob rule by one tribe, they support it from another. This fundamental hypocrisy reflects a calculus that sublimates doing the job to keeping the job.

It’s just not how the real world works.

If you run a business and pit your customers against each other — you aren’t going to be in business very long. If your excuse for non-performance is blaming the “other,” burning down the office or questioning the motivations of anyone who dares question you, you aren’t going to be around long either.

Our communities and our country are not a collection of political partisans — but rather a collection of human beings — each imperfect yet striving to build a better future. At our best, we’ve worked together to right some terrible wrongs and build a more perfect union — often alongside acts of peaceful protest that inspire constructive dialogue on issues like racial injustice.

Sometimes, even our best-intentioned efforts have brought unintended consequences that need to be fixed. But we can work through good-faith policy disagreements to get that important work done.

We need to heal our nation so we can recover and rebuild. But first, we need to reject the false choices that feed partisan dysfunction, and to condemn the violence and distrust it breeds.