Threats, Stalking and Harassment is the New Normal for Many Public Officials

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More than 40% of state legislators have been victims of threats or attacks since 2020, according to a recent survey. Death threats, stalking and relentless harassment of public officials working across local, state and federal government has becoming increasingly common. Experts say intimidation is feeding on political divisiveness and the abuse is pushing people out of government all together. We’ll talk with politicians who have been targeted, and with experts, about why violence against public officials is so pervasive and what can be done about it. Guests: Eric Swalwell, U.S. Representative representing the 14th District of California, including parts of the East Bay; Rep. Swalwell serves on the House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace studying political violence Gowri Ramachandran, deputy director of elections and government, Brennan Center for Justice Scott Wiener, California state senator representing San Francisco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KGBD Podcasts comes from Landmark College, offering a fully online graduate-level
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1:11.7	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Scott Schaefer in for Alexis Madrigal.
1:17.2	Political violence is nothing new in the United States. We were founded by a revolution after all, but in the past few years, harassment, threatening emails, calls, and social media posts
1:22.5	have more and more people in public service looking over their shoulders. Not just politicians, but judges,
1:28.9	jurors, election officials, health officers, even librarians are the subject of anger and threats
1:34.5	of violence. This hour on forum as we head into a very polarized election year, we examine
1:39.8	a disturbing trend that increasingly is driving good people from public life. That's coming up next
1:45.2	after this news.
1:59.1	Good morning and welcome to Forum. I'm Scott Schaefer in today for Alexis Madrigal.
2:03.5	And this hour, we're looking at the rise of political violence. You know, in the past few years,
2:08.3	we've seen a pretty alarming uptick in threats, intimidation, even violence directed at Republican
2:14.3	and Democratic elected officials and others who work in the government,
	...

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