The Home Front
Chapter Seven shows how the successful initiatives described throughout the book provide a blueprint for residents of ostensibly peaceful countries to address conflicts at home. It analyzes efforts that have effectively decreased gun violence, gang fighting, and inner-city conflicts in the United States, tackled extremism and hate crimes in Europe and North America, and reduced other kinds of racial, ethnic, religious, and political tensions throughout the Western and non-Western world. In doing so, this chapter demonstrates that putting insiders in the driver’s seat and acting from both the bottom-up and the top-down is the best way to resolve violent conflicts—whether they be private or public, local or global. It also explains how the other lessons from the book apply beyond war-torn places. Throughout, this concluding chapter discusses what readers who are moved by the analysis can personally do to improve the situations in their own communities.