A man was charged with the attempted assassination of US President Donald Trump after allegedly opening fire at the annual correspondents' dinner.
The workers who staff the halls of our press galleries, the men and women who labor in the kitchens of our great hotels, and the security guards who stand watch over our political institutions have a shared interest in a stable and predictable peace. They have an interest in a world where the work of the day is not interrupted by the sudden, violent rupture of gunfire. Yet, when the smoke clears from a scene of political violence, the voices of these very people - the ones who bear the immediate terror and the long-term economic uncertainty of such chaos - are rarely the ones heard in the halls of power. The decision being made regarding the aftermath of this event does not include their voice. It should.
We are presented with a report of an attempted assassination, a moment of profound instability in the heart of Washington. We see the names of the powerful: a former President, federal prosecutors, the architects of the state. We see the machinery of the law moving to charge a suspect. But as we look upon this drama, we must ask the question that defines all true political inquiry: whose side are we on, and what is the true cost of this upheaval?
It is easy, in the heat of such a crisis, to become lost in the contest of identities. We are told to look at the motive of the man with the gun; we are told to debate whether the target was truly the man himself; we are told to weigh the political implications for the next election. These are the debates of the high rooms. They are the debates of those who view politics as a game of chess played with pieces made of gold. But the worker in the press corps, the waiter who was perhaps clearing a table when the shots rang out, the local laborer whose livelihood depends on the steady, unthreatened flow of commerce and civic life - they do not care for the nuances of political motive. They care for the sanctity of the space in which they labor.
When violence enters the political arena, the first thing to be sacrificed is the common ground upon which the working class must stand to demand its rights. Violence is the ultimate tool of division. It creates a climate of fear that serves only to entrench the powerful and to isolate the individual. It allows the state to justify an increase in the carceral apparatus, to tighten the grip of surveillance, and to redirect the immense wealth of our nation away from social progress and toward the fortification of the elite.
Look closely at the movement of the state in this moment. The prosecutors move with efficiency. The security apparatus prepares for expansion. The focus is placed squarely on the individual actor - the “suspect” - as if the violence were a lightning bolt from a clear sky, disconnected from the social rot that produces such desperation and rage. By focusing on the singular, criminal act, the state avoids the much harder question of the systemic instability that makes such acts possible. They treat the symptom as the disease.
The true danger of this event is not merely the threat to a single political figure, but the erosion of the social contract that protects all of us. When the political class descends into a state of perpetual conflict, the cost is always borne by those at the bottom of the economic ladder. It is the worker who suffers when the economy falates due to political instability; it is the worker who suffers when the state uses “security” as a pretext to suppress the right to assemble and the right to dissent.
We must resist the urge to let this moment become a mere partisan skirmish. If we allow ourselves to be divided into camps of “supporter” and “opponent” of the figures involved, we are falling into the very trap that the masters of capital have set for us. They want us focused on the personalities of the powerful so that we do not focus on the shared plight of the powerless. They want us arguing over the identity of a shooter so that we do not argue over the identity of the exploiter.
The solidarity we require is not a solidarity of political parties, but a solidarity of shared interest. We must stand together in the demand that our political life be conducted in a way that respects the safety and the dignity of all people, not just the high and the mighty. We must demand that the investigation into this violence does not become a smokescreen for the further marginalization of the working class.
The path forward is not found in the hardening of political lines, but in the broadening of our collective concern. We must look past the headlines of the assassination attempt and see the underlying truth: that a society where political disputes are settled by the bullet is a society that has failed its people. We must reclaim the political arena for the purpose of building a world where the worker can labor in peace, where the press can report without fear, and where the state serves the needs of the many rather than the security of the few. That is the only way to ensure that the next time the shots ring out, they are not heard as a herald of chaos, but as a distant echo of a struggle we have already won through the power of our common purpose.