Rebuilding Community among the Local Public

This chapter focuses on the final two local protective mechanisms, in this case those that primarily operate through interaction with the local public, in church services and beyond: raising moral salience and building solidarity. Raising moral salience encompasses activities that attempt to convince the local public that Drug War violence is an urgent moral issue rather than business-as-usual policing, through religious observances such as the Mass, community processions, and even art installations. Efforts at building solidarity involve strengthening the cohesion of local communities, via local dispute resolution, social connection, and mutual aid. Resolving even petty disputes among neighbors makes it less likely that such tensions could feed into Drug War violence by involving local police. After using the parish-based survey to get an overall sense of the distribution of these activities, the authors empirically substantiate their operation through qualitative and quantitative evidence, including parish interviews, experimental evidence from a sample of plausible Philippine police personnel, and survey evidence of ordinary Filipinos.