It was a busy fall morning at Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C. Myrieme Churchill found a clearing in the arrivals hall and scanned the crowd.

One by one, her people showed up: a black father and daughter from Tennessee. A white couple from Georgia. A Somali immigrant. Two South Asians — one from Canada, one from Britain. Churchill greeted them in a blend of languages: Salaam! Bonjour! Welcome to D.C.!

The travelers embraced and began chatting about the weather, barbecue, kids. Anything but the unseen thread that brought them together in Washington: extremism. That would come later, in private, at the fourth annual summit of the nonprofit Parents For Peace. Nearly everyone in the group is a former extremist or the relative of one.

“They were each isolated by their own stories,” said Churchill, the group’s executive director. “They were suffering on their own.”

Parents For Peace began in 2015 mainly as a support group. Now, in response to resurgent extremist violence, the focus is shifting to policy and prevention work. Members came to Washington to put human faces to a problem typically addressed as a national security issue. They want to reframe extremism as a public health emergency that cuts across race, religion, geography.

Churchill, a longtime psychotherapist, said she is inspired by the activists who swayed public perceptions of HIV in the 1980s and ‘90s. They took what was then a socially untouchable, poorly understood condition and chipped away at the stigma by humanizing HIV patients, showing Americans that the disease can affect anyone. Churchill said she hopes Parents For Peace can do the same with extremism.

'We Were Blindsided’: Families Of Extremists Form Group To Fight Hate

Photo: Hannah Allam/NPR