Compared to public hearings where I live, which often devolve into shouting with people forcibly removed from the room, this seemed very mild. They even said "please" and "thank you".

It's "violent" in the sense of "I violently agree with you". I read a lot of public comment (I'm peripherally involved in local government) and language like "please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily zoning overlay projects" is unusually forceful; it's not even attempting to persuade, but rather making a direct demand.

At any rate, none of this is any kind of woke words-as-violence drama; it's a word being used in a colloquial sense that people here happen to have an unproductive hair trigger about.