The Power of One Small Voice

No one can deny that we are living in a troubling time in the United States. There is so much to worry about, from the escalation of fascist ideas in our government to the increasing wealth gap in our economy to the terrifying potential of AI to render it nearly impossible for people to tell truth from fiction. For someone like me — someone with a fierce sense of right and wrong, someone with clinical depression and anxiety, someone with equal capacity for love and rage — trying to balance the conflicting but overwhelming desires to change the world and withdraw from it feels impossible.

I feel strongly that I can’t sit idly by and do nothing. When I contemplate that course of action, an endless loop of admonitions by my historical heroes echoes through my head.

I hear Emmeline Pankhurst in 1913 explaining to Americans that if a “legislature turned an absolutely deaf ear to their demands,” then people “would have to make a choice of two evils: they would either have to submit indefinitely to an unjust state of affairs, or they would have to rise up” and adopt revolutionary methods to force change.

I hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 speak to a group gathered at Riverside Church, reiterating the opening statement of the executive committee of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” Dr. King warns that even if I feel “pressed by the demands of inner truth,” I will likely find myself “on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty.” And he tells me, as he told his audience at the time, that I “must move on,” that “the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”

I hear Elie Wiesel in 1986 accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, recalling his confusion as he was rounded up with his neighbors, friends, and family for deportation to a concentration camp. Saying to his father, “This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” And then I hear him vowing “never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.” I hear him telling me that “[w]e must always take sides,” that “[n]eutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

I think of these fearless men and women, heroes who spoke out against injustice, who fought for a better world — not just for themselves but for all of us — and I feel as defeated as I feel inspired. Who am I? What voice do I have? Who would listen to me? How can anything I say make a difference?

But then I think of another of my heroes, one from my own home state, and she gives me guidance. Leslie Marmon Silko told an interviewer in the 70’s that, “The most effective political statement I could make is my art work…The most radical kind of politics is language as plain truth.” In her profoundly moving novel Ceremony, written in 1977, she explains the concept further by emphasizing: “The only way to get change is not through the courts or — heaven forbid — the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts — music, poetry, dance, painting, writing — can we really reach each other.”

So, I will follow in this amazing woman’s footsteps. I will speak with my art, my writing. I may never reach the status of a Pankhurst or a King or a Wiesel; I may never be as profound as Silko. But I do have a voice, and maybe my voice will inspire someone else, someone with a bigger voice, a bigger platform, someone who can change human consciousness in a way I may not be able to.

Here is what I know:

I know that the United States of America has always held within its government the seeds of fascism for all and the practice of fascism for some. If that statement is shocking to you, I would urge you to look at historical records. Look at how the Nazi government of Germany and the Apartheid government of South Africa studied U.S. policies on Native Americans and Black Americans when they designed their own practices of oppression.

I know that the United States of America has always had selective amnesia about our past and selective blindness about our present. If that statement is surprising to you, I would urge you to look at historical records. Look at how the U.S. responded to Irish immigrants seeking relief from famine, to European Jews seeking refuge from extermination, to Indigenous tribes seeking redress for state-committed atrocities.

I know that the United States of America has always had a noble declaration of purpose in direct contradiction to an ignoble dispensation of power. We want to be a nation with “freedom and justice for all,” but we consistently support politicians who pander to special interest groups and repeatedly reject measures that would hold those in power truly accountable for their actions.

We — and I mean ALL of us — must do better. And I believe we can.

We can speak out against injustice. We can speak out against violence born of prejudice, ambition, greed, insecurity, and fear. For that is what we are witnessing, what we are living right now.

We can contradict those who claim that this or that group of people are less than. For no human being is more or less worthy of life, of rights, of respect.

We can descry those who claim that this or that identity “deserves” violence. For no human being deserves to be made a victim because of another’s lack of self-control.

We can rebel against those who claim that they are the only — or the only “true” — authority. For if I have learned anything irrefutable in my life, it is that neither power nor truth are singular.

I believe humans have an immense capacity for love. The reasons we more frequently choose to enact our equally immense capacity for violence are myriad and complex, but choosing to embrace violence rather than love is exactly that: a choice. So, let’s choose the other side of our nature instead. This website may be small; its audience may be few. But small things can make difference. After all, a single grain of sand can make an oyster produce a pearl.

Let’s make our small voices that piece of sand that creates a pearl of a future that will be precious to us all.