Silence useless in provoking change

Jessica Hagendorn
Advertising/Marketing Director
I am a voice. In a world where there are so many things that people can’t say, it is the duty of those of us who can speak out to do so. Yet, there are so many times when I stand by and say nothing at all. What difference can my words make, I think.

If people don’t say something how will problems ever be brought to light, discussed, solved? It doesn’t matter if it’s spoken to a friend, discussed at an Amnesty International meeting, or published in a newspaper as long as we just say something.

“If the stories aren’t being told, then the discussion stops and that’s where we get into ugly territory,” said Leslie Berestein, an immigration reporter from the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Who are the silent majority? The people who can vote but don’t. Those who are in emotionally unhealthy relationships but remain silent. Christians who let the bigoted among them speak for the compassionate rest. So why do they remain silent? Why do we? Most of us are classified as part of a silent majority. What is the person in the next chair not saying, I wonder. Perhaps something amazing would happen if only he’d speak.

If Gandhi had decided it was better not to say a word perhaps India would still be controlled by Britain. There might have been no Martin Luther King Jr., at least not as we know him, and no Civil Rights movement, had King decided to remain silent. If Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole, three California college students, had decided to say nothing about what they saw in Uganda, the film “Invisible Children: Rough Cut” might never have been made. The non-profit group probably wouldn’t exist, and thousands of children might still be fighting. The band Barlow Girls has a line in their song “Million Voices,” that says “We’re the million voices breaking silence/‘til they’ll remember we were here.”

One voice can become an hundred voices, then a million, and then, maybe, something will change. If that single person never breaks the silence, though, and stays a part of the silent majority, nothing will ever happen. I am a voice. We are all a voice.