Don't Keep Quiet

My wife is a member of a local choir, Beacon Rising, which sings a song called "I Can't Keep Quiet." It’s about women refusing to shut up and accept their place. Don't keep quiet should be the mantra for resistance to repression, inequity, injustice, and genocide. When we call it out, we find others who understand and want to take action.

I walk several miles a day with my two-and-a-half-year-old golden doodle, Rosie. The main attraction is meeting people as we walk Beacon's Main Street. Rosie looks forward to a pet and a sniff and, if she's lucky, a treat from a local merchant or the always accommodating UPS driver on his rounds. I enjoy meeting and chatting with folks I know or meet for the first time.

These days, the ubiquitous, “How are you?” is more fraught than usual. “Not bad. You?” has been replaced with, “As well as can be expected in this moment,” and more honestly, “Stressed.” At least I know others are as horrified and anxious as I am. The unquiet exchange is ironically reassuring. The comradeship of suffering can be the precursor to action if we refuse to keep quiet.

Like many of us, I'm trying to make sense of this moment, how we got here, and more important, what to do.

On how we got here, I’ll skip what has been written so many times over, including by me, about growing inequity and insecurity amidst globalization and climate change, Republican racist fear-mongering, corporate media’s bothsideisms, the refusal of Democrats to coherently and forcefully address the needs of working people, and the failure of progressives–thus far–to build a broad and powerful enough multi-racial movement for racial, social, and economic justice.

I’m trying to focus on what to do.

I get the sentiment, but I do not want to attempt to self-protect by turning inward. Ultimately that’s a doomed illusory endeavor. Viscerally, I know that taking care of myself must include keen alertness to opportunities for resistance and change, as well as dangers. Deep in my marrow, as a Jew who grew imbued with the knowledge of death camp neighbors who shut their windows to avoid the stench of burning bodies and those who turned in their Jewish friends to the Gestapo, I know that turning away from the persecution of any group is a personal threat to me. And it continues now, with Israelis and Americans who turn away from the murder of innocent Gazans and the brutalities and land theft by West Bank Settlers. In my town, we worry about losing friends we’ve grown to care about to Trump’s mass deportation plans. We also witness the flight of rent-burdened tenants that is undermining the diverse stable community I value. The struggles of too many people I know, teach me that my health and that of my extended family is entirely dependent on an increasingly dysfunctional healthcare system. The acrid wafting smell of wildfires in drought-plagued New York and the flooding and loss of water and electricity in our cousin's home in Ashville make it abundantly clear that it is impossible to turn away from the ravages of climate change. The conservative onslaught to privatize, segregate, desecularize, and control the content of public education will affect all our children.

There’s no secure rock to hide under and no place to escape. Trump and his allies want us to preemptively self-censure. They want to cow us into powerlessness. We can’t keep quiet.

I’ve arrived at my answer about what to do. I hope others come to the same place. It starts with a decision to help organize to build trust in one another and widen the circle of connection with folks who want to live better. That staves off debilitating isolation and hopelessness. Some issues are ripe for challenging the destructive national perception that collective solutions to problems–especially through democratic government–are naïve and unrealistic. Organizing to gain small local and state victories that protect tenant rights and expand the pool of affordable housing or get local police to refuse to cooperate with ICE agents in rounding up undocumented immigrants are good examples of how to reclaim agency. Similarly, state campaigns to end investment in Israeli bonds that fund genocide and settlement expansion can shift public perception of the power of organizing.

We can’t keep quiet. When we call it out, others will understand and join us.

Arthur taught and led science professional learning and curriculum and assessment development projects for 50 yrs. He writes about education and social justice. He loves spending time with friends and family, hiking, and gardening.

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