I cannot stand idly by
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.” — Hannah Arendt
by·stand·er
A person who is present at an event or incident but does not take part.
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Since the 2016 election, I’ve often found myself wondering what it might have been like to be a doctor or a lawyer or some other member of the upper middle class in Vienna circa 1935. Istanbul circa 1913. San Francisco circa 1942.
To be relatively comfortable, relatively stable, aware in the abstract that injustices are happening to people who do not look like me, yet busy enough and separate enough and secure enough in my own status as not one of them, that I could easily turn away and pretend such atrocities did not exist.
How many of us are like that now? How often have we gazed upon the atrocities of our day and told ourselves, “I have my own problems. I don’t have the mental space to care about this thing, too.” Or, “It’s very sad, but I never hurt anyone. It isn’t my fault this is happening.” Or, “Of course I care, but I’m just one person. What can I do?”
And so it becomes perilously easy to justify doing nothing. I have done it a thousand times myself already. Week after week, as the scope and scale of our government’s horrifying disregard for basic human dignity continues to reveal itself, as fellow human beings who mostly do not look like me continue to suffer from oppressions I have never had to worry about, I have shaken my head guiltily and repeated these phrases to myself.
But I haven’t done nothing, I console myself. I’ve called my elected officials a few times. I’ve donated a little money, signed some petitions, posted angrily on social media. I think most of us in the privileged classes have done these things. But I haven’t really gone out of my way. I haven’t had to. So far, my material circumstances remain relatively unchanged by the decisions of our government. If anything, with this new tax law, they stand to improve.
Some of you may protest my use of the phrase, “our government,” and say, “But it’s not my government! I didn’t vote for this!”
That may be true, but this is still our country. We are still, all of us, responsible for what happens here. Voting a certain way does not absolve us of this responsibility.
(Also, it would be disingenuous to claim these sorts of injustices are new. The United States has a long, dark history of cruelty toward those it considers “other.” It did not begin with this administration, but maybe, just maybe, if enough of us speak out, it can end with it.)
I watch what is happening now, and I imagine myself 30, 40, 50 years in the future. I imagine people asking me about what it was like to be alive in this time. And a conversation plays out in my head.
“Did you know what your government was doing?”
Yes.
“Did you know they were systematically separating children from their parents at the US border?”
Yes.
“Did you know they held many of those children in actual cages?”
Yes.
“Did you know they tried to strip legal residency from hundreds of thousands of US residents who came here as children and spent most of their lives in this country?”
Yes.
“Did you know they enacted immigration policies that were deliberately cruel and inhumane?”
Yes.
“Did you know they openly defended those policies precisely because they were cruel and inhumane?”
Yes.
”What did you do?”
…
I imagine all the excuses I could give.
I was so busy.
I was trying to build a business. I didn’t have time.
I was overwhelmed by what was happening and didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t think my actions mattered.
I had my own life to live.
I didn’t vote for those things.
I never hurt anyone.
How empty they sound.
I think about what I want to be able to say instead.
I called my elected officials every day and demanded change.
I spoke out, vocally and often, when I saw injustice occur. I wasn’t a bystander to bigotry and hate.
I joined communities of other people who cared, and together, we worked for democratic freedom, economic fairness, constitutional rights and basic human dignity.
I actively sought out opportunities to give my time and money to the causes I believed in. I encouraged others to do the same.
I used my voice to advocate for those who had no voice.
I refused to go numb and do nothing.
I’d like to note, at this juncture, just how low the barrier to entry for doing something really is, especially for people like me. I’m not talking about putting oneself in danger. I’m not talking about quitting one’s job or restructuring one’s entire life. I’m not even talking about huge investments of time or money.
I’m talking about fundamentally reorienting our sense of individual responsibility for the collective unfoldings of our society. We can’t control everything that’s happening in the world, but we can control how we respond. We can use our gifts and privileges as best we can. We can refuse to go numb.
One day, many years from now, we will all be asked about this time. We will be asked what it was like, and we will be asked what we did.
The stakes for taking action (at least for people like me) are low. The stakes for doing nothing are high, higher perhaps than we realize. In this wonderful article for Slate, Dahlia Lithwick writes:
If things continue on this way for people without funds, or with brown skin, or for women and children and the sick, there will come a time when we all have fewer choices. This is not yet that time.
Repeat: This is not yet that time.
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P.S. If you want to help and are feeling unsure where to start, I recommend signing up for Jen Hofmann’s Weekly Action Checklist.
It goes out every Sunday and contains specific, well-researched actions you can take every single week in support of democratic freedom, voting access, constitutional rights, equality and basic human dignity.
