The Fight of Our Lives

The one we can’t afford to lose

Whoever came up with the saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” is a liar. Words are everything. Words are how we communicate with each other, how we learn, how we grow, how we form relationships, how we express what matters most to us. They’re also how we hurt people around us, how we belittle and demean others, how we lie to them and about them, how we make excuses for ourselves, how we spread hatred and foment violence. Words are at the root of everything we do, everything we think, everything we believe, and everything we are. The book of Proverbs cautions us that “a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” The book of James spends several paragraphs on the power of words: “the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts… The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire… With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.”

Without words, what would we have? Nothing. If you’ve ever heard the story of Helen Keller, a woman who lost her sight and hearing as a toddler after an illness, and who was left unable to speak for years, you’ll have some idea of what that’s like. When she was seven years old, her parents hired a governess, Anne Sullivan, who taught her to communicate using sign language and became her lifelong companion. Helen initially struggled to understand the finger-spelling that Anne was teaching her- she didn’t understand that objects and concepts had unique words to symbolize them, and didn’t connect the signs Anne made for things like “doll” or “mug” to the objects around her. When she finally made the connection, as Anne spelled w-a-t-e-r while holding her hand under running water, Helen later described it as “a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me…. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!” Without language, she was lost in darkness and intensely lonely, unable to express her thoughts and feelings or understand the world she lived in. With language, with words, she was set free.

Words can be dangerous. They can do great harm, and they’re powerful weapons against people and ideas. But they are also the source of our connections with each other. They help us to know and understand the people we love. They give voice to our ideas and thoughts and allow us to share them with the world. They are weapons against injustice, cruelty, and hatred. They shine light on dark things and wake us up to the need to do better. They set us free to think, to dream, to believe. Words are everything.

For those of us who resist the tyrannical impulses and fascism of That Guy, words are our greatest weapon. We reach out to other people with our words to convince them to join the fight. We question the ideology and lies of the regime and, hopefully, make the people who’ve ignored or supported it question those lies. We encourage each other and steer the direction of the movement with our words. Our emails, phone calls, questions at town halls, cheers and jeers, our protest signs- everything that has bolstered the opposition to the regime and started the slow turning of the tide against it has its root in our words. For some of us, words are all we have. We don’t have money, political connections, social status, fame, or strategic know-how. But we have our words, and that’s enough.

That’s why the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil last weekend was such a flashpoint and, I believe, a turning point in American history and the resistance to the Trump administration. I have read multiple articles from different viewpoints on Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and his role in the protests at Columbia University, including some of his public statements. I cannot find any evidence that he engaged in or incited violence. I cannot find any direct statement from him that supported destroying Israel or that I could interpret as antisemitic, which is also important to me as a person with Jewish friends and neighbors who I care very much about. In fact, he’s made some statements that seem to encourage Jewish people to be a part of the movement he was leading. He has not been convicted of any crime related to the protests, or even charged with one. There are no criminal charges surrounding his arrest and the government’s move to revoke his legal permanent residency in the United States. The government has not produced any evidence that he engaged in criminal activity or that he provided some kind of material support to Hamas or other terrorist groups. The only thing they’ve pointed to as the reason for his arrest is that he organized a protest.

This is the first time in my lifetime that I can remember someone in America being arrested simply for their words, for supporting an idea. This is the first time that I feel I can accurately say that this country has turned a corner, and we’re now living under a fascist regime, or some degree of fascism. Freedom of speech, freedom to express your thoughts and ideas even if other people object to them, is such a core tenet of American life and political culture that any attack on that freedom is an attack on the idea of America itself. The First Amendment of our Constitution, which protects freedom of speech, is the first one for a reason. Of all the rights we have in this country, this freedom is the most sacred. And the reason that it is the most sacred is because without this freedom, there is no America. There is no freedom. Without the freedom to express our thoughts, our beliefs, our selves, we have no real freedom. We cannot think, we cannot believe, we cannot speak freely. And an attack on one person’s freedom to think and speak freely is an attack on everyone’s freedom. It doesn’t matter that he’s not a US citizen- the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech for every person in America, not just for citizens. This has been made clear in law and legal precedent. If those laws and our Constitution do not apply to him, we cannot guarantee that they apply to anyone. The regime can find some excuse to say it no longer applies to any one of us. If they can treat one person this way, when he hasn’t even been charged with any crime related to his speech or actions, we are all in danger of suppression.

This is scary, of course. Our instinct might be to shut our mouths, curl up in a ball, and hide from the world. But we can’t. Our forefathers and foremothers fought too long and too hard to defend our freedoms, and to earn equality for those of us who’ve been excluded from enjoying our rights under the Constitution. Too many women suffered brutal treatment from police and prison guards when they were arrested for protesting to have the right to vote. Too many of our neighbors endured beatings from police and White mobs to fight for equal treatment and protection under the law regardless of your race. My great-grandfathers lived through too many horrors in the Pacific Theater in World War II for me to give up and say it’s too dangerous and too scary to fight for my right to speak here in my own country. I’ve been given too much and come from too long a line of people who’ve fought for this country (not just my great-grandfathers, but my grandfathers and my father too) to lie down and accept a fascist dictator taking away my voice. I have one voice, and I get to live one life. I’m going to use it, and I’m not going to give it away for free to an autocrat.

Mahmoud Khalil does not deserve to be in jail. All the information I can find tells me that he has done nothing to deserve what’s happened to him. He appears to be a political prisoner of the regime. He deserves to be free. We all deserve to be free. And until he is free and free to speak his mind, none of us are truly free.

I know many of you are probably scared and don’t know what to do, or if anything you do can really make a difference. I don’t know how much of a difference I can make- certainly not much on my own. That’s why I need people like you to be brave. We need people like you to join the fight. Those of us who can’t and won’t go down without a fight need people standing beside us, even in the small ways and the unseen places, engaging in little acts of kindness and resistance. We need you to find small ways to be brave, even if it’s just borrowing a banned book from your local library. We need you to use your voice, even if it’s just one conversation with that family member or friend or neighbor you’re a little scared of but who’s willing to listen. Start small and build up your courage over time. So that when the regime comes for people like Mahmoud Khalil, you’ll have built up the courage to say something. Then you can call your representatives, call your senators, take to the streets, and let us know- and let the regime know- they can’t keep all of us silent. One day they won’t be in charge anymore- this is still a country that holds elections, even if they want to make threats and hint that elections won’t happen or won’t matter. We need to remind them that this is, with all its flaws and in spite of all their posturing, still America. We are still a free people. And we the people demand our rights. We the people are the government- we are the ones that give our government the power through our consent to make laws in this country, and they answer to us.

This is the fight of our lives, the fight for the most basic of our freedoms. We cannot afford to lose this fight. And we won’t lose. Even if it takes more than the next four years, even if it takes decades or generations. We will win. And we’ll win because people like you choose to be brave and use their voice. So even if you’re scared, even if you don’t know what difference you can make, we need you anyway. Start with the small things, and start exercising your voice. Start standing up for what’s right. Start saying something. Words are our greatest weapon in this fight. And it’s a fight that we can, and will, win.