The Power of Silencing and How To Break It
Three Tennessee state legislators risk speaking out for the things that matter, and win
On April 6th the word “silencing” took on new meaning for America. On that day three Tennessee State House legislators peacefully broke through the Speaker’s iron-tight ban on speaking out against gun violence. When it shattered, Americans responded.
On April 5th, If you had said the word “silencing” to me, I might have thought of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring. Her book wasn’t banned so her voice wasn’t silenced. Americans heard it, and corporations had to listen, too. In 1972, what was banned was the use of DDT in our environment.
Just as Carson spoke up for protecting the environment, so the Tennessee legislators were trying to speak for the people of their districts, to protect them from gun violence.
To me, free speech is about values. Whose values, is the question.
Who is speaking, and for whom? About his expulsion from the Tennessee state House on April 6, Justin Pearson has written,
I wasn’t elected to be pushed to the back of the room and silenced. We who were elected to represent all Tennesseans ... are routinely silenced when we try to speak on their behalf. Last week, the world was allowed to see it in broad daylight.
Silencing survives in the dark. And for whom are the silencers working? Pearson continues,
Besides expanding already expansive gun rights, Republican-led statehouses across the country are proposing and passing staggering numbers of bills that serve a fringe, white evangelical agenda that abrogates the rights and freedoms of the rest of us.
In this struggle between the personal freedoms of a few powerful people and the democratic “rights and freedoms of the rest of us”, Pearson says, we can choose whether to look on in silence or to speak out.
Unchecked gun violence, environmental racism and denial of basic health and human services should enrage us all and compel us to action.
Action means to write a letter to the editor, join your local Democratic Party and the NAACP, tell young people that it’s ok to speak up for what they think is right, go to local school board, city council and county commission meetings, run for office. Question, object. Vote.
It works. In the few days since the Tennessee House session of April 6th was televised,
the Governor has signed an executive order for background checks on gun purchases;
he has proposed safer gun regulations to the state legislature;
Tennessee House policies are being questioned by U. S. Congressional leaders;
both of the state House Representatives who were expelled, have been reinstated.
This week people spoke out to defend the role of their voice in our democracy, and it worked.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said,
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
People’s lives. Equal rights. The earth. Things that matter.
Thank you for your very thoughtful, informative column! In these days of struggle and backward movement it can become so easy to feel defeated, but we gain strength to keep pushing forward by being reminded about our history, and our heroes--from the past and now the present!
The Republican super majority of the Tennessee legislature has egg on its face..as it should!
Until all assault weapons are completely banned for the public, the tyranny of gun violence will continue.