Raise Your Voice

I have traditionally been apolitical.

I knew very little about politics; I know very little about politics. I find the whole world of politics terrifying, boring, and depressing. And so I avoided it growing up. And even as I got older, and I learned the basics of how our government works, how our citizens don’t vote, and why we should, I shrank away from every conversation, every article, every mention of politics. I felt utterly out of my element, unsure what to say. My parents were Republicans, and I attended a conservative Christian school through the eighth grade. And then I went to a private high school in Texas, a school which was originally a white flight school. And I began to notice that I didn’t always agree with my mom, and I didn’t always agree with my classmates. And then I went to Yale, a small liberal-arts college, and I remember my grandmother telling me to make sure I didn’t let all those liberals get to me. But I began to notice my inclinations to agree with my liberal friends. But I wasn’t a democrat. I almost didn’t vote in the 2012 Presidential election. I didn’t know what I believed. I felt like I needed to understand the whole system, study all its facets, before I declared what I believed. What I was. But I didn’t want to do all that, because I had this underlying intuition that none of it worked anyway. That government in its massive predilection for gridlock was ineffectual and meaningless.

But I’m beginning to think that even if I don’t know what I believe, I can recognize when I feel that something is wrong.

And I'm beginning to understand that I have the privilege to not need to know what I believe. But there are millions of people who will die because of the politics I have chosen to ignore. That the racist, sexist, economically and environmentally corrupt power structures that govern our lives depend on bystanders' silence. 

And I watched a TED talk on climate change the other day that more eloquently expresses the idea that I don’t need to know the entire body of scientific literature on tigers to know that I don’t want one mauling my throat. And I’m trying to find the courage to speak about what I feel through the mist of what I think I know, and what I don’t know for certain. Because I’m outraged about Ferguson, and I’m outraged about Eric Garner, and I’m outraged about Tamir Rice. I’m outraged about the cultural censorship, ignorance, and whitewashing of history that led me to believe that I was born in an era in America where racism didn’t exist. I’m outraged about CAFOs, and I’m outraged about Monsanto, and I’m outraged about monolithic multinational conglomerates who aren’t held ethically or morally responsible because they’re the biggest kid on the playground. I’m outraged about student debt and the industrial prison complex; I’m outraged about the violent misunderstandings of feminism and the cultural oppression of LGBTQIA+ communities. And I’m trying to educate myself about all of these things, but I’m also trying to figure out my responsibilities as a privileged, white, straight male, as a healthy, energetic young debt-free-but-poor person, as a human being.

I work in the theater. I call myself an artist. I spend my time teaching young people about performance and storytelling. And I tell myself that my work is important, and I believe that art is necessary. I teach young people that we tell stories as a way of understanding each other as humans. I say to them, “I have a story. I have something to say. Will you listen?” I say to them, “What do you have to say? What do you want to tell me? I will listen.” I teach them that the theater is about creating something that no one of us could make on our own – something that no one of us could dream of alone, something that doesn’t exist without each and every one of us. That the individual is important to the whole, and the whole is connected to every individual. I teach them that we must listen, and we must be vulnerable; we must allow ourselves to be changed by those around us. I tell myself that art is important because empathy is how we see each other as humans, and that empathy is what we need to heal.

And I worry that I’m not maximizing my utility. That, because the children I teach are predominantly the children of affluent white families, I’m perpetuating a system of privilege and exclusion. And I try to break the exclusivity of the programs I oversee. But I could try harder. And I have to believe that if I try to help young people be better people, if I try to make myself a better person, that together we, and they, and you can effect change that’s bigger than any one of us.

Because I’m beginning to think that culture precedes politics, or perhaps that policy is meaningless without cultural support. And we can’t destroy our racist institutions if we don’t listen to the people who are destroyed by our racist institutions, without ego. We must listen. We must be vulnerable. We, white America, we must say, “What is your story? I will listen. I will believe. I will be willing to change.” We, male America, must open our hearts to the women who tell us what they face, what they endure, what they feel, and we must be moved to action. We, straight America, must see ourselves in the queer community and stop asking why they’re different and start asking why we’re different and start understanding that different is human and that human is meant to be loved. And that Black Lives Matter and Yes All Women experience discrimination and oppression, and that it's not about us, white straight males. Most of all, we must stop thinking we know what’s best for people who aren’t us. We don’t. I don’t.

But then, I think, “This is not enough.” It’s not fast enough. It puts too much faith in people. It won’t matter worth a damn if we don’t listen to the earth, which is crying out against us, begging us to listen, begging us to see the atrocities we’ve thrust upon our natural world, begging us to change before we destroy ourselves and the world with it. If the seas rise, and the farm land disappears, and the positive feedback systems of natural pollution release are activated, and the world descends into a starving, thirsty, ravished wasteland, it won’t matter if we haven’t found the time or the ability to listen to our hurting, huddling masses.

And so I think, “We need revolution.” This system isn’t working. This infrastructure of industrialized monocultural megafarming will feed the world today, poison us tomorrow, and salt the earth next week. This corporate socialism, which protects megacompanies too big to fail, megacompanies which protect the ten white men at the top, this business world will never give us fair wages, will never close the gap, will never break the glass ceiling, will never do anything but put us in debt and spend millions on marketing to subconsciously subdue us into subjugation. This farce of a thing we call government isn’t listening, won’t listen, can’t listen, and will never work for its people, no, only the corporations it calls people. The system isn’t worth trying to fix; the system won’t ever work. Let us break the system so badly it will never rear up again. Let us band together; let us march into the streets; let us seize the internet; let us do something. Anything. Before Michael Brown becomes just another hashtag.

I’m not an expert on race relations, or environmental science, or the economy, or queer activism, or feminism, or political science, or revolution. I’m in the arts. I tell stories. And I want to raise my voice. I want to raise your voice. Tell me your story. I want to hear what you have to say. Let’s change the world. Before we lose it.