I am often told that I should be more careful. That I should consider the political implications of what I say. That naming names and identifying perpetrators is dangerous, divisive, and counterproductive.
I have considered it. I reject it.
Silence, in the face of visible injustice, is not caution. It is complicity. And I refuse to be complicit.
The Myth of Neutrality
There is a persistent belief – especially among institutions, media organizations, and professionals – that it is possible to remain neutral in the face of injustice. That by not taking a side, you avoid becoming part of the problem.
This is false. Neutrality is a position, and in a conflict between the powerful and the powerless, it is a position that favors the powerful.
When a government displaces a community and you say nothing, your silence does not register as neutrality. It registers as absence of opposition. The government did not need your endorsement. It needed the absence of your objection. Your silence provided it.
When a corporation violates labor rights and you say nothing, the corporation does not interpret your silence as ambivalence. It interprets it as permission. The cost of your silence is zero. The cost of your voice would have been real.
Silence is not the absence of a position. It is a position, and it is the cheapest one available.
Why People Stay Silent
I understand the reasons. They are real.
Fear. Speaking costs something. It costs jobs, relationships, safety, status. The people who stay silent in the face of injustice are not always cowards. They are often people who have calculated the cost honestly and decided they cannot afford it.
I do not judge this calculation lightly. I know what speech costs. It cost me my life.
But I will say this: the cost of silence is not zero. It is paid by someone else. When you are silent about the eviction, the family being evicted pays the cost. When you are silent about the labor violation, the worker pays. When you are silent about the violence, the victim pays.
Your silence does not eliminate the cost. It transfers it to the person who can least afford it.
The Institutional Silence
Individual silence is understandable, even if it is wrong. Institutional silence is indefensible.
When a university refuses to comment on the political persecution of its own faculty, the university is not being measured. It is being institutional. It is prioritizing its relationships with power over its obligation to its people.
When a media organization avoids covering a story because it might offend an advertiser or a government, the organization is not being objective. It is being purchased.
When a religious institution fails to speak against injustice because its own interests would be threatened, the institution has abandoned the mission that justifies its existence.
Institutions have resources that individuals do not. They have platforms, legal protection, organizational power. Their silence is not the silence of the vulnerable. It is the silence of the capable, and it is unforgivable.
What Speech Requires
I am not asking everyone to become an activist. I am not asking you to risk what you cannot afford to lose.
I am asking you to be honest about the cost of your silence. Not to pretend that it is neutral. Not to pretend that it carries no consequences. To see clearly that when you stay silent, someone else absorbs the cost, and that person is almost always weaker than you.
And I am asking that when you can speak – when the cost to you is manageable, when the risk is tolerable, when the voice you add would make a difference – you speak.
Not because it is easy. Because it is owed.
The people I write for cannot afford silence. They have been silenced – by force, by poverty, by the structural exclusion that makes their voices inaudible to the people with the power to help.
They need someone to speak. If not you, who?
If not now, when?
I have heard these questions before. I answered them with my life. I do not expect the same from you. But I expect something.
Silence is a position. Choose a different one.