Words hold tremendous power, and if we don't reclaim our language and start seeing people instead of 'militants,' drone victims instead of 'bug splats,' or natural splendor instead of 'green infrastructure,' then the voiceless are destined to be silenced forever.
Throughout history, women have often been treated as second-class citizens and their voices silenced.
I refuse to be silenced.
It's not lost on me that every single person who told their story about Harvey Weinstein talked about how they were silenced, how they were encouraged not to speak up, how they were embarrassed or ashamed to speak up.
The loudest voice in the room, sometimes, is the absent voice of the silenced.
Oppression does not make for hearts as big as all outdoors. Oppression makes us big and small. Expressive and silenced. Deep and dead.
For too many years, those eligible to vote in primary or general elections did not bother to do so. Those sensible centrists who do not go to rallies but care deeply about our country effectively silenced their own voices. That sent the message to incumbents that they were either doing the right thing or that we just did not care.
With the exception of the New York Times, Fox news, and Lou Dobbs of CNN, and talk radio, the rest of the mainstream media has basically been silenced like a bunch of dumb monkeys.
Making people fear the expression of their own power is a very effective way of disempowering them. It is not just those who feel the frustration of being silenced: it also encompasses every person who has no idea of their own power to realise their visions because they have not seen this in action in their communities.
The struggle of democratic secularism, religious tolerance, individual freedom and feminism against authoritarian patriarchal religion, culture and morality is going on all over the world - including the Islamic world, where dissidents are regularly jailed, killed, exiled or merely intimidated and silenced.
