When I was a senior in high school, our government teacher came up with a creative plan for our major research paper. Every student would be made to sign a contract, which outlined an agreement of which grade the student wanted on the paper and what he was willing to do to earn it. If he didn’t sign the contract, that student failed, simple as that. To this day, I feel that the contracts were wrong, but like everyone else I signed it all the same.
After we were a few days into the research process, a good friend of mine named Harry came up with an idea for a funny political cartoon about our government teacher. Since I had some modest art skills, I drew the cartoon, a parody of the movie poster for 1980s Flash Gordon, depicting our government teacher as a leather-clad Ming the Merciless. A second friend, Paul, made photocopies of this political cartoon and covertly pinned it up all over the school. So began my first taste of activism.
Late in the day of our cartoon’s distribution, I was called into the Vice Principal’s office. It seemed that one of the teachers had turned in the cartoon to the front office, and since the VP was my former art teacher, he recognized my style of caricature art and immediately knew that I was cartoon’s artist.
In the VP’s office, I was harangued, insulted, criticized, and verbally abused. I was threatened with a timely three-day suspension, which would mean I would miss key finals in three of my classes, and since this was near the end of the school year and I was only an average student, missing those finals would mean I would fail those classes. As a result, I would not be able to graduate, not be able to walk across the stage with my classmates, and to add insult to injury, I would not be able to participate in the high school musical, Oklahoma, in which I had a key part (our theater instructor was already scrambling to replace me).
What did I do? I buckled. I ratted out my two friends, the VP spent most of the afternoon threatening and attacking us (a pretty traumatic form of mental torture as I recall it now), and finally he decided to go easy on us and issue 15 hours of detention as our punishment. I breathed a sigh of relief, of course. I could take my finals, participate in Oklahoma, and still walk across the stage in May. Never mind that our government teacher’s forced contract was wrong and possibly in violation of contract laws about coercion. Our protest was squelched without much protest at all because I was too concerned about my own comfort to stand up for what I felt was right.
A couple of weeks ago, I was working with some audio interviews from a graduate student writing her thesis on the growth of atheism and agnosticism among her generation. One of the interviews was with a young man who had tried to form a student atheist organization in his high school. He had gone through the proper channels, even gotten an instructor to sponsor the group, but once he began circulating flyers inviting other students to join, he was called into the office by his fundamentalist VP and run through the wringer.
Now, I love and believe in God, so I do not agree with this young man's believes, but I do believe he has every right to form his group and meet with other like-minded students. He even got a teacher to sponsor the group, as I said, so he had navigated the process correctly. Nevertheless, his efforts were thwarted by religious teachers and administration who could not stand the idea of students having an opposing view.
The young man admits that he could have pushed for his right to have this school group, but in the end he gave in, took down the posters, and disbanded the organization. What was the deciding factor? He was told that if he went forward with his atheist student group, he would not be allowed to participate in commencement exercises. “I wanted to walk the stage,” the lad admits, so his own personal comfort superseded his fight for personal expression.
Why do I share these two stories?
Two weeks ago, I watched the documentary A Whisper to a Roar at a North Hollywood theater and stayed afterwards for a discussion with the film’s writer/director Ben Moses. A Whisper to a Roar chronicles the stories of democracy activists in five countries--Egypt, Malaysia, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe--as they fight against oppressive dictatorships, risking imprisonment, torture, and death to bring freedom to their people. It is a compelling film, and I found myself trembling afterwards, not only from the witnessed horrors at the hands of these brutal regimes but from the inspiration I drew from the democracy activists themselves as they refused to bend when faced with insurmountable odds.
One of the most inspirational figures in the film is Roberto Patiño, a young student who founded VotoJoven in Venezuela, which “promotes youngsters' registration to vote, continuous participation, and monitoring of electoral processes” (A Whisper to a Roar website).
Roberto is a charismatic young man, passionate about freedom and hungry to advance the cause of democracy in his country. He clearly loves Venezuela and is willing to put everything at risk for the individual liberties of his fellow citizens.
When speaking to Ben Moses after the film, my friend asked about Roberto and if he continues to be safe. Moses informed us that Roberto’s life is in danger every minute of the day. This was terrifying to me, especially since A Whisper to a Roar documents with an unflinching eye some of the tortures that were inflicted upon activists from all five countries in the discussion. The idea that Roberto risks such horrors to advance his personal cause is mind-blowing to me.
But then I thought of myself, and of this young atheist I mentioned. How quickly we two cushy American kids gave in, simply because we were faced with some minor discomforts. Let me look solely at myself for a moment. Suppose I had stood my ground on principle and let myself be suspended for three days? So what? I fail a couple of classes, but I can make them up in summer school. I don’t get to walk across the stage during commencement, but all these years later that seems like a minor sacrifice. And sure, I don’t get to participate in the school musical, but let’s get real here. For guys like me, high school theater was an exercise in ego-stroking, not an opportunity to polish my skills as an actor (which are minimal at best).
Is it such a small price to pay to do what's right?
In his book Everyday Survival, Laurence Gonzales examines how the more comfortable a people become, the more blinded they are to the very real dangers surrounding them. He cites as an example the western tourists who stood on the beaches in Thailand in 2004, watching the approach of a massive tsunami, and were subsequently sucked out into the ocean depths because they could not mentally process the danger. Likewise, in 1980, when Mount St. Helens erupted, tourists actually moved into the evacuated area and camped because they had never seen an active volcano before (many of them died under a cubic mile of debris). Hell, in my home state of Kansas, whenever a tornado touches ground, there are dozens of blind fools standing on their porches to watch.
I would like to hope that I am not so foolish as to stare down the wrath of God, but perhaps in smaller ways I am just like the ignorant victims discussed in Gonzales’ book. Unlike Roberto Patiño, I have never had so much at stake that I was willing to put everything at risk. I grew up in America, in a comfortable home with loving parents, with an understanding that my rights would always be protected and my liberties would never be compromised. Perhaps that is why at 18 I crumbled so easily when my high school VP threatened me with a few minor inconveniences.
Would I have the strength of a Roberto Patiño or any of the other activists in A Whisper to a Roar? Would I be able to gather in a public square, march against armed guards, and risk imprisonment or worse?
I honestly do not know. As Americans, we go about our business, looking over our shoulder while assuring ourselves that it can’t happen here. And that’s kind of frightening to me. We are far too comfortable when kids abandon principles so they can participate in commencement exercises. And we clearly know very little about personal sacrifice when a little girl like Jessica Ahlquist is praised as “courageous” because she got a school prayer removed from a wall (I was rather annoyed by the “brave little girl” moniker attached to Jessica since she never really risked anything of substance for her petty little cause).
The best I can say is that I do believe it can happen here, but I hope that it does not. But if it does, if I am called to the test, I hope I have the stomach for the challenge. I hope I can stand up for what’s right the way Roberto Patiño et al. do in A Whisper to a Roar. At the very least, I have A Whisper to a Roar as a reference, a touchstone, and if forced activism is in my future, there are plenty of role models in that film that provide a blueprint for courage.
I send my thoughts and prayers to these people daily. Perhaps some day, I will able to send more. In the meantime, I hope I can honor them as they honor me, as enthusiasts for freedom and as fellow human beings.
For more information about A Whisper to a Roar, please visit their website: http://awhispertoaroar.com/
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