Silencing local voices?

Speaking for myself only, I sincerely thank our city councilors for stepping up to a hard, underappreciated, often contentious job, dealing with a mountain of administrative tasks. 

Councilors, friends: you occupy a seat no one else can occupy now. Your choice to serve obligates you to a far larger role than you might prefer. You are more than high-ranking administrators – you are this community’s voice. No one else can officially register our community’s dissent of national policy, if you shun moral issues about operations of power playing out on the world stage.

Operations of power are inherent in all relationships. To date you have chosen to exert your greater power to silence the voice of our youth, who have only the power of protest. You dig in your heels while yet claiming to be powerless – bound by the kite string of your own policy – a version of shrugging your shoulders as you close your ears. I cannot accept this, nor should anyone of conscience.

What lesson would you have our citizens learn about interceding with government (along with two-thirds of our general population who yearn for a ceasefire) – that it’s not worthwhile? That they have no voice in the operations of government?

While tens of thousands of Palestinians are being slaughtered, hundreds of thousands grievously wounded without access to health care, and literally millions clinging to life in the face of probable starvation, what are you clinging to? A slightly less onerous (and perhaps safer) job description? Except sadly – for all involved – it is actually harder to follow your path of silencing.

You can choose a different route: resonate to and affirm the moral stirrings of our community. Be the Council who acts wisely and in accord with our rising young leaders – encourage their voice, their determination to act from conscience and within our system. Change your community gag policy and call for a permanent ceasefire in Palestine. Voices DO matter, despite editorials to the contrary – they are why we continue to make gradual social progress carrying forward the efforts of past millennia.

Be our voice, councilors. You have the power of the megaphone – we do not.

– Kirby MacLaurin, Durango