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I Cannot Remain Silent: Words, Images, and the Arizona
Massacre
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2011-01-09 20:35:01
Aspiring and not-yet-established authors regularly receive advice not to post political opinions on their blog or any others,
lest they offend potential readers who don’t agree. Over and over we’re told that outspokenness can kill our career.
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However, I cannot remain silent about the events of Saturday, January 8, 2011 in Tucson,
Arizona. Like the Dixie Chicks who sacrificed their careers when they spoke their minds, I cannot “shut up and sing.”
Denouncing the violent deaths of six people, murdered by a hate-filled madman who had targeted Representative Gabrielle
Giffords (D-AZ), is a lot more important than the preservation of my career. Giffords herself was so gravely wounded
outside the supermarket in north Tucson that early reports declared her dead. Among those confirmed dead were a Federal
judge who ruled in favor of four undocumented workers in an immigration case, one of the Congresswoman’s staffers, and
constituents who had come to meet her, among them a 9-year-old child who had just been elected to her elementary school’s
student council. I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Gabby Giffords four years ago, when she entered Congress as one of a
large group of freshman Democrats that included Kirsten Gillibrand. Giffords’s district is adjacent to that of Rep. Raul
Grijalva, with whom I appeared on a panel at the 2010 Annual Conference of the American Library Association and who,
like Giffords, received many death threats during the 2010 campaign. We have yet to learn all the details of the assassin’s
motivation. But as an author, I know that words are powerful, and “showing, not telling” is even more powerful. With the
collapse of the economy, people often look for scapegoats, and violent eliminationist rhetoric leveled against President
Obama, members and officeholders of the Democratic Party, and people with liberal views has increased dramatically.
Campaign posters put Democratic Senators and Representatives in the crosshairs of rifles. Rep. Giffords’s own opponent in
2010 held fundraisers at shooting ranges. Words. Illustrations. Showing and telling. The media outlets that broadcast this
eliminationist rhetoric do so without providing a critical counterpoint. The Fairness Doctrine ended in 1986, so the most
angry, violent voices are the ones that dominate the airwaves and are rarely answered. When words and images of violence
against scapegoats are allowed to dominate and proliferate, is it any surprise that desperate people resort to, in the words of
right-wing extremist Senate candidate Sharron Angle, “Second Amendment remedies” when the election doesn’t go their
way? Because writers traffic in words and images, it is especially crucial for us to denounce with all our eloquence the use
of words and images to spread hatred, and to show what the consequences are before real people are wounded and killed. In
my own writing, I have tried to portray the impact of political violence on individuals, their families, and their communities.
My companion to Gringolandia, SURVIVING SANTIAGO, depicts what can happen when political divisions turn deadly
and outspoken people become targets. By saying my piece on the internet, I risk guaranteeing that SURVIVING
SANTIAGO and whatever else I write in the future never finds a publisher outside the small press/independent publishing
ghetto. Today, I dare the media conglomerates to go ahead and blacklist me. What kind of country are we that we give a
megaphone to those who preach hate and violence against political opponents, and silence the voices that call for peace?
