1/31/21

By Josh Rubin

If you have been following this group for long, you will have noticed that the word “witness” in the group’s name gets repeated quite a bit in posts. I certainly mention it a lot.

It may leave you with the impression that I think that witnessing is the answer to the monumental problems of forced migration and racism, and the tragic and staggering inequality in human society. But I want to clarify this a bit. It seems to me that witnessing presents us with more of a question than an answer. And the question is this: Can we look straight into the face of this injustice, see it in not just an intellectual way, but a visceral one, without something shifting? Without a transformation of ourselves, and then of more than just ourselves?

Now, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that there is anything easy about witnessing. Those of us who have done it, who are doing it, do not always have an easy time. Elements of that unjust world out there do what they can to resist our presence. We face intimidation often. It is nowhere near the hardship faced by those we go to witness. But it can be difficult, and is not for the faint of heart.

Much harder is what we face inside. Facing the pain we see robs us of the comfort of obliviousness. We dismantle the protections we humans have against the suffering of others. And after a while I find, that at least for myself, as much as I might want to, I cannot look away. It is always somewhere in my vision. And in my heart, a constant, nagging pain. Tears are never far. Maybe age has something to do with it...

We didn’t invent witnessing. It grew out of despair. The idea suggests a kind of sympathetic magic. How do you get people to pay attention? Perhaps, we thought, by learning what it is to pay attention yourself. To look something, someone, in the eye. No screens intervening. To breath the same air. To inhabit the same world.

To look past the walls between us. The walls that, in a seismic gamble, may someday crumble before our eyes.