6/8/20

By Josh Rubin

The power of bearing witness.

It may seem self-evident, but in the last days we have seen the seismic power of bearing witness. We have not seen the witness who kept her cell phone camera pointed at a man slowly dying under the pressure of oppression, the brutal poetry of watching a man stop breathing, his heart stopping, his voice stilled.

But because of that act of witness, his voice will never be completely silenced, and his blood has filled the veins of a movement, and is still pumping through the awakened streets of a nation. Because there was a witness who did not turn away.

There are so many things that people do to try to change the world for the better. There are marches, there are electoral politics, there are petitions and letter-writing campaigns. There are reports and there are commissions. All of these are noble, and I will not say a word against them.

Not every act of witness will be as consequential as the still small voice of a young woman with her camera. Perhaps most will only add a flashing memory or engrave a momentary pain in someone’s mind. But, dream this with me: what if we were all watching, recording, and telling people what we see. What if we summoned the courage not to look away. In fact, to go where they don’t want us to go, to see what they don’t want us to see.

It is often unpleasant. You will face opposition. You will be discouraged by the smallness of your audience, by their easy distraction.

But one of us, perhaps, will capture a moment. And it may shake the earth.