Are you my friend if you don’t stand with Assange?
My case for taking silence personally
I expect a lot from people. It’s a trait of mine that I’m aware of. I’m aware it can be much. What I like to call “tough love” has resulted in a good many fights with people in my life, and I know I’m often in the wrong with the expectations I hold people to.
I expect a lot from people because it’s fundamental to my understanding of the world that people are genuinely intrinsically good and capable of mind-blowing levels of empathy when they choose to act on that good.
I’ve also come to realize that people are much more likely to be stubborn and set in their ways and that the extent to which I try to be selfless is not healthy and probably shouldn’t be copied. While I still hold higher expectations for my loved ones than they would probably like, I’ve made it a point to work on being far more patient and forgiving with people, those I’m close with and those I’ve just met.
So after all that growth and energy and fights and people’s words I’ve taken to heart that have brought me to a level of personal development that I would shamelessly put on par with that of ATLA’s Zuko, why am I writing an article with such a dramatic thesis on what I should expect from people? Why am I flickering between disgust and despair as I think about how few people in my life chose to speak in support of Julian Assange today, even though I damn well made sure they knew the hearing was happening.
Julian Assange could be me. Of course he’s not. At this point in my life I couldn’t even begin to imagine holding the level of bravery and endurance Assange has shown in his effort to expose government crimes. But as someone whose dream it is to go into foreign policy journalism, it’s impossible to not take the silence personally.
My earliest memory of anything “political” was my parents complaining about the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I was lucky to have been raised by two of the mere 28 percent of Americans who opposed the invasion from the very start. My parents weren’t exactly anti-war activists, but their decision to choose the right side of history would end up influencing me significantly.
Before I supported Black Lives Matter, I hated war. Before I called myself a socialist, I hated war. Before I strongly held to any set of progressive values or spoke in support of any specific cause, I hated war.
I started complaining about the U.S. military when I was in middle school and I was not popular for it. Admittedly I was not tactful at all. My “fuck you you’re an evil person if you join an organization that kills people” sentiments have since been refined to a much more class conscious understanding of war, which sympathizes with how working class Americans are also victims of the military industrial complex. Still, even when I was just a child pissing everyone off with my edgy statements, the reasoning behind them was the same reasoning that led me to pursue journalism. War is stupid, we should talk about it.
And now here I am, an adult with a clear understanding of what I want to do with my life. I have absolutely no clue how to get there, but I know my path leads to anti-war journalism. Whatever my life looks like, I intend for it to consist of me telling stories that make wars less likely to happen. Because fuck war.
Needless to say, Julian Assange is an inspiration. The Hell he’s endured for exposing war crimes is painful to watch, but what really cuts deep is how many people in my life will just watch and say nothing.
I’m not sure if this will be read by no one, just strangers, the friends and family who have spoken in support of Assange, or the intended audience, the friends and family who have remained silent. If this is being read by my intended audience, please consider the following..
I see the silence and all I can think is that if I were in Assange’s position right now, you would be just as silent for me. I’d hope anyone who knows me knows by now that I’m interested in a career where I would be subject to the same attacks that Assange is experiencing.
If the government slandered me by claiming I smeared poop on the walls of an embassy, would you publicly question that? Would it be hard for you to learn that I’m being kept in solitary confinement, showing signs of psychological torture, and being denied access to a lawyer? If Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International were telling the world to speak up for my freedom, would you, someone who I may have shared any number of great times with and considered a person worth having in my life, add to the calls to support me?
If you’re someone who knows me and answered no to those little thought experiments, please do go and unfollow me. If you answered yes, please consider the following. By choosing to not stand with Assange now, you’re choosing to put me and any number of journalists in a position where the very same attacks will happen down the road. Please, speak out for Julian Assange, if not for him, if not for press freedom, for someone you consider a friend.
