Silence Is Violence
A reckoning with comfort, complicity, and the lie of good intentions in an age of concentration camps, repression and state violence.
What would Martin Luther King, Jr. think if he could see us today?
Lyrics
You post my quotes in pretty fonts once every January
Share my dream on Instagram, performative and temporary
Then scroll past the news of children dying in detention
And tell yourself you’re one of the good ones, beyond contention
But I wrote from Birmingham Jail about people just like you
The white moderate who prefers order over what is true
Who says “I agree with your goals but not your methods or your timing”
While the boot’s upon the neck and the oppressed are still dying
Your silence is violence, your comfort is complicity
You quote me like a prophet but ignore my prophecy
That the greatest tragedy’s not the actions of the bad
But the silence of the good, and you’re the silence that I had
Warned against in 1963, now fifty years later
You’re still choosing order over justice; modern moderator
Of discussions about rights like they’re abstract thought experiments
While real people disappear and you maintain your temperament
You celebrate my holiday with sales and days off work
Then vote for politicians who make cruelty their perk
Who raid the schools and churches, who cage the refugee
And you say “Well, I didn’t vote for that specifically”
But you voted for the package, for the fear that they would stoke
For the promises to hurt the ones you’ve othered with your vote
And now you want to wash your hands like Pilate did before
Say “I’m not responsible” while they’re breaking down the door
I said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere
But you built borders in your mind that say “Not my cross to bear”
“Not my problem,” “Not my people,” “They should’ve come legally”
While you stand on stolen land, on wealth built by slavery
You weaponize my words about judging by character alone
To attack affirmative action and dismantle what was won
You claim to be colorblind; convenient for the privileged
But I never said ignore the racism that’s been inherited
Where are you when they’re raiding? Where’s your voice, where’s your presence?
Where’s your outrage when they cage the innocent? Where’s your resistance?
Or does justice only matter when it’s comfortable and safe?
When it doesn’t cost you anything, doesn’t challenge your own place?
You think you’re not like them because you don’t hold the keys
To the cages and the camps, but your silence is the grease
That keeps the machine running smooth, that gives cover to the crime
Your silence is violence, and you’re running out of time
Your silence is violence, your comfort is their pain
Every time you look away, every time you stay
In your bubble of protection while the vulnerable suffer
You become complicit in making this world tougher
For those who have no safety, no defense, no voice
Your silence is violence, and silence is a choice
So this is your MLK Day call to arms, to action
Not to celebrate my memory but to break from your abstraction
The dream demands your presence, your discomfort, your stand
Your body on the line, not just your thoughts or plans
Because history will ask what side you took, what you did when it mattered most
And “I was silent” won’t be enough; You’ll be counted with the host
Of those who let it happen when you could have said no
Your silence is violence. Now you know