Speaking For Those Who Can't

In Doctor Martin Luther King Junior ’s speech, Beyond Vietnam - A Time To Break Silence, he spoke for the those who could not. Dealing with the attacks on the citizens in Vietnam, King spoke up for those citizens who had no say in the attack that was coming down on them. King is an example because he presents his speech as a way to stand up for others in their dire time of need. He spoke in words of wisdom declaring how those who are being attacked have no fair say in defense of themselves. They are being attacked for reasons that they have nothing to do with and they feel as if they are facing their own personal war. Those who break silence are the ones who have intentions to reach out to and sympathize those in need. One may break silence in order to save those who are stuck in silence. During the time of suffering and pain is when it is appropriate to break silence because it is being broken to benefit those who are in need. 

People who are suffering through hard times are the ones who are in need of a savior who will speak out for them. When people of lower class are suffering and can not speak up for themselves because no one is listening, that is a time that utter silence must be broken. “We have destroyed their land and their crops.” (King Para. #24). Within this quote, King is discussing the destruction of the land of Vietnam and how the women and children are left with next to nothing because their food sources have basically been abolished by the warfare. King speaks out for these people in attempts to put an end to the destruction for the sake of those who are suffering. In the present time, there are millions of people who are left with next to nothing due to a national economical problem called poverty. 

Poverty, to this day, has left approximately 600,000 of the American population alone on the streets, homeless without food and water. They are left having to live with what they receive from their public begging which sometimes is no more than a nickel and a dime. It takes someone of higher power to help people that are in this type of condition which is why the Governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin, is taking action by setting a goal to end family homelessness. In the article, Shumlin: End family homelessness by 2020 by Paris Achen, she stated how “Gov. Peter Shumlin has announced that his administration will seek to end child and family homelessness in Vermont by 2020.” (Achen Para. #1). Also quoted Shumlin when he said “About 1,500 people in Vermont live without housing on any given night” (Achen Para. #5) into her article. This shows how Shumlin realized that with the economy today, people struggle when it comes to affording homes. Around 1,500 people with families are left homeless because they can not afford any type of house to call home. The Governor is taking action and speaking out by proposing his goal to end family homelessness. He realized that they are in need of assistance of a higher power and with him having say in most decisions regarding the state of Vermont, he is using his power to his advantage to helping the voiceless. 

By taking his power to his advantage to help the voiceless, he is saving all of the families who are left without a house from suffering another cold and brutal winter by providing them a place they can call their home. Poverty brings out the worse in people because it only takes and takes until there is nothing left. Those who are suffering poverty are losing their power as people so they need a helping hand to speak out for them that has more power than most people.

In their time of suffering, only the people who feel for their struggle are those who can speak out for them in intentions to help them. This situation of national struggle is when it is a time for silence to be broken and for the problem to come to an end. Those who set a goal and provide some type of solution to help these people in need are the ones to break the silence. As shown by Shumlin, it is necessary to break silence when people are truly in need of assistance because they are too weak to break their own silence.

Losing a home and their belongings is not the only thing that can push a person to the point of rock bottom. People can lose something that contains so much more meaning than just an inanimate object. Losing a loved one, whether if it is for a long time or for the rest of their life, can push people to a point of no return. “It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.” (King1 Para. #10). In this part of his speech he is discussing how Vietnam is sending out all men who meet the age requirement into situations that they may not return from. In these cases of pure destruction where innocent lives are being put on the line demonstrates another point that King makes of when it is time for silence to be broken. Countries are taking loved ones and using them for their own personal business and putting them into life or death situations, even to this day. 

Everyday, families have to say good-bye to their relative as they are shipped off on their deployment. All around the United States the demand to bring troops home and pleading for an anti-war world is almost like a national anthem. To this day, you hear multiple stories of distraught families in agony because they lost a loved one to the war effort. While there have been multiple efforts to bring troops home for good, there have been twice as many failed attempts. The warfare keeps them from seeing their families for months on end with the question of if and when they will see their soldier again. These families need assistance in getting their word out and grabbing America’s attention so that their troops can be brought home. Their silence needs to be broken in order to not only save them from possible heartbreak, but to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of troops who were sent out to the war. 

Saving the troops is something that has to be publicized to a high extent so once one person begins to speak out about ending war and bringing our troops home, more people will jump into supporting the movement in order to save military lives. This is where the organization, called the MFSO (Military Families Speak Out), comes in to help gain support for our troops, their families, and plead for anti-war world. This organization breaks the silence of suffering military families around the nation by standing up for them and using their personal stories as a way to make their awareness more meaningful. The MFSO puts together presentations that are used to support the anti-war efforts and to bring our troops home. On their blog, Pat Alviso posts about how the MFSO gets involved with spreading the word and one post presented how “Last summer, MFSO members worked with National Coalition partners and called on members of Congress to support the efforts of Congresswoman Barbara Lee and others to force the issue of Iraq to be debated in Congress.” (Alviso Para. #4). The MFSO working to support Barbara Lee is just one example of how this organization supports an anti-war world. This shows that breaking silence is necessary when people are not strong enough to do it alone and need more voices to speak out. It has shown that breaking the silence of families suffering from the military effort is necessary because it can not only save them from the pain of loss of a loved one but it can also save millions of lives if the troops are brought home and global war comes to an end. 

When dealing with a war, it is necessary to not only focus on ending it but also to help the lives of the innocent. Helping the poor or those in need is not something everyone has the heart to do because they worry about how it is going to look on others. “We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.” (King 1 Para. #4). In this quote, King is talking about how no matter how hard it may be to help those in need, it is absolutely necessary to do so. By helping those in need, one must stretch their limits and go in depth to a situation only to truly see what is happening. He is motivating the listener to take action in helping those in need and overcoming their personal set limits. He is asking them to put themselves at their own risk of doing something out of their definition of ordinary in order to break the silence of those who need help. 

The citizens of Syria were in dire need for someone to help them get out of their situation but they could not call for help in fear of their own government. In Syria, February 2012, the citizens needed someone to give them assistance due to the brutal situations that they were put in by their own government. Each citizen was either unwillingly being murdered or put onto the streets. There was mass destruction surrounding them and they had no control over, even if they tried to stop it. Actress Angelina Jolie saw what was happening in Syria and took immediate action to help those people in need. She saw the destruction of Syria and the inhumanity of the refugee camps with her own eyes. Jolie did something that changed her popular image as an actress in order to help save those people by putting her career as a celebrity beside her for sometime to focus on humanitarian effort in Syria. She also helped them by donating $100,000 to the refugees along with urging the US to provide medical assistance. 

Jolie showed the humanity of putting aside her career and pushing her limits in order to help those in need. She put her life as a star on the line to attend to a deal that was much more important to her than acting in a movie. She found it necessary to break the silence of the people by providing them the attention and the help that they were silently begging for. In this case, it is necessary to break silence to help those people in need because they can not call out for help themselves. Silence is being broken in this case because the people can not speak for themselves since their lives depend on every word that they speak. It is necessary at any time to speak for them, even if it puts you out of your comfort zone, because you may not realize that the break of silence was truly needed.

A time to break silence is when people are in a time of dire need of assistance. It is usually when they are not calling out because they are too scared to call out for help so they sit back and watch destruction before their eyes. There is a time to break silence when you are breaking silence for those who can’t. Whether it is because they are too weak to speak out, they do not have a loud enough voice and need support, or they can not speak out because their lives depend on it. Breaking silence is necessary because you could be changing something that you may have never thought that would have been possible. These changes can either be life saving or life changing. It should be known that to break silence is necessary in any case that there is a sign of suffering within a person or a community.

Works Cited

Achen, Paris. “Shumlin: End family homelessness by 2020.” burlingtonfreepress.com. Burlington Free Press, March 30, 2015. Web. 1    April 2015.

Alviso, Pat. “MFSO Monthly Report October, 2014.” MilitaryFamiliesSpeakOut.com. WordPress. October 2014. Web. 30 March 2015.

King, Martin Luther Jr. “Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence.” Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. Riverside Church, New York City. 4 April 1967. Lecture. 

A Sense of Freedom

What Is Considered Freedom?

Freedom is considered as the ability for people to express themselves in anyway that they wish to without being restrained. In the book The Good Lord Bird, two characters are presented who raise the question of which one is granted more freedom than the other. One character presented is Pie; she is a mulatto house whore who is believed to get better treatment than the other slaves because she is half black and half white. The second character is Sibonia, who is presented as your stereotypical, beaten down slave. It may seem like Pie is given more freedom than Sibonia is, however, there are a few reasons as to why that statement may not be exactly all true. Sibonia has made it clear that she is the type of woman to do things the way that she wishes to do them. She is not the type to be taken advantage of, to be corrupted, or to be forced into doing things that aren’t done in her own way. It is clear that Sibonia has a mindset to obtain freedom and express her own individuality which makes her more free than Pie will ever be. 

Unlike Sibonia, Pie has no intentions of following anyone else’s steps in the strive for freedom. Pie believes that she is granted more freedom because she has better treatment than any other slave for privileges such as being given her own bedroom and being allowed to open doors.. What Pie does not realize that these simple privileges do not give her the freedom she believes she has. Pie is fooled by the owner who takes care of her. She is deceived by Miss Abby because she gives Pie the wrong perception that she is treating Pie with freedom. Though these privileges may be better than how the other slaves have it, it does not mean that she is free. Pie lacks self-respect and dignity which is one factor at which her and Sibonia differ.

Sibonia expresses herself as a woman who has respect for herself who refuses to let anyone take advantage of her, unlike Pie. For example, in the novel, Sibonia said to Onion, “How I covers my skin is my business.” (McBride 163) When she says this, she is most likely stating how the only way she does things is not by what other people tell her to do, but how she wishes to. This is a statement of freedom because the reader can tell that Sibonia does not want anyone to have control over her body. You can detect the sense of self-respect that Sibonia has for herself. In contrast to Pie, Sibonia has more freedom already because she is able to keep her dignity and pride by not falling for the same false perception that Pie did.

Pie does not show the slightest respect for herself like Sibonia does. It is easily shown that she has not self respect just by the fact of how she lets her body be used by multiple men in a day just to make money because that is what her owner told her she has to do. Pie is given a false understanding that makes her believe that how she is being treated is better than any other slave. This shows that Pie is anything but free simply because she willingly gives up her body and self-respect in order to make money for Miss Abby. Sibonia does not let anyone take advantage of her in this way giving more of a sense of a free, self-respected woman than Pie is.

Sibonia expresses her strive for freedom in the story when she started to make a plan that would start a “riot” for freedom. Sibonia is not corrupted by the white man to sit back and listen to their every rule. Sibonia takes action in her riot for freedom with no intentions of being held back from what she is planning to do. She is proceeding to plan the riot because she has a desire to fulfill which is to be free. Anyone who has the idea to start a movement for freedom is someone who has is passionate about freedom. When she was confronted, Sibonia did not try to lie about what she was planning to do, she looked the man straight in the eye and told him that she was the one who was planning the movement for freedom that he had been told about. Sibonia said exactly, “I am the woman” and “I am not ashamed or afraid to confess it” (McBride 175). In this quote and overall situation, it can be detected of how Sibonia truly feels about freedom. By the way that she did not try to get out of this situation because she was scared of the consequence shows how passionate she is about standing up for herself and not letting anyone hold her spirit down. 

For Sibonia to plan this shows that she has freedom within her because, at the time, no one would even think about standing up for a rebellion, especially not even Pie. Pie was the one who proceeded to tell Judge Fugett that Sibonia had been working with several people on her murderous plot and that she was the leader. This shows that Pie isn’t free and is corrupted because she immediately told authority of Sibonia’s plan. It was almost as if Pie did it because she felt as if she had to. This is where Pie is more of a slave simply because she showed weakness when it came to the information given to her by Onion by immediately going to the white men about Sibonia’s plan.  

It seems that having control over herself and what she does is a noter one of Sibonia’s main priorities. Having control over herself is a quality of freedom because it means that no one else can tell her specifically what to do. She does things in the ways that she wishes things to be done. For example, in the last few minutes of her life Sibonia leaped out for her own death. The book described her death by stating “Sibonia suddenly sprung away from him, jumped high as she could, and fell heavily through the galley hole” (McBride 183). In this quote, it is describing how Sibonia took on her own death in her own way. This example best shows how Sibonia does things in her own way so that she can not only feel a sense of freedom but also so she can be remembered for what she does. Sibonia did not hang herself in the ways that everyone else is hung, she took her last moment to take a leap to show that she if she is going to do anything, it’s going to be in her own way. 

Sibonia’s act to show herself off by doing something in her own way overcomes anything that Pie has ever done. Pie is always the type to do what she is supposed to because that is how she believes things are done. Pie would not dare to do something in her own way simply because she honestly believes that she has to do everything by the rules. Pie does things in the ways of which she is told because she refuses to think of any other way to do things. This is why more freedom is presented by Sibonia’s act than freedom will ever be shown in any act that is done by Pie.

Though Pie may have a little more freedom in a physical manner, mentally she is trapped. In contradiction to Pie, Sibonia has a mindset on obtaining freedom and expressing herself in her own way to obtain freedom. It is obvious how Sibonia was not the type to be abused by the white man without putting up a fight. She is not the type to be taken advantage of, corrupted, or forced into doing things that aren’t done in her own way. Sibonia has more freedom in her state of mind which is more than what Pie has overall. It is clear that Sibonia has more freedom than Pie does because she is self-righteous and has more intentions of obtaining freedom than Pie ever did.

Works Cited 

• McBride, James. The Good Lord Bird. New York. Riverhead Books. 2013. Print.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbO2_077ixs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=SRbillie%20because%20we%20want%20to&t=76&v=D_XI_290cfw