Rev. Dr. Darryn Hewson, Contributing Writer
What is most precious to you? Your family? An heirloom? Your reputation? The list of most important things should not be all that long, but the list of how important something is to you changes daily, maybe even hourly or minute by minute, depending on how much something affects you and your life. Does a war, famine, or natural disaster in another part of the world matter more to you?
By the time you are reading this, some time will have passed since the assassination of trailblazing Palestinian American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. If you did not hear about it when it happened, that just confirms some of what needs to be said. Most of the United States would not have heard about it if she were not an American citizen. American news does not report that much about the rest of the world. Europe gets the most notice. The big players like Russia and China get noticed sometimes, but it must be big (invading another country, originating a pandemic) to be more than a sideline. The death of Abu Akleh happened in Palestine, and a United States ally (one that cannot be questioned even if his or her actions go against the very fabric of the religion they claim to represent) killed her. Her story may just disappear like the stories of many Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIOPIC) people.
Even if the whole world seems to be talking about something, that does not mean it becomes of greater value to the average person, and it has an effect and at least makes people want to know more. Russia invading Ukraine got the world’s attention. In other parts of the world, like in Syria, people are still being killed or forcibly oppressed by their government. Every few years, in a much more one-sided invasion by Israel in Gaza, not to mention the occupation in the West Bank, we only talked about Afghanistan briefly as the United States pulled out. The genocide in Uyghurs, China is devastating. The climate is changing. More and more, people are becoming food insecure or losing homes and livelihoods, and natural disasters are more frequent–the list of tragedies is endless.
So what do we do? We care. We care about every life regardless of where they are or what they look like. Still, we also understand that at this time in the world the ones that need to matter most are the ones that are being oppressed, that are being targeted, the ones that have historically not been protected or are currently not being protected even by the governments and authorities who are meant to do so. As people of faith, our role must be to speak out for those whose voices are not being heard. Tell their stories. This is not a new call, but if we do not remind ourselves often, we forget and we fail to make a change. Every voice and every story matters.
