How can I remain silent?

Someone called it the U.N. of Writers Conference (wish I’d thought of the description) referring to the 2.5 day conference at Webster University in Geneva run by the IWWG and the Geneva Writers Group. Of the 95 participants 31 countries were represented. People were from all continents that are inhabitable. No penguins waddled through to take up paper and pen, but they would have just added one more continent.

All the normal writing conference workshops were there with differences of opinion on the best way to write. I went from one session where the facilitator didn’t believe women should write from a male point of view or vice versa to a workshop where we wrote first from the point of view of a man about to commit suicide and then from the POV of a new hooker going out on the street for the first time.

Unlike other conference this had a heavy political feel. I am used to maybe 75% of my conversations being about politics with people taking various activist stands, but in the past conferences politics were scarcely mentioned.

At least two of the participants were from New Orleans. One was an American married to a Dutchman. They had tried to live in New Orleans but found life too hard and returned to Europe. Their return did not stop the sadness at the devastation of the city. The young woman wrote, despite the rawness, captured her pain in words.

A woman from Lisbon who was so upset about the war that last weekend she flew to America to participate in the Cindy Sheehan March in Washington, D.C.

There was talk about the environment, the American economic model which more and more countries are disputing as the ideal to follow.

The story of the 82-year old Englishman wrestled to the ground at the UK Labour meeting when he cried, ‘Nonsense’ to the rubbish Jack Straw was spouting came up. The man was taken away under the terrorist act. If saying ‘nonsense’ is a terrorist act then every English citizen is in danger.

When the war was mentioned, people shook their head and the news of the new Bali bombings brought looks of resignation. These conversations bounced around as the participants weighed words and ideas more traditional to writer conferences.

One instructor was from South Africa and grew up in Soweto. As part of the discussion a woman mentioned the photo of the baby girl Prince Harry held. The baby had been raped because a man with AIDS believed that rape would save him from dying. The instructor talked about how her writing addressed these issues and encouraged us to speak out, write out, on the injustices all around us, encouraging us to vanquish all timidity.

‘How can I remain silent?’ she asked. I wonder how many people can remain silent and if they do what price we will all pay.