Silence equals death

We are all obsessed with numbers. Mainly our own numbers. How old we are or aren't yet, the number on the little white square, right next to the label in the back of our clothes, the number on the scale, the number in the food we eat or do not eat, the number of people we slept with, the numbers on our paychecks, in our bank accounts…The number of friends we have, of rooms in our apartments… Those numbers are so important to us; they sometimes feel like they have taken over our lives. Those are the numbers we pay attention to. Those are the numbers that seem to matter the most. To everyone.But there are thousands of hundreds of other numbers we do not speak about, or hear about. Numbers that are secret, taboo… Silent. Numbers we wish to forget.I remember when I first heard those words. Shouted. So Loud! So Proud! Silence= Death. Silence = Death. Silence = Death…Yes, this slogan was particularly appropriate for the silence surrounding AIDS. A silence that disappeared under thousands of screams…we the victims of AIDS will not be ignored. We, the friends and families of victims of AIDS will not watch them die alone with no medical help, no healthcare, like criminals…You, the government, doctors and nurses will have to do something about it...And the world did. In France, the government was sued for lying. For "forgetting to mention a thing or two" about the status of all the blood it was giving to patients in the early 80's. In the US, Congress passed a bill and got funds for AIDS research. People knew they had to wear condoms. Safe sex was everywhere! On Salt-n-Pepa's rhymes, on Lisa's left eye. In Magic Johnson's hands. People were screaming and they were winning.If you're lucky, after a storm in the summer, you can spot a very bright rainbow. We weren't. There was no seven-color stripes through our gray clouds…Instead, it was replaced by a very loud, and thick silence. You see, there was now the "Cocktail"; everything was going to be all right. AIDS wasn't a death sentence anymore. So people forgot they had to be protected, people like Didier, B. at the gym, my friend F. - straights and gays - had sex with no love and no rubber…People stopped shouting, stopped talking, and stopped whispering until there was a hush. And then, there was death, all over again.Because we, the people... man…our nature is such that, when you don't show us what to look at, you don't tell us what to listen at, we do not remember it exists.Today, numbers are growing because we forget. Not only the numbers of Aids victims, the numbers of everything. The numbers of gays being beaten up. Because they are not tragically, brutally slaughtered like Mathew Shepard, and Brandon Teena, because no one makes a movie about their lives, they don't make front news on CNN. Nothing will interrupt the DC sniper, shock and awe or Laci Petterson headlines. Yes, 6-feet-Under had an episode featuring gay bashing…2 years ago. Do you know who Gwen Araujo is? Do you know that Sakia Gunn was stabbed in New York seven months ago? Do you know she was only 15? Do you know who Emonie Spaulding is? She was the last person killed. She was killed on August 21st. This year. Should I tell you she was a transgender woman? Does it matter? Does it give more "sense" to her death?I have a baby brother. He is 22. He is the most amazing and beautiful human being I know. He makes me want to be a better person. He too is gay. And so skinny, and so small, and so fragile.Would it make you scream with me if I told you that there are nights when I wake up from a horrible nightmare and I am sweating and I am not sure if I dreamt it or if it really did happen? It's always the same. The phone rings, I pick it up. It's my brother's boyfriend and he can't speak. Every time he let's some air in and out of his mouth, no sound can be heard! I know he is crying so much he can't breathe and I start feeling sick to my stomach; I fall on my knees because I know, I know what he is trying to say: my baby was killed, beaten up to death and left on the side of the road. Like an animal. Road kill!Will it bring me compassion to let people know this is how real the numbers are to me? That they could be someone I know one day…my brother, my friends, coworkers, neighbors… You know what pisses me off? That we can't wait to see the made for TV movie version of Jessica's Lynch amazing "rescue" but you need to get HBO to see the Laramie Project! That gay bashing crimes are only available on a fight for your rights MTV half-hour-special, late at night when all the innocents are sleeping, right after a Madonna Erotica music video marathon and reruns of the "real" world! The only thing real about that world was the battle of Pedro…and that was almost 10 years ago! Come on, MTV… Shout! Shout! Let it all out!Silence=DeathRemember all those times you wanted to say something but never did? When you saw two kids fight on the streets? When you witness a lovers' quarrel and you're not sure why, but you get an uneasy knot in your stomach, because he is bigger and stronger and louder than her and maybe... Maybe… Well, it's none of your business. People fight. Right? It happens…There are too many times when we have kept quiet for fear of saying too much. Too many times when we have looked the other way because we respect other's privacy…When my friend D. was raped at 8 in the morning on a corner of a Parisian subway station, that is exactly was the commuters did. A big, bold silence. No one called 911, no one yelled for help. People walked pass her. They didn't really see what was going on inside that circle of men. They really didn't hear anything. Her cries muffled by the cold hand pressed against her bleeding lips, the grunts of the boy, his zipper open, her pants around her ankles, the cheers of his friends as he was about to come… Every two minutes, a woman in the US is sexually assaulted. Are they all mute assaults? Is there no one to hear? Ever?Rape is so taboo; most victims never file a complaint. Date rape, child rape, even baby rape, incestuous rape…you name it, it's out there. But unless the suspect is Michael Jackson, the crime will not be news worthy…should we have a show about it? This is the true story, the true story of one stranger who raped me… Why bother? What's so fascinating about it? I'll tell you what's so fascinating! Like I said, every two minutes, TWO minutes, someone is sexually assaulted in the United States. In 2002, there were 247,730 victims of sexual assault and 87,000 of them were completed rape -meaning with penetration- and you want to know something else? The Justice Department has estimated that one of six victims is under age 12. Under 12…Silence = DeathMy proudest memory of my sister is an old one. She was 16. I was 15. We were at my friend's house. Her parents were out of town. Party at her place! Twenty teenagers sitting around the wooden dinning room table, trying to throw a coin in a shot glass. If you miss, you drink. Someone started telling jokes. Why do Arabs do this? Why do Belgians do that? Blacks, Hispanics…Jews… It's not the jokes that upset my sister. Some were funny, not very smart and completely un-PC, but funny…but there was one…Olivier answered back to one: "Well, it is true. They are cheap people!" I remember the moment so well. Because I had a crush on Olivier and his bright, piercing blue eyes, with a fringe of long dark eyelashes…I looked into his eyes and could not believe he had said that! My sister got up, turned to him, called him a racist anti-Semite and left. Later on, people mocked her. How she always had to overreact. How she couldn't take a joke. How she wouldn't be invited out anymore if she didn't "loosen up"… No one mentioned the Jewish tombs that had been violated and destroyed in a cemetery in the north of France a few weeks prior. Or the rise of The National Front…It was in everyone's minds but no one spoke. I didn't defend her either and for that I am ashamed. Because he was racist and we all knew it. But because he was popular, because we all wanted him to kiss us, no one stood up. Except one. Half Arab, half French. My sister.A few years later, at the post office, rue de Rennes, in Paris, 6 eme arrondissement, I was waiting online to buy my stamps. A long, long line that only post offices know how to breed. An older man stepped out of the line. Fist in the air, his gray moustache had crumbs of croissant on it. If it weren't for those "bougnouls" from Africa, we wouldn't have to wait for so long. Les Bougnoules… it sounds as bad as it is. Black uncultured peasants that invaded France. If we all spoke out, told those racist fucks that we were not going to let them express their hatred, and fuck the amendment, maybe we wouldn't have psychos like white supremacist Matt Hale, waging his Rahowa (Racial Holy War) as the leader of The World Church Of The Creator. How many have heard of him? His "Church"? The guy is in chat rooms, spreading his hatred and no one knows about it! No one seems to pay attention to the fact that there are so many hate websites on the Internet that it is impossible to get a count of them. 11. ELEVEN. You know what that number is? It's the age of the youngest creator of a hate website. Eleven years old. This young boy created "Stormfront for kids". Because at eleven, he wants to be able to share with other white boys and girls why niggers, Jews, fag, Mexicans, Asians and Arabs should die. Eleven years old.!!! France being against "America" when it was really against the war made the front pages for three weeks but an Illinois lawyer/nazi leader, known and sued by the government for plotting the assassination of a federal judge does not! 09072000. Another number that did not get a catchy title. It stands for September 7th, 2000. It's the day a jury found The Aryan Nations Organization and it's leader liable for damages relating to a 1998 assault on a woman and her child. Not news worthy I guess. I look back at that day at the post office and only remember the silence…not a word in the post office was spoken. No one told him to get out. No one refused to serve him. No one at all. Not me, not the people on the line- White, Blacks, Asians or Arabs. Not the security guard, not the clerks. NO ONE.On a September morning, in the subways of Paris, I was spat on. For being an Arab-Catholic, with my cross dangling right niext to the Hand of Fatima. A few years later, on another September morning, I was insulted. Called a terrorist's daughter. My friend with the Hejab was harassed. Thrown stones at. I don't know about you, but I do not want to wait for a cross to burn in my backyard, for my name and adress to be crossed out on a webpage; I do not want to wait for someone to shoot at my sister at a gas station because she has brown skin and dark curly hair…Silence = DeathDid you know that more and more prisoners on death row are being found innocent thanks to DNA tests? I didn't. I had no clue! I completely lost faith in the system after a French production team followed a young black man unfairly accused of murder on a Sunday morning in Florida. Yes, the documentary won an Academy Award…and then, it was all forgotten. Did we question why the young boy was even accused? In 2002, in Illinois, the governor declared a moratorium on all executions in the state until a commission could review the administration of the death penalty and determine the fairness of the system after 13 death row inmates were found not guilty. A year later, I went to see a play. The Exonerated. Six people, sentenced to death. All found innocent after DNA tests proved them right. We assumed for years the system was fair. For or against the death penalty, that was beside the point. The guilty were supposed to be guilty and the innocents were supposed to be, well, proven innocent! In Wonderland, maybe. In the real world, according to a study done by Columbia University, 68 percent of the more than 5,000 death sentences imposed since 1976 have been overturned for serious error implicating basic fairness, like incompetent counsel, prosecutorial or police misconduct, judicial errors. Oh, and yeah, the fact that the accused might be…innocent! Now, I don't know about you, but doesn't it look like there is a big flaw in the system? Exonerations are happening left and right, and yet, no news flashes at the bottom of the screen. The Exonerated is playing in a small theater on Bleecker Street, as far from Broadway as you can get. No sign in Times Square telling the world to get educated and go see the play. No teenage washed out singer making his on-stage come -back. Just actors who believe it is time someone opened their mouth. Amazing, New York actors…some famous, others not so famous. Do you want more numbers? 41 and 4! 41 is the numbers of gunshots that were fired at Amadou Diallo, a man who did not have an gun, a knife, a piece of gum in his pocket and was just getting his ID out.... 41 is the number of bullets shot just to be on the "safe side". 4 is the number of police officers found not guilty. And then there is 660. It's the number of alleged Al-Qeada and Taliban fighters who have been brought to Guatanamo bay, bound, gagged, ear plugged and blindfolded and detained for over two years without charges or access to counsel, or even a phone call to their family... And how about 5385? It's the number of children that are detained, kept prisoner, for illegally entering the country, unaccompanied. Some of these children have family here, willing to foster them. Some probably wouldn't mind going back home. Instead they are kept in prison, sorry, in e "special" school/detainment center... And finally 148. It happened this past Saturday. 148. It's the number of people who perished when a plane crashed over the red sea of Egypt. Entire French families, 13 Egyptian crewmembers, one Moroccan and one Japanese woman. Who knows about it here? Not news worthy. But please, let me know how many feet long was the hole of Saddam Hussein's "hiding spot".Isn't it about time we opened our mouths and counted what mattered?I am just as guilty as the next person. I am scared to open my mouth sometimes as well. I don't want to be boycotted like the Dixie-Chicks, not be asked out 'cause I am too "radical", lose my job and so on and so on…But Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted to scream? A business dinner where offensive jokes are shared in between amuses-bouches and appetizers, or when your best friend's boyfriends tells her she better get those implants or else no one is ever going to love her? Or worse, when he tells her to go put some clothes on because she looks like a cheap ass mother-fucking slut dressed like that and "don't let me get my belt off!" Have you ever heard kids calling one another "stupid homo"? Someone actually referring to a black person as a nigger, and it's not part of a rap song sang by a "brother".I am not saying we should interrupt everyone making a point when we disagree with them, but you know and I know when someone steps over the line. When a bully mocks it's one thing. When he beats up the kid with glasses, he went too far and you should say so. According to "Stop the Hate", this year, 1,634.000 kids were bullied. What are we waiting for? Another suicide? Another Columbine? When your friend talks about killing themselves, speak up. Because you do not want him or her to become part of the statistic: every eighteen minutes, someone in America commits suicide...When someone makes fun of the fat girl on the dance floor, you should slap them if they're smaller than you, or at least tell them to shut up! Yes, I believe in being compassionate and forgiving, allowing others to be who they are and have their own opinion, be free to express it. Who am I to say who is right and who is wrong? But by being too tolerant, too loving, too forgiving, we simply shut up. Silence can come across as approval, motivation for some people. The extra push they need to go over the edge! By keeping quiet we are pushing the dirt under the rug. And that can lead to death! Silence has become too unacceptable for me to shut up. Silence has equaled death for too long!Today you can read my lips and they will tell you: Enough is enough is enough is enough.