The Danger of Silence, by Clint Smith (Jimena López)

The Danger of Silence, by Clint Smith

Clint Smith is a poet and educator whose work blends art and activism. As a teacher,  he has internalized the message that says Martin Luther King in 1968:
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends".

Klint says we see the consequences of silence in the form of discrimination, violence, genocide and war. In his classes he encourages his students to explore the silences in their own lives through poetry. Create a culture in the classroom where students feel safe to share the intimacies of their own silences. Klint has 4 basic principles, which explains before starting the course: read critically, consciously write, speak clearly, speak your truth. He realized that if he was asking them to lift the voice, he had to say his own truth and say that also often he couldn’t do it. He makes clear that is a son of a catholic family in New Orleans, and that as tradition during the Lent taught the better thing that it was possible to do is resign something. He stop taking refreshments, McDonald's, … But until one year,he sacrifice to speak.

Klin makes clear that he spend most of his life saying to the people what they wanted to listen and not what they needed to listen. Dishonor his pupils for not defending them, ignored a child and a vagabond. "We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't," says Clint Smith.

In conclusion, he says that this year, he will live every day as if there were a microphone tucked under his tongue, a stage on the underside of his inhibition.

Jimena López de Lamadrid