On the idea of a witness
Or, I opened my broken heart and an essay spilled out (cw: gun violence)
I didn’t think I’d muster the energy to show up at the page last night, or the night before that, but something tugged at me, so I’m here knocking. I’ve been thinking a lot about Sonya Huber’s recent essays, “Writing the Emergency” and “Live Through This Carrying.” She writes about the collision course that sometimes exists between lived-through crisis and making art, and how one can expect to do that. There are a lot of blank pages. There are several tears. And still, there is the showing up, again and again. As we do with life, we do with art.
(Side note: I had Sonya as a professor in grad school, and she is as phenomenal a teacher as she is writer, and her Substack is a lucky way I still get to learn from her.)
From the infinitesimally macro to the micro, this world — nay, this universe — is full of disaster and chaos and pain. There are train derailments. Toxic chemical spills. War. Famine. Bombs. Black holes. Missing women. Missing children. Missing empathy. A puzzle full of the most destitute pieces. And yet. Sometimes, I can only sit with it all. Let it take hold. Witness whatever’s in front of me. There is something about the sitting-with. There is something about witnessing.
Last Sunday night, I attended the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Gala. An international literary prize founded in 2006, it’s the only U.S. literary award recognizing the power of literature to promote peace. It’s named for the Dayton Peace Accords:
In 1995 Dayton was chosen as the site of what came to be known as the Dayton Peace Accords. The accords were a last-ditch effort to stop the ethnic cleansing that had claimed more than 300,000 lives and displaced 1 million people. It was ‘the worst killing ground in Europe since World War II,’ wrote Mr. Richard Holbrooke in his 1998 book, To End a War.
Ambassador Holbrooke chose Dayton as the summit site, an unimpressive alternative to opulent settings in Geneva, Paris, or Washington. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the largest in the country, provided stark accommodations for the nine participating delegations, sealed off the press, and displayed America’s air power. This environment augmented Holbrook’s use of the ‘Big Bang’ strategy—now known in diplomacy circles as a ‘Dayton’—where negotiators are locked in a room until they reach an agreement.
— From the Dayton Literary Peace Prize website
In 1995, I would have been 9 years old, blissfully unaware of the horrors of the world, unable to define the word “genocide.” I would have been unaware of war, of sacrifice, of all that went into protecting my ignorant state of safety.
I have a hazy memory — maybe I was 5: I’m with my mother at Thriftway grocery store, just inside the doors where all the gumball and prize machines are. I put in a coin and turn the handle. A plastic ball with a pop-off lid rolls into my hand. I open it and peer inside. I’m disappointed. It’s a small yellow pin, with the words:
OPERATION DESERT STORM
BRING OUR TROOPS HOME SAFE
My mother peered down at it. I’ll take that, she said, tucking it into her purse before I lost interest, or lost it completely. Decades later, I found it in her jewelry box, safe and sound. I knew nothing of war then. She knew enough.
At the gala, a cloud hung over the night. It was festive and people were cheerful, but given the state of things (the Israel-Gaza war, Russo-Ukrainian war), how could it not? The dichotomy of attending a lavish fundraising dinner named for peace while each of us was aware of the global unrest and violence happening in those very moments was an uncomfortable pace to sit. But it was there on that stage that the writers and honorees let loose their words, solemn and grounding acknowledgements of hurt, fear and suffering while also sparking hope. They did not have the answers. They were not the peacemakers. But in those words they opened up an invitation to sit in the discomfort together, to acknowledge a shared feeling, and that moment has brought me the most peace I’ve felt in months.
In her acceptance speech, Sandra Cisneros, winner of the Holbrooke Lifetime Achievement Award, quoted Rumi when she said, the reason our hearts break over and over again is so they can learn to stay open. I began thinking about what that meant — the work it takes to witness, the courage it takes to feel hurt, to acknowledge the pulverizing things. Of prying the heart open again, letting your guard down again and again, knowing you’ll be crushed in the process. The acceptance of that.
I keep thinking about what it means to witness. To see, to be seen. I don’t know that pain can get any better if it’s held secretly in the dark.
On Thursday, the Washington Post published a piece, “Terror on Repeat,” about the devastation caused by AR-15 shootings. Poynter, a nonprofit media institute, published an opinion piece about the coverage decisions in this story, titled “How The Washington Post decided to show extremely graphic images of mass shooting.” The Poynter piece (again, an opinion piece) opens as follows:
Today, The Washington Post went further than any mainstream news organization has ever gone before in showing the brutality and devastation of something that plagues this nation: mass shootings.
This morning, The Washington Post published “Terror on Repeat.”
It’s at this point, you should be warned: The Post piece is extremely graphic and some may find it disturbing. The Post looks back at 11 mass shootings in which the weapon used was an AR-15. Just the names of the places bring back horrific memories: Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas, and Newtown, Connecticut. The Post’s project includes the shootings at a concert in Las Vegas, a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
To have the most impact, the Post told the story through photos, videos and the words of those who have survived these horrific shootings. The photos are jarring. For example, there are images of schoolrooms at Robb Elementary in Uvalde moments after dead children were removed. Videos are hard to watch, such as one that includes the cries of students inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as gunshots are heard.
— Tom Jones for Poynter
From a media perspective, we (journalists) are are very cautious about the photos, videos, and audio we use in our stories, on our websites, on our social media. We have internal discussions on which portions to use, what to edit, what to blur out. We circulate and discuss police body cam footage and discuss it from all angles. We make what we believe to be the ethical choice, based on answers to several questions:
Does this add something — context, understanding — to the story?
Does editing, blurring, or bleeping take something critical away from it?
Would using this be gratuitous? Is there anything about this that is overwhelmingly exploitative?
Can we accomplish the same goals — stating the facts, telling the story — without it?
Will it cause undue harm?
Human beings are fallible. The decisions they make, equally so. We are sophisticated in our clumsiness, but we’re still clumsy at the heart of it. Sometimes we try to make the right decision and still mess it up. Other times, we move too quickly in the moment and get it flat-out wrong.
The discussion (from a journalist’s perspective) around the WaPo story reminded me of a memory from my early days in the Dayton newsroom. It was Monday, April 15, 2013. I was managing the website homepage and social media at that time, scrolling through Twitter when the news broke about a bombing at the Boston Marathon. AP didn’t have any images yet, but Twitter was awash in them. I requested use of some images from a few users so that we could have an image for our story.
I found a photo featuring officials working the scene, with debris behind them and clusters of people huddled together. That was the primary subject of the photo, or at least I thought. But after uploading and publishing, I noticed something toward the bottom: a white sheet, with a bloom of red. I quickly realized that this was a body, and flagged down my boss and a few colleagues to discuss.
It was a graphic photo, yes, but it was not overtly graphic — but it was disturbing enough that in the end, we took it down and went with a less-upsetting image. But that conversation stuck with me, and I’ve had dozens of conversations like it since.
I often think “do no harm.” But I also believe in the power of witnessing, of giving something the space to exist, no matter how horrible. These things fester in the dark. We can’t truly turn away from them, not really.
Last year, to her delight, M. got our 12-year-old a massive stack of books for Christmas. They were all banned or challenged books, and they contained multitudes, a variety of perspectives and experiences. There were stories about immigrants, war, family, friendship, disabilities, mental illness, and loneliness. There were stories about self-acceptance, prejudice, love, and joy. That same Christmas, she got me a tote bag that said: I READ BANNED BOOKS.
This morning, she was talking about the current book she’s reading called “The War That Saved My Life.” It’s about a 10-year-old girl surviving not one, but two challenges to her existence: her abusive mother, and World War II. As I listened to the 12-year-old’s description of the protagonist and the how the abuse she endured made her afraid of trusting others, she said, "poor girl has trauma because of it.” Her compassion and empathy emerge so easily. It makes me want to be a better person, too.
As Dayton Literary Peace Prize executive director Nick Raines quoted in his address at the gala: People change their minds like they change their underwear — privately. What better way to do that than in the pages of a book?
For 8th grade Civics class, we had to do an oral history project about an event in history. My project was titled “A Soldier’s Story: The War in Vietnam.” My subject was my father, who served in Vietnam.
I won’t forget the interview.
I sat in the dining room, notebook and pen in hand, as I talked to him on the phone. We did the interview remotely, since he was in Delaware at the time. It felt like it went on for hours. I would ask a question, and it would be met with silence. Sometimes, the pauses were so long that I would ask, “Dad? Are you still there?” He’d clear his throat. Yes, he’d say.
At the time, I was prepared with my research and my questions. I thought I knew what I was asking of him. But I was in 8th grade, far removed from any sense of war or real-world conflict. I was asking for excavation, the opening of a painful Pandora’s Box. But I didn’t know that then.
So I try to listen to all the hard things. The blurred parts. I know very little about so much of the pain in this world, but I know just enough, and I can try to be a witness to it.
Wow! This is absolutely one of your best! I struggle with just about everything you write about, but especially the AR15. I still have not gotten over Sandy Hook, it haunts me to this day. As for war, our son is deployed, as I write this , and I don’t know know where he is because that is also part of war. You pulled at my heart , Ashley but,as always, I’m so proud of you as a journalist and a compassionate person❤️