Manifesto, "We will. We shall. We must not. " by Hallie Leo
Today, we are here to observe the burial of our freedom. As we gather around in our melancholy state, we honor the loss of our dear friend. But his murderer will be avenged; his killers have stomped upon their last victim. Freedom shall live on through memory and through each and every one of us. As we unify to remember what freedom was like, we must all take an oath to resist the forces of oppression.
The media; the central powers in office; the heads of corporate businesses… How many things are filtered and sugar coated before they are distributed to the masses? How many sugarcoated news tidbits have given the people endless cavities, aches, and sores? We, the regular people, are tired of oppression. We, the people, are tired of the cost that comes from censorship. We, the people, have been sifted and concentrated to the extent that we have forgotten what it feels like to express ourselves without the fear of being ostracized or castigated for our beliefs.
What does it mean when our abilities to hear or to see horror or beauty is taken away? Will we be controlled by a delegated or imposed power? Censorship is a tool that shapes our mindset in today’s society, but a lack of censorship can create just as much havoc.
Books in Germany, scholars in China, and now us… We will be censored until we do not exist on our own. We will be filtered until we do not have anything left to say. We will be synthetic, affected, broken, and tainted by the tyrannical influence of the media. We will be slaves to the system that wishes for our complacency with the way things are.
I do not propose that we participate in pandemonium. No, I am simply stating that we should not compromise our original thoughts or actions to conform to the stencil of what is acceptable within the bounds of our modern society. We will rise above the media’s vision of what is scandalous and what is entertaining. Our own ideas will take precedence. We will. We shall. We must be able to think for ourselves and to speak and to create without the fear of being victimized.
We, the people, seldom appreciate the endless opportunities that the United States provides for us. We will not forget that our country is rooted in a deep and inspirational history of freedom and individual rights. We shall not forget that our country is also dirtied by its history of slavery and drug related crime. We must not forget that history is also censored. History can turn the objective into the subjective. History has the power to remind us of what went wrong, but it is malleable and can be rewritten to depict a grossly erroneous tale.
They write our textbooks. They make our films. They produce the ideas that influence our thoughts. They post propaganda. They manipulate our advertisements. Enough is enough!
A lack of public shaming or mild censorship may result in havoc, but since we are so deprived… we thrive upon our “celebrities” making mistakes. We worship the smutty stories that are plastered onto the covers of our Magazines. But why? Why are we this way? Why have we become such narcissistic animals? Why do we censor and shame bad behavior, yet praise it at the same time. With our new age form of censorship, we oppress the people. We are taking away the raw reality of the world and replacing it with ideas that lack substance. Mainstream media gives more coverage to stories about Amanda Bynes’ lastest tantrums rather than to Malala’s courage and bravery to fight for her own knowledge against a more oppressive censorship than our own. We need to ask “Why?” We will move together in a cohesive unit. We shall ruminate about who really is in control of our opinions and our actions. And we must not compromise ourselves for another’s ideals.