The Right to Listen

I think that “doing nothing”—in the sense of refusing productivity and stopping to listen—entails an active process of listening that seeks out the effects of racial, environmental, and economic injustice and brings about real change.

We are all accustomed to thinking of freedom of speech as a universal human right enshrined in democratic countries’ constitutions and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In looking at freedom of speech in this way, we tend naturally to focus on the right of the speaker to say what she believes, without censorship or punishment. But this