A Writer's Power

Hi readers, today I meant to write up an explanation for my lyric, Footprints, that I posted on Tuesday. I was in the middle of writing out how writing can be powerful when concise when a headline on Yahoo! news caught my eye. It was about the four men who had raped a woman on a bus in India and left her for dead on the street. I had heard about this event for awhile, but I had always discounted it and just shook my head in disgust. But upon reading the article that the four men accused of gang rape were sentenced to death, I felt awful for not having paid more attention. It is really easy for someone who lives in a country like the United States to be blissfully unaware of the brutalities and hardships that face others in less fortunate countries. So today, I wanted to talk about the power that everyone has: their voice.

Everyone has a voice, but not everyone feels comfortable using it. I find that a writer's greatest power is not their imagination or their creativity, but it is their ability to make their voice be heard. Poets, novelists, prose-writers, anyone. Writers can make their views heard, can have their thoughts broadcast to the world and with innovations like social media, this is easier than ever. Writers are gifted with the ability to eloquently project their thoughts and ideas into words and it would be selfish if you as a writer did not use this gift.
When I read the news story about how the woman was gang raped on a public bus, raped with a metal bar and then dumped bleeding and naked onto the street to die, I felt sick to my stomach. It's tragic that we has humans, we who brag to be so advanced and so above cruelty, would do something like that. In an event like this, it's not just the Indian government's responsibility to stop this kind of brutality, its humans' responsibility as a civilization and a species to rise above and beyond this.
So I speak to you now, my fellow writers. Never forget that you have a gift that you could use to change the world, albeit slowly and steadily. If we always assume that someone else would do what we put off till tomorrow, nothing will ever get done. So I challenge you. Use your gifts to change the world, write not just about romance and far-away lands, critique our society, our culture, our views. Help us as a civilization see our errors and fix them, so that together as a world, we can become better.