Back to The Defiant Few ←THE DEFIANT QUESTION · THURSDAY · DF016
A Bigger Microphone Can Make the Truth Smaller.
Organizations can amplify an advocate’s voice, but amplification is not freedom when the sentence that most needs saying must first survive somebody else’s comfort.
A microphone does not make a voice louder for free. Sometimes the price is electricity. Sometimes it is a logo behind your head and a polite request to avoid the sentence that explains why the microphone was needed in the first place.
I have spent years speaking publicly about Parkinson’s—from testimony before the United States Senate to books, stages, social media and conversations nobody bothered to put on a program. The job has always been translation: take what this disease looks like from the outside and explain what is actually happening underneath it.