When Hunter asked me to take a crack at the year-end review this year, it seemed a bit daunting as I started thinking about this year past. It was a tough year, a violent year. Only a week into 2015 we saw the targeted killing of cartoonists and journalists in Paris, in what turned out to be the first of many violent attacks by the forces of divisiveness. From Beirut to Paris, innocents were deliberately made targets, ordinary people going about their lives at cafés and concert halls. And where compassion was needed this year, it was often lacking, as refugees fleeing brutal civil war were too often turned back, met with racism and accused of being the very people they are trying to escape.

Political discussion has framed this past year as dominated by clashes of civilizations, subtextually advancing the idea that cooperation between different nations, faiths, and cultures is inherently impossible and the problem. And too often, the great challenge can be to find memes and shared evidence to the contrary. We are so immersed in the images and rhetoric of difference that it is easy to forget the overwhelming preponderance of our commonality.

Guns and borders took up too big a place in the chronicle of this year of human history, and freedom of expression found itself on the frontlines in this year of violence. On one hand we saw the targeted deliberate killings of both artists and fans of art, cartoonists and concertgoers. But as well, the fundamental human right to free expression has found itself increasingly violated in more structural senses, by people’s own governments that violate their sacred duty to protect the rights of their citizens. We live in a time of both extremist and structural violence. At the time of this writing, The Voice Project is running 28 campaigns for artists who are imprisoned by their governments on charges relating to their artistic work, for simply using their voices to speak out, and with many more facing formal charges, censorship or other forms of intimidation by their state and those in positions of power.

So truthfully that’s some pretty dark stuff which I wasn’t looking forward to putting it down in print, especially around the holidays. But in researching on this, here is what saved me. It was looking through the actions taken by this community over the past year, I actually tried looking at them one by one; thousands of actions, taken by people from around the world on the behalf of complete strangers. Letters were written and signed by people from countries big and small, from all corners of the globe; from the United States to Russia, from Israel to Turkey, from El Salvador to Hong Kong, from Sri Lanka to the Canary Islands… thousands of actions from individuals from 57 different countries who took the time this year to write a letter, share a story, and lend their voice in compassion and support of someone else, a stranger who needed it. Trying to page through them one by one you find yourself facing the hard fact and the overwhelming reality that people care about each other.

And that’s what saves it for me…saves the looking back at 2015, the writing of this summary, the holidays, the work we’ve done, and the work we plan to do in the coming year.

I’m encouraged too by how many good outcomes we had this past year. In January, Wisconsin’s Fourth District Court of Appeals dismissed all of an estimated 400 cases brought against protesters who sang in the state capitol and were the subject of our Solidarity Wisconsin campaign. In February, the Malaysian cartoonist Zunar was released from jail and is free while he mounts his case against the charges he faces for using his pen to speak out. His newest book, full of political satire and commentary, was released in September without arrest or incident.

Malaysian Cartoonist Zunar, unbowed.

 
In Cuba, Tania Bruguera was released from detention and her passport returned, after being arrested for placing an open microphone in Havana’s Revolution Square and calling on Cubans to speak their mind. She was able to return to New York in August. To hear first hand from a safe and secure Tania how grateful she was for all the support she got from this community while detained was one of the highlights of our year. Likewise with the success of seeing Danilo Maldonado freed after 10 months in prison. Bruguera is currently a fellow at Yale and Maldonado has been spending time with his daughter.

Cuban American artist Tania Bruguera back in the United States following eight months of detention in Cuba.

 
In Tibet Pema Rigdzin, a producer of Tibetan music featured in The Voice Project’s “Free The Artists of Tibet” campaign, was released by Chinese authorities in October and welcomed home by his family and friends. And just last month Yaghma Golrouee, the author arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard for producing a women’s rights video, was released from an apparently arbitrary detention, though numerous artists, poets and journalists remain imprisoned.

We have plenty of work ahead for us in 2016, but I am buoyed by the wins and by the less-told stories of compassion and solidarity that defy those that wield the guns and those that would close the borders, that defy the bullies of state who would quiet the voices of dissent, and that defy the distance and difference which we are told should separate us each from the other. Freedom of expression will continue to be on the front lines, and those with the courage to speak out will need support in this coming year, some are sitting in prisons right now. With your help, we’ll aim to have them out by this time next year. It’s something we’ll work on together, no matter the distance, no matter the borders. And we’ll do it with words of Sabeen Mahmud, the Pakistani activist killed this past year on her way home from a free speech seminar in April, in mind: “Things are dangerous and bad things happen. But you can’t let fear control you, you’ll never get anything done.” Let’s keep fighting against fear, for free expression, and for each other in 2016. If you’d like to make a contribution to The Voice Project, we would appreciate the help, please do so here.

Seán Patrick Eckmann
Campaign Director
The Voice Project