A Timely Reminder: Don't Be Bosnia

I get thinking, does this little email of mine, this nth blog or social media post, my letter to the editor, to my congressperson, governor, mayor, dog catcher... does it matter?

Does it even matter if I go to another protest?

Well, friends, nothing has made me want to KEEP SPEAKING UP more than this recent email from a blog-friend (now in the USA) who was a teenager in Bosnia during their civil war (1992-1995).
I originally met her when I read her old blog Bosnian Girl.

This week she wrote:

"I survived one civil war. And I live among the Trump supporters, although I’m not one.
So lately, I keep thinking how the situation here is eerily similar to the situation just before the war started in my country of origin.

There is a difference between here and Bosnia. People here keep on saying their opinion. That difference might save the USA.

People in Bosnia kept quiet all the time because we also had unmarked and armed officials who would break into your house during the night and take people away. Such people disappeared, not even corpses were ever found. So people did not dare to speak up, did not dare to say that they do not support the lies of the government. 

You probably heard on the news what is going on in Portland. Such troops need to be disbanded. Really, a law needs to be made to make such unmarked armed officials illegal. If that becomes the norm, then the USA will slide in the war.

I’m glad that in Portland protests are now stronger than they were, and that there will be an investigation of those mysterious troops."

If we've got freedoms--of speech, of meeting in public, of petitioning for change--let's use them.

You know what happened in Bosnia. If you don't, you can look here. "A Photographer Looks Back on the Horrors of the Bosnian War. But, oh my god, I can't recommend looking.

Let's not be Bosnia.