Sometimes I get tired of using my “inside voice” for advocacy.
A woman dies walking through the bitter cold to an open homeless shelter. I use my inside voice to tell policymakers that she is one of more than a hundred people who will die homeless this year.
I know people who have more cockroaches, mice, and other critters as neighbors than women, men, and children. Using my inside voice, I ask legislators to consider stronger laws to protect low-income renters.
A state representative tells me it is the Church, not the State, that should care for people experiencing homelessness. I politely use my inside voice to explain that people living on the streets with severe and persistent mental illness, women and young people fleeing violence, and families perpetually trapped in an economy that doesn’t offer them a path to stability might benefit from some professional assistance.
My inside voice shares useful statistics intended to promote change. It delves into cost-benefit analyses, explaining that prevention and early intervention are almost always cheaper—and more humane—than waiting until problems become crises.
My inside voice is Minnesota Nice. It is middle-class-skewed. It doesn’t want to rock the boat. It believes that if I provide enough information, explain the problem clearly enough, and make the economic case convincingly enough, eventually the right people will understand and change will follow.
But my inside voice is starting to sound stale.
And it isn’t producing the results we need.
While I remain polite and respectful, some policymakers continue to make terrible changes to programs that currently keep vulnerable people alive.
A few days ago, I heard a legislator question the existence of mental illness. After all, there is no blood test for it.
That’s when my outside voice bubbled up from somewhere deep in my gut.
It was angry. Disgusted.
I wanted to lash out. I wanted to scream words that rarely come out of my mouth. I wanted to make my opponents feel small. I wanted to blame.
During times like that, it is probably best that I go for a run, listen to some heavy metal, or find a place where I can scream and no one will hear me.
But I am beginning to realize that my outside voice can be useful.
It doesn’t have to be cruel. It doesn’t have to be insulting. It doesn’t have to tear people down.
My outside voice is the voice that stops hiding behind acronyms for effective programs and bureaucratic language. It is the voice that tells the truth plainly enough that policymakers have to feel some of the discomfort that comes with accepting the status quo.
My outside voice sometimes gets elevated.
It quivers.
Sometimes it doesn’t have all the statistics behind the feelings.
But it comes from somewhere real.
It comes from seeing people hurt. From knowing that some of the policies being debated in comfortable rooms have consequences for people who are already living on the edge.
My inside voice says, “Here are the numbers. Here is the research. Here is the cost-benefit analysis.”
My outside voice says, “Look at what is happening to people.”
Maybe we need both.
But perhaps I have spent too much time believing that advocacy is most effective when it is quiet, reasonable, well-documented, and polite.
There are times when those things matter.
And there are times when people need to hear the anger behind the statistics.
My outside voice might just be the voice that reaches politicians and “real people” alike.
It might be the voice that reminds us that these aren’t abstract policy debates. They are people’s lives.
I think I need to use my outside voice more.
