"I Know That Voice"

Unless we stand together to defend even unpopular causes, the voices of Americans will be silenced, too.

When I served as a technical specialist with the US Information Agency in 1987 in Moscow & Kiev on a traveling exhibition about the use of computers in the US, I was fortunate to meet two journalists who worked with Voice of America. One was an on-air personality. The other was a writer. I wish I could remember their names.

1987: Guides take a break in the lounge. From left, Jana Fankhauser, Dawn Stockbridge, Bridget Farley, Melinda Goodrich, Jan Eklund. [Photo by Amanda Merullo, 1987]

The on-air guy remains the most polished, affable professional I have ever had the good fortune to meet. It's hard for me to convey the effect he had when he spoke. In our crowded space, a hands-on computer center open only to educators, scientists, and engineers by invitation, his voice and presence calmed, centered, and lifted spirits — even among those standing outside, unable to enter.

I began to recognize Ukranian for "I know that voice," spoken as people pressed in to talk to him, thank him, share a story of their own.

One elderly woman who couldn't reach him spoke to me instead. She began with the sentence "I know that voice." Then she said, (through my interpreter,) "I can't tell you how often that voice in the darkness told me it would all be ok, all would be well."

Now, the Voice of America personality in the room was far too young to have been on air in WWII. So, I can't say with any truth what specific darkness she referred to. And this was 1987 — so she's probably long gone by now.

The Soviet Union fell four short years after this USIA exhibit finished its tour. (I admit that I felt outsized pride over our hand in this.) And I've often wondered whether all was well with her, and whether she lived to see Putin's bombs fall on Ukraine.

Last night, I dreamed her voice. She kept asking, "Now who will tell me all will be well?"

I awoke sobbing.

I joke about that exhibit as my time as a propagandist for the US. But the truth is, we didn't need to lie nor were we asked to. Simply by being humans to each other, we learned not to fear each other. We put human faces — and voices — on the United States. And the people we met did likewise for their countries. Simply by existing, talking, eating together, we countered the state-sponsored propaganda that made us out to be enemies.

But free speech is an enemy to dictators and despots. And silencing Voice of America yesterday made many of them rejoice, publicly. I can't help but feel this shut down was an intentional gift to Putin in his war with Ukraine, and to all despots who reign by making truth unknowable.

As the great Edward R. Murrow (who also headed the USIA in the 60s) once said:

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.”

The Voice that modeled that unmistakable sound of ordinary, humble, principled people speaking their noble and funny and wise and self-deprecating truth to power and to each other, was silenced throughout the world yesterday.

After six weeks of snubbing Congress, and distorting language around diversity, equity and inclusion, after a month spent shutting unfavorable reporters out of the press pool, after a week of deporting protestors and threatening universities for lawful but unfavorable protests, on March 17, 2025, they silenced the Voice of America.

Unless people from both parties stand together against being silenced, unless we protect our constitutional rights and the system of checks and balances and responsibilities that protect our liberties, and unless we remember and cultivate the sound of calm, fierce truth:

March 17, 2025 will also serve as the day the voice of Americans died.

Today's action menu:

Call the GOP and beg them to stand up for the Constitution. Support an independent media outlet. Start a broadsheet. Use your ham radio to take up the slack. Have a beer at a local bar or donut shop and find common ground with someone whose opinions you dislike.

Cultivate sources of truth for yourself. If all else fails, get outside and listen to the four dimensional, interwoven, complicated sounds of the physical world. Unless we figure out how to stop this assault on free speech, that may be the only truth we hear for a long time.