“Every bombed village is my hometown.” -James Baldwin on the Vietnam War
Protest songs are love songs. Though the calling to write one has grown within me over the past few years, I’ve struggled to do it without relying on clichès. This essay is about how one of my favorite Star Trek characters ended up guiding me through the process.
My song “Bearing Witness”, about a journalist reporting from the frontlines of a war, was originally titled “Jake Sisko”. One night in January, I lay on the couch after watching an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. DS9 is a show I watch over and over because the characters and storytelling are so rich. I had been grappling with how to express my despair over the massive suffering of civilians I was watching be bombed and brutalized in high definition through my phone screen each day, how to explain why I couldn’t look away in an implicit plea to others not to avert their eyes either.
Jake Sisko is the son of Starfleet Commander/Captain Benjamin Sisko, and their bond forms the heart of the series. DS9 was revolutionary in many ways, and one of these was centering the tender, complex, loving relationship between a Black father and his son. Angelica Jade Bastién writes in "Deep Space Nine Is TV’s Most Revolutionary Depiction of Black Fatherhood":
When Deep Space Nine premiered in 1993, it was walking in the shadow of its immensely successful predecessor, The Next Generation, which was still on the air. The series was also entering a politically fraught environment on the heels of the Los Angeles riots, and not far removed from the presidency of Ronald Reagan — a politician who framed black people as stark stereotypes of criminals and “welfare queens,” establishing a cultural understanding of black families that America continues to grapple with. In this context, the DS9 producers’ decision to cast its leading commander (and later captain) as a black man was not just a historic first within Star Trek, but politically resonant in ways that have only deepened over the years.
Deep Space Nine would go on to carve a unique path within Star Trek lore, and science fiction as a whole, as a complex, expertly crafted meditation on war and the price of peace that favored multi-season arcs, which amplified its biting approach to Star Trek mythos. In its first season, it was uneven, still getting a hold on the characterization and ideas it would continue to explore. But one aspect of its story immediately felt lived-in and real: the tender relationship between Commander (and later Captain) Benjamin Sisko (a magnetic, theatrical Avery Brooks) and his young son, Jake (Cirroc Lofton).
In the first episode, we learn that Ben and Jake are grieving the loss of their beloved wife and mother, Jennifer. Jennifer and Jake were living as civilians on Ben’s starship when it was attacked, and she was killed in front of them. Over the seven years of the series, we see Jake break with the military tradition of his father to become first a writer of fiction and eventually a journalist and war correspondent. Ben’s father, Joseph Sisko, a New Orleans chef, is introduced as an occasional but integral character. Bastién explains what the show’s characterization of the Black family at its emotional center means to her:
Conversations about representation in pop culture often feel like too much of a numbers game. Whittling the value of a series down to who stars in and who creates these works can be useful when looking at the culture more broadly. But it doesn’t tell us about the soul of the work — how it speaks to its audience, the history it reflects, the artistic risks it’s willing to take in order to not only represent minorities, but to speak to their experience with care. The impact of Deep Space Nine goes beyond the casting of black actors like Brooks and Lofton in these pivotal roles. The series boldly interrogated blackness within the arc of American history through their characterization. Like my maternal family, Sisko was from New Orleans and took pride in his heritage, often cooking Creole recipes from scratch that he learned from his chef father. When I see three generations of the Sisko family onscreen in episodes like the season-four two-parter “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost,” a tinge of wonder rises in me. How often have we seen a black family given such importance, depth, and cultural weight on a television show such as this?
The episode I watched that night in January was an early one. Jake hadn’t started writing yet, but it struck me that he was already a keen and caring observer of people. In one scene, he’s encouraging Ben to pursue a woman he’s interested in and says, “It’s been over a year since you’ve been on a date, Dad. A year!” Ben is bemused and touched that his son has noticed this, that he cares.
Suddenly it came to me: I should write about war through Jake’s eyes. At the time, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that over a hundred Palestinian journalists had been killed in the past few months, or that many journalists still alive in Gaza had chosen to remain there despite the danger and having the opportunity to evacuate. In their own words, this decision was rooted in love for their people and their homeland. Ben desperately wants to keep Jake safe and far away from the war front, but even he cannot stand against his son’s devotion to what he feels is right. Jake is honest about the terror he feels in life-threatening situations and the times when his courage fails him, as in the fourth-season episode “Nor the Battle to the Strong”. He writes:
The truth is, I was just as scared in the hospital as I'd been when we went for the generator. So scared, that all I could think about was doing whatever it took to stay alive. Once that meant running away, and once it meant picking up a phaser.
When he shows his father what he’s written, Ben replies:
Anyone who's been in battle would recognize himself in this. Most of us wouldn't care to admit it. It takes courage to look inside yourself, and even more courage to write it for other people to see. I'm proud of you, son.
Jake never lets fear or failure deter him from his mission. In “Bearing Witness”, I imagined the protagonist writing a letter to someone they loved, explaining why they were risking everything to stay and document the truth.
The song poured out of me, beginning with the first line of the chorus: If I told you, would you believe me? Although it’s never stated outright, I feel that Jake’s memory of witnessing his mother’s violent death weighs in his choices during the war, so from the start I wanted to include that (my mother silent at my feet / sometimes it’s all I can recall). Thanks to my partner, who gave me a suggestion that only he could have knowing both me and the show so well, it grew beyond Jake’s experience to encompass those closest to him: his father, the soldier; his grandfather, whose ministry during the war is feeding people; his best friend, Nog, an eager Starfleet cadet who loses his leg in battle. I reference the following exchange between Jake and Nog at the end of the second verse, from the sixth-season episode “Valiant”:
Jake: What do you think I should say?
Nog: That it was a good ship, with a good crew, that made a mistake. We let ourselves blindly follow Captain Watters, and he led us over a cliff.
Chief Dorian Collins: That’s not true. Captain Watters was a great man.
Jake: Dorian, he got everyone killed.
Chief Dorian Collins: If he failed, it’s because we failed him.
Nog (to Jake): Put that in your story too. Let people read it, and decide for themselves.
In my song, this became:
And for my best friend who survived
The loss of faith and limb together
I tell the truth as he prescribed
This war, it wages on forever
I changed the name of the song to “Bearing Witness”, but it wouldn’t exist without Jake. As I was preparing to write this post, I did an image search for “Jake Sisko writing” and was stunned when it linked me to this essay by Jerome Stueart called “What Can We Learn From Star Trek’s Jake Sisko, Writer?”. Not only does my song dovetail with his piece, but would you like to guess what his website is called? Bear Witness. As Stueart notes, Jake Sisko is a writer “in the mold not so much of Hemingway and Crane but of Samuel R. Delany, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison—artists trying to envision a future, trying to illuminate the present, talking about life under the Occupation, telling their stories.”
An unexpected benefit of using a fictional world as an entry point to our real one is that it makes the song feel timeless and universal. “Bearing Witness” is a protest song, an antiwar song, and despite its genesis in the wars raging across the globe at this moment, the message I hope it carries is ultimately about opening our hearts to that which may seem unbearable. To bear witness, we must not only see, but be willing to feel the pain of our fellow beings as inseparable from ourselves. This is a song about the kind of love that pierces the armor we use to keep true empathy at bay and that moves us to act.
I do a Tibetan Buddhist practice called tonglen that I learned from the wonderful and wise book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön (p. 123):
Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or have died, those who are in pain of any kind. It can be done as a formal meditation practice or right on the spot at any time. We are out walking and we see someone in pain—right on the spot we can begin to breathe in that person’s pain and send out relief. Or we are just as likely to see someone in pain and look away. The pain brings up our fear or anger; it brings up our resistance and confusion. So on the spot we can do tonglen for all the people just like ourselves, all those who wish to be compassionate but instead are afraid—who wish to be brave but instead are cowardly. Rather than beating ourselves up, we can use our personal stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world. Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us. Use what seems like poison as medicine. We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
It occurs to me now that perhaps what I am asking us all to do is practice tonglen for one another. I often include tonglen in my morning meditation practice. Then, though I am imperfect at doing this consistently, I try to take one concrete action in the direction of justice and peace, like calling my representatives. For the next 18 weeks, my focus is on mobilizing Democratic voters ahead of the U.S. election on November 5th, 2024. Despite my vehement opposition to the war machine in this country, where I live on stolen land watered with the blood of genocide and slavery, I believe in incremental change. I see a lot of doubt about the value of voting these days and cannot understand how some are so quick to cast aside a right which so many have died for and so many continue to be denied. Those who want to maintain hierarchy, inequality, and injustice know the power of our vote, and those of us who mobilize against their tyranny must as well. We must also always hold those who claim to represent us accountable because it has unfailingly been the power of ordinary people that forces the hand of progress.
In the sixth-season episode of DS9, “Far Beyond the Stars”, Ben Sisko begins having visions of himself as a science-fiction writer in the 1950s, with Jake and the rest of the main cast also appearing in different roles. Bastién describes this incredible story line and its impact:
In the 1950s plotline, Jake isn’t Sisko’s son, but a slick-talking street hustler known as Jimmy. The episode builds to a gut-wrenching emotional turn that always moves me to tears: Jimmy/Jake is gunned down in the street by cops, sending Benny/Sisko into an emotional breakdown. He barrels toward Jimmy’s lifeless body, covered in blood. When Benny grows angry, the cops take the opportunity to brutalize him. Weeks later, Benny finally decides to go to the office to see his story about Deep Space Nine — which he cherishes because it allows for a hopeful future for black people — first published, only to find out it won’t be going to print. Benny launches into a monologue about the power of his idea with a beautiful intensity that echoes with the voice of every black man beaten down by a system that survives on their suffering.
When the episode finished airing at Syracuse University, I was approached by a black professor who sat in on the screening. He was deeply moved by Brooks’s performance, the audaciousness of his direction, and the political resonance of the story line, which tackled everything from police brutality to the devaluing black creativity. “Why didn’t this man win any Emmys?” he asked ecstatically. We spoke at length about how Sisko and his relationship with Jake is one of the more unsung revolutionary turns in television history and why it cuts so deeply. No series before or since has a portrayed a black father with such complexity, crafting him as a widow, a powerful authority figure, a religious icon, a man whose morals are formed in shades of gray and whose love of his son remained his guiding principle.
To me, the most important line in “Bearing Witness” is, Would you let this pain change you? I’m working with a fantastic producer to record a fully arranged version of the song, and she threw out the idea of switching some parts around, which would make the repetition of bearing witness, bearing witness, bearing witness the chorus. I tried it out, but it just didn’t feel right to me. When it comes to our lived experience, bearing witness is not the culmination but the pre-chorus leading us forward into the next part of the song, opening a door into a different way of seeing and being and relating and moving. The vital question that follows is whether we walk through it and let ourselves be changed.
Links and Recommendations
Here is the video of the scene described above from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Far Beyond the Stars”, one of the most powerful in the history of television. It is unconscionable that Avery Brooks never won an Emmy for his passionate, emotional portrayal of Ben Sisko.
Join me in writing postcards to voters with Activate America (formerly Flip the West).
I can’t get enough of Raveena’s new album, Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain. This song, “Rise”, is so uplifting, acknowledging the intensity of suffering in the world while calling on spirit to help us meet the moment. It is also musically exquisite, a lush garden of sound that wraps my soul in a blanket and holds me. I find myself repeating the lines rise up every morning, asking spirit for the truth like a prayer.
The following passage from Thich Nhat Hanh’s Silence (p. 85-88):
Perhaps you have heard of monks in Vietnam who immolated themselves during the war in the 1960s. That action had its root in this chapter of the Lotus Sutra. People who don’t consider this body to be themselves sometimes choose to use this body in order to get a message across. When the Vietnamese monks set themselves on fire, they were trying to send a silent message, to send the strongest message they possibly could, because so far no one had listened to the cries for help of those who were suffering. These monks were trying to say, by acts rather than words, that there was suppression, discrimination, and suffering in Vietnam. They used their body as a torch in an effort to create awareness of that suffering. . .
I learned of Thich Quang Duc’s death in the New York Times. Many people asked the question: "Isn’t that a violation of the precept concerning not killing?” I wrote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a letter sharing with him that this was not really a suicide. When you commit suicide, you are in despair; you don’t want to live anymore. But Thich Quang Duc was not like that. He wanted to live. He wanted his friends and other beings to live. He loved being alive. But he was free enough to offer his body in order to get his message across: “We are suffering and we need your help.” Because of the great compassion in him, he was able to sit very still in the fire, in perfect concentration. I shared with Dr. King my understanding that when Jesus died on the cross, he made the choice to die for the benefit of others—not out of despair but out of the will to help. That is exactly what Thich Quang Duc wanted to do. He committed this action not out of despair but out of hope and love, using his body in order to bring change to a desperate situation.
This burning was a kind of offering. What Thich Quang Duc and Medicine King wanted to offer in the act of self-immolation was not just their body, but their strong determination to help other living beings. That extraordinary determination was the basis of their dramatic action that successfully delivered an unforgettable message and silently transmitted their insight far and wide.
I tell this story not because I think you should do something this drastic, but simply to illustrate the power of silent action. We all want to change certain things or convince someone of something. If you have some small matter at work or in a relationship that you want to change and you’ve tried talking about it without results, consider the strength that is possible in silent action.