A brief follow-up from my last link: Garrett Bucks, in his preface to that piece, wrote:

We have wished (appropriately) for bravery from our media, from elected Democrats, from public officials in general. However fair those wishes are, they come with a risk: that we miss the opportunity to be the lonely voice for justice in our own community, the person who makes it a little easier for a second and third and fourth lonely voice to start perking up by our side.

That idea—one lonely voice making it easier for others to perk up—stirred something in me and I started to hum, an indistinguishable tune at first. Only after hitting publish did it coalesce into something recognizable.

I was in my eighth grade choir—this would be 1982, 1983—and one of the songs we performed, and which has clearly stuck with me all these years, was Barry Manilow’s One Voice:

If only one voice would start it on its own

We need just one voice facing the unknown

And then that one voice would never be alone

It takes that one voice

(Complete lyrics.)

The parallels with Bucks’ phrase teased this forty-plus-year-old memory from the depths of my subconscious.

It’s a beautiful song, and a beautiful sentiment.