WRITE TO CHANGE THE WORLD

This program is about thinking BIG. It is about empowering

you to contribute to and shape the important conversations
of our age—whether in print, online, on TV, on twitter, before
your colleagues, to your board of directors, to potential
funders or investors, or on the steps of Congress. It is about
ensuring that the best ideas—regardless of where they come
from—have a chance to shape society and the world. This is
about making your knowledge count, your ideas spread, and
your impact rise. And it is about the collective difference we
all make by doing so.
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 WRITE TO CHANGE THE WORLD

AGENDA

1. OPENING
• Introductions & Agreements
• Origin Story: How we all got here
• Five Core Questions

2. THE CREDIBILITY GAME

What are we experts in? Does that term apply? What do our answers to those questions signify? In this live
thought experiment, we’ll examine the source of credibility and strategies for creating it, as well as the
underlying implications of our assumptions.

3. WHAT IS THOUGHT LEADERSHIP?

What is the package for an idea that can change the world?

4. PURPOSE (Why and Who?)

• Why put an idea out in the world? What are your intended outcomes? Who will you reach?

5. HOW DO WE CHANGE MINDS?

Why are some people more persuasive than others? We’ll examine the building blocks of influence, including
addressing opposition – and why it is so difficult to change minds.

6. BREAK OUT GROUPS

7. GAME: THAT’S RIDICULOUS!

If you say things of consequence, there may be consequences. The alternative is to be inconsequential.

8. THINKING BIGGER (TRIANGULATION)

How can limited knowledge speak to limitless things with integrity?

9. CLOSING
• Five Core Questions Redux
• What’s next: How we’re going to CHANGE THE CONVERSATION
• One more thing: what you can do when you walk out the door

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HISTORY & WHY WE EXIST
Who narrates the world? Key commentary forums, currently 80-90% led by men, are a front door into the
marketplace of ideas. They drive policy, public opinion, resources and talent – and they predict which ideas and
individuals will become influential across industries. The imbalances in these forums perpetuate imbalances in larger
ways:

• 84% of experts cited on Sunday morning TV political talk shows are men
• 90% of top Hollywood producers and directors are men
• 76% of tenured faculty at top universities are men
• 90% of Wikipedia editors are male
• 80% percent of Congress is male.

In short, much of the world’s brainpower is missing. This presents a huge problem for those of us whose voices are
underrepresented—as well as a tremendous opportunity: what might be the return to society if together we invested
in our missing brainpower?

Lots of people have debated whether the problem is biology or sexism or socialization or something else. But we
launched The OpEd Project because of a more obvious—and more solvable—part of the problem, which is that
women are not participating in key “front door” forums with anywhere near the frequency that men are. At the
Washington Post, for example, a five-month tracking found that roughly 90% of op-ed submissions come from men—
and about 88% of published Post bylines are male. If you think about it, women are actually being fairly represented,
in relationship to our participation/submission ratio. Isn’t the obvious solution to get more smart women submitting?

That’s where we started. Partnering with universities, think tanks, non-profits, corporations and community leaders
across America, we began to scout and train underrepresented experts (especially women) to take thought leadership
positions in their fields (op-eds and much more). We began to connect participants with each other and with our
national network of high-level Mentor-Editors (journalists who believe a wider range of voices should be shaping the
world, and who volunteer to mentor new voices). We also channel the best new ideas and experts directly to media
gatekeepers who need them across all platforms.

We envision a world where the best ideas – regardless of where they come from – should have a chance to be heard
and to shape society and change the world.

Why is this important?

• Because the lack of women and other underrepresented voices in the most powerful idea forums conveys the
wrong idea that we aren’t leaders.

• Because whoever tells the story writes history. If we are not telling our story, then someone else will tell it for
us—and not the way we would.

• And most importantly: what is the cost to ALL of us when so many of the world’s best minds and ideas are
missing? What could we accomplish – together – if we invested in our missing brainpower?

—Katie Orenstein
Founder & CEO

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FIVE CORE QUESTIONS
1. What is the source of credibility and how do you establish it?

2. How do you build an evidence-based, value-driven argument?

3. What is the difference between being right and being effective?

4. What’s the bigger picture – and how do you experience your reality?

5. Do you understand your knowledge and experience in terms of its value to others?

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 CREDIBILITY GAME

Hello, my name is:____________

I’m an expert in:______________
Because: ____________________

OBJECT OF THE GAME: HOW WE’LL PLAY:

Establish maximum credibility, in Hello, my name is: ___________
the minimum amount of time, in I’m an expert in:______________
the eyes of your peers, using Because: ___________________
only true statements.

EXPERT: RULES:
1. Be specific
You are the go-to person in 2. Use exact phrase
the group on your topic, and 3. Pick ANYTHING, but
potentially far beyond. only one thing

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HOW DO WE CHANGE MINDS?
YOUR IDEA
In just a few words, what do you most want to focus on? It could be something that inspires you, or pisses you
off, or feels urgently needed.

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YOUR ARGUMENT
In ONE sentence, what will you make a case for? It could be a new initiative or a new analysis of an existing one;
a policy you think is needed; a project you want to see implemented; a way to change something unfair or create
something new. For example: “The Company should offer paternity leave for all global employees”

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YOUR OUTCOME
What is your intended outcome?

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HOW DO WE CHANGE MINDS?

Lede:

News Hook:

Argument:

Evidence

To Be Sure:

Conclusion:

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FREE WRITE
So often we focus on the package or “raft” of an idea, and miss the thoughts, feelings, and information, that flow around it.
The goal of a free write is to capture the river, not the raft. In our free write, we endeavor to put pen to paper and write
continuously without lifting our pen, for the full time specified. It is best to do this with pen and paper, rather than keyboard,
if at all possible. If we get stuck, we simply write “la la la” or “stuck stuck stuck” until a new thought arises.

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NOTES:
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Stepford is Us
By CATHERINE ORENSTEIN
June 9, 2004
Paramount's remake of "The Stepford Wives" is billed as a comedy, but the continuing relevance of this cult
classic's dark themes ought to make us all think twice.

The original 1975 film, in which suburban husbands killed and replaced their partners with blonder, bustier
robotic look-alikes, dramatized the feminist argument that marriage transformed women into ever-smiling,
floor-mopping automatons. In those days, the vast majority of new American houses were built in suburbs, and
women — who in midcentury began marrying younger, having children earlier, and doing more hours of
housework than in previous decades — were complaining of a malaise brought on by what Betty Friedan had
dubbed "the feminine mystique." The remake, in contrast, stars Nicole Kidman as a high-powered TV executive
who, previews suggest, is more than a match for her husband — or anyone else's.

While the wives of Stepford have advanced since 1975, along with the rest of us, not everything has panned out
the way feminists envisioned. American women today tend to delay marriage; we have careers; we demand that
men do their share of the housework; we expect to be equal partners. At the same time, we have internalized a
piece of Stepford, becoming, metaphorically speaking, our own Stepford husbands — imposing a conformist
definition of beauty and femininity. Girls' and women's magazines incessantly promote perfect thighs, abs and
hair, and achieving the perfect look has moved beyond diet and exercise. More and more, we place ourselves
willingly under the knife, happily embracing the plastic.

The remake opens at a peak in our Stepfordian obsession with cosmetic surgery. No longer reserved for the rich
and the old, reaching for the knife begins these days with the first wrinkle. Along with collagen implants and
Botox, summer beauty treatments now include toe-shortening and even pinky-toe removal — the better to fit
into pointy shoes.

Television reality shows like "Extreme Makeover" and "The Swan," in which contestants undergo extensive
surgery, reinforce our relentless pursuit of physical perfection. On MTV's "I Want a Famous Face," men and
women endured radical reconstructions to look like their favorite movie stars. On Fox's series "The Swan,"
surgically altered women competed against one another for a chance to be part of the beauty pageant in the
final episode.

Because they undergo many of the same cosmetic procedures — breast and chin implants, nose and teeth
straightening, liposuction and hair lightening — executed by the same surgeons and beauticians, the contestants
on these shows ended up looking eerily alike. And, not incidentally, like the two blondes who vied for the
Bachelor's hand in marriage, who in turn looked like Britney Spears. All could be knockoffs of the blond Nicole
Kidman in the "Stepford" movie posters.

Why do we wish to reinvent ourselves so badly — and so blandly? Our desire taps a powerful myth of self-
transformation in which we magically become — and are recognized for — our most ideal selves.

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The Cinderella Cycle, as folklorists call that fairy tale and its multitude of global variants, is ubiquitous, appearing
in ancient texts (the earliest written version is from ninth century China) as well as in the modern mythic genre
of cinema. In movies like "Sabrina," "Pretty Woman," "Moonstruck," "Maid in Manhattan" or "The Princess
Diaries," the heroine's transformation from Plain Jane to Queen Bee is represented by a montage in which she
shops for clothes and gets her hair and make-up overhauled.

Scholars have debated the meaning of this narrative path, some calling it a seasonal or fertility myth, perhaps
derived from ancient ritual. In the eyes of Bruno Bettelheim, the popular Freudian psychologist, the Cinderella
tale embodies sibling rivalry and Oedipal conflicts. In its modern incarnations, as in our real-life fixations with
rehabbing ourselves through diet, cosmeceuticals and surgery, the fairy tale lends itself to a literal
interpretation, as a mere physical makeover. But it also has metaphoric power.

Narratives of physical transformation can be read as symbolic of our desire to be seen, and loved, for who we
really are — and to find love, recognition and acceptance that transcends stereotype, class, age, poverty and
physical imperfection. The truly climactic moment of Charles Perrault's famous 1697 version of "Cinderella" is
not the moment soot stains disappear from the heroine's cheeks; rather, it is the moment when she is
recognized, while still in rags, by the prince — thanks to her ability to fit her foot into a tiny slipper (a detail that,
incidentally, most likely derives from China, where foot-binding produced a standard of beauty and
womanhood).

We could say, then, that the myth of self-transformation is really about recognition of the inner person, perhaps
explaining why so many "improved" contestants on "The Swan" and "Extreme Makeover" say they feel for the
first time that they look like their true selves.

At what point, though, does a myth about recognition, acceptance and truth become just the opposite — a tale
of artifice and disguise?

Myths often contain the seeds of their own inversion, and so it is in this case. In our quest to be Cinderellas, we
are risking becoming her impostor stepsisters — eagerly slicing off toe and heel (as they do in the Grimms'
version of the fairy tale) to fit into a false shoe.

It is not men (or at least, not men alone) who do this to us. Indeed, Paramount's Web site for "The Stepford
Wives" hardly mentions husbands. Instead it addresses the female viewer, showcasing "before" and "after"
photos of the character played by Bette Midler much like those belonging to "Swan" contestants, and inviting us
to upload our own photos for a personalized "Stepford Makeover."

It's a funny but frightening parody of our aspirations, given the original movie's dark ending. As Sylvia Plath
warned us, not long before her suicide in 1963: "The woman is perfected/Her dead/Body wears the smile of
accomplishment."

Catherine Orenstein is the author of Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy
Tale.

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Low Pay for Women of Color = More Clout Needed
in Politics
By REBECCA SALDAÑA “I wrote an op-ed on Pramila
August 16, 2016 [Jayapal] going to Congress and
the importance of women‘s
For women of color Equal Pay Day—the time it takes to catch up
representation. After I wrote that
with the earnings of male counterparts—has still not arrived yet
op-ed, I felt like I needed to
this year.
answer the question—how can I
While women overall catch up, on average, with male earnings in have the biggest impact?”
April, African American women must wait until Aug. 23 of each
year, and Latinas wait until Nov. 1, to catch up with the average In 2017, after publishing this
earnings of a white American male. column as an OpEd Project “Public
Voices” fellow, Rebecca Saldaña
What that means: glass ceilings may be shattering for some ran for office and was elected to
women, but not nearly fast enough for women of color, overall. the Washington State Senate.
Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential bid notwithstanding, we still She replaced Jayapal, becoming
need to keep the question of political representation in our the only woman of color in the
headlights and question who is out there watching out for our State Senate.
interests.
Pramila Jayapal, a nationally renowned immigrant rights leader, made history when she clenched the lead in a
crowded race for the liberal 7th congressional district of Washington State recently. She is one step closer to
becoming the first Indian-American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
As a feminist women of color arrested for standing in protest with undocumented workers, Jayapal has a chance
to join forces with a powerful but small number of women of color in Congress this November.
Powerful Leadership
At the recent Democratic National Convention, we witnessed the leadership of people of color and black
women’s leadership in particular. Consider the powerful speech by Michelle Obama and also by the “Mothers of
the Movement,” when Sybrina Fulton, the mother of the late Trayvon Martin, said, “This is not about being
politically correct, it is about saving our children.”
Additionally, issues from reproductive justice to economic justice took center stage in the party platform and in
the speech of the Democratic presidential nominee. All this contributes to many black women feeling
hopeful about the expanding role of women in leadership in this country.
But along with this hopefulness come the setbacks, such as the attack on the Gold Star mother Ghazala Khan by
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. This prompted a social media movement for and by Muslim
women, #CanYouHearUsNow.
Yet and still, with the growing awareness and the mounting milestones achieved, not all women are equal in
these United States of America.

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Women of color—Hispanic, African American, Asian American–represent more than 33 percent of the women in
this country, according to 2015 U.S. Census Bureau statistics, and about 62 percent of women in this country are
white.
U.S. Congress, in general, is a sink hole for female representation, with women making up just 20 percent in
either house.
Within those marginal ranks, the overall population statistics roughly hold up. Thirty-three of the 104 women
serving in Congress in 2016 are women of color, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.
These include 18 African Americans, nine Latinas and six Asian American/Pacific Islanders. There are no Native
American women serving in Congress. To date, only 54 women of color have served in Congress.
Meanwhile the most diverse Congress in history isn’t actually that diverse; it’s still 80 percent white and 80
percent male. Given that, women of color deserve special merit badges for holding their own, proportionately
speaking, with white women in the U.S. Congress.
Statewide Offices
In statewide elective executive offices, meanwhile, women of color lag further behind, which means our
representation shrinks that much more.
Women, overall, hold only 24 percent of 312 statewide elective executive office. Within that minority, women of
color are even harder to find. Of the 76 women serving in statewide elective executive offices, nine, or about 12
percent, are women of color.
In state legislatures women, overall, are 25 percent of the 7,383 seats. And among them women of color are
once again in even shorter supply. Of the 1,815 female state legislators serving nationwide 399, or about 22
percent, are women of color. They include 102 state senators and 297 representatives; 366 are Democrats, 30
are Republicans, one is non-partisan, one is Progressive and one is with the Working Families Party. Women of
color constitute about 5 percent of the total 7,383 state legislators.
This means moving forward, candidates who are women of color need to win seats, confronting not only
patriarchy, but racism. Five-term U.S House Rep. Yvette Clarke reports she still gets asked for an ID when she is
in the halls of Congress to serve. As Black Lives Platform so eloquently stated, if we don’t seize this moment,
breathing will become harder for all of us.
As citizens, we need to champion women of color and queer people of color. We need them to champion
progressive platforms that can actually improve the lives of women of color and our communities.
With Women’s Equality Day approaching on Aug. 26, there is no better time to assess not only how far some
women have come in the fight for fairness; but how far all women need to go.

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 Carrie Scherpelz, a poll volunteer
A Wisconsin poll worker dreads the job in Wisconsin, published multiple
By CARRIE SCHERPELZ op-eds on Wisconsin's voter ID
April 17, 2016 laws, including this one in the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. As a
I'm a Wisconsin poll worker. I've come to dread my job. result, she was asked to be a
witness in the case challenging
After four years of experience at my busy polling place, I was
these laws. This case is now going
surprised to find myself dreading Wisconsin's primary election.
Sadly, running elections has grown more daunting with every new to the Supreme Court. Carrie said,
voting law passed by the state Legislature, especially the new "I’m learning that when my voice
is heard loudly and clearly
photo ID requirement and voter registration rules. The April 5 high-
enough, I can go even farther to
turnout election put even more new guidelines in place — added
in the two months since the Feb. 16 election. Not surprisingly, both help make a difference by my
actions."
voters and poll workers are confused. That makes my job much
harder and far less rewarding.

I want voters to have confidence in my knowledge of ever more complex procedures. I want to serve them well so
they enjoy exercising their right to vote. I don't want them to stand in long lines or feel scrutinized as if they are
passing through an airport security checkpoint. Most of all, I hate telling students that their student ID is not an
approved voter ID. When I inform students of their options, I apologize and say, 'Please promise me you'll get the
proper ID and come back. I want you to be able to vote.'

As a last resort, I can tell those voters they can still 'vote' by casting a provisional ballot and presenting the city clerk
with the proper ID within four days. But what good is a vote if it's not counted? Of the 123 provisional ballots cast
citywide by voters without ID on April 5, only 41 were counted in the end. Voter impersonation is virtually
nonexistent — yet, lacking an approved photo ID, familiar voters listed in our poll book are silenced. How can I
possibly feel good about that?

On election day, 24,625 voters registered at the 87 polling places in our city. I appreciate Wisconsin's same-day
registration policy, because I love to serve both new voters and regulars who have changed address. I usually spend
most of my time assisting long lines at the voter registration table, but I find that task is now more complicated and
even troubling.

For instance, I'm very uncomfortable with current requirements for recording a voter's proof of address. Wisconsin
banks and businesses: Do you realize that voter registrars must write down the last few digits of people's account
numbers when they register them to vote? I find this very intrusive and unnecessary, not to mention a complete
waste of time. I know you respect your customers' privacy. I know you would not release information to an official in
order to verify a voter's address without a court order.

Do you see why I've come to dread my job? I'd like to anticipate the November presidential election with excitement,
but, instead, I'm upset about unnecessary and time-consuming requirements that confuse voters and make them
wait longer to cast their vote. To make matters worse, Wisconsin legislators cut early voting hours in half and
eliminated early voting on evenings and weekends, creating yet more pressure on election day. Hiring additional poll
workers so the April 5 election would run smoothly increased our city clerk's costs, in addition to the challenge of
recruiting and training all those new workers. We are doing our best to serve voters. Wisconsin legislators, I have a
suggestion: Why not spend a day as a poll worker before you pass more laws that create obstacles to voting?

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 John Thompson came into The OpEd
Project community because we share a
seed funder – Echoing Green – which
The Prosecution Rests, but I Can’t supported J.T. in founding Resurrection
By JOHN THOMPSON After Exoneration, a nonprofit to help
April 9, 2011 exonerated prisoners reintegrate into
society. Within days of publication of his
I SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on op-ed, J.T. was deluged with offers of
death row. I’ve been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence support and media attention. We
covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my ourselves received a thank you note
execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last from The New York Times for sending
month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case I’d won J.T. their way, and his Innocence Project
against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, Lawyers wrote us:
ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that
evidence — which included proof that blood at the robbery scene “Obviously this has been huge for
wasn’t mine. J.T. As a result, he has already been on
CNN, received calls from CNN
Because of that, prosecutors are free to do the same thing to documentaries, Fox, and 60 minutes
someone else today. and will soon be appearing on The
Colbert Report.”
I was arrested in January 1985 in New Orleans. I remember the
police coming to my grandmother’s house — we all knew it was
the cops because of how hard they banged on the door before kicking it in. My grandmother and my mom were
there, along with my little brother and sister, my two sons — John Jr., 4, and Dedric, 6 — my girlfriend and me. The
officers had guns drawn and were yelling. I guess they thought they were coming for a murderer. All the children
were scared and crying. I was 22.

They took me to the homicide division, and played a cassette tape on which a man I knew named Kevin Freeman
accused me of shooting a man. He had also been arrested as a suspect in the murder. A few weeks earlier he had sold
me a ring and a gun; it turned out that the ring belonged to the victim and the gun was the murder weapon.

My picture was on the news, and a man called in to report that I looked like someone who had recently tried to rob
his children. Suddenly I was accused of that crime, too. I was tried for the robbery first. My lawyers never knew there
was blood evidence at the scene, and I was convicted based on the victims’ identification.

After that, my lawyers thought it was best if I didn’t testify at the murder trial. So I never defended myself, or got to
explain that I got the ring and the gun from Kevin Freeman. And now that I officially had a history of violent crime
because of the robbery conviction, the prosecutors used it to get the death penalty. I remember the judge telling the
courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body. If the first attempt didn’t kill me, he said,
they’d put more volts in.

On Sept. 1, 1987, I arrived on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary — the infamous Angola prison. I was put
in a dead man’s cell. His things were still there; he had been executed only a few days before. That past summer they
had executed eight men at Angola. I received my first execution date right before I arrived. I would end up knowing
12 men who were executed there.

Over the years, I was given six execution dates, but all of them were delayed until finally my appeals were exhausted.
The seventh — and last — date was set for May 20, 1999. My lawyers had been with me for 11 years by then; they

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flew in from Philadelphia to give me the news. They didn’t want me to hear it from the prison officials. They said it
would take a miracle to avoid this execution. I told them it was fine — I was innocent, but it was time to give up.

But then I remembered something about May 20. I had just finished reading a letter from my younger son about how
he wanted to go on his senior class trip. I’d been thinking about how I could find a way to pay for it by selling my
typewriter and radio. “Oh, no, hold on,” I said, “that’s the day before John Jr. is graduating from high school.” I
begged them to get it delayed; I knew it would hurt him.

To make things worse, the next day, when John Jr. was at school, his teacher read the whole class an article from the
newspaper about my execution. She didn’t know I was John Jr.’s dad; she was just trying to teach them a lesson
about making bad choices. So he learned that his father was going to be killed from his teacher, reading the
newspaper aloud. I panicked. I needed to talk to him, reassure him.

Amazingly, I got a miracle. The same day that my lawyers visited, an investigator they had hired to look through the
evidence one last time found, on some forgotten microfiche, a report sent to the prosecutors on the blood type of
the perpetrator of the armed robbery. It didn’t match mine; the report, hidden for 15 years, had never been turned
over to my lawyers. The investigator later found the names of witnesses and police reports from the murder case
that hadn’t been turned over either.

As a result, the armed robbery conviction was thrown out in 1999, and I was taken off death row. Then, in 2002, my
murder conviction was thrown out. At a retrial the following year, the jury took only 35 minutes to acquit me.

The prosecutors involved in my two cases, from the office of the Orleans Parish district attorney, Harry Connick Sr.,
helped to cover up 10 separate pieces of evidence. And most of them are still able to practice law today. Why
weren’t they punished for what they did? When the hidden evidence first surfaced, Mr. Connick announced that his
office would hold a grand jury investigation. But once it became clear how many people had been involved, he called
it off.

In 2005, I sued the prosecutors and the district attorney’s office for what they did to me. The jurors heard testimony
from the special prosecutor who had been assigned by Mr. Connick’s office to the canceled investigation, who told
them, “We should have indicted these guys, but they didn’t and it was wrong.” The jury awarded me $14 million in
damages — $1 million for every year on death row — which would have been paid by the district attorney’s office.
That jury verdict is what the Supreme Court has just overturned.

I don’t care about the money. I just want to know why the prosecutors who hid evidence, sent me to prison for
something I didn’t do and nearly had me killed are not in jail themselves. There were no ethics charges against them,
no criminal charges, no one was fired and now, according to the Supreme Court, no one can be sued.

Worst of all, I wasn’t the only person they played dirty with. Of the six men one of my prosecutors got sentenced to
death, five eventually had their convictions reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. Because we were
sentenced to death, the courts had to appoint us lawyers to fight our appeals. I was lucky, and got lawyers who went
to extraordinary lengths. But there are more than 4,000 people serving life without parole in Louisiana, almost none
of whom have lawyers after their convictions are final. Someone needs to look at those cases to see how many others
might be innocent. If a private investigator hired by a generous law firm hadn’t found the blood evidence, I’d be dead
today. No doubt about it.

A crime was definitely committed in this case, but not by me.

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When War Comes Close to Home Zareena Grewel, one of our OpEd
By ZAREENA GREWAL Project “Public Voices” fellows at
October 4, 2015 Yale University (2014), worked with
OpEd Project mentor Zeba Khan. The
In the dead of night on Sept. 21, an airstrike from the skies above following is a note she shared with us
Mosul, Iraq, flattened the homes of my husband’s cousins, and on Facebook, upon publication
instantly killing four innocent civilians, and maiming others. The of this piece.
shock wave reverberated throughout our family scattered around
the world, even here in quiet Connecticut. “Even though I am a writer, I never
believed the pen was mightier than
The American-led air campaign did not hit a weapons storage the sword. I spent most of my adult
facility belonging to the Islamic State, or ISIS, as one local report life feeling helpless in the face of
claimed. In a secluded part of Mosul that locals call “the Woods,” endless war. On September 21st, my
the empty government warehouse, which the Islamic State briefly husband Hamada’s family in Mosul
occupied until January, remains untouched. Instead, the strike hit was drone-attacked by missiles in
two homes nearby, killing my husband’s cousin, Mohannad Rezzo, the middle of the night and four of
a university professor; his 17- year-old son, Najeeb; and their them died and others were injured.
beloved German shepherd, Sinbul. We’ve been devastated, but what
made it harder was that the U.S.
Mohannad’s wife, Sana, survived the explosion, which flung her, government and U.S. media refused
burned, from her second-floor bedroom to the driveway below. to even acknowledge the attack took
Mohannad’s older brother, Bassim, also narrowly survived, but his place until 5pm Friday when the New
wife, Miyada, and their 21-year-old daughter, Tuka, did not. York Times editor told the Pentagon
Bassim’s pelvis and leg were shattered in the attack and require they were going to print my article.
surgery, but it is his emotional pain that consumes him. The threat of this article is what it
took for the Pentagon to admit the
Meanwhile, Bassim’s elderly parents have fallen into such a state attack happened, to even consider
of shock and grief that they refuse to eat, and we worry for their investigating civilian loss.”
health. As for the two families’ older children, Abdulla, Aya and
Yahya, they mourn their parents and siblings from a safe distance,
having moved out of Mosul last year. But like us, they are deprived of the solace of attending funerals, and are
condemned to sleepless nights trying to make sense of how missiles or bombs could be launched against a
defenseless family who did not have so much as a pistol in the home.

A spokeswoman for the United States Air Force Central Command confirmed that it became aware of a “civilian
casualty allegation” in Mosul the day after the airstrikes. In an email Friday, the Air Force spokeswoman, Maj.
Genieve David, said Centcom was assessing the credibility of the reports, before determining any follow-on
action, which might include a “formal investigation.”

I desperately want the Islamic State to be defeated, but I wonder if our rage at it has made us blind to anyone
we kill along the way, even those whose lives have been terrorized by the group.

Iraqi civilian losses used to be referred to as the inevitable “collateral damage” of war; but from the scant Arabic
media coverage and the silence of the Western press, it is painfully clear that the deaths of my loved ones have
not even earned that ghastly euphemism. These civilian victims are simply lumped together with the death toll

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of Islamic State fighters. Only one Iraqi journalist made reference to “incalculable” civilian losses in this recent
wave of Mosul airstrikes.

It will not bring our relatives back, but I want their deaths to be counted and for them to be recognized for who
they were: Muslim civilians, not Islamic State militants.

I visited their elegant homes, disastrously mistaken for a weapons depot. My Iraqi relatives’ lives were full of
love, laughter, books, delicious smells of food, gleaming marble floors, white curtains floating in the breeze, and
children running up and down the stairs. Now relatives send me pictures of unrecognizable rubble.

Last Sunday night, I sat in an airplane seat with my son in my lap, gliding past the largest moon I have ever seen,
eclipsed by the slow-moving shadow of the Earth below. Like millions, I was transfixed by this glimpse of proof
to the naked eye that the Earth is in motion. Seeing it was also proof that I am here, alive and able to witness
such fleeting beauty. What a beautiful, terrible sign: a moon the color of blood.

As a Muslim, I believe that everything in the skies and on Earth is a sign inviting reflection. That does not mean I
reject science or reason, only that I believe there is a creative, divine source of the dust that made the moon
appear red. And I believe that the source of my life is also the source of my mortality. These beliefs are shared
across many religious traditions, yet some insist that there is something warped, even pathological, about how
Muslims understand life and death. This sustains the racist lie that for Muslims, life is cheap, that Muslims prefer
death to life.

The Muslim prayer for the dead is a simple line from the Quran: “Surely we belong to God, and to God we shall
return.” Muslims understand the sustenance of life, and death, as acts of God. Some take issue with Muslims’
view of the all-powerful God who creates and extinguishes life because they presume, wrongly, that this negates
free will. They blame Muslims for their “fatalism,” which they argue makes God’s will an alibi for human error
and corruption, and encourages Muslims to passively accept their fate and suffering.

Muslims strive for justice in this world, though we believe only divine justice is perfect. We cling to life though
we know death is inevitable. The fact that some of my family members survived the airstrike by God’s mercy,
and others did not, also by God’s will, does not erase the human culpability and barbarity of war, the human
error that caused them to be targeted.

As we flew in that slim aluminum tube with wings, under the eclipsed moon, I felt so grateful for the blessing of
the illusion that my safe arrival home was certain, that I would live to see countless full moons.

Zareena Grewal, an associate professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale University, and a Public
Voices fellow with The OpEd Project. She is the author of “Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the
Global Crisis of Authority.”

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 Carol Anderson, one of our Public
Voices fellows at Emory University
(2014), worked with OpEd Project
Ferguson isn’t about black rage against cops. It’s white rage against mentor Chloe Angyal. Her op-ed,
progress. “White Rage,” was the Washington
By CAROL ANDERSON Post’s most emailed op-ed of 2014.
August 29, 2014 It sparked a bidding war among
publishers for Anderson’s book,
When we look back on what happened in Ferguson, Mo., during the White Rage: The Unspoken Truth
summer of 2014, it will be easy to think of it as yet one more episode of Our Racial Divide, which was
of black rage ignited by yet another police killing of an unarmed published in May 2016. In
African American male. But that has it precisely backward. What September 2016, Anderson was
we’ve actually seen is the latest outbreak of white rage. Sure, it is named to POLITICO’s list of the 50
cloaked in the niceties of law and order, but it is rage nonetheless. most influential “thinkers and
doers and visionaries changing
Protests and looting naturally capture attention. But the real rage American politics,” alongside
smolders in meetings where officials redraw precincts to dilute Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders,
African American voting strength or seek to slash the government Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Supreme
payrolls that have long served as sources of black employment. It Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
goes virtually unnoticed, however, because white rage doesn’t have Carol was later invited by Harry
to take to the streets and face rubber bullets to be heard. Instead, Reid to speak to the entire
white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the Democratic Caucus and her book
courts, police, legislatures and governors, who cast its efforts as landed on the New York Times
noble, though they are actually driven by the most ignoble "100 Most Notable Books" list in
motivations. 2016.

White rage recurs in American history. It exploded after the Civil

War, erupted again to undermine the Supreme Court’s Brown v.
Board of Education decision and took on its latest incarnation with Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House.
For every action of African American advancement, there’s a reaction, a backlash.

The North’s victory in the Civil War did not bring peace. Instead, emancipation brought white resentment that
the good ol’ days of black subjugation were over. Legislatures throughout the South scrambled to reinscribe
white supremacy and restore the aura of legitimacy that the anti-slavery campaign had tarnished. Lawmakers in
several states created the Black Codes, which effectively criminalized blackness, sanctioned forced labor and
undermined every tenet of democracy. Even the federal authorities’ promise of 40 acres — land seized from
traitors who had tried to destroy the United States of America — crumbled like dust.

Influential white legislators such as Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-Pa.) and Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) tried to
make this nation live its creed, but they were no match for the swelling resentment that neutralized the 13th,
14th and 15th amendments, and welcomed the Supreme Court’s 1876 United States vs. Cruikshank decision,
which undercut a law aimed at stopping the terror of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nearly 80 years later, Brown v. Board of Education seemed like another moment of triumph — with the ruling
on the unconstitutionality of separate public schools for black and white students affirming African Americans’
rights as citizens. But black children, hungry for quality education, ran headlong into more white rage. Bricks and
mobs at school doors were only the most obvious signs. In March 1956, 101members of Congress issued the

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Southern Manifesto, declaring war on the Brown decision. Governors in Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia
and elsewhere then launched “massive resistance.” They created a legal doctrine, interposition, that supposedly
nullified any federal law or court decision with which a state disagreed. They passed legislation to withhold
public funding from any school that abided by Brown. They shut down public school systems and used tax
dollars to ensure that whites could continue their education at racially exclusive private academies. Black
children were left to rot with no viable option.

A little more than half a century after Brown, the election of Obama gave hope to the country and the world
that a new racial climate had emerged in America, or that it would. But such audacious hopes would be short-
lived. A rash of voter-suppression legislation, a series of unfathomable Supreme Court decisions, the rise of
stand-your-ground laws and continuing police brutality make clear that Obama’s election and reelection have
unleashed yet another wave of fear and anger.

It’s more subtle — less overtly racist — than in 1865 or even 1954. It’s a remake of the Southern Strategy,
crafted in the wake of the civil rights movement to exploit white resentment against African Americans, and
deployed with precision by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. As Reagan’s key political strategist, Lee
Atwater, explained in a 1981 interview: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N-----, n-----, n-----.’ By 1968 you can’t
say ‘n-----’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’ and all that stuff.
You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are
totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously
maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that.” (The interview was originally published anonymously, and only
years later did it emerge that Atwater was the subject.)

Now, under the guise of protecting the sanctity of the ballot box, conservatives have devised measures — such
as photo ID requirements — to block African Americans’ access to the polls. A joint report by the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund and the NAACP emphasized that the ID requirements would adversely affect
more than 6 million African American voters. (Twenty-five percent of black Americans lack a government-issued
photo ID, the report noted, compared with only 8 percent of white Americans.) The Supreme Court sanctioned
this discrimination in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act and opened the door to 21st-
century versions of 19th-century literacy tests and poll taxes.

The economic devastation of the Great Recession also shows African Americans under siege. The foreclosure
crisis hit black Americans harder than any other group in the United States. A 2013report by researchers at
Brandeis University calculated that “half the collective wealth of African-American families was stripped away
during the Great Recession,” in large part because of the impact on home equity. In the process, the wealth gap
between blacks and whites grew: Right before the recession, white Americans had four times more wealth than
black Americans, on average; by 2010, the gap had increased to six times. This was a targeted hit. Communities
of color were far more likely to have riskier, higher-interest-rate loans than white communities, with good credit
scores often making no difference.

Add to this the tea party movement’s assault on so-called Big Government, which despite the sanitized language
of fiscal responsibility constitutes an attack on African American jobs. Public-sector employment, where there is
less discrimination in hiring and pay, has traditionally been an important venue for creating a black middle class.

So when you think of Ferguson, don’t just think of black resentment at a criminal justice system that allows a
white police officer to put six bullets into an unarmed black teen. Consider the economic dislocation of black
America. Remember a Florida judge instructing a jury to focus only on the moment when George Zimmerman

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and Trayvon Martin interacted, thus transforming a 17-year-old, unarmed kid into a big, scary black guy, while
the grown man who stalked him through the neighborhood with a loaded gun becomes a victim. Remember the
assault on the Voting Rights Act. Look at Connick v. Thompson, a partisan 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2011
that ruled it was legal for a city prosecutor’s staff to hide evidence that exonerated a black man who was rotting
on death row for 14years. And think of a recent study by Stanford University psychology researchers concluding
that, when white people were told that black Americans are incarcerated in numbers far beyond their
proportion of the population, “they reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of
punitive policies that exacerbate the racial disparities,” such as three-strikes or stop-and-frisk laws.

Only then does Ferguson make sense. It’s about white rage.

Carol Anderson is an associate professor of African American studies and history at Emory University and a Public
Voices fellow with The OpEd Project. She is the author of “Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for
Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960.”

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If Men Could Menstruate
By GLORIA STEINEM
October 1978
(Excerpt)

So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event:

Men would brag about how long and how much.

Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners,
and stag parties would mark the day.

To prevent monthly work loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea.
Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men would be hormonally protected, but
everything about cramps.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of
such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammad Ali's Rope-a-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi
Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields- "For Those Light Bachelor Days."

Statistical surveys would show that men did better in sports and won more Olympic medals during their periods.

Generals, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation ("men-struation") as
proof that only men could serve God and country in combat ("You have to give blood to take blood"), occupy
high political office ("Can women be properly fierce without a monthly cycle governed by the planet Mars?"), be
priests, ministers, God Himself ("He gave this blood for our sins"), or rabbis ("Without a monthly purge of
impurities, women are unclean").

Male liberals and radicals, however, would insist that women are equal, just different; and that any woman
could join their ranks if only she were willing to recognize the primacy of menstrual rights ("Everything else is a
single issue") or self-inflict a major wound every month ("You must give blood for the revolution").

Street guys would invent slang ("He's a three-pad man") and "give fives" on the corner with some exchange like,
"Man you lookin' good!"

"Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!"

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TV shows would treat the subject openly. (Happy Days: Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still
"The Fonz," though he has missed two periods in a row. Hill Street Blues: The whole precinct hits the same
cycle.) So would newspapers. (Summer Shark Scare Threatens Menstruating Men. Judge Cites Monthlies In
Pardoning Rapist.) And so would movies. (Newman and Redford in Blood Brothers!)

Men would convince women that sex was more pleasurable at "that time of the month." Lesbians would be said
to fear blood and therefore life itself, though all they needed was a good menstruating man.

Medical schools would limit women's entry ("they might faint at the sight of blood").

Of course, intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguments. Without the biological gift for
measuring the cycles of the moon and planets, how could a woman master any discipline that demanded a
sense of time, space, mathematics-- or the ability to measure anything at all?

Menopause would be celebrated as a positive event, the symbol that men had accumulated enough years of
cyclical wisdom to need no more.

Liberal males in every field would try to be kind. The fact that "these people" have no gift for measuring life, the
liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.

And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine right-wing women agreeing to all these arguments
with a staunch and smiling masochism. ("The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month":
Phyllis Schlafly)

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here's an
idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning
of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in
those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation
up to you.)

The truth is that, if men could menstruate, the power justifications would go on and on.

If we let them.

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 Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
Letter from Birmingham Jail
(EXCERPT)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J.
Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the
Reverend George M. Murray. the Reverend Edward V. Ramage and the Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed
under somewhat constricting circumstance. Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement
appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro
trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me. Although the text remains
in substance unaltered, I have indulged in the author's prerogative of polishing it for publication.

April 16, 1963

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities
"unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the
criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence
in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of
genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in
what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

***

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and
Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-
buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt
the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and
fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse,
kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro
brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find
your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she
can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in
her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority
beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an
unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is
asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and
find it necessary to sleep night after night in the

uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in
and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your
middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and
mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact
that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are
plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of
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"nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of
endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can
understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

***

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg
you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that
allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to
meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian
brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of
misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the
radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

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 MENTOR-EDITOR PROGRAM
A micro-mentoring program with stunning results

Mentor-Editors are experienced journalists and thought leaders—columnists, pundits or editors—at the top of their fields,
men and women alike—committed to improving public discourse and supporting new and promising voices. Mentor-
Editors volunteer to read the op-ed drafts of OpEd Project alums who have come through at least a full-day OpEd Project
seminar. This is an opportunity for successful writers, editors and thought leaders to dramatically improve the quality of
public conversation—to inspire, and be inspired—in a very meaningful way, in about an hour a month. As an OpEd Project
alum, you may request a mentor match any time you have a draft op-ed you’d like feedback on. If use the Mentor-Editor
program within one month of taking an OpEd Project seminar, we will extend your access to mentoring for two more
months (three total). Mentor-editors statistically double your odds of success.

HOW IT WORKS

1. You may request a match any time in the one month after completing a full-day OpEd Project seminar, by submitting
your op-ed to our online portal. Your access password can be found in your closing note when you complete your
workshop. If you use this program at least once within the one-month window, we will extend your access for an
additional two months (for a total of three).

2. You must submit a solid draft op-ed to initiate the match. It must meet The OpEd Project definition of an op-ed: a
timely, evidence-based argument of public value. It should be approximately 600-800 words. We will not match you if
your op-ed draft exceeds 1000 words.

3. Upon receiving your request, we query Mentor-Editors to find the best match for you. This process can take 2 business
days, although it may be faster.

*If you are working on a very time-sensitive op-ed and need immediate feedback, we encourage you to tap your seminar
group for peer mentoring.

4. Mentor-Editors commit to providing positive critical feedback in a tone that encourages and inspires. We ask Mentor-
Editors to do everything they can—in the manner they feel most appropriate—to empower you. They may comment on
broad ideas, suggest copy edits, or both.

5. Your mentor will not pitch your op-ed for you—that is your job. To help you, we post submission and contact
information for hundreds of media outlets on our website, and we encourage you to read our Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) page on the Resources tab of our website. In it, we address questions like, "Where should I pitch?" and
"How do I follow up?”

6. Although Mentor-Editors occasionally share personal contacts, you should not expect this.

7. Your Mentor-Editor will provide feedback in a one-time, one-op-ed interaction.

8. This program was founded to support your voice – please do not use it for ghostwriting.

To request a match: submit your request and draft op-ed to our online portal:
theopedproject.org/mentoreditor-submission

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