Malala Yousafzai, Edward Snowden, Hope for the Future

Dear Mr. President,

Yesterday was Malaladay at the UN, honoring and celebrating Malala Yousafzai’s 16^th birthday. She spoke to a gathering of the Youth Assembly about the importance and power of education—“One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world”—and called for world leaders to provide free compulsory education for all children. (Her call puts us to shame as we dismantle our public education system.) She spoke about human rights and her belief and faith in nonviolence, a belief learned from her parents, from Mohammed, from Jesus, from Martin Luther King, from Gandhi and others—“I do not even hate the Talib who shot me,” she said. “Even if there was a gun in my hand and he was in front of me, I would not shoot him.” The power of education, the power of love. She was poised, eloquent and certain, and as I write this I am reminded of something you wrote at the end of Chapter 9 in Dreams from My Father: “…in politics, like religion, power lay in certainty—and that one man’s certainty always threatened another’s.” Reagan’s Freedom Fighters in the 1980s are your terrorists today, which goes back to the Arabic proverb, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Malala’s speech and her call for education and nonviolence put the lie to that proverb however, and she shames all who live by that dictum, who preach and practice hatred and violence, who call whistleblowers traitors, who reward torturers and assassins, who operate in secret, ignore laws and trample human rights, who cannot distinguish good from evil and no longer care. Malala Yousafzai gives hope in this angry, fearful, ignorant world deaf to the cry for peace and common humanity. Edward Snowden, like Malala, also gives us hope. Hope that not everyone has sold out or been cowed by the power of the state. Like Malala, he has defied power to call for education—in this case, education of the public about the excesses and deceit of our government—in hopes of starting a dialogue about whether this is the kind of world we want. And like Malala’s enemies, Snowden’s enemies are doing everything in their power to silence him. I hope there will also be a Snowdenday at the UN to honor this courageous American patriot who believes in democracy and the power of truth and transparency, who believes that a government operating in secrecy is a danger to us all. Edward Snowden and Malala Yousafzai, a new generation of voices for justice and freedom. Listen to them, Mr. President, they are the future.