سلام به دوستان

In America, for the past month my family and I have watched the images and sounds coming out of Iran.  We have stayed up nights to listen to the voice of the Supreme Leader, to see the outcome of vast seas of marchers determined to be heard in the streets of Tehran.  We have downloaded clandestinely filmed video of a night sky illuminated with the echoes of "Allah Akbar."

I am 31 years old.  Americans of my age have seen over the course of their lifetime many other images from Iran, filtered through the years by our own media and government.  Those images left a sense of fear and anxiety for our future relations, and were reinforced by the policies of our mutual governments as well, producing in the mind of the average American a biased and somewhat negative reaction.  However, in recent years, due to the focus of the American government on the Middle East, and to the failures of that government to produce positive change or dialogue towards that region, many Americans have reexamined their own attitudes.  They have questioned not only the motives of their own government officials, but of the policies which have stood in the way of dialogue and peace for too long in our lifetime.

When many Americans saw the developments immediately after the 1388 election in Iran, what arose in the mind's eye was their personal feelings of the American 2000 election, a wound has yet to heal.  Not just the idea of "what might have been." But the pulse of liberty and freedom squashed by power and injustice.  The voice of the people extinguished by tyranny.  A fraud on all of our people.

So we already had sided with those wronged Iranian men and women who took to the street.  It was tragically human. 

When we saw the image burned into our psyche of a young woman killed in the pinnicle of life, senseless, anguished, and so quickly evaporated and stolen--that of our Neda--I say "our," we knew this cause was worth fighting for, even to the last man, the last battle, the last voice.  Flags and borders matter little at such times, when humanity is threatened by injustice, and lives of innocents are in peril.

There is a frustration here in America; a frustration that we cannot do anything to help our brothers and sisters in Iran.  We can speak out.  We can exert pressure.  We can agitate our leaders to either intervene or open dialogue through channels.  But we, as citizens of the world, feel somewhat powerless, and do know our immunity here in our relative safety of America.

But we also know that we can do something.  We can affect the next generation of minds, of ordinary Americans, and Iranians.  We can communicate.  We can open dialogue.  We can establish lifelong, meaningful relations with Iran.  Through personal exchanges, conversations, and friendships across this vast ocean of space and injustice. 

We do identify with you, though we do not yet know you.  But let us each take the first step, to say that world peace and human rights is a matter of concern for all of us, even when it seems not to affect our daily lives.  It starts with us.

So to my American brothers and sisters, and to my Iranian ones--let us open our hearts and minds.  Let us be free of old attitudes, and open to learning the true nature of our perilous and beautiful humanity.  Let us be open to learning to be willing to correct and admit to our errors, and willing to be honest and courageous in our dialogue and friendship and mutual respect.  We cannot understand each other if we do not know each other.  We cannot be friends unless we speak openly to one another.  If our leaders fail us, let us lead them, and take the first step towards a better world.