Dear Friends,

In the last few months, I have been learning what it means to be a global citizen. Living in Italy automatically changes my perspective on global events. I don’t receive the same media stories of the refugee crisis, and the reports on what is happening at Mizzou and Yale are being shared mostly through social media from friends back in the US. I have listened to lectures by and been in dialogue with artists, journalists, and other world leaders who have opened my eyes to what is going on in Syria beyond what I have understood from U.S. media.

So last night when I was sitting at a popular restaurant in Florence with five of my friends and we learned about the terrorist attacks on Paris, we halted our conversation. We had been in a heated discussion about the U.S. Presidential candidates, the best pie flavors, and then we all began to receive news notifications and messages from family members checking to see that we were not near Paris and that we were safe. We all took a minute to respond to their worries.

Without more information, we moved on, the tragedy that was just beginning in Paris moved to the back of our minds, still there as our conversation went back to the other international crises that we knew more about. When we returned home and all went to our separate spaces, I sat at my laptop pouring over my Twitter and Facebook feeds, simultaneously watching the New York Times live report. I was trying to understand what was going on in Paris while also learning that tragedy had struck in Beirut, Baghdad, Japan, and Mexico. The past two days have been fraught by a sense of global fear and pain culminating in this Parisian massacre.

I didn’t and haven’t posted anything to my social media, aside from some retweets on Twitter, because I have been watching and learning. I have been watching people point fingers at the Muslim community and I have watched others fight back and protect our Muslim brothers and sisters. With the history of 9/11 still so fresh in our part of the Western world, I am watching part of our global community come together to protect Muslims from the same stereotyping that they were subjected to after 9/11 in the United States but there is still another part of our global community that is afraid. They are afraid and ignorant, and there are leaders or potential leaders, in the case of some US presidential candidates, who are “confirming” people’s misinformation. Fear has often driven us to forget about the humanity of our fellow humans and as a global citizen, I am going to do my best to combat this.

As a global citizen, I am not going to allow another terrorist attack on Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, or Syria, and I am not going to allow terrorism at Missouri State University or Yale. As a global citizen, I am going to dedicate myself to being a better ally where I have privilege of being a more internationally knowledgeable citizen. I am going to stand with the oppressed, protect groups from being wrongfully blamed, and diversify my consumption of media to have a more complete and complex understanding of the world. I am making a promise right here and now to learn more, listen better, apologize quickly when I mess up, and to never think that I am finished. I will always be changing and growing and learning and working to make the world a better place.

Saying that I will not “allow another terrorist attack” may seem ignorant and impossible. I was afraid to write such strong words because, who am I? Just one student who is (maybe) overly optimistic; I am not stupid. I know the reality is that my demand for world peace will not magically erase the evil that is in the world, but I do believe that by putting those words into the global community, demanding that we as an entire community try harder, become better, and demand more from each other, then we can make progress.

I am immensely lucky to say that my friends in Paris are alive and well, but I’m bereaved to think about the fact that some lost the most important people in their lives.

The incidents in Paris are unfortunately only a fraction of the greater problem of violence and oppression we have in our world. We have a lot of work to do all around the globe, in every aspect from helping others heal from tragic occurrences to making an effort to eradicate the hate and oppression that spark them. We cannot forget that this feeling that we, as Westerners in the global community, are experiencing today is the state of being that people like the Syrian refugees are living in. My heart dropped when I realized that, despite my friends being safe, so many still live in constant danger. For whatever it’s worth, I’m sending them my love, my compassion, and a promise to be a change-maker, and work towards a world with less conflict and less hate.

With love,

Grace Halvorson