Dear Barak Obama,

Model: Dear Beatrice Ask

In many aspects we are different. Your are born in the early sixties, I in the middle fifties, you are black, I am white. Your are politician, I am a doctor. There are also things we have in common. We are both fond of sports and have difficulties to stay away from nicotine. We both have full citizenship in our countries, born within its territory, united by its flag, language, history and infrastructure. We are both equal in front of The Law.
Therefore I was susprised when you on the press-conference some days ago, as the president of your country, defended that people in my country have to be supervised by you. Only because we could be enemies of your country.
I write to you with a sincere wish. I want us to change experience. Come on. Just do it ! In 24 hours we share our bodies.

First I enter yours, to fully understand that being black is still a disadvantage.
Then you borrow my skin, to understand that 9/11 for me is not the day of the falling twin-towers, it is first of all the birth-day of my youngest daughter. Every 9/11 since 2001 this has been spoiled by television and newspapers, trying to make me believe that what happened in your country in 2001 is something I shall always be aware of, part of, and even guilty of, especially if I have any interest in muslim values, which I have (sic). In 2011 we were so drowned by this information that we almost felt half guilty, with all the the muslim people within our borders.
We knew that others have a much worse situation, and most of us have kept quiet. Now we know, from PRISM and NSA,  that you look upon all of us as suspicious terrorists.
Somebody argues that we all have to follow the law, the Patriot Act, we all have to participate in the war against terrorism. But imagine that this law is not following The Law, that this war is not our war ?
And somebody of you says that we have to do priorities, how could we trust some and not others ?
We don´t know, but we know for sure that no human being can be suspected of anything, just because she is a human being, living an ordinary life, with ordinary contacts, ordinary phone-calls and ordinary e-mails. Such a law is against all people, agains all human beings.
Maybe you want to leave this body we share at the moment,  you agree that this has gone too far, there is no solution, there is no emergency exit, the structures will not change if we take the PRISM and NSA  away, they are the  logical result of the tough culture of suspicion. It will survive until we stop look upon ordinary people as strangers, and start to look upon them as part of the same community, the same humanity.
You can leave our body now.

Eric Secher
Sweden

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