Marianne Schnall

Tough Talk From Environmental Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott

2012-05-09T09:23:20-04:00

Dr. Helen Caldicott has passionately devoted the last 40 years to educating the global community about the inherent risks and dangers of nuclear energy and weapons and the critical changes needed to restore and help save our embattled Earth. The Australian-born medical doctor (a pediatrician) and former Nobel Peace Prize nominee is the author of five books and the founder of several organizations including Physicians for Social Responsibility, Women's Action for New Directions (WAND) and The Helen Caldicott Foundation/NuclearFreePlanet.org. I recently had the opportunity to talk to the world renowned activist and environmental prophet at Green America's Green Festival in New York City, where she delivered an urgent and electrifying speech. Dr. Caldicott, who has been outspoken about the health and environmental dangers of nuclear power since before the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl meltdowns, prays that we will take heed from the recent Fukushima nuclear disaster, which resulted in the Japanese government shutting down all 54 of Japan's nuclear reactors, and spark a global trend to close nuclear power plants. Her frustration and anger at the lack of meaningful progress on this issue is palpable; as is her inspiring hope and belief in the collective power of individual citizens to raise their voices and create the political will to take action. What's at stake, as she reminds us in this candid interview, is our moral and spiritual imperative to protect our children and our Mother Earth. As she bluntly puts it, " The planet's in the intensive care unit, critically, acutely ill, and now we are all physicians to a dying planet." She urges, "Let the data sink in and then get off your couches to save the planet for your children."

Marianne Schnall: What is the one message you are most hoping to get out there?

Helen Caldicott: There isn't one message, there are three. One is that we are in dire danger from global warming and that unless we pull our socks up and stop burning coal and stop driving our SUV's around doing five miles to the gallon and stop fracking and natural gas, we're doomed. The temperature is on the way to be three degrees centigrade hotter by the middle of the century, which is almost antithetical to human existence, and six degrees by the end of the century - this is the top leading scientific data now that is available. I mean, we're killing the earth! Overtly. And we don't love our children enough, because if we did, we would be taking the necessary steps to stop burning coal and saving energy, you know?

When you think, that the Japanese had 54 reactors and now they've got none, they're all closed down, I think except one, I'm not sure. I think the last one is being closed. They're not dying - well of course, they will be dying soon of cancer and leukemia from the accident, but they're surviving alright without... I mean, what about sweating in the summer, hmm? That's what you've got sweat glands for, to cool your body down. I mean, we're so spoiled. We live at the same temperature like a Jello, the whole year. So you come to New York in the summer, it's hot and you go into a theater - it's like being in a refrigerator! Or in the winter, the buildings are so hot you'd have to take your clothes off. Well, what about putting on a lot of clothes in the winter - I mean, there are so many ways to go. And I do believe Americans desperately want to do the right thing, they're really good people, but they're just really not informed about what is happening. So inform yourselves. Read all my books. Question. Let the data sink in and then get off your couches to save the planet for your children. I mean, why immunize children and why care about what they eat, if, in fact, they don't have a future! It really amazes me. Number two: you close down your two Indian Point reactors, because if one of them blows, man - you're all gone. Three: work with Obama to work with Russia to abolish 97% of the weapons on the planet, between Russia and America. You can do that. The Russians are ready. What's holding it up is your generals, who are really pathological in the Pentagon and one of them said, 'If you get rid of our nuclear weapons, man, that's threatening the family jewels,' and that says it all, in a nutshell, so to speak, and that's a bad pun.

Marianne Schnall: When you look at the human species right now and the evolution of our consciousness, what do you think is at the root of our inability to act on any of this?

HC: You know, we did stop slavery and women got the vote and we've done all sorts of wonderful things, we are capable of growth, but we're still kind of tribal. After 9/11, this country turned into a tribe seeking vengeance. And I was in Eau Claire, Wisconsin the morning it happened, I had just flown in from Australia. It was a very Christian campus. So I got out the Bible and I looked at Luke, not that I'm a Christian. I'm a Pantheist. And Jesus said, love thine enemies, do good to those who hate you - and I hoped that America would not seek vengeance, the most powerful, destructive country on Earth. Well, I caught the Greyhound bus three days later and the country was swathed in flags and outside every mom and pop store it said 'God Bless America' and I thought, oh God. So "W" went into Iraq and killed a million people, half of whom were children, using uranium weapons and there's a very high incidence of severe congenital anomalies now, where those weapons were used in Basra and Fallujah, such that babies are being born with no brains, no arms, single eyes and so severe is it that the doctors have told the women to stop having babies. You were conducting a nuclear war there because some people went into the World Trade towers. Why didn't you stop and think, now why did they go into the World Trade Center? What have you done to alarm people so much that they would be, in their craziness, willing to do that, or fly into your Indian Point reactors? So America needs to grow up. And especially you need to grow up because you are the most militarily powerful country on earth and people really are kind in America and they really, desperately want to do the right thing, but without being educated, through the media, they don't know what it is. And the media, therefore, is determining the fate of the earth. As Marshall McLuhan said, "The media is the message."

MS: Do you feel hopeful? Are you optimistic that we're going to be able to...

HC: No, I'm not optimistic about the media, at all.

MS: About the situation generally?

HC: I am. I mean, I've got the cure to global warming, which is a study that I commissioned called Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free. Download it at www.ieer.org. You've got enough renewable energy right now, right now - integrated forms supply all the energy you need, right now - well, by 2030 - but get going and you'll employ millions of people and it will be terribly exciting. And lead the world towards a carbon-free nuclear-free future. We can abolish nuclear weapons. Obama wants to. He said in his speech in Prague, "I need your help" - and no one stepped up to the plate to support him. So he's on his own, fighting those crazy generals in the Pentagon who see the missiles as a surrogate for their erectile disability. That's why I called my book, years ago, Missile Envy. I mean, that's how they talk! They do.

The other thing is you can close down all the reactors if you rise up off your couches and you do what the people in Wisconsin did - take over your Congress. It belongs to you. Occupy it. It is yours. You are the leaders and those Representatives are your representatives. The President is not your leader. You're his leaders. And if you leave a vacuum there by not going in and making sure your representatives do what you want, the corporations step in and fill the vacuum and then you've got a corporate plutocracy and they're all corporate prostitutes, except maybe Bernie Sanders. So, you know, it's kind of your fault that it's happening, kind of your fault. And I think the Occupy movement has great potential. I think what happened in Wisconsin was so exciting. And when I went to Zuccotti Park in November or whenever, it was such a feeling of hope! For the first time in 20 years. You've got to rise up! You've got to take control of your country. You've got to get rid of those blasted corporations, who are evil! They're evil. They're killing the earth! And they know. I once spoke to a man who was building cruise missiles and I said, 'What about your children?' And he looked at me with eyes like dead stones and he said, 'I'm making money.' I said, 'Yeah, but what about your children?' And he repeated it. But when those men are on their death bed, they recant and they tell me what they've done. But it's too late, because they're about to die. Because they know, inside, what the truth is.

MS: Last question. What is your wish for the children of the future?

HC: That we have the courage to save their lives! I'm a pediatrician. I took the Hippocratic Oath. The planet's in the intensive care unit, critically, acutely ill, and now we are all physicians to a dying planet. And if we don't have the commitment and dedication that we have when we've got a patient in the ICU, and we stay up all night with them. We don't even think about ourselves. We're so tired out, we can hardly walk. We feel nauseated with tiredness. But that commitment is appropriate now and it's the only thing that's going to save the earth.

For more information visit:

ifyoulovethisplanet.org
nuclearfreeplanet.org
helencaldicott.com

Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's website and non-profit organization Feminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com. Her new book, based on her interviews with a variety of well-known women, is titled Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice.

An In-depth Interview With Life Coach Tony Robbins

2012-04-29T09:58:35-04:00

When I recently met author, strategist and coach Tony Robbins backstage at a taping of Oprah Winfrey's ground-breaking series Lifeclass, the first thing I was struck by was his sheer size. He is a somewhat startling six-feet-seven, yet he comes across like a loving, gentle giant, and when he talks to you he gives you his full magnetic attention. He is known for being an exuberantly charming, inspiring, energetic and articulate speaker and is also a huggably nice, caring person and a generous humanitarian. The New York Times calls Tony Robbins "the high priest of human potential." In the course of his impressive career, he has advised a diversity of luminaries including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Mother Teresa and three U.S. presidents, and CEOs, Olympic athletes and individuals all over the world regularly consult with him for his guidance. Countless more people have been transformed by his extensive selection of books, tapes and his exhilarating seminars. Robbins has gone through his own personal evolutions throughout his life, including a metamorphosis triggered by a brain tumor back in 1994 when he says, "I lost all sense of certainty in my life, whether I was going to live or die" which sparked an awakening which deepened, enriched and spiritually-infused his work and perspective. This candid, in-depth interview offers insight into Anthony Robbins' heart and soul.

Tony Robbins will be appearing in two shows airing this coming Monday, April 30th on OWN -- the Oprah Winfrey Network: the season finale of Oprah's Lifeclass: The Tour at 8/7c followed by an episode of his series Breakthrough at 10/9c. (If you are not sure where to find OWN, you can use the channel finder.)

Marianne Schnall: I think a lot of people at times see themselves as a passive recipient of whatever life brings, rather than realizing that they are in control of their own destiny. What would you say to wake people up to their own power, their own sense of control over their lives?

Tony Robbins: Well, I think you have to acknowledge, everyone has to acknowledge that we aren't in control. We have influence. We're not in control of the external world. It doesn't matter. The idea that we're puppets or that we're victims, comes from the fact that people look around and they focus on the fact that there's so much they can't control. But if you look at anyone who has great well-being, anyone who has a sense of impact, anyone who leads, whether it be a mom leading a family or a person leading a business - the thing that makes them different than everyone else is they understand there are two worlds. The external world which I can influence and the internal world which I do control. And that internal world is where you have to master yourself. And I think that whatever your story is, whatever your core belief system is, you're going to find a way to support it.

If I said to you right now -- I'll do this in a seminar, I'll say, look around the room right now and I'm going to give you a quick test and I want you to notice everything that's brown. Every single thing that's brown. Look behind you. Look around you. Try it right now wherever you are.

MS: Okay.

TR: Okay, close your eyes. And now tell me everything that's green. [laughs] And so what happens is I dare say you saw more brown. Now open your eyes and look for green. More green than when you were looking before, because you get what you look for -- right? So my whole approach is to get people out of your story. If your story is that 'life's a bitch and then you die,' that's how your story shows up. If your story is -- the one I encourage people to go consider is: what if life was not happening to you, but was happening for you. If that was your approach, then you look at everything in life and say everything is happening for a reason and a purpose and it serves me, but it's my job to figure out how to get it to serve me. Most human beings have had experiences in their past that they hated, that were horrific, that they never want to go through again and they probably wouldn't want any friend or someone they cared about to go through, and yet when you look back on it five years later, ten years later, at some point you say thank God that happened, because of that I have this tremendous drive, or I have this compassion because I suffered, or other people are not going to suffer because I did and I'm going to make sure it doesn't occur. So everything happens for a reason and a purpose and it serves us, it gives us a different approach, and then the focus becomes, what can I control, what can I take and shape in my life and then you don't end up finding yourself in that place.

But, really, I think all people's lives are controlled by three decisions. You look at people's lives -- it's not their conditions, it's their decisions. So everybody has a choice and every moment in your life you're making three decisions. You're making it while you're listening to me right now. First one is 'What are you going to focus on?' You're going to focus on what somebody is saying, what it means to you, you're focusing on how much longer am I going to have to listen to this crap [laughs], you're focusing on what you're going to eat -- you know, whatever it is, but whatever you focus on you're going to feel. Now some people have a patterned focus and they focus on what they can't control and some people focus on what they can. That one pattern alone can shift somebody from being depressed and feeling empowered. Some people's pattern, for example, is focused on the past. Some patterns the focus almost always goes to the future. Some to the present. There's no right or wrong, but whatever your pattern of focus is, it starts to control your whole life because it's the first filter of everything. If your focus is on what you don't have versus what you do have, it's not hard to figure out what your life is going to be like. We don't have to go any further than that and we can determine what your life is going to be like. You're going to be miserable.

On the other hand, as soon as you focus on something, the second decision your brain has to make -- and most people, by the way, make these decisions unconsciously -- which is why their life is unconscious. They let their unconscious just do it, rather than taking control. So the second one is you focus on something your brain has to immediately decide, 'What does this mean?' Is this person dissing me? Are they harassing me? Are they challenging me? Are they teasing me? Just one word change and you're going to go into a radically different emotional state, respond to that person in a very different way. Is this the end or is this the beginning? If you think it's the end of a relationship, you're going to treat the person very differently than if you think it's the beginning of the relationship. So that shift, shifts how you feel. And that's the third decision: what am I going to do? So as soon as I have a meaning, I have an emotion. If the emotion is anger, the choices I am going to pull from and what I'm going to do are going to be very different, than if the emotion is overwhelm than if the emotion is gratitude, than if the emotion is excitement. So our entire lives are controlled by that. Is God punishing me? Is God challenging me? Has this got nothing to do with God, is it just my lazy ass? [laughs] So I am always looking at those three decisions with people -- what do we tend to focus on, what do these things really mean to them, which is their story, their set of beliefs, their rules, and thirdly, 'What do they do?' which is their role models for action depending on what state they're in. And when you shift a person's life, you shift it by changing the pattern of focus, the pattern of meaning and the pattern of action.

MS: I think part of the problem is as you said, most of us are living our lives on autopilot, unconsciously. Even for myself I find it takes a lot of effort, because we're not brought up to watch our thoughts, to even be aware of what we're thinking, because we don't really know how to pay attention to our inner world. What advice would you have on that? I was reading something of yours where you were talking about a mental diet -- it is easier said than done, in terms of remaining aware and mindful of your thoughts and catching yourself when you're in a negative thought pattern.

TR: You're so right because I always tell people that one of the rarest of all human commodities is self awareness. Not self consciousness -- self consciousness, you're constantly evaluating yourself and judging yourself. But self awareness, which means becoming aware of the part of you that is patterned. You remember at that little group when I was doing the warm up with you, I had people pulling hands apart and bringing them together, let's figure out what thumb it was and change thumbs. And everybody's face looks weird when you change thumbs -- it's so unconscious. So becoming aware of your patterns is the first step. And that's basically what I have people do, I have them become aware. Because once you wake up, you might go to sleep for awhile, but you'll never be asleep again because your brain knows to look for it. It's like -- I don't know if you've ever bought an outfit or a car or something and all of a sudden you see that outfit or car everywhere. It's a part of your brain that's called the reticular activating system, the RAS, and it tells your brain what to notice. Once you set a goal, once you become aware of something, it becomes part of your consciousness.

So that's what I try to do, I try to wake people up. But as you said, when you do something as simple as a seven day mental diet, and you say here's what we're going to do for seven days: I'm going to become aware of my patterns -- not from the standpoint of trying to be a positive person, but to understand that if I go into negative states on a regular basis -- when you're in negative state you don't treat people better, you treat them worse. When you're in a negative state, you don't optimize your ability at work or your creativity or your business or your sport or whatever it is you're involved with, or as a parent. You just don't. And you sure as hell don't enjoy your life.

So as a thought process or a discipline in mental strength and mental happiness and a sense of empowerment, I say to people, take seven days and all I want you to do is very simple. Seven straight days where you catch yourself with anything you're saying that is derogatory, negative, about the future or about yourself or about another human being. So all you've got to do is very simple. You catch yourself and you just go erase. Catch yourself and say erase -- but you've got to go seven straight days where you don't have to say erase. Well, for most people, this is a month long process [laughs], because they have no idea how much negativity they state about the future, or they state about themselves, or they state about other people. And you make them right write it down and you'll start to see a pattern. You write it down, you erase, no more, right? And you keep a little journal doing this and again, most people they'll start going and they might even get through half a day, a quarter of a day and all of a sudden they'll have this regurgitation of shit that comes out of their head. And that little discipline will remind you, it will just make you so aware of how many unconscious thoughts you have each day. And then it's not about beating yourself up, it's about saying, 'Wow. This isn't me. This is the automatic part of my brain that undisciplined it will just throw out trash.' You know, weeds grow automatically. You don't have to plant weeds. I look at people's lives and you see what's not working in their lives and it usually comes from an undisciplined mind.

MS: There are so many different things we are educated about, yet this is something that is completely not taught to us as children -- to be aware of our thoughts and how that affects us. I only learned about this myself, later in life, through the practice of meditation and still, sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night and my brain starts going off on the things I have to do or I'm worrying about, I have to literally tell my brain to stop and focus on my breathing. It is a constant training and retraining, and I notice the difference in myself when I do have time to meditate and when I don't. How do you personally stay centered and balanced? What tools do you use or recommend?

TR: Let me answer that two ways. Number one -- I'll tell you tools second -- but let me tell you the number one piece. Whenever you have something that's a mission that's larger than yourself, whether it be your children, whether it be a business, whether it be a non-profit focus -- I don't care what it is. Something that is your life's passion, that is more than just you, you will find that you're not going to have a whole lot of time inside your consciousness for negativity. I believe that life supports what supports more of life. In other words, motivation does matter. If you're just trying to take care of yourself, you're part of life and I believe life steps in and gives you a certain level of insight. If you're trying to serve something larger then yourself -- your family -- you know when I suddenly had four kids overnight and I was 25 years old and I had a 17-year-old, an 11-year-old, a five-year-old and one on the way, I grew more than any other time in my life, no matter what else I was doing, because I had to have insights to support this family all of a sudden. It grew me geometrically. If you're trying to take care of a whole community, you have to have a different level of insight, because your motivation is to truly serve something much larger than yourself and then those things come true. If you're trying to serve humanity, I think you need even greater insight.

So I think number one is if you get outside yourself, you're going to find yourself having a lot less of these limiting thoughts because your purpose is to serve something. As long as we're within ourselves, we have challenges. Because that's just the nature of the human mind. That's why meditating is a wonderful experience, but why it's so difficult for people. What's actually to me a more powerful meditation -- and I still meditate as well -- is that sense of service where everything else disappears. You're not worried about your thoughts. You're not fighting and trying not to think of anything else. You're moving towards something. Living life on a purpose is the greatest gift you can find for yourself. But how do you do it on a day to day basis? You ask better questions. Questions control focus. So if I say to you, tell me Marianne, what's something in your life right now that you're really proud of? When you look back on your life in the last few years or over your whole life, what's something that stands out for you that you could be really proud of, that you do feel proud about. I read your biography, so you've got plenty.

MS: My kids, my websites, my interviews and writings. The work that I do to help and inspire others.

TR: Out of that grouping of things, think of one in particular that you really feel proud of.

MS: I guess my kids.

TR: Yes. Can you think of something in particular you're proud of about your kids?

MS: That they seem to be in touch with their authentic selves, which is something I don't remember being so in touch with at their age.

TR: Wow. So something that you didn't have in your life, you're able to give them. That's probably part of your drive of why you did. But when you feel proud about them, just as I ask you the question, and you start to focus on what I'm asking, obviously you shift your focus to what you're proud of. If I ask you what you're excited about and I get you to really take a few moments and think about it, you're going to start to feel that. In your own life -- I have what I call my kind of morning questions or solution questions. If suddenly all hell is breaking loose, the first question I ask is 'What's great about this?' If my brain first answers, 'nothing' [laughs], what I do is I force myself to just say, what's great about this? Okay -- what's great about this is at least now we know. What's great about this is I'm having to be aware of this so I can go attack it now. What's great about this is I'm going to get an insight out of this, I'm going to solve this and once I solve this, it will help so many other people. So what's great about this? My next question is what's not perfect yet? And the question presupposes there's perfection in this. And the brain's kind of an interesting thing. Whatever you ask it, it will give you an answer. If you go, how come I can never lose weight? There's a presupposition to that question that you can never lose weight and so your brain operates that way and goes well, because you're a pig [laughs]. If you go, what's not perfect yet? Our brain will go what's not perfect yet is, we've got to deal with this challenge because somebody was unconscious and it's not solved yet, right? And I go, what am I willing to do to make this work? What am I willing to do right now to move this forward and make this work?

So I go from 'Holy shit, this huge problem' to 'What's great about it? What's not perfect yet?' so it acknowledges the challenge -- and what am I willing to do to really transform this? And my last question is how can I transform it and enjoy it? And again, I've asked these questions so often that what happens to my brain is it just kicks in gear, so I want to do more than just to accomplish it, I want to find a way to enjoy what I'm going to do, which usually means finding some higher purpose or something about it that says, you know what? Rather than this just being a pain in the butt, this is going to lead you to something quite magical.

So I use questions. Questions change focus. And if you develop some simple questions to ask yourself -- you know, one of my primary questions in life -- everybody has a question they ask more often than anything else unconsciously, I do a whole seminar where you dig it in and find out what yours is. But my number one question in life is 'How can I make it better?' Think about it -- my whole life has been shaped by that. All the skill sets that I have, all the things I'm able to do in this world, the things you saw on the show, the things you saw in the live event that we did there -- they've all come out of me basically saying how can I make this better? How can I make myself better? How can I make this process better? It's an obsessive question for me. And ask and you shall receive. So questions are the answer. But you want higher quality questions, and that's what will direct your focus.

MS: So that's another aspect of all this that doesn't come naturally to us, taking the time to contemplate these types of questions, since our society is so focused instead on all these meaningless, materialistic goals, and doesn't encourage us to do this type of inner reflection. There are so many necessary shifts in perspective that aren't supported by our society so it is a lot of relearning and working against a different tide.

TR: Well, the tide I think is cultural, more than anything else. We live in a culture that is about me. We live in a culture that expects instantaneous gratification for everything, and the web has only enhanced that in many ways. It empowers in many ways, but it also makes people believe 'I should have everything right now.' And the missing element in our culture today and the reason why -- you know, in 2006 we had the highest levels of unhappiness ever measured in North America and it was at the peak of the financial -- before the crisis -- peak of our last 30 years of financial well-being for the United States. And I believe the reason is because people expected more and more with less and less effort. There was no sense of mastery. There's no sense of 'I'm responsible in life for something.'

What makes people feel alive is to have a life of meaning, not to be happy. Happiness is wonderful. It comes and it goes. Pleasure comes and goes. Pleasure is in the body. Happiness is in the mind. But in the spirit, that experience of meaning is what's the richest experience for human beings and meaning sometimes comes from very tough situations that you push through and that's because you only push through because there's a motive larger than yourself, so what are you responsible to life for? What are you here to give? What are you here to share? What are you made for? What's your sense of purpose? These are the things that change a person's life much more quickly than trying to solve their own individual problems. It's not to say you can't be practical -- I teach the practical side of things. But very quickly, people go to an event like mine -- they'll find that they came because they want to make more money, or they want to lose weight, or they want to transform their relationship, or they want to turn their kid around, or whatever the case may be -- take their career to the next level. I deliver on that, but I'm a Trojan Horse. Once I get you there and I deliver on it, now you're enthralled and now I lead you to a place where you remember who you are and what you're here for.

MS: One important message I see conveyed in your work is that some of the most powerful transformations can come from going through a really difficult time or a time of crisis. We're taught to fear those events in our lives, but they can be these unbelievable opportunities and gifts, if you're open to it that way. The trick is remaining open, rather than shutting down, which is usually our instinct.

TR: You're absolutely right. I always tell people there's nothing greater than a crisis to create a breakthrough. Because that's when we breakthrough usually -- most people don't proactively breakthrough -- they breakthrough because they have to. They breakthrough because it's a 'must' to change now, not a 'should' to change now. And the beauty of crisis is it doesn't feel beautiful, is it melts us down. And when you're melted down you can recast your life in a new way. But when you stay in the same form, you just keep doing what you're doing. People have so much momentum in the way they are -- they have so much inertia, would probably be a better description -- in this is how things are, the sameness, the certainty of what I know, that very often it takes a crisis to break that inertia and get somebody to all the way push through. So that crisis is almost always an opportunity. It's corny and it's used a million times, but the whole Chinese symbol about crisis and opportunity. You know, danger and opportunity at the same time -- it's exactly what it is. But the most powerful thing about a crisis is, it moves you to do something that you wouldn't have done before. Because you have to. You know the current situation is not working, so you're going to have to do something else. And I think crisis is almost always a gift. If you look at people's lives and ask them what have been some of the greatest breakthroughs of your life, and then ask them what preceded it, virtually always it was a crisis of some sort. And all a crisis is, is nothing is working, you're not being rewarded, you're getting pain for the very things maybe at one time you were rewarded for.

MS: I know that you're a father. What advice would you give to parents, and people who care for children, like teachers, on raising happier, more resilient, more empowered kids?

TR: I would say you have to first go first. You can't raise a happy, more resilient kid if you're not a happy, more resilient adult. We teach people how we are, we don't teach them by what we say, we teach them by the way we live. So I look at this and say, breakthroughs in life always come from those three things. I think I may have mentioned at your event there, which is you've got to first be able to create -- people think about get the right strategy, I don't know how to do something -- but the reason you don't know how to do it, is you've got a belief system, a story if you would, that's limiting you. You know, 'I'm out of control, it's too much, I don't have enough time, I've tried everything' -- there's some story that's keeping you from getting the very strategies to make you most effective. And a way to get out of those lousy stories, the number one skill set, is to really learn to change your state. It is the one thing that none of us are taught. We're taught alright -- but we're taught by two million commercials we should have instantaneous release from pain, and the way we should do it is reach for something. Drink something, eat something, ingest something that is going to suddenly change it all. The problem, of course, is when you take away the pain, you take away the drive to change. And so we have a huge portion of our society that's medicated -- some medicated by prescription drugs, some medicated by food, some medicated by alcohol, but it's a massive medication process. And so learning to change your state and being able to demonstrate that with your kids in an instant -- what I teach, which is a radical change is the way you use your physical body. Learning how to do that on a dime, over and over again and developing that as a habit, will teach your kids the most important thing of all, which is to be resourceful.

We're all going to face extreme stress in our lives, there's no one who is going to escape that. That's the one thing, rich or poor, I don't care who you are, you're going to lose. You're going to go through some pain. You're going to lose your home or you're going to lose your job or you're going to lose your savings or you're going to lose a dear friend or you're going to lose a child or you're going to have somebody come to you and say as I've had, 'You have a tumor in your brain' -- and those days, those moments, and those things happen and how you respond is going to determine the quality of your life. It's not how things go when it's well, it's the ability to change that state, get resourceful, find an empowering meaning and find a solution to move forward, that's what makes people successful, so you've got to do that first. You've got to say this is a skill set, a set of skills I need to get within my own life. I need to become the master of my own mind, the master of my emotions. I need to get emotionally fit and strong and the only way you're going to do that is by going to a gym. You're not going to do it, frankly -- you know reading a book is a nice thing, but like people say, 'Why do you do seminars?" Well, you could read a book on swimming or you can go swimming with somebody who is an expert swimmer who'll throw you in the deep end and make sure you don't die, but also make sure you get totally immersed and you know what you're doing, so you can go do it on your own. That's really the ideal environment for people. A book or an audio type of thing is probably the next best thing.

MS: When you look out at humanity, right now, at the world, what do you think is at the root of the serious problems the world is facing, when you diagnose the human species at the moment?

TR: That's a pretty large question. [laughs]

MS: Sorry, I'm known for those. [laughs]

TR: I think of human beings as having -- you know I had an experience when I was diagnosed with a tumor, and I found myself having these really crazy aberrant behaviors. You know, I fought the idea of it. I went through all these different elements, long story short, I had an experience where I realized I had lost all sense of certainty in my life, whether I was going to live or die and I began to realize that for most of my life I had worked early on in my life as a kid to pound certainty inside myself, because I didn't have any. I had no role models in my house. There was nobody that was happy or successful, in any way. Happy, meaning, you know my mom was married four times. We were always broke. There were times there was no food, literally. The reason I feed people today, over two million people every year, is because my family was fed when I was 11-years-old by some strangers on Thanksgiving. I just never forgot it and decided someday I would do the same for other people, so it was a great gift to my life. With none of that available to me, I pounded certainty into myself. I literally conditioned myself to be certain, to have that confidence, that strength, and it was something I did by controlling my mind. I would do what I call incantations. An affirmation you might go, 'I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy' and your brain goes 'bullshit' -- but an incantation is something that you state with such intensity over and over again and you engage your entire body where I would literally go out at 17 years old on these slow jog runs for an hour and a half doing these incantations. You know, 'I now command my subconscious mind to direct me in helping as many people as possible, by giving me the strength, the humor, the brevity, whatever it takes to show these people, to get these people to change their life now' -- and do it over and over again. Or 'God's wealth is circulating in my life, it's what flows to me, an avalanche of abundance. All my needs, desires and goals are met instantaneously, by infinite intelligence -- where I'm one with God and God is everything.' I'd do that for an hour. And I'd shout at the top of my lungs while I'm jogging and I would literally condition myself to be there.

So now, here I am 31 years old, I'm the most successful I'd ever dreamed of being and I've got a tumor. What the hell -- all of a sudden I'm not functioning anymore. What I lost was my certainty. And that triggered me -- I was literally going to work with this man who was a Saudi Arabian sheik, who was paying me a million dollars to come coach him and I'm thinking to myself, this guy ... You know I never think like -- I'm always compassionate -- I don't ever think like 'this guy's an idiot.' And I'm thinking 'this guy's an idiot' [laughs]. He's got no reason not to feel good about his life and I was getting all whipped up and I was in the shower and in the shower, I came up with probably the seminal piece of my work, which is that all human beings are driven by six needs, is the answer to your question. People have a need for certainty -- and that need for certainty is in every human being, certainty that you can avoid pain, certainty that you can at least be comfortable. It's a survival instinct, right? But at the same time everyone goes after certainty in different ways. Some people get certainty by working harder and saying I'm going to master something. Some people get certainty by lowering their expectations, going 'it will never work. Everybody's screwing me anyway. The world is against me. I'm a victim.' And they lose their dreams, but they get their needs. The needs are not like goals. They're not like belief systems that are built into you. So if you can get certainty by eating -- you're stressed out, you go eat a bunch of your favorite food, you overwhelm your bloodstream, and all of a sudden you start breathing again. You could do it that way. You could do it by smoking a cigarette. There's a million ways to get certainty. The only question is, are the ways you're doing it, are they empowering, neutral or dis-empowering? If it works for the moment and it doesn't hurt anybody, it's kind of neutral. If it works long term, obviously for yourself and others, it's empowering. If it just works for the moment, just gives you a little hit, but it has a downside long term, you know drugs, food, alcohol, that's extreme. All those things -- how does it cost you? Well here's the weird thing -- if you get totally certain -- if every moment in your life, Marianne, you knew what was going to happen, when it was going to happen, how it was going to happen, how would you feel?

MS: Bored.

TR: Bored out of your mind. So God, in her infinite wisdom -- gave us a second need: variety, uncertainty. We all want uncertainty. Variety is the spice of life. We all want surprises. Do you like surprises?

MS: I can't help remember what Oprah said during the Lifeclass taping -- depends on the type of surprise.

TR: As long as it's a type of surprise we want, right? The ones we don't want are a problem, but we need them to feel alive, so we need variety. Now here's the interesting thing. People will go into a relationship, if it's a brand new relationship, it's so exciting because it's something brand new, it's variety, it's different. And you're so excited by the feelings. And what most people try to do because they don't want to lose that, they try to control it to make it certain. And if they make it so certain then you become bored in the relationship. It's a delicate balance. It's not a teeter totter where you and I get across on a seesaw or teeter totter and we go okay, here's the goal, we're going to balance it. Alright, now once you and I balance it, how long before one of us is going to start jerking that thing around just to feel alive. That's what people do with their lives.

So the third need is significance: the need to feel unique, special, important or needed. Everybody has those needs, including the people that say I don't need to be special. If thou dost protest too much, it's still a part of them. So significance can be achieved by being the toughest person, the smartest person, the sweetest person, the most generous person. You can do it by the way you dress. You can do it by having a big problem, bigger than anybody else's. I'm sure you've seen people that argue about 'Oh, you think you've got it bad, let me tell you what my problem is.' [laughs] They're arguing over significance. So you can get it in a way that's empowering, mutual or dis-empowering, once again. Violence is the fastest way -- and this is a long answer, but you're asking me a big question and I'm giving you the context. Violence is the fastest way to get significance without education, without background, without any money. If I feel completely insignificant and you walked through the hood and I come up to you and put a gun to your head, just how significant am I on a zero to ten scale in your life right now? I'm 100, right?

And here's the other thing that I've learned. There's six needs. The only difference between human beings is two things. One, which of these six needs are the top two for you? Because while we have all the same needs, we don't value them equally. So some people are more certainty driven. In fact, if you mess with anything, they freak out. Control freaks. Where you're late for anything they go nuts. Or you change anything they go nuts. If certainty is at the top of your list, you have a very different life then if variety is at the top of your list. That person is going to go sky diving, they're going to do everything that they possibly can, they've got completely different direction for their lives.

So the top two shape you, so interestingly enough, if significance is the most important thing to you in your life, you're going to behave very differently with what the fourth need is, love. Connection and love. Most people settle for connection, because love's too scary. They don't want to lose that feeling, that super high is too crushing so they settle for the comfort of connection. And again, you can get connection in lots of ways. You can get it by a friendship. You can get it by a dog. You can get it by a child. You can get it by being attached to a cause. You can get it by having huge problems and sharing those problems with other people, going 'I have that problem too' and you both get to connect. Those are the most common ones to do these things. But here's what I found -- any time an action you take, any time a thought pattern you have, any time you have an emotion that meets at least three of these needs, it becomes an addiction. Take an example of putting a gun to your head. Why do we have in the world so much violence? I put a gun to your head -- here I am feeling totally insignificant -- instantly I'm significant at a zero to ten at a ten plus. How certain am I that you're going to respond to me if I put a gun to your head?

MS: Right.

TR: And by the way, every time we do it, there's going to be some variety. And in a sick way, we're connected. 'I live in a place where I feel America's dominating the world and destroying my family,' I go fly a plane into a building -- guess what, it might take you ten years to build that building, but I could blow it up in two hours. Didn't take a whole lot, $400,000 for the whole operation, changed the world as we know it. So it wasn't a lot of money -- it was just somebody feeling like I could be significant. And by the way, those people went in and they died flying those planes into there believing that if I do this, I'll be more significant. I will go up and be with Allah and I'll be greeted and my family will be honored, because I'll be a martyr. It's huge. People will die for significance. People will die for love.

More often than not, men bio-chemically are driven for significance and women more by connection, but in the world we live in today, you can find just as many women driven for significance as there are men and vice versa. So the reason I tell you this, because this relates to everything you see. So these first four needs, everybody finds a way to meet. I don't care who they are. You might get certainty by lowering your expectations. You might get variety by eating. You might get significance by tearing other people down or reading magazines that tear other people down and you can feel superior to those people. Or by sharing your problems so that you can connect with people. You can do it in negative ways, neutral or positive.

The final two needs are the spiritual needs. They're not religious, they're spiritual, they're what lifts your spirit. And that is, number five is, you've gotta grow. If you don't grow, you're not going to be fulfilled. Most people meet their needs basically, even if they have to lie to themselves for those first four needs, but very few people are fulfilled because they aren't growing. Growth is what life is. The one word that makes happiness happen for people is progress. I don't care where you are in your life, if you're making progress with your family, if you're making progress with your body, if you're making progress with your kids, if you're making progress in your energy or your health, you're going to feel better about your life. And so progress is a symbol of growth. Everything in the universe grows or dies. And the last one is contribution. What makes us feel alive is to have something that has greater meaning. Life is not about me, it's about we. So it's a long answer to your question -- so now where are the challenges in the world? The challenges in the world come from, as we develop, as individuals and societies, we start out extremely egocentric. All babies are egocentric. Meaning, they care about whose needs?

MS: Their own.

TR: Their own, that's it. So we only grow because in the beginning it's okay for babies to do that. In fact if you're a mother or a father, you're filled with oxytocin when you have a child. It makes you love the baby, even though they look like a lizard [laughs], it doesn't matter. You'll think it's the beautiful thing in the world. But there's a day that oxytocin wears off, and that's the day that fear enters our body, because you start realizing, 'Oh my God, I've got to do something, gotta be something, gotta somehow be a certain way', in order to be loved, in order to survive, even. So inside of all of us we have these patterns where we eventually become at least ethnocentric. We care about our group, our mom, our dad, our family, our religion, our white people, our African American people, our Chinese, our whatever. Right? And not everybody evolves beyond that. And some people, eventually, evolve beyond that until they're more human-centric or even spirit-centric where they care about everything. The more you consciously care that way your life changes. When you look around the world, consciousness is delivered by which needs you value. If your value is certainty, you're in survival mode. If you're in variety, you're in the fun mode, which is just me. If you're in significance, then you're going to be in a mode of trying to achieve something or being an achiever of something. If you're in love mode, it's going to be spirit and connection. You're going to care about a larger group of people. If you're into growth and contribution, it's a different level. So there are elevations.

So if you look around the world and I can tell you right now that the majority of the planet is focused on certainty and significance. And those two absolutely guarantee unhappiness. Because if you're driven by significance, it doesn't matter what you achieve, it's never enough. It doesn't matter how many people you conquer, it doesn't matter how much money you make, it doesn't matter -- because there's always a comparison to something else and as a result, those people can never be fulfilled. It's the number one thing in our society, is significance. I was just in India and if you go to India and you ask -- and I've done studies there, of junior high and high school students, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' -- the number one answer is a software engineer, but what's more interesting is why. And they say 'Because I want to do well and be successful so I can take care of my family'. If you ask, instead, in the United States today -- USA Today I believe was the one did the poll -- 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' to junior high and high school students in the United States, what do you think their answer is?

MS: I don't know.

TR: To be famous. The number one answer -- which today you can do by being infamous, right? You just create a video online of doing something crazy. So our world is hugely driven by significance. The other one is certainty. If you are driven by certainty you can't grow. If you are driven by certainty if somebody messes with you, you can get very intense, even violent, depending upon the person's personality. So I look around the world and say, the challenges these days, almost all challenges these days, virtually all, are human challenges. Humans created the problems, so humans can solve them, but only by a higher level of consciousness. You know, it's the whole thing, you can't solve the problem at the same level of consciousness that created the problem. And the evolution happens as people learn to value higher needs in their life, as what guides them. So think about it this way: 9/11 there were people who ran in that building, firemen, who knew there was no way on earth they're going to come back out of that building. They were going to literally give their life to save strangers. Now what makes a human being do that? The answer is significance. Significance and contribution are elements that would get them to go do that. But here's the difference, the guys that flew the plane that killed everybody were also driven by significance. The difference is I said two things. What do we value most and also, we have a different set of maps or beliefs of how to meet that need. So one person's belief to be significant is to kill "the enemy". The other person's way of being significant is to die for a stranger. So that belief system about how to meet your needs, that's the structure.

So you asked me a pretty giant question so I know it's a long answer, but here's how I look at it: I look at society and I look at people and I say... I'm not Mr. Motivator. Somebody wrote Mr. Motivator. I think you get a better sense -- I believe in energy. I believe in passion. I believe in teaching people in an environment where it's like being at an NBA Championship Game. But on the other hand, my view is I'm the 'why' guy. I don't need to motivate you. What I need you to discover is what is your motivation. So if you say, 'I'm unmotivated' -- you're not unmotivated, you're highly motivated to eat, right? [laughs] So my job is to uncover that process. So I look around and I say: what is the driving force inside of somebody? What's really making this thing work? What needs are they trying to meet? And then if I can show them a better way to meet those needs, suddenly they see the whole world differently.

MS: Lately I feel hopeful, I see so many signs that there's this mass awakening happening, like human consciousness is evolving right before our eyes. That's how I like to see the world, rather than the focus on all of the problems, the light that is emerging, all these people waking up.

TR: That's right. Waking up is the whole key. But what's waking everybody up right now? It's crisis. Think about it, that's why there's all the seasons. Winter serves. Because things die in winter and things are cleaned out so that there's room for the new springtime. I think we're not yet quite to springtime, each of us individually can enter springtime, but as a culture, we're right now still in winter and there's enough crisis there which some people are already pushed over the edge and others people aren't and I can promise you, over the next ten years you're going to see a lot more crisis and you're going to see a lot more breakthroughs and on the other side of it, we'll enter a new springtime.

MS: I run a women's website and non-profit organization Feminist.com, and I've heard you talk a lot about masculine and feminine energy, which I believe is in both men and women. In fact, we have a new initiative "Men & Women as Allies", which is not just about men and women working together towards gender equality, but also looking at how destructive gender stereotypes impact men as negatively as they do women. What is your sense of that? In addition to everything else it seems that people are up against, they may not be aware of the influence of constricting gender roles. That's why I think it is so great when I watch episodes of Breakthrough and I see men openly crying and expressing emotion and vulnerability. I think that's a whole other issue -- this idea that we all have masculine and feminine qualities in each of us and we need to value them both to be whole.

TR: I think you're absolutely right. I think both parts of yourself have to be... We only feel alive when we're whole. And to think that you're one or the other is a joke. Culturally, though, what has happened, is we overvalue one, not based on our real wiring. In other words, both masculine and feminine are in everyone, and my experience, and I've dealt with four million people in live seminars in a hundred countries -- and I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that somewhere in the range of 90% of the people are wired similar to their sexuality, meaning there is a driving force inside you that you're born with that is the stronger of the two. So you use both as a whole, but equally challenging is, the culture tends to reward the opposite. Most men under stress become more feminine -- meaning feminine in its natural state is the thing I was talking to Oprah about. I think you were there when I was talking about the affirming, right?

MS: Yes.

TR: So women have this beautiful capacity that men don't seem to have, when they're masculine men, at least, of affirming. Guys just don't do that when their masculine males, it's quite the opposite. Masculine energy grows by challenge. That energy tends to grow. The reason I bring it up, though, is, a woman can do anything a man can do today and then some. She can even have a child without a man, so there's not a question about where the equality is. But what you have to look at is beyond equality. I think in my experience, because again I've dealt with so many magnificent achiever women who will blow away any guy, but I can tell you that if their core is feminine, if they don't honor that feminine, because the culture for so many years, it was so out of balance, the culture encourages women to be masculine and encourages men to be feminine. It's actually a reversal of where we were at one time. My experience is for fulfillment -- I'm not talking about balance, for fulfillment, you've got to be able to know what your core is and be able to return and nurture that part of yourself. Because if a mom is a single mom and she's out there and she's playing both roles in life, she has developed her masculine very strongly. In fact, she's probably had to develop more of her masculine then maybe is her nature and as a result though, women should get to turn that off since she's responsible all the time for everything and everyone, it's a difficult situation. So a big part of my focus with people is to say, let's figure out what your core is. And you'll know, because you know what really, truly fulfills you outside your cultural conditioning and get people to feel that and make sure that there's a segment of that in their life that is nurtured deliberately and consciously.

MS: How would you describe your life philosophy or your sense of spirituality? I'm sorry to keep asking you such big questions.

TR: I like big questions. To me spirituality is just love, period. When you're in a state of love, you do what's right. When you're really in love, it's not about you. When you're really in love, it's about giving, serving, delivering to others and that's when we feel most alive. We feel most small, we feel most challenged when we're only focusing on ourselves. Because even when you fulfill yourself, meaning you get what you think you want, you still find yourself in a position where it's never enough. You only feel it for so long. It's like what you get will never make you happy. Who you become, will make you very happy or very sad. And so it's that becoming that makes us feel alive. That becoming is it.

I look at it this way -- I try to break it down in practical terms, so that people can think about life and say, here's what I'm about. I'm about having people experience the most extraordinary quality of life that they possibly could imagine. Now what's an extraordinary quality of life for you, might be different, Marianne, then for your friends or even for your daughters or for me or anyone else. Everyone has a different model of what that looks like, so I'm not here to tell people what an extraordinary life looks like. I just know that it's one where you're truly fulfilled and honor that extraordinary life on your terms. Some people have built giant companies, for some people it's having a beautiful garden, some people it's learning to sing a beautiful song, write a poem -- it's different for everybody.

But I personally believe that there are two master lessons in life, is how I practically break it down. There's the science of achievement and there's the art of fulfillment. If you're going to have an extraordinary life, both skills must be mastered. Now the science of achievement is in fact, the science. If you want to lose weight, be healthy, have fitness, if you want to make more money, if you want to achieve something, there are rules to achievement, there are rules of finance, there's rules of the body. We're all unique and individual biochemically, but there are certain rules that if you violate them, you're going to have disease in the body. If you're aligned with them, you're going to have an abundance of energy and vitality and health. Same thing financially. I don't care what your color, your background, your age is, your gender -- if you do certain things, you're going to have too much month at the end of the money, if there are certain principles you violate. If you do other things, you're going to have an abundance of economics. So there are very clear rules. There's a science to achievement. I spent probably the first 10 to 15 years of my life, primarily focused on finding all those best strategies and that's how I built my original reputation and I've turned things around, helped people achieve, make things go.

But along the way, when I got my tumor, I kind of uncovered that there was another part of life that I wasn't fully masterful of and that is the art of fulfillment. I call it an art, because everybody's idea of art is as unique as a human being. It's like you go to an art show and some people look at this big blue dot and go, 'That's the most amazing thing' and somebody else says, 'Are you kidding me? That's insane.' [laughs] Everyone has a different thing. In fact, you want to know what God loves, what the universe loves, go to the forest. There's total diversity in the forest. Everywhere you look is diversity. So what I look at is: what's going to make you feel fulfilled and that's totally unique to you, Marianne, then it is to your children, then it is to me, even for the people we love.

But I do know that there are some principles, not laws, but some fundamental principles and that is for you to feel fulfilled you've got to grow and you've got to give. You've got to feel like there's progress, something, somewhere in your life, for you to feel good and you've got to feel like your life is more than just about yourself, when those two things are there. So I look at life and say: these are the two parts of life -- the ability to take the invisible and make it visible. Take thoughts and turn them into actions, turn them into results, turn your dreams into reality. That's really the science of achievement. The ability to enjoy and be fulfilled and to have meaning and all that, that's really the art of fulfillment.

MS: The question I always like to end with, because I believe in visualizing, is what would be your wish or prayer for the children of the future?

TR: I think my prayer would be for them to own their true value in life, but to know that that value they're born with and yet it's magnified by what they give. If you could install one value into all human beings, it would be the need that's already there called contribution, but getting them to go there first, instead of certainty, and that's not an easy thing, because it means you have to face fears. But I think getting people outside themselves.

I had a great Mom. She was crazy as hell. She beat the shit out of me. I went through an incredibly violent childhood. But she loved the shit out of me too. She was a mixed up lady. She was beat when she was a kid, so when she felt out of control that's what happened. But she also took me when I was four years old, maybe five years old, on my birthday I got some balloons and she would say to me, 'Do you want these balloons here or do you want to give them to these people?' She'd bring me to this old folks' home, and I'd hand these balloons to these old folks and they just lit up like a Christmas tree. It was like I had enough experiences like that, that I got hooked on contribution at an earlier stage, earlier than even my certainty being met. I got hooked on higher value structure and it has shaped my life in every way, shape and form.

My kids, I took them all out when my boy was four or five, I'll never forget, we went to a place in Oceanside, California, this park and we go to this park and we've got these baskets of food and we're looking for homeless people and we find this guy lying on the floor in the bathroom, just covered in a bunch of rags and he's sleeping and I said to my son, 'Give him this big basket.' It was so big he could barely carry it and I said, 'Why don't you give this to this man?' and he starts to go in and he puts the basket down and all of a sudden, bam, this guy wakes up and he grabs my son's arm. And my son screams and I jump ten feet, right, and before anything could happen, he pulls my son's hand close to his face and he kisses his hand. My son's 26 now, my youngest, and he still remembers that today. He still contributes. He still driven and the thing I'm most proud of him in his life, is he's a contributor in everything he does. Those things, those value systems, change the quality of a human being's life, but they change the quality of a community, they change the quality of the world. I think getting hooked on contribution is the way outside of yourself, outside of your pain and into a life that's meaningful.

MS: You have such a beautiful spirit and it has been a real pleasure to speak to you and help spread your inspiring messages and wisdom.

TR: You're so kind. Thank you very much. I love people and I love seeing impact. I'm as driven today as I was when I started this stuff at 17. I'm even more driven today. So it never gets old for me and I love seeing what you saw. I love to see people wake up and feel that aliveness again. That's what I live for.

For more information about Tony Robbins as well as a schedule of his upcoming events and seminars, visit www.tonyrobbins.com.

Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's website and non-profit organization Feminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com. Her new book, based on her interviews with a variety of well-known women, is titled Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice.

Exclusive Conversation Between Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra

2012-04-25T08:31:56-04:00

When I recently attended the taping of Oprah's Lifeclass at Radio City Music Hall in which Deepak Chopra served as guest teacher, you could feel the mutual respect, affection and friendship between the two trailblazing thought leaders (during the show Oprah lovingly referred to the combination of Oprah and Chopra as "Choprah"). In fact, it was Deepak Chopra who Oprah says was the inspiration for her recent trip to India. So it is compelling to watch Oprah turn her probing interviewing skills upon the world-renowned author and spiritual pioneer, in an insightful interview which airs this coming Sunday on a special one-hour episode of her "Super Soul Sunday" series on the network she founded, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.

In the interview, taped in India, Dr. Chopra talks about his ground-breaking work in the field of mind-body medicine, the lessons he's learned from his parents and family, the influence that India's rich cultural traditions have had on his journey, and offers spiritual advice such as the importance of living in the present moment. He also shares personal stories and insights, such as his recent life-changing experience as a Buddhist monk in Thailand as well as reflections about his family and his wife Rita who he has rarely talked about in the media. It is a thought-provoking and intimate sit down about life, spirit and enlightenment between two of today's most inspiring personalities.

Here is an exclusive excerpt from the never-seen-before interview as well as two video clips. The episode will premiere this Sunday, April 29th at 11am ET/10am CT on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network (if you are not sure where to find OWN, use the channel finder ).

Oprah: OK. I just want you to finish these sentences. Life is...

Deepak: A field of infinite possibilities and an opportunity to evolve in the direction of truthfulness beauty and harmony.

Oprah: The world needs...

Deepak: More compassion and love.

Oprah: I believe in...

Deepak: the divinity of all life.

Oprah: Love is...

Deepak: the ultimate truth of the heart of creation. It's not a sentiment or an emotion. It's the fact that we're all the same being in different disguises.

Oprah: Modern medicine must....

Deepak: Learn to look at the soul and not just body.

Oprah: I want to thank...

Deepak: I want to thank all the people that have given me so much love without my even asking for it.

Oprah: The person I want to be most proud of me is...

Deepak: My children and my grandchildren and their grandchildren.

Oprah: I am ready to forgive...

Deepak: I have already forgiven.

Oprah: Great. I want my legacy to be....

Deepak: A passing breeze. A pattern of behavior of the universe that came and is now gone but the fragrance lingers.

Oprah: Whew-oh. That's really great. That's really great.

"Oprah and Deepak Chopra in India"

(Photo Credit: Â© 2012 Harpo Inc./GeorgeBurns)

Sneak peek of the episode

Watch two exclusive video clips:

When Oprah and her crew arrived in India, spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra gave them one piece of advice: Go with the flow. Hear why Deepak says learning to move with the flow of life wherever you are is key to appreciating every moment.

When his career first began, spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra had his fair share of critics--and he says he didn't always handle them well. Then, he says, a quote from Nelson Mandela changed his approach forever. Watch as he shares the insight he took to heart.

Oprah's "Super Soul Sunday" interview with Deepak Chopra airs Sunday, April 29, at 11/10c on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.

Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's website and non-profit organization Feminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com. Her new book, based on her interviews with a variety of well-known women, is titled Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice.

Behind-the-Scenes At Oprah's Lifeclass With Tony Robbins And Deepak Chopra

2012-04-08T17:20:28-04:00

It's not every day Radio City Music Hall temporarily closes down its men's bathroom. But that's exactly what happened when Oprah Winfrey decided to film two episodes of her Lifeclass series at the famous theater in New York City. My adventure started when I got the email from the OWN team inviting me to attend the tapings of Oprah's Lifeclass: The Tour featuring two charismatic guest teachers -- spiritual wise man Deepak Chopra, who taught the afternoon show about tapping into your spiritual side (which will air on OWN on April 23) and charismatic life coach Tony Robbins, who taught the evening live show about living fearlessly.

When I first got to the theater, I was escorted backstage, downstairs to the brightly lit Rockettes dressing room, to convene with about ten other journalists, and then taken into a small room next door for an intimate meet-and-greet with Tony Robbins. We were all personally introduced to him, and he lasered each of us with his full wattage attention and smile. He then sat down on a couch and thoughtfully and insightfully answered a few questions. At the end of the conversation, we took a picture (which you can see on this page) in which I look like my own mini-me next to the 6'7" Robbins. He is quite literally larger than life.

I was then escorted back to the main hall to be seated for the Deepak Chopra taping. As press we were given seats that actually had plugs on a railing in front of our seat so that we could charge our computers and phones while we watched. That is one of many things that is so groundbreaking about Oprah's Lifeclass -- her unique, pioneering, interactive incorporation of social media -- in addition to a corresponding online curriculum and live webcast, Oprah encourages people to fire up their phones (on vibrate of course) during the show so that everyone in the audience, and online, can participate in polls, comment on Facebook and live tweet during the show (she also has people Skyping into the show from around the world). I sent out quite a few tweets during both tapings -- in fact, I found myself taking copious notes throughout the shows because I wanted to remember some of the profound droplets of wisdom that were said (a few memorable sound bites I jotted down follow this article).

Being at an Oprah show can at times feel like being at a Beatles concert -- when Oprah first comes out on stage the reception is exuberant and deafening, with everyone standing on their feet clapping wildly. Some of my favorite moments happened behind the scenes during the commercial breaks when Oprah speaks off-the-cuff, sometimes seriously, sometimes funny, to the audience. For example, during one of the breaks on the evening show, she complained about her uncomfortable high-heeled Louboutins, finally lamenting "I can't take it anymore" and handing them off to a lucky fan in the audience, remaining barefoot until a stage hand offered her a more comfortable pair. During the Deepak Chopra show about spirituality, she admitted during a break that her own practice was put to the test when that previous week she and her OWN network were scrutinized in the press when news was released that OWN had cut 30 jobs and cancelled The Rosie Show. Oprah confided that she found it helpful to keep repeating her prayer, "In God I move and breathe and have my being "and to keep reminding herself that this "isn't who you are and don't get that confused".

Adding to the excitement was a surprise pre-show for the Tony Robbins evening taping, when Tony suddenly appeared on stage about a half an hour before the show to pump up the crowd. He managed to get over five thousand of us at Radio City hugging total strangers and dancing, jumping, and screaming (his trademark "yes, yes, yes!" accompanied by fist pumping) -- a truly definitive and memorable Oprah Lifeclass moment for me and everyone else. Normally I get embarrassed doing this type of thing but the moment was contagious. Tony's potent point was about how our state -- and the motions of our body -- affects us and others around us, and there was a tangible surge in energy, of feeling awake and alive -- that I noticed in myself and the audience as a result.

*****

Both Lifeclass shows -- and this is true of the whole series -- contain thought-provoking, life-changing sparks of inspiration. As Oprah pointed out during Deepak's show, to her, spirituality is not about traditional faith or religion but about "living your life with an open heart through love". You can watch the Deepak Chopra Lifeclass episode on OWN on April 23 (if you are not sure where to find OWN, use the channel finder ) and the Tony Robbins Lifeclass show which has already aired on OWN live can be viewed online. It is certainly refreshing and hopeful to see meaningful television that is aimed at uplifting and inspiring people to, quoting Oprah, "live your best life". I, like many others, wholeheartedly support, appreciate and thank Oprah for launching and nurturing OWN, creating visionary television like Lifeclass, being a role model, and for all the humanitarian work she does in the world. If I had had a chance to meet her in person that day, I would have given her a big hug.

Here are some of my notes I took during the Lifeclass tapings:

Oprah Winfrey:

"Don't get confused between what people say you are and who you know you are."

"The stories you tell yourself can make or break you -- no matter who you are."

"You can step out of your history and the past and write a new story for yourself."

"Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway."

"You don't become what you wish for, you become what you believe."

"There is no life without a spiritual life."

"We are all spiritual beings having a human experience."

www.oprah.com

Tony Robbins:

"We are all telling ourselves stories. The question is "does your story empower you or hold you back"?

"You can't have real courage unless there is something you are really afraid of."

"The only solution to fear is massive action."

"You can't wait for the perfect situation. You've got to get out there and discover your passion."

"When you focus on serving, there is no fear in you."

"To break through you need: 1) A strategy, a "how to" 2) The right story 3) A different state of mind. Your state determines your story."

"Love is the oxygen of the soul."

www.tonyrobbins.com

Deepak Chopra:

"Spirituality is a journey into self awareness."

"Everybody does the best they can from the state of spiritual awareness they are in."

"Our great option is to choose love rather than to choose fear and shut down."

"Your personal transformation is the future of the transformation of the world."

"The worst thing you can say about another contains some truth about yourself."

"Whatever you are struggling with is a reminder for you to find true purpose in your lifetime."

"You are a spark of divine consciousness."

www.deepakchopra.com

Watch "Oprah's Lifeclass: the Tour" on Monday nights at 8pm EST/7pm CST on OWN. Follow the show online at Oprah.com and see the coursework that corresponds to each episode's theme. Join the "Lifeclass" conversation online on Twitter @OprahsLifeclass and using #lifeclass.

Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's website and non-profit organization Feminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com. Her new book, based on her interviews with a variety of well-known women, is titled Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice.

Ending Child Marriage: Insights From Desmond Tutu And Mary Robinson

2012-02-06T09:11:03-05:00

Child marriage is one of the most shocking and disturbing practices facing girls around the world today. Every year, ten million girls are forcibly married before the age of eighteen, many as young as twelve or thirteen years old. That is something like 25,000 girls a day. These young girls suffer sexual abuse and domestic violence and are frequently forced to become mothers at a very early age, putting them at a much higher risk of maternal injury and death. The epidemic of child marriage has mostly received little attention and continues unabated year after year. An organization called The Elders, a group of global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007, seeks to change that, launching an ambitious Global Partnership to End Child Marriage called Girls Not Brides that aims to stop the harmful practice in one generation.

This week, a delegation from The Elders, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, will visit India with a focus on girls' development and the impact of child marriage. The primary objective of the Elders' visit is to learn about the causes of child marriage in India, discuss the harmful impact of child marriage on human rights and development, and to encourage local efforts to end the practice. The Elders will meet political and business leaders, UN and NGO representatives, members of the media, and communities affected by child marriage. Because of its large population, India is home to an estimated one third of the world's child brides. The Elders will visit New Delhi and Patna and will also attend a regional meeting hosted by Girls Not Brides.

I asked Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson about the implications and factors contributing to child marriage and their hopes and goals for the Girls Not Brides Partnership.

Why is the issue of child marriage important to you and to The Elders?

Desmond Tutu:
Until the Elders started working on child marriage, it had not occurred to me how little the girl child is even thought about in broader efforts to lift people out of poverty and defend basic human rights principles. The most vulnerable in my view are those girls who are married young. I knew that there was an institution of child marriage, but I was devastated to discover how widely it occurs, and on such a huge scale. It is hard to fathom that this year alone some ten million girls will marry before they turn 18 and many of those will be as young as 12 or 13.

Last year I went to the Amhara region of Ethiopia where I met girls and women who were married at eight and ten years old. It's one thing to hear experts talking about child marriage, but it's quite another to meet these girls and hear their stories. You realize this affects every aspect of their lives: they leave school before they can complete their education; their young bodies bear children before they are physically ready to do so; they're unable to negotiate safe sexual practices with their older husbands. They really are some of the most vulnerable and voiceless people on earth.

Marianne Schnall: What are the implications for girls - and for their families, communities and the world - of child marriage?

Mary Robinson:
It's hard to exaggerate the scale of the problem: in the next decade it's estimated that 100 million girls will marry before they are 18. That's a staggering level of lost potential. There are few places where this is more evident than in India, which is home to one third of the world's child brides.

The benefits of delaying marriage for girls are felt community-wide. Girls stay in school and gain the opportunity to learn skills that will better equip them to work and contribute economically to their families and community. Their children will benefit too. Sadly, babies born to mothers under 18 are 60 per cent more likely to be poor, and are at much higher risk of dying in their first year of life than those born to older mothers.

There is a lot of impressive work being done by local activists and NGOs in India that have recognised that these girls are one of the country's greatest sources of untapped potential. I'm very much looking forward to seeing their work for myself when I visit India with Archbishop Tutu and other Elders.

MS: What are the factors that cause parents and society to allow and even encourage child marriages to take place?

Desmond Tutu:
I am convinced that there is no mother or father on this earth who doesn't want the best for their child. Indeed, many parents marry off their daughters young because they feel it is in her best interest, often to ensure her safety in areas where girls are at high risk of physical or sexual assault.

And of course poverty, too, is an important perpetuating factor. Who am I to criticize the decisions of parents who live in extreme poverty with large families to support who decide to marry their daughters young because they simply can't afford to feed her, or because of the bride price that she can fetch? Sadly in many communities where child marriage is practiced, girls are not valued as much as boys - they are seen as a burden. The challenge will be to change parents' attitudes and emphasize that girls who avoid early marriage and stay in school will likely be able to make a greater contribution to their family and their community in the long term.

I must also stress that no major religion promotes the practice of child marriage. Child marriage is a traditional practice that happens today simply because that is the way things have been done for many generations. We have met some brave religious and traditional leaders who recognize the harmful effects of child marriage and who are actively encouraging their communities to end the practice, but unfortunately, in countries where this is common, they're still in the minority. We want to encourage men and boys to stand up for their daughters' and sisters' rights. Community leaders and religious leaders, fathers and brothers can all join the effort to end child marriage.

MS: What will it take to end the practice?

Mary Robinson:
First, we need governments to show their support at a legislative level, to enact and enforce a legal minimum age for marriage. I was encouraged to see that Human Rights Watch, a member of Girls Not Brides, recently issued a report calling on the government of Yemen to introduce a minimum age of marriage in a country where more than half of girls are married before they turn 18.

But legislation alone will not end entrenched traditional practices. Among the most effective efforts to end child marriage have been community mobilization and empowerment programs that encourage dialogue among parents, religious leaders, village councils, teachers - everyone. Over time these people often come to a collective decision to stop marrying their daughters off very young. We've been impressed by the fact that these programs are changing the attitudes of men, some of whom have become the most active advocates for change.

Above all, we need to empower girls. We need to improve their access to quality schooling as school attendance has been found to help shift attitudes and ideas that surround child marriage. We also need to provide support networks and create safe spaces where girls can gather and meet, reducing their sense of isolation and vulnerability.

Desmond Tutu:
Simply put, we do not have to accept that child marriage happens because it is just 'how things have always been', or that it is a tradition and can't change. What we want is for world leaders to make sure this change happens on a global scale. I'm going to the World Economic Forum in Davos to encourage leaders to implement at regional and national levels programs that have been proven to prevent child marriage. It's the kind of work that's being done already by people at a local level. Now just imagine the scale of change possible if our leaders followed their brave lead...

MS: What are the mission and goals of the Girls Not Brides Campaign?

Desmond Tutu:
We Elders are a humble bunch! We initiated Girls Not Brides, a global partnership of activists and organizations committed to ending child marriage, because we realize that there are a lot of people out there who know much more about child marriage and who already are doing some truly admirable work to end the practice. What we hope to do is to bring together this collective wisdom, to learn from each other what works - and what doesn't - and to use our collective clout to bring this issue to global attention. In many ways, it echoes the philosophy behind The Elders, that by working together we are stronger.

Mary Robinson:
Change will be made at local, national and international levels. By building a global partnership we hope to harness all the resources and information that Girls Not Brides members have collected to bring home the injustice of the practice, to make important changes to development policy and investment, and to bring home the fact that for 10 million girls a year their wedding day is a day of loss.

To learn more or get involved, visit www.GirlsNotBrides.org and watch a Girls Not Brides short educational video here.

Portions of these interview originally appeared in an article at the Women's Media Center.

Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's website and non-profit organization Feminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com. Her new book, based on her interviews with a variety of well-known women, is titled "Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice".

Reflections on Occupy Wall Street From Nancy Pelosi, Alice Walker, Arianna Huffington & Others

2012-01-05T11:23:59-05:00

At a holiday dinner with family, the conversation turned to the Occupy Wall Street movement. My mother made a comment about how the spirit of the movement had seemed to have somewhat come and passed, the protests seemingly swept away by other distractions and the chill of winter. I found myself a bit disturbed by the comment. While it may be true that the huge crowds have significantly decreased, as has the accompanying media coverage, there is no question that some hugely transformative seeds have been planted that are only beginning to sprout.

Time Magazine verified this by naming The Protester their "Person of the Year" - it has been inspiring to witness the uprisings that have swept the world and our nation, and the commitment and the martyrdom of empowered citizens passionately driven to action. The movement was birthed quite dramatically by Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street merchant who finally had enough of corruption and set himself on fire. That became the catalyst that lit a spark that set off the Arab Spring which toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya and continues to reverberate in other countries, and has become a global movement of people power, which goes by many names.

One of the criticisms of the Occupy movement here in the U.S. has been that there is no clear cut agenda. But that is what makes the movement so dynamic and exciting - it is decentralized, still evolving, and incorporates many different important causes that need addressing. It is an expression of democracy in action - if you look at the makeup of the protesting crowds, it is a melting pot of different ages, races, classes, cultures, and beliefs. And it has been mostly a peaceful movement, at least in the U.S., which is why we were all so shocked to see the image of a police officer in riot gear blasting burning pepper spray into the eyes of passively seated protesters at the University of California, or hearing about the spraying of an elderly woman and a pregnant woman at other Occupy protests.

The frustration people are feeling over the lack of jobs and the economic crisis, the glaring inequities of the 1%, the corruption of the banks, and our dysfunctional political system, has awakened us from our apathy. As a people, it is up to us to build upon the momentum of this galvanizing and hopeful movement, to take advantage of this moment in history that calls for honest reflection, discussion and debate, and to feel our power in creating the change we want to see in our lives and the world. As Arianna Huffington told me, "This is one of the biggest stories of our time - one that we cannot afford to ignore, and one that we in the media must do a better job of covering." Whether traditional media covers it sufficiently or not, alternative, people-driven media using the Internet, YouTube and social media has become an unstoppable force.

To help till the fertile soil, I asked a variety of well-known public figures the following questions: how do they think we can funnel some of the anger and outrage people feel into positive change? What new paradigms or shifts do they see emerging? Here are some of their thought-provoking answers.

Reflections from Arianna Huffington, Nancy Pelosi, Sheryl Sandberg, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson

Arianna Huffington, president and editor in chief of The Huffington Post

"The Occupy Wall Street movement is an expression of an essential truth in our society today: the solutions we need are not going to come from the halls of government or from the top-down institutions that continue to fail us. But there are countless women and men across this country using their skills and gifts every day to bring about positive changes in real, tangible ways. But that doesn't mean we don't need the leaders of our political institutions to enact real, large scale solutions, or that we should let them off the hook. But what we're seeing is people reacting to the realization that Washington is too broken to initiate change -- all it can do is ratify change. So the people will have to do the heavy lifting and force Washington to do it. This is one of the biggest stories of our time - one that we cannot afford to ignore, and one that we in the media must do a better job of covering."

Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic leader, first female Speaker of the House

"The level of civic engagement we've seen from ordinary Americans in recent months has strengthened our democracy. Americans must come together to demand the change they want to see in their lives.

Women have always been agents of change, or what I like to call 'magnificent disrupters.' They are unsatisfied with the status quo, and always demanding progress - on behalf of their children, their families and their communities."

Gloria Steinem, author, activist, co-founder of Ms. Magazine and The Women's Media Center

"It's very important that it exists. The Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Patriarchy movements are very, very positive. They've caused a discussion in this country about the disparity between rich and poor that was not happening before. Both have made me feel very hopeful. We have to translate them in every way we can, in how we use our dollars, what we buy and what we don't, and how we use our votes, and how we use our time, our language, our neighborhoods. We have to make each of our days resemble as much as possible, what we want in the future."

Sheryl Sandberg , chief operating officer of Facebook

"I think there are real challenges in the world that all of us are facing - challenges for employment, challenges for creating peace worldwide, challenges for making sure the American promise is still true for everyone. The question I ask is, if you have really big challenges, don't you want to use the talent of the entire population to rise to those challenges? I think women have more opportunity than ever before, but what we don't see is increasing numbers of women making it to the top of any industry anywhere in the world. So my goal - and I think it's not just my goal, it is a goal so many of us share, men and women alike - is to make sure we are harnessing the talents of everyone -- of men, of women, of everyone - regardless of gender or race or location - to solve the world's problems."

Alice Walker, author, poet and activist

"What is our greatest fear? That we will be harmed. What is our greatest threat? The escalation of cruelty. What is our greatest need? To believe we are worthy of the joy that is possible in this life. Time Magazine was right to name protestors Person of the Year, for we have collectively left our couches for the trenches and the streets, which means we are beginning once again to believe in ourselves. There is only us to muddle through whatever madness is thrown our way. May we muddle steadily, happily, soulfully: may kindness be the compass. And may all listen without hurry for consensus to be heard."

Deepak Chopra, author, founder of the Chopra Foundation and the Chopra Center for Wellbeing

"Occupy Wall Street is the up welling of moral outrage at social and economic injustice from the collective consciousness. Now it is time to think of solutions that also come from the collective consciousness. It's time to be the 100 percent."

Marianne Williamson, author and activist, founder of The Peace Alliance and Project Angel Food

"If we're changing the basic First Principle of 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people,' to 'government of a few of the people, by a few of the people, and for a few of the people,' then that should certainly merit a debate. To me that's what Occupy Wall Street represents: the wail of democracy when someone is stepping on its foot. The wail appears now as anger and sometimes misplaced outrage, but that kind of messiness is not inherently a bad thing. I prefer the messiness of democracy any day, to the relative complacency that has characterized the response of the American people to the systematic threats to democracy over the last few years.

What appears sometimes as a negative thing can in fact be a positive one: there is nothing negative about yelling 'Fire!' if indeed the house is burning down. You can't pour pink paint over a pile of junk and call it spiritual. The fundamentally positive paradigm in life is one in which we make love the bottom line, but that often emerges from the horror of realizing that it is not that now. You find your passionate conviction to feed the starving children of the world when you realize first that 17,000 of them are dying of starvation every day. So there is an intimate relationship between outrage over what's wrong, and the positive energy to make things right. Not all moral outrage is born of anger. Much of it is born of love.

Love can't just be the goal; it has to be the means as well. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.' The point is not to not feel the outrage; the spiritual point is to feel it and then surrender it to a Higher Power; then, instead of a self-indulgent emotion, the energy turns into a positive, mature and sober force for good."

Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's web site and non-profit organization Feminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com. Her new book, based on her interviews with a variety of well-known women, is titled "Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice".

Miss Representation: An Interview with Writer & Director Jennifer Siebel Newsom

2011-10-20T09:30:16-04:00

Featuring an interview with Writer/Director Jennifer Siebel Newsom and exclusive remarks from Barbara J. Berg, M. Gigi Durham, Caroline Heldman, Jean Kilbourne, Jennifer Lawless, Nancy Pelosi, Jennifer L. Pozner and Marie Wilson

When I first heard about the film Miss Representation, I knew, as the founder of the 16-year- old women's site and non-profit organization Feminist.com and a journalist who covers women's issues, that it would be essential viewing. The film features an impressive roster of participants, including Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Condoleezza Rice, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem, among others. What I anticipated was an insightful film on the subject of the harmful portrayal of women and girls in the media. Having now seen and experienced the film twice, I found that it not only met all my expectations, it exceeded them, reaching through to my heart and stirring up the very depths of my humanity, prompting an inner tsunami of epiphanies and emotions. It is impossible to watch this film without being deeply affected, inspired and forever changed.

The film, which premieres on OWN - Oprah Winfrey Network, tonight (Thursday, October 20th), features stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists and academics, interspersed with eye-opening statistics, images and film and video clips. It is not just the textured illustration of the problem that has such an impact, but the interconnected web that visionary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom astutely is able to weave between how depicting women and girls as objects, valuing them only for their youth, beauty and sexuality, can lead to the suppression of women who are rendered voiceless, disempowered, dehumanized and objectified. This ultimately leads to preventing them from realizing their full potential to the detriment of themselves, our democracy, and society.

The problem itself is systemic, underscored by the fact that women are vastly under-represented in top positions within the media industry itself, in a corporate culture driven by advertisers and profit. It is a socially and economically-complicated predicament with no simple solutions. Thankfully, the film offers up an ample dose of education, inspiration and hope by providing tips, resources and a social action campaign through the Miss Representation web site, as well as an educational curriculum for schools to help younger generations to become more media literate.

I believe the impetus for change can be sparked by going beyond intellectually understanding the situation to becoming acutely aware of its real world manifestations and how it is insidiously and subliminally affecting the people in our life, ourselves, our loved ones and the world. During the film, I deeply related to the personal story of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, whose personal experience as a young girl included low self esteem, eating disorders and an incident of sexual assault. And I connected to how as mothers of daughters, we feel even more passionately committed to wanting both their present and future to be different.

What follows is my interview with Jennifer Siebel Newsom from last week's East Coast premiere of the film at the Paley Center for Media , as well as some other exclusive insights I collected from some of the amazing women featured in Miss Representation. I hope that these thoughtful and inspiring answers will encourage people to watch this wonderful film, and then participate in its recommended actions. As Pat Mitchell, Paley Center President and CEO says in the film, "The media is the message and the messenger -- and increasingly a powerful one. " Journalist Katie Couric sums it up this way, "The media can be an instrument of change. It can maintain the status quo and reflect the views of the society or it can, hopefully, awaken people and change minds. I think it depends on who's piloting the plane. "

Interview with Jennifer Siebel Newsom, writer and director, Miss Representation

Marianne Schnall: What is the message you are most hoping to get out with this film?

Jennifer Siebel Newsom: I'm hoping that we can start the discussion, and actually the discussion turns into action around valuing women in our culture. And that's huge. Because we don't value women, we don't value motherhood. If we valued women and motherhood, we would see more women in leadership. We'd actually allow women, not only to sit at the table, 50 percent representative of our population -- or 51+ percent. But we would actually let their voices be heard. And we would see more women in leadership, across the board -- not only in government, but in the private sector. And at the end of the day, I think once we start valuing women, and valuing the feminine, you're going to see a huge cultural transformation. So that's really my goal.

MS: This whole topic of the media's portrayal of women can feel very abstract. How do you view its tangible implications for what's happening in the world right now?

JSN: Well, the media is this huge pedagogical force of communication -- it's dictating our cultural values and our gender norms. And it's doing it in such a way that it's communicating to us that a woman's value is limited, and that her value lies in her youth, her beauty and her sexuality. You and I know that's not true. But what unfortunately happens is girls and boys buy into this belief system, this construct, and then boys continue to perpetuate it, by objectifying women and not valuing women or giving them the seat at the table, or making sure that they're fully represented. And that's ultimately, at the end of the day, we're going to have a better media system, we'll have a healthier culture, and we'll have a culturally-healthier nation once we have women represented 50 percent, or 51+ percent, and speaking their minds, and telling their stories. And I think then corporate America and everything will follow suit. And I think that this is so huge that it will impact the environment, health care, education -- I just think it's the solution to so many of our problems in this country.

MS: It is amazing the people you got access to for this film. Did you find that people were really eager to talk about this topic? What was your experience in making the film in terms of the response?

JSN: You know what's really interesting is that not only did the interviewees really enjoy speaking, but I had a crew that was comprised of both men and women, and most of the gaffers and the sound crew ended up being men -- those were the people that were available. And they would come to me afterwards and say, "Oh, my gosh -- thank you so much. I learned so much -- these women are so amazing, and this conversation makes me want to be a better father, this conversation makes me want to be a better man." I just feel like this dialogue -- and really, it's sort of been the elephant in the room -- but if we could just sort of get to the truth and the root of there's a huge gender gap in our country, and the media is --whether it's wittingly or unwittingly -- perpetuating it, and women's voices need to be heard. And women need to be treated as equal. And I think once we have that, I will be so excited to see what happens in this country once we really achieve parity.

MS: I thought it was great that there were a lot of men were featured in this film. At the website I run Feminist.com, we're very aware of the need to include men as allies -- that we need to stop seeing these types of topics as "women's issues." Was that important to you?

JSN: Yes, it was so critical to me. Just as we all come from a woman, we all come from a man as well, and we all have a man in our life that we care about. I just gave birth to a son and I'm particularly concerned about the culture that he's being raised in, and the kind of man he's going to be. And for me, you know, my husband [Lieutenant Governor of California, Gavin Newsom] has been a big champion of human rights in general, and I would say it sort of fits with both us -- this is about equality across the board. In other words, it's not a "women's" movement, it's kind of a human rights movement that we are really embarking on, and that's for me why we needed to interview men. I think in some regards men are more enraged -- fathers of daughters are more enraged right now, and more concerned about the future for their daughters. And so I think we're going to start to see more and more men speak up and out against this.

And so many men, including my husband, will say that women are better managers or -- this is interesting, the research has come out recently to prove that the more diversity and more women you have in leadership, both in government and business, the greater the productivity, the creativity and the bottom line. And that's a fact. And I don't know why in this country we're not recognizing the value in that, but that's the truth. So if that's the truth, then we need to get women into the pipelines.

MS: One of the things I think is important about this film is that it's not just about delivering bad news, it offers its viewers concrete solutions and hope, that there's a comprehensive action campaign as part of this.

JSN: Yes -- we didn't want to reinvent the wheel -- we're just doing our little piece in this huge complex web that is challenging women's representation and looking for parity in our culture. But what we've launched is MissRepresentation.org, and basically we're encouraging people to take the pledge. If you go to missrepresentation.org, take the pledge, join the movement, join the campaign. And there's little things that we can do individually, every day, to start to create not only dialogue, but action, simple steps to actually influence cultural change. And then there's everything from getting the film into educational institutions across the country, through ro*co films, our education distributor, we have K-12 and then university level, age-appropriate modules, video modules available with the curriculum and everything. We're also talking to corporations about best practices to empower women, not only internally, but when looking at who their advertising partners are and who their media partners are, and how they're portraying gender in those.

So we're tackling it at all levels and we're also going to do some FCC government and Congressional screenings later in the fall. So I'm really excited -- I think we're just going to hit it from all angles.

MS: What would you most want to say to people, to leave people with?

JSN: I want people to recognize their own unique power. I want women to remember that we are 86 percent of consumers, and so we have a choice. We don't have to consume that TV show, we don't have to consume that tabloid magazine. We need to support good media, healthy media, and this is just beginning I think of a revolution! And a re-balancing of what has been an imbalance in our country.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom
Writer | Director | Producer Miss Representation
Jennifer graduated with honors from both Stanford University and Stanford Business School. She worked overseas for Conservation International, a global environmental organization, where her primary focus was providing micro-enterprise opportunities to women. Upon graduation from business school, she moved to Los Angeles where she performed in numerous films and TV shows. Jennifer founded Girls Club Entertainment to develop and produce independent films that empower women. She and her husband, California's Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, have a young daughter, Montana, and a son, Hunter.

* * *

In alphabetical order: Barbara J. Berg, M. Gigi Durham, Caroline Heldman, Jean Kilbourne, Jennifer Lawless, Nancy Pelosi, Jennifer L. Pozner, Marie Wilson

Barbara J. Berg, PhD
Historian
Author, Sexism in America

What is your impression of the way media currently portrays women?
BB: The media stereotypes, hypersexualizes and grossly under-represents girls and women. This is true in a range of industries--advertising, news broadcast, movies and television. Women are generally not valued to their accomplishments or achievements but for their youth and appearance. As I wrote in my recent book Sexism in America, Popular culture is our shared social reality, communicating stories, images and ideas about who we are and how we should feel, think, and act. It powerfully reflects the most salient features of our society. But the images women see of themselves are as distorted as those in "funhouse mirrors."

Women make up 51% of the population yet only 17% of Congress and 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women are largely still underrepresented in the political sphere, executive levels of business and media as well as in the boardroom. What do you see as the root cause of this imbalance and what role, if any, does media play?
BB: This is a complicated question for which there is no quick answer. Since 9/11 there has been a noticeable pushback against women's rights and opportunities in America. And, of course, the poor economy has also contributed to this trend. The concentration and consolidation of the media into super monopolies and the fact the women own less than 5 percent of commercial broadcast TV stations have all added to the marginalization of women in the political sphere. Women who do run see themselves characterized in the worst way, demeaned and diminished.

What do you believe are some of the most important changes that need to happen for women and girls in America?
BB: We need more leadership training programs, more emphasis on teaching young women their history in schools, more access to positions of authority in government and in the media, a real pitch to stop the media from showing women as competitors and rivals and show them instead as friends and supporters. Women must mentor younger women and girls in every way possible to enhance their self esteem and to create positive identities for themselves that are not reflected in the media.

How can a film like Miss Representation make a difference?
BB: Films like Miss Representation can make a huge impact by clearly identifying the problem, exposing all its components and working for media literacy in the schools and population at large.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
BB: I've spent my whole professional life working on behalf of women and girls often feeling despondent about our future. Miss Representation and all the women I've met connected to it give me a great deal of hope. I'll be happy to promote the film however I can.

* * *

M. Gigi Durham, PhD
Author, The Lolita Effect
Associate Professor of Journalism
University of Iowa

What is your impression of the way media currently portrays women?
MD: In my view, representations of women have regressed so much one would think feminism had never happened. NBC's new show The Playboy Club springs to mind, as well as the many mindless cable programs featuring walking Barbie dolls like the Kardashians and the so-called "real housewives." In these shows, women's intelligence and social consciousness are certainly not highlighted; nor are women's artistic, literary, civic, or political contributions featured in any way. Media representations of women are pretty much focused on "hotness" -- and a narrowly defined concept of it, at that. Women in the media are so stereotyped and one-dimensional they may as well be plastic figurines. For girls growing up in this media culture, it's a terrible message: that women are only valued for their looks, and only then if their looks conform to some ideal constructed by the corporate media purely for profit. This is all happening at a time when women still hold little political or economic power, are sorely underrepresented in fields like science and engineering, and are victims of violence in epidemic proportions -- and these media representations aren't helping to change any of that.

What do you believe are some of the most important changes that need to happen for women and girls in America?
MD: So much needs to change socially: women need to be represented in all spheres of social and economic life, violence against women needs to be recognized as a pressing issue, women need equal access to health care, to education, to opportunity. We pay a lot of lip service to those ideas in this country, but the statistics show a really bleak picture: we lag behind most other industrialized nations on all those fronts. We need to see real-world action on those issues. And we really need progressive, thoughtful, diverse representations of women in the media to help change the gender ideologies that hold women back.

How can a film like Miss Representation make a difference?
MD: Miss Representation, and other films like it, can bring these issues to the surface, ensuring that we confront them and engage in public discourse about them. I think the media can be powerful tools for pro-social change, and Miss Representation is a film that can catalyze women and men to first, think more critically about the media environment, and second, work on ways to change not only systems of representation but the world they live in.

* * *

Caroline Heldman, PhD
Associate Professor of Political Science
Occidental College

What is your impression of the way media currently portrays women?
CH: Girls and women are vastly underrepresented in roles in entertainment media, and when they do appear, they are usually sidekicks and sexual props for male characters. The rare female protagonist is almost always highly sexualized in a way that reminds viewers that women should exist for male (viewing) pleasure.

Entertainment media almost exclusively tell stories about men's lives, and on the rare occasion they tell stories about women's lives, these stories typically revolve around romance and "getting a man," and are accorded less importance as "chick flicks." Little girls get the message that their lives and interests are not valued by broader society, and that their primary goal should be to get male attention. These messages are incredibly damaging in their effect on girls' self-esteem, body image, ambition, and cognitive functioning.

Few women are involved in the production of entertainment media, so it's not surprising that women are virtually erased and portrayed in objectifying, secondary roles in this medium that is so influential in shaping societal norms.

Women make up 51 percent of the population yet only 17 percent of Congress and 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women are largely still underrepresented in the political sphere, executive levels of business and media as well as in the boardroom. What do you see as the root cause of this imbalance and what role, if any, does media play?
CH: The root cause of the vast under representation of women in positions of power is patriarchy -- the assumption that men are "natural" leaders and the higher value placed on their lives and activities. Patriarchy is apparent in gender gaps in party recruitment and grooming of political candidates; discrimination in corporate hiring, promotion, and compensation; girls being raised to think of "ambition" and "power" as dirty words; openly sexist media coverage of female leaders defining them as less capable "tokens;" and the more subtly sexist but highly damaging messages from entertainment media.

Media are highly influential in creating and communicating societal norms about proper roles and behaviors for men and women. If more women were involved in the production of entertainment and news media, we would see more women on screen and better roles portraying women as powerful subjects instead of passive sexual objects.

More images and more diverse images of women in media would lead to a revolution of identity and leadership if millions of little girls grew up thinking of themselves as fully capable, ambitious human beings instead of bodies to be worked on in order to get validation through male attention.

What do you believe are some of the most important changes that need to happen for women and girls in America?
CH: Because Americans are now bombarded by thousands of images on a daily basis, marketers cut through the information clutter by amping up the shock value with more sexually objectifying and violent content. This has led to increased acceptance and use of violence among boys and heightened body hatred issues with girls. The national epidemics of violent masculinity and self-hating femininity can only be addressed if we go after the source of the problem: shock media/marketing.

Consumer activism targeting offensive marketing is an effective way to interrupt these damaging media messages. The recent campaign against Abercrombie & Fitch to halt the sale of g-string underwear to female toddlers is one example of this success of this tactic. Another example is the effective campaign against JC Penney to stop sales of the shirt, "I'm too cute to do my homework so my brother has to do it for me." The social media age makes these sorts of campaigns quite effective.

Beyond targeting those who produce damaging media messages, it's important to work with young people on media literacy so they can discern and reject these messages.

How can a film like Miss Representation make a difference?
CH: A film like Miss Representation is the first crucial step is identifying the problem of damaging media images and their origins and consequences. It is a one-film public information campaign that will hopefully ignite action across the nation that will change media content and eventually the landscape of leadership in the U.S.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
CH: The Miss Representation team is amazing!

* * *

Jean Kilbourne
Filmmaker, Killing Us Softly
Author & Senior Scholar
Wellesley Centers for Women

What is your impression of the way media currently portrays women?
JK: I've been studying the portrayal of women in the media since the late 1960s, so I am often asked this question. In many ways, the portrayal has never been worse. Of course, women are far more often shown in professional positions than before, but the tyranny of the ideal image of beauty (made so much worse by Photoshop), the obsession with thinness, the sexualization of girls, and images of violence against women are far worse than ever before. I made the first version of my film "Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women" in 1979 and raised all these issues. The updates (in 1987, 2000, and 2010) track the lack of progress.

Women make up 51% of the population yet only 17% of Congress and 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women are largely still underrepresented in the political sphere, executive levels of business and media as well as in the boardroom. What do you see as the root cause of this imbalance and what role, if any, does media play?
JK: Of course, I think that media play a huge role in this imbalance. As you say in the promotions for your film, "You can't be what you can't see." Not only are girls deprived of positive images, but also they are encouraged to spend a huge amount of their time and psychic energy on worrying about their bodies and their sex appeal. I would say that sexism is the root cause of this imbalance and that the media promotes sexism more persuasively and pervasively than any other aspect of our society. The media also promote the double bind for women and girls -- the requirement to be sexy but virginal, strong but feminine, tough but nurturing, etc.

What do you believe are some of the most important changes that need to happen for women and girls in America?
JK: Title IX brought about a huge change and must be protected. We also should be teaching comprehensive and accurate sex education in our schools starting very early on and with an emphasis on healthy relationships as well as on sex and sexuality. We must guarantee reproductive freedom. We should have bullying prevention in the schools that recognizes that most "bullying" is really sexual harassment (girls are called sluts and boys are called fags). And, of course, I think we should be teaching media literacy in the schools as well. The United States is the only developed nation in the world that doesn't teach media literacy --or sex education --in its schools.

How can a film like Miss Representation make a difference?
JK: I've personally seen the huge difference that a film can make because of the success of my "Killing Us Softly" film series. I hear all the time from people who say that it changed their lives, that they have never looked at ads again in the same way, etc. So I think that Miss Representation can make a very big difference in raising awareness, connecting the dots, and motivating people to take some action.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
JK: Only "brava" and let me know how I can help.

* * *

Jennifer Lawless
Associate Professor of Government
Director, Women & Politics Institute
American University

Rather than answer each question, I've written some broad thoughts about my research and the manner in which the media affect women's representation.

Over the course of the last few years, Richard Fox and I have surveyed and interviewed thousands of people whom we consider "eligible candidates" - highly successful individuals who occupy the professions that are most likely to precede a career in politics: law, business, education, and political activism.

Although about 50 percent of the people to whom we spoke had considered running for office, women were more than a third less likely than men to have considered a candidacy. And they were only half as likely as men to have done any of the things that usually precede a campaign - like investigating how to place their name on the ballot, or discussing running with potential donors, party or community leaders, or even mentioning the idea to family members or friends. If we focus only on the 50 percent of people who had thought about running, then women were one third less likely than men to throw their hats into the ring and enter actual races.

Study after study reveals that, when women run for office, they tend to fare at least as well as similarly situated men. There is no evidence of aggregate-level bias on Election Day, either in terms of fundraising receipts or vote totals. But our research finds that women are far less likely than men ever to make it to Election Day.

Why? Perhaps the most important barrier that tends to preclude women's candidate emergence is that they doubt their qualifications to enter the electoral arena. They just don't think that they're qualified to throw their hats into the ring. Now, it's important to emphasize that the women we interviewed are, objectively speaking, just as "qualified" as the men. They have achieved comparable levels of professional success in the fields that precede political candidacies. They are equally credentialed and educated. And there are no gender differences in levels of political knowledge or campaign experience. Yet 60 percent of men, compared to 40 percent of women, think they're qualified to run for office.

But it gets worse - not only do these women think that they're not qualified to run, but they are also more likely to let their doubts hold them back. A woman who doesn't think she is qualified to run for office has less than a 25 percent chance of even thinking about running. The average man who doesn't think he's qualified - now remember, he checked off the box on the survey that says "I'm not qualified " - still has about a 60 percent chance of contemplating throwing his hat into the ring.

So, why do women underestimate their ability to enter politics? Well, a few specific statistics shed light on this dynamic:

â�¢ Women are approximately 25 percent more likely than men to judge their local and congressional elections as "highly competitive."

â�¢ Women are nearly twice as likely as men to contend that it is more difficult for women to raise money for a political campaign, and only half as likely to believe that women and men face an equal chance of being elected to high level office (13 percent of women, compared to 24 percent of men).

â�¢ 12 percent of women state outright that they are not qualified to run for office simply because they are the "wrong" sex.

â�¢ 48 percent of women, compared to only 29 percent of men, report that they do not have "thick enough skin" to run for office.

â�¢ Women are roughly 25 percent more likely than men to report that the invasion of privacy that comes from press coverage serves as a deterrent to running for office.

â�¢ And women are 50 percent more likely than men to report that they view dealing with members of the press so negatively, that such an activity is a major deterrent to running for office.

In other words, based on the media coverage eligible women candidates see, based on the manner in which women are often treated by the press, based on the idea that the media will make navigating the campaign trail far more complex, more complicated, and more difficult for women than men, women perceive it as nearly impossible to win a race. The reality of women's Election Day successes is actually not as important as the perceptions that they can't win - perceptions that are generated and reinforced by many in the media.

I ran for Congress in Rhode Island's second congressional district in 2006. And with the exception of a few off-handed comments, the media treated me very, very well. Voters, however, had absolutely no problem articulating sexist remarks - probably because they'd seen women treated this way over time. In the early stages of the race, for example, I spent more time listening to how my voice was too high, my neckline too low, my hair too long, my stature too short, than I did about the war in Iraq, a woman's right to choose, or any of the other issues that motivated my candidacy.

Voters take cues from the media. And if voters believe that it's okay not only to evaluate female candidates using different criteria, but also that it's okay to say to the women things like - and this actually happened to me - "You're not nearly as fat in real life as you look on TV," then is it really that surprising that women doubt they have the thick skin required to enter politics? That women envision a far more competitive electoral environment than men who live in the same community?

If we want more women to run for office and more women to stay the course through Election Day, then we need to identify the sexist treatment women in politics often receive and let women know that, despite this coverage, their political success is just as likely as that of their male counterparts.

* * *

Nancy Pelosi
U.S. Representative, California
Former Speaker of the House

What is your impression of the way media currently portrays women?
NP: As I often advise young women, 'if you are prepared to throw a punch you also have to be willing to take a punch." It's a tough environment, but I don't want young women to be discouraged from running for office.

Women make up 51 percent of the population yet only 17 percent of Congress and 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women are largely still underrepresented in the political sphere, executive levels of business and media as well as in the boardroom. What do you see as the root cause of this imbalance and what role, if any, does media play?
NP: America, as a nation, needs to make a decision that they want to see more women leading in the halls of power. But also, women have to help women: to run for higher office, to succeed in business, and to excel. There's nothing more powerful than someone who has succeeded reaching back to lift up the next generation. I hope that we will help each other make history and progress.

What do you believe are some of the most important changes that need to happen for women and girls in America?
NP: I have always said that I see my work in politics as an extension of my role as a mother. Therefore, anytime I am asked what the three most important issues facing the Congress, I always say the same thing: our children, our children, our children. We must work on behalf of their health and education, the economic security of their families, the safety of their neighborhoods, and a world at peace.

I hope that women will lead progress on all of these issues, because every single issue is a 'women's issue:' from the security of our country, to its economy, to prosperity around the world. I hope women will bring their solutions, rooted in their unique perspective, to all the challenges we face.

How can a film like Miss Representation make a difference?
NP: Miss Representation gives us an opportunity to raise awareness, and then raise our voices: working together for a solution.

* * *

Jennifer L. Pozner
Founder and Executive Director
Women in Media & News
Author, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV

What is your impression of the way media currently portrays women?
JP: In corporate journalism, women are misrepresented and marginalized when they aren't missing entirely as op-ed writers, front-page sources, leading anchors, and noted experts. The most popular scripted TV genre is procedural crime dramas which fetishize and glamorize rape, incest, and torture of women and children. And in reality TV, women are portrayed as stupid, bitchy, pathetic golddiggers who can never be happy without being passively chosen by any man who'll have them. Through this genre, product-placement advertisers have created a regressive, 1950s-esque world in which we're supposed to believe that women's only achievement is marriage, her only power is her beauty, and in which women of color only exist as ignorant, hypersexual, "ghetto" "hos." If you knew nothing about American women other than what you saw in "reality" TV, you'd believe the women's movement and the civil rights movement never even happened!

To find positive, challenging, critical journalism and entertainment that represents women in all their diversity, we need to turn to independent media alternatives, from GRITtv with Laura Flanders, WINGS radio and ColorLines magazine, to blogs like WIMN's Voices, Feministing, Racialicious, and The Feminist Wire, to video remixers Pop Culture Pirate and Feminist Frequency.

Women make up 51 percent of the population yet only 17 percent of Congress and 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women are largely still underrepresented in the political sphere, executive levels of business and media as well as in the boardroom. What do you see as the root cause of this imbalance and what role, if any, does media play?
JP: In 1984, NBC's Tom Brokaw described vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro as a "size 6" at the Democratic National Convention. On the day Condoleezza Rice became America's first African-American female national security adviser in 2001, a front page New York Times story reported that "her dress size is between a 6 and an 8." Broadcast news outlets have called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a "bitch," "harpy," "nutcracker," "ugly," and far worse. Media outlets regularly obsess over female politicians' hair, bodies, clothing and motherhood choices, a double standard that is virtually never applied to male politicians. When journalism treats female politicians like ladies first and leaders only a distant second, the public is led to believe that women are less qualified to lead -- and less electable -- than their male counterparts. The roots of this double standard go beyond the content itself, to an institutional bias within the media industry.

Just six powerful, white male dominated conglomerates control the vast majority of what we read, watch, hear, see and play in newspapers, magazines, TV news and entertainment, radio, movies, commercials, billboard ads, and video games. Media consolidation and deregulation is a root cause not only of the under-representation of women's voices and the exploitation of women's bodies in contemporary media -- media economics also goes to the heart of why the news is now driven by sensationalism rather than journalistic ethics, why gender, race and class issues tend to be ignored or trivialized in the press, and why powerful corporations that commit fraud are so often let off the hook by news outlets that are often financially tied to, and sometimes even owned by, those fraudulent corporations. For example, this is why we nearly never read in mainstream media about the massive drain on American solvency caused by corporate welfare, while news anchors, op-ed writers and economics reporters regular rage against supposedly "greedy" "welfare queens."

In a corporate media landscape owned by six white men, where women hold just 3 percent of "clout titles" and where women and people of color are virtually absent from boardrooms, is it any surprise that Americans do not get to see women leaders taken seriously in journalism or in fictionalized images of politics?

How can a film like Miss Representation make a difference?
JP: Viewers of "Miss Representation" have reported being shocked, enraged, enlightened and inspired. My hope is that we can mobilize that energy from awareness into action. Because while the biases exposed in the documentary are certainly enraging, they are not shocking to those of us who have been working for decades to combat sexism and racism in news and entertainment media, to and create more a diverse, critical, positive media landscape. As such, "Miss Representation" presents an extraordinary opportunity to bring the work of the feminist media activist movement into the mainstream.

When viewers of "Miss Representation" leave the theater or turn off OWN, they shouldn't simply get angry--they should get active. From Women In Media & News, which I founded in 2001, to the national Media Action Grassroots Network coalition, there is a vibrant movement in America that needs their energy, support and involvement to hold corporate media accountable for damaging and inaccurate content, to improve representations of women, people of color and other marginalized communities, and to advocate fairer, more just policies regulating the media industry. There is also a strong independent media community where "Miss Representation" viewers can hear the voices and perspectives of women and people of color misrepresented, marginalized or just plain missing in the corporate media, including Ms., ColorLines, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, Women's Enews, Feminist.com, World Pulse, GRITtv, WINGS, and many others.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
JP: The last thing I say in "Miss Representation" is that "we need media literacy as much as we need to learn to read." I want viewers to know that there amazing feminist, anti-racist media literacy resources out there, from the Media Literacy Project's educational curricula and online toolkits, to Reel Grrls program to teach girls how to make their own media, to the media literacy lectures and workshops I conduct through Women In Media & News. Once "Miss Representation" sparks viewers' interest and outrage, they have many ways to learn--and do - more.

* * *

Marie Wilson
Founding President
The White House Project

What is your impression of the way media currently portrays women?
MW: I have been working on the issue of the media portrayal of women for decades, and feel that at present it is going in two directions: As women gain more power, the clothes are more "seductive" even on the news shows, especially Fox ... On the other hand, as I look at the offerings for new television shows (excluding "Pan Am" and "The Playboy Club") I see women playing strong female leads in several very good shows: "The Good Wife," "NCIF," "Unforgettable," "Prime Suspect," "Law and Order Special Victims," and a few others that are very tough but strong women characters.

More are mysteries and international crime (with the exception of "The Good Wife") but it's a good start. The BBC has great female characters in new show, "The Hour." With TV News and morning shows, women becoming "normal" this helps.

Women make up 51 percent of the population yet only 17 percent of Congress and 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women are largely still underrepresented in the political sphere, executive levels of business and media as well as in the boardroom. What do you see as the root cause of this imbalance and what role, if any, does media play?
MW: As I told Jennifer when she started this, as Marion Wright Edelman always says, "You can't be what you can't see," so we went for a show (Commander in Chief) which we got but it lasted too short a time. I think the way women are portrayed on television dramas, sitcoms and other shows is powerful in changing the perception of women, how they are talked with and about on the news shows matters enormously. But the sexy betrayals are still out there, and again, as women gain more power, they do proliferate and get worse ... again you have both happening.

But having worked on "root causes" for the last decade ... they are myriad. The cultural role of women in the U.S. is wife and mother ... irrespective of the mass entrance of women in the workforce. There hasn't been a national childcare policy in twenty years. Male leaders are still "uncomfortable" with women. Getting to the top in corporations involves sponsorship, and that's not as easy for women to come by. The parties (even the dems) are not good at recruiting women. Our way of funding candidates is stacked against women. The hours of careers like law make it hard for women to get anywhere (billable hours is a killer). Sex still sells. Women are still responsible for child care in two thirds to three quarters of homes. The economy ... there are roots and roots. Television and movies, docs and drama can play a powerful role, and are beginning to ... some of us (like you) have been saying this for so long ... but it is being heard and social media has a role to play as well.

What do you believe are some of the most important changes that need to happen for women and girls in America?
MW: The most important thing that can happen for women and girls in the U.S. is just that women who support the policies and programs that allow for women to live fairly and justly have to be in half the power positions. Period Exclamation ... we've tried everything else.

How can a film like Miss Representation make a difference?
MW: Just what it is doing. Raising more awareness of the powerful role that media plays in how it depicts the diversity of women and asking women to watch and support media that hits the mark, and NOT SUPPORT what does not.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
MW: You know Marianne, I have been at this for so long, and it has taken so long for even our colleagues to get it, that I have to continually remind myself of how long these kinds of changes take, and celebrate that they are at least happening. And I think the film is terrific.

* * *

For more information, visit MissRepresentation.org.
Miss Representation will premiere on OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) on October 20, 2011 @ 9pm EST/MST/PST (8pm Central). Directly following the premiere of the documentary, there will be a one-hour special with Rosie O'Donnell in which Jennifer Siebel Newsom and guests will engage in a discussion to highlight the call to action regarding the messages about women within the film. Says Rosie O'Donnell about Miss Representation: "The truth with how the media deals with females. .. a must see for all women - aged 8-88."

Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's web site and non-profit organization Feminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com. Her new book, based on her interviews with a variety of well-known women, is titled "Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice".

Senator Gillibrand's Call to Action

2011-10-11T16:58:51-04:00

Like the national appeal to Rosie the Riveter during World War II, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is asking women to move "Off the Sidelines" to the center of decision making and power in the United States.

Senator Gillibrand (left) with fashion designer Donna Karan at an Off the Sidelines event

Of all the ideas to jumpstart the economy or solve other serious problems facing the world, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is convinced that an obvious strategy has simply never been realized: the equal participation of women. She cites some startling statistics: "We only have 17 percent women in Congress, we only have six women governors. In terms of economic empowerment, less than three percent of women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and 16 percent are on Fortune 500 corporate boards." To her, it's about gender equality but also the multiple benefits in both the political and corporate arenas of having more women at the table when decisions are made. "A lot of studies show that when women are on corporate boards that companies do better. My own experience in Congress is when women are on committees and at hearings, the nature of the discussion is different, and the outcomes are better -- better decisions are made," Gillibrand said.

Although wary of generalizations, Gillibrand thinks that as more than half the global population, women bring a necessary and different world view: "A woman's perspective often will complement a man's," she says. By bringing both perspectives to the table, "you will have a more holistic approach, one that is 360 degrees." She finds, for example, that "women are often very good listeners, often consensus-builders, often able to compromise and reach across party lines in Congress, able to forge deals and reach better solutions."

These types of observations led Senator Gillibrand to create Off the Sidelines, a new initiative and website intended to be "a nationwide call to action to get more women engaged, both in solving this economic crisis and entering political life and being heard on political issues." Her goal is to "create a one-stop-shop for empowerment," showing "once you understand the issues and what the challenges are, [you know] where you can go to make a difference."

Gillibrand likens Off the Sidelines to the iconic Rosie the Riveter campaign during World War II when record numbers of women -- including her grandmother, great aunt and great grandmother -- entered the workforce while men were off fighting the war. "I feel like we need [the] Rosie the Riveter of our generation. That campaign alone produced two million women into the work force within 14 months, and by the end of the war, six million," she said. Today's call to action, according to Gillibrand, would be as follows: "women, we need you to be advocates, to be heard on the issues you care about, to be voting, to be running for office, to be part of decision making."

On the economic front, she believes women are poised to make strides to boost our economy. "If we are going to out-innovate, out-compete, out-educate our competitors," she says, "we are only going to succeed if women are leading the way." She points out, "Women are now graduating with more than 50 percent of advanced degrees, more than 50 percent of college degrees -- and women-owned and minority-owned businesses are the fastest growing sector within small businesses." However, to reap the full benefits we must confront longstanding road blocks, by addressing issues like pay equity: "Women are earning 78 cents on the dollar -- if we had equal pay in this country, you could raise the GDP [Gross National Product] by up to nine percent." Gillibrand adds, "Women start businesses with eight times less capital than men." If they had the same access to capital, we would see substantial growth, she says, "because women owned businesses are so fast-growing."

The other challenge facing many women these days -- the struggle to balance work and family -- has always been an issue of interest for the senator, and something she can personally relate to as the mother of two children. "We've had these women's economic empowerment roundtables all across the state, and we got feedback about the lack of affordable day care, good, quality early childhood education," she said. Employers should know, she said, that "when they provide child care services, or when they make it easier for parents to work, they are increasing access to very good workers. That it's a very pro-economic [growth] issue." Advantages to businesses are backed up by studies that "show that if you provide day care on-site or make it accessible, that actually a lot of parents are more productive workers as a result." Senator Gillibrand is already trying to tackle this through presenting "a number of pieces of legislation to double the tax credit for early childhood education" and offer "incentives for employers to create opportunities for on-site day care, or easily accessible day care."

One of the strengths of the Off the Sidelines website is personal narratives from women about what inspired them. For Gillibrand, it was her grandmother:

She was a woman who came from very modest means -- [she] never went to college and was a secretary in Albany state legislature. She wanted to have a say in the priorities of the people who represented her. And so she organized other women to work on campaigns with candidates that they valued. She made a huge impact on the political landscape [by] fighting for issues she cared about, and using the grassroots as a tool to amplify her voice.

Sharing "stories from regular women about what got them off the sidelines, why they care about an issue and what they're going to do about it" in an interactive way is critical to the site, Gillibrand says. "Oftentimes women need to see other women doing things as a guide."

Gillibrand frames Off the Sidelines as a call to action because, she says, studies have found "that women really need to be asked to participate, that they respond very well when they're asked to run for office." She is quick to add that "the studies also show that when women do run, they win -- that they do have the ability, they do have the tenacity, they do have the drive, they can raise the funds." Women need to hear that "this is something that they can do. That you can find a way to balance a career and family -- that there is a way that you can be part of the decision-making fabric of this country and still be a good mother." She says women ask themselves, "Is it the right time in my family's life to take on these challenges? And my call to action is very comprehensive -- do whatever you can do: Are you voting? Are you being heard? Are there issues that you care about that you could advocate for? Would you ever consider running for office?" Her call to action is for women's participation across the board.

"Getting off the sidelines is a state of mind," says Gillibrand, a matter of "understanding that women's voices matter." The timing is "urgent," she says: "This is one of the toughest economic crises we have been in, certainly in my lifetime, and if we are going to grow our economy and really create a competitive environment against other nations, we need women as part of that effort. We need women leading the way. Until women are able to achieve their potential, America will not achieve hers."

For more information, visit http://www.offthesidelines.org.

To read the full interview with Kirsten Gillibrand, click here.

This article originally appeared at The Women's Media Center.

'Know Your Power And Be Ready": An Exclusive Interview With Nancy Pelosi

2011-09-21T10:08:47-04:00

This past weekend, I attended Arianna Huffington, Donna Karan and Sarah Brown's second-annual WIE Symposium (Women: Inspiration & Enterprise), an event which set out to explore the central theme of "What it means to be a woman now" through a variety of thought-provoking and informative panels and lectures. The two day event, which benefited the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, featured a keynote from Dr. Jill Biden and a wide diversity of esteemed and inspiring speakers. Several women leaders and activists were also honored with WIE awards. I was there for the presentation of the WIE Leadership award to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Leader of the United States House of Representatives, who made history when she became the first female Speaker of the House, a position she served from 2007-2010. She currently serves as House Minority Leader.

Pelosi was presented with the award by Jeffrey Sachs, American economist and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, who praised her as "someone who has stood for the right things very, very boldly and with incredible consistency ... with a long track record of decency, leadership and wise judgment." Sachs called her "one of our country's greatest leaders for women's rights, for sexual reproductive rights, for the defense of all groups in our society" as well as an important champion for peace.

When Pelosi took the stage, she shared her personal story of getting from "the kitchen to the Congress" and from "being a powerful homemaker to being the House Speaker" (Pelosi has five children and eight grandchildren). One inspiring story she shared was about her first official meeting at The White House after being elected House Speaker -- with then President Bush, the Vice President and the other leadership of the Democratic and Republican House and Senate. She said she had the sensation of "feeling very squeezed in my chair, I just couldn't figure out what it was, just very tight." She realized it was the presence of "Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Alice Paul -- they were all sitting on the chair with me, in that room. And then I could hear them say 'At last we have a seat at that table!'" Pelosi paused for the audience's applause and cheers, then added, "And then they were gone. And my first thought was, we want more!"

Pelosi then went on to talk about the uphill battle and criticism those pioneering suffragettes faced in their tireless and brave fight for a women's right to the vote, reminding us that she and all women today are "standing on their shoulders." Pelosi says it was a "tremendous" achievement to have become the first woman Speaker, adding, "You have no idea how it is there -- it's like not a glass ceiling, it's a marble ceiling."

In the remaining portion of her speech, she touched on many topics, ranging from making sure her colleagues "consider women when they come to the table to make decisions," fighting discrimination against women in health care ("no longer will being a woman be a pre-existing medical condition"), alleviating poverty and disease and helping women in the Third World, and the growing role of women's entrepreneurship and women-owned businesses in fostering job creation and boosting the economy. She ended by addressing the room, saying she was excited to see "so many young women with all your hopes, dreams and aspirations." She encouraged them to "understand that your success will help so many other people in the world... We all have to do our part. Nothing is more wholesome for our country than the increased participation of women in government, business and the academic world and the leadership of our country."

Immediately after her speech, I was honored to have a few moments alone with Pelosi to ask her a few questions.

Marianne Schnall;: That was a very inspiring speech. For the people who might not have been able to be here, what was the one message you are most hoping to convey?

Nancy Pelosi: Well, one message is: Know your power. And be ready. Because you just don't know what opportunity will present itself when. But I want these young women to have the confidence that whatever they have been doing will prepare them in a very unique way for the challenges ahead. There's no one like them. There's no one like them.

MS: Only 17% of Congress is women. What can we do to change that and get more women into positions of political leadership?

NP: Yeah, I know, it's a small percentage of Congress. But we have to do more. It's a decision we have to make as a country. But women also have to decide and be confident about taking the chance of running -- it's tough.

I think women also have to -- and I have said this to some groups lately -- women have to have each other's backs. Because we are talking about power. And nobody ever yields power. It is fought for. And when women go forward -- they are great competitors, but therefore they become great targets. And women have to help women in that regard.

MS: I realized I have been fortunate to interview a lot of women "firsts": Madeleine Albright, the first female Secretary of State, Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, and now you, the first female Speaker of the House. As a a trailblazer -- what specific, unique advice would you have in terms of breaking through barriers and obstacles, or as you said, glass or "marble" ceilings?

NP: Well, you've named two wonderful people -- Sandra Day O'Connor is so respected in our country, Madeleine Albright as well. Mine was a little different in that I had to be elected to it. And so it was always about competition and a fight in that regard.

But I always say to people -- know why you're there. What is your vision? What do you hope to achieve with all of this? What is your vision, what do you know about the subject? Be equipped with knowledge so that gives you good judgment. Understand your strategic plan for how you want to get something done. And if you have a vision, knowledge of what should be done, and a plan, and a path for achievement, you will attract -- which is the fourth part of it -- you will be able to attract support for what you are doing. It is a more emotional thing, at that level, the attraction level -- the others are more intellectual. But I just say, be clear, be clear about your priorities, understand what you are talking about. And that has to come through. Have a plan and you will get support, I guarantee it.

MS: Without making generalizations, what unique qualities do you think women can bring to leadership that you think is most needed in the world now?

NP: I can say this without any doubt [laughs] -- I have no hesitation -- women bring a consensus building attitude that is not always present at the table. When I first became Speaker, people would come to me and say, 'Do you know how different this meeting would have been if a man had been running it?' We build consensus, we don't dictate policy.

Secondly, I really do believe that women have an intuitive sense, which is very important in leadership. Sure, we all are deductive and learn from this and learn from that -- but if you have a vision, and you have knowledge, and you have a plan -- you know what decision you need to make intuitively. And that confidence is contagious. If you act in that decisive a way, people will have confidence in you. And they'll follow your lead. And if they don't, then you have a different path, but you will not have your possibilities diminished because you waited too long to make your judgment about what the consensus is in your groups, consistent with our values, based on knowledge and values and part of a plan to get the job done.

MS: Right now, people are mostly focused on what's going on with their own lives - such as the economy -- and in your speech you talked about the role of women's innovation and the growth of women owned businesses -- do you think we are getting to a point where these aren't just seen as "women's issues" -- where people see the interconnection of empowering women with other issues?

NP: Oh, absolutely. And the thing is that we don't want women just to become involved to do so-called "women's issues" -- the defense of our country, the economy of our nation, the global prosperity -- these are all women's issues.

MS: Looking out at the world right now, it can feel so daunting all the problems we face, and people are very overwhelmed in their own lives and may feel like nothing they do can make a difference. What would you say to that person?

NP: There is no question that people can make a difference. And sometimes when things are as troubled as they are now, there's even more opportunity to make a difference, and certainly more responsibility to be engaged.

MS: Right now people can feel very hopeless and despondent with what is going on in the world. What keeps you hopeful and gives you faith?

NP: Well, because it's urgent. You cannot surrender to that. But you know what? There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful, because people are engaged. They are paying attention. And that gives us an opportunity to make the choice -- the distinctions and the choices that are there.

MS: What is your vision or wish for the future?

NP: My vision for the future always centers around our children -- it always centers around our children. So anytime anybody asks me what are the three most important issues facing the Congress, I always say the same thing: our children, our children, our children. Their health, their education, the economic security of their families, the safety of the neighborhoods in which they live, a world at peace in which they can thrive. So that is what my motivation is. I always saw politics as an expansion of my role as a mom.

MS: I have two daughters, ages ten and thirteen. I think about young girls today who can often lose touch with what you are talking about, their power and their own inner voice and intuition. What advice would you most want to offer to young girls?

NP: I would say that one of the things that encouraged me so much when I became elected to the leadership was the letters I received from fathers of daughters, saying that my daughter can now do many more things because of what you did. And that was the best thing I could ever hear. I think with these young girls these days -- they're raised -- you're raising them in a different way than certainly I was raised. And I don't know how you were raised because you're in between us -- but they have to have the confidence that they can do anything. And they can just reach for the stars. Go for it! Swing for the fences. They may end up someplace between here and the fences, but they'll end up a long way down the road. So I say it again -- know your power, respect what is inside of you and value it, and be ready for the opportunity that comes along.

Photo: Christos Katsiaouni

Exclusive Interview With Gloria Steinem: In Her Own Words

2011-08-12T15:09:07-04:00

When you think of the world's most famous feminist, who do you think of? Among that small group of special women, you can't help but think of Gloria Steinem, the renowned activist and best-selling author, who co-founded Ms. Magazine in 1972, which has become a landmark in both women's rights and American journalism. At seventy-seven she is still just as active, vibrant, and pioneering, co-founding the Women's Media Center in 2006, making numerous media and speaking appearances, and is currently at work on Road to the Heart: America As if Everyone Mattered, a book about her more than thirty years on the road as a feminist organizer. This coming Monday, August 15th, HBO Documentary Films will premiere an intimate biographical portrait of Gloria's amazing life called "In Her Own Words" that features recent and archival interviews and showcases her humor, compassion, wisdom and courage. And in true Gloria fashion, always looking to emphasize she is a symbol of something larger than herself, Gloria and the Women's Media Center are using the film as an opportunity to launch an online campaign encouraging people to voice their own vision and ideas about the future of feminism, intended to spark intergenerational dialogue and help create change.

It is quite evident from Gloria's impressive list of ongoing accomplishments that she is a dedicated and passionate activist. She also happens to be an incredibly humble, warm, charismatic and wonderful person -- as well as a very committed mentor who has nurtured and supported many young women along their path. I am lucky enough to be one of them, having had the pleasure and honor of interviewing Gloria numerous times dating back to 1992; through her support of the 16-year-old web site and non-profit organization I run, Feminist.com; as well as my longtime involvement with the Women's Media Center, which now includes my recent wonderful experience a few weeks ago as a participant in WMC's Progressive Women's Voices media and leadership training program. Even though Gloria is involved with so many important projects and people in her life, she has always graciously taken the time to offer me meaningful support, wisdom, encouragement, and advice, whether in one of her many thoughtful emails to me, or whispering something profound in my ear at an event. She has a very motherly spirit, of caring and love, both for the people she knows personally, as well as those she tries to touch and reach through her work. And as awareness grows about how the diminished status of girls and women is intrinsically interconnected with so many other critical issues facing our world -- and how gender inequality and restrictive gender roles affect everyone, men just as much as women -- we can appreciate Gloria as the visionary and trailblazer she is.

In the following interview, Gloria reflects on the HBO film, the "In Your Own Words" campaign, the current state of women and politics, and her own vision for the future of feminism.

Marianne Schnall: Women's Media Center has launched a social media campaign to go along with "In Her Own Words" asking people to use "their own voices to plot the next 40 years of feminism." What do you see as the future of feminism?

GS: I think of the future in two ways -- survival plus moving forward. Under survival, I would put all the efforts to save the female half of the world from violence directed at us specifically because we are female; what Diana Russell has called femicide.

Under survival is everything from domestic violence, sex trafficking, rape and serial killing to aborting female fetuses, female genital mutilation, child marriage and denying female children protein, health care and education.

Under moving forward, I would put all the efforts to humanize the "masculine" and "feminine" gender roles that are the beginning of a false human hierarchy and normalize race, class and other systems of domination to come -- even "Man's" dominion over nature. The deepest change begins with men raising children as much as women do and women being equal actors in the world outside the home. There are many ways of supporting that, from something as simple as paid sick leave and flexible work hours to attributing an economic value to all care-giving, and making that amount tax deductible. Until the masculine role is humanized, women will tend to be much better at solving dangerous conflicts. That's already happened in Ireland and Liberia, and is beginning in North and South Korea.

And of course, allowing women the power to decide when and whether to have children is the only way to solve the 7 billion human load on this planet that threatens to destroy it. Women's equality is also men's survival.

MS: The United States currently stands as 70th among countries in terms of women's representation in positions of political leadership. How do you feel about the current state of women in politics? What do you think is at the root of this imbalance and what can we do to change it?

GS: Unequal access to money and media plus bias, external and internalized, and male-dominant religions and illegality at the polls -- all those are reasons for women's wildly unequal political power. All those are things we have to fight. Remember, at the beginning of this wave in the 1960s, the main way that a woman got into high political office was to marry a man who had it, wait for him to die, and then take over as a widow continuing his work! But the truth is that the voting booth is still the only place that a pauper equals a billionaire, and any woman equals any man. If we organized well from the bottom up -- and didn't fall for the idea that our vote doesn't count; an idea nurtured by those who don't want us to use it -- we could elect feminists, women of all races and some diverse men, too -- who actually represent the female half of the country equally. It's up to us. We need to form Democracy Circles and do it ourselves.

MS: When you were on Christiane Amanpour's show "This Week" she asked you about how you felt about all these conservative women rising stars, you answered that it was not about biology, but about the issues. Can you elaborate on that?

GS: In the suffragist and abolitionist era, there were a lot of white women and some black men and women who argued for the old hierarchy and against universal adult suffrage -- often on religious grounds. It's no surprise that we still have people who look like us and behave like the establishment. I think most women know or sense this because candidates like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann get more male votes than female votes, also mostly white votes, while all the women in Congress who are fighting the good fight were elected by the Gender Gap and the Racial Gap. Obviously, the idea is not to get one woman a job, but to make life better for all women -- and for men who are being treated unfairly.

MS: I have heard it said that the next wave of feminism is taking place online. What do you think of the role of the Internet?

GS: The Internet is an almost miraculous way of getting information, of finding and organizing with each other, both minutely and globally -- a million times better than the phone and the mimeograph when we started this wave! Also much better than TV, which is one-way and passive; a plug-in drug. But every medium has its danger. The danger of the Internet is cocooning with the like-minded on line -- of sending an email or twitter and confusing that with action -- while the real corporate and military and government centers of power go right on. In a way, the highest purpose of the Internet is to bring us together for empathy and action. After all, the reflector cells and empathy-producing chemicals in our brains only work when we're physically together with all five senses. You can't raise a baby online.

MS: In working on this documentary, which documents your life, as well as the past and future of the women's movement, what do you feel is its overall message?

GS: I hope the message of the documentary is that we've come a long way in 40 years or so, and we can go at least an equal distance in the next. Also that there is no such thing as perfect, there is unique. And most of all we're communal creatures. We need each other.

"Gloria: In Her Own Words" premieres Monday, August 15th (9-10pm ET/PT) on HBO. To watch the trailer for the film or find out more about ways you can participate in the "In Your Own Words" campaign visit http://womensmediacenter.com/blog/gloria-steinem/. You can also visit Gloria's web site at http://www.gloriasteinem.com

Be the Change: Inspiration and Advice from Activists and Celebrities

2011-07-08T09:01:23-04:00

Following the news these days, it is hard to be optimistic, there are so many serious problems the world faces and we may see ourselves on the sidelines as a passive, helpless spectator. We all have our hands full juggling our own responsibilities and all the stresses of modern day life. Media and society in general doesn't do a lot to inspire us or appeal to our own individual power to create change, or even to help us believe that a more hopeful vision of the world is possible. In many ways it does just the opposite.

In fact, we have been conditioned to leave the messy business of world change to our elected officials, rather than as Gandhi said, to "Be the change you want to see in the world." Or as world renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead famously remarked, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The evolution of Mother Earth and humanity's consciousness is calling each of us, all of us, to awaken to our own individual power, our own voice, our own way of being an active agent of change in the world.

When thinking about where to start, my best advice is to follow your heart, pay attention to where you feel called, what interests, outrages or inspires you. And then set out to find out more about the issue and what resources, people and organizations there are working on them -- the Internet makes this easier now, and then follow your passion and try to discover your own unique way of contributing. Every little bit helps. Maybe it starts out in small ways, by joining an organization, a mailing list, signing online petitions or action alerts or writing op-ed pieces or letters to your representatives.

Or, maybe your way of contributing is in writing a check, no matter what size, to a worthy organization doing great work around an issue you care about. You could find yourself inspired to play even a larger role, by organizing a fundraiser, or starting a campaign or your own non-profit, or volunteering or applying for a job at a local, national, or global organization you admire. There are many options to get involved, in whatever ways fit you and your lifestyle - the point is to just begin to take those first steps.

I think people can be confused by the term "activist". It sounds so serious, so fanatical, so demanding. What I find very interesting and telling as a journalist who specializes in interviewing celebrities about the causes and charities they promote (which have included inspiring artists and activists such as Jane Fonda, Natalie Portman, Annie Lennox, Goldie Hawn, Ted Danson, Melissa Etheridge, Cameron Diaz, Meryl Streep, Ed Begley Jr., Bette Midler and so many others) is that when these artists and entertainers achieve the definition of success that society conditions us to strive for -- fame and fortune -- many are passionately driven to give back, and ultimately find they derive the most meaning in their lives through their charitable work.

When I interviewed Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman, who serves as the Ambassador of Hope for the organization FINCA International which promotes micro-lending to empower women in poor countries, she talked emotionally about being dramatically transformed and greatly enriched by her time traveling the globe working with and assisting these women in developing countries. She spoke to me about how "amazing" and "rewarding" and "meaningful" volunteer work was for her, confessing that she felt, "I am not helping them in any way near as much as they are helping me." This is the dimension of activism we need to hear more about and experience ourselves, the soul-nourishing rewards that come from working on a cause you feel passionate about, with a community of like-minded people -- and the uplift of focusing on hope and working towards positive change in the world.

You can contribute to change through your very being, by being conscious of your own impact and energy you bring within your own personal circle of influence, in your family, your community, your school, your workplace. It is as simple as the way you interact with the people around you in life, which includes the messages you implant in your children, the way you talk and behave around your colleagues, the kindness you show a neighbor or a total stranger. You can be a part of bringing love and peace to the world by spreading love and peace yourself, which radiates out, and by celebrating what unites us rather than divides us. It starts in our mind, with positive thinking, intention and action. And activism is also not an all or nothing approach. For example, if you are interested in helping the environment, you can start just bringing some awareness and mindfulness to your own ecological footprint, even just by remembering to turn out the light or deciding to switch to one natural, recycled or organic product, or using a reusable container for your water - all these are positive, meaningful acts that collectively can make a huge difference and are good for the environment, your health and your soul.

You can't help but be an optimist when you are contributing to positive change. Believe in your own power and then to be bold enough to use it. Together we will create a better world.

****

For further inspiration, here is some advice on creating change in the world from my book, Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice.

First of all, change is like a house: you can't build it from the top down, only from the bottom up. Whatever small change we make will be like a pebble in a pond. It will reverberate outward, and also it will be fun... We're meant to be active and contribute to the world. What's the alternative? Just sitting there and wondering, "Oh, if I had just done this, maybe..." I've learned only one thing: no matter how hard it is to do it, it's harder not to do it. Then you're stuck with wondering, "What if I had said...? What if I had done...?"
--Gloria Steinem

Everybody has the power to make changes... and every change makes a difference.
--Cameron Diaz

As much as you can do helps. You don't have to be perfect, you don't have to be an expert, you don't have to have hours and hours of free time or tons and tons of money. You don't have to go to workshops to know about it. All you have to do is have faith in your passion, and it really makes your life a lot better. You feel like you're making a difference.
--Kathy Najimy

I never said, "Ooh, I want to be an activist." I just found that the more I spoke the truth, the more activist I became. I am constantly amazed at how courageous and radical speaking the truth is. The most activist thing you can do is just speak the truth and search for the truth and just follow that trail, and it will come to you. Believe me, the universe will hand it to you.
--Melissa Etheridge

There's so much to do that you will be paralyzed if you sit around thinking, "What's the best thing I can do? Or the most effective? Or who's the neediest?" These are questions that actually don't serve us. What serves us is to just pay attention to where we feel really called... I think it's less about figuring out what's the best thing to do or who's the most needy, and it's really about who are you, what are the resources you bring, and how can you match that with what the world needs?
--Courtney E. Martin

There's always something to do--always.
--Alice Walker

I think when people say to me, "Jane, I really want to help. What can I do?" people could just spend time a bit of time each day thinking about the consequences of their choices. Like what do you eat? Well, that may seem simple--I ate this or that today--but where did it come from, how many miles did it travel, did it harm the environment, how much pesticide was used, was it produced using child slave labor? If it was intensive farming, how did that affect the animals? How did it affect the environment, and how did it affect your health? The same with what you wear, how you travel, how you connect with people. If people would just start thinking about the consequences of all these small actions.
--Jane Goodall

You could sit there and say, "Oh, the problem's too big, I'll never be able to change it." That's a cop-out. It's a responsibility to your brothers and sisters in the world. That should be your number-one concern. You are responsible for what this world is and how it is and all it is. And if you don't want to help fix it, you're part of the problem.
--Betty Williams

With a global population of 6.8 billion people, that's a lot of potential for good to happen. If we all just do a little something, it'll go a long way. We need to realize that we are powerful beings. We live in a world where ordinary people do extraordinary things every day.... Activism is like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it'll become. It's like riding a bike: you start, you practice, you get better at it. The next thing you know, it's really not that hard.
--Loung Ung

I think volunteering is the most fun thing... it can be really, really amazing and rewarding and meaningful.... Sometimes I feel like it's more for me, you know? I mean, I'm not really helping them in any way near as much as they are helping me.
--Natalie Portman

Discover your fantasy of what you need the most, what you would want someone to do for you the most, and then go out and give it to someone else.
--Eve Ensler

Portions of the above originally appeared in Marianne's monthly radio commentary for 51% The Women's Perspective.

Peace Laureates Take on the War on Women

2011-06-14T19:55:43-04:00

Members of the Nobel Women’s Initiative are marshaling their collective wisdom and experience to tackle the challenge of ending rape as a weapon of war.

"Violence starts in the mind, so we have to start by changing the minds of men and women all over the world." Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, democracy leader in Burma, participated in the conference by video.

Certain topics have always been hard to talk about -- rape and sexual abuse ranking high up on that list. And yet we must speak up more because of the many women affected.Â According to conservative UN estimates, “worldwide, one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime."Â It is likely that sexual assault has happened to you, or to your friend, your mother, your daughter, your sister -- the girl next to you on line at the grocery store, to scores of women reading these words right now.Â In too many cases, the secret lies buried deep within us for the rest of our lives.

But six women who are Nobel peace laureates want to not only break the silence but also to spearhead a global campaign to end rape.Â Who better to take on this challenge than this group who have individually overcome enormous odds?Â Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Betty Williams and Mairead Maguire have already created a global organization to "work together for peace with justice and equality."Â As part of this effort, the Nobel Women's Initiative just released a report that finds that rape as a weapon of war is a crime occurring "on a massive scale" and is a threat to global peace and security. War on Women: Time for Action to End Sexual Violence in Conflict examines studies of sexual violence in five regions of the world, explores the leading causes of such heinous acts, assesses actions taken by the international community and offers some ways individuals and governments can move forward to end sexual violence.

“Waging war on the bodies of women has got to stop,” says Jody Williams, the 1997 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to ban landmines. “Like any tactic of war, it can be eliminated.”

Rape is only one of many manifestations of the global pandemic of sexual violence -- what some at the UN call a "global scourge" -- that includes sexual slavery, forced prostitution, mutilation, as well as forced pregnancy and sterilization.Â Women may be targeted as members of a different tribe, to force their families off mineral-rich lands or to silence their voices raised to defend human rights. Whatever the reason, the scale and scope of the problem is growing.Â In places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and Burma, mass rapes have been used as a deliberate and strategic tactic of war--as an effective way to terrorize civilians and tear the basic fabric of society.

According to a report in May in the American Journal of Public Health, almost two million women and girls have been raped in the Congo, at an alarming rate of approximately 1100 a day, 48 women every hour.Â In the 1990s, more than 500,000 women were raped in the Rwanda genocide, and some 40,000 during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We should allow that information to go beyond our eyes and our brains and sink into our hearts, to feel the suffering of a girl as young as two months or a woman as old as eighty. These women may have been raped in front of family members, their bodies violated with broken glass bottles or rifles, leaving them permanently mutilated or pregnant or infected with HIV and other diseases. While the perpetrators rarely suffer any repercussions, the women are often sentenced to a lifetime of misery--ostracized by their communities and rarely getting the medical and psychological support they need.

To kick-start its effort to mobilize the world community, the Nobel Women's Initiative organized a three-day international conference last month in Canada of more than 120 activists, academics, security experts and corporate leaders from some 36 countries. Â Participants at "Women Forging a New Security: Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict" shared ideas and developed strategies to join together as an organized movement, ending with a day of action, in which they called upon the public to pressure their elected officials to "take a stand."Â (Readers are invited to take action at this link.)

There is no single solution to stopping the use of sexual violence in conflict zones; it is entangled with many other thorny issues that face the world locally and internationally.Â However the peace laureates can speak with authority of non-violent means to resolve conflicts and to begin to look with an honest, open heart at its roots--at the cracks in the culture and the people in places where violence, and particularly sexual violence, thrives.Â How is it that human beings have grown so disconnected from each other, from our sense of compassion and empathy for the suffering of another human being, that such savage and brutal crimes can be routinely committed on such a grand scale?

This profoundly disturbing problem nevertheless offers the potential for hope and transformation,Â for the world community to, as Nobel Laureate Maguire Maguire puts it, "create a civilization with a heart." Says Maguire, who won the peace prize in 1976 for her efforts to end violence in Ireland, "Sexual violence is not just happening in far away places, it is happening in our own homes.Â We need to recognize that this is not someone else's problem but an issue to be faced by the whole human family.Â Working together, we can bring these horrific crimes to an end."

Since such an interesting diversity of perspectives from so many different sectors were represented at the NWI conference, I decided to solicit some insights on this issue from some of the amazing women who participated at the event. These follow.

You can also find out more about the NWI conference and campaign, and find out how you can become involved at: www.nobelwomensinitiative.org

"[Sexual violence] is a way of demonstrating power and control. It inflicts fear on the whole community. And it is unfortunately a very effective, cheap and silent weapon with a long lasting effect on every society."
- Margot Walstrom, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

"Rape is used in my country as a weapon against those who only want to live in peace, who only want to assert their basic rights... It is used as a weapon by armed forces to intimidate the ethnic nationalities and to divide our country...We must do everything we can to put an end to this. Violence starts in the mind, so we have to start by changing the minds of men and women all over the world."
-Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Laureate and democracy leader in Burma.

"We have to be a loud and clear voice for those whose voices cannot be heard. Under international law, rape is a crime against humanity--and it is our duty to work to bring impunity for such crimes to an end."- Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Laureate from Iran.

"We survivors continue to fight against oppression. In Rwanda, women head 35% of the households. They are poor, they have HIV-AIDs, some of them have children born out of rape and most of them have been rejected by society. In Rwanda, there is a feminization of poverty."
- Godelieve Mukasarasi, Coordinator, SEVOTA (an organization helping genocide survivors), Rwanda.

"Rape is one of the most obvious forms of violence against women, but it should also be understood as part of a continuum of violence--one that starts with the violent words that we use against one another."
- Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Laureate and Chair, Nobel Women's Initiative.

"To stop sexual violence, I believe in empowering women. Often [men] have the mindset that they are the stronger ones, and women are weak. Having power physically, mentally and economically is important for women."
- Rockfar Sultana Kahanam, Commander of Bangladesh Female Peacekeeping Unit in Haiti (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti).

"I think if we wait for the international community to start a global movement to end sexual violence, then we will be waiting for the rest of our lives. I think it up to us, women in civil society, to come together and tackle it one continent at a time--in a holistic manner."
- Leymah Gbowee, Executive Director of the Women, Peace and Security Network in Africa. Gbowee played a key role in bringing the end to armed conflict in Liberia.

"In the US context, sexual assault has always taken place. It is really a matter of US society growing up and acknowledging the dirty little secret that sexual violence and domestic violence are pervasive throughout US society, and are specifically concentrated in the US military. We can applaud the service of our service members, especially during a time of war, but we have to acknowledge that crimes are committed by service members against other service members. It is actually the patriotic thing to do and it actually improves the military when you hold perpetrators and you hold negligent commanders accountable for these crimes."
- Anuradha Bhagwati, Executive Director, Service Women's Action Network.

"I want to see more communities put their words into action and allocate their resources to the survivors [of sexual violence]. This means to not just pass a resolution--but also provide practical and concrete support. Sometimes the international community is busy passing resolutions while women on the ground continue to suffer with no access to resources."
- K'nyaw Paw, Board Member, Women's League of Burma.

"Rape in war is a sign of a problem that is systematic and widespread. Until the day that a woman can have a social value that is greater and deeper than merely sexual or procreative, until a woman is more than simple property, until women are fully represented in all the places where power is divvied up, then rape will always be a problem. And rape will always be a problem in more places than just the Democratic Republic of Congo--or Africa, for that matter."
- Abigail Disney, Filmmaker and Producer of the upcoming Women, War and Peace series debuting on PBS.

"If we can travel to the moon and back--then of course we can end sexual violence."
- Charlotte Isaksson, Senior Gender Advisor, Swedish Armed Forces, Sweden.

"I think there is a socialization that goes where violence becomes acceptable. You have to change that and say, 'No, that's not acceptable, rape is not acceptable and neither is any form of violence against women. We must not be ambiguous about violence. The greatest war is fought inside our own hearts, a war of anger and resentment and greed. So we start within ourselves and then with our families and our communities."
- Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate.

Portions of this article originally appeared at The Women's Media Center.

Exclusive Interview With Eve Ensler, Recipient of the 2011 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award

2011-06-13T09:06:00-04:00

Playwright and activist Eve Ensler is one of the most inspiring people on the planet, and I have been blessed to have a front row seat to her amazing journey. I was there in those first days when she first began to talk about using her Obie-award winning play The Vagina Monologues to launch V-Day (in fact the term V-Day was literally coined at my dining room table when Eve brainstormed with the board of the women's organization I run, Feminist.com), her global anti-violence movement which has gone on to raise over $80 million dollars for programs in over 140 countries. She is quite simply a force of nature. I am not the only one who shares tremendous admiration for her, which was evident by all the love in the room at Viva Vevolution!, a sold out V-Day fundraiser and celebration of Eve's birthday at Donna Karan's Urban Zen Center this past Wednesday evening, a crowd which included some of V-Day's luminary Board members such as Donna Karan herself, Kerry Washington, Pat Mitchell, and Thandie Newton (other V-Board members include Jane Fonda, Salma Hayek, Rosario Dawson among others). On Sunday, June 11th, Eve was also awarded the prestigious 2011 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award, which recognizes an individual from the theater community who has made a substantial contribution and effort on behalf of humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations.

One of the many things I have always admired about Eve was her bold and indomitable spirit. When she first set V-Day's mission she decided to make it to "end violence against women and girls" and those words were chosen purposefully. It wasn't something a little less idealistic or diluted like "to work to help stop violence against women" - she set the bar pure and simple on ending it - no compromises, no excuses. That is what the world needs right now - that uncompromising belief that despite all odds, a better world IS possible. It is Eve's contagious passion and determination that has made V-Day a success - we thirst for that belief that humanity's consciousness and behavior can evolve and change. I think it is also that Eve believes and invests in the notion that pain can be transmuted into power. She turned pain into power for herself, which began when she was physically and sexually abused as a child by her father, an experience that has fueled so much of her work. She sees the same possibility in abused, violated and marginalized women here in the U.S. around the world -how that outrage and desire for other women to avoid that same fate can be turned into a source of strength, and healed through the act of helping others. There is perhaps no better testament to turning pain to power than V-Day's opening this past year of the City of Joy, a groundbreaking community in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Congolese women and girls, who have survived horrific acts of rape and violence, are provided with support to not only heal themselves, but training to become leaders to steer Congo towards peace. At the event, and in this interview, Eve talked about her sense of an emerging "woman spring" - women, like those in the Congo, who are courageously rising up to demand their rights, have their voices heard and assume leadership roles in their communities and around the world.

Eve and V-Day always seem to have their finger on the pulse of what important new paradigms are emerging, whether it is focusing on empowering girls through her latest work I am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Lives of Girls Around the World and their new V-Girls campaign, or V-Men, which engages men not just as allies in ending violence against women, but to also free them from what she calls the "tyranny of masculinity" which she believes has "cut men off from their hearts".

Eve recently survived uterine cancer, and at the event on Wednesday night she talked openly about coming through the past year and almost dying, an experience she described as being profound, very difficult, yet also incredibly beautiful - and that in addition to the power of people's prayers and love it was the truly the power of potential change and her work on behalf of women and girls that kept her alive.

In the following interview, Eve talks about V-Day, the Tony award, V-Girls, V-Men, the "gift of cancer", the "woman spring" and more.

Marianne Schnall: How are you feeling about all these celebrations of you and V-Day, both at the event last night and receiving the incredibly prestigious Isabelle Stevenson Award at the Tonys on Sunday?

Eve Ensler: You know, I feel so happy about so much. It's always holding the two - right, the really terrible and pressing state of the world, and the incredible signs that there is this birth of the woman spring. I am so grateful to be alive. Everything after that feels like gravy. And the gravy's pretty good.

MS: Having been there at the beginning, it certainly does seem amazing all that V-Day has accomplished. What does the success and spread of V-Day's reach and spirit say to you about the power of women and sisterhood?

EE: I had a Board meeting yesterday, with the most amazing group of twenty women. And I just sat in this room and I just thought, "Look at these women - we are in such sisterhood, and such solidarity and we are working towards the same goal with our hearts and our souls." And I feel that way about V-Day - in the room the other night, you could feel the solidarity, the community, the love, you could feel people's commitment. And so many of those people have been there since the beginning, Marianne [laughs] you know? So I am wildly optimistic when I think of where we are and what this is.

MS: Having worked in so many regions of the world over the course of so many years you have a unique global perspective. You talked on Wednesday night about your sense that the "woman spring" is now arriving. How would you best describe it? What are the signs you see?

EE: Well, I think I mentioned a few of them the other night - whether it's a chambermaid speaking out against DSK and a woman judge prosecuting, or Cairo women creating a harass map, or Agnes [Agnes Pareyio, a Kenyan woman who created the first V-Day Safe House to escape female genital mutilation] running for parliament, or 5,000 V-Days this year or the City of Joy opening and the Congolese women taking back their country - I think it's everywhere. I think we are seeing the absolute and utter collapse of male politicians in this country and we're seeing what the underpinnings of the power structure are, which are sexist underpinnings.

MS: And simultaneous with all that you do see these little sprouts, even in the most heavily oppressed regions of the world, such as in the Middle East, where women are slowly beginning to find their voice and demand their rights as well.

EE: In some ways faster than here! It feels like if you just look at the fact that a woman was central in twittering the Cairo revolution, and women were central to the Tunisian uprising. Women are at the center of everything right now and moving everything forward. And I do think in the next year or two, we are going to see such a woman spring, such a rising.

Look, I was in Paris when this whole DSK thing happened and the number of women coming out of the closet to talk about harassment, to talk about abuse, to talk about the ongoing sexist objectification that is going on in the workplace and the home and the streets and relationships - it's fantastic! It's a huge a breakthrough.

MS: Now that the City of Joy has opened - what is happening there?

EE: At this point almost 40 women - we'll have 90 over the next few months, are in the early stages of therapy of healing, there will be civic training, there will be legal training, there will be speaker training, there will be an economic empowerment piece, there will be computer training, literacy training, self defense, agricultural training - women will hopefully gradually become leaders and be able to bring back what they've learned in their community. And in the process we will begin to create a network of leaders throughout the Congo.

MS: I loved when Christine [Christine Schuler Deschryver is V-Day's Congo Director and Director of City of Joy] was talking about how you and V-Day uniquely came in and rather than imposing, really just empowered them.

EE: Well, that's V-Day's model. Never impose. We never bring The Vagina Monologues anywhere, it only goes where people sign up to bring it - we never bring programs anywhere - we just support existing programs or programs that people envision on the ground.

MS: The International Criminal Court is now accusing Libyan dictator Moammar Ghadafi of ordering mass rapes by his armies in Libya - even going as far as providing them with Viagra to encourage them to do it. It does seem that rape as a formal tactic of war has been becoming more widely implemented...

EE: It's been happening for years. I don't think it's new. I think it's always been here.

MS: But do you think it's improving or worsening?

EE: You know what I think? I think the world is always improving and always not improving. I think that both are simultaneously happening all the time. I don't think it's one motion unfortunately - I wish we could say it's better, better, better - but I think it's better, bad, better, bad - you know?

MS: Maybe it's that there's more awareness.

EE: We have no idea how many women were raped in wars - because no one ever asked. So sometimes when people say statistics have escalated, I wonder if, that is true or are we just hearing about things now that we didn't hear about before. .

MS: Your latest book, I am an Emotional Creature is aimed at empowering girls, and V-Day recently launched V-Girls. As you know, I have two daughters, so this is hugely important to me, especially having had such a tumultuous teenage-hood myself. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to your teenage self?

EE: To have had my anger and not had to turn it against myself. Because it really turned into depression and self-hatred and self destructive behavior rather than just being angry which would have moved me towards my strength.

MS: The other exciting initiative that V-Day is focusing on is V-Men. What is at the heart of the message and mission behind the V-Men initiative?

EE: To really build a movement of men who are equally devoted to ending violence against women and girls, and who are reviewing what it means to be men, and what it means to be masculine, and looking how patriarchal definitions of masculinity have led to violation and desecration and inequality of women.

MS: There was a lot of talk at the event about "breaking out of the man box".

EE: Well, that's the name of the piece, it's "Breaking Out of the Man Box" - and I think what Call to Men and Tony Porter and Ted Bunch are doing is so fabulous at looking at this whole construct of what it means to be a man, and breaking out of that.

MS: Not only having men as allies but also seeing how this whole movement frees them too.

EE: Exactly. Well, the tyranny of masculinity and the tyranny of patriarchy I think has been much more deadly to men than it has to women. It hasn't killed our hearts. It's killed men's hearts. It's silenced them, it's cut them off. And I think to be cut off from your heart is the greatest tyranny in the world.

MS: On Wednesday night you talked about the "perilous" place the human species is in right now, and that we have to be bolder and braver and believe in all-out change and revolution - and then you said "we have the power to turn this paradigm around". What is the new paradigm you think is emerging and what is required from humanity to usher it in?

EE: Well, I think we just have to look at all the ways in which we are violating the Earth, each other, economic violence, racial violence, environmental violence - where we are dominating and not cooperating . It's the denial of global warming and the denial of ecological destruction and breaking out of that denial. But breaking out of that denial across the board - how we treat women, how we treat gay people, how we treat people of color - facing poverty, the five percent or three percent of the world own all the resources. And ninety-five percent live in starvation and dire poverty. And how are we going to reverse that?

MS: I do think part of it is having the belief that it's possible - I always think back to when you decided to make the mission to "end violence against the women" - not something softer like "to help stop violence against women" - that you have to really, as you're saying, be bold and brave and believe that humanity is capable of what seems like an almost insurmountable transformation.

EE: Exactly. And I think we have to get bolder. Why after Fukushima didn't we all go out and shut down all the nuclear power plants and stay there until it happened? I think the human species is very suicidal. And I think overcoming that is very difficult and the point of being here.

MS: My sense is also that people are going through so much stress and personal suffering, kind of on autopilot, that they are just not even awake to know how to be part of the world and realize how their energy effects it - because it does seem very daunting, how they possibly could contribute to change.

EE: But I think that's part of the whole denial and suicidal mechanism right "Oh my God, the house is on fire." You sleep through the smoke.

MS: To me, after so many years of hearing you express such distress and outrage about what is happening to women, to hear you talk about a "woman spring"- something hopeful like that is very encouraging. Because for women to rise up, and be part of the energy to save the planet, that's hopeful.

EE: Oh, I think it's going to happen. I really do.

MS: There were so many people on Wednesday night so grateful and thankful that you seem to be back in good health, and you were simply glowing. You have written and spoken a lot about the "Gift of Cancer". How are you doing and feeling? And if you could distill it, what have you learned from that journey?

EE: Well, I feel fabulous. I feel better than I have ever felt in my life. And you know, it was the hardest year of my life. I almost died and I came very close. In a way, I did die. I feel like a huge tornado passed through me, and it swept out everything that wasn't meant to be there and it cleared the path for the future. And I am so grateful for all the people who helped me - and the resources I had, all the insurance I had to pay for incredible doctors, and I see how crucial it is that everybody has those resources. And I feel it's emboldened me - when you lose seven organs, whatever it was [laughs], you have infections for months, and chemotherapy for months, and you lose your hair, and you have all kinds of contraptions coming out of your body - you stop being afraid in a weird way. It's happened, you know [laughs] - it's done. A friend of mine said to me, "you are lucky in a way you've already gotten cancer - all of us are waiting for it."

MS: Sometimes life throws you these stark reminders that you are a body, of the miracle of life, and the experience of being human.

EE: It's not so bad - it's not so bad! Look, I wake up every day and I think "I'm breathing! It's a good day." [laughs]

For more information on Eve Ensler and V-Day, visit www.vday.org

In Times of Outer-World Overload, Take an Inner Time-Out

2011-05-17T08:59:00-04:00

When I speak to people these days, I am struck by how overwhelmed and busy we are all feeling. It seems as though our responsibilities keep mounting, as do the constant inputs that can now reach us 24 hours a day, through emails, the Internet, our cell phones, Facebook messages and more. The combination of a sense of too much to do combined with too much coming at us can leave us feeling stressed and drained. I should know: with a new book out, two kids and all my work from my freelance writing career and running two web sites, my to-do list and email in-box seem endless. Creating balance in our lives can feel just like "another thing to do." Yet it is during busy times like these that it is most important to prioritize breaks for ourselves, to remember to "be" rather than to "do" all the time, to actually be present in our lives, to pay attention to and nurture our inner worlds with just as much attention as we do our outer worlds, and carve out some quality, self-nourishing time for silence and stillness. There are many benefits to doing this, not just for our mental and physical health and well-being but for our own effectiveness in all aspects of our work and lives.

There are so many inputs coming at us at all hours of the day, and it is easy to be over-stimulated and live life on auto-pilot, operating on knee-jerk reactions, just to get things done. Yet, oftentimes it can be better in the long run to take a few centered breaths, or even wait overnight before responding to an important email that requires thoughtful consideration or reflection. Or, if you are having a problem that you just can't figure out no matter how much you dwell on it, take a break and try meditating, taking a shower or a walk in nature, and maybe the answer will come to you. It is in those moments of non-doing, non-thinking that we can often hear those important whisperings from deep within us. Creative ideas, our intuition, inner guidance and inspiration can come to us during those quiet times. No one else can do this for us; creating balance is something we ourselves need to prioritize and make time for ourselves.

It is especially important to also convey to our children the value of quiet time and the importance of "unplugging" occasionally. Believe me, as a BlackBerry addict who never goes anywhere without it, and as someone surrounded by people who live with the constant buzz, I know how hard this can be. Yet our children are becoming just as addicted as we are to their gadgets, preferring to spend hours on the Internet, on their computer games or watching television rather than in the outdoors, chatting on Facebook or sending out thousands of texts to their friends rather than seeing them in person. There are alarming studies about how all this time children spend on their computers and computer games are impacting the development of their brain and their social skills. (For more on the unique challenges facing children today and possible solutions, you can also read my recent interview with Goldie Hawn about the Hawn Foundation's innovative MindUP program.) So moms and dads should try hard to occasionally, purposefully -- if they can find it within themselves to do it -- set an example and get off Facebook and turn off their own BlackBerrys and iPhones and give their children the gift of focused time, where they are truly present, not just to model these behaviors but because we are sacrificing precious moments with our loved ones that we will never get back. No email message or Facebook chat will ever be able to live up to a meaningful conversation, a smile, a touch, a hug or a shared activity with those we love.

The world spins so fast these days, with a hurricane of news coming at us all the time creating a sensory overload, and we all have so many concerns that we have to tend to and worry about in our own lives and so many serious problems in the world that we face. And it is in times of great stress when we are in survival mode, when it is most important to stop and take a few deep breaths every once and a while, pay attention to how we are feeling, be thankful for what we have, and to enjoy life, so we can recharge ourselves and be better able to face the challenges of our lives with strength, clarity and grace. We need to pause and reflect on what is truly meaningful and ponder the mystery and magic of our lives. We need to keep in mind that technology has many benefits, but the latest technology also holds many dangerous temptations to turn us into our machines, to farther disconnect us from our natural environment and each other. Taking care of ourselves and being present for our own lives and nurturing our inner life within is one of the most important gifts we can give to ourselves, the world and those we love.

I wanted to end on this inspiring quote from an interview I did with the very wise Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who told me this:

It is very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus and find creative solutions to problems. We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we'll also have a lot more joy in living.

And for more inspiration, the following quotes are taken from my book, "Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice":

"You know what happens if you're completely still? Your mind -- that little tape that's running 'bup, bup, bup,' all the noise -- it eventually runs off the reel. And you have nothing left to think. All of a sudden, the answers are just there. I think we are way too busy, we are way too noisy... and we need some stillness in our lives."
--Melissa Etheridge

"It's been shown several times that contact with nature is actually important for psychological development. So children who are in a concrete jungle with little opportunity to learn about the natural world -- or equally, children everywhere who are glued to their computer screens and computer games -- I mean, this is becoming really frightening. What can we do about it? If you can't get the child into nature, then bring nature to the child."
--Jane Goodall

"I'm very lucky that I live in nature. I feel really blessed that I get to be in the wildness of nature because it reminds me of the wild parts of my mind and heart. I am grateful that I learned to meditate and do other spiritual practices starting at the age of nineteen because I can at will calm the voices in my head. That comes from having a practice, and I highly recommend it.... Those are things I do: nature and practice."
--Elizabeth Lesser

"I meditate. Sometimes I meditate by sitting, sometimes I meditate by walking... I hike a lot outdoors. For me, sometimes meditating is being on top of a mountain. But drawing inward and becoming still I think is the important thing."
--Jane Fonda

"Connecting with nature is really important. Unfortunately, we don't get to do it very often in the nature that is truly nature. But go to the park; I love going to the park. Whenever I'm in a city, I always go to the gardens, usually the municipal gardens, and I'll just take off my shoes and put my foot right on the ground. It does connect you in a totally different way."
--Cameron Diaz

"I spend a lot of time, or as much as I can, in silence and at home.... I think all this zipping around the world is overrated. One of the things that I've learned is that I need to be more rooted, and so I've been working on that. I feel that has been so helpful to me -- to cut out movement wherever possible instead of going here and there all the time. Talking a lot less. Being much slower and much more grounded with my animals, with my friends. Staying extremely simple. Dancing more, too. Just learning to really, really love the ordinary -- that nice, well-made bowl of oatmeal in the morning and walking with my dog... just what is ordinary, what is simple and true."
--Alice Walker

"I try to put myself first. For me, I've had to do that. If I don't kind of put my own physical and emotional health first, then I'm not really useful to any movement, to any work of art, to any creative endeavor. I have to be aware -- not selfish and self-absorbed and self-obsessed -- but I have to be self-aware of what my needs are and be willing to take care of my own needs."
--Kerry Washington

Portions of the above originally appeared in Marianne's monthly radio commentary for 51% The Women's Perspective.

Envisioning a More Peaceful World: Leading Thinkers Speak Out on Peace and an Upcoming Summit

2011-05-11T17:51:00-04:00

Featuring exclusive remarks from Cory Booker, Majora Carter, Deepak Chopra, Shirin Ebadi, Donna Karan, Martin Luther King, III, Elizabeth Kucinich, Somaly Mam, Soledad O'Brien, Zainab Salbi, Sharon Salzberg, Robert Thurman and Marianne Williamson

We are living in a time of global instability and unrest that provides fertile ground for dramatic change and transformation. The recent death of Osama bin Laden only seems to add to this feeling. His death, and the aftermath, have served to deepen what I think is a very healthy questioning of the roles we play -- individually, as a society, and as a country within the global environment. Looking at the far-ranging responses to his death, from sober reflection to exuberant celebration, it feels more important now than ever to put our focus not on a continuing cycle of violence that brings more death, but instead on efforts that contribute to life -- our global safety and health as well as our own personal health and well-being. So I was very excited to find out about an upcoming event that I think will contribute greatly to a movement away from war, violence, destruction of our environment and mounting individual stress, to one of openness, kindness, love of humanity, and a greater caring for ourselves and the Earth. It is this focus that will produce the deep peace we all long for.

The Newark Peace Education Summit is a three-day conference which will focus on peacemaking practices from around the world. Inspired by the teachings and practices of peace leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, the summit (which will be held at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center May 13-15, 2011 and is co-convened by Tibet House and The Drew A. Katz Foundation) will highlight peacemaking as a way for individuals, families, communities and nations to resolve conflicts and problems. Nobel Peace Laureates, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who will be involved in the first two days of the summit, Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights advocate, and Jody Williams, the American anti-landmine activist, will be among the many peace leaders speaking at the panel sessions. Other panelists and workshop leaders include: Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Martin Luther King III, Robert Thurman, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Goldie Hawn, Donna Karan, Van Jones, Jeffrey Sachs, Majora Carter, Zainab Salbi, Russell Simmons among many other distinguished peace advocates from a wide cross section of cultures, disciplines and perspectives.

Since there are so many diverse and interesting perspectives being represented at the summit, I thought that a interesting way to highlight the event, and it's extremely valuable themes, would be to do a "round up" -- posing the same three questions about the conference and the notion of peace to a cross-section of the distinguished activists and thinkers who are participating. I hope that these thoughtful and inspiring answers will encourage people to attend this important event. For those who are unable to attend, I hope this piece will get us all reflecting upon and sharing with each other how we, as the powerful individual forces that we are, can contribute to peace -- in ourselves, our families, our communities and the planet . May we hold in our hearts the vision of a more peaceful world in which we understand our interdependence as well as the interconnection of the many issues we face. As the Dalai Lama said, "Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free."

In alphabetical order: Cory Booker, Majora Carter, Deepak Chopra, Shirin Ebadi, Donna Karan, Martin Luther King, III, Elizabeth Kucinich, Somaly Mam, Soledad O'Brien, Zainab Salbi, Sharon Salzberg, Robert Thurman, Marianne Williamson

Cory Booker

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
CB: Those people who seek peace must realize that this is not a passive thing -- it necessitates action. As Martin Luther King said, "Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good." We need a far more proactive agenda for people. It is not a matter of can we; it's a matter of do we have the collective will.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
CB: The conference will be a gathering of local and global peace leaders who are engaged in efforts to create peace within our global community from many different approaches. From peace within one mind and spirit, to how we relate to each other, person-to-person, country-to-country, and religion-to-religion -- there is not one major theme we hope to convey. Our goal is to elevate the dialogue, to learn form one another and realize how we can be better servants to humanity's highest calling.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
CB: Most importantly, I hope that people gain practical and substantive means by which to better engage their immediate lives and communities as agents of peace. In the end, if we want the world to change, we have to be better activists for peace ourselves. I hope that we will become better leaders for a more peaceful society, and our work can provide light, hope and inspiration for others.

Cory A. Booker is the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, which will host The Newark Peace Education Summit. Elected with a clear mandate for change, Mayor Booker has begun work on realizing a bold vision for the city. Newark's mission is to set a national standard for urban transformation by marshalling its resources to achieve security, economic abundance and an environment that is nurturing and empowering for individuals and families.

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Majora Carter

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
MC: I believe that setting a goal of environmental equality would lead us there most quickly. That's because a great deal of our current domestic and international conflicts can trace their roots back to dirty-energy. Whether one looks at the extraction, refining, or burning of fossil fuels, there is always a large degree of environmental sacrifice involved. It may be bad for the polar bears, but it is definitely bad for the people who live in proximity to any of these activities in terms of their public health. The ability of our so called leaders to continually claim that dirty-energy is "cheaper" is only viable if we do not account for the human suffering involved.

If we focus on the ability of all people to have equal access to clean air, water and soil, then a cascade of changes would ripple throughout our energy, agricultural, and waste handling systems in order to meet that goal.

This in turn would reduce: conflict over energy resources, conflicts based on the poverty dirty-energy enables, and conflict as a result on the lower educational attainment which proximity to fossil fuel emissions is known to cause - a leading indicator of how likely one will enter a prison here in the U.S.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
MC: I am going to help people focus on domestic inequality and poverty alleviation here in the US through the advancement of green-infrastructure and climate-adaptation projects. If there are opportunities for me to help foster these ideas abroad as well, I will be happy to explore options to do so.

People everywhere can benefit from an increased sense of what I call, "Home(town) Security" -- that is, an increased interdependence on their neighbors and regional businesses to provide for their energy and food needs, and less on long-distance suppliers that often carry an environmental sacrifice borne by poor people near and far.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
MC: I hope people -- especially the Americans in attendance -- will have a better understanding that one doesn't have to look across oceans to find some struggle for peace that they are looking to join.

The problems in America's own house that are so easily overlooked today will undermine any future efforts made abroad.

I also hope more people will agree in the value of "Home(town) Security", and that it can be most cost effectively accomplished through accessible job creation. Many of the social service support systems we pour billions of dollars into through government and philanthropic spending, can be obviated by the creation of accessible family wage jobs. The dignity-effect that these jobs produce is a powerful multiplier towards the success of individuals and their families towards building peaceful communities everywhere.

Majora Carter founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 and by 2003 had implemented the highly successful Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training (BEST) program -- a pioneering green-collar job training and placement system -- seeding communities with a skilled workforce that has both a personal & economic stake in their urban environment. She is currently president of the green-collar economic consulting firm the Majora Carter Group, LLC.

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Deepak Chopra

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
DC: The only way lasting peace that can occur is when we become the change we want to see in the world. Peace can only be created by those who are peaceful. Love can only be shown by people who love. No social transformation can occur in the absence of personal transformation. We have enough angry peace activists and don't need more. Moral outrage adds violence even if it is for a good reason; it is rage. Even when the outrage is for the right reasons; it is still rage and perpetuates violence in the world.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
DC: I am presenting a seminar on the neuroscience of enlightenment and the biological correlates of spirituality.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
DC: I hope people realize that they hold immense power in their own beings to create a peaceful, just, sustainable and healthy world.

Deepak Chopra M.D. is the Founder and Chairman of the Chopra Foundation, and Founder and co-Chairman of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California. Chopra's Wellness Radio airs weekly on Sirius/XM Stars, Channels 102 and 155. He is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post On Faith, and contributes regularly to Oprah.com, Intent.com, and Huffington Post.

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Shirin Ebadi

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
SE: Lasting piece is built on two pillars: democracy and social justice. In a society where there is no freedom, and they try to repress their own people with bullets and violence, there can be no lasting peace. In a society with class differences and where a great majority of the population is poor, sooner or later that society will lose its stability. Democracy and social justice are the true foundations for lasting peace.

Shirin Ebadi, J.D., was awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote human rights, in particular, the rights of women, children, and political prisoners in Iran. She is the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and only the fifth Muslim to receive a Nobel Prize in any field. She is a co-founder of the Nobel Women's Initiative.

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Donna Karan

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
DK: Dropping the "me" and thinking of the "we," realizing that this world is one for the whole of humanity and that the higher forces are letting us know something through the turmoil of the environment.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
DK: I will be speaking about a new model of "Philanthropy and Commerce" and explaining why I think it's important for them to be collaborative or supportive of one another. I know how to dress people so they look good on the outside but I also want to help them feel good on the inside, in body, mind and spirit, by introducing a combination of healthcare, education and cultural wisdom. I want people to understand that we all must collaborate if we are to survive the future.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
DK: A sense of importance and urgency, that we're all in it together and that the only way to accomplish and realize the love and peace we each want, is to share it with one another throughout the world.

Fashion icon Donna Karan seeks not only to dress one's outside, but to address their inside, mind, body and spirit. In 2007, she founded the Urban Zen Foundation, dedicated to three interconnected objectives: Preservation of Culture (The Past) Integrative Healthcare (The Present) and the Empowerment of Children (The Future.) Currently, Karan is working with The Clinton Global Initiative to develop and support sustainable Haitian opportunities for US consumerism.

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Martin Luther King, III

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
MLKIII: I hope people come away with a real sense of hope and understanding -- hope for a more peaceful world, and understanding for the urgent need for more peace education. I hope summit participants gain a deeper insight into the principles of nonviolence as taught by my father and a sense that these teachings are as relevant today as they were back then. I hope we develop faith in the power of nonviolence to create peace in our homes, communities, nations and world. If all of the conference participants walk away with greater faith in the power of nonviolence, then we will have accomplished something very worthwhile.

As the oldest son of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, III is carrying the torch lit by both of his parents into the 21st century. Martin's dedication to creating and implementing strategic nonviolent action to rid the world of social, political, and economic injustice has propelled him to the forefront as one of the nation's most ardent advocates for the poor, the oppressed, and the disillusioned.

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Elizabeth Kucinich

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
EK: Talking about "world peace" is very abstract and lofty. There is also a very broad definition of peace - it is not only the absence of violence and war, it is living in harmony with nature, compassionate, living gently and considerately, mindfully and with purpose. It's difficult to imagine peace in our own family relationships and communities, let alone the entire world with all its complexities, personalities and political undercurrents.

Therefore I take a different approach, a "bite size" approach. Each one of us has the capacity to take responsibility for peace in our own lives, and simplest and greatest way with the most immediate impact is through our choice of diet. 75 million animals are killed every day for food in the USA alone, having lived a short brutal life of cramped conditions, drugs, and violence. Livestock production is the largest single contributing factor to climate change -- a whopping 51 percent according to the World Watch report, "Livestock and Climate Change." It is also responsible for the greatest amount of water use and pollution, land erosion and hunger -- with it taking 8lbs of grain to produce 1lb of ground beef. We are losing our rainforests at a rampant pace for largely GMO crops grown for animal feed and cattle ranching. We are not only killing animals and the planet with our choice of diet, we are also killing ourselves, with rising rates of obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease, to name but a few, all completely preventable and also reversible with an organic vegan (plant-based) diet. We choose to bring about peace or suffering three times a day with each meal.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
EK: Those of us who strive for peace in the world understand that the outer world merely reflects our inner state of being. So too, our bodies resonate to the vibration of that which we nourish them. For this and many other reasons, our choice of food has both a deep consequence on our own health, and also the well-being of the entire world. Because of this, being mindful about our food choices is the most important single step an individual can take to bring about peace in the world.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
EK: Activism can be daunting and debilitating, continually striving for what others may perceive is the impossible. I hope that my workshop particularly, and the conference as a whole, will lift spirits and create a renewed sense community and excitement, possibility and empowerment, with hearts and minds ready to address their own health and the health of the world through simple compassionate choices and enlightened actions.

Elizabeth J. Kucinich is a longtime peace and human rights advocate and champion for improved human health, the environment, and animal-protection. Elizabeth Kucinich is the Director of Public and Government Affairs for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

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Somaly Mam

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
SM: I think people need to be more affected by the suffering of others. I do not mean outraged, I just mean they need to want to help. I think part of this is that a lot of people maybe do not know how much suffering there is in the world and it is our job to speak for the victims who cannot speak for themselves. However, I believe that we can find ways to inform people and help people without any violence. As I always say the most important thing is to forgive. We can be upset that people are suffering but then to help them as survivors or as just any person we have to forgive before we can start to heal ourselves and others. Maybe there are some people that do not think forgiveness is possible, but I am an example, and I hope my example like so many others at this conference can inspire people to help in a way of peace that is effective. Violence to fight violence only makes more violence. Humanity has to change its perception that force is the way to create change. Patience and love and education (understanding) is the way we need to think to make change.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
SM: I will be speaking on the "Peace in the Home" plenary session. There are so many other wonderful leaders on the stage with me and I hope I will learn from them too. I know from my work in the field and from my own life that peace starts in the home. A home with violence and abuse starts you in a life that seems like there is no hope. I try to give hope and opportunities to the girls in my shelters who never knew love, never knew hope, all they knew from a very young age is violence and fear. Again I want to help them forgive and to learn that to heal themselves they can heal others. My girls and I are a new family with hope and love we can go forward to a better future and teach by example to other people that we can change our lives and empower each other. I see everyday women who have grown up alone with only beatings and rapes and they are angry and they hurt others. Instead I want to help, to save these young girls from that cycle that they can learn to love others, to love themselves, and be empowered to break the cycle. The home is where this starts.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
SM: Again, I hope to learn from all the other amazing people who are also speaking at this summit. I speak to a lot of people in many different forums but I also listen, I listen to victims, to survivors, to people's words but also to their hearts. I think I can always make my words stronger and better and maybe one day we will all have the same message of peace. Even though we all come from different places and different cultures we can all help each other. I hope to be inspired by everyone and I hope I can inspire people too. I also hope that when we all go home from this event we can keep working together even if not actually in the same place so we do not lose what we learned at the summit. We have to keep moving forward and I hope many others will join our efforts and that all together we can inspire people for peace, cooperation and love.

Born in a village deep in the Cambodian forest, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelve years old. Her book, The Road of Lost Innocence, recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the story of her awakening as an activist and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos.

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Soledad O'Brien

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
SO: To achieve lasting world piece human beings need to value every living person -- in every region of the globe. There has to be a sense that every person has value -- regardless of where they live, their economic status, how they are 'different' from us. In addition, realizing that we have a global responsibility to help others who are impoverished and un and under-educated would go a long way to connecting us literally and emotionally to other counterparts around the world.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
SO: At the conference I am part of a panel tackling issues of parity in education.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
SO: My biggest hope is that people will come away from our panel and the conference understanding that as challenging as the issues are--there ARE solutions. And that there is a tremendous sense of urgency--we need to fix these problems NOW.

Soledad O'Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN/U.S. Since joining the network in 2003, O'Brien has reported breaking news from around the globe and has produced award-winning, record-breaking and critically acclaimed documentaries on the most important stories facing the world today. She also covers political news as part of CNN's "Best Political Team on Television."

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Zainab Salbi

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
ZS: As I have seen through the work we do at Women for Women International, it is vital that women are represented fairly in any kind of reconciliation process. While we have made a great deal of progress, women still aren't part of the peace negotiations, and we only need to look to Iraq and Afghanistan to see that. They should be given that right and it's something I'm going to continue to work very hard to achieve.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
ZS: I hope to be able to express why the work we do is so incredibly important. Eighty percent of the world's refugees are women and children. They are our hope for the future, so it's hugely important we invest in them 100 percent through education and employment initiatives. I'll be speaking about how we've served nearly 300,000 achieve better lives in some of the harshest environments in the world.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
ZS: I hope people will come away realizing how we all need to be more responsible and more committed to helping those who truly need it the most. After all, a more stable world is better for all of us.

Zainab Salbi is Founder and CEO of Women for Women International, a grassroots humanitarian and development organization helping women survivors of wars rebuild their lives. Since 1993, the organization has helped 271,000 women survivors of wars access social and economic opportunities through a program of rights awareness training, vocational skills education and access to income generating opportunities, thereby ultimately contributing to the political and economic health of their communities.

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Sharon Salzberg

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
SS: We need to know that all our lives are inextricably interwoven, that what each of us does matters, and that what happens "over there" never just nicely stays "over there" -- we need new ways of thinking based on the truth of how interconnected we all are. We need to care both about ourselves and others. We need to experience the phenomenal and unusual joy of inner peace, so we have the resiliency and resourcefulness to work for external peace in a sustained way.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
SS: I am leading a workshop on fierce compassion. So often we think of love and compassion as signs of weakness, as a lack of discernment, or as passivity. Or we think of them as secondary virtues, as though to say "Well, if you can't be brave and you can't be courageous and you can't be wonderful, be kind. It's not that great, but it's something." Whereas the reality is that qualities like kindness and compassion are vibrant, powerful, intelligent and can be quite fierce as well as gentle. They aren't passive at all, but instead are the roots of a whole other vision of possibility, strength, and change.

And the rest of the time I am delighting in listening to and learning from other presenters.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
SS: I think we will all come away with an enhanced sense of community, a renewed vision for helping make this a better world, inspiration from many great people, and quite specific possibilities as to where we can put our time and energy for fostering peace.

Sharon Salzberg is Co-Founder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts. She has been a student of meditation since 1971, guiding meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Sharon's latest book is the New York Times Best Seller, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program, published by Workman Publishing.

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Robert Thurman

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
RT: Humanity needs to develop greater understanding of the power of nonviolence in achieving peace, to diminish the destructive consequence of all forms of violence. To achieve that in the outer world, the inner reactivity of the unreflective unmindful life-habit needs to be studied, individual by individual, in a gradual process of self-education. "World peace through inner peace!" is one of the Dalai Lama's favorite slogans, and he means that each of us needs to cultivate our inner peace. We can do that by living with greater ethical sensitivity about how our acts, words, and thoughts affect others, by developing more freedom through self-awareness about our reactive habit patterns, and by understanding things from multiple perspectives, not getting locked rigidly into our own point of view. Once we find that inner peace, any small bit of it, baby step by baby step, we feel much better, even joyful and energized. Then whatever activist work we do to achieve outer peace in any situation comes from an effective place and does not create more turbulence and counter-reactions.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
RT: At the conference I will be moderating, making sure that people feel that they are under a gigantic Tibetan peace tent, a relaxing place where all kinds of people doing all kinds of helpful things can meet, reinforce one another, re-kindle the energies of hope and insight, and realize that the "impossible" is actually possible.

As moderator, I want to make sure that presenters focus on presenting their work to His Holiness, re-visiting it themselves in the light of his presence, and feeling his celebration of their sincere motivation, effort, and accomplishment, as well as thinking creatively about how to further their effectiveness. The message is that of His Holiness and the Tibetan people and all those who try to find opportunity in difficulties, never give up, see the other side, keep hope alive, and remain joyfully determined.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
RT: We want them to realize that their positive efforts are meaningful, their goals highly possible, and no good deed, word, or thought goes unrewarded by goodness and happiness, sooner or later. As Buddha and Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi and His Holiness, among many others, tirelessly teach, peace is the path as well as the goal.

Robert A. F. "Tenzin" Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President and co-founder of Tibet House US, the President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, and Editor-in-Chief of the Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences, a long-term translation and publication project of the Tibetan Tengyur canon. A personal friend of the Dalai Lama for over 40 years and the first American to have been ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk, he is now an ordained lay Buddhist.

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Marianne Williamson

What changes do you think humanity needs to make to achieve lasting peace in the world?
MW: We can't validly say we want such a fundamental change as "world peace", if we're only willing to make superficial changes in order to make it happen. We prepare for war, but then say we want peace; we perpetuate the causes of continued desperation among the least advantaged of the world, but then say we want peace; we continue to put economic prosperity for a few before humanitarian concern for the many, but then say we want peace; we recklessly disregard the most basic imperatives of brotherly love, but then say we want peace.

What exactly will you be doing at the conference? What theme or message are you representing?
MW: I'm giving a workshop on the relationship between our personal spiritual work and our effectiveness as social activists. Also, I'm appearing on a panel on peace.

What do you hope people come away with from the summit?
MW: I would like to think that people come away from the summit with much more than just intellective date. I hope they come away inspired, ablaze with purposefulness and ready to do their part to change the world.

Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed spiritual teacher. Among her 10 published books, four of them were #1 New York Times Bestsellers. She has been a popular guest on television programs such as Oprah, Larry King Live, Good Morning America and Charlie Rose. Marianne also founded The Department of Peace Campaign, a grass roots campaign supporting legislation to establish a U. S. Department of Peace.

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For more information, visit Newarkpeace.org. Tickets are still available for all 3 days of the Newark Peace Education Summit. Visit NJPAC.com or call the box office at 1-888-GO-NJPAC.