Close to half a million Syrians have died in the Syrian Civil war since 2011. In Aleppo alone, since 2012, over 100,000 Syrians have been killed. As of 2015, the UN puts the estimate of civilians killed by the Syrian regime at 250,000. Other estimates range from 150,960 to 470,000.[^1]

More Arabs have been killed by Bashar Al-Assad since 2011 than by Israel since 1948.

Reading Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road gave me many treasured lessons. Many are relevant on election years. One is especially relevant on the heels of the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and particularly during an election year where fear and Islamophobia are on the ballot.
As a large portion of Americans react to fear of terrorism and religious-inspired radicalism with Islamophobia and an anti-immigrant mentality, I remember this.

Steinem recalls a conversation with a cab driver in New York city “only ten days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks”. “Downtown streets were covered with surrealistic gray ash and debris,” she says, “and gutters were filled with the bodies of birds that had been incinerated in flight.”
But then she rides in this man’s cab.