Dear Mr. President
By Felicia Russell (MA '07)

Sheryl Oring, left, collects a birthday greeting in Brooklyn.

While working at the San Francisco Chronicle, Sheryl Oring (’87) went to Berlin on a fellowship. There at the foot of a monument depicting a Nazi book burning, Oring said she began to think about censorship and free speech.

Oring obtained other fellowships and stayed in Berlin for six years, exploring those ideas as a writer and an artist. When she returned to United States, she said she didn’t feel that newspapers were covering what real people thought about politics. The “I Wish to Say” project was born in 2004 out of her desire to give voice to the American public and encourage civic engagement.

“The journalist in me is just out there to see what people have to say,” she said.

Fashionably dressed in a 1960s-style frock and armed with a manual typewriter, Oring travels the country to bring her brand of performance art to the American public. She said she sets up “office” in parks and town squares, on college campuses and at flea markets, where she invites people to sit down and speak their minds. Oring types as veterans, children, mothers, immigrants, students and more dictate postcards to the U.S. president.

She was named ABC News’ Person of the Week by Peter Jennings for her “I Wish to Say” performance piece during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.

A carbon copy of one American's letter to President Bush.

It turns out Americans have a lot to say. In 2006, people wanted to talk about the war in Iraq, but the topic seems to have shifted to the economy now, Oring said.

Oring’s actions often inspire people who wouldn’t have done so otherwise to write a letter to the president. Sometimes it gives someone a public space to speak about deeply emotional issues, such as the woman who began to cry as she told Oring about her friends in Iraq.

“Those types of interactions are extremely powerful and keep me doing this project,” she said.

On Feb. 26, images and words from the project were released as a book, “I Wish to Say (The Birthday Project).” The book features carbon copies of cards and letters addressed to President Bush on his 60th birthday. Some cards are encouraging, some angry, some hopeful, but what the birthday wishers have in common is a desire to be heard.

“This year I’m really busy with this project because it’s an election year,” Oring said, adding that she’s entertained the thought of doing the project each election year. Over a period of time, she said, such a project would become an unfiltered measure of American attitudes and perceptions.

But the most important result of the project may be the Americans who are encouraged to get involved in the democratic process by speaking out.

Oring was assistant city editor at the Chronicle and also has worked as a copy editor at The New York Times and editor of English-language content at the German national daily newspaper, Die Welt.