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Good afternoon, I'm proud[br]to be here at TEDxKrakow.

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I'll try to speak a little bit today[br]about a phenomenon

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which can, and actually is[br]changing the world,

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and whose name is people power.

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I'll start with an anecdote,

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or for those of you[br]who are Monty Python lovers,

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a Monty Python type of sketch.

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Here it is.

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It is December 15, 2010.

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Somebody gives you a bet:[br]you will look at a crystal ball,

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and you will see the future;[br]the future will be accurate.

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But you need to share it with the world.

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OK, curiosity killed the cat,[br]you take the bet,

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you look at the crystal ball.

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One hour later, you're sitting[br]in a building of the national TV,

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in a top show, and you tell the story.

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Before the end of 2011,

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Ben Ali, and Mubarak,[br]and Gaddafi would be down,

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and prosecuted.

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Saleh of Yemen and Assad of Syria

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would be either challenged,[br]or already on their knees.

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Osama bin Laden would be dead,

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and Ratko Mladic would be in the Hague.

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Now, the anchor watches you[br]with a strange gaze on his face.

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And then, on top of it you add:

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"And thousands of young people[br]from Athens, Madrid and New York

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will demonstrate for social justice,[br]claiming they are inspired by Arabs."

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Next thing you know,[br]two guys in white appear,

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they give you the strange t-shirt,

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take you to the nearest[br]mental institution.

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So I would like to speak a little bit

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about the phenomenon which is behind[br]what already seems to be

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a very bad year for bad guys.

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And this phenomenon[br]is called people power.

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Well, people power[br]has been there for a while.

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It helped Gandhi kick[br]the Brits from India,

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it helped Martin Luther King[br]win his historic racial struggle.

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It helped a local, Lech Walesa,

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to kick out one million[br]Soviet troops from Poland,

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and in beginning the end[br]of the Soviet Union as we know it.

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So what's new in it?

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What seems to be very new,

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which is the idea I would like[br]to share with you today,

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is that there is a set of rules and skills

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which can be learned and taught

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in order to perform[br]successful nonviolent struggle.

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If this is true, we can help[br]these movements.

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Well, the first one - analytic skills.

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I'll try where it all started[br]in the Middle East.

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And for so many years,

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we were living with a completely wrong[br]perception of the Middle East.

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It was looking like the frozen region.

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Literally a refrigerator.

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And there were only[br]two types of meal there.

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Steak, which stands for a Mubarak-Ben Ali[br]type of military police dictatorship,

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or a potato, which stands for[br]a Tehran type of theocracies.

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And everybody was amazed[br]when the refrigerator opened,

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and millions of young,[br]mainly secular people

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stepped out to do the change.

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Guess what - they didn't watch[br]the demographics.

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What is the average age[br]of an Egyptian? 24.

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How long was Mubarak in power? 31.

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So, this system was just[br]obsolete, they expired.

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And young people of the Arab world[br]have awakened one morning,

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and understood that power[br]lies in their hands.

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The rest is the year in front of us.

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And guess what? The same Generation Y,

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with their rules, with their tools,[br]with their games,

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and with their language,[br]which sounds a little bit strange to me.

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I'm 38 now.

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And can you look at the age[br]of the people on the streets of Europe?

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It seems that Generation Y is coming.

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Now, let me set another example.

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I'm meeting different people[br]throughout the world,

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and they are, you know, academics,[br]and professors, and doctors,

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and they will always talk conditions.

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They will say: "People power will work[br]only if the regime is not too oppressive."

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They will say: "People power will work,

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if the annual income of the country[br]is between X and Z."

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They will say: "People power will work[br]only if there is a foreign pressure."

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They will say: "People power[br]will work only if there is no oil."

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And, I mean, there is a set of conditions.

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Well, the news here[br]is that your skills during the conflict

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seem to be more important[br]than the conditions.

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Namely, the skills of unity, planning,[br]and maintaining nonviolent discipline.

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Let me give you an example.

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I come from a country called Serbia.

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It took us 10 years to unite[br]18 opposition party leaders,

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with their big egos,[br]behind one single candidate

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against the Balkan dictator[br]Slobodan Milosevic.

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Guess what? That was[br]the day of his defeat.

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You look at the Egyptians,[br]they fight on Tahrir Square,

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they get rid of their individual symbols,

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they appear on the street[br]only with the flag of Egypt.

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I will give you a counter-example.

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You see nine presidential candidates[br]running against Lukashenko,

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you all know the outcome.

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So unity is a big thing.

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And this can be achieved.

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Same with planning.

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Somebody has lied to you

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about the successful and spontaneous[br]nonviolent revolution.

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That thing doesn't exist in the world.

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Whenever you see young people[br]in front of the row

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trying to fraternize[br]with the police or military,

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somebody was thinking about it before.

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Now, at the end, nonviolent discipline.

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And this is probably the game-changer.

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If you maintain nonviolent discipline,

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you'll exclusively win.

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You have 100,000 people[br]in a nonviolent march,

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one idiot or agent-provocateur[br]throwing a stone.

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Guess what takes all the cameras.

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That one guy.

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One single act of violence[br]can literally destroy your movement.

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Now, let me move to another place.

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It's the selection[br]of strategies and tactics.

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There are certain rules[br]in nonviolent struggle you may follow.

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First, you start small.

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Second, you pick the battles you can win.

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It's only 200 of us in this room.

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We won't call for the march of a million.

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But what if we organized the spraying[br]of graffiti throughout the night,

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all over Krakow.

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The city will know.

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So, we pick tactics[br]accommodated to the event,

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especially this thing we call[br]the small tactics of dispersion.

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They're very useful in violent oppression.

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We are actually witnessing the picture[br]of one of the best tactics ever used.

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It was on Tahrir square,

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where the international community[br]was constantly frightened

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that, you know, the Islamists[br]will overtake the revolution.

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What they organized --

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Christians protecting Muslims[br]where they are praying,

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a Coptic wedding cheered[br]by thousands of Muslims,

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the world has just changed the picture,

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but somebody was thinking[br]about this previously.

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So there are so many things you can do

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instead of getting into one place,

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shouting, and you know, showing off[br]in front of the security forces.

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Now, there is also another[br]very important dynamic.

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And this is a dynamic[br]that analysts normally don't see.

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This is the dynamic between[br]fear and apathy on the one side,

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and enthusiasm and humor on another side.

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So, it works like in a video game.

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You have the fear high,[br]you have status quo.

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You have the enthusiasm higher,

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you see the fear is starting to melt.

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Day two, you see people[br]running towards the police

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instead of from the police, in Egypt.

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You can tell that something[br]is happening there.

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And then, it's about the humor.

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Humor is such a powerful game-changer,

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and of course, it was very big in Poland.

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You know, we were just a small group[br]of crazy students in Serbia

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when we made this big skit.

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We put the big petrol barrel

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with a portrait of Mr. President on it,[br]in the middle of the Main Street.

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There was a hole in the top.

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So you could literally come,[br]put a coin in,

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get a baseball bat, and hit his face.

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Sounds loud.

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And within minutes,

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we were sitting in a nearby café[br]having coffee,

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and there was a queue of people[br]waiting to do this lovely thing.

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Well, that's just[br]the beginning of the show.

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The real show starts[br]when the police appears.

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(Laughter)

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"What will they do?"

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Arrest us? We were nowhere to be seen.

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We were like three blocks away,[br]observing it from our espresso bar.

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Arrest the shoppers, with kids?

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Doesn't make sense.

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Of course, you could bet,[br]they did the most stupid thing.

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They arrested the barrel.

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And now, the picture[br]of the smashed face on the barrel,

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with the policemen[br]dragging it to the police car,

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that was the best day[br]for newspaper photographers

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that they will ever have.

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So, I mean, these are[br]the things you can do.

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And you can always use humor.

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There is also one big thing about humor,

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it really hurts.

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Because these guys really are[br]taking themselves too seriously.

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When you start to mock them, it hurts.

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Now, everybody is talking[br]about His Majesty, the Internet,

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and it is also a very useful skill.

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But don't rush to label things[br]like "a Facebook Revolution,"

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"Twitter Revolution."

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Don't mix the tools[br]with the substance.

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It is true that the Internet[br]and the new media are very useful

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in making things faster and cheaper.

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They also make it a bit safer[br]for the participants,

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because they give partial anonymity.

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We're watching the great example[br]of something else the Internet can do.

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It can put the price tag[br]of state-sponsored violence

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over a nonviolent protester.

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This is the famous group[br]"We are all Khaled Said,"

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made by Wael Ghonim[br]in Egypt, and his friend.

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This is the mutilated face of the guy[br]who was beaten by the police.

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This is how he became known to the public,

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and this is what probably became[br]the straw that broke the camel's back.

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But here is also the bad news.

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The nonviolent struggle is won[br]in the real world, in the streets.

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You will never change[br]your society towards democracy,

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or, you know, the economy,[br]if you sit down and click.

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There are risks to be taken,

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and there are living people[br]who are winning the struggle.

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Well, the million-dollar question.

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What will happen in the Arab world?

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And though young people[br]from the Arab world

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were pretty successful[br]in bringing down three dictators,

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shaking the region,

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kind of persuading the clever kings[br]from Jordan and Morocco

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to do substantial reforms,

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it is yet to be seen[br]what will be the outcome.

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Whether the Egyptians and Tunisians[br]will make it through the transition,

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or this will end in bloody[br]ethnic and religious conflicts,

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whether the Syrians[br]will maintain nonviolent discipline,

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faced with a brutal daily violence[br]which kills thousands already,

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or they will slip into violent struggle

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and make ugly civil war.

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Will these revolutions be pushed[br]through the transitions and democracy

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or be overtaken by the military[br]or extremists of all kinds?

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We cannot tell.

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The same works for the Western sector,

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where you can see[br]all these excited young people

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protesting around the world,[br]occupying this, occupying that.

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Are they going to become the world wave?

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Are they going to find their skills,[br]their enthusiasm, and their strategy

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to find what they really want[br]and push for the reform,

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or will they just stay complaining[br]about the endless list

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of the things they hate?

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This is the difference[br]between the two paths.

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Now, what do the statistics have?

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My friend Maria Stephan's book

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talks a lot about violent[br]and nonviolent struggle,

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and there are some shocking data.

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If you look at the last 35 years[br]and different social transitions,

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from dictatorship to democracy,

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you will see that,[br]out of 67 different cases,

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in 50 of these cases[br]it was nonviolent struggle

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which was the key power.

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This is one more reason[br]to look at this phenomenon,

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this is one more reason[br]to look at Generation Y.

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Enough for me to give them credit,

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and hope that they will find their skills[br]and their courage

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to use nonviolent struggle

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and thus fix at least a part of the mess[br]our generation is making in this world.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)