WEBVTT 00:00:01.236 --> 00:00:04.316 Good afternoon. I am proud to be here at TEDxKrakow. 00:00:04.316 --> 00:00:07.368 I'll try to speak a little bit today about a phenomenon 00:00:07.368 --> 00:00:10.294 which can and is actually changing the world, 00:00:10.294 --> 00:00:12.284 and whose name is people power. 00:00:12.284 --> 00:00:15.036 I'll start with the anecdote, or for those of you 00:00:15.036 --> 00:00:18.612 who are Monty Python lovers, a Monty Python type of sketch. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:18.612 --> 00:00:22.612 Here it is. It is December 15, 2010. 00:00:22.612 --> 00:00:25.884 Somebody gives you a bet. You will look at a crystal ball 00:00:25.884 --> 00:00:28.628 and you will see the future. The future will be accurate. 00:00:28.628 --> 00:00:31.324 But you need to share it with the world. Okay? 00:00:31.324 --> 00:00:33.942 Curiosity killed the cat. You take the bet. 00:00:33.942 --> 00:00:36.372 You look at the crystal ball. One hour later, 00:00:36.372 --> 00:00:39.055 you are sitting in a building on the national TV 00:00:39.055 --> 00:00:41.700 in a talkshow, and you tell the story. 00:00:41.700 --> 00:00:46.542 "Before the end of 2011, Ben Ali and Mubarak 00:00:46.542 --> 00:00:50.304 and Gaddafi will be down and prosecuted. 00:00:50.304 --> 00:00:53.196 Saleh of Yemen and Assad of Syria 00:00:53.196 --> 00:00:56.484 would be either challenged or already on their knees. 00:00:56.484 --> 00:00:58.692 Osama bin Laden will be dead, 00:00:58.692 --> 00:01:01.348 and Ratko Mladic will be in the Hague." NOTE Paragraph 00:01:01.348 --> 00:01:04.870 Now, the anchor watches you with a strange gaze on his face, 00:01:04.870 --> 00:01:06.661 and then on the top of it you add, 00:01:06.661 --> 00:01:09.366 "And thousands of the young people from Athens, Madrid 00:01:09.366 --> 00:01:12.500 and New York will demonstrate for social justice, 00:01:12.500 --> 00:01:15.356 claiming that they are inspired with Arabs." NOTE Paragraph 00:01:15.356 --> 00:01:18.485 Next thing you know, two guys in white appear. 00:01:18.485 --> 00:01:20.762 They give you the strange t-shirt, 00:01:20.762 --> 00:01:22.701 take you to the nearest mental institution. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:22.701 --> 00:01:25.634 So I would like to speak a little bit about the phenomenon 00:01:25.634 --> 00:01:29.418 which is behind what already seems to be the very bad year 00:01:29.418 --> 00:01:34.125 for bad guys, and this phenomenon is called people power. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:34.125 --> 00:01:36.905 Well, people power has been there for a while. 00:01:36.905 --> 00:01:39.649 It helped Gandhi kick the Brits from India. 00:01:39.649 --> 00:01:43.562 It helped Martin Luther King win a historic racial struggle. 00:01:43.562 --> 00:01:46.936 It helped local Lech Walesa to kick out 00:01:46.936 --> 00:01:49.925 one million Soviet troops from Poland 00:01:49.925 --> 00:01:52.758 and beginning the end of the Soviet Union as we know it. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:52.758 --> 00:01:56.456 So what's new in it? What seems to be very new, 00:01:56.456 --> 00:01:59.037 which is the idea I would like to share with you today, 00:01:59.037 --> 00:02:03.122 that there is a set of rules and skills which can be learned 00:02:03.122 --> 00:02:07.606 and taught in order to perform successful nonviolent struggle. 00:02:07.606 --> 00:02:11.126 If this is true, we can help these movements. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:11.126 --> 00:02:14.134 Well, first one, analytic skills. 00:02:14.134 --> 00:02:17.009 I'll try where it all started in the Middle East, 00:02:17.009 --> 00:02:20.793 and for so many years we were living with completely the wrong 00:02:20.793 --> 00:02:23.206 perception of the Middle East. 00:02:23.206 --> 00:02:26.623 It was looking like the frozen region, literally a refrigerator, 00:02:26.623 --> 00:02:28.974 and there are only two types of meals there: 00:02:28.974 --> 00:02:32.237 steak, which stands for a Mubarak, Ben Ali-type of 00:02:32.237 --> 00:02:36.315 military police dictatorship, or a potato, 00:02:36.315 --> 00:02:39.054 which stands for Tehran types of theocracies. 00:02:39.054 --> 00:02:42.022 And everybody was amazed when the refrigerator opened 00:02:42.022 --> 00:02:45.654 and millions of young, mainly secular people step out 00:02:45.654 --> 00:02:50.450 to do the change. Guess what? They didn't watch the demographics. 00:02:50.450 --> 00:02:53.030 What is the average age of Egyptians? 24. 00:02:53.030 --> 00:02:55.502 How long was Mubarak in power? 31. 00:02:55.502 --> 00:02:59.270 So this system: just obsolete. They expired, 00:02:59.270 --> 00:03:01.783 and young people of the Arab World have awakened 00:03:01.783 --> 00:03:06.222 one morning and understood that power lies in their hands. 00:03:06.222 --> 00:03:09.206 The rest is the year in front of us. And guess what? 00:03:09.206 --> 00:03:11.912 The same Generation Epsilon with their rules, 00:03:11.912 --> 00:03:14.671 with their tools, with their games and with their language, 00:03:14.671 --> 00:03:18.556 which sounds a little bit strange to me. I am 38 now. 00:03:18.556 --> 00:03:22.472 And can you look at the age of the people on the streets of Europe? 00:03:22.472 --> 00:03:26.579 It seems that Generation Epsilon is coming. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:26.579 --> 00:03:29.709 Now let me set another example. 00:03:29.709 --> 00:03:31.747 I'm meeting different people throughout the world, 00:03:31.747 --> 00:03:34.372 and they are, you know, academics and professors 00:03:34.372 --> 00:03:37.132 and doctors, and they will always talk conditions. 00:03:37.132 --> 00:03:41.132 They will say, "People power will work only if the regime is not too oppressive." 00:03:41.132 --> 00:03:44.169 They will say, "People power will work if the annual income 00:03:44.169 --> 00:03:46.876 of the country is between X and Z." 00:03:46.876 --> 00:03:50.476 They will say, "People power will work only if there is a foreign pressure." 00:03:50.476 --> 00:03:53.412 They will say, "People power will work only if there is no oil." 00:03:53.412 --> 00:03:55.378 And, I mean, there is a set of conditions. 00:03:55.378 --> 00:04:00.338 Well, the news here is that your skills [that you] bring in the conflict 00:04:00.338 --> 00:04:03.390 seem to be more important than the conditions, 00:04:03.390 --> 00:04:06.036 namely skills of unity, planning, 00:04:06.036 --> 00:04:07.943 and maintaining nonviolent discipline. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:07.943 --> 00:04:09.570 Let me give you the example. 00:04:09.570 --> 00:04:11.471 I am coming from a country called Serbia. 00:04:11.471 --> 00:04:16.219 It took us 10 years to unite 18 opposition party leaders, 00:04:16.219 --> 00:04:19.266 with their big egos, behind one single candidate 00:04:19.266 --> 00:04:22.004 against Balkan dictator Slobodan Milosevic. 00:04:22.004 --> 00:04:24.692 Guess what? That was the day of his defeat. 00:04:24.692 --> 00:04:27.508 You look at the Egyptians, they fire on Tahrir Square, 00:04:27.508 --> 00:04:29.812 they get rid of their individual symbols. 00:04:29.812 --> 00:04:32.884 They appear on the street only with the flag of Egypt. 00:04:32.884 --> 00:04:35.099 I will give you a counter-example. 00:04:35.099 --> 00:04:38.596 You see nine presidential candidates running against Lukashenko. 00:04:38.596 --> 00:04:39.999 You will know the outcome. 00:04:39.999 --> 00:04:43.476 So unity is a big thing, and this can be achieved. 00:04:43.476 --> 00:04:45.916 Same with planning. Somebody has lied to you 00:04:45.916 --> 00:04:49.783 about the successful and spontaneous nonviolent revolution? 00:04:49.783 --> 00:04:52.044 That thing doesn't exist in the world. 00:04:52.044 --> 00:04:54.799 Whenever you see young people in front of the road 00:04:54.799 --> 00:04:57.284 trying to fraternize with the police or military, 00:04:57.284 --> 00:04:59.796 somebody was thinking about it before. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:59.796 --> 00:05:02.156 Now, at the end, nonviolent discipline, 00:05:02.156 --> 00:05:04.367 and this is probably the game-changer. 00:05:04.367 --> 00:05:08.572 If you maintain nonviolent discipline, you will exclusively win. 00:05:08.572 --> 00:05:11.420 You have 100,000 people in a nonviolent march, 00:05:11.420 --> 00:05:14.070 and one idiot or agent provocateur is throwing stones, 00:05:14.070 --> 00:05:16.972 guess what takes all the cameras? That one guy. 00:05:16.972 --> 00:05:19.151 One single act of violence can literally 00:05:19.151 --> 00:05:21.612 destroy your movement. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:21.612 --> 00:05:24.268 Now let me move to another place. 00:05:24.268 --> 00:05:25.847 It's selection of strategies and tactics. 00:05:25.847 --> 00:05:29.771 There are certain rules in nonviolent struggle you may follow. 00:05:29.771 --> 00:05:31.190 First, you start small. 00:05:31.190 --> 00:05:34.344 Second, you pick the battles you can win. 00:05:34.344 --> 00:05:37.098 It's only 200 of us in this room. 00:05:37.098 --> 00:05:39.173 We won't call for the March of Millions. 00:05:39.173 --> 00:05:42.462 But what if we organize spraying graffiti throughout the night 00:05:42.462 --> 00:05:45.492 all over Krakow city? The city will know. 00:05:45.492 --> 00:05:48.796 So we pick the tactics which accommodates to the event, 00:05:48.796 --> 00:05:52.902 especially this thing we call the small tactics of dispersion. 00:05:52.902 --> 00:05:56.692 They're very useful in a violent oppression. 00:05:56.692 --> 00:05:58.670 We are actually witnessing the picture 00:05:58.670 --> 00:06:01.116 of one of the best tactics ever used. 00:06:01.116 --> 00:06:04.400 It was on Tahrir Square, where the international community 00:06:04.400 --> 00:06:07.916 was constantly frightened that the Islamists 00:06:07.916 --> 00:06:10.321 will overtake the revolution. Well, they've organized 00:06:10.321 --> 00:06:13.452 Christians protecting Muslims, who are there praying, 00:06:13.452 --> 00:06:16.172 Coptic wedding cheered by thousands of Muslims. 00:06:16.172 --> 00:06:18.162 The world has just changed the picture, 00:06:18.162 --> 00:06:21.180 but somebody was thinking about this previously. 00:06:21.180 --> 00:06:23.500 So there are so many things you can do instead of 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:26.795 getting into one place, shouting and 00:06:26.795 --> 00:06:30.247 showing off in front of the security forces. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:30.247 --> 00:06:33.940 Now there is also another very important dynamic, 00:06:33.940 --> 00:06:37.073 and this is a dynamic normally analytics don't see. 00:06:37.073 --> 00:06:40.575 This is dynamics between fear and apathy on one side 00:06:40.575 --> 00:06:43.668 and enthusiasm and humor on another side. 00:06:43.668 --> 00:06:45.676 So it works like in a video game. 00:06:45.676 --> 00:06:47.948 You have a fear high, you have status quo. 00:06:47.948 --> 00:06:51.954 You have enthusiasm higher, you see fear starting to melt. 00:06:51.954 --> 00:06:54.364 Day two, you see people running towards police 00:06:54.364 --> 00:06:56.658 instead of from the police. 00:06:56.658 --> 00:06:59.664 In Egypt, you can tell that something is happening there. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:59.664 --> 00:07:03.471 And then it's about humor. Humor is such a powerful 00:07:03.471 --> 00:07:05.906 game-changer, and of course it was very big in Poland. 00:07:05.906 --> 00:07:08.932 And you know, we were just a small group of crazy students 00:07:08.932 --> 00:07:12.124 in Serbia when we made this big skit. 00:07:12.124 --> 00:07:15.205 We put the big petrol barrel with a 00:07:15.205 --> 00:07:17.965 portrait picture of Mr. President on it 00:07:17.965 --> 00:07:20.414 in the middle of the Main Street. There was a hole on the top 00:07:20.414 --> 00:07:23.412 so you could literally come, put a coin in, 00:07:23.412 --> 00:07:26.852 get a baseball bat, and pow, hit his face. 00:07:26.852 --> 00:07:30.282 Sounds loud. And within the minutes, we were sitting 00:07:30.282 --> 00:07:32.780 in a nearby cafe having coffee, and there was 00:07:32.780 --> 00:07:36.428 a queue of people waiting to do this lovely thing. 00:07:36.428 --> 00:07:38.740 Well, that's just the beginning of the show. 00:07:38.740 --> 00:07:41.204 The real show starts when the police appears. 00:07:41.204 --> 00:07:44.940 What will they do? Arrest us? We are nowhere to be seen. 00:07:44.940 --> 00:07:48.644 We are three blocks away observing it from our espresso bar. 00:07:48.644 --> 00:07:51.972 Arrest the shoppers with kids? Doesn't make sense. 00:07:51.972 --> 00:07:54.764 Of course, you could bet they have done the most stupid thing: 00:07:54.764 --> 00:07:57.372 They arrested the barrel. And now the picture 00:07:57.372 --> 00:08:00.084 of the smashed face on the barrel with the policeman 00:08:00.084 --> 00:08:03.164 dragging them to the police car, that was the best day 00:08:03.164 --> 00:08:06.332 for the photographers from newspapers that they ever will have. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:06.332 --> 00:08:08.948 So, I mean, these are the things you can do, 00:08:08.948 --> 00:08:10.219 and you can always use the humor. 00:08:10.219 --> 00:08:13.996 There is also one big thing about the humor: It really hurts, 00:08:13.996 --> 00:08:18.108 because these guys really are taking themselves too seriously. 00:08:18.108 --> 00:08:20.479 When you start to mock them, it hurts. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:20.479 --> 00:08:24.652 Now, everybody is talking about His Majesty, the Internet, 00:08:24.652 --> 00:08:28.636 and it is also a very useful skill, but don't rush 00:08:28.636 --> 00:08:32.428 to label things like Facebook Revolution, Twitter Revolution. 00:08:32.428 --> 00:08:35.590 Don't mix tools with the substance. 00:08:35.590 --> 00:08:39.084 It is true that the Internet and new media are very useful 00:08:39.084 --> 00:08:41.950 in making things faster and cheaper. 00:08:41.950 --> 00:08:44.560 They make it also a bit safer for the participants 00:08:44.560 --> 00:08:47.236 because they give the part of anonymity. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:47.236 --> 00:08:50.554 We are watching the great example of something else the Internet can do. 00:08:50.554 --> 00:08:55.683 It can put the price tag of state-sponsored violence over nonviolent protesters. 00:08:55.683 --> 00:08:58.348 This is a famous group, We are all Khaled Said, 00:08:58.348 --> 00:09:00.746 made by Wael Ghonim in Egypt and his friend. 00:09:00.746 --> 00:09:04.448 This is the mutilated face of the guy who was beaten by the police. 00:09:04.448 --> 00:09:07.466 This is how he became the public, and this is what probably 00:09:07.466 --> 00:09:10.616 became the straw which broke the camel's back. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:10.616 --> 00:09:12.376 But here is also the bad news. 00:09:12.376 --> 00:09:14.989 The nonviolent struggle is won in the real world, 00:09:14.989 --> 00:09:18.672 in the streets. You will never change your society 00:09:18.672 --> 00:09:21.856 towards democracy or economics 00:09:21.856 --> 00:09:23.585 if you sit down and click. 00:09:23.585 --> 00:09:26.083 There are risks to be taken and there are living people 00:09:26.083 --> 00:09:28.431 who are winning the struggle. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:28.431 --> 00:09:32.466 Well, million dollar question: What will happen in the Arab World? 00:09:32.466 --> 00:09:34.672 And though young people from the Arab World 00:09:34.672 --> 00:09:37.626 were pretty successful in bringing down three dictators, 00:09:37.626 --> 00:09:42.137 shaking the region, kind of persuading clever kings 00:09:42.137 --> 00:09:45.041 from Jordan and Morocco doing substantial reforms, 00:09:45.041 --> 00:09:49.488 it is yet to be seen what will be the outcome, 00:09:49.488 --> 00:09:52.936 whether the Egyptians and Tunisians will make it through the transition 00:09:52.936 --> 00:09:56.959 or this will end in bloody ethnic and religious conflict, 00:09:56.959 --> 00:10:00.841 whether the Syrians will maintain nonviolent discipline, 00:10:00.841 --> 00:10:04.261 faced with the brutal daily violence 00:10:04.261 --> 00:10:06.148 which kills thousands already, 00:10:06.148 --> 00:10:08.005 or they will slip into violent struggle 00:10:08.005 --> 00:10:11.802 and make ugly civil war. 00:10:11.802 --> 00:10:15.618 Will these revolutions be whole like through the transitions 00:10:15.618 --> 00:10:18.000 to democracy or be overtaken by military 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:22.362 or extremists of all kinds? We cannot tell. 00:10:22.362 --> 00:10:25.309 Same works for the Western sector, where you can see 00:10:25.309 --> 00:10:28.338 all of these excited young people protesting around the world, 00:10:28.338 --> 00:10:31.035 occupying this, occupying that. 00:10:31.035 --> 00:10:34.226 Are they going to become the world wave? 00:10:34.226 --> 00:10:37.780 Are they going to find their skills, their enthusiasm, 00:10:37.780 --> 00:10:41.217 and their strategy to find what they really want 00:10:41.217 --> 00:10:44.250 and push for the reform, or will they just stay 00:10:44.250 --> 00:10:49.514 complaining about the endless list of the things they hate? 00:10:49.514 --> 00:10:52.842 This is the difference between two towns. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:52.842 --> 00:10:55.538 Now, what [do] the statistics have? 00:10:55.538 --> 00:10:57.923 My friend's book, Maria Stephan's book, 00:10:57.923 --> 00:11:00.770 talks a lot about violent and nonviolent struggle, 00:11:00.770 --> 00:11:03.513 and there are some shocking data. 00:11:03.513 --> 00:11:06.002 If you look at the last 35 years 00:11:06.002 --> 00:11:09.267 and different social transitions from dictatorship to democracy, 00:11:09.267 --> 00:11:12.853 you will see that out of 67 different cases, 00:11:12.853 --> 00:11:16.146 in 50 of these cases it was nonviolent struggle 00:11:16.146 --> 00:11:19.522 which was the key power. 00:11:19.522 --> 00:11:22.442 This is one more reason to look at this phenomenon. 00:11:22.442 --> 00:11:25.178 This is one more reason to look at the Generation Epsilon, 00:11:25.178 --> 00:11:28.658 enough for me to give them credit and hope 00:11:28.658 --> 00:11:32.585 that they will find their skills and their courage 00:11:32.585 --> 00:11:34.570 to use the nonviolent struggle 00:11:34.570 --> 00:11:37.051 and thus fix at least a part of the mess 00:11:37.051 --> 00:11:39.460 our generation is making in this world. 00:11:39.460 --> 00:11:43.123 Thank you. (Applause)