WEBVTT

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So recently, we heard a lot about
how social media helps empower protest,

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and that's true,

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but after more than a decade

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of studying and participating
in multiple social movements,

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I've come to realize

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that the way technology
empowers social movements

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can also paradoxically help weaken them.

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This is not inevitable,
but overcoming it requires diving deep

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into what makes success possible
over the long term.

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And the lessons apply in multiple domains.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, take Turkey's
Gezi Park protests, July 2013,

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which I went back to study in the field.

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Twitter was key to its organizing.

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It was everywhere in the park --
well, along with a lot of tear gas.

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It wasn't all high tech.

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But the people in Turkey had already
gotten used to the power of Twitter

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because of an unfortunate incident
about a year before

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when military jets had bombed and killed

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34 Kurdish smugglers
near the border region,

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and Turkish media completely
censored this news.

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Editors sat in their newsrooms

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and waited for the government
to tell them what to do.

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One frustrated journalist
could not take this anymore.

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He purchased his own plane ticket,

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and went to the village
where this had occurred.

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And he was confronted by this scene:

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a line of coffins coming down a hill,
relatives wailing.

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He later he told me
how overwhelmed he felt,

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and didn't know what to do,

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so he took out his phone,

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like any one of us might,

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and snapped that picture
and tweeted it out.

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And voila, that picture went viral

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and broke the censorship
and forced mass media to cover it.

NOTE Paragraph

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So when, a year later,
Turkey's Gezi protests happened,

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it started as a protest
about a park being razed,

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but became an anti-authoritarian protest.

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It wasn't surprising
that media also censored it,

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but it got a little ridiculous at times.

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When things were so intense,

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when CNN International
was broadcasting live from Istanbul,

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CNN Turkey instead was broadcasting
a documentary on penguins.

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Now, I love penguin documentaries,
but that wasn't the news of the day.

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An angry viewer put his two screens
together and snapped that picture,

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and that one too went viral,

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and since then, people call Turkish media
the penguin media. (Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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But this time, people knew what to do.

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They just took out their phones
and looked for actual news.

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Better, they knew to go to the park
and take pictures and participate

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and share it more on social media.

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Digital connectivity was used
for everything from food to donations.

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Everything was organized partially
with the help of these new technologies.

NOTE Paragraph

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And using Internet to mobilize
and publicize protests

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actually goes back a long way.

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Remember the Zapatistas,

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the peasant uprising
in the southern Chiapas region of Mexico

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led by the masked, pipe-smoking,
charismatic Subcomandante Marcos?

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That was probably the first movement

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that got global attention
thanks to the Internet.

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Or consider Seattle '99,

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when a multinational grassroots effort
brought global attention

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to what was then an obscure organization,
the World Trade Organization,

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by also utilizing these digital
technologies to help them organize.

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And more recently, movement after movement

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has shaken country after country:

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the Arab uprisings from Bahrain
to Tunisia to Egypt and more;

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indignados in Spain, Italy, Greece;
the Gezi Park protests;

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Taiwan; Euromaidan in Ukraine; Hong Kong.

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And think of more recent initiatives,
like the #BringBackOurGirls hashtags.

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Nowadays, a network of tweets
can unleash a global awareness campaign.

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A Facebook page can become the hub
of a massive mobilization.

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Amazing.

NOTE Paragraph

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But think of the moments I just mentioned.

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The achievements they were
able to have, their outcomes,

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are not really proportional
to the size and energy they inspired.

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The hopes they rightfully raised
are not really matched

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by what they were able to have
as a result in the end.

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And this raises a question:

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As digital technology makes things
easier for movements,

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why haven't successful outcomes
become more likely as well?

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In embracing digital platforms
for activism and politics,

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are we overlooking some of the benefits
of doing things the hard way?

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Now, I believe so.

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I believe that the rule of thumb is:

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Easier to mobilize does not always mean
easier to achieve gains.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, to be clear,

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technology does empower in multiple ways.

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It's very powerful.

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In Turkey, I watched
four young college students

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organize a countrywide citizen journalism
network called 140Journos

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that became the central hub
for uncensored news in the country.

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In Egypt, I saw another four young people
use digital connectivity

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to organize the supplies and logistics
for 10 field hospitals,

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very large operations,

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during massive clashes
near Tahrir Square in 2011.

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And I asked the founder
of this effort, called Tahrir Supplies,

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how long it took him to go from when
he had the idea to when he got started.

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"Five minutes," he said. Five minutes.

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And he had no training
or background in logistics.

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Or think of the Occupy movement
which rocked the world in 2011.

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It started with a single email

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from a magazine, Adbusters,
to 90,000 subscribers in its list.

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About two months after that first email,

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there were in the United States
600 ongoing occupations and protests.

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Less than one month after the first
physical occupation in Zuccotti Park,

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a global protest was held
in about 82 countries, 950 cities.

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It was one of the largest
global protests ever organized.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, compare that to what the Civil Rights
Movement had to do in 1955 Alabama

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to protest the racially segregated
bus system, which they wanted to boycott.

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They'd been preparing for many years

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and decided it was time
to swing into action

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after Rosa Parks was arrested.

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But how do you get the word out --

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tomorrow we're going to
start the boycott --

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when you don't have Facebook,
texting, Twitter, none of that?

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So they had to mimeograph 52,000 leaflets

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by sneaking into a university
duplicating room

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and working all night, secretly.

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They then used the 68
African-American organizations

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that criss-crossed the city
to distribute those leaflets by hand.

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And the logistical tasks were daunting,
because these were poor people.

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They had to get to work, boycott or no,

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so a massive carpool was organized,

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again by meeting.

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No texting, no Twitter, no Facebook.

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They had to meet almost all the time
to keep this carpool going.

NOTE Paragraph

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Today, it would be so much easier.

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We could create a database,
available rides and what rides you need,

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have the database coordinate,
and use texting.

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We wouldn't have to meet all that much.

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But again, consider this:

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the Civil Rights Movement
in the United States

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navigated a minefield
of political dangers,

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faced repression and overcame,
won major policy concessions,

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navigated and innovated through risks.

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In contrast, three years
after Occupy sparked

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that global conversation about inequality,

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the policies that fueled it
are still in place.

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Europe was also rocked
by anti-austerity protests,

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but the continent
didn't shift its direction.

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In embracing these technologies,

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are we overlooking some of the benefits
of slow and sustained?

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To understand this,

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I went back to Turkey
about a year after the Gezi protests

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and I interviewed a range of people,

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from activists to politicians,

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from both the ruling party
and the opposition party and movements.

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I found that the Gezi protesters
were despairing.

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They were frustrated,

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and they had achieved much less
than what they had hoped for.

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This echoed what I'd been hearing
around the world

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from many other protesters
that I'm in touch with.

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And I've come to realize
that part of the problem

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is that today's protests have become
a bit like climbing Mt. Everest

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with the help of 60 Sherpas,

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and the Internet is our Sherpa.

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What we're doing is taking the fast routes

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and not replacing the benefits
of the slower work.

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Because, you see,

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the kind of work that went into organizing

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all those daunting,
tedious logistical tasks

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did not just take care of those tasks,

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they also created the kind of organization
that could think together collectively

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and make hard decisions together,

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create consensus and innovate,
and maybe even more crucially,

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keep going together through differences.

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So when you see this
March on Washington in 1963,

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when you look at that picture,

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where this is the march where
Martin Luther King gave his famous

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"I have a dream" speech, 1963,

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you don't just see a march
and you don't just hear a powerful speech,

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you also see the painstaking,
long-term work that can put on that march.

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And if you're in power,

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you realize you have to take
the capacity signaled by that march,

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not just the march, but the capacity
signaled by that march, seriously.

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In contrast, when you look
at Occupy's global marches

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that were organized in two weeks,

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you see a lot of discontent,

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but you don't necessarily see teeth that
can bite over the long term.

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And crucially, the Civil Rights Movement
innovated tactically

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from boycotts to lunch counter sit-ins
to pickets to marches to freedom rides.

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Today's movements scale up very quickly
without the organizational base

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that can see them through the challenges.

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They feel a little like startups
that got very big

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without knowing what to do next,

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and they rarely manage to shift tactically

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because they don't have
the depth of capacity

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to weather such transitions.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, I want to be clear:
The magic is not in the mimeograph.

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It's in that capacity to work together,
think together collectively,

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which can only be built
over time with a lot of work.

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To understand all this,

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I interviewed a top official
from the ruling party in Turkey,

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and I ask him, "How do you do it?"

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They too use digital technology
extensively, so that's not it.

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So what's the secret?

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Well, he told me.

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He said the key is
he never took sugar with his tea.

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I said, what has that
got to do with anything?

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Well, he said, his party starts
getting ready for the next election

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the day after the last one,

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and he spends all day every day
meeting with voters in their homes,

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in their wedding parties,
circumcision ceremonies,

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and then he meets with his colleagues
to compare notes.

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With that many meetings every day,
with tea offered at every one of them,

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which he could not refuse,
because that would be rude,

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he could not take even one cube of sugar
per cup of tea,

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because that would be many kilos of sugar,
he can't even calculate how many kilos,

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and at that point I realized
why he was speaking so fast.

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We had met in the afternoon,
and he was already way over-caffeinated.

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But his party won two major elections

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within a year of the Gezi protests
with comfortable margins.

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To be sure, governments have
different resources to bring to the table.

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It's not the same game,
but the differences are instructive.

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And like all such stories, this is not
a story just of technology.

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It's what technology allows us to do
converging with what we want to do.

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Today's social movements
want to operate informally.

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They do not want institutional leadership.

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They want to stay out of politics because
they fear corruption and cooptation.

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They have a point.

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Modern representative democracies
are being strangled in many countries

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by powerful interests.

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But operating this way
makes it hard for them

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to sustain over the long term
and exert leverage over the system,

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which leads to frustrated
protesters dropping out,

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and even more corrupt politics.

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And politics and democracy
without an effective challenge hobbles,

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because the causes that have inspired
the modern recent movements are crucial.

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Climate change is barreling towards us.

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Inequality is stifling human growth
and potential and economies.

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Authoritarianism is choking
many countries.

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We need movements to be more effective.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, some people have argued
that the problem is

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today's movements are not formed of people
who take as many risks as before,

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and that is not true.

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From Gezi to Tahrir to elsewhere,

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I've seen people put their lives
and livelihoods on the line.

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It's also not true,
as Malcolm Gladwell claimed,

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that today's protesters
form weaker virtual ties.

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No, they come to these protests,
just like before,

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with their friends, existing networks,

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and sometimes they do
make new friends for life.

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I still see the friends that I made

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in those Zapatista-convened
global protests more than a decade ago,

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and the bonds between strangers
are not worthless.

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When I got tear-gassed in Gezi,

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people I didn't know helped me
and one another instead of running away.

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In Tahrir, I saw people, protesters,

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working really hard to keep
each other safe and protected.

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And digital awareness-raising is great,

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because changing minds
is the bedrock of changing politics.

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But movements today have to move beyond
participation at great scale very fast

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and figure out how
to think together collectively,

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develop strong policy proposals,
create consensus,

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figure out the political steps
and relate them to leverage,

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because all these good intentions
and bravery and sacrifice by itself

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are not going to be enough.

NOTE Paragraph

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And there are many efforts.

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In New Zealand, a group of young people
are developing a platform called Loomio

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for participatory
decision making at scale.

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In Turkey, 140Journos
are holding hack-a-thons

00:15:16.046 --> 00:15:19.879
so that they support communities
as well as citizen journalism.

00:15:20.619 --> 00:15:23.725
In Argentina, an open-source platform
called DemocracyOS

00:15:23.725 --> 00:15:27.133
is bringing participation
to parliaments and political parties.

00:15:27.133 --> 00:15:30.518
These are all great, and we need more,

00:15:30.518 --> 00:15:34.694
but the answer won't just be
better online decision-making,

00:15:34.694 --> 00:15:40.247
because to update democracy, we are going
to need to innovate at every level,

00:15:40.247 --> 00:15:44.740
from the organizational
to the political to the social.

00:15:44.740 --> 00:15:48.692
Because to succeed over the long term,

00:15:48.692 --> 00:15:51.064
sometimes you do need tea without sugar

00:15:51.064 --> 00:15:52.697
along with your Twitter.

00:15:52.697 --> 00:15:54.209
Thank you.

00:15:54.209 --> 00:16:01.010
(Applause)