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War has been a part of my life
since I can remember.
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I was born in Afghanistan,
just six months after the Soviets invaded,
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and even though I was too young
to understand what was happening,
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I had a deep sense of the suffering
and the fear around me.
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Those early experiences had a major impact
on how I now think about war and conflict.
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I learned that when people
have a fundamental issue at stake,
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for most of them,
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giving in is not an option.
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For these types conflicts --
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when people's rights are violated,
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when their countries are occupied,
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when they're oppressed and humiliated --
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they need a powerful way
to resist and to fight back.
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Which means that no matter how destructive
and terrible violence is,
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if people see it as their only choice,
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they will use it.
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Most of us are concerned
with the level of violence in the world.
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But we're not going to end war
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by telling people
that violence is morally wrong.
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Instead, we must offer them a tool
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that's at least as powerful
and as effective as violence.
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This is the work I do.
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For the past 13 years,
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I've been teaching people
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in some of the most difficult
situations around the world
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how they can use nonviolent
struggle to conduct conflict.
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Most people associate this type of action
with Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
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But people have been using
nonviolent action for thousands of years.
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In fact, most of the rights
that we have today in this country --
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as women,
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as minorities,
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as workers,
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as people of different sexual orientations
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and citizens concerned
with the environment --
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these rights weren't handed to us.
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They were won by people
who fought for them
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and who sacrificed for them.
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But because we haven't learned
from this history,
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nonviolent struggle as a technique
is widely misunderstood.
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I met recently with a group
of Ethiopian activists,
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and they told me something
that I hear a lot.
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They said they'd already
tried nonviolent action
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and it hadn't worked.
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Years ago they held a protest.
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The government arrested everyone
and that was the end of that.
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The idea that nonviolent struggle
is equivalent to street protests
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is a real problem.
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Because although protests can be a great
way to show that people want change,
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on their own, they don't
actually create change --
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at least change that is fundamental.
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(Laughter)
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Powerful opponents are not going to give
people what they want
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just because they asked nicely ...
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or even not so nicely.
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(Laughter)
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Nonviolent struggle works
by destroying an opponent,
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not physically,
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but by identifying the institutions
that an opponent needs to survive,
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and then denying them
those sources of power.
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Nonviolent activists
can neutralize the military
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by causing soldiers to defect.
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They can disrupt the economy
through strikes and boycotts.
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And they can challenge
government propaganda
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by creating alternative media.
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There are a variety of methods
that can be used to do this.
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My colleague and mentor, Gene Sharp,
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has identified 198 methods
of nonviolent action.
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And protest is only one.
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Let me give you a recent example.
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Until a few months ago,
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Guatemala was ruled
by corrupt former military officials
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with ties to organized crime.
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People were generally aware of this,
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but most of them felt powerless
to do anything about it --
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until one group of citizens,
just 12 regular people,
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put out a call on Facebook
to their friends
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to meet in the central plaza,
holding signs with a message:
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"Renuncia YA" --
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resign already.
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To their surprise,
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30,000 people showed up.
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They stayed there for months
as protests spread throughout the country.
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At one point,
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the organizers delivered hundreds of eggs
to various government buildings
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with a message:
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"If you don't have the huevos" --
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the balls --
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"to stop corrupt candidates
from running for office,
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you can borrow ours."
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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President Molina responded
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by vowing that we would never step down.
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And the activists realized
that they couldn't just keep protesting
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and ask the President to resign.
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They needed to leave him no choice.
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So they organized a general strike,
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in which people throughout
the country refused to work.
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In Guatemala City alone,
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over 400 businesses
and schools shut their doors.
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Meanwhile,
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farmers throughout the country
blocked major roads.
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Within five days,
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the President,
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along with dozens of other
government officials,
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resigned already.
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(Applause)
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I've been greatly inspired
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by the creativity and bravery
of people using nonviolent action
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in nearly every country in the world.
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For example,
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recently a group of activists in Uganda
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released a crate of pigs in the streets.
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You can see here that the police
are confused about what to do with them.
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(Laughter)
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The pigs were painted
the color of the ruling party.
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One pig was even wearing a hat,
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a hat that people recognized.
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(Laughter)
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Activists around the world
are getting better at grabbing headlines,
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but these isolated actions do very little
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if they're not part of a larger strategy.
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A general wouldn't march
his troops into battle
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unless he had a plan to win the war.
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Yet this is how most of the world's
nonviolent movements operate.
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Nonviolent struggle is just as complex
as military warfare,
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if not more.
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Its participants must be well trained
and have clear objectives,
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and its leaders must have a strategy
of how to achieve those objectives.
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The technique of war has been developed
over thousands of years
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with massive resources,
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and some of our best minds
dedicated to understanding
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and improving how it works.
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Meanwhile, nonviolent struggle
is rarely systematically studied,
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and even though the number is growing,
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there are still only a few dozen people
in the world who are teaching it.
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This is dangerous,
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because we now know that our old
approaches of dealing with conflict
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are not adequate for the new
challenges that we're facing.
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The US government recently admitted
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that it's in a stalemate
in its war against ISIS.
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But what most people don't know
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is that people have stood up to ISIS
using nonviolent action.
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When ISIS captured Mosul in June 2014,
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they announced that they were putting
in place a new public school curriculum,
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based on their own extremist ideology.
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But on the first day of school,
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not a single child showed up.
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Parents simply refused to send them.
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They told journalists they would rather
homeschool their children
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than to have them brainwashed.
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This is an example
of just one act of defiance
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in just one city.
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But what if it was coordinated
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with the dozens of other acts
of nonviolent resistance
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that have taken place against ISIS?
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What if the parents' boycott
was part of a larger strategy
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to identify and cut off the resources
that ISIS needs to function;
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the skilled labor needed to produce food;
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the engineers needed
to extract and refine oil;
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the media infrastructure
and communications networks
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and transportation systems,
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and the local businesses
that ISIS relies on?
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It may be difficult
to imagine defeating ISIS
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with action that is nonviolent.
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But it's time we challenge
the way we think about conflict
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and the choices we have in facing it.
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Here's an idea worth spreading:
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let's learn more about where
nonviolent action has worked
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and how we can make it more powerful,
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just like we do with other
systems and technologies
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that are constantly being refined
to better meet human needs.
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It may be that we can improve
nonviolent action
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to a point where it is increasingly
used in place of war.
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Violence as a tool of conflict
could then be abandoned
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in the same way that bows and arrows were,
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because we have replaced them
with weapons that are more effective.
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With human innovation, we can make
nonviolent struggle more powerful
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than the newest and latest
technologies of war.
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The greatest hope for humanity
lies not in condemning violence,
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but in making violence obsolete.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)