Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is solvable. I'm your host, Jacob Weisberg. My
Speaker 1: solvable is to get one million women and girls to
Speaker 1: learn how to cool. My solvable is breaking the wall
Speaker 1: of depression. My solvable is to take energy to where
Speaker 1: communities are. I want to tackle this problem because I
Speaker 1: know it can be solved. We're excited to share with
Speaker 1: you a new season of conversations with leaders and change
Speaker 1: makers about how to solve the world's biggest problems. This
Speaker 1: is an extraordinary moment. We're living through a global pandemic,
Speaker 1: and in the United States we're experiencing the most powerful
Speaker 1: protest movement of my lifetime against police brutality and racial injustice.
Speaker 1: It's a time of great possibility. Our society seems to
Speaker 1: be open to the kinds of moral and social transformations
Speaker 1: that we're much harder to imagine before the virus and
Speaker 1: before the killing of George Floyd. For this our second season,
Speaker 1: I'll be joined again by my Pushkin co founder, Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwell and journalist and friend Dan Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 1: winning historian and staff writer at the Atlantic. To start
Speaker 1: this season, we're focusing on two problems, racial injustice and
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election. We can have an election that
Speaker 1: is participatory with robust turnout in twenty twenty. Justice isn't blind.
Speaker 1: We have to be far more critical and thoughtful and
Speaker 1: have that lens on. On today's episode, we hear from
Speaker 1: an international expert on non violent protest. Let's solve this
Speaker 1: one big issue, Let's have more racial equality, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to look at our narcissism of small differences. Later,
Speaker 1: when the outcry went up over George Floyd's killing, peaceful
Speaker 1: demonstrators took to the streets in Minneapolis, then another cities
Speaker 1: across the country and across the globe, and a problem arose.
Speaker 1: It's a problem we've seen elsewhere, bad actors, outliers with
Speaker 1: destructive agendas, overtaking the news coverage by engaging in retaliatory violence.
Speaker 1: This isn't a new issue, it's one peaceful protesters have
Speaker 1: long faced in South Africa, Egypt, Ukraine, Tunisia, and during
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street. Sergia Popovitch is a Serbian activist and
Speaker 1: scholar of social movements. Organizers from around the world have
Speaker 1: turned to him for advice about how to strengthen and
Speaker 1: propel their movements. Popovitch is the executive director of the
Speaker 1: Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies or CANVAS. He
Speaker 1: literally wrote a user's manual for successful social change. Our
Speaker 1: host Anna Applebaumb lives in Poland. She spoke to Papovitch
Speaker 1: from his home in Belgrade in Serbia. Here's their conversation.
Speaker 1: My soula boys, is to create social change through the
Speaker 1: successful and strategic non violent movement. So, Sergia, why is
Speaker 1: this your solvable? In other words, what makes this issue
Speaker 1: personal to you? Well? First of all, I started very young.
Speaker 1: On my freshman year on the university. We were faced
Speaker 1: with a crazy regime in Belgrade back Daryan nineties, and
Speaker 1: you kind of had two choices. You can fight or
Speaker 1: you can flee. I guess I was too stubborn to flee,
Speaker 1: so I stayed and fight. Together with a group of friends,
Speaker 1: we launched a movement called Oddpoor, which is a Serbian
Speaker 1: work for resistance, and then built from eleven people to
Speaker 1: seventy thousand people, eventually getting rid of the bad guy
Speaker 1: Miloshevic and I kind of went addicted to the idea
Speaker 1: of the social change group people power movements. Ever since
Speaker 1: you originally began oddpoor you and your friends, we've had
Speaker 1: any experience. You hadn't run protests before, you hadn't organized
Speaker 1: a movement before, you know, and now you're able to
Speaker 1: advise people. So how did you begin thinking through the
Speaker 1: problem in the beginning? Was it just spontaneous or did
Speaker 1: you plan? First of all, we started by doing it
Speaker 1: without planning, which is why it took us nine years
Speaker 1: to actually do it. So ninety two we did a
Speaker 1: little bit of locking ourselves in the campuses, singing for
Speaker 1: peace kind of stuff. It didn't work because it didn't
Speaker 1: involve the rural people. Then ninety six ninety seven, a
Speaker 1: lot of people were mobilized. We expanded to the smaller places.
Speaker 1: We protested for one hundred days, day by day by day.
Speaker 1: This will we figure out that every day protest is
Speaker 1: probably not the best way to do it because it's
Speaker 1: very exhausting. So we figure out that it is the
Speaker 1: unity thing that we are missing. Most of the protesters
Speaker 1: in the world getting involved in a protest, and then
Speaker 1: they say we are too busy to plan. So learning
Speaker 1: by doing and making mistakes is actually the best way
Speaker 1: to do stuff, but it's very slow. So would strongly
Speaker 1: advocate to the people to start reading books and learn
Speaker 1: from other people mistakes rather than learning from there on.
Speaker 1: How did you break it down in dissolvable pieces? How
Speaker 1: should people who want to create change think about that?
Speaker 1: For a successful protest, you need so much more than
Speaker 1: the protest. You need an idea what should be different,
Speaker 1: what you call vision of tomorrow. Then you need to
Speaker 1: share this vision with the different groups. Then you need
Speaker 1: to work with the people you are not normally alike
Speaker 1: and probably disagree on many other stuff to really get
Speaker 1: to the change. So you need to take a really
Speaker 1: sober look at the groups you need, and then, without
Speaker 1: politicizing and ideologizing, thank you, approach these groups and then
Speaker 1: you try to figure out how you work together for
Speaker 1: the change that benefits everybody, because you need to understand
Speaker 1: social change is a very kind of selfish for many people.
Speaker 1: And the trick in these thanks is to find this
Speaker 1: unifying prop position which is the smallest common denominator from
Speaker 1: the groups you want to mobilize and very important. Do
Speaker 1: you want to agree on what you agree, but you
Speaker 1: also want to agree what you disagree, So this is
Speaker 1: not about the things that are different among us. We
Speaker 1: leave this thing for layer, But let's solve this one
Speaker 1: big issue. Let's get rid of communism, let's get rid
Speaker 1: of Miloschovitch, Let's make more racial equality, and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth, and then we are going to look
Speaker 1: at our narcissism or small differences later. Tell me about
Speaker 1: the nonviolent piece of it as well. Because the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement in the nineteen sixties was successful, you know,
Speaker 1: not only because people were extremely brave and very disciplined
Speaker 1: in their non violent tactics. Well, what about the argument
Speaker 1: that because those demonstrations existed alongside more aggressive protests by
Speaker 1: groups like the Black Panthers that brought attention to the
Speaker 1: nonviolent movement? Is that a you know, do you need
Speaker 1: some element of danger in order for people to admire
Speaker 1: and follow nonviolent leaders? Well, first of all, need to
Speaker 1: understand that there is a historic proof that the non
Speaker 1: bounced the works. And there is a very serious study
Speaker 1: done by two American scholars, Maria Stephan and Erica Chanot,
Speaker 1: and they were looking about three hundred twenty three different
Speaker 1: movements in the last century and actually figure out that
Speaker 1: the non violent movements are twice more likely to succeed
Speaker 1: the Stein's actually studies and we're looking at the movements
Speaker 1: that actually had the violent flank, and that's the flank
Speaker 1: that sometimes resort to the violence. And they actually prove
Speaker 1: that the movements without the violent flank are more likely
Speaker 1: to succeed and the movements with violent flank, for example,
Speaker 1: the Unti Appretiated movement in South Africa did have the
Speaker 1: violent flank, which is the solely reason why why Nelson
Speaker 1: Mandela was sitting in jail for so many years. They
Speaker 1: are more likely to succeed when they get rids of
Speaker 1: this flank. For successful non VLAN movement, you need participation.
Speaker 1: The more people participate, and also the more diverse people
Speaker 1: participate in the movement, the more you're likely to success.
Speaker 1: And there are numerous studies that show that if there
Speaker 1: is a protest about whatever topic in the world, which
Speaker 1: is likely to be cheerful, massive, peaceful, nice, with a
Speaker 1: lot of music and probably some pranks, I will probably
Speaker 1: come in. I'll bring my wife and I will bring
Speaker 1: my kids. And they're at this point four and six.
Speaker 1: By the way, the kids are these these lovely creatures
Speaker 1: you hear in the background. If this is the place
Speaker 1: where somebody will burn the building and burn the car,
Speaker 1: and then it will be a tear gas I'll probably
Speaker 1: come without the kids. And then if this is the
Speaker 1: place where somebody will shoot around live rounds, I'll probably
Speaker 1: not appear at all. So when you take a look
Speaker 1: at the level of risk, it's really connected to the participation.
Speaker 1: So the more non violent you make it, the more
Speaker 1: peaceful you make it, the more you put the risk
Speaker 1: bar down, the more people are likely to participate. The
Speaker 1: more people are likely to participate. And the same study
Speaker 1: proves that you need being three and five percent of
Speaker 1: the society to participate in the campaign to get a
Speaker 1: successful campaign. So taking a look at this, the movements
Speaker 1: really developed skills to overcome the violent groups, to build
Speaker 1: a non violent discipline. It's actually a skill. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by skill? What's give me an example of
Speaker 1: a skill that people can learn. So if you play
Speaker 1: violence against the state, this is selecting the boxing ring
Speaker 1: to play against the Mike Tyson. Your opponent has a
Speaker 1: social contract use violence here, or she has a police
Speaker 1: he or she has a military. So this is your
Speaker 1: place of weakness. So whatever argument you use this is
Speaker 1: the first level is explain to your people that you
Speaker 1: are weaker if you're using violence. Step number two is
Speaker 1: select tactics which are less likely to produce violence. So
Speaker 1: violence of cures on when you use tactics of concentration,
Speaker 1: the protests, the marches, speaking common language. This is where
Speaker 1: your troops meet their troops. This is where the violence happens.
Speaker 1: So if you instead boycott things, and this is what
Speaker 1: the South African movement did, if you instead hit pots
Speaker 1: and fans from the windows, if you instead use other
Speaker 1: methods of dispersion, there will be no conflict. If you
Speaker 1: must have tactics of concentration. You're angry. You want to
Speaker 1: shape short numbers. The people want to go out in
Speaker 1: the street. The people are really upbeat about the marches
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Organize your own security. You have
Speaker 1: seen people in US protests. You have seen people in
Speaker 1: many protests across the world organizing their own security. The
Speaker 1: purpose of the security is to protect your own people,
Speaker 1: but also to protect police from your own people. So
Speaker 1: if you take a photos of Burmese protest, you see
Speaker 1: monks in the front range. If you take a look
Speaker 1: at the Serbian protest, you'll see girls, disabled people in
Speaker 1: the front ranks. Why so because they are less likely
Speaker 1: to attack the police. So this is how you structure
Speaker 1: your organization. When you go to the protest. You want
Speaker 1: to control your own people because there may be you know,
Speaker 1: crazy heads there. They'll maybe drunk people, they may be
Speaker 1: aged prok tours that are infiltrated in your group in
Speaker 1: order to start violence, which has been done with the
Speaker 1: protest group in the history. The thing is, you need
Speaker 1: to be committed to non violence. You need to preach
Speaker 1: it and teach it to your group. You want to
Speaker 1: train your people not to resort to the violence. Remember,
Speaker 1: in almost none of the cases, it is not the
Speaker 1: police that you're targeting. You're targeting the government. You're targeting injustice,
Speaker 1: you're targeting the bad rules, you're targeting corrupt officials. So basically,
Speaker 1: you really want to police pull police on your side.
Speaker 1: You actually want them to join the protest. But the
Speaker 1: only way to do it is not throwing objects on them,
Speaker 1: but talking to them. Yeah. Well, well, in the US,
Speaker 1: as you see in the last couple of weeks, some
Speaker 1: police have joint protests and very notably in a few places.
Speaker 1: But what about in other situations where the protest is
Speaker 1: about the police. How do you prevent protesters from from
Speaker 1: lashing out, and why shouldn't they remember It's like every
Speaker 1: time it comes to human rights violation, it is the
Speaker 1: person with the name who does it. What do you mean,
Speaker 1: a person with a name? So the police didn't do it.
Speaker 1: The person with a name did it. So it's not
Speaker 1: about a police because this four policemen did it, and
Speaker 1: they have names and badges and numbers, and they should
Speaker 1: be punished and prosecuted while the rest of the police
Speaker 1: should be there to preserve law in order. And it
Speaker 1: isn't the best interest of all of us to take
Speaker 1: this rotten apples out. I'm what about the argument that
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes a police force or you know, is
Speaker 1: simply structured in a way that it can't be changed.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a and this, by the way, is
Speaker 1: not just an argument you here in the US. You know,
Speaker 1: we heard it in communist countries after the fall of communism.
Speaker 1: There was this idea that, you know, you need to
Speaker 1: ban or abolish secret police forces because you know they'll
Speaker 1: just come back in a new form. And these are
Speaker 1: people who are unreformable. Are are there unreformable institutions? So
Speaker 1: when you have a situation like this, especially with history
Speaker 1: of racial abuse, and racial intolerance. Like in US, you
Speaker 1: need to build confidence. You need a joint place where
Speaker 1: us and then meet. It is the US and them
Speaker 1: mentality which brought us here at the first place. So
Speaker 1: where we are talking about the social clubs, where you're
Speaker 1: talking about the UK recreation clubs, either place where people
Speaker 1: can touch a policeman or a policewoman, where they can
Speaker 1: talk to him or her and figure out that they are.
Speaker 1: You know, there are people like ourselves and also these
Speaker 1: people from the police force. They need the way to
Speaker 1: communicate with a culture they will be policing. This is very,
Speaker 1: very difficult problem to solve. It has been solved in
Speaker 1: many countries. But actually bridging this social distance and bridging
Speaker 1: this cultural distance and building this joint space is where
Speaker 1: you solve the cause of the problem. Overseeing police, putting
Speaker 1: cameras on the police, you're curing the symptom. But the
Speaker 1: real problem with this illness is that people don't understand
Speaker 1: the self. They're coming from a very different world and
Speaker 1: they're coming from the history of intolerance. And this is
Speaker 1: where I think systemic problem like this should be addressed.
Speaker 1: And that works for you, as that works for any
Speaker 1: given movement in the world. Why do you say it
Speaker 1: works for any given movement in the world. Don't we
Speaker 1: all have deep cultural differences, aren't there? You know, profound
Speaker 1: you know differences between United States and the Philippines and
Speaker 1: South Africa and Poland. I mean, how can you how
Speaker 1: can you give advice to these very different kinds of
Speaker 1: movements with different histories and ethnicities and different kinds of education. Well,
Speaker 1: what happens when you when you meet the group? I
Speaker 1: mean the way, the way my organization works is that
Speaker 1: we get invitation from the group, invitations from a variety
Speaker 1: of different groups. And that can be a anti restist
Speaker 1: activist in the US, and that can be a you know,
Speaker 1: gender right activists who is care about abortion legislation coming
Speaker 1: in Poland, and that can be something in Uganda fighting
Speaker 1: the brutal dictatorship. And every time they come in with
Speaker 1: the same sentence like, okay, our case is different. So yes,
Speaker 1: it worked well great in your own case, but in
Speaker 1: our situation you need to figure out everything is different.
Speaker 1: And this is true. The contexts are different, the mentalities
Speaker 1: are different, The level of existing political and social space
Speaker 1: is very different in Uganda, Poland than us. But when
Speaker 1: you take a look at the principles throughout the history
Speaker 1: of the principles are more or less the same. You
Speaker 1: will never win without knowing what you want. So most
Speaker 1: of the movements that died in an early phase died
Speaker 1: because they knew what they are against, but they didn't
Speaker 1: really knew what they want. You will never never win
Speaker 1: without building the wider coalition of the people and building
Speaker 1: the unity and holding to this unity through the rough times.
Speaker 1: Successful movements are always carefully planned. Only two types of
Speaker 1: movements in this world. They're either spontaneous or successful. They
Speaker 1: can't be both. And you will never win without understanding
Speaker 1: that one single act of violence can send all of
Speaker 1: your non vound efforts on their ice. So if you
Speaker 1: apply these principles, then it will work in Maldives, in
Speaker 1: Poland and Georgia and Ukraine and Egypt and everywhere. If
Speaker 1: you kind of make mistake in some of these principles,
Speaker 1: it is very likely that you will fail. A lot
Speaker 1: of research, a lot of practice, a lot of movements
Speaker 1: have tried this in the past, and actually, however different
Speaker 1: you are, you will never win without these three principles.
Speaker 1: And that's something you figure out when you deal with this.
Speaker 1: For about fifteen years. So, Sergia, what are three or
Speaker 1: four things that people listening to this to this podcast
Speaker 1: can do right now to help fix the kinds of
Speaker 1: problems they see around them. Well, first of all, they
Speaker 1: can get active, and they need to figure out that
Speaker 1: every change in the world comes from us. So watching
Speaker 1: it and waiting for somebody else to solve the thing,
Speaker 1: or posting and sharing it and liking it, it's not enough.
Speaker 1: You need to get involved. You need to get invested.
Speaker 1: You need to get your friends in, you need to
Speaker 1: recruit more people if you're passionate for the change. Second,
Speaker 1: read books, watch movies. They are amazing books and movies
Speaker 1: written on the matter, starting with a little forty five
Speaker 1: minutes ten videos which you can fight on our website
Speaker 1: on how to build a successful movement. So if you
Speaker 1: want to invest forty five minutes of your life, go
Speaker 1: and can Alsoppedia dot organ check it. But most important,
Speaker 1: you need to figure out that the world won't change
Speaker 1: by itself, that even the smallest creature can change the
Speaker 1: destiny of the world. And whether or not you are
Speaker 1: the big front of the Lord of the Rings. You
Speaker 1: need to imagine yourself as a hobbit and every time.
Speaker 1: It's a hobbit. So you need to understand that without
Speaker 1: your things will change, and don't watch get involved. If
Speaker 1: you're angry, try to figure out how from the sanger
Speaker 1: into hope. If you are hopeful, mobilizing more hopeful things,
Speaker 1: you have talents and skills, please join some of the
Speaker 1: progressive movements and disappointment and never ever lose hope. Sergia,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Thank you on such a pleasure
Speaker 1: and thrill working with one of my most favorite journalists
Speaker 1: on this point, and one of my favorites too, that
Speaker 1: was Anna Applebaumb speaking with Sergia Popovich. Sergia is the
Speaker 1: executive director of the Center for Applied Non Violent Action
Speaker 1: and Strategies or CANVAS. You can find a link to
Speaker 1: the videos he mentioned on the Solvable website and at
Speaker 1: canvas Opedia dot org. Solvable is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Camille Baptista, Jocelyn Frank,
Speaker 1: and Katherine Girardo. Mia Lobell is our executive producer. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Kadija Holland, Heather Fame, Carle Bigleior, Eric Sandler
Speaker 1: and the whole Pushkin team. We'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with the next episode in this mini series about organizing
Speaker 1: and racial justice, I'll talk with Inscha Rachman about how
Speaker 1: to solve mass incarceration. I hope you'll join us