Speaker 1: The thing it creates.
Speaker 2: My hopeful democracy is just It makes people realize that
Speaker 2: they can do more than just vote, and that they
Speaker 2: can solve the problems. The more you make friends and
Speaker 2: the more you have fun doing this thing, the more
Speaker 2: you want to continue, explore, learn, and then you learn
Speaker 2: more about the problem and you say.
Speaker 1: What can I do more? And then it becomes kind
Speaker 1: of a natural path.
Speaker 3: Welcome to How the Citizen with Baratunde, a podcast that
Speaker 3: reimagined citizen as a verb, not a legal status. This
Speaker 3: season is all about how we practice democracy, what can
Speaker 3: we get rid of, what can we invent, and how
Speaker 3: do we change the culture of democracy itself. We're lieving
Speaker 3: the theoretical clouds and hitting the ground with inspiring examples
Speaker 3: of people and institutions that are showing us new ways
Speaker 3: to govern ourselves. At the start of COVID, I remember
Speaker 3: being terrified. The streets requiet, The coyotes and the deer
Speaker 3: had started taking over our driveways and our sidewalks. For
Speaker 3: those of us who could stay at home, Depending on
Speaker 3: who you were, it was shocking but kind of easy.
Speaker 3: For others, it was life denying, especially if you were
Speaker 3: someone who lived in an elder care facility. I remember
Speaker 3: phoning up my friend a lot during this time, and
Speaker 3: I'd always make sure to ask him about his grandparents.
Speaker 4: I'd never actually met them.
Speaker 3: But I felt like I did because he talked about
Speaker 3: them so much, so they'd always come up in conversation.
Speaker 3: He shared this story that they were both living in
Speaker 3: the same care facility, but they were each being isolated
Speaker 3: in different rooms in different wings.
Speaker 4: Of the building.
Speaker 3: In fact, they were together but completely alone, and that
Speaker 3: was so sad to me. At the same time that
Speaker 3: this deep loneliness was being experienced by so many people
Speaker 3: around the world, there were also people with nothing to
Speaker 3: do at home, feeling helpless but wanting to feel helpful,
Speaker 3: and finding out that Christian vani Zett, the person you're
Speaker 3: going to hear from, helped spark a phone calling program
Speaker 3: that matched young people with elders to keep them company.
Speaker 4: That was just really moving to me.
Speaker 3: On the surface, this idea of young people calling old
Speaker 3: folks homes sounds real basic, But then the majority of
Speaker 3: our human needs are real basic. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: they're easily or regularly met. Though this program it became
Speaker 3: so popular that the French government added it to its
Speaker 3: official volunteering website, so not that basic, and that's just
Speaker 3: one of thousands of projects that Christian has helped bring
Speaker 3: to life. Christian was born in French Polynesia, in Tahiti actually,
Speaker 3: and now he lives in Paris. My wife and I
Speaker 3: met him through our friend Diana and American who's basically
Speaker 3: living a better version of that Netflix series Emily in Paris. Anyway,
Speaker 3: we were recently in Paris between work gigs and decided
Speaker 3: to interview Christian in person. We walked over to his
Speaker 3: offices in the Bastille neighborhood where the French behead their
Speaker 3: leaders okay, one of the places the French behead their leaders.
Speaker 3: I was so excited to be there that I didn't
Speaker 3: make sure we had the best audio setup, so you
Speaker 3: may be able to hear that we're in an office
Speaker 3: and not in fact a sound padded studio. And I
Speaker 3: may have clipped Christians mic to his hoodie drawstring because
Speaker 3: I'm not a professional sound engineer.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: What I am instead is someone who's very excited to
Speaker 3: add Christian's voice to the how the citizen world. He's
Speaker 3: built something that is moving and so perfectly aligns with
Speaker 3: the way we see citizen as a verb. I also
Speaker 3: want to make sure that how the citizen isn't just
Speaker 3: an American thing.
Speaker 4: Even though I am a very American thing.
Speaker 3: I love America and I love not America as well,
Speaker 3: and we got a lot to learn from people outside
Speaker 3: of this country. Christian has inspired this global movement of
Speaker 3: citizens who are passionate about crowdsourcing solutions where they lives
Speaker 3: to our most pressing social and environmental problems.
Speaker 4: And he's done it by essentially.
Speaker 3: Becoming a recruiter and I'd even say a matchmaker. The
Speaker 3: organization he co founded, makes Sense, draws in citizens who
Speaker 3: want to take action but don't know where to start.
Speaker 3: Does that sound like somebody you know? The group places
Speaker 3: them in small teams of strangers who want to make
Speaker 3: a difference on the same issue, and then it empowers
Speaker 3: them by giving them opportunities to shape the projects they'll
Speaker 3: be working on, opportunities to learn from each other, to
Speaker 3: become team leaders, and then to recruit their own friends
Speaker 3: and start the cycle all over again. Since starting a
Speaker 3: decade ago, makes Sense has seen nearly three hundred thousand
Speaker 3: people attend workshops, has opened offices in seven countries, and
Speaker 3: has started volunteer chapters in over one hundred cities around
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 4: It's been so success.
Speaker 3: Christian's gotten the attention of many government leaders and was
Speaker 3: recently selected as an Obama Scholar Fellow. Remember Obama. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we still like that, dude, And yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: Volunteerism has been around for a very long time, and
Speaker 3: we've definitely seen a lot of organizations that help place
Speaker 3: volunteers inside of other organizations. But the method that makes
Speaker 3: sense uses it's bottom up, it's citizen led, locally based,
Speaker 3: and the work and the projects that they foster and
Speaker 3: support they're culturally appropriate to each place.
Speaker 4: Because makes sense.
Speaker 3: HQ is taking all its directions from the people on
Speaker 3: the ground, not imposing some top down template from on high.
Speaker 3: And now a decade in Christian and the organization's many
Speaker 3: volunteers have increasingly turned their retention to the fight to
Speaker 3: stop and even reverse climate change.
Speaker 4: We know the basics here.
Speaker 3: Humanity's got limited time to a climate disaster, and we
Speaker 3: need to reduce our carbon emissions dramatically to achieve that.
Speaker 3: That means more electric cars, renewable energy, regenerative agriculture. It
Speaker 3: also means we need to stop fossil fuel extraction, and
Speaker 3: that's going to be hard. Researchers have identified hundreds of
Speaker 3: carbon bombs, like coal mines and oil and gas projects
Speaker 3: that would release at least one metric gigaton of carbon
Speaker 3: dioxide emissions if they move forward. You don't have to
Speaker 3: know what a metric gigaton of carbon means. Basically, the
Speaker 3: people who do know what this means, the experts. They're
Speaker 3: terrified of these carbon bombs because they understand that if
Speaker 3: they get built, it likely means the planet will warm
Speaker 3: past one point five degree celsius, the threshold set by
Speaker 3: the Paris Agreement, and warming past that number could intensify hunger, conflict,
Speaker 3: and drought worldwide. Now, one of these projects is the
Speaker 3: East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline aka e COOP, and it's
Speaker 3: run by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the
Speaker 3: French oil giant Total Energies or TOTAL for short. There's
Speaker 3: a campaign to stop it and it's called wait for it,
Speaker 3: stop ECOP.
Speaker 4: I Love the creativity Now.
Speaker 3: Christian helped launch this campaign in France based on what
Speaker 3: he's learned from a decade and makes sense and the
Speaker 3: ways stop ECOP is trying to diffuse this particular carbon bomb.
Speaker 3: It's creative, strategic, it's even fun, which isn't something I
Speaker 3: generally associate with the climate movement.
Speaker 4: Like in se Ufa, who we.
Speaker 3: Heard from earlier this season, Christian is finding ways to
Speaker 3: bring joy and communal connection to the ways we participate.
Speaker 3: But instead of focusing on elections, he's bringing that energy
Speaker 3: to the ways we volunteer and even the ways we protest.
Speaker 3: You'll hear how Christian helped create a global movement and
Speaker 3: just how organized it is right after the break.
Speaker 5: Hello Christian. Hell, So what is makes sense?
Speaker 2: That makes sense is a nonprofit that started in Paris
Speaker 2: and basically we trained community organizers all across the world
Speaker 2: so they mobilize volunteers and the community for social environmental issues.
Speaker 1: And it's a yeah, ten years ago.
Speaker 2: Now it's about three hundred employees across the world and
Speaker 2: more than three hundred thousand volunteers.
Speaker 3: Three hundred thousands, So you've basically built an army that's undeclared.
Speaker 1: Does the UN know about your army? It's a yeah.
Speaker 1: We just built a way for people.
Speaker 2: When they see a problem, we train them and they
Speaker 2: know how to mobilize other volunteers and we lin them
Speaker 2: up with experts social entrepreneurs and then the cities the
Speaker 2: self organized fifteen to do the thing they want to do,
Speaker 2: like collect things, help the elderly, but beeping themselves and
Speaker 2: not needing like a big angeo like the Red Cross
Speaker 2: to tell them what to do.
Speaker 3: So take me back to the beginning of makes sense.
Speaker 3: Who were you before then? What were you doing with
Speaker 3: your time? How old were you and how did this idem?
Speaker 2: So I come from Tahiri, French Polynesia, and I arrived
Speaker 2: in France for my business school and during the time
Speaker 2: in the business school, I studied social entrepreneurship, so it
Speaker 2: was really interested in how business can do good.
Speaker 1: My dad from in the book of Again Them.
Speaker 2: Muhammad Junus at the Nobel Lar Rate of Peace in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: I'm interrupting my own interview with Christian to add a
Speaker 3: little context. I like to call these explainer ton days.
Speaker 3: Professor Mohammad Yunis you just heard mentioned, is a giant
Speaker 3: in the world of social entrepreneurship. He started this project
Speaker 3: called the Gramin Bank in Bangladesh in the late nineteen
Speaker 3: seventies and it became internationally renowned for its revolutionary system
Speaker 3: of micro credit, which gives loans to entrepreneurs too poor
Speaker 3: to qualify for traditional bank loans, and it's helped millions
Speaker 3: escape poverty.
Speaker 4: As a result.
Speaker 3: The unique feature of Gramen is that no collateral is
Speaker 3: required to get the credit. Doctor Eunis was one of
Speaker 3: the first leaders to talk about the possibility for business
Speaker 3: to do good and set limits on infinite profits. His
Speaker 3: concept of a social business defines financially self sufficient businesses
Speaker 3: as those whose primary aim is to address a social
Speaker 3: problem and not pay dividends to its owners. This idea
Speaker 3: often referred to as social entrepreneurship. It's inspired many people
Speaker 3: in the world of business and economics. It actually sparked Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: my wife and executive producer of this show, on her
Speaker 3: journey around all this too. In fact, you could say,
Speaker 3: Professor Unis is one of the reasons we even know
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 4: And now back to my conversation with Christian.
Speaker 2: And Muhammad Junus at the Nobelar Rate of Peace in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, and so I was reinspired by
Speaker 2: how you use business to do good, and so in
Speaker 2: the business school with my friend Omar, he said, okay,
Speaker 2: what about we create a platform where people can support
Speaker 2: social businesses, so people who start business to do good.
Speaker 2: And this is how the idea of make Sense was bormnbed.
Speaker 2: And to start, we decided to go at the root
Speaker 2: of where social entrepreneurship for us was invented, which was
Speaker 2: in India and Bangladesh. And so we negotiated with the
Speaker 2: school that instead of going to university abroad was supposed
Speaker 2: to go to Germany, that we do a backpack trip
Speaker 2: for six bombs.
Speaker 3: So you convinced the schools starting about in Germany, you've
Speaker 3: got to backpack around.
Speaker 1: Around India Bangladesh.
Speaker 2: And so we went with backpacks to meet social entrepreneurs
Speaker 2: and do videos about them and start to build this
Speaker 2: platform where volunteers could come and help them with years.
Speaker 2: This was twenty ten and so makes Sense were just
Speaker 2: a Facebook page at that time, and every time we
Speaker 2: were arriving in a city like in Mumbai, we would
Speaker 2: start a Facebook group to say, hey, we organized the
Speaker 2: workshop to help this project that's helping people with disabilities
Speaker 2: have access to the information in a.
Speaker 1: Subway back, do you guys want to come help?
Speaker 2: And so every part of the trip we started a
Speaker 2: Facebook group and then we organize the first workshop, which
Speaker 2: is a tree a wall workshop. People would come together
Speaker 2: give ideas and skills to the entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: We called it the hold up of ideas, a hold up.
Speaker 2: So then we gave the pdf in the Facebook group
Speaker 2: how people could continue to do it, and every time
Speaker 2: we go and now there's like two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: Facebook groups and people using the method.
Speaker 1: And this is what makes sense.
Speaker 2: Was bombed was really organic and kind of just people
Speaker 2: using simple tool kits of workshops by themselves.
Speaker 3: And how do you because so much of what many
Speaker 3: of us understand social improvement change like you need expertise,
Speaker 3: you need deep training, and you're a kid with a
Speaker 3: backpack and a dream. You're not from India or Bangladesh
Speaker 3: in this particular case, I presume you don't have a
Speaker 3: deeps you of understanding accessibility in public transit in India.
Speaker 3: So what role are you playing in bringing strains in
Speaker 3: the form of these entrepreneurs and strangers in the form
Speaker 3: of these volunteers together to try to solve their local problem.
Speaker 2: So the main point was to say, we want volunteers
Speaker 2: from the city itself. And so what we acted like
Speaker 2: was just facilitate all with a toolkit and methods and
Speaker 2: also connection between these local communities, because when you're in
Speaker 2: Mumbai or when you're in Marseilles, France and you're a
Speaker 2: student in a business school you want to do good.
Speaker 2: You feel kind of alone in your school, but then
Speaker 2: thanks to the internet, if you there's someone else who
Speaker 2: also feels alone on the other side of the world
Speaker 2: and who has the same ideas as me. And so
Speaker 2: by the role was really to facilitate with methods, but
Speaker 2: also connect all these communities that want to make change
Speaker 2: on a global scale. We use all the tools of
Speaker 2: community organizing, so all the local staff, local office are
Speaker 2: run by locals and they decide by themselves what they
Speaker 2: want to do, so it's not like the headquarters giving orders.
Speaker 2: And this is what's a bit different from other engels.
Speaker 3: You've described playbooks, workshops or process and community organizing as
Speaker 3: the kind of DNA. Where did you learn these things
Speaker 3: yourself or where did the organization in each journey decide
Speaker 3: this is what belongs in the playbook, This is how
Speaker 3: we're going to organize ourselves.
Speaker 2: Yes, the playbook was really about how to run a brainstorming,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't even as like how to community organize.
Speaker 2: At first, it's just how to get people together and
Speaker 2: one can participate and give ideas. Basically creativity workshops and
Speaker 2: ways to create edits together with post its and in
Speaker 2: a country like friends might seem obvious in the US,
Speaker 2: but in France, since you're a kid at school, we
Speaker 2: never ask you what is your idea or we always
Speaker 2: think there's a right answer or a wrong answer, and
Speaker 2: we can only talk, I shot the right and sell.
Speaker 2: And so for students in France to just say I
Speaker 2: don't need to be an expert, I just come to
Speaker 2: this workshop and I can express myself, give my point
Speaker 2: of view, my ideas, and so this is would make
Speaker 2: it go like super fast. And then from the trial
Speaker 2: and error process we've filled into the longer thing of
Speaker 2: organizing your local chapter and other methods to keep bringing
Speaker 2: people together.
Speaker 3: And how have you been able to make sure that
Speaker 3: the solutions and the ideas and the creativity people are
Speaker 3: putting forth are actually relevant and have a positive outcome
Speaker 3: for the core problem that they're trying to address.
Speaker 2: So for us, the expertise and the local knowledge is
Speaker 2: the entrepreneur or the angel who work on the field
Speaker 2: for many years and they define what is the challenge,
Speaker 2: what is the ideas they need? And then the volunteers
Speaker 2: come and help. So the two legs of makes sense
Speaker 2: or supporting the entrepreneurs and getting the seasons to join
Speaker 2: and support them.
Speaker 1: And over the years it.
Speaker 2: Grew into funds and more programs to help the entrepreneurs grow.
Speaker 5: I need some examples.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in this vast history of three hundred thousand people,
Speaker 3: three hundred steff, I don't know how many entrepreneurs can
Speaker 3: you what's a few examples?
Speaker 5: A projects that you've.
Speaker 1: One example we in front.
Speaker 2: You have a project that is really big now, it
Speaker 2: was really small at that time called back market back
Speaker 2: market to make you buy your old phones instead of
Speaker 2: the new ones.
Speaker 5: So instead of black market, it's back market helps me.
Speaker 2: Use, we use it and so it's really interesting and
Speaker 2: circular communions. So the challenge they give when they launches,
Speaker 2: which kind of event could be organized to make back
Speaker 2: market known?
Speaker 1: Okay, So the.
Speaker 2: Volunteers came together and the idea was to organize the
Speaker 2: other keynote. So the same day Apple said the keynote
Speaker 2: about the new iPhone, back market was organizing the other.
Speaker 1: Automatic old iPhones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, volenteers came up with the ideas and helped set
Speaker 2: this up and now it's one of the biggest startups
Speaker 2: in France.
Speaker 1: So it's one example.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can just testify taking the metro around
Speaker 3: all week as the pairs have seen. I heard a
Speaker 3: back market just a few months ago due to a
Speaker 3: company we have a relationship with that's based in the US.
Speaker 3: But seeing the billboards, oh my god, back market is
Speaker 3: huge now, it's huge, and you will literally helped launch.
Speaker 1: It at the beginning. So there's many stories like that.
Speaker 2: A story I love is during the COVID time, there
Speaker 2: was like this startup that we helped support, which is
Speaker 2: to connect the elderly together so they don't fill alone
Speaker 2: with their family. So what we set up was through
Speaker 2: this program of self volunteering. We had like four thousand
Speaker 2: people in three weeks who went on a platform to
Speaker 2: call a Rondom elder and then have weekly conversations with
Speaker 2: them during the top of the COVID time. And the
Speaker 2: way the volunteers built the trust with the retirement house
Speaker 2: to get the numbers was by the first thing we
Speaker 2: told them it is first to bring.
Speaker 1: Them a cake to the director. And so you had
Speaker 1: volunteers showing up bringing cake.
Speaker 2: And then once the directors said okay, I'm okay to
Speaker 2: give the numbers so you can call. Then it went
Speaker 2: into a listing and people were picking up the phone
Speaker 2: and calling. This example of program taken by the French
Speaker 2: government on its public volunteering platform and so then it
Speaker 2: becomes officially something you could do.
Speaker 3: During COVID, did the government acknowledge the origin of this idea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I mean, they bring us into groups and
Speaker 2: right now this program that's called Reactions two weeks program
Speaker 2: so you can take action to have the elderly and
Speaker 2: is working with the state to become a public policy. Wow,
Speaker 2: to make it that the way the youth engagement program
Speaker 2: of the state around three hundred thousand young French people
Speaker 2: per year, works the same way that our program. And
Speaker 2: so it's very interesting after two years of just an
Speaker 2: id during COVID and then it helps become a public policy.
Speaker 3: And how much did you spend on lobbying dollars with
Speaker 3: your government to get them?
Speaker 1: We didn't. Basically that's how we were doing in the US.
Speaker 5: Had to give a lot of campaign.
Speaker 2: The thing they need is that they had too much
Speaker 2: demand on their platform and not enough offers and in.
Speaker 3: This case, because it's such a clear case with COVID
Speaker 3: isolated older people, young people who want to help. Can
Speaker 3: you lay out a bit of the pieces of how
Speaker 3: that came together. Was there an initial volunteer organization that
Speaker 3: had relationships with elderly holmes? Was there a young person
Speaker 3: who missed their grandparents? Like, what's the seed of that solution?
Speaker 2: At the beginning of COVID, no one knew what was
Speaker 2: going to happen. I remember that, and at that time
Speaker 2: I was studying in a program in New York at
Speaker 2: Columbia University with Yobama Foundation. And so we had a
Speaker 2: briefing from the team that was working with President Obama
Speaker 2: on preparing pandemics. Oh wow, so the organized the day
Speaker 2: the whole thing started, Yeah, we do this briefing. Destroyed
Speaker 2: the briefing and I told them makes sense. Team, Hey guys,
Speaker 2: this thing is like real and it's going to be
Speaker 2: a lot of mess for the most vulnerable people. And
Speaker 2: so then we saw that it was the elders, the
Speaker 2: young people because they couldn't go to studies, the people
Speaker 2: that already don't have house or how do they access
Speaker 2: to hygiene product? And so we had six programs at
Speaker 2: the front lines, and we just said, okay, let's do
Speaker 2: a digital program where people self organized and groups are fifteen.
Speaker 2: And for each program, we ask our experts, the social
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs who've been working ten years with the organized, ten
Speaker 2: years with the elderly, what is the.
Speaker 1: Actions people should do. We build those two kits.
Speaker 2: And we launched it with like I think the first
Speaker 2: week was one hundred and fifty people and each group
Speaker 2: of fifteen you had one organizer whose goal is to
Speaker 2: get people excited. And the magic of the thing is
Speaker 2: that each group then created three people to become the
Speaker 2: team leader. So you have one group and the next
Speaker 2: week would lead to three groups. And this is how
Speaker 2: we grew the system and it was really exciting. But
Speaker 2: it's also amazing to see the power of digital tools
Speaker 2: because it was all running on WhatsApp and emails.
Speaker 1: When you plug it with community organizing.
Speaker 2: But this method you can use the same for activism,
Speaker 2: for elections, even something to get a virus.
Speaker 3: To spread, a different type of virus as opposed to
Speaker 3: the COVID virus that's spreading. Because what you have co
Speaker 3: created with the community isn't a top down playbook. You
Speaker 3: kind of set the stage, and it's emerged groups of
Speaker 3: fifteen people scaling, self replicating, self teaching like a positive virus.
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you've been learning about where people go
Speaker 3: from here. If you've unleashed these tools of collaboration and
Speaker 3: problem solving and growth, what have they seeded That it's
Speaker 3: kind of a derivative of some of this type of organizing.
Speaker 2: So what's happening now is we see the first model
Speaker 2: that we had, which was based on people meeting in
Speaker 2: real life and doing workshops together, and this model which
Speaker 2: was really like digital since COVID is starting to go away,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a merge of both. So we see
Speaker 2: the people who did the programming that it is getting
Speaker 2: together and say hey, let's meet in real life and
Speaker 2: then they to think together what they could do next.
Speaker 2: So it's really interesting because then it spins kind of
Speaker 2: out of makes sense. But the good part of it
Speaker 2: is from the statistic we had is like two thirds
Speaker 2: of the people who did this program never volunteered before.
Speaker 2: So the thing it creates my hope for democracy is
Speaker 2: just it makes people realize that they can do more
Speaker 2: than just vote, and that they can solve the problems.
Speaker 2: The tension we're seeing right now is that the news
Speaker 2: you get on climate for example, or the social and
Speaker 2: romantic issues are becoming really urgent, and sometimes they feel
Speaker 2: the connection on the small action they can do to
Speaker 2: help someone. And then the big problem that comes, especially
Speaker 2: from the youth participant of the program, we see that
Speaker 2: there's a will to become more, even more than just volunteering,
Speaker 2: like really become an activist to push for more radical
Speaker 2: change faster. And what we're trying to build that makes
Speaker 2: sense is to say, okay, we help start social entrepreneurship,
Speaker 2: especially in France, why don't we create accelerator an incubator
Speaker 2: for activists because this is a trend. We see that
Speaker 2: people realize they need change of the systems faster, and
Speaker 2: so the volunteer impact is kind of you start as
Speaker 2: a two years after actively Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that wasn't the explicit explicitly, but that's some
Speaker 3: of what emerges when you give people these kind of tools.
Speaker 2: Yes, the more you get you make friends, and the
Speaker 2: more you have funding this thing, the more you want
Speaker 2: to continue explore, learn and then you learn more about
Speaker 2: the problem and you see what can I do more? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it becomes kind of a natural path.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I've experienced, and I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people who will hear this have, is
Speaker 3: a sense of isolation in the face of great challenges.
Speaker 5: We feel alone.
Speaker 3: We have our phones, which are supposed to connect us,
Speaker 3: but they kind of make us feel smaller. And in
Speaker 3: the US, especially, our connections to each other are weak.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't have churches as much anymore, we
Speaker 3: don't live with extended family anymore, we don't have the
Speaker 3: clubs we used to have in terms of just the
Speaker 3: power of being with other people, maybe who were even
Speaker 3: different from us. What have you learned about the power
Speaker 3: of gathering or associating through volunteers and through these small
Speaker 3: groups of fifteen in terms of a culture of civic
Speaker 3: engagement that goes beyond.
Speaker 2: So the thing is when it was the workshops, so
Speaker 2: basically people coming to help a social entrepreneur on his
Speaker 2: project and ID the people we were having were mostly
Speaker 2: like people who did the higher degree studies. So there
Speaker 2: were students so young, professional and they came because they
Speaker 2: were applying what they were learning at school or universities.
Speaker 2: When we did the COVID programs, and then the first
Speaker 2: call to action wasn't to come to a workshop for
Speaker 2: three hours, but it was to call and elderly and
Speaker 2: have a discussion, which is something everyone can do. This
Speaker 2: was really great because the demographics of people participating were
Speaker 2: really looking like the French society in all age, all background.
Speaker 2: And this was really amazing because you could see different
Speaker 2: and once now how they get together in real life.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to make something powerful because they're
Speaker 2: going to define actions of things that look more like
Speaker 2: the French society than what it was before COVID and
Speaker 2: this is bringing different people who didn't know each other before.
Speaker 3: What you've described so far and built sounds great. It's
Speaker 3: like hundreds of thousands of people reconnecting with their society,
Speaker 3: with each other, solving problems, not just waiting for our
Speaker 3: government or some big business to come and fix it
Speaker 3: for them. What is the hardest part of pulling this off?
Speaker 3: What are the things that we're not hearing yet in
Speaker 3: terms of the challenges, so.
Speaker 2: Like building the organization, finding the financing the business, all
Speaker 2: the things people don't see. Yeah, it was really tricky,
Speaker 2: especially that it started as an organic movement makes sense.
Speaker 2: We have those volunteers running these workshops, everywhere, and then
Speaker 2: we build the organization to run after them. Oh there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people speaking Spanish. Oh, we need the
Speaker 2: support team to do the training. Oh let's okay, well
Speaker 2: in Mexico. Okay, okay, firstvolunteer, O kid drink in the team.
Speaker 2: Now build these whole thing. And so the building the
Speaker 2: organization was a bit tricky, but it's like any entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 2: The thing that's really frustrating now is that Mike Sen
Speaker 2: has all these volunteers, these employees for the social entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: We even have a fun like we have one hundred.
Speaker 2: Million investments and investment that we can invest, and it
Speaker 2: just feels like, Okay, this is great and we're happy
Speaker 2: in the team, but like the problems seems so much
Speaker 2: urgent and huge that when I started that, I'm like,
Speaker 2: what can we do now to accelerate because it's not
Speaker 2: just by continuing what we did during ten years then
Speaker 2: we would make a bigger dent in the issues we're
Speaker 2: trying to solve as an organization. And so this whole
Speaker 2: questioning is what's happening in the team now, and we're
Speaker 2: trying to see what's next should be done so that
Speaker 2: we can make a bigger dent in the problems that
Speaker 2: are becoming more urgent.
Speaker 3: So what type of person ends up doing what you're doing?
Speaker 3: Why does this move you so much? And the idea
Speaker 3: of makes sense, the idea of empowering people to collectively
Speaker 3: work to solve their problems, where.
Speaker 1: Do you think that comes from.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Tahili, is really a small island
Speaker 2: in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and my grandfather
Speaker 2: was from the French Navy and he arrived there with
Speaker 2: a boat and he met my grandmother, who's Taritian from Tehili.
Speaker 2: He started a soccer club and had a lot of friends,
Speaker 2: and so then he went into politics and he was
Speaker 2: the first president of the local assembly because they even
Speaker 2: if part of the French Republic, we have our own government.
Speaker 2: And the first law that he passed was the social
Speaker 2: security so people to have free health.
Speaker 1: Care and they were so fresh. Free health care.
Speaker 2: And free with not free, but retirement, yeah, for everyone.
Speaker 2: And this is what was kind of the biggest thing
Speaker 2: you could do for advancement in Tahili. And so I
Speaker 2: grew up in this family people super motivated and engaged,
Speaker 2: and when I needed to study I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: where do I feel is going to have the biggest impact,
Speaker 2: And my guess was the economy is running the world,
Speaker 2: and so finding ways to trick the economy and making
Speaker 2: run to solve problem and not just make more money
Speaker 2: is why I.
Speaker 1: Choose business school.
Speaker 2: And also the thing when you talk about global challenge,
Speaker 2: for example, like climate change, super scary when you come
Speaker 2: from a small island and the main narrative you hear
Speaker 2: is like, this are the first places that are going
Speaker 2: to disappear, And so I really engage on this topic
Speaker 2: because you can see the.
Speaker 1: Effect right now on the corals.
Speaker 2: But the problem is that you come from tails so
Speaker 2: small hasn't if you can't do much about the problem
Speaker 2: of climate change from Tahili is not because one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people take their bikes that things will be sold.
Speaker 2: And so then you realize, okay, like seventy percent carbon
Speaker 2: emissions come from big cities, so people acting in New York,
Speaker 2: in Paris, in Manila, it has more impact to save
Speaker 2: my island. And so this is kind of why I
Speaker 2: was selling like connecting the DUTs and local communities. I
Speaker 2: think it's what needed for this kind of challenge and
Speaker 2: in a really selfish way.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of trying to save your home.
Speaker 3: It all comes back to self preservation, but through collective
Speaker 3: action after the break the wild and clever tactics, Christian
Speaker 3: and thousands of others are using to diffuse a carbon bomb.
Speaker 3: So you've made this connection many times to climate change
Speaker 3: as the accelerating type of global crisis and the idea
Speaker 3: that you can't solve.
Speaker 1: It just from where you are.
Speaker 3: You have to look to other places to kind of
Speaker 3: affect where you are, which brings us to this pipeline
Speaker 3: and this East African crude oil pipeline ecop that you
Speaker 3: are very much against. Can you give some context, more
Speaker 3: content for the pipeline and the connection of this kind
Speaker 3: of self organizing volunteer effort to try.
Speaker 2: To start if we do the same as what we
Speaker 2: did during COVID, you know, we look at what science
Speaker 2: says we need to do and we need to help.
Speaker 1: It's the same with the climate.
Speaker 2: And one of the first recommendation of the scientists of
Speaker 2: the International INADI Agency is really clear.
Speaker 1: They say, if we want to keep.
Speaker 2: The Paris Agreement alive, so not more than one point
Speaker 2: five degree global warming, the first thing to do is
Speaker 2: no new oil and gas infrastructure. It doesn't mean no
Speaker 2: oil from tomorrow. It means we don't need to build
Speaker 2: new ones because it will make global warming worth So
Speaker 2: I just was thinking, what can I do to participate
Speaker 2: with my capacities to this priority that the scientists said.
Speaker 2: And so in the climate activist movement, what happens that
Speaker 2: if you're in the UK, you focus on.
Speaker 1: The UK Oil Company, so it's BP.
Speaker 2: If you're in France, this company is called Total And
Speaker 2: so I looked at what is the thing we could
Speaker 2: do from friends to make sure there's no new il
Speaker 2: And so this company is building one new island gas project.
Speaker 2: It's going to be the longest heated crude oil pipeline.
Speaker 2: It has to be heated at fifty degrees.
Speaker 3: The longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: And let's go from Uganda to Tanzan Yak And so
Speaker 2: the first thing we did was to ask the local
Speaker 2: activists there, like what do they think about the project?
Speaker 3: And so I love, I'm just going to pause you
Speaker 3: right there because a lot of us don't do that
Speaker 3: step right. So you have had a initially kind of
Speaker 3: analytical approach right. I read the IPCC report, the International
Speaker 3: Energy Agency that they said this is important. I looked
Speaker 3: at the energy companies that were kind of within my reach.
Speaker 3: I'm friends, it's in Hotel Boom Boom. Then I checked
Speaker 3: with the.
Speaker 5: Local activists to see what they want.
Speaker 3: I just I need to really affirm that pause, because
Speaker 3: a lot of people skip that step and just.
Speaker 1: Say we got to stop this, We've got to do that,
Speaker 1: and don't check in. So what happened when you checked it?
Speaker 2: So because the thing is we don't know the local
Speaker 2: realities and so maybe they will say, oh, we really
Speaker 2: need that energy or we really need these things. And
Speaker 2: then what you realize is that there was two court
Speaker 2: case from local NGOs and people affected by the pipeline
Speaker 2: who are taking total to court in France to say
Speaker 2: that this project don't happen. And the biggest thing that
Speaker 2: happened is that there's one hundred thousand people being displaced.
Speaker 2: And so there was a lot of mobilization in Uganda,
Speaker 2: not from what we taught was the angle of climate,
Speaker 2: but from the younger of human rights, like for the
Speaker 2: last seven years, they can't use their land because it's
Speaker 2: going to be on the way of the pipeline and
Speaker 2: it's mostly farmers. So basically there's a huge amount of
Speaker 2: farmers were like, we will, can't use our land. You're
Speaker 2: not compensating us. And so what we did when we
Speaker 2: started the campaign in France was the say, okay, we
Speaker 2: need to bring voices from Uganda to come and tell
Speaker 2: to the French people that we're so proud of saying
Speaker 2: we invented the human rights and all these things, to
Speaker 2: just say what the French company is doing there, and
Speaker 2: so that it's known and people realize that this is
Speaker 2: a mess not just for the climate, but also for
Speaker 2: the lives of the people.
Speaker 3: So listening to the activists on the ground, listen to
Speaker 3: their story, find the connection to the story the people
Speaker 3: you're trying to influence.
Speaker 5: So French people take credit.
Speaker 1: For inventing human rights.
Speaker 3: You know, the Declaration of the Rights of Men is
Speaker 3: very proud part of French history. So if you really
Speaker 3: believe that, then you're going to be really sensitive to
Speaker 3: these stories of these people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they came to tell the story.
Speaker 2: And once you spend two weeks with them and you know,
Speaker 2: like hearing their stories and everything, you're like, it's kind
Speaker 2: of the motivation to do the fight and what we
Speaker 2: need to do. And it's very human because climate is
Speaker 2: something really like help for people to.
Speaker 3: Be very abstract, very analytical, numbers based.
Speaker 2: And also it was really important for us that the
Speaker 2: start of the campaign was the activist fighting for years
Speaker 2: on the field there, promoting their voice first so that
Speaker 2: they're more known and more protected because we don't know
Speaker 2: what could happen in Uganda. And the second thing is
Speaker 2: to tell this oil company that the TOTAL keeps saying
Speaker 2: but everyone in Uganda wants it to should know there's
Speaker 2: some people who.
Speaker 1: Don't want it's just that they're being repressed.
Speaker 2: And so this was the start, and when you look back,
Speaker 2: I think it was the best angle because it's really
Speaker 2: the thing where Total is pushing to say, like, but
Speaker 2: it's like people from the North who don't want Africa
Speaker 2: to give love.
Speaker 3: So they're basically saying you're racist, yeah, for stopping Africans
Speaker 3: from having progress economically and moving forward. Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 3: hit pause here. You don't have to hit pause. I'm
Speaker 3: hitting pause on my own conversation for a quick tactum day.
Speaker 3: Check what Christians saying here about Total needs a little
Speaker 3: bit more context. We couldn't track down any instances of
Speaker 3: total Energy saying these exact statements. However, they did recently
Speaker 3: post something to their website responding to to a quote
Speaker 3: unquote set of misconceptions about ECOP and another project. They
Speaker 3: said the following, which I will deliver in a cartoonishly
Speaker 3: French accent, because I find their behavior to be cartoonish.
Speaker 3: We could ask ourselves whether the desire to prevent countries
Speaker 3: like Uganda from exploiting their natural resources is not itself
Speaker 3: inspired by a vision that is neo colonialist or selfish.
Speaker 4: To say the.
Speaker 3: Least, what local Ugandans want to see is a developed
Speaker 3: constraint with infrastructure kitling to people's most basic needs. Critics,
Speaker 3: you're the colonialist.
Speaker 4: That's good.
Speaker 3: I hope they're paying these people. Well, no, they don't
Speaker 3: say Northerners don't want to see Africa developed, but we
Speaker 3: can agree it's implied given their response seems to be
Speaker 3: responding to non Ugandan detractors of the project. And yes,
Speaker 3: in that statement, Hotel does an outright say that everyone
Speaker 3: in Uganda wants e COP to be built.
Speaker 4: But by saying that quote.
Speaker 3: What local Ugandans want to see is a developed country
Speaker 3: with infrastructure catering to people's most basic needs. In a
Speaker 3: company posts that's specifically responding to misconceptions about this project.
Speaker 3: I think we can infer that their meaning that locals
Speaker 3: want e coop, whereas non locals may not. But next
Speaker 3: to total, the Udan government has been much more direct.
Speaker 3: After the EU called for e cop to be halted
Speaker 3: due to human rights abuses and climate concerns, President Yuwaerri
Speaker 3: Musevani responded saying they are insufferable, so shallows, so egocentric,
Speaker 3: so wrong. I don't know if that's his accent, but
Speaker 3: that was certain his energy. Now this may seem extra
Speaker 3: to fact check, given how much is implied here, but
Speaker 3: when you're fighting multi billion dollar companies with padded marketing
Speaker 3: and legal teams, getting specific with our critiques is a necessity,
Speaker 3: just part of the job.
Speaker 4: And now back to my conversation with Christian.
Speaker 2: It's really like a big fight and to win the
Speaker 2: narratives where most activists from Uganda, what they tell you
Speaker 2: is that of course they want development, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: need to be a dirty development because if there's a leak,
Speaker 2: it's going to be the fisherman from the Lake Victoria
Speaker 2: who won't be able to fish anymore. So of course
Speaker 2: yes to investment and things like that, but needs to
Speaker 2: be renewable different kinds of projects and not old oil pipeline,
Speaker 2: especially in a moment we're not sure oil is going
Speaker 2: to continue in the long term being a good as
Speaker 2: set to have. So if a country develop itself on
Speaker 2: an asset that's going to be not good in twenty years,
Speaker 2: then you're screwed. And when you look in Africa, they
Speaker 2: didn't lead the landfall, you know, they directly went to mobilis,
Speaker 2: so while not doing the same and the energy I.
Speaker 5: Got an idea for the campaign then totally screwed.
Speaker 1: So that was a free one.
Speaker 3: You got workshop alat in the brainstorms the team less
Speaker 3: to considered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been really an interesting fight.
Speaker 3: And so as you have engaged further in this fight
Speaker 3: to stop this pipeline, the size of the problem feels
Speaker 3: very large. How have you gone about further breaking it
Speaker 3: down into pieces that groups of volunteers can feel like
Speaker 3: it's approachable For.
Speaker 2: The first thing to know is that there's what we
Speaker 2: call carbon bombs carbon box So it's new oil and
Speaker 2: gas projects that is creating a lot of carbon emission
Speaker 2: this pipeline. For example, in Uganda alone, it's seven times
Speaker 2: the emissions of Uganda. So these projects create a lot
Speaker 2: of you can be millions taking your bike. If these
Speaker 2: things happen, it doesn't change anything. And so it's really
Speaker 2: the urgency in the climate movements. And so the goal
Speaker 2: is to make sure that everything we do on this
Speaker 2: pipeline can be replicable, because there needs to be activists
Speaker 2: and campaigns like that happening all around the world against all
Speaker 2: these oil companies. And so the key thing, the key
Speaker 2: pressure point on all these carbon bombs is always the
Speaker 2: same is the finance. And so where there's a lot
Speaker 2: of citizen power that can be used is to put
Speaker 2: pressure on the banks so that they don't fund. But
Speaker 2: even better than the banks is the insurance, because they
Speaker 2: should put pressure on the insurance. Then the bank don't
Speaker 2: want to lend to a project that's not insures and
Speaker 2: so then you break it down, Okay, what can citizen
Speaker 2: do to put pressure on an insurance and so then
Speaker 2: you need to track which insurance might ensure the pipeline.
Speaker 2: And so for example, there was one in Germany that
Speaker 2: was called Munikroe and then we contacted the local the
Speaker 2: most well known activists in Germany, and we.
Speaker 1: Say, hey, again checking the people on the ground, what
Speaker 1: can we do to get them out of this project?
Speaker 2: And then she said, and in Germany we're really lucky
Speaker 2: because she's really powerful. When she tweets, there's like thousands
Speaker 2: of people going in the street. So she just did
Speaker 2: tweet to the CEO. The next day the guy are
Speaker 2: okay out. And so this is how many insurance that
Speaker 2: like all the German ones, really easy, you just need
Speaker 2: Louisan a power to tweet. In other places more complicated.
Speaker 2: And so right now a total is going to try
Speaker 2: to find an insuran in the marketplace for insurance, which
Speaker 2: is in Lloyds everyone and so right now and so
Speaker 2: all the dirtiest projects on the planet, they all come
Speaker 2: to Loyds at some point.
Speaker 1: So the Layds is meant to delude the risk.
Speaker 2: So instead of saying I ensure the whole project, is
Speaker 2: I ensure two percent of it and someone else and.
Speaker 5: Show the other those single person the whole risk.
Speaker 1: And so then it's becomes really tricky.
Speaker 2: And so what we created is the WhatsApp group with
Speaker 2: sixty volunteers and every day at lunch. You have two
Speaker 2: people going with posters stop ping up and the flyers,
Speaker 2: and their job is to recruit within the insurance marketplace
Speaker 2: who knows which actor are my finance, et cetera, and
Speaker 2: also which one is against. So they give their emails
Speaker 2: and then we basically recruit employees within the insurance marketplace
Speaker 2: to give us information. And then went these guys, they
Speaker 2: start on the Wetstele group and then we have hundreds
Speaker 2: of people sending emails directing mass this field, don't do that.
Speaker 2: And then every three weeks we have a big happening
Speaker 2: happening in front of the Lloyd's marketplace. So the last
Speaker 2: one was organized by Models Razers. They had one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty Dan Cells who came and did the show
Speaker 2: of I forgot her name, chim Chimney Mary Hippop Pin's okay,
Speaker 2: and so they did because the story of bankers being sad.
Speaker 2: Because so we had one hundred and fifty bankers with
Speaker 2: a fake Mary pop to the CEO of Floyd's Insure
Speaker 2: insure future and insure those projects.
Speaker 1: So you have these multi campaigns like that.
Speaker 2: It's digital WhatsApp groups and these techniques will hold Lloyd's
Speaker 2: dropped from Adny coal mine a big coal mine project,
Speaker 2: so we know it works. You just have to find
Speaker 2: the right pressure point and had this parties to get
Speaker 2: the information. So actually the best job to do is
Speaker 2: to go every day, make friends, have lunch with them,
Speaker 2: and get them infation.
Speaker 1: And then it's easy to organize.
Speaker 5: Like an intelligence operation.
Speaker 2: And it's all run by people who are nineteen to
Speaker 2: twenty one. And there's an Instagram account where they post
Speaker 2: every day, Hey, well every day in front of Lloyd.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is really pissing them up.
Speaker 2: Like the project be cous one point five billion, it's
Speaker 2: around like ten billion because of all these tactiques to
Speaker 2: not find insurance and things like that.
Speaker 5: So I'm hearing at least two things.
Speaker 3: One is consistency and just like every day at lunch,
Speaker 3: two people go and do this thing, so there's a
Speaker 3: rhythm to it. I'm also hearing play fun joy, you're
Speaker 3: hiring dancers. Young people are getting excited. A lot of
Speaker 3: the image that we are taught about what it means
Speaker 3: to engage civically is it's boring, it's sad, it's cold,
Speaker 3: and maybe you call your member of Parliament or your
Speaker 3: member of congress and hope they listen to you until
Speaker 3: the next day. This sounds much more active and much
Speaker 3: more fun. Is that by design?
Speaker 2: It's it's because from the story of makes sense. We
Speaker 2: know that if people volunteer they're not paid, they need.
Speaker 1: To have fun.
Speaker 2: Otherwise they don't have fun, they'll not keep going and
Speaker 2: keep doing. For example, at every end of the week
Speaker 2: they will meet all together in a pub it's in.
Speaker 1: London, and then they make friends.
Speaker 2: And at the same time it's really fun to be
Speaker 2: like twenty years old and to scare all these CEUs
Speaker 2: and to cause them billions, and when you're just with
Speaker 2: one person it seems like they are giants from outside. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but then they have there can be so weak. So
Speaker 2: it's also you play on fun and also this rebellios.
Speaker 2: This really sad part is even if people have fun
Speaker 2: and there's all these campaign there are still some real
Speaker 2: things happening, like activists in Uganda. When you're not in
Speaker 2: England or in Friends it's a bit different the political
Speaker 2: regimes there and there they're being put in jail and
Speaker 2: things like that. So I think it's this mix of
Speaker 2: being real bad the issue, but at the same time
Speaker 2: knowing which tactics to engage more people than can work,
Speaker 2: just so that it doesn't become just a fun thing
Speaker 2: that you then detach from the reality that's really not fun.
Speaker 3: And I think that's essential because things can get too
Speaker 3: performative and feel, like you said, disconnected. I also there's
Speaker 3: something you were describing, even in terms of the digital
Speaker 3: activism which is often rightly criticized as clicktivism, and there's
Speaker 3: a disconnect from real outcomes and real impact because it's
Speaker 3: so easy to like and share and retweet, especially if
Speaker 3: that's not part of a larger strategy, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: How are you ensuring that the digital actions are meaningful
Speaker 3: and really connect on the ground.
Speaker 2: So on this specific campaign for the pipeline, it's first
Speaker 2: there's a coalition of angels all around the world of
Speaker 2: putting it and they build and.
Speaker 1: Decide the pressure points.
Speaker 2: So there's an engine that specialized in analyzing the financial
Speaker 2: actor of the banks and the insurance and they say
Speaker 2: what is the thing that can help the most and
Speaker 2: actually sending an email to these people in the insurance.
Speaker 2: They're not used to receive emails from everyday citizen. Also,
Speaker 2: the novelty of the action, so this activism is not
Speaker 2: just like you're expressing something like you write to your
Speaker 2: congressman or big petition, they just change that. Or yeah,
Speaker 2: you need just five people sending an email to that
Speaker 2: guy who never received emails from any citizen and stuff
Speaker 2: and say hey, i'm watching you.
Speaker 1: What you're looking at me?
Speaker 2: You're looking at me, and they're.
Speaker 1: Like wow, for them, it's new. They're not politicians.
Speaker 2: So this is how you can design the right strategy
Speaker 2: of digital activism, and it's finding where it can be
Speaker 2: the most useful. And often it's just a tool to
Speaker 2: help the engel's campaigning. For example, right now there's like
Speaker 2: people being arrested in Uganda because they protested against ecop
Speaker 2: and so the main things to do is we put
Speaker 2: pressure on the French ambassador in Uganda, so he condemned
Speaker 2: and as that there is.
Speaker 1: All of this because of a French company.
Speaker 2: Of course, there's angels who know really well the ambassadors
Speaker 2: and they know really well the foreign affairs of friends,
Speaker 2: and so they lobby, they go talk to them. But
Speaker 2: if at the same time there's one hundred of citizens
Speaker 2: sending them email, it gives more power to this nonprofit
Speaker 2: when they nego shape. So it's just about launching this
Speaker 2: at the right time.
Speaker 5: It reminds me of a puffer fish.
Speaker 3: You know, you're appearing bigger than you really are, and
Speaker 3: you show up with allies and you're like, we have
Speaker 3: a massive army and it's like five kids email.
Speaker 2: But the cool figure is that then you have at
Speaker 2: the same time the John elliet is to talk about
Speaker 2: it and then you can make it a think. But
Speaker 2: it's also because at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 2: not okay that in the country that say, the country
Speaker 2: of human rights that because of a French company, human
Speaker 2: rights are not respected. So it's still tied to something
Speaker 2: really deep in the people which are mobilizing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not just a charitable do good it's holding
Speaker 3: people to their own standard and reminding them who they
Speaker 3: say they are and giving them a chance to be
Speaker 3: who they say they are, which I think is also
Speaker 3: a pretty deeply empathetic approach to persuasion, activism and even
Speaker 3: pressure points.
Speaker 5: There's some love in that pain. Yeah, you've recently launched
Speaker 5: an app. Can you describe this app and how people
Speaker 5: might get involved in it?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The complicated part about this oil and gas pipeline is.
Speaker 3: That there's a huge number all these carbon bombs, and.
Speaker 2: So every time what we realize is that, for example,
Speaker 2: you need five thousand people to send a message to
Speaker 2: a bank that their clients off. fIF five thousand people
Speaker 2: send them an email saying, hey, guys, I really don't
Speaker 2: want you to use my money to finance this kind
Speaker 2: of project.
Speaker 1: This string an alert in the bank. It's a reputational risk.
Speaker 2: So Regroup is just a platform where people can join
Speaker 2: the campaign and send those emails when it's the right
Speaker 2: time to do. But then we know these people and
Speaker 2: if there's another campaign and they can directly help on
Speaker 2: the other campaign. So do you fast track how people
Speaker 2: act together ising digital tools? My hope is that people
Speaker 2: will start by sending an email to the censure and
Speaker 2: then they will end up being the people in front
Speaker 2: of Lloyd's in London every day at lunch being more active.
Speaker 5: Right, So it's like going to the gym.
Speaker 3: You start with a little exercise, at you're running the
Speaker 3: whole circuit because you've gotten stronger.
Speaker 5: We like to leave our.
Speaker 3: Listeners and our audience, our community with things they can
Speaker 3: do in your experience through this campaign. Through the decade
Speaker 3: of makes sense, how have you grown to interpret what
Speaker 3: it would mean to citizen as a set of actions
Speaker 3: or as a verb.
Speaker 5: What does that look like to you?
Speaker 1: To me?
Speaker 2: One thing I learned I was during this one year
Speaker 2: in New York at this fancy university at Columbia and
Speaker 2: this Obama program. We were eight and there was one
Speaker 2: girl who was with me the also in the co op.
Speaker 2: Her name was way Way new when she's an activist
Speaker 2: from me and Mack, and she spent her whole teenage
Speaker 2: year of seven years in jail because her dad was
Speaker 2: in the party from Ansuki, and so the drink put
Speaker 2: her dad in jail somewhere, put the whole family in
Speaker 2: the jail somewhere else. And I really realized that before
Speaker 2: I was massage people who were volunteering and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But one of the exercise what to do during the
Speaker 2: program was to tell the other person's story to the others,
Speaker 2: but talking at the first like and so you hold
Speaker 2: that story like a baby. And I had to tell
Speaker 2: the story of way Away, which was all about the pain,
Speaker 2: the suffering in the jail and being far from her
Speaker 2: dad and at the same time going out after and
Speaker 2: you think the junta is out, but then her community
Speaker 2: is the rowing gas so there was still persecuted after
Speaker 2: and it's just hearing her story and having to say
Speaker 2: it to completely transform me. And this developed bigger side
Speaker 2: of empathy. And for me, this is the thing of
Speaker 2: to citizens to when you hear someone's story, to really
Speaker 2: feel it and then you can't take it away from you.
Speaker 2: The story of the activists in Uganda, the story of Wayway.
Speaker 1: Now like I would do whatever.
Speaker 2: I can whenever, just to do something because their story
Speaker 2: is in me now and so I think this is
Speaker 2: the thing that really changed me. And how to citizen,
Speaker 2: I would say, just to let all those stories of
Speaker 2: injustice that happen, of things that need to change to
Speaker 2: the world, not just mentally, but let them leave in you.
Speaker 3: At the risk of sounding very much like someone who
Speaker 3: enjoys puns, that makes sense. So thank you Mesoku for
Speaker 3: giving us a window into how we can make more sense,
Speaker 3: have more fun, and have more power when we do
Speaker 3: it together.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Four Seasons.
Speaker 3: In As we are with this show, I hope you
Speaker 3: are familiar with our refrain about how civic engagement and
Speaker 3: citizen ing has got to be more than just voting.
Speaker 3: Voting is necessary, but it is not sufficient, especially because
Speaker 3: many folks can't vote by law. But we can all
Speaker 3: participate in shaping our communities and in solving our own problems.
Speaker 3: Our first pillar of how the citizen is literally show
Speaker 3: up and participate. But many of us we're out of practice.
Speaker 3: We need a way in, and it helps if that
Speaker 3: way in is also fun. What excites me most about
Speaker 3: Christian is that he's helped create a gateway drug to
Speaker 3: Citizening makes sense, helps people build and practice that collective
Speaker 3: problem solving through volunteerism, which sometimes slides into activism. It's
Speaker 3: these practices that help reinforce a culture of small d democracy.
Speaker 4: A culture is so.
Speaker 3: Crucial to upholding a democratic system of self governance. Christian
Speaker 3: is a recruiter for helping us all practice democracy, helping
Speaker 3: us all citizen by showing up, and he successfully recruited
Speaker 3: me for real, Like I get excited about all of
Speaker 3: our guests, but I don't necessarily.
Speaker 4: Always go all in on the thing they just built.
Speaker 4: I tried the beta version of the regroup.
Speaker 3: App he mentioned, and I did the stop e cop
Speaker 3: daily actions for a while.
Speaker 4: And it's all.
Speaker 3: In French, because yes, your boy also speaks French. But
Speaker 3: It also speaks to how addictive and cool and fun
Speaker 3: the platform was that the French I didn't speak.
Speaker 4: I was looking up to make sure I knew what
Speaker 4: I was doing.
Speaker 3: Now, look, you can learn more about makes Sense over
Speaker 3: at makessense dot org. It doesn't really operate fully in
Speaker 3: the US, but there's still a lot to be learned
Speaker 3: from it and maybe you'll be someone who starts a
Speaker 3: US chapter if you're here, check out the actions to
Speaker 3: stop e cop on Instagram stop eacop where there's actions
Speaker 3: you can take in the US, because unfortunately Black Rock,
Speaker 3: which is based right here in our own New York State,
Speaker 3: is an investor in Total Energies, which is a major
Speaker 3: shareholder in ECOP, which we're trying to stop. And if
Speaker 3: you want to get in on these daily actions and
Speaker 3: notifications like me which got me so excited, you can
Speaker 3: help stop this pipeline with the regroup app it's r
Speaker 3: e g roop and find it in your nearest app store.
Speaker 3: And speaking of daily actions, in the show notes, we
Speaker 3: always have actions you can take after listening to each episode.
Speaker 3: We give you options to go inwards and feel into
Speaker 3: the material, to become more knowledgeable or to get involved
Speaker 3: with others to make an impact. So here's a juicy
Speaker 3: prompt for some internal reflection. How do you feel when
Speaker 3: you hear the words climate change, like you encounter a
Speaker 3: story on the topic, what's the dominant emotion? I want
Speaker 3: you to write this down, and then I want you
Speaker 3: to think about a different climate story that provokes the
Speaker 3: opposite or at least a very different emotional reaction, and
Speaker 3: spend more time in that one. So when I think
Speaker 3: of climate change, the emotions that come up are anger, despair, frustration.
Speaker 3: Now when I think about a story that shifts me
Speaker 3: out of that, I think about Christian I think about
Speaker 3: a lot of the stuff that we talked about in
Speaker 3: this episode, and I feel a sense of awe, even
Speaker 3: a little happy, because I'm like, yo, these kids are
Speaker 3: getting so creative. And so for me, this exercise is
Speaker 3: going to be looking for more stories that prove that reaction.
Speaker 3: Are there other climate change stories that lead to a
Speaker 3: sense of awe or joy or excitement or hopefulness as
Speaker 3: opposed to the despair and the overwhelmedness that I felt before.
Speaker 3: The goal here is to be curious and open to
Speaker 3: your feelings, to be conscious of the emotional impact of
Speaker 3: the climate narratives you're ingesting and to consciously try to
Speaker 3: rebalance that. Now for more active actions, there's what we
Speaker 3: already mentioned with the stop ecop campaign, and on the
Speaker 3: other side of this coin, there's a chance to take
Speaker 3: some personal responsibility for our consumer culture. This culture is
Speaker 3: fueling more demand for oil, and we can counter that
Speaker 3: with a different kind of spending. There's this product called
Speaker 3: future Card. It's a payment card that rewards you for
Speaker 3: climate friendly purchases. Full disclosure. I'm an early investor and
Speaker 3: advisor because I think it's a powerful way to align
Speaker 3: incentives in our economy. Find them online at future dot green. Also,
Speaker 3: you may hear people say that it's not on us
Speaker 3: as individuals to stop climate change, and it isn't on us,
Speaker 3: at least not alone. But we do have power, and
Speaker 3: I don't want us to feel like because our governments
Speaker 3: aren't doing enough, there's nothing we can do. So it's
Speaker 3: a both proposition. We can lower our demand for fossil
Speaker 3: fuels while we also pressure policymakers in the oil industry
Speaker 3: at large to change. No matter what you hear from
Speaker 3: any side, we truly need to do both to curb
Speaker 3: climate change. As always, we'd love to hear from you
Speaker 3: about your experience taking any of the actions. We may
Speaker 3: even ask you to share your story.
Speaker 4: With future listeners.
Speaker 3: The show notes got full details, so check them on
Speaker 3: your podcast app or visit howdocitizen dot com where we
Speaker 3: have transcripts, actions and more. How to Citizen with Baritunday
Speaker 3: is a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts.
Speaker 4: And row Home Productions.
Speaker 3: Our executive producers are me Baritunde Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart.
Speaker 3: Our lead producer is Ali Graham, Our associate producer is
Speaker 3: Donya abdel Hamid. Alex Lewis is our managing producer, and
Speaker 3: John Myers is our executive editor and mixed engineer. Original
Speaker 3: music by Andrew Eapen with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Joelle Smith from iHeartRadio and Leila Bina.
Speaker 3: Next time on How to Citizen, we're turning inward.
Speaker 6: It's a radical act of citizen ing to change our story,
Speaker 6: to change the narrative that we're living within and our
Speaker 6: relationship to ourselves and others in the world of like.
Speaker 6: I won't participate in that old way of being the
Speaker 6: authorizing me to you, humanizing the fighting the oppression. I
Speaker 6: won't I'm not going to do that to me. I'm
Speaker 6: not going to do that to you. I am going
Speaker 6: to stand for love. I will stand for love and
Speaker 6: in that being this change my world.
Speaker 3: In our final episode of the season, we talk with
Speaker 3: doctor Sam Raider, who helps us invest in a relationship
Speaker 3: with ourselves so we can build better relationships in our communities.
Speaker 4: Row Home Productions