Thank you mayor Betsy I'm really happy you asked me to come here because I look at this group, and I talked to some of them and to me These are the most interesting people in the world Because you are our budding decision-makers and you are the steering team For this city of Fort Worth coming up us old guys Are ready for you guys To keep us going on to better and higher things and you have all kinds of tools to do it that we don't like this stuff You know I've never seen it that while someone's speaking the tweets come up So all I can say is I want two thumbs up every time up there, okay? Okay, you can tell each other what you really think when it's over But for now be nice okay well, I I I I Imagine that all of you just by the nature of the fact that you are part of this Organization steer Fort Worth that you're working with our mayor that you think Fort Worth is a pretty good place. It's a pretty good place to live and bring up your families and So forth and that gives you an interest in our city and doing things for working with our city Well, believe me That's exactly what I think And I have been deeply involved since I went away to school and started my business in New Mexico But I've been deeply involved since I was drawn back here in about 1980 and Today I want to discuss with you two things that I think are really so important at the heart of why this is Fort Worth a great place One of them those things is very tangible and That's our public facility. This city is rich in public facilities And any great city must be that's one of the definitions and we're fortunate that we are very wealthy in our public Facilities wealth, you know is not a matter of money. It's a matter of being able to forwardly organize Our our our lives in a positive way and our public facilities help that for the life of our Community now the other is an intangible That you can just call very quickly Quality of life. We have a real quality of life here in Fort Worth and again. I think that's probably part of all of your Attitude why this is a great place and we can look at other cities in Texas and be very proud We think we have amongst the best if not the best quality of life Here in Fort Worth. Well, I want to tell you these two things our public facilities and our quality of life are inextricably intertwined They have very much to do with each other our Those facilities contribute to quality of life that value that we have for quality of life Contributes to why we have these facilities so you can just look around you where we are today You drove in you saw into the Fort Worth botanic garden now This is a wonderful botanic garden. It's of unusual size and quality for a city like Fort Worth Right in the heart of the city which means almost by definition It was created carved out in the early days of our city together with Trinity Park and all the wonderful stretch of parkland there It was created by what I'm going to call our forebearers our forebearers the the you know The grandfathers and great-grandfathers of people here in the room The people they are early days of Fort Worth my mother's family came to Fort Worth five brothers and three sisters After the Civil War that came from Georgia, which was in shambles and So that would be my great great great Uncle was the first police chief in Fort Worth Another one was Was a fire chief in Fort Worth at that time But these are the kind of people that are forebearers and for those who didn't weren't born or don't have family originally in Fort Worth You can appreciate there you're adopted forebearers and They've given us something here for the public enjoyment. It's free of charge. It's a wonderful place to bring kids It's a wonderful place to come for quiet contemplation to to discover nature and so forth now This botanic garden is also supported today Improved today sustained today by three private organizations The Fort Worth Garden Club built and operates all the conservatory and education complex over here The Fort Worth Botanical Society over by the Rock Springs building over looks so looks over the the takes care of The Japanese Garden and the newcomer in town Brit whose building we're in here Built this building on the side of the old worn out public health building Which used to be fenced off with cyclone fence from the garden and we Had the idea I say we because I'm part of Brit of Putting our fence out there and integrating this into the campus of the garden and expanding the education facilities Expanding the parking with a area. I don't know if you appreciate Somewhere you can read on the wall about this parking area. It collects all the rainfall. There's no runoff from this parking area it collects it and recycles that and much of it is caught in basins out there and sinks down into the back into the ground into the aquifer and Stuff that runs over there is kept in a pond over here and it goes back to irrigate and it goes on the green roof here and so That's part of what what we did with this so this is a public-private partnership in one reason It's a great garden now I'm going to stay in the neighborhood because right across the streets the will Rogers Center built by our forebearers in 1936 now what an incredible facility for generation after generation Because of all of the events of course the Fort Worth Stocks show and rodeo is the highest profile That wouldn't be the show it was if it weren't for these public facilities. They're owned by and operated by the city Today they bring the most lucrative convention and visitor business you can get Equestrian shows I always say anybody that shows horses has disposable income by definition And they dispose of it here in Fort Worth a large chunk of it It's really it's really quite wonderful when I was a kid. That's where you went ice skating The skating rink was very operative Still some of the public shows are not at the convention center circuses and so forth This is a great facility now. It has been expanded grown improved over the years Through public-private partnership because the stock show has been very active at taking The its earnings and putting them back in the city's facilities so they can be used 12 months of the year The stock show is invested more than 50 million dollars in present-day dollar terms in the Facilities of the will Rogers complex. You don't have to go far up the road to find the zoo a fabulous zoo especially for a city of this of this size and when I say of this size we may be 750,000 people now, but it was only two decades ago We were like 350,000 people and still we have that zoo and of course that is a wonderful public-private Partnership with a Fort Worth zoo association that actually under contract with the city Operates it. It's it's an interesting deal the city owns all the facilities and the zoo association owns all the animals They couldn't do without each other obviously So do we see a pattern here well we really do we're lucky in Fort Worth one because of our forebearers the vision they had and The willingness to make investments to Start these cap these beautiful facilities public facilities And they were doing it to make them set make Fort Worth proud at their time But they were doing it thinking of us We also are very lucky for our value the value for quality that we have We understand quality of life is the number one issue in the city you live in and One reason it's so important is what you want most for your children not just for your own pleasure We're very lucky that the public sector and the private sector are both interested in these things and That here we really know how to work together in public private Partnerships some of them going back decades others quite new others just for special purposes And then they and then they dissolve so Here's a lesson in all of this for us we Are somebody's forebearers? We are the forebearers we're the forebearers of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so We have the same responsibilities that our forebearers had every generation must build and must renew What has been built before Because cities are living organism you can't just put them aside on a shelf to admire them They're like they're like your dog You've got to feed them every day you've got to love them every day You've got to take care of their health when they fall ill And they will give you no end of love and pleasure back a city will give you no end of love and pleasure back If you take care of it If you take care, they will thrive if you if you neglect your city It will become despondent and decrepit and die away now All of this when we talk about these public facilities it takes investment It takes capital Investment just by definition and We're a great city because over the decades we have made those capital investments or our forebearers have not not us And so doing so it cost every generation It's our responsibility. I would say there's a thing called intergenerational Neutrality and basically what that means what I do is not taken away From what the next generations will get but what I do gives enough to my generation That I'm not just slaving away and getting nothing in order to provide for the future generations And that's what makes a great city. We wouldn't have a great spirit if we were slaving away thinking We got to make things good in 40 years, but now we can we can skimp And that's it. That's important to remember Now one thing that you encounter in this world today and This is something always been around, but I think it's come to more prominence You would counter what I'm going to call the tax naysayers Okay There there are always a certain number of people are always have been always will Who think that there is virtue in not having to pay taxes? There are people in this city that think that keeping up the streets picking up the garbage Delivering the water keeping the peace and putting out fires is all we need to pay for well And that's what I'm calling tax naysayers Say there shouldn't be taxes. There shouldn't be government though at the same time Many tax naysayers May use our public facilities and our services very very liberally somehow they just don't think it's fair for them to have to pay for it Now you are intelligent men and women your professionals You're you're in the most exciting parts of your lives in your careers. You're working hard To improve things for your family and so forth Because you know that you get what you pay for you know your hard work and your drive Lead to success so you were paying for your homes your cars you're paying for education For your kids Though it may be through a public system you're paying for your entertainment You know you get what you pay for And what you pay for gives you a better quality of life So If you think in the bigger scale of our city and the longer term of your kids generation and your grandkids generation It's up to us to be making capital investments just like You may own your home and you pay every month on a mortgage and one day you'll you'll own a clear of debt We must build things and the city take out debt and we will pay for it every year So that one day debt-free our kids Will have the kind of facilities the kind of city Yes, the quality of streets and sidewalks and sewers and storm drainage But also the quality of facilities that you can use for entertainment education sport All of those things those kind of capital The facilities so that we have them it's incumbent on all of us you me the mayor To to build To To make investments today with our money and hard work to build for our children those things That will ensure what what's here today will be obsolete It'll be too small. It'll be outdated somehow In the future because we got it from two to three generations ago It's incumbent on us to keep that process up and moving We don't have a Lot a lot of capital capacity here in Fort Worth. We struggle with that every year in the budgets We have to choose very carefully how we expend it We have to make decisions on that But one thing we can't afford to do you know City like all businesses has cycles if we think that every time there's An upcycle and things are good and the money's coming into the city budget and we have some surplus Let's cut the taxes That wouldn't be a good day way to run business. I'm making more money this year. I'm gonna cut my prices Because then when the cycle goes and it's tight and we don't have money and you've got to cut something in today's world You can't raise taxes back where they were we have to look at this intelligently and long-term and make these investments for our kids


Good morning, and welcome to the U.S. Institute of Peace. I am Chantal Liouma-Antraat. I am the Associate Vice President here at USIP, in charge of the Jennings Rental Fellowship Programs. This morning event is part of a three-day program, a three-day conference, organized with the generous support of the Dutch Embassy, USAID, and Creative Associates International. And with the creative juices of 10 other international, 10 other civil society, governmental and academic institutions, including women in international security, the International Civil Society Network, the Institute for Inclusive Security, Women for Women International, Peace by Peace, the UN Association of the National Capital Area, the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, the World Bank, and the Office of Global Women's Issues at the U.S. State Department. The two days thus far have been terrific and really extremely inspiring. Now, yesterday and the day before, we talked a lot about UN Security Council resolution in 2013-25, the UN resolution that is all about power and protection, power in the sense of giving voice to women and recognizing that they have to be part of the polity, that they have to be part of the negotiating tables, and protection in the sense that we can no longer tolerate the atrocious crimes that are being committed under the disguise of war. Or as it was said by Margot Wolfstrom, the UN Special Representative on sexual or against sexual violence in conflict, we cannot really wait for peace to give peace to women. Of course, in this context, we talked a lot about the DRC. In a way, the DRC has become sort of symptomatic of the changing nature of war and of some of the most horrendous behaviors of mankind. But as we think about these issues, I think it is good to remember two points that were made by Margot Wolfstrom yesterday. Namely, one is that sexual violence is not something that happens only in Africa. Europe, Asia have seen and are seeing similar abhorrent behavior. And second, that sexual violence is neither cultural nor sexual, it's just plain criminal. Now, in the two panel discussions this morning, we thought it would be good to drill down a little deeper and look more specifically at what is happening in the Congo, to take a more general view of what is happening and then in the second panel to examine how UN Security Council resolutions like 1325, how international diplomacy may affect and guide the action of international actors. I think we have a terrific lineup for you in these two panels. This first panel is the more general panel. And I'm very proud to introduce Severine Hautecer. Severine is a former USIPP scholar that is a recipient of a very competitive Jennings Randolph pre-doctoral competition. She is now an assistant professor of political science at Barnard College at Columbia University and has just turned her doctoral dissertation into a book entitled The Trouble with the Congo, a book that was published by Cambridge University Press and our flyers outside for the book with a 20% discount if you want to buy the book. I think Severine has developed a powerful, new and very provocative argument about what I would call a powerful argument that emphasizes what I would call the context blind culture of international peace builders. And I will leave it up to her to develop her argument in a few minutes. After Severine, I will give the floor to two expert commentators. First, we will hear from Christine Karumba. Christine is the DRC country director of Women for Women International. And I'm not going to read her bio, you have it all in your package, but Tammy Duckworth, the assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, yesterday said, women are strong because of the steel of their determination. And in that sense, Christine is a real iron lady. She has an unhealthy amount of courage and determination, a wealth of experience and has touched and changed the lives of thousands of women in the DRC. She's also the author of a new report published by Women for Women International on the DRC called Stronger Women, Stronger Nations. And the report is outside as well for you to take a copy from. I will then turn to Raymond Gilpin, my friend and colleague here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Raymond is associate vice president at USIP and directs the Center of Innovation on Sustainable Economies. Raymond is also our in-house expert on the DRC. So with that, and without further ado, let me turn it over to Sivirin. Thank you so much, Chantal, and thank you to all of you for coming. In the 15, 20 minutes that I have today, I want to tell you a little bit about the argument of my book, The Travel with the Congo. The book started from the observation that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, from 2002 to 2006, a peace settlement was reached at the national and regional level. So when I say regional, I mean at the level of the Great Lakes region, Burundi, Uganda, Burundi, Congo. But there was no peace settlement at the sub-national level. What I mean is that since 2003, we have seen the official reunification of the country, the re-establishment of diplomatic ties between former enemies. We have seen the establishment of a transitional government. We have seen the holding of national elections in the Congo. And yet, during all those years, and up to now, the eastern provinces have faced massive population displacement and horrific human-right violations on a daily basis. Countless women have been subjected to horrific human-right violence and horrific sexual violence often multiple times. And persistent fighting has regularly brought the Congo back to the brink of civil and international war. So the main question orienting my research was to understand why have the international actors succeeded in helping the Congo build peace at the national and regional level, but not at the sub-national level. And closer to the theme of the conference, I was trying to understand why have women remained at risk in the Congo. The existing policy and scholarly answers to this question are of two kinds. The first one is that peace builders may do their best to establish peace, but economic, political, security, or contextual constraints may impair and adequate treatment of the problems at the root of the violence. Second, vested political, security, economic, or institutional interests may lead some peace builders to consciously ignore violations of the peace agreement. My book develops a different answers that revolves around two central findings. First, violence has continued in the Congo since the war officially ended in a large part because of the persistence of local conflict. And when I say local, I really mean at the level of the individual, the family, the clan, the community, the district, sometimes the ethnic group. Second, when we try to understand why there has been so little work on grassroots conflict resolution by international actors, we see that of course constraints and interests matter. And of course that did influence the intervention strategy. But even more importantly, what I call the dominant international peace building culture shaped intervention in a way that precluded action on local violence and that ultimately doomed the international efforts. My research shows that Western and African diplomats, United Nations peacekeepers, and the staff of most non-governmental organizations involved in conflict resolution share a set of ideologies, rules, rituals, assumptions, definitions, standard operating procedures. This common culture influences the peace builders understanding of the causes of violence, the past world peace, and the roles of foreign actors. In the Congo, the presence of this peace building culture explains why massive international peace building efforts have only very rarely targeted local conflicts and therefore why the international intervention has failed to have the Congo build a sustainable peace. So in this presentation, I will very briefly develop these two main ideas. I'll be really extremely brief because I'm basically summarizing 350 pages in 10 minutes. But I'd be of course very happy to give you more detail on any point of the argument during the discussion. Also, please keep in mind that the book focuses on the period of the transition, so from 2003 to 2006, and things have evolved a little bit since then, and I'd be very happy to talk more during the discussion about the few recent changes. But overall, you will see that local conflicts and the peace building culture remain just as influential now as they were during the transition. The argument that I developed in the book builds on all the data that I collected for the project. So just very briefly, I spent a year and a half just doing field observations in the most violent provinces of the Congo. I also conducted over 330 interviews with Congolese political, civil society, and military and diplomatic actors with victims of violence, with perpetrators of violence, with foreign diplomats, staff of international and non-governmental organizations. And I did all that in the Congo mostly, but also in France, Belgium, the United States, and South Africa. And of course, I drew on document analysis. So the book first shows how in the Congo, the dominant peace building culture shapes the international understanding of violence. Basically, most international actors understand the continuing violence in the Congo as a top-down problem. So as you all know, UN officials and diplomats and the staff of most non-governmental organizations interpret continued fighting and massacres in the Congo as the consequence of national and regional tensions. So for example, they focus on tensions between President Kabila and the various leaders of the different rebel armed groups. Or they focus on the tensions between the Congo, Ravindra, Uganda, Burundi. And I show in the book that these kind of top-down understanding is mainly the result of socialization and training processes. And in addition, these international peace builders usually view local conflicts as the result of either insufficient state authority or of the Congolese people's so-called inherent propensity to violence. And I want to highlight two shared understanding that are particularly influential and detrimental and that still persists today. The first is that since June 2003, international actors have labeled the Congo as a so-called past conflict situation. And this label determined a change of strategy for most peace builder. For example, since the Congo was not at war anymore, side-national actors could not be conceptualized as rebels or warring parties anymore. The Congolese actors participating in the transition became and in the past transition process, they became the only legitimate partners for diplomats and UN staff. The actors who refused to participate in the transition and past transition process and who continued to wage violence were labeled illegal and therefore diplomats and UN staff were not supposed to meet with them. So, mediation between different combatants was not an option anymore because at least one of the parties was considered illegitimate. And we could see how detrimental this construction was in 2006, 2007 when it prevented mediation between President Kabila and rebel leader Laurent Kunda who was considered an illegitimate actor at that time. And mediation was prevented until it was too late and Kunda has attacked Goma. Everything was under siege and large scale violence had resumed. And at that point, diplomats and UN staff were forced to mediate and to meet with Kunda. The second shared understanding that I want to highlight today is that international actors believe that violence is pervasive in the Congo. Many international actors I met still picture the Congo as an inherently turbulent country where violence is normal and to be expected.  And this presentation of violence as normal for the Congo strengthens the lack of international interest for ongoing local conflict. And it turns the lack of interest for local conflict means a lack of resources to address grassroots conflicts. The dominant peace building culture also shapes the international actors understanding of their role. It constricts intervention at the national and regional level as the only natural and legitimate task for UN staff and diplomat. It elevates the organization of elections as a favorite state reconstruction mechanism over more effective approaches. For example, it puts election organization over reconstruction of the bureaucracy, the justice system and effective and disciplined coercion forces. So in brief, this peace building culture has enabled foreign actors to pursue a top-down intervention strategy that permitted and even at time exacerbated fighting massacres, rapes, massive human rights violations during, after the transition and even now. And this culture has enabled international actors to view their intervention as a success at least for a time in 2006, 2007. I then success an alternate analysis of violence which in part explains why the international efforts have failed to build a sustainable peace. In the Congo, now justice during the war and the transition. Continuing violence is motivated not only by the regional and national causes emphasized by most policy and academic analysis but also by longstanding bottom-up agendas whose main instigators are villagers, traditional chiefs, community chiefs or ethnic leaders. Many conflicts revolve around political, social and economic stakes that are distinctively local. For example, there is a lot of competition at the village or district level over who can be chief of village or chief of territory according to traditional law. Who can control the distribution of land and the exploitation of local mining sites? And who can be appointed to local administrative positions? This competition often results in localized fighting and quite frequently it escalates into generalized fighting. So mass violence in the Congo is not coordinated on a large scale but it is rather the project of fragmented micro-level militias which each try to advance their own agendas at the village or district level. And there is an interaction between the local and the national and regional levels namely alliances between local actors and national and regional actors. But since 2003, local actors and local agendas have become increasingly autonomous and self-sustaining and autonomous from the national and regional tracks most notably in the Kivus, Norskatanga and Ituri. And there in these three areas, local disputes have led to clashes that no national or regional actors could stop and that eventually jeopardized the national and regional settlements. So my book progresses to an analysis of the reasons why in these circumstances foreign actors neglected to implement local peace-building programs. And I found that diplomats and UN staff members considered local conflict resolution as an important and familiar and ill legitimate task and admirable. The very idea of becoming involved at the local level clashed so fundamentally with existing cultural norms. And it's so threatened key organizational interests that neither resistance nor external shocks could convince international actors to revise their strategies in a way that took into account the critical role of local conflicts. So in some my main argument is that the dominant peace-building culture shapes the intervener's understanding of peace, violence and intervention in a way that precludes action at the local level. The resulting in attention to local conflicts leads to unsustainable peace-building in the short term, constant violence on the population and potential war resumption in the long term. And I would be very happy to show during the discussion how this analysis can help us better understand many cases of international intervention failures, not only in Africa, but also in the rest of the world. Local conflicts are usually critically important in sustaining violence in most war and post-war environments. And the international peace-building culture almost always precludes international action at the local level. And of course, I have developed really detailed and extensive policy recommendations based on these research findings. And I will just take one minute to mention the main ideas. And of course I'm really happy to talk more about that during the discussion. The main point is that in addition to any top-down intervention, conflict must be resolved from the bottom up. Again, my main argument is not that national and regional tensions don't matter and that national and regional peace-building is unnecessary. My argument is that both macro-level and micro-level peace-building is are needed to make peace sustainable. And of course, local NGOs, local authorities and civil society representatives should be the main actors in this bottom up process. But there are obstacles. Local actors often lack the funding, the logistical means, and sometimes the technical capacity to implement effective peace-building program, effective grassroots peace-building program. So international donors should expand the funding available for local conflict resolution. And they should do so either by shifting their priorities away from immediate elections in post-war area or by increasing their aid budget. And in the Congo, donors, the UN, international and non-governmental organizations and Congolese state authorities at all levels should focus on two high priority areas, land reform and inter-community reconciliation. So again, it's a very brief summary of my research findings and I'd be delighted to talk more about all of this during the discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much. Christine. Thank you very much. Once she was talking, I remember when I grew up and we used to go to the villages every holidays and while going to the village, it was the time for us to reconnect with our own identity. The way our mothers and grandmothers flash water, they farm, we go to farm. It was a moment for us to receive stories from the grandmothers about their courage, about how they are making life to be more and more enjoyable. That was the memories which came to me when she was talking. And now in the DRC is in the eastern part of Congo that is no longer possible because of the atrocities and violences which started since 1994 when the refugee randies came to the DRC. And I feel like I'm dying when I do understand that people can think that it's in our culture or to killing one another, to raping one another, to destroying, come again, to destroying our communities. It's not in our culture. We have been living in a beautiful context and the beauty of that context has made us to strength because we still link to that as part of our self, as part of our DNA. We still have those memories as strong as we live even despite the atrocities we are seeing. Back to the work we do as women for women international, we have the women to be able to move from a victim state to become an active citizen. And what we developed is a market-based skill trainings and right education because most of the women we do work with are social excluded women. They are women on the grass roots who does not, does they never had a chance to education. And they are those women who have been in a situation or denial not having access to education. So what is the entire love is her family, her children, and her husband. And we have seen through the process that now those women have been refused to be wives, mothers because of being raped.  You are cursed. That's the way the women are living in the DRC, eastern part of the DRC. We developed a men's leadership program because we saw that men, sometime we know that they are perpetrators but also they are ignorant. Ignorance lead them to act or to run from their responsibilities. So our main purpose with the men's leadership was to let them understand the women's rights and how they can protect the women. Which role they have to play in the process. And we also developed a commercial integrated farming initiative where we help the women to use the farming practices to grow crops and to sell and to feed their families. The program in the DRC started in 2005 and as a women for women organization we have so far served around 271,000 women and we have distributed as direct aid around 89 million. But in the DRC specifically, we have served around 37,000 women and we have distributed around four million in direct aid.  Put them in a position. I remember when I participated in Walung on one of the men's leadership training, one leader stood and say, women for women sometimes you don't understand where we are. These women they were raped before us or we are there to protect them. We couldn't protect them. We are feeling ashamed to not be able to protect those women. It's like we have been disarmed from our authority as leaders. So for us to be able to know how again to reconcile with the women, with the community and to play our role is somehow our priority. It was the way of saying, let you engage us. Let us men understand how we can contribute. And that's where I feel like we miss our approach programs are missing that substance in our prioritization, in our program implementation for building pieces in the DRC. In the survey we conducted, we have seen that around 93 men leaders after they have graduated, they have expressed their commitment to work to prevent the sexual gender-based violence committed so they are willing to stand and to defend the women. They are willing to stand in the side of that women to say that has happened to you but has happened to the entire community. They have targeted you, but they were targeting an entire community to paralyze the community. I am not the first person who said that the rep was used as a weapon of war. It really was used and still used as a weapon of war.  I do know that health and wealth goes together. So when they are at that level, the poverty will continue and the cycle of violence will continue. When somebody was around a gang group who which pays, they will be motivated to go to that gang group. I'm not defending that they should go to gang group because there are some values they should protect but that's the fact, that's what is happening. And again, before the men leaders attended the program, 51 of them, they were saying that actually women, they don't have nothing to receive from their husband and community for their integration. They rep victim, they don't have nothing. Men doesn't have no role to play on that. But that has increased after the training session to 96%. And for us to see that the men can understand, we have a role to play, to appease the suffering of the rep victim, who are our mothers, our wives and the citizen of the community. And I remember one man is a military military officer in Uvira, who attended the men's leadership training. And for him, he was saying that sometimes we neglect to, or we don't pay attention to what is happening to women. And even when they come to us to report the case, we just, we don't care. It's like, what does that, doesn't have any concern to us and why should we punish the perpetrators, why? So he was saying like that, but when he received understanding on the consequences on the larger scale, on the community, then he started changing his perceptions. And that's why me I strongly believe that, as he said himself, that we have to train military and soldiers, they have to be disciplined. They have to know their roles. They have to work on economical development, farmers, they have to be mechanics, all the job they should do so that at least they don't destroy the population they are protecting. In the survey we did, we discovered that what the women are just saying, they still trust that peace is achievable. And that has really shaped my head and my understanding. When in the chaos where we see that in the leadership, in the security, in the institution is like chaotic, but the women still believe that peace is achievable. Who are we not to believe and build on that momentum? If the women on the grassroots still believe, despite the failure of the international community to accomplish its promises, you can see the UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The failure is so obvious. The millennium development goal, where are we in the DRC context? It's a failure. And we have to acknowledge it. When we acknowledge it, we can develop strategies at least to appease the life of Congolese. Imagine five million people died in the DRC. My sister from Bosnia told me that there are 4.5 million population in Bosnia. Imagine the entire Bosnia vanished. That's what is happening. We are citizens of the earth. And sometimes those figures does not matter sometime because it's a far away story. But me, I live, I feel the fear of being in that context. And what the women was expressing to us, for them, 41% of the women, they fear to go to work out of their home work, home. So for them to go to farm, to go to flush water, in that context of conflict, it is like dying. But what should they do? They have to farm. They have to survive. They have to flush water to survive. And the fear for us of seeing that 87 of the women participants, they have experienced people who have lost their siblings. And what that mean fear to them, what that mean peace to them? We have to look on the eyes of the women. For them, peace is to be able to go out and to farm. Peace for them is to have market for their produce. That mean peace to them. And let us engage the grassroots. And let us engage the grassroots. Let us engage the grassroots as peace builders so that we can reverse what is happening. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think this brought us down to the bottom, the field. And I'll now turn it over to Raymond Gilpin and try to tie this all together. Thank you very much. And thank you all for joining us. I have a very difficult task following two very able speakers and trying to condense the wealth that they have shared in five minutes. I'm also very pleased that we are focusing not just on macro issues or generalities but that we have a sense of how we connect the dots not just in the policy environment because that's where a lot of the discussion starts and ends. How do policies connect? But connecting the policy conundrum with reality on the ground is a much larger challenge. Let me flog Severin's book a bit. If you haven't got a copy, get one. Are there discounts outside? Yeah. What I like about it is the fact that she spends quite a bit of time talking about how practical ways reality on the ground could be so much different if we just had the approach right from the beginning. We talked a bit with the previous speaker. Christine talked about the scale of the tragedy not just in terms of numbers but in terms of the indelible impact it has on the lives and livelihoods of families. That's not just a woman of families and I think she really brought us down to why are we engaged? Why are we involved? Why are we thinking about this? On page 76 of the book which I told you to buy you're not leaving without it. I'm joking. On page 76 of the book Severin recalls a discussion with a French official who likened the Congolese approach to violence to Europe in the Middle Ages and reading the book that's one of the sentences that stood out not just because I find it abhorrent but because it's indicative of the milieu. The approaches we believe that we are operating in a middle-aged type setting and therefore a lot of the international approaches have been very medieval in their approach. They have a Hobbesian view of the world where life is short and brutish and therefore we really don't have to do much at the local level. However, anyone who knows anything about the conflict dynamics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo knows that we're dealing in a space, in a theater where although we do have state-to-state and interstate complexities a lot of the dynamics are at the local level and so the ability to comprehend that and discard the notion that life is short and brutish therefore let's focus on the policy and it will trickle down eventually is misguided and the policy pronouncements that Severin rightly points out are spot on. However, there's some things I don't agree with in Severin's book. I wouldn't list them. But the one thing that I think she did that I have a hobby horse about is the tendency when we're dealing with either humanitarian or development issues to default to jargon. Jargon is good because it's catchy, top-down, bottom-up but again that really doesn't tell you what you're talking about because top-down in Liberia is different from top-down in the DRC that Christine is talking about and when you read the book and what you leave with is a context that you need the top-down formula. Many times we, and one of the things that Severin's book and Christine mentioned is that we think that we are in the theater we've heard that millions have died millions have been displaced and therefore we need to do something. However, the people really don't know what to do so let's get there and we need to think outside the box. I think that is one of the worst phrases that business schools have bequeathed to the world. I agree. When you enter a theater the first thing you do is look inside the box because the answers are probably there. Both Severin and Christine have given examples how at the community level you really don't need rocket science or brain surgery to figure it out and we really need to pay some more attention to this. One thing I think that Severin did not mention I think is probably because of the time the duration she's talking about or she's dealing with or she's analyzing is the importance of an international champion in these sort of interventions. If you look across the world at Bosnia you had NATO front and center. Sierra Leone you had the British front and center and so there was some consensus on who is leading, what will be doing, how we will be engaging because even think about it even if we did have the will and the commitment and there are so many different players doing different things you will not be able to get the objective to accomplish the objective of engaging the communities, engaging the households and moving whole societies from instability and violence to stability and peace. That's one thing that I would have loved to see a bit more and we could talk about how that is evolving as we speak. Let me just very quickly mention three things I think we need to consider moving on. I think the first is linked to my last point. We need a champion whether it's a coalition of the willing or a group of countries but we need a champion that has the credibility the resources and long term commitment not just to formulate the policy framework but to link it directly to community needs over time. And this is very important not just because the transition from humanitarian to development takes time but also because you're dealing with healing societies and that does take a lot of time and so there needs to be a lot of flexibility as the societies adjust to new realities to be able to have approaches to speak more to their needs. Secondly I would say and Christine's book is excellent at this let's avoid reductionism. Let's don't try to reduce the problem to bite-sized slogans we can feed to advocacy groups or legislators. Let us take time to understand the dynamics in various areas and apply accordingly. And thirdly I think this is an excellent example and a great candidate for the use of smart power. Smart power involves diplomacy that would isolate the spoilers development that would empower the enablers and defense that protects communities. I don't think that there is that the trouble with international efforts has analyzed 2003 through 506 but the trouble is that repeatedly we don't have this coordination we don't have this focus and approach and we don't accord complex problems like the DRC the intellectual rigor that they deserve and we are a little surprised that we missed the mark in terms of outcomes and impact. I will stop here and be more than happy to respond to questions of participating in Q&A. Thank you. Thank you very much Raymond I think you have pointed out the dilemmas and problems when we are trying to dissect some of these issues I would like to give Sivin maybe just a few minutes to give some quick reactions to what Raymond has said and you can stay maybe from here from the table and then I want to open it up to the audience. Sivin. Thank you so much. Can you hear me? First thing on Christine's presentation to me what Women for Women International is doing is exactly the kind of thing that we need in the Congo the kind of organizations that really know the specific local areas the specific villages and that has solutions and programs that are really tailored to the community and that put local actors that put the villagers in the driver's seat so that they decide what they want and how they want it and I think that everything that Christine was talking about on how they approach peace building and human rights in the Congo is really illustrative of the kind of grassroots movement that are going on in the Congo and that can be supported effectively by international actors. On Raymond's presentation yes, the thing about linking violence in the Congo to violence in the Middle Ages it's something that I saw in 2003 to 2006 and now back to the Congo for a year to work on another research project and I continue to see this approach this idea that well it's really an environment we need to reconstruct the state now the big mantra is we need to do state building we need to do restoration of state authority and as Raymond was saying one of these slogan is like top done bottom up now with state building and state building now in the Congo means we're going to build road and we're going to build big buildings prison, jails and administrative buildings and justice buildings and we're going to build them and then the main idea for the state building strategy is to make sure that we reconstruct a state state authority in the provinces in the rural areas where there is no state authority because we think that reconstructing state authority by itself is good the problem with this kind of approach it really helps an approach you have anarchy you need to reconstruct state authority the problem is that when you talk to people in the Congo they will tell you well the worst thing that can happen to me in a day is to meet with a soldier or to meet with a police officer so we're coming with our thing we need to extend state authority we need to make sure that the national army, the soldiers the policemen, the authority can now be in the villages but the problem is that there is no questioning on what kind of soldiers who are deploying in the villages what kind of policemen, what kind of state authority so basically we're increasing human rights violations by deploying soldiers and policemen who are preying on the population I'd be happy to talk more about that in five years when I finish this research project I see we have now a long line of people with comments and questions so I would like to ask all of you to keep it brief Agnes, I believe you were first but I also remember you can sometimes go on so could you please keep it brief and one question because we have a long line of people we're trying to find a solution for the Congo and we need to pinpoint all the people who are responsible for the situation who are who are responsible who are the true perpetrators of those violence they are known and we can see that on other side of the Congo not in the eastern there is no sexual violence or gender based from the FRDC in the eastern side of the Congo those are Rwanda's military who have been integrated in the FRDC army I'm trying who gave them weapons who trained them I will end by asking the question those people who are today in the army group were former in the time who gave them the weapon or those material that they need to perpetrate the violence in the eastern I would like to thank each one of you for your great book and analysis and the commentaries thank you you alluded to the importance of natural resources and in particular mineral resources and when you mention the local conflict you indicated that part of it is for access and control of a land but not only land as farming land but land as where you have mines and those vast richness and quite exclusive richness that the DRC has in particular in terms of Colton which is an absolutely resource that the DRC has almost exclusively in the world do you actually see this as one of the major factor of fueling the conflict and if so what could be the policy implication should we envisage something along the line of a Kimberley process to replicate what has been done for Diamond on other resources such as Colton and is that an option thank you thank you very much good morning, I'm Sanam Anderlini International Civil Society Action Network as you were speaking, I felt as if I was back in 1996 in London because we were talking about I was working at International Alert and we were doing things like coming up with conflict and peace analysis as the basis of first understanding what's happening and looking at who are the actors, regional, local and so forth and to get the analysis to then be able to determine what kind of programming needed to be done with who and where were the positive and where were the negative forces and so forth and it was all meant to be multi-stakeholder what I've seen over the last 10-15 years is that those frameworks have filtered somewhat into the work of development actors but when it comes to being used in a cursory way, sometimes they arrive in country and they're sitting in their hotel rooms and just cutting and pasting, other times they do the framework but then they say oh no, we can't do this because our 5-year plan says that we should be doing something else and so my question is what are we seeing in terms of the donors or the international community coming in, in terms of how they engage the different stakeholders really to get that initial understanding because I agree, I think we do need to work the regional, think about the Kimberley approach and what is Rwanda doing but at the same time clearly what you were saying also makes sense and who out there is doing it and how do we make sure that it actually gets done, thanks. Okay Agnes, yes there are Rwandan perpetrators there is a Rwandan environment in the Congo the violence is linked in part to the presence of the Rwandan state of Rwandan actors but it's not the only problem for example most, I mean this analysis everything is because of Rwanda and if Rwanda would be out of the Congo then we would be at peace I don't think it holds because for example in 1993 Rwanda was not in the Congo the Rwandan genocide had not happened yet and yet you had extensive local conflicts in Masseise you have massive human rights violations so I'm afraid that by continuing to say there is no local conflict there is no conflict among Congolese people it's all the fault of Rwanda we're just pushing international peace builder to continue to work at the regional level and to ignore what grassroots people what people on the ground really want which is to live at peace with their neighbors but also to be able to, for example to know who owns the land to know who is entitled to traditional power to legitimate power basically they want to have conflicts resolved on the local level and not only on the regional level Cecil the importance of national resources as, yes it is one of the factors leading the conflict it is extremely important at the local level just as it is at the national level in terms of what is best what's best to do I think we need to look at each specific mineral and how they are dug out and what are the social implications of the minerals in the different communities and I haven't looked very much at the response to mineral exploitation per se but I would be afraid of having one blanket solution designed in international capital and then that just trickles down on the ground and that may be disrupt the livelihood of people there have been really interesting analyses done by various Congolese and international groups on what mining resources means for people in the villages and every time the policies that are thought about and that are designed in western capital usually they actually hurt people on the ground more than they help them so I would be more for an approach that actually goes to the various villages, the various mining areas and that really makes sure that the solution is locally grounded and international alert is actually one of the in the book I talk about exceptions to the dominant approach and actually I have a lot on international alert and search for common ground and life and peace institute what we see in terms of Donna and how they engage the different stakeholders what I've seen mostly is that they are like oh yes we do have local partners but local usually means national so engaging local partners still mostly means talking to the government in Kinshasa or at best talking with the governor of North Kivu it doesn't mean going to Masisi, to Ruchiru to Walikale and sitting down with the villagers and asking them what they want and how they want to do things so I think we need to in terms of the framework and in terms of what kind of advocacy we want to do I think we need to incite it's great now you're taking national authorities into account but you know let's let's go a step further Christine do you have a comment maybe on the the local international interaction? I think she said everything that the way we had to the views, the eyes of the experts in the ground as the grassroots people is really matters because they may give us some insight we cannot as an international community and that can help us that our investment in terms of program is more effective and can be there can be a ownership on what we are implementing because overall is for those communities so we have to live and empower those communities to be able to stand on themselves and to develop a sustainable piece in their environment just a very quick one on the resource question I completely agree with you that we need to have things that work at a local level but we also need to have instruments that speak to like the companies that do business and the I'm not sure if you know about the franks bill here in the United States has specific language on the DRC requiring companies to specify who they bought it from where it came from etc and this is recognized internationally as taking a leadership role in trying to bring transparency to a very opaque process it's a first step but I think it's an important step and the next issue will be how that then connects to reality on the ground let's go to the next and last round please I'm going to start with Congo Global Action just like Sanan just say listening to the presentation of Miss Otisere I went back 10 years ago when the framework about the Congo conflict was about ethnic conflict I think that was the big mistake when everybody was pushing to see the Congolese conflict as an ethnic conflict and that's why mistakes have happened a lot because they forgot to mention the regional and everything that goes around because I'm going to disagree the problem in Congo is not local itself because saying that we have to take put a special interest on the local conflict between neighbors or between people living in the same village it's saying that in the Congolese are some kind of suspicious of people where law and order cannot be implemented we have to listen to the villager to have like a specific way of dealing with conflict between neighbors conflict between neighbors happen all over the place I mean in the Congo all they have to do is to implement the laws and we have a constitution how land is reformed how we belong to what land but saying that we have to forget about that and have a specific where the NGOs with the people trying to figure out how to reform the land and I mean talk about that's criminality when a neighbor kills another neighbor that's criminal matter in 1993 like you said the reason why people start fighting is because the states just failed the Mobutu regime was failing and there were no order, no authority that's why people start avenging themselves but in the setting like now we are we passed that 10 years, 15 years ago where we have laws, we have a government we have all those things we stop talking about local justice and local and traditional peace building and we have to implement the laws I mean the Congolese are human being just like everybody, they know about rights and about the justice system they just have to implement that so I really have an issue with that I think we got your point Hello, my name is Valérie Rousseau and I am a senior fellow here at the USIP thank you very much for your presentation each of you, Severina I really really appreciated your book thank you very much two brief questions the first one is that you mentioned that things have evolved since since I would like you just to stress the main points the second thing is you stress two priorities areas Land Reform Commission, Truth Commissions what would be concretely the role of international peace builders in these processes and I have some I have a concern in mind I know quite well the Belgian case since I am a Belgian and in Belgium there is a fear to be seen as a post-colonial power of course and it's a real feeling of guilt which is untenable but which is extremely important in terms of foreign policy I think and knowing that the Land Reform and the Truth Commission are by definition local what could be their implication in this local area because they will not feel comfortable it's much more easier to give money for the election right thank you we have four more people may I ask you to be very brief so that we can all four of you can get your comments or questions my name is Jean Cassando I speak in French I would only like to apologize I don't have any questions I am Congolese I don't have any questions okay can you comment if it can be very brief if you please madame we are here at the institute you can use the microphone my voice is very loud is it for peace if we really want peace in Congo we have to speak with Congolese what they say is what they want for their country we are at the US institute of peace if you really like the peace to get back in Congo you need to go talk to the Congolese to go tell them how to bring this peace I will give you an African Nadaj there are a lot of Congolese experts because they have lived 5 years in Congo they have read books on Congo but there are a lot of Congolese who have been here for 30 years in America they are not American experts but there is an African Nadaj who says this a piece of wood he can make hundreds or thousands in the water or in the river he will never become a crocodile I will give you one short Nadaj a proverb there are so many experts on the Congolese matter because they have spent 5 years in Congo and read so many books but there are so many Congolese who have spent 30 years here they will never say they are experts in America and also in Africa we say a piece of wood can spend 20 years in the water he will never become a crocodile what is it when it's about water or everything in the sea go ask the question to the crocodile with the panel like today we would wish that with the Congolese speak on the panel speak about the Congolese to tell you how we can use that and you ask him ask your question it's not every time we give this possibility it's been 3 days we came to a conference that talked about women with war during every 3 days we talked about the Congolese the problem of the Congolese is very important she emphasizes that over these 3 day conference we have talked a lot about the Congolese so it means it's really important issue I would like to say we talk a lot about the democratic elections that took place in the Congo I am here I have lived democratic elections here the candidates we put it there we put their names it's where they were born what are their studies Dr. Assisi has it excuse me we put where they came from we will put my 4th and 5th generation in the Congo there were elections democratic there were 2 candidates in the first round there was one who had 60% of votes who was born in the Congo who had it Dr. Assisi had it there was another we didn't know even 2 generations of the Congo we didn't have all of it the one who didn't give us so now I don't say it's not Congolese Dr. Assisi because for someone to be there it's someone who has the knowledge we didn't say he must be an expert but he still has the knowledge it was a young boy who came as a rebel we understood my colleague Raymond Gilpin will give a brief answer and also translate what you have just said during this time there was a mapping report Madam, please please I just want to I'm not going to translate because that will be a catastrophe but there's no need to there's no need to translate I think the gist of the issue was that this is the Congolese issue we should be listening to the Congolese I'd just like to point out that the United States Institute of Peace is the only institute in Washington DC that has an ongoing Congolese diaspora series over the last two years we have had meetings with just the Congolese telling us what the problems are what the solutions are we have brought Deputy Assistant Secretary of State here we have brought people from the Treasury from the Department of Defense here to listen to just the Congolese and we have also brought people from the World Bank the UN, the IFC here to listen to the Congolese we are currently editing a document written by Congolese so I think it is very very disingenuous for the lady to suggest that we disregard the Congolese voice the interpreter is one of the authors on the book on the paper that we are writing just by the Congolese and so I think that anybody who thinks that the Institute of Peace disregards or does not engage the Congolese diaspora or Congolese people or the crocodiles in the river should be I think that is I take this very personally because we have gone over and beyond to make sure that the Congolese diasporas voices are heard, no need to translate George, no need to translate no need to confirm I think people can take me at my word this panel again illustrates that of all the countries in the world we are spending an entire panel on Congo and I think it helps for us to understand the value of bringing different perspectives in and then what is wrong we say this exactly is what is wrong this is the right way to do it rather than suggest that if you are not from the region you don't have an opinion or you don't have a voice I think that is very on democratic on Congolese and on American I think it's probably a very sour note on which to bring a really really good panel to the close because we have actually run out of time but I still want to give both Christine and Zidane a few seconds to have some I also want to remind you that the whole morning we continue talking about the Congo so please hold your fire if I may for the next session I can feel the way she's feeling but that's not the way we can solve problems the way we can solve problems we are bringing really the reality of Congolese on the table it is clear that they may not be Congolese by nationality but there are many many people who have the heart of Congolese who cares about what is happening for Congolese and who are willing to see the changes reason why three days thinking about how we can solve problems it can is very very something for me to know that people are just here not for anything but to see how we can solve problems in Congo it is for me a plow for everybody and we are in the process and we need everybody on board to make sustainable changes in the country and across the region thank you on the first question the ethnic framework thinking that the Congo is an ethnic problem it's still one of the misconception that we hear today I just want to clarify when I said that conflicts are local it doesn't mean that conflict are ethnic it's different you can have local conflicts about political power about economic resources about social status it's not an ethnic problem it's just local versus national regional and a bit puzzle as to conflict resolution in the Congo means treating the Congolese as a subspecies we have local conflict resolution in every country in the world it has different names different implementers sometimes it's NGO sometimes it's the justice system we have it in France we have it in the United States we have it in African countries in Asian country so I don't see why we couldn't have it in the Congo and I think that Congolese are entitled to it just as are Americans and other citizens of the world on Valerie's question how things have evolved basically I see two steps in the right direction the first one is that now we start to have an acknowledgement that local conflicts matter so for example when I'm based in Norskivu this year in Goma and people very regularly talk to me about land conflict and the importance of land conflict which is something that they never do they would never do five years ago so I think that's a step in the right direction the problem is that then when they talk to me about land conflict it's about the problem of refugees returning to the Congo so it's still this local conflict linked to a big regional issue the return of refugees based in Rwanda coming back to the Congo and they don't talk about land conflict that matter for villagers who are not linked to refugees return so it's just a small step and same thing in terms of programs to support local conflict resolution we have a small step in the right direction for example UN Habitat now is doing programs to resolve land conflict in the two Kivus again it's a very very small step because when you look at how many people they have and the resources they have they have six people working on the two Kivus and one car it's great to have a program we just need to give them so much more resources and same thing for all kind of local conflict resolution programs and finally concretely how international actors can support local conflict resolution and make sure that we're not imperialist or neocolonial et cetera to me when we really put Congolese grassroots actors in the driver's seat and we have a role just as enabler you need money then we give you money you need logistic resources you need a car, you need some training on how to do something or something else when we actually respond to what they ask us to do and we really make sure that they are the spoke person that they are the program manager that they are the program director that they decide what they want to do and how they want to do it then to me it's not a neocolonial enterprise but it's the work that Congolese grassroots actors themselves want to do thank you very much I hope you will join me in thanking the panel thank you and Raymond Gilton and I would say stay tuned because Raymond is indeed the one who regularly organizes events here at USIP on the Congo I would suggest that we take a very short break of five minutes and then reconvene here at 11 o'clock for the next panel


Hi you guys! Welcome to a really quick, really easy, extremely beginner-friendly sewing project for your holiday table this year. We are making utensil pockets. It's just exactly how it sounds. It's a little pocket that holds your utensil. You can put these to the side of your plates on your plates however you want to adorn your table this year. But I wanted to put together a tutorial that literally comes together in less than five minutes so that you can crank these out really, really quickly, whether you are cooking for just your family of four or an entire feast and you've got 20 people coming over. You can literally make one for every place setting. The first thing you're going to need is fabric. I pulled out this absolutely stinking adorable, cannot get enough of it, fabric line that Free Spirit fabric sent to me. It's from Henry Glass. It's called Timber Nomi's Tree Farm. I'm going to be using these two fabrics. The first step is to cut two 5 by 16 rectangles. If you're using a directional print, make sure that the short end, the five inch end, is what is running the direction of your fabric. If I were using the trees for example, this would be the five inch side and the 16 inch side would come down here. If you're using non-directional fabric, it doesn't matter. You can cut it any old which way. Then you need to interface it with just some light interfacing. This is the, as you guessed it, if you've watched my channel for any period of time, heat and bonds interfacing, ThermoWeb, I absolutely love their product, mostly because you don't have to use steam to get it to adhere to the fabric so I can use my Cricut heat press and it makes super quick work out of interfacing all of these pieces because you do want to interface both sides of your utensil holder. The first step is going to be to put these two things wrong sides together. Okay? I know that's going against everything we've ever said we're ever going to do, but wrong sides together it is.  But again, we're trying to make this in a hurry. Santa's coming, right? People are ringing your doorbell. The roast is almost done. Like we got to get these done, right, before everybody comes over. So take this over to your sewing machine, baste at a quarter inch, three-eighths of an inch. Don't be too precise about it. Just a similar same allowance all the way around all four edges. You're completely enclosing this. I'm going to go do that and I'll meet you back here. Okay, so we've got all of that basted. They are attached. You can tell my edges are a hot mess. That's totally okay. Now we need to prepare our little pocket. So we're going to be flipping this up like so, like I just showed you. And you can see this edge here is a raw edge. By all means, you can turn that down, right? And then the next step would be to stitch down these sides. I don't even want to bother with that. So I am going to treat this like I am all other edges of my utensil holder. And that is with this sneaky little trick. And that is these bad boys from Kai scissors. But did you know that they make rotary cutters that are either like pinked, you know, like little zigzag, or they even have this wavy one, which is super cool as well. So that is what I'm going to be using to finish, finish the raw edges of my project. That's going to prevent me from having to hem anything from having to turn anything right sides together. So basically, the only downside to these things is that you cannot use a ruler with them like this and then run it along the edge. You run the risk of the little corners clipping the edge of your ruler and that will dull them.  But even if it's not perfectly straight, I mean, it's homemade, right? It's supposed to be a little bit organic, a little bit free form. So we just go along like this. This is obviously the wavy one. And you can see that it makes that super, super cool little wave there. You can also use the pinking one. That would look like this. I'll show you on this scrap. So that's what the pinking one does. It makes little zigzags. So you can do waves or zigzags. I just think these things are so super cool. You can get them on Amazon. So they'll be delivered really quickly. I will have a link in the description box for you on where to grab these. But once you have that little bottom edge, or like I asked, what will be the top edge of your pocket done, you turn this over. We are flipping this guy up five and a half inches, five and a half. Again, we're not being super precise. But you can see now that makes our pocket and now that edge is finished. So we're going to go back to our machines. We're going to stitch along here back stitching over this little bump here and back stitching at the bottom as well. Same thing down here, making our pocket but leaving this little edge open. All right. So our pocket is sewn. This is where our silverware will go. And as you can imagine, we're just going to use the same rotary cutter to trim away all these edges and create a really pretty finish along our project. Now, while I'm doing this, I will say that if you have some extra time on your hands, or maybe you have some elves that can help, the one thing that would totally elevate this project is if you were to also use these as the name plates. If you were to put like Uncle Frank up here or even right here, I think that would be really cute too. You can do that, obviously on a Cricut. If you have a fancy embroidery machine, you can do it there. I just think that that would take this up a notch and it might even be a fun little thing that people would want to take home with them. I don't really know how they would use it, but you know, that's their problem. But it would be a cute way to adorn the table, have everybody know what their seating assignment is and, you know, be fully, fully homemade. Here are our finished pockets, right? I mean, I, without all the talking, this probably took three minutes. Okay, I grabbed some of my silverware. You can drop these in here. Like so, I don't really know what the proper way to do it in a pocket is. Obviously, I know how you do it on a table setting, but I mean, you guys, that couldn't be cuter or faster. So I hope this helps you kind of feel the holiday spirit and give you a little bit of extra push to maybe do something special for your table this year. Leave a comment in the comment section below if you have any questions about this project at all. As you can see, it is for the absolute novice dust off your sewing machine from when you made masks. And I promise that you can make this and then check the description box for links to all the products I mentioned today, including the rotary cutters as well as the fabric line. It'll take you to Free Spirit's website. And then you from there you can find out where you can buy it locally. So you can grab all of this stuff before this weekend, really. So have fun making these, send me pictures. If you make them, I want to see all your tables done up with the little utensil pockets included and bonus points if you make it into a nameplate too. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you all very soon. Bye.


Slide around a little more, but I did want to come back to Horizon 3 and check this car out, that's a really long e-brake grab, but we got it. What's up everybody, welcome back to the channel, I'm EvilRabbit here, back on Forza Horizon 3 in the Quartz Regali. Not really sure why Forza decided to bring this into the game other than some other cars like, you know, Chasers and such. But we're here today, gonna rip this thing around, we're gonna see if we can't get this thing to drift, it's a big girl. So it comes stock with like 430 some horsepower I believe, all wheel drive, let's double check that. 433, all wheel drive, weighing 5600 pounds, it's a big girl. But can we get it to drift? That is what we are here to do to see if we can make this Quartz Regali drift after we rip it around here stock for a second. I mean it sounds pretty good, I wonder if we can actually even make a real drive swap this.  It's a big girl. Okay, alright so we're gonna hop into the other show and see what we can do to this thing. I don't know, it's pretty big, it weighs a lot, I don't even know if we can actually get this thing to drift, we're gonna have to get a lot of power out of this thing. Quartz Regali, it's free to pick up if you haven't picked yours up yet.  So I guess we're gonna be real drive bias, can we do that, can we at least do a diff? Definitely gonna keep it on stock tires. Do you like those wheels though? So we can't even make it rear wheel drive, but we could probably make it rear wheel bias. So we're just gonna, I guess, serve as much power as we can in this thing. Brakes, fully upgrade this thing. Rally suspension, we're gonna dump this thing to the ground of course. Not a fan of the wheels, big roll cage, drift taxi. So let's see what type of power we can get into this thing. I mean it looks like it's gonna make plenty of power, but I mean we're definitely gonna need that power since it still weighs 4,000 pounds. Jesus man, this thing is huge. Alright so power wise, 800 horse. Yup, we're just gonna throw this thing all the way up there, max it out and then we'll drop down if we have to. I'm thinking we need to change those ugly wheels. And not a fan. See what other, ooh those aren't too bad. We need something very flashy.  Alright, final deal on this 877 horsepower, 4,100 pounds, $58,000, I'll buy that while I have a sip of my engling here. Alright, now let's see what we can do tuning wise on this thing. So we're gonna have to bury this thing. Throw some camber at it. Some camber. There we go, baseline tune. Any roll bars, soften them up a little bit more. And we're gonna drop this thing as far as we can.  Frame dragging. We're gonna have to mess with the differential here because we're probably, we're gonna have to throw this 100% to the rear. And lock the rear and take it completely off the front. Alright, it didn't go as low as I thought it was gonna go. And it's raining, of course. Oh my gosh. 100 horsepower, essentially rural drive. Oh my God, this thing is so big. Hey girl, I mean, it kind of slides though. It definitely can feel the difference, the difference of like, rural drive converted or straight rural drive. So what better place to test this out? Then others can go into a wall. Then at the parking lot simulator, of course. Head over to there with, this thing is such a big car. That was one of just a tap. Alright, of course, Regalti. Yep, here we go. So can you drift it?  This thing is massive. There's like no room in this parking lot for this, but it like, I mean, it slides. I mean, hands down. You can make it drift. Is it the best drift car? No. Is it pretty fun? Yeah, it's definitely different. Definitely fun. Excuse me sir, I'd like to pick you up for your ride to the show. And by the way, we're gonna be going sideways. So definitely, definitely a different feel. You can definitely feel the difference, like I said, of it being all rear wheel bias, not all rear wheel drive, because you do still have the zero steer feel.  This thing is crazy though.  But, you know, it's free. We'll mess with it.  We're good. This thing is huge. It'll definitely drift. So let's throw it up to double hairpins here. See if we can't really get it to see what it can really do in a, you know, point scoring environment. I mean, it looks aggressive. It makes me not gonna lie. It does look pretty cool, but all right, let's go. Pretty nice. There's a car there. And the dirt, still getting points though. Oh my God.  Not getting all the points in the world, but looking good doing it. Big boat. I mean, respectable 69K. Trace. Why should never text and drive? Never look at your phone and drive. That's what happens. You hit trees. We're gonna sink up hill one more time. There we go. Clutch kick it back. Can you drift? Look for it. You can. In the trees. So we're gonna head up to hillside and see what we can do on hillside. Maybe hit one or two more drift zones here. But overall, can it drift? Yes, it can drift. So I am a little bit sad. I was supposed to be getting a package today that I did not get. I was sad, but it will be here tomorrow. So super excited about that. I said super excited to bring that to you guys here when that package gets here. So look forward to the channel here in the next day or so for that. Throw this in. Oh my. Clutch kick. Throw steer drifting. And that's how you can tell the difference between the rim of the drive and all the drive converted. So we're gonna rip this uphill. I am actually having a little bit of fun with this right now. It's very luxurious. All right, here we go. But I can say that it is what it is. You gotta give it something. I mean, not every day you would see this big behemoth of a car. It's lying sideways around. Here at all. I'm gonna rip this through. See how fast we can go. If I can go into the right gear. Oh boy. A little 360. Didn't not as clean as I liked. But it's okay. It is fun to drift for sure. If you want to try and drift it. If you do the exact tiles, same tune I did. Tuning settings and all. That's actually a lot of fun. I have a different feel of drifting. Because like I said, there is pretty much a zero steer sometimes. Because it does still have some front wheel pull on the car. In between. Oh, I didn't think we were gonna make that.  No, we're not gonna go that way. I don't even know where I'm going. Feel like I can hit up a street section with this. And have a lot of fun. I think this is the most power we can get out of it though. So it's not the fastest thing by any means. Oh, it's definitely good squarely though. Excuse me. Oh, it just wants to go though.  Against this big thing. Alright, so we're gonna throw it in here. Slide around a little more. But I did want to come back to Horizon 3. And check this car out. That's a really long e-brake grab. But we got it. Because, you know, I wanted to see what we could do to this car. Pretty sad that we couldn't make it Rural Drive. So we did the next best thing we could. And make it Rural Bias. And I mean, it does slide. Hands down, it slides. It's a lot of fun. Excuse me, Mini.  I actually never really drifted to section that much. That's a fun little section. Take it back in. I'm gonna probably rip this around one more time here. To end this episode off. Like I said guys, I got something special coming to the channel here soon. So make sure you stay tuned to the channel for that. If you guys want to see more Forza Horizon 3, don't forget to tap that like button. Subscribe to the channel. I've been on Forza 6 a lot recently. So I am enjoying the Forza 6 content. If you guys want to see Forza 6 as well, comment that down below. Gonna be wanting to get into open lobbies here soon. Getting drifting some tannins and some guys and such. Either on Forza 6 or Horizon 3. Maybe Assetto. I've been wanting to get back into Assetto. I was gonna get into open lobbies today. But unfortunately for some reason all the servers are down. That's a really fast entry. So there was no online servers in Assetto. Ooh, what's happening? Just tap. So I think that's gonna do it here for this episode. Here on Forza Horizon 3. Like I said, don't forget. Facebook, Twitch, Twitter and Instagram. All that you found in the description box below. I'm off road in this car and all over the place. So until next time guys, I'm gonna do this one last corner here. So I'd like to thank you guys for watching. I'll be the rabbit and I'm out.


Wacusta, or the prophecy, a tale of the Canada's, Volume 1, written by John Richardson, narrated by Nick Adams. Chapter 1 As we're about to introduce our readers to scenes with which the European is little familiarized, some few cursory remarks, illustrative of the general features of the country into which we have shifted our labours, may not be deemed misplaced at the opening of this volume. Without entering into minute geographical detail, it may be necessary merely to point out the outline of such portions of the vast continent of America as still acknowledge allegiance to the English crown, in order that the reader, understanding the localities, may enter with deeper interest into the incidence of the tale connected with a ground hitherto untouched by the wand of the modern novelist. All who have ever taken the trouble to inform themselves of the features of a country so little interesting to the majority of Englishmen in their individual character must be aware. And for the information of those who are not, we state that the portion of the northern continent of America which is known as the United States is divided from the Canada's by a continuous chain of lakes and rivers, commencing at the ocean into which they empty themselves, and extending in a northwestern direction to the remotest parts of these wild regions which have never yet been pressed by other footsteps than those of the native hunters of the soil. First, we have the magnificent Saint Lawrence, fed from the lesser tributary streams, rolling her sweet and silver waters into the foggy seas of the Newfoundland. But perhaps it will better tend to impress our readers with a panoramic picture of the country in which our scene of action is more immediately laid, by commencing at those extreme and remotest points of our Canadian possessions, to which their attention will be especially directed in the course of our narrative. The most distant of the northwestern settlements of America is Michela Mackina, a name given by the Indians and preserved by the Americans who possess the fort even to this hour. It is situated at the head of lakes Michigan and Huron, an adjacent to the island of St. Joseph's, where, since the existence of the United States as an independent republic, an English garrison has been maintained, with a view of keeping the original fortress in check. From the lakes above mentioned, we descend into the river Sinclair, which in turn disembarks itself into the lake of the same name. This again renders tribute to the Detroit, a broad, majestic river not less than a mile in breadth at its source, and progressively widening towards its mouth until it's finally lost in the beautiful Lake Erie, computed at 160 miles in circumference. From the embouchure of this latter lake commences the Chippewa, better known in Europe from the celebrity of its stupendous falls of Niagara, which form an impassable barrier to the seaman, and for a short space sever the otherwise uninterrupted chain connecting the remote fortresses we have described with the Atlantic. At a distance of a few miles from the falls, the Chippewa finally empties itself into the Ontario, the most splendid of the gorgeous American lakes, on the bright bosom of which, during the late wars, frigates, seventy-fours, and even a ship of one hundred and twelve guns manned by a crew of one thousand men, reflected the proud penance of England. With the opposite extremity of this magnificent and sea-like lake, which is upwards of two hundred miles in circumference, the far-famed St. Lawrence takes her source, and after passing through a vast tract of country whose elevated banks bear every trace of fertility and cultivation, connects itself with the Lake Champlain, celebrated as well as Erie for a signal defeat of our flotilla during the late contest with the Americans. Wishing her bold waters through this somewhat inferior lake, the St. Lawrence pursues her course seaward with impetuosity, until arrested near Lachine by rock-studded shallows which produce those strong currents and eddies, the dangers of which are so beautifully expressed in the Canadian boat-song, a composition that has rendered the rapids almost as familiar to the imagination of the European, as the falls of Niagara themselves. In Lachine, the St. Lawrence gradually unfolds herself into greater majesty and expanse, and rolling past the busy commercial town of Monterey. Sample complete. Ready to continue?


Police officer pops open woman's trunk, lets her go after what he sees updated six months ago on July 20, 2020 by Michael Roque. It was supposed to be Chinese Thacker's Day to shine. She had an important job interview, was dressed for success and ready to knock it out of the ballpark as she drove over. But in that very moment, fate threw her a curved ball. Blue lights began flashing in her rearview mirror. And what happened after the police officer approached her left her utterly stunned. When Richmond Virginia native Chinese Thacker woke up on the morning of September 1, 2017, she had high hopes for what was to come. She started her day feeling motivated. The young mom had a job interview scheduled for that day, and now more than ever, she needed to be in tip top shape. Naturally, Chinese wanted to impress her interviewer. That meant slipping into her best business casual outfit, carefully doing her makeup, and knowing the finer aspects of the job she was interviewing for. She was feeling lucky as she walked out of her front door. Yet as it would turn out, luck had something quite different in mind. Chinese got into her car and pulled out of her driveway.  She didn't know it at the time, but as she stopped at stop signs and red lights, and break to make turns, she was actually putting a lot of people in danger. Chinese had a broken brake light. This meant that if any sudden stops were needed while on the highway, she might get smashed from behind. That said, Chinese had no idea that her brake light was out. If anything, she actually thought they were working fine, and she had good reason to think that. Only about a month prior to the day of her job interview, Chinese had checked her car into the local Firestone, where she had been urged to get her lights worked on. They then tried to charge her a startling $600 for a wiring test. She declined, asked for her car back, and then went on her way. While there is no concrete proof, it's definitely possible that one of these Firestone mechanics didn't like her rejecting their pricey wiring test, and decided to fool around with her car's lights. Fast forward one month, and while Chinese was on her way to that job interview, suddenly she saw something alarming in her rearview mirror. When going out for a job interview, knowing the job and dressing to impress just isn't enough. You need to appear confident and need to sport some good vibes. Chinese good vibes and confidence were at serious risk of being washed away, as she saw red and blue lights flashing in her rearview mirror. That hopeful Virginia Morning now took a turn for the worst for Chinese. If she didn't play her cards right, she knew that she might not make that job interview at all. She pulled over to the side. The cops slowly approached the car and Chinese quickly reached for something in her glove compartment. Chinese couldn't have been pulled over at a more urgent time. Being late to an interview is definitely a telling sign of what could be expected from a possible hire, and a penchant for being tardy definitely wasn't one of her personality traits. Chinese mood immediately took a nosedive. Being in a rush to get to her job interview, Chinese didn't want to waste any time arguing with the police officer. She immediately opened her glove compartment and reached for her registration. However, the cop didn't care about her registration. He wanted to get straight to the point. And it was at that point that officer Jenkins did something shocking. Nine times out of ten, if you have a broken brake light, no sob story is going to phase a cop.  At the very least, he might write you out a fix-it ticket and be on his merry way. One could only assume that this police officer's behavior would be no different. He immediately told Chinese to put her license and registration away, and informed her that she had been driving with two broken headlights. The information bomb that he dropped on her was a shock to her system. What he'd do then was utterly unexpected. Chinese began telling the police officer her story about being overcharged by firestone and recently getting the lights fixed. Officer Jenkins raised an eyebrow and asked her to pop the trunk of her vehicle. We can only imagine the panic that she felt when he asked that question. She didn't want to end up on the news and had nothing to hide, so she stayed calm and opened up the trunk for the police officer. As he began circling the vehicle, she was likely wondering if she'd ever make it to the job interview. Chinese stepped out of the vehicle and watched the cop tinker with her trunk. What he was doing back there was definitely not something out of a police officer's job manual. Out of nowhere, the police officer went into full-on mechanic mode and began tinkering with her brake lights. He gave them a good look over and even tapped them a few times. Unfortunately, the lights did not turn on. Either her car was too old and decrepit, or the mechanics at Firestone had ripped her off. The officer lifted himself out of the trunk and then asked Chinese to pop the hood. He then proceeded to check the relay box. Chinese all the while looked on in disbelief. She recalled during an interview with Fox, he could have easily given me a ticket, but Officer Jenkins stepped out of the officer role and into the mechanic role to make sure I was straight. Despite the officer's good deed, would she make it to the interview? In terms of the broken brake lights, nothing much beyond the officer's touching response has been reported on. If Officer Jenkins managed to fix the brake lights and the end remains yet to be told, it's safe to assume that Chinese was able to make things right again with her vehicle. As for the job interview, she more than likely aced it. In 2017, Chinese began working at the University of Phoenix as a correctional program support person. While things might have looked dim earlier that morning, it was thanks to a cop with a different than usual approach that her day picked up. However, she didn't easily forget what that police officer did for her. She would later pay a little tribute to him. Chinese special thank you. Officer Jenkins' good deed stuck with Chinese throughout the whole day, and when she got home, she had to let the world know how she felt. Naturally, she took her gratitude to social media and left a very touching post. It surely isn't every day that a cop goes the extra mile for someone quite like that, so with suspense in mind, Chinese told her whole story. She built it up slowly, making many people suspect that when those blue and red lights began flashing, she was in big trouble. However, when everyone finished reading her post, they knew what a good man officer Jenkins was. Many people responded, but one post in particular really turned heads. Chinese grateful post instantly skyrocketed in terms of shares and comments. People were completely taken by the police officer's compassionate approach. With that said, there was one comment that Chinese was really touched by. Amidst the deluge of comments, the Henrico County Police Department decided to chime in and thank Chinese. The police station responded on Facebook by saying, thank you Chinese Thacker for sharing this about one of our officers. We are so proud of our officers, especially when we see citizens share things like this. Above and beyond the call of duty, Officer Jenkins. Service to our community is what it's all about. This back and forth would end up taking their mild story to the next level. These days, headlines featuring police officers generally have a far darker story behind them. But this act of kindness made Officer Jenkins stand out like a diamond in the rough. The internet ran with the story and it soon became a viral sensation. Even big news networks like Fox and NBC featured this simple tale of generosity. One person commented on the story saying, yes, there are some good ones out here. I got pulled over a couple weeks ago for my tail lights being out, and he helped me figure it out. It turned out that it had a fuse blown. He told me to drive the rest of the way home with my hazard lights on. Nonetheless, the context was not lost on some. The example of Officer Jenkins being a good Samaritan and thinking outside the box is just one story exemplifying the fact that there are actually a ton of amazing policemen and women out there. They aren't exactly itching to give you tickets or throw you behind bars, but instead to serve and protect their community. One comment on Chinese Post said the following, actually he gives all officers a good name. We have him, but there are thousands more like him. The bad ones with attitudes overshadow the truly professional officers like him. I do think Henrico has the best officers though. Officer Jenkins' compassion actually shined a light on possibilities people never fully considered. Many people saw look at how good the world could be if people just changed their approach towards one another. One comment summed it up neatly when it said, I love a good cop because I remember how nice it was to see them in the neighborhood and the feeling of being safe and you could talk to them. If all the good cops would oust all the bad cops, then police would again have our respect and admiration. Another comment expressed something similar when it said, Good job, Officer Jenkins. You are a great representative for the law enforcement community and the Lord is pleased with your righteous act of service. God bless you sir and may God protect you and your family. Given a few years have passed since the interaction, many wonder where Chinese is today. Years after this touching incident, Chinese life has taken a huge upturn. She no longer has the job that she interviewed for all those years ago, but is doing something more aligned with her dreams. She is currently working as a youth counselor at UMFS, a company that provides youths and families with the tools to overcome some heartbreaking challenges. As for Officer Jenkins, he is still doing his job of protecting and serving the good citizens of Henrico County, Virginia. And as for the future, the people can only hope that this officer's compassion and kindness is infectious to other officers on the police force.