It looks like we're live Okay, now here we are everyone. Hi everyone this welcome to coat pinks weekly 20 minutes of hot news From Latin America on what the F is going on in Latin America this week We're gonna be discussing The repression of activism in Colombia. I'm joined today by my compatriot and co-worker Leonardo Flores and we are Waiting we have a little bit of technical difficulty our guest today is Sally Barera. He is a Colombian activist and musician living in the DC metropolitan area. Oh, and here we go He forms part of the El Congreso de los Pueblos the Congress of the People's a grassroots coalition of social movements that seeks to transform Colombia from below Sally is also a member of Colombia Percutiva a band that performs in the DC area. And so Selle has actually joined us Okay, are you here? Yeah, I'm here. So I was just just introducing you to our audience. I'm so pleased that you were able I well, thank you. I have a little problems with this technology But here you are. Yeah, I am here. I know Well, so I have to say with the technology We were attempting to do our live streaming via YouTube today And just so the audience knows we are building a code pink YouTube channel And I had some technical difficulty getting on to YouTube. So we are back to live streaming on Facebook today So you're not alone Selle with the technical technical hurdles so Okay, no, you can't see me. No, I cannot see you but okay. I am Can you check on the bottom of your menu and click on the camera and make yourself there? Okay. Yeah, okay There we go. Fantastic So I introduced you to the audience as a Colombian activist and musician and some of the Organizations that you're involved with and what I'd like us to do for the next 20 minutes is to talk about Being an activist as a Colombian and then if we could relate all of this as to the what's happening on the grounding Columbia today basically the persecution of all progressive leftist activists environmental activists labor activist journalists political and social justice activists like yourself and Yeah, that is you terrific, and you will have some great firsthand Life experiences to share with our audience. We have Leonardo Flores from code pink with us as well and He will translate for you. So just so the audience Understands our format today Selle is most comfortable talking in his first language of Spanish today because the issues are very Technical intense and we want to make sure that he expresses to you as comfortably and correctly so that You know that the dialogue shared with you is his very best representation of what he's experiencing and so We'll do this in Spanish with English translation provided by Leonardo. So So Selle, why don't you? Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? And then maybe we could talk about what's what's happened in Colombia on the ground since the weekend since the tear gas canister hit this young man's head and he since died from the injuries on Monday night And maybe we can start there and then backtrack with you know, all of this Social movement happening on the ground in Colombia Muchas gracias por la invitación muchas gracias a code pink por la invitación muchas gracias al colectivo de Venezolanos que están aquí en Washington DC Organizando y haciendo resistencia por la dignidad de los pueblos de América Latina y Caribe Que fueron los que me contactaron no me invitaron a participar en este escenario So thank you for the invitation also Thank you to code pink and the collective of Venezuelans who are organizing here in DC to uphold the dignity and sovereignty of the People's of Latin America and the Caribbean. They were the ones who contacted me and invited me to this Si yo me llamo Celestino Barrera soy de una organización colombiana Internacionalista que se llama el Congreso de los pueblos My name is Celestino Barrera For part of a Colombian internationalist organization called the Congress of the People's El Congreso de los Pueblos como organización política y social Somos una plataforma de articulación política de diferentes expresiones sociales y partidos políticos So the Congress of the People's is a political and social organization That forms as a platform for different social movements and political parties Somos cerca de 1200 organizaciones que estamos dentro de de Congreso de los pueblos y abarcamos diferentes grupos poblacionales trabajadores, indígenas, mujeres, estudiantes, LGTBI Exiliado, refugiados So there are about 1200 organizations within the Congress of the People's and Our membership spans different sectors including workers, indígenas, people, women, students, LGBTQ people, exiles and refugees Si En Washington una de las cosas que hago también es representar a nivel internacional todo ese conglomerado de compañeras y compañeros que hacen parte de mi organización Hago parte de la Comisión Internacional del Congreso de los Pueblos So in Washington what I do is I represent the Congress of the People's at the international level part of the international commission of the Congress Bueno eso es un poco lo que hago Lo otro es la segunda parte de la pregunta es acerca de lo que viene pasando en Colombia actualmente con las diferentes manifestaciones y el paro nacional que inició el 21 de este mes de noviembre So now to talk a bit more about the second part of the question Regarding what's happening in Colombia with the protests and the national strike that took place on November 21st lo que pasa hoy en Colombia es el resultado de la reorganización del movimiento social y político en Colombia en los últimos 20 años So what's happening in Colombia today is the result of the reorganization of the social and political movements in Colombia This reorganization that's been taking place over the past 20 years Si como en Colombia hoy en día hay tres grandes bloques de articulación del movimiento social Uno es el Congreso de los Pueblos el otro se llama marcha patriótica Y el otro bloque es el polo democrático alternativo Que se coordina junto con un sector que se llama progresista son como lo Tres los tres grandes bloques que vienen articulando la lucha social y política hoy en Colombia So today in Colombia we can talk about three major blocks of social movements The Congress of the people's is one of them the patriarctic march is another and then there's the democratic alternative pole Which is also very much linked to the progressive movement Junto con el movimiento de progresistas de Gustavo Petro que es un sector más pequeño pero que ha venido ganando mucha fuerza And this progressive movement is led by Gustavo Petro who was a The movement was small at first, but it's been gaining a lot of steam En los últimos 20 años el movimiento social ha venido reconfigurando se rearticulando se Porque ustedes saben que en la década del 80 y 90 hubo un exterminio contra el movimiento social y muchas organizaciones y muchos líderes Murieron y otros tuvieron que clandestinizarse Entonces aunque y algunos se tuvieron que ir a los movimientos insurgentes y hubo un momento como de no de pausa política pero si de disminuir la acción Pública de los sectores sociales para evitar que los siguieran asesinando y persiguiendo no In the past 20 years social movements have reconfigured themselves because in the 80s and 90s There was an extermination of social movements lots of leaders in organizations of Organizations died or went into hiding and some even had to join the insurgency movements So we can talk about a moment that wasn't quite a pause really but a more of a diminishing of public action By social movement by social sectors to prevent persecution and assassination Claro por eso en el dos entre 2009 y 2010 Surgen dos los dos grandes movimientos fuertes no la marcha patriotica que es como una organización con mayor Influencia de los partidos comunistas y tola el pensamiento comunista sovietico y Congreso de los pueblos que es una organización más de carácter latinoamericano y carideño que reivindica un socialismo propio en un ecosocialismo un socio un socialismo pensado por los sectores campesinos negros indígena de la América Latina y el caribe un socialismo marra y sal So in 2009 and 2010 Two major movements surged the first was the patriotic patriotic march Which is very much influenced by communist parties specifically by soviet communism The other movement was the congress of the peoples and this is a more of a socialist movement based on the latin-american and Caribbean experiences It's really an eco socialism that's heavily influenced by campesinos by Black columbian afro columbians and it's kind of a grassroots homegrown socialism Ya y sobre todo el carácter indígena el Logramos meter dentro de las estructuras organizativas Toda la forma de pensar y de organizarse los indígenas en el continente And I also emphasize the indigenous nature of the congress within the organizing structure. We managed to Structure it so that it incorporates lots of the different ways of thinking Thinking of the indigenous peoples of the Americas En ese contexto en el 2011 sale la después de muchos años de no hace grandes movilizaciones en el 2011 sale la gran movilización de los estudiantes por la defensa de los derechos de la educación por la defensa de la educación pública y financiación para la investigación científica y es una de las grandes movilizaciones estudiantiles después de la década de los 60 fueron millones de estudiantes y gente que estuvieron en las calles durante un mes de protestas In that context in 2011 after many years of not mobilizing there was a big mobilization of students in defense of public education and asking for more Scientific funding. This was the biggest mobilization of students since the 1960s. I don't know if you can still hear me I think I froze up. Okay. Yeah, so I'd like to ask a question regarding this mobilization So for 20 years of mobile there was no mobilization was it was oppressed suppressed and what has Changed in the last 20 years most more specifically in the last 10 years 2009 2010 What has changed? among the movements that has empowered them to Unite and take action. They Completely through with the government and what has mobilized them to do this and where and where is their support coming from? La segunda parte la pregunta no la entendí bien leo me ayudes que ha cambiado que con estas movilizaciones en los últimos días de años porque están saliendo ahora Ah, bueno Mobilizaciones en algo interno o viene también desde afuera si para ya iba entonces en el 2011 sale la gran mobilización de los estudiantes luego en el 2013 sale la gran minga indígena y es que todos los indígenas del país Se votan a las calles con un programa de indígena un programa indigenista por la defensa del territorio no y luego en el 2016 sale el La gran movilización campesina y agrícola por la defensa del del del del de la soberanía alimentaria No 2011 estudiantes se votó como por bloques no Se fueron como si van consolidando los movimientos no se consolidaron de la noche a la mañana sino que fueron consolidándose por bloque estudiantes primero que salieron a las calles en el 2011 luego en el 2016 2013 salen los indígenas con la minga indígena En el 2016 sale en los campesinos con la reforma agraria y toda la defensa por los horarios y explota ahorita con un paro nacional donde están todos los sectores vinculados no es como una un proceso no Y paten Traduces y terminó con lo del lo de la última parte la pregunta So in 2013 there was an indigent indigenous minga, which is kind of like a joining of the indigenous people Who went out in the streets and defensive land rights in 2016? There was a campesino and agricultural mobilization for food sovereignty and land reform So we're talking about things that are started happening happening by different blocks of sectors It wasn't consolidated overnight first it was students then indigenous people then campesinos for agricultural reform And and now what we're seeing is a national strike where all the sectors are being mobilized together And I'm gonna go into why this is happening now Yes, today is all the social block in the streets, campesinos, indigenous workers, all with a unique action program Really the foreign influence in Colombia, there are two visions of the thing On the one hand, the Colombian government is saying that the marches in Colombia are being influenced by the Foro de Sao Pablos They're saying that the marches in Colombia are being financed by Venezuela Which is like a way of destabilizing the country but it's not that real The other thing is that it's a process of the continent and we have a lot of common identities And the struggle that is going on in Chile or the one that the Bolivian companions are going through Or the revolutionary process that is being generated in Venezuela is part of the same continental dynamic Because we have the same enemies in common, the same destructivist companies that are coming to kill the people So today it's the entire social block on the streets, whether it's campesinos, indigenous people, workers And they have a single plan of action And then going back to the other part of your question, there are two visions regarding the possible external influences in Colombia On the one hand we have the Colombian government which blames the Foro de Sao Pablos Or Venezuela says that these protests are financed by Venezuela in order to destabilize the country But there isn't any truth to this The other is that there is a process within the continent where lots of things are going on And we have lots of things in common, say for example with people in Chile or Bolivia or people resisting in Venezuela So there's kind of a continental dynamic going on where we have enemies in common being the destructivist companies And that's influencing us because of shared histories So maybe we could talk about, it's interesting that he's mentioning extractivist companies Versus any particular political body or governments And maybe we could talk about what is happening across the Americas Which I would argue has been happening for the last 500 years with extractivism And talk a little bit in broad terms about how different sectors are responding similarly or differently Colombia is particularly interesting because those of us in the United States don't hear a whole lot about the social movements In Colombia it's a significant supporter of U.S. foreign policy And we don't hear so much about the persecution of activists in Colombia as we do elsewhere But maybe we could talk a little broadly for the moment about what is happening across the hemisphere Yes, look, on the subject of extractivism The rich continent in raw materials And the two major imperialist blocs that are closer to Europe and the United States They have certain interests in keeping control of those raw materials that, as I see them And we have big criminal companies in Colombia such as Anglo-Bolayanti Responsible for river contamination, deforestation, murder against communities Or the Drummond, also responsible for coal Responsible for financing of paramilitary groups and the extermination Or the Coca-Cola, also processed in Colombia for financing of paramilitary groups And murder against union leaders And both in Europe and in the United States they know That these companies in Canada, in South Africa, in the United States, in Europe However, the state policies of Europe or the United States continue to finance These companies continue to give the ball to these companies to continue generating extractivism So, in Europe and the United States as blocs that are sometimes believed to be democratic Really, in their government policy, they are not favoring or they are not listening to the demands of the people in the continent And in Colombia, specific cases are not listening to them There are some cases, some examples that I am going to put right now For example, give it to Leo The government is rich in raw materials We have two major imperialist blocs, Europe and the United States And they have clear interest in entertaining control over these materials So, in Colombia we have major criminal enterprises, companies that are responsible for contaminating leaders And assassinating rivers and assassinating leaders And financing extermination and paramilitaries I am talking specifically about Drummond and Coca-Cola and others The US and Europe know this as there are lawsuits in Canada and South Africa, the US and Europe But regardless of this, the state policies of both the United States and Europe continue financing extractivism So, these powers which claim to be democratic are not actually listening to the demands of the people in the case of their policies And this is very true and specifically in Colombia An example, for example, the small company, the small brand company, in Colombia Was sanctioned for financing paramilitaries For drug trafficking, for putting trucks, containers of weapons in Colombia for paramilitaries To kill hundreds of people, massacres, etc. In the United States, the demand for the small company is gained That is, the small company is judged as responsible But it turns out that the small company did not function The small company paid some money but the small company paid the US And the small company licenses were granted again And now it is in Guatemala And in Guatemala it turns out that it continues to take people from the land and kill social leaders And it is the same company And it knows the world, it knows Europe, it knows the governments, it knows the State Department in the United States However, they continue to give licenses That is why in Colombia as a social movement, we do not ask the American government to leave the country With their agencies and their companies We do not believe in any multilateral institution that is under the control of the American government or Europe We believe in social movements We believe in the political movement of solidarity and accompaniment to the struggles of the people But not really in the American governments There are other organizations in Colombia that do believe, that do acude That do lobby with the State Department and senators But the Colombian social movement does not have any kind of interlocution with senators or State Department Why? Because they know who are the assassins who have been killed by people in Colombia And they have not done anything complex That is why we as a social movement take distance from them They did pay a fine but it was in the United States And yet Chiquita continues winning licenses to operate Now they are in Guatemala doing the same thing, killing people and taking land Which is something the entire world knows and yet they are still able to do business So in Colombia, we are not really asking for anything from the US but that they leave with their agencies and companies We do not believe in any institution under the dominion of the US and Europe We believe in social movements, not in governments There are other organizations in Colombia that do lobby with the State Department and with Congress But social movements in Colombia do not really have contact with these institutions And they are not interested because they see them as being complicit in the murders that have been going on in their country I would argue this is a present This is a 500 year history of North American and European Starting European practice in this hemisphere We saw the Spaniards come for the gold and silver bullion And it's just basically continued today for different resources and different tools but similar For a similar purpose And particularly how it affects indigenous people Can you help me with the question, Leo? Yes, you are saying that this is something that has happened for the last 500 years in Latin America And I would like to discuss a little bit about the impact of all this in Colombia Particularly in indigenous people Well, indigenous peoples in Colombia Fortunately, due to the struggles and the resistance of these peoples They have achieved a lot of progress in terms of rights in the last 30 years For example, the indigenous and Afros in Colombia have managed to implement a law In 1970, which is a law that protects their territories And as a protection of territory, when the government or some state or departmental entity will do something in that territory They have to consult the indigenous and consult the Afros communities So indigenous black people in Colombia, luckily because of their resistance They have achieved lots of progress in terms of their rights in the past 30 years They managed to implement law 70, which protects their territories So now when the government or a government institution or agency wants to do something in these territories They have to consult the local communities And what happens there? As they do the consultation For example, if you go to Anglo-Bolayanti to extract gold in the Cauca And the National Indigenous Organization, the UNIC or the CREIC, the Regional Indigenous Council It is consulted in case the company wants to extract gold The indigenous people say no And then the murder against indigenous leaders comes To intimidate the community and to impose extractivism through blood and fire So when they do do the consult I want to talk about, for example, the gold company that went to Cauca And the local indigenous people were consulted and they said no, of course About having a gold mining company operating in their territory And then so when the indigenous people say no, that's when the assassinations start The targeted assassinations of leaders that are meant to intimidate the community into giving in And saying and accepting this sort of extractivism Most of these partners are environmentalists They are environmentalists who work in a strategic reserve area To protect the water, or to protect the jungle, or the animals In fact, the most recent was a member of Congress The ones that everyone knew as Sejas And Sejas was in charge of protecting the route of the condor Which is like one of the representative birds of the continent And there is a company that wants to have land and do a cultural project People were consulted, people said no And as a measure of repression, they kill Sejas That's a bit of logic When the indigenous, the Afro, the environmentalists The ones that protect the land, the natural resources They oppose the mega, the big projects Miner-energetics, etc Repression comes from the fact that they kill them When they kill them, or generate a massacre, terrorize the people The people move, the land is left alone The people stay in misery and the company arrives And supposedly buys the land to the displaced Of course, the displaced people in the city don't have money and accept anything And then the company says, I didn't commit the massacre The massacres were committed by others And we bought the land And that's one of the ways to remove indigenous rights In Colombia today Yes, he was in charge of protecting the condor An iconic animal for the continent that's in danger of extinction So a firm wanted to do business in one of these zones where the condor was The people of that area said no and Sejas was murdered That's their logic Because when the people protecting lands, whether it's indigenous people or capesinos Or Afro-Colombians When they're protecting the land and the communities oppose these projects Like mining, electricity, etc. The repression comes in the forms of assassination or massacres And so when you have leaders murdered or people massacred The people become frightened and they leave They become displaced, they go into the cities The land is left empty The people are left in misery And then the company comes and then buys the land Since no one is no longer there The company says that they didn't do the murder They weren't complicit in it And they say they bought the land in good faith So this is one way that the rights of indigenous and black people in Colombia Are being threatened and taken away So the violence is extraordinary And we don't talk enough about it In the U.S. media here in the States And the level of violence and murder against activists in Colombia One of the things that Cele mentioned Was that these, particularly the indigenous communities Do have legally the right to consultation But it appears that that's just simply a name Only given that if you don't agree with the government's use of the land Or in other words the use of the transnational corporations Use of the land, you're in one way or another Removed from the land Is that correct, my understanding? And it's basically a policy of names Yes, exactly It's like, even though they can't take the land And they can't destroy the territory On the legal path They go to the extra-legal paths Like the murder of the community The displacement of the community Yes, exactly Since they can't take their lands or destroy their lands legally They resort to extrajudicial means Whether it's murdering or massacring Forcing the people to become displaced And then that way they can take control So this is our Wednesdays What the app is going on in Latin America Hosted by Code Pink This is 20 minutes of hot news Every Wednesday afternoon And we are actually at 25 minutes at this point So maybe we could ask Cele if he has anything in particular We should use for closing remarks Or a particular action That our audience can take How we can best support him, his people And the various movements What we do We also follow other actions And in these days of struggle In these days of a lot of agitation In Colombia That they are killing people A military A week ago a military came out Saying that he was in favor of the struggle And it turns out that the military committed suicide After that another manifesto Was killed on the street It would be good to make videos With a phone That supports the social struggle In Colombia The different organizations Send videos supporting the social struggle And spreading what happens in Colombia That would be of great help Because that would help to break the media That they are imposing The social struggles in the continent And one way to do this Is to spread information and the company actions So in these days Of the strike and the following unrest People have been murdered A soldier last week Said he was in favor of the strike And three days later he was found And supposedly he had committed suicide So videos are very good Saying that videos where you might say That you support the social struggle And the strike and broadcasting What's going on in Colombia And that will break the media blockade That makes it so hard to get information Well this is one of the things That we attempt to do With our weekly webinars To break that media blockade And it's so wonderful to have people Like you, Cele, join us Every week and talk about A lot of these issues that are not Either completely ignored In mainstream media or very lightly Touched upon I wonder if you could tell us a little bit About yourself and for those of us Who live in the greater DC metropolitan Area where we Can come out here and play We as a band, like the Colombo Percutiva, have been on the streets Since November 21 Since the strike Well, Leo has been with us With us And at the beginning we were little But at night we were In front of the colombian embassy All night Doing carcerolazos We were singing At night we had hot panela With cheese and bread And we were there until the police came And we followed Every night we were in front of the colombian embassy We thought there was not so much Progresista in the area Because many of the colombians Who are here in the area are on the right They are fascists in their majority Uridistas full of hatred But a lot of people have arrived At the Colombo Percutiva An immigrant Cumbia And we are musicians from Bolivia From Colombia From Peru From Puerto Rico From the United States There is also a musician And we are social and political activists Some are DACA Others are undocumented But in the end we are Immigrants in the band Doing solidarity actions At night in front of the embassy Playing drums And sacrificing ourselves for life So the Colombo Percutiva Which is my band Has been out every night Ever since the strike on November 21 In front of the colombian embassy Last night there were a lot of us out there In front and we've been there every night With drums and singing and banging pots Last night we were there until 10 o'clock We actually didn't think there were Many progressives colombians in the area To find so many because The most of the colombians We had found before this had been either Fascist or their support Or they're full of hate The band is called Colombo Percutiva Migrant Cumbia We have people from Colombia Bolivia, Peru, Puerto Rico And the US Lots of us are political and social activists We've got people who are on DACA Who are undocumented also So basically it's a band of migrants We've been out in front of the colombian embassy Every night Basically shouting And demonstrating for life And one important thing Right now, with all these days That we've been on the streets We've created an interesting group That's called DC Resiste And as DC Resiste We were talking about How we do an action We talked about We talked about the night That the Venezuelan friends from Bolivia And here in Brazil So we were talking about How to talk to the rest Of the friends who are here in organizations And do a joint action Do a day Where we do a joint action That we arrive at the colombians The brazilians, the Venezuelans We arrive at all the Americans We arrive at all and do an action Of solidarity for life Of the peoples' extermination For the protection of the environment And we choose a symbolic place That can be that we put ourselves in the OEA In front of some of these institutions And among all The Latin America and the Caribbean We do a great action That's like a proposal That we want to launch And we invite people here To join the proposal There's a group called America Morena Where there are friends That always talk about different organizations And well We are ready To do this action A political action of solidarity And resistance, right? We have a joint action Where we all join together In solidarity with life We're thinking of choosing A symbolic site Like the OAS And inviting our friends from Latin America And the U.S. To join us in an action We'd love for it pink to join And everyone watching to join There's a similar group called America Morena Which is also talking about doing this So what we want to do Is solidarity and basically for life Well I would encourage all of us To do that and stand in support with you Literally and figuratively You were mentioning that You're out in front of the Colombian embassy Every night since the national strike We have one question here Before we close our webinar And that question is Since you are protesting and demonstrating against the national strike Can you talk a little bit about The government, the Colombian government's Response to the national strike Is actually happening on the ground How is the Colombian government reacting? Second What the government did Was the militarization of the main cities The army of the police And a very dangerous group Called the Esquadron Mobile Antidisturb That in 20 years of existence Has killed 21 young people And none of them Was questioned or judged When there is enough evidence Because it kills them publicly I mean No, it kills them publicly In front of thousands of people And cameras and photographs And it kills 21 people So the Colombian government Took the military, the police And the Esquadron And militarized the cities And the third action That the government did Was to summon a national dialogue Where It invites And some social leaders To dismantle the peace So these are the three actions One, the de-legitimization Of the peace, saying that This is called by Venezuelan And international terrorists Two, the militarization of the cities And three, to summon A national dialogue To remove the mockery Of the fellow citizens That implies repression Within that logic Decreted even a little bit And Financed, there was funding Of some groups That were walking in the neighborhoods Taking out, stealing Caught Going to the police That is, the demonstrators of the paro Are not being violent But there is a sector of people That is paying them That is destroying, destroying The transportation systems And the police, right now There are about 230 injured police There is a police that is in intensive care Because there is another police that lost an eye But they are not the demonstrators Infiltrated, financed Within this logic of de-legitimization Of the paro That was the government's response Not a response to solve the problems Nor the demands that the people That are in the paro So the government has had a strategy To respond to the strike Trying to de-legitimize it By saying it was convened by terrorists In Venezuela and saying it was somehow This sort of Castro-Chavista plot And therefore it wasn't legitimate Second, they've been militarizing The main cities in the country They brought out the police in the military And an especially dangerous Police unit called the Esmad Which is the riot police in Colombia In 20 years, this group This unit has been responsible for 21 Murders of youth And none of their officers have ever been charged For these deaths despite the fact that they were Carried out in public with photos And videos and other sorts of evidence And third, they convened A supposed national dialogue Inviting mayors and some social leaders In order to take away The spotlight On the actual social leaders Carrying up the strike and to make the strike fail So we have these three ways The de-legitimization Of the strike by saying This was financed from abroad The militarization of the cities And the supposed dialogue to take away Attention from the protesters And all of these three things imply repression There's also been a curfew A curfew set in several cities And a financing of groups in certain neighborhoods Of groups of vandals Basically to that loot and our violence Against the police The protesters themselves haven't been violent But these groups of vandals have smashed businesses And buses and they've been Wounding the police and it's very clear That they are infiltrators Within the logic of the attempts By the government to de-legitimize the protesters So this has been the government's response Is to de-legitimize And not to resolve the actual problems That have led to the strike I think you're muted, Teri Sorry, so Selly We have a lot to stand in solidarity With you and your Your movement and All the social movements In Colombia. Thank you so much For joining us today I know we kept you on air a little longer Than we promised, but we so appreciate Your comments and your sharing with us And we Will encourage people here in the DC Metropolitan area to come join you At the Colombian Embassy, listen to your music And stand in solidarity with you Against the repression in Colombia And so thank you Again so much and thank you so much And so for inviting Selly To join us and for your fantastic translation Today Yeah So Let's be in front of the ambassador's house From 5.30pm Let's be there with the tambores And everyone On Monday, December 2 Let's be in front of the ambassador's Residence Which is located right by The north exit of Dupont Circle We're going to be with Another Colombians expressing Our discontent with what's going on So come join us We'll do that. Thank you so much And please join us again next week Wednesday At noontime eastern. Today we were a little Late, but we'll do our best To see you at noontime next Wednesday as well Thank you everybody Thank you Bye Thanks, bye bye Now I don't know how to get out of here


So, if anybody arrives late, maybe you miss the announcement, there will be at quarter to six some walking caravan, leaving for the organ concert. There are also some buses, but we encourage people to walk, since there are not enough buses. Okay. Okay, so next talk is dynamic collusion bounded functional encryption from identity based encryption. George Lu will be giving the talk, and this is joint work with Richard Garg and Rishabh Goyal and Brad Waters. Okay, yeah. Hello. I'm George. So, yeah, as she said, our work is on dynamic collusion bounded functional encryption from identity based encryption. So, we can start with the concept, many of you are probably already pretty familiar, which is just plain old functional encryption. Oh, I don't know. So, in this setting, you have like a setup algorithm, and a key gen, which produces secret keys associated with a particular function, and sort of like any public key primitive, you can encrypt with the public key and decrypt with the secret keys. And so, what makes functional encryption functional is that even though you encrypt sort of just like any public key encryption, when you decrypt a particular function key, what you produce is not the message itself, but the evaluation of that message on the function associated with that function key. And so, what this should, and you know, depending on what this function is, you may reveal like more or less about the underlying message, but for a functional encryption scheme to be secure, it should sort of be the case that this function is all you learn about when you decrypt. So, how to capture this idea a bit more formally is with this simulation security game, where an adversary gets to request a ciphertext and a bunch of function keys, and they shouldn't be able to tell if these were produced by an honest, honestly using the encrypt algorithm and the key gen algorithm, or if there was actually a simulator, which doesn't actually know the message itself, but only knows the evaluation of the message on those functions, and has to simulate the keys and ciphertext in this way. So, there have been, you know, functional encryption has turned out to be like a pretty cool concept, a lot of people like it, but the sort of downside is that at least as I've described here, functional encryption has turned out to be pretty hard to construct. So, an actual relaxation of this was the definition of bounded collusion functional encryption, which for like correctness purpose, correctness works almost exactly the same as regular functional encryption. The only syntactical difference is that at setup time, you also take in this collusion bound Q, and you only sort of guarantee security as long as an adversary gets to see Q or less keys. So, bounded collusion functional encryption has also turned out to be a pretty successful definition. It turns out it is actually much easier to construct than functional encryption, and it actually does come up in a lot of applications where you want something sort of like functional encryption, but, you know, maybe not quite as strong. And, yeah, there's been a bunch of works in this area, and just to elaborate a little bit further on the easier to construct part, in the case of bounded collusion functional encryption, we can actually already know how to construct it for all polynomial size circuits just from public key encryption, which is pretty much like the best you can hope for in something in a case like this. I guess, unfortunately, it's pretty clear that this is not functional encryption, and from sort of a practical perspective, having this collusion bound is pretty limiting. So, at setup time, you have to decide what your collusion bound is. You have to have some foresight on how you're actually going to be using your functional encryption system.  And finally, you know, even when you, since it's a public key system, there could be multiple encryptors, and they all have to sort of, you know, agree. Yeah, this seems like a reasonable Q value to use in this system. So, we can also look at bounded collusion functional encryption, or I guess functional encryption in general from a bit more of a theoretical perspective. So, I think a couple of sides ago I said that turns out like full functional encryption is pretty hard to construct. And in fact, using the simulation definition that I've given, unbound like fully collusion resistant functional encryption is actually impossible. So, I won't go into too much detail on how this result is actually shown, but the basic intuition is that the sim, since the simulator doesn't know the message itself, when it's trying, when it needs to simulate the ciphertext, it needs to program in all the, all the function outputs into the ciphertext. And so, what the like impossibility result sort of actually rules out is any sort of simulation security, even for bounded, bounded collusion functional encryption when your ciphertext is sub-linear in your number of keys. And as a brief like side note as well, some of you may be aware there's also an indistinguishability based definition of functional encryption, which I guess fortunately is actually constructable. But even in this case, you can sort of see that when you when you try to force it to be sub-linear in your collusion bound, it's, it gives you the full the full like collusion resistant functional encryption, which we only know how to realize from like fairly hard cryptographic assumptions. We're in contrast, if we allow our scheme to grow linearly, these, the, the prior works actually achieve like linear dependence in your collusion bound. So it seems like this is like a pretty tight, you know, we're pretty, this is like pretty tight results, right? Like if it's sub-linear, we, it's either impossible or like you can only realize from IO and if it's linear, we can get it from public key encryption, right? But where there's like this slight gap here is that these impossibility results only really care about the, or talk about the ciphertext size, right? And so this sort of brings us to the definition that we introduce in our paper, which is a dynamic bounded collusion function, collusion functional encryption. And so whereas a normal, so it's a pretty simple change, whereas a normal functional encryption in normal bounded collusion functional encryption, which I think we'll refer to as like static bounded collusion functional encryption from now on, the collusion bound is specified at setup time. Instead we can just move this collusion bound to encrypt time because that's when, you know, your ciphertext is actually generated. And so notice here that now you're set up in key-gen algorithms have to like run independently or like without knowledge of this collusion bound. So this kind of, this is kind of like a bit of a stronger notion and it does solve these like practicality, I guess, issues with static bounded collusion functional encryption since, you know, at setup time you don't have to worry about any of this collusion bounded stuff at all. And moreover, like if you have different encryptors they can even like choose different collusion bounds to encrypt their messages too. So, right. In our paper what we get is okay, first we introduce a dynamic collusion bounded FE and then we construct this primitive from IB. I guess I'd also like to mention there was a concurrent work by MBY, which says the same thing. And they also consider this problem of dynamic FE in the uniform model for like Turing machines where they get some results from LWB. Okay, so how do we actually get from IBE to dynamic FE? So we have a couple transformations. So even though it says we start with IBE sort of maybe a better way to think about it is we start with, you know, these existing constructions of static FE schemes and we really want to like, you know, make the key gen and set up more efficient so that it can become dynamic. So starting with using IBE in some of these static schemes let's us build this intermediate primitive we call a tag functional encryption. And you can think about this as sort of an analog of IBE for static functional encryption where an IBE scheme is just, you know, maybe like you can think about it as like an exponential number of like public key schemes sort of sharing a single setup. Tag functional encryption scheme is sort of a bunch of static functional encryption schemes, which all share the same setup algorithm. And now once we have this tag functional encryption scheme, we also want to make, remember we also in the definition of dynamic functional encryption, your key gen also doesn't know of your collusion bound, right? So somehow your key gen algorithm also has to be efficient. And the way we do this and so our next goal I guess is to produce explicitly a static FE scheme which has an efficient setup and key gen algorithm. And basically the way we do this is we take advantage of the fact that we do have we can efficiently set up like many static FE schemes in parallel. And we use this to sort of, when we want the static FE scheme which has an efficient key gen, we just run the tagged FE scheme in parallel with a lower collusion bound but sort of more parallel instances. And then when it comes time to key gen, we only give out the key for a single one of these tagged instances of the tagged FE. And finally, once both of these algorithms are efficient, we can almost direct, we can pretty, at least in a single step, go to a dynamic functional encryption if you're, which, you know, the main change here is sort of a syntactic one where we need to move our setup algorithm, where we need to move the collusion bound from the setup algorithm to the encrypt algorithm. So I'll go over all of these steps a little bit more in detail, but that was just sort of the high level roadmap. So, okay, we can start by defining this intermediate primitive of tagged bounded functional encryption. So what this, like as I said, what this is is pretty much an analog of the, of IBE for static bounded functional encryption. So every key in ciphertext has a tag associated with it and it can only decrypt the matching tags. And sort of just like IBE, your efficiency is like poly logarithmic in the tag space. So I just emphasize how exactly this works. Notice that it really, they really are just like parallel instances of the static scheme. Even though the collusion bound here is set to two, it's okay that you gave, we gave out like seven keys in total, so long as for under, for each single tag we've given out at most our collusion bound. And you know the security I guess is only broken when you exceed that on any single tag. Okay, so to go from IBE to tag functional encryption, sort of as I said earlier, we start with some of these static bounded functional encryption schemes that are constructed from public encryption. So there's this line of work which all sort of have a similar flavor of construction. In our actual paper we use the AV-19 result to get, I guess, Q-bounded dynamic functional encryption for p slash poly, but just for like, just at a high level, these all sort of have the same overall structure which we can use. And what this is is, in the scheme, how these schemes generally work, is that if you want to produce a ciphertext for a message, you first have a universal circuit which, with the message hard-coded, which takes in a circuit and evaluates that circuit C on your message M. And then you compute a garbled circuit of this circuit. And there's also a bunch of public encryption schemes and what you do is you encrypt the input labels of your garbled circuit under each of these public encryption schemes. So when it comes time to produce a function key for some particular function, you just compute the secret keys which allow you to decrypt the input labels which will allow you to evaluate the garbled circuit at that particular C value and that gives you the and that gives you, this gives you like a some static-bounded functional encryption scheme. So since our starting point is IBE we can pretty simply just replace all these different public key schemes with a single IBE scheme and instead of, you know, encrypting to different public keys, we'll just encrypt to different identities. But once we have this, it's actually really easy to go to this tagged functional encryption, right? We just add our tag to the ID space and the sort of efficiency and security properties that we wanted from our tagged functional encryption scheme pretty much follow from the same, the corresponding like efficiency and security in an IBE scheme. So, okay. Now that we have our tag functional encryption, our next step is to go to this efficient static form and remember the main goal here is to make sure that our key gen is efficient. So how we do this is we run our tag space, like concretely is we run our tag scheme on a tag space of Q and the collusion bound equal to the security parameter. So and at key gen time instead of, you know, maybe like, I don't know what else you could do, but what you do is you just pick a random tag and you give out a key for that tag. And you can sort of argue by this like concentration bound. If you notice there's Q separate instances here. In expectation, each tag will only get one key. You can concentration bound the probability that any tag gets more than lambda with like negligible. And of course for this to, you know, work out correctness wise, you do need to encrypt all Q of these tags. Okay. So finally, last step we have the, now that we have our efficient static scheme our goal here is just to move this Q input from setup to encrypt, right. And so this uses a pretty, we use a pretty standard powers of two trick where we run setup in key gen to sort of instantiate lambda different, lambda different static FE schemes where each of these schemes is run on like collusion bound which are the powers of two. And remember since our setup in key gen are efficient now, it's all right that this goes up to exponential and your security parameter. And since there's only lambda of them, even running all of these is efficient. And when it comes time to encrypt and now you know your collusion bound, you can just pick the power of, the closest power of two larger than your security parameter and just encrypt to that scheme. Okay. So to summarize, we introduce dynamic founded functional encryption and build it from IBE. And then I can, I guess I'll end off with a couple of open directions that this paper leaves. So one is we is transforming any static FE scheme to dynamic.  But suppose you know tomorrow someone came out with like some like completely new like static scheme, which maybe works in either has some like cool property or works in some different like on some different like model of computation, like how much work would it be like to make that dynamic. And we actually have a work on at least making progress towards this on going from static to our like intermediate tag notion generically. And another question is if you remember, we had this motivation of sort of closing this gap between the negative and positive results of in terms of bounded collusion functional encryption and you know a possible future and something else to explore might be like how could this maybe even further be closed. So for example, there's a couple bounded collusion schemes where the dependence on the collusion bound is additive. And like can this be sort of either done like even better or like more generically. And yeah, that is it for my talk. Thank you very much. Any questions in the audience? Okay, so I guess we'll close the session now remember that there is a walking caravan quarter to six living at the front to go to the organ concert and there are buses you can find the information on the buses at the website but remember there is no place for everyone in the classes. Thank you.


the deconstructed pancake. This is something that we see all the time in marketing sites because as you increase the size of the viewport, those items will start spanning into the same line. So the way that we're going to be doing this one is using the shorthand for Flexbox, Flex01 base width is this look that you're seeing right now without the stretching. But if we did want to stretch, we would set that to Flex11 and then the Flex basis. And the reason why we do this is because the Flexshorthand stands for FlexGrow, FlexShrink, and then FlexSpaces. So again, here we have Flex01, 150 pixels. That is the basis here. So as we increase the size, it is not going to be growing much. Also when we decrease it, it's going to be staying within that 150 pixel size. When we do change that to one, I'm just going to delete the side of code here. Now we see that this is going to be stretching. So here you can see that it stretches to fill the space even as it wraps. And as I increase it to be even larger of a viewport size, these items are going to be filling that space. Next we have...