Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone around the world, and welcome to what we expect to be a lively and interactive discussion on how movements maintain resilience and momentum in the face of repression. My name is Maria Stephan, and I direct the program on nonviolent action at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and I will be moderating today's event. We are grateful to have a terrific lineup of scholars and activists joining us from various parts of the world to provide insight on this timely and important topic. And of course we will be taking questions from our global online audience throughout the event, so please feel free to comment and put questions into the chat box. Just a bit about USIP, the U.S. Institute of Peace is a nonpartisan independent institution that works with local partners, experts and practitioners to help prevent and resolve violent conflict in different parts of the world. Our program on nonviolent action focuses on the role of civil resistance and people power movements in advancing just and sustainable peace. Our team conducts applied research, supports education and training in strategic nonviolent action and movement building, and seeks to amplify grassroots voices in national and global policy fora. Today's event is inspired by a couple of countervailing trends in the international community. On the one hand, authoritarianism is resurgent and democracy is taking a hit around the world with declines in global political rights and civil liberties for the past 13 years. On the other hand, we are witnessing a veritable explosion of activism and people power movements globally. From Latin America to Hong Kong to Sudan and Algeria, people are taking to the streets and engaging in nonviolent direct action in unprecedented numbers. In all those places, activists have faced various forms of state and non-state repression, ranging from cyber attacks to police brutality to attacks by government backed paramilitary forces. Often governments will deploy agent provocateurs to foment protester violence in an attempt to delegitimize movements. How have movements responded to these forms of repression? What strategic and tactical decisions have they made to maintain resilience and momentum? What are the lessons from research and past cases that could inform current movements? To answer these questions and many more from you all in our Facebook Live audience, I now turn to our virtual panel of speakers. I will briefly introduce them and they will then kick off our conversation and then I would encourage you to not be shy about adding questions and comments as we go forward with the conversation. So first we will be hearing from Johnson Young, who is a Hong Kong human rights activist and advocate and activist who works on issues related to freedom of assembly and expression and protection for human rights defenders. He chairs the board of the Hong Kong Civil Hub, which produces briefings on shrinking civic space and builds solidarity with international rule of law and human rights communities. We will be hearing from Zied Busan. Zied is a Tunisian activist for democracy and human rights. He works as a researcher covering governance, public policy and human rights for a research center called Pandora. Zied also works as a trainer focusing on these same topics for Tunisian, Libyan and Moroccan associations. Azaz al-Shami has more than 15 years of experience in public diplomacy, policy research and advocacy. She focuses on Africa in the Middle East with a particular focus on Sudan and the Gulf. She is also an expert trainer on nonviolent resistance, citizen journalism and peace building. Ivan Marovic is a leading practitioner in the field of strategic civil resistance. He serves as director of global training and movement support for the organization RISE. He previously was an active member of the youth led pro-democracy movement in Serbia and has worked with dozens of activists and movements globally. Victoria Hui is an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Her research examines the centrality of war in the formation and transformation of China throughout history. She writes and comments frequently on Hong Kong politics for various media outlets. And finally, Jonathan Pinkney is a program officer for USIP's program on nonviolent action. Previously, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His research examines extra institutional political contention in non-democracies with a focus on nonviolent civil resistance. So, Johnson, we are going to kick off the discussion with you. You have been part of the recent round of pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong that were initially triggered by the Hong Kong government's imposition of the extradition bill, which has since been shelved. The demonstrations have attracted mass participation and the Hong Kong government and police have been accused of excessive use of force. At the same time, there has been an increase in the use of violent tactics by protesters. However, as we saw most recently, pro-democracy legislators recently won a landslide in the district council elections. So, I wanted to start by asking you how you would assess the state of the democracy movement in Hong Kong and how is it dealing with repression? Thank you, Maria. And thank you for having me in this discussion. It's been amazing. So, yeah, Hong Kong is still in the midst of unrest and the protest movement has continued for six months in June. And there's no sign that it will soon fall off. So, the movement right now is still retaining a strong support from the population that more than 84% of the population demand an independent inquiry into police brutality, which is a major demand of protests. And on the other hand, you mentioned about the pro-democracy camp win a landslides in the previous local election. Will that defer the energies of protest movement into institutional buildings or formal politics? I think it is not that simple. The short answer for that is no, because the district council is mandated to govern neighborhood duties like garbage collections and traffic contractions. And what democracy camp gain from this win is resources, because each district councilors will get roughly 700,000 U.S. deeds, allowance, and non-linear realms. And this will provide material resources for organizers to build power from below. The landslide win also energized the movement because it proved that many of the amongst the populations are supporting the demands of the protest. A lot of candidates who was wanting for this election, they were using the protest demand as their major electoral platform. Now, I think the problem that Hong Kong people is facing now is Beijing is unwilling to make concessions and they are going to continue to back the administrations of Hong Kong. So the future, in a sense, it looks quite gloomy. And the protesters, although they have successfully disrupt the administration, the Hong Kong government is losing allies, pro-government parties, and business elites is keeping their distance from Carrie Land. So if this scenario happens in other nations' states, then the presidents will probably resign and substantial reform will be met. But Hong Kong is not a nation's state, nor is real enemy, aka Chinese Communist regime, is being besieged or challenged in its own territory. So this is what we are, the situation that we are facing now that I still believe that Beijing is going to tighten its grip by taking control or heavily influence in the institutions like at the chimneys, like media outlets or schools. So the future is a little bit gloomy. Now, you mentioned a little bit about the violence, the escalating violence and use of force by the protesters. And I would like to adjust this point, which is why the Hong Kong protesters are escalating the use of force and not relying solely on nonviolent tactics. That is because a lot of peaceful means are exhausted. A lot of legitimate channels to channel the grievances of the people have already been shut down. What Hong Kong people is facing now is torture under detention, arbitrary arrest, and the Hong Kong government is also recognizing its law against its people like imposing defacto curfew or the mass ban that was implanted in October. So that's part of the reason why some people resolve to violence and sometimes using force from the protesters does have some utility. For example, it does stop some of the police from harassing people and torture people afterward. It does galvanize some of the populist support because people feel they are fighting back and there's hope in this fight. But what we are really trying to defend in here is Hong Kong becoming a movement that solely relies on militant measures. And I think this is like as organizers or as academia, that's something we need to really research and look into. That is how mixed strategy can cooperate and collaborate with each other so we can get the most of it. Thank you, Johnson. And we'll talk a little bit later about what the research suggests about the mixing of violent and nonviolent tactics because it's not evident, let's say, that it always helps a movement. But we'll hear from Jonathan about that point. But let me bring in Victoria. Victoria Hui is someone who's written about the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement from the umbrella movement in 2014 to the current round of protest. What would you say are the greatest strengths of the movement right now? And what are the biggest challenges that lie ahead? Essentially, I would say that the best strengths that this movement has are the kind of the keywords, unity, commitment, broad-based support, and international support. At the same time, though, I would say that these are also the reasons they also have become the targets for Beijing's crackdown. So think about mass protests. Hong Kong, for a long time, for decades, is very famous for the massive protests. Hong Kong has 7.5 million population, and then you can see 1 million, 2 million people protesting. And so given your research in Erika's, that you show that if you have 3.5% of the population all organized, rallying around a particular cause, you should achieve success. But Hong Kong repeatedly goes way beyond this 3.5 threshold. So then what the poem is doing is to, because in Hong Kong you have to have in no objection, permits from the police in order to have lawful assemblies. And by denying that permits to be organized, then any assembly becomes unlawful, subject to police use of force. Another thing is that Hong Kong people are also very, very artistic and they have done all kinds of artwork in order to support the protest. There have been lemon laws, essentially democracy laws. They're also human chains. And so these activities are subject to the same kind of unlawful assemblies. And not just that, not just, you know, if you gather without the permit, you can be arrested. But also because there've been folks who are around with knives to attack young people who are trying to put up posters and posted notes or to try to protect the walls. Another strength is commitment. So commitment, meaning that these days the young people are really willing to just sacrifice everything they're fighting the last stand. And then during the umbrella movement, people would actually turn themselves in at the police stations, because in a faith that the judicial system is going to, you know, if I have broken any law, I'm willing to take the consequences. But this time it seems that the police understand that if they take people to the court, the many of them will be released. And so they beat the people.   So then it would take them, you know, for an entire decade probably to even recover some of them actually suffer from disabilities as a result. And you can also hear from some top politicians that we just basically have lost interest in the entire young generation. So it's kind of this really concerted efforts to wipe out the young people. Now, another strength is the broad base of society to support. And that then has invited kind of essentially Beijing has been using whole society crackdown. So civil servants are behind this and any civil servants who are arrested, whether or not they're doing anything on the street if they happen to be even just by the, by put aside if they're arrested they get dismissed. Can the Pacific, many crew members join the annual strike on August 5th, they got fired. And then universities and students and secondary schools are now targets of repression. So I would say that another thing that seems to be so in other cases in South Africa, for example, consumer boycott is very, very effective. But in Hong Kong, we're dealing with China. And they have so much money. They have so much economic power. So NBA one guy made a tweet to stand with Hong Kong and then NBA will be banned in China. And so this goes back to I think to in order to maintain resilience. The best thing that I've seen that's going to allow people to do that is still talk to the boycott but in a sense of identifying the pro democracy businesses and pro democracy young people connecting each other. The apps doing that the business is doing that. So that will be the best way. And even but when it comes to elections. So with the district council elections that happened on November 24, the pro democracy councilors candidates could win because this election was based on first past the post. But with the legislative council election next time, it's going to be based on proportional representation. And it is designed to keep pro democracy councilors in perpetual minorities. So these are a lot of the challenges. Thank you, Victoria. So I wanted to bring in Azaz Alshami, who's been very actively involved in the pro democracy movement in Sudan. We were just noting before we went live that it's almost at the one year anniversary of the mass protests in Sudan that culminated in the ouster of Omar Bashir.  So this was a case of a popular movement going against an accused genocider, if you will. So I wanted to just ask Azaz, we heard that, you know, from Johnson and we hear from activists often in some of the most difficult and repressive context around the world that we've tried everything. We've exhausted all of our nonviolent options. So there's only one thing left and that's violence. So I just wanted to get your sense thinking about the Sudanese popular movement of how do you explain how this movement was able to stand down and face a regime accused of war crimes and prevail? Sure. Thank you, Maria and ESIP for hosting us. So for the revolution that took place in December 2018, it actually, rightly so, it started by a small protest in a school on the 13th in the Mazeem. But the revolution did not only start in 2018. It has been an accumulative movement that started as early as 2005. When I did some research about the first act of the sense of public protest or sit-in or picketing, it actually goes back to 2005. And ever since a lot of interest groups and a lot of movements in Sudan have been working internally, but a little bit in solio, they were not interconnected. And I think what happened in 2018 in December, it was an opportune moment where all these movements that have been working together met with a leadership that was actually almost like coincidence, which is the Sudanese professional association. And throughout these years, since 2005 until 2018, all these movements or groups or interest groups where had grievances, they tried that institutional path by trying to negotiate with the government and trying to have petitions or representation or something like that. And they all felt like it was going to fail or it didn't bring fruit. So they started to go against the government. And as you noted, the Sudanese government is notorious, and it has a very dark track record when it comes to human rights and human rights violations. But I would say that whatever these movements and these moving parts that makes the Sudanese government revolution had two characteristics that made it successful. One is something internal that is characteristic to the movement itself, and another is external that is something outside of it. The internal thing is the core model. Most of them were strong grassroots organization. And by grassroots, what made it very integral and important and critical to this movement is that it was not elitist. It was not central. You would find stakeholders across the country from different socioeconomic backgrounds with different grievances. People who already had tried their own tactics in their own struggle now coming together for something beyond their small groups. And the other thing about the characteristics of the movement, it was the inclusiveness. By inclusiveness, I mean at all levels, like gender-wise, age-wise, socioeconomic, racial, geographic. You would have, like, mass marches in the very small town that's called Atlet al-Maghadeba, which a lot of people might not even be able to point it on a map that can be similar and akin to that, you would find in Bursudan or Khartoum. So this inclusiveness and this mass scale made it also successful. It became inevitable for people not to join. And also, they were very persistent. And maybe we can talk later about the aggression from the states that varied from arresting to torture to people even dying in government facility and then mounting up to this big massacre that took place on June 3rd. And again, in the face of all of this oppression and aggression, the people were being persistent. And the persistency was not something that is superhuman. What they did, they did something very smart by preserving their energy and having a schedule, a revolutionary schedule, if you will, where they streamlined and organized their tactics and how they do it and rationed their energy. And the third internal aspect is the leadership. The leadership in this movement, specifically now this revolution, was the today's professional association that actually orchestrated, it was like the lead of the orchestra telling people the themes, telling people what to go, telling people what days to do, what days to mobilize. And that was very central in a sense that the guidelines are central, but at the same time, the components of the movement across the country have their own agency to execute that plan. So it was central in the guidance sense, but at the same time, it was decentralized enough for people to have a room and a leeway for them to do their own. And also the meaning non-violent. That was a very big challenge for a lot of people. And it was really interesting to see how the movement remained violent, not only just as a logical choice that this is minimizing my loss, but it was also part of the future of how they see this country that it belongs to them and they need to preserve it and they need to make sure that it's intact once they win. So almost like being so in believing convection that this war or this battle, it will end in their favor and they don't want to have a lot of damage that could hinder their efforts. The other component that made this movement successful was the external health. And that can be seen in the diaspora support. Sydney has a big diaspora around the world. And they were very integral and helpful and supportive of this movement in many ways, when it comes to fundraising, when it comes to advocacy, when it comes to bringing the attention to the situation, when it comes to documentation. And also they were very integral when it came to amplifying the message when the country was under siege by the internet shutdown that took place almost like 35 days after the massacre on June 3rd. So I feel like it was all these interlocking blocks about the core of the movement being central, being very grassroots, being very close to the people and the stakeholders and being very exclusive, being geographically spread and not elitist or centralized. And also the support that they get from outside, from Sydney's people themselves, who were almost like ambassadors or to reflect the movement stages and struggle and challenges. Thank you, Azaz. That was really interesting. And I thought it was an interesting choice of words that you preserved your energy in the movement and kind of in order to sustain over the longer term. In the interest of mixing activism and scholarship, I wanted to now turn to Jonathan Pinkney. Jonathan, you've researched the dynamics of civil resistance campaigns and recently published a special report with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict on Making or Breaking Nonviolent Discipline in Nonviolent Movements. And while I personally can't imagine any movement, particularly one facing a repressive opponent that could ever be perfectly nonviolent, what does the literature, the growing body of literature, I might add, suggest about the results of movements using violence, even unarmed forms of violence? Thanks, Maria. Yeah. I mean, this is an incredibly crucial question because exactly as you brought up, it's very rare to see a movement, particularly a movement that is based significant amounts of violent repression from the state that remains entirely nonviolent. But this means, of course, that it's very difficult to analyze these things at a movement level from the scholarly perspective because sort of small degrees of incidental violence often accompany almost every movement. So it's difficult to tease these things apart. So most of the work that's been, you know, there are scholars who argue on the one hand that even small levels of violence tend to undermine a movement's chances of success. Others who argue that some kind of violence, particularly violence without the use of arms can be beneficial. And others who argue that there isn't really much, much difference one way or the other. So on a macro level, it's difficult to say things with a high degree of certainty. But I think there are three specific points on this that I think we do have a lot of information about. A lot of good studies have been done and I think help us to get into this in a little bit more detail. And the first is that nonviolent events tend to lead to short term government concessions at a much higher rate than violent events. So we're not talking about sort of the overall success of the movement, but just in terms of the government making some kind of concession, some kind of short term gain for the movement. This tends to happen most frequently in response to nonviolent events rather than violent events. And so this means that it can be, if a movement is dominated by violent events, it can be a lot harder to build that gradual momentum over time that can maintain the energy. Like Azaz was talking about, and ultimately lead to a longer term success. So fewer concessions in response to violent events. Second, and sort of kind of the inverse, violent events are much more likely to face extreme levels of government repression relative to nonviolent. And we see this across many, many different contexts, whether that's in dictatorships, democracies, anywhere. And of course, this can be one of the major factors that SAP's movement strength undermines its resilience and prevents people from sort of maintaining a commitment to the movement over the long term. Now if a movement is particularly large or is facing a weak opponent, then these higher levels of repression may not be particularly important in affecting the movement's overall chances of success. But if a movement is facing a particularly strong state, then this impact on resilience is likely to be particularly crucial. And then third, we know from many, many different studies across many different contexts that on average the use of violence by an opposition movement tends to undermine people's external support for it. And increase the degree to which external observers view government repression as justified and understandable. So this has mostly been done by scholars doing sort of different kinds of survey experiments, or this kind of work. My own work, I've recently completed a study where we surveyed 5,000 people across 33 countries, found that when we depicted a movement as being violently repressed by the government, a peaceful movement, that significantly decreased whether people said the government had justice on its side. But if we changed it and said the government is engaging in the same kind of oppression of a violent movement, that increased the amount to which people said the government was justified more so than it was decreased when the movement was peaceful. So this can have a really significant effect in undermining people's support for a movement and increasing the degree to which people view the government's actions as justified. And this isn't necessarily 100% of the time. Some violence in a movement, of course, doesn't mean that it's doomed to failure, not at all. Particularly if this violence is perceived, if violence by the movement is perceived as proportionate relative to extreme levels of government repression. But it certainly comes with these particular challenges. Thanks, Jonathan. I wanted to just see before we talk with Ziad if either Victoria or Johnson had any particular questions for Jonathan before we move on. Yeah, I think Jonathan has made a very good point about the complexities of violence, whether in some of the context which is something that I also witnessed in Hong Kong. That is, you know, the violence of the protesters has to be proportionate and it has to be justified. It has to be fed by a reasoning. And if the interesting fact about the use of force of Hong Kong protesters, there are several characteristics of it. One, it is proportionate to the police crackdown. So, you know, usually the police and the military police, they use a very high levels of force while the protesters were only four and breaks. Rebuilding violence against the backdrops of Hong Kong society, the use of force from the professor, it's not that serious. And I think this is part of the reason why it doesn't lose popular support. And the second characteristic is those violence are very targeted to the government or the coonies of the government. So we see some fantasies of empty our services and some businesses. We also see violence against the police, but part of the reason why the protest movement maintain support is because they are very targeted. So what we according to the public survey done by independence academia, more than 60% of the Hong Kong populations said it is justifiable. And they can understand why protesters will use medical measures when the government is not responding to the movement. And I think this explains why public support being proportionate is something that every stakeholders in the movement has to keep in mind. Thanks, Johnson. I wanted to just, you know, Jonathan have in mind maybe kind of some additional insights from the research. But I wanted to bring in Zied from Tunisia. Tunisia is an interesting case where it was the first of the Arab Spring uprisings, the Jasmine Revolution, which resulted in the departure of another dictator, Ben Ali. And it was a case where the same groups that were leading the civil resistance ended up being the lead negotiators for the pathway to democracy and negotiating the democratic transition. And so, you know, and at the same time, the activists were facing a lot of, you know, government violence, police brutality. And a lot of the current activism in Tunisia today is still focused on these very issues of security force accountability and police violence. So I wanted to just ask Zied kind of what have you observed about how movements in Tunisia can best and most effectively engage with security forces? Thank you. Hi everyone first. So, yes, we, it's almost 10 years now since the revolution, nine years exactly.  And I'm happy to bring up some memories from the late 2010 and 2011. When the protests started in December 2010, it started first, as you may know, outside of the capital city. All the dictatorship of Ben Ali was built on a strong administration, especially on a central level. So everything started outside of Tunis, the capital city, and then Tunis was the last one, let's say, to move, if I may say that. On the first protests we did in the streets of Tunis, nothing was really coordinated. When we saw on the other hand that police special forces and even anti-terrorist forces were deployed in the streets to counter us, common citizens, we decided to organize ourselves. So it's our way of organizing ourselves, let's say, was based on three ideas. The first one was that the ideal thing is to hide behind institutions. Let me explain. Before 2011 we didn't really have any civil society in a democratic sense, only five or six organizations. And the idea was to push these organizations like the Tunisian Human Rights League or the UJTT, the main union in Tunisia, to push them to take a position and support the movement. And once UJTT or the Human Rights Defenders Association agreed to do that, we had a kind of a legal umbrella under which we could go into streets. Otherwise we would have faced much more brutal oppression. The second thing is we used what we had under our hands social media. So many Tunisians, especially young ones, were already using Facebook and Twitter. Getting an account or connecting to social media was very hard at that time because, for example, before 2011 we didn't in Tunisia have access to YouTube. For example, we didn't have access to many other social media. But we had Facebook and we used Facebook to keep each other informed about what was happening, especially outside of Tunis because it was very hard between, let's say, the end of December 2010 and the 40th of January. It was very hard to move outside of the capital city. It was very hard to get insights from what was happening. So we used Facebook and Twitter to organize ourselves. The third thing is, even if we never actually theorized what we did in 2011, we used what we call in Arabic a distract and divide. So let's say I was many times in 2011 within the Faculty of Law in Tunis and we had 300, between 300 and 500 people ready to go downtown to protest. And we knew that if we had moved all of us at the same time it would be easier for police to be violent with us. So we divided ourselves in groups of 10, 15, 20 people. We managed to deploy ourselves in many streets of the city, which imposed on police forces also to divide itself into smaller groups. And we found out that it was much better or much easier for us to do that than to go all of us all together at the same time on Habib Burgiba, which is the main street of downtown Tunis. So these were the three main ways we used to organize ourselves. But there were also, if I may add, factors. Let's say, I would say random factors because no one really thought about that, but it happened anyways. The first factor is the extent to which the crowd during the protests was diversified. You had obviously adult men and adult women, but also students and Ben Ali, we use this as a joke, Ben Ali made one of his biggest mistakes a week before he left the country by closing down all the universities. In his mind it was a way to stop students from protesting, but actually it helped a lot the movement because students were free to go and support the students. But we had also elderly people, older people in the crowds and children brought up by their parents. I know some might think it's kind of non-responsible, but we think it's the country. The police was facing a crowd of thousands of people and not only adult men, women, children, elderly. And that made it much more complicated for them to use violence. And at some point they finally used it on January 14th, but it was too late already. I may raise just one point for the debate, we can talk about it later, which is impunity. I think it's a very important thing. Nowadays in Tunisia the police is not using repression anymore during protests. The police is still doing harm to protesters within detention centres, within prisons. I know Victoria mentioned this point. And now we changed our mindset or our planification from how to do on the street to how to do after the protests once people are in custody. How to protect them and how to react to police violence within detention centres. That's really interesting. Thanks Ziad. And I finally wanted to turn with Ivan Marovic. Ivan, you were a student leader during the pro-democracy movement in Serbia and faced no shortage of violence and repression and have since worked with activists and movements in various countries around the world. What can you say, building on the conversation up to this point, what can you say about the strategies and the tactics that movements have used to maintain momentum in the face of repression? And what are the common pitfalls that they've experienced? Thanks Maria. So although I have to say my experience is from the previous centuries, so it may be a bit outdated, but there are some things that are kind of remain the same. And I think like in your question you just kind of put the seeds of an answer. Actually the point of reacting to repression is actually to maintain mobilization levels and momentum that the movement has. Because we have to ask ourselves not just like why regimes use repression, but if repression is so good for the regimes, one, they're using it all the time. And the reason why they're not using it all the time is it's too costly. So the way regimes use repression is that if they see an urgent need to quash a movement or to prevent certain kind of behavior by the people, they're going to use repression hoping that this behavior is going to stop and that the movement is going to either fall apart or they're going to like withdraw or they're going to make a mistake or something like that. But if the movement manages to keep on going despite the repression, usually the repression starts falling apart because it's just too costly. And it's costly both in terms of resources and in terms of morale of the forces that need to enforce that repression. Because they need to be convinced that they need to do things that are pretty much extraordinary. So one of the things that movements successfully do and this is something that we did back in Serbia and I also encountered other movements who were doing that was to have like a combination of tactics of concentration followed by the tactics of dispersion. So if you have people all protesting and you know we kind of assume that protest is probably kind of the most talked about and most reported on tactic that movements use. So you have people protesting in the street and all coalescing in the big towns or a capital city or whatever it is and then they're faced with a crackdown. Some movements try to do it again and usually they're faced with like formidable opponent but in some cases including what we did in Serbia was we actually instead of tactics of concentration we opted for tactics of dispersion. So we would do simultaneously smaller gatherings and smaller actions in dozens of towns across the country. That put the regime in a really awkward position because they had only few loyal and fierce and well equipped and well trained forces those special forces that could easily deal with us. But if the protests are happening and the actions are happening across the country at the same time they had to rely on local forces because they had to deal with them simultaneously and once they had to rely on local forces the local forces were not as good and also they had like local loyalties because they were coming from those towns in those cities so they were not as brutal in this repression. So that was for instance one of the things that was pretty successful strategy and I think it can be universal because the logic behind it is actually not country specific culture specific or even time specific. This is a tactic from a 20th century let's say that can be easily replicated in the 21st. Great thank you very much Ivan. That's very interesting on the strategic value of alternating between methods of concentration and dispersion. I wanted to now turn to our global audience and take a question from Saif Ahmed Alhadi who asks Victoria question. Victoria do you think a severe challenge is the unpredictable violent tactics that authorities take against the movement? And he goes on to say that I see the youth element as being a critical component in fueling the nonviolent approach. Victoria hold on we're just going to take you off mute. The Hong Kong case and other cases because for in the rest of the world usually you people have lived under dictatorship repression for quite a long time. What has happened with the Hong Kong police is that for many years we will be saying hi-fi to the police forces they were the most professional across Asia. So this is why even five years ago during the umbrella movement people would turn themselves in surrender themselves never expecting to be beaten up or torture. But now this is why I say that it is really against the determination of the entire young generation. And it's also precisely because there are these different pillars of freedom especially the rule of law. And therefore the police have been using very very extreme balance completely unexpected. And at the same time though we are also going back to what Jonathan was saying is that it we are dealing with a high capacity regime in Hong Kong. And the police force they are very well disciplined very well trained. And so far that Beijing has not sent out the PLA the People's Liberation Army because they think that they can really rely on the local police forces. So in this case we're dealing with a very high capacity regime that's willing to do whatever it takes to crack down on the people. And the people are also very very mobilized also we are we are talking about a high capacity society because Hong Kong for many many decades has always enjoyed freedoms. This is why we have this confrontation very very brutal crackdown turned to violence but at the same time also very sustained international local support. It's just true that the trend of violence has caused a little bit of that. But still we especially even senators actually went to Hong Kong and say hey guys can you we will return to non-violence. But still the Senate the House they all passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and then even European countries do it kind of looking at the same model as well. So this is kind of my take. And I mean part of the question was also the unpredictable nature of the violence. And you know one aspect of the situation actually in most of your cases was the role of non-state actors so paramilitary groups. And I'm curious how you have thought strategically about how to respond to whether it's triads or whether it was kind of paramilitary groups. Whether it was you know you know in Sudan kind of the non-traditional armed groups who were using violence against protesters. So how do you think strategically about responding to these actors. Yeah I think this is a very good question for a lot of Hong Kong people. This is something that they haven't really thought about. And also that I was just writing a piece. The use of fuckish violence is really to incite the whole point is to incite vigilante justice. And so now in the international media reports that we see these horrifying scenes of protesters beating up others. That's actually I think it's been costly to the movement. And also when protesters they have themselves thrown Molotov cocktails and also that because they mass themselves they also address in black. This then has actually I think the most horrifying scenes the worst distractions are done by agent provocateurs. Now Hong Kong people because Hong Kong people grew to the TV grew to all the videos so they know who did what. But the international media international observers really cannot tell. So they are the huge fendalism of train stations. I think that I can actually really we have enough evidence to show that they're not done by protesters. But again for the international audience that's really impossible to tell. Yeah. Other responses to the idea of paramilitaries Johnson I think you have a response. Yeah my my response is small on you know my questions to other movement experience because the very reason why Hong Kong people are trying to we're trying to gear up and escalate the use of force is because in late July there was paramilitaries. There were higher facts high by the government who were attacking people in the train station in this community and it really in framing people. And I think this is part of the this scenario would always be a counter by organizers or activists or even ordinary citizens in a movement because when people were facing the police you can say OK they are the government so we don't want to fall into the trap or we don't want to be get more violence from them. But when people are facing paramilitary or a state actor it's really easy and makes sense to for the protesters to gear up and to fight back so they can reduce further harm in the future. So I would like to hear other movement experience too. Ivan or Azaz do you have thoughts on that. So I have like you know I'm going to bring another example from the from the 20th century and we have to deal with a similar problem. So the first time we saw this happening was in Romania in the early 90s. When you know Nilesco was faced with the wave of protests in Bucharest mostly led by students. He organized secretly what used to be called the miners Olympics which means he organized miners to come down into the city and organize clashes with the with the students. So they started beating up students and then the police had to step in just to kind of maintain order. There are two sides we have to kind of maintain order but it actually completely turned the dynamic from students against the regime into like two groups of people fighting and then how can you be against the miners. Miners are risking their life every day going into the mines. So that was the day. So Milosevic tried the same thing with what we call the counter rally in 1996. We were organizing demonstrations against him and he organized counter demonstrations like people spontaneously gathering to support the government. But the whole idea was to organize incidents that are going to lead to to the clearing of the state of law. They even had like guns were used. They were shooting at protesters. But these were unarmed civilians not armed armed but ununiform civilians that were armed and that were that were organizing this act of violence. So what it was really difficult for us and we had to maintain like complete separation. We tried to kind of de-escalate as much as we could to prevent and to kind of build a very strong media narrative. What is going on. We were going to come back the next day after the counter rally happened and to reclaim the streets because the whole idea was to prevent this narrative of two sides of the civilians trying to fight and then the army stepping in or the police stepping in because that's a trick actually. It wasn't really genuine. It was actually all applied by the by the regime. That's really interesting. I have something to say. So in Sudan in the recent context there are two ways in which the government tried to manipulate the situation by having their own flank. One was doing a counter rally of course using slogan that is opposite to what the people were using. For instance the people were using the government's Mexico and the counter rally was using the slogan of no you must pay. And they gathered their own people and their supporters and they took over one of the public spaces. The other one was a little bit more controversial and more tricky. During the sit-in where the protestor took over a street next to the general command of military as a sit-in from the April 7th until June 3rd. That was a very popular place and that was like a little utopia if you will. And what the government did used an adjacent area next to it called Columbia that is known to be a hub for recreational drugs. And what the government said and they use that pretext as that area as a pretext for the aggression and the excessive use of violence. And it was really interesting because it created this breadth within the movement itself and the people in general and the general public who were like oh we don't approve of recreational drugs and we're not going to accept that. This is not our code of conduct, this is not our ethics. And at the same time they under the generation noticing what the government is trying to do and saying no. Columbia is part of the revolution. The people who are there mostly are people who are homeless or come from very underprivileged economic backgrounds. They are victims, they are as victim as we are and they are citizens and they should not be neglected. And it was sad enough that that area has been taken as a pretext for the excessive use of violence on the June 3rd. Because the government until recently the narrative is like we tried to disperse Columbia which was a drug hub but we did not want to do anything with the sit-in. So it was quite interesting and I think that it was also a learning curve for the movement itself about accepting people and the social economic divide that a lot of people didn't look beyond just being poor but that was like for them to see the choices that people underprivileged sometimes are left with and how they can live and what their choices are. But it did succeed unfortunately in minimizing the support for the people who live in that area. As a result many of them might not get justice for their killing or what they have faced. Thanks Azaz. I wanted to take two questions that are related. The first one from Sege Medin. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Sege asks what has been the role of women as movement creators? And then the related question from Madison is about the gender breakdown of each of your movements. And her question specifically is do women frame their grievances differently or are women's issues adopted in the overall movement agenda? Somebody want to take a stab on that? Maybe you had some reflections on women's roles in Sudan. Do you want to take that now or let somebody else go? Yeah sure. I would say that. I was just recently in Sudan and I had the honor to work with more than 60 women who were part of the revolution. And it was really remarkable. I know they are part of the revolution but when you look at the ways and their engagement is just astonishing. People were not just showing up in mass numbers. It was way beyond that. Many women who were not necessarily political activists or necessarily like your average activist were really involved in the mobilization. They were involved in getting messages to people who are hard to reach. They were also very engaged when it comes to the organization of events. For instance, doing the logistics, making sure who is who and who is where. Getting permission for a lot of the protest especially for the younger ones. That was a very important part because we are a communal society. A lot of people, it really matters to them the validation of their family and what the family says especially for women, younger generation. And a lot of women were actually asking their girls to show up. They were asking their girls to go. And even those who could come from a more restricted environment, they were trying to provide help in another way. For instance, doing the social media campaigns, making sure that they are posting the photos. Making sure that the message is getting across. Doing the logistics for the underground groups together and all that. And that was not only just in urban settings. That was even in areas that are remote where women participation in politics is not really perceived as something okay or accepted by the society. And at the same time, even in IDPs camps where internally displaced people, most of the movement leaders and the grassroots leaders were actually women. And also the other rule that a lot of people don't realize is keeping this movement peaceful and nonviolent. That was actually most of it put on the shoulder of women because they were the one who are trying to promote the ethos of peacefulness. Trying to remind the men because we have this culture where women in the war culture, they are usually the one who instigates men to go and take revenge on all that. And they became the one who are calling for nonviolent, reminding men that the strength is not about just use of violence. It's not about being irrational and angry. It's actually about being wise. So they were integral leaders of this movement in ways and means that there were not the usual way. But it was the best way possible for them to do so given the culture and the structure of the society there. One last thing is during the sit-in that lasted for almost two months and a half, the core, the bees are the one who were doing the heavy lifting of the logistic were actually women. For a lot of people to stay there 24-7 and remain put during the sit-in, it required a lot of other women who are at home to take the responsibility to do so who are guarding the sit-in. And that was also done by women, providing the food, providing the logistics, providing even protection, providing the sense of family and convivial atmosphere. It was put on women. Women doctors were mainly remarkably seen during the sit-in. So they were everywhere. Sadly though, when it came to the political process and it came to the after the negotiation part and that women were not as recognized. And they were like almost told, okay, thank you, we got it from here. And this is a new struggle now for women in Sudan. They're trying to take their space and curve their space. While also to validate their own differences within them and there's a new women movement emerging from Sudan. And the process are very promising, despite the setback and the challenges, but it's very promising. And this new Sudanese woman now, there are like 10 times stronger than they were before. So imagine how strong they are now. Thanks, Azaz. Any other thoughts on the kind of the gendered aspects of the movements? Yeah, so in Hong Kong the same too. We see same phenomenon that more women are taking up prominent roles and organizing role and they have to do a very good job in using their role in the movement. So for example, after the students break into the legislature building, a lot of mothers hold a assembly and they were trying to subword the narratives of student vandalizing buildings into something like the students were desperate and as mothers, as parents, you have to understand them. So we see more women are taking up a prominent role in the movement. But at the same time, what I would like to emphasize is having women to take up a prominent role doesn't mean that we will achieve gender equality into the movement. Because as for gender equality, we also need to respect the feminities of women and their specific ways of engagement into social movement. And I would say in the Hong Kong context, in the Hong Kong movement, we still have yet to respect that kind of feminity. And this is kind of related to the questions on violence. Part of the reason why some women will be excluded from the front line is because they face huge violence and oftentimes women are seen as less skillful in fighting the police. So sometimes they would face discrimination or they would be looked down upon if they were trying to be at the front line. And at the same time, because the use of force has become one of the main tactics in the protests, it also discouraged some of the considerations of women. Because, you know, again, structurally, women are seen as a weakest subject in fighting the police. So this brought us to the questions of, you know, if we really want to include everyone, if we want to include a, if we want to have a movement that is inclusive. So what kind of tactics or what kind of mixed tactics should be used and how should we be flat, how should we alter our tactics will be something that all of us have to learn. No, thanks, Johnson. That's really interesting. And I think that's one of the kind of the research findings about the introduction of violent tactics is that it tends to, on average, reduce active participation. And if that's a primary strategic interest to increase participation and certainly to increase participation of women, that's where kind of the introduction of violence can be problematic. And, you know, generally in these struggles, it's young, able-bodied men who are throwing the molotovs or the bricks or whatever. So that's a kind of exclusionary approach, if you will. But it was interesting what you said. One other question we have from Neda Zodi, who says, it seems a critical factor for your movement's success is long-standing networks that predated major actions. During the off-times, how can you evaluate if networks and relationships in civil society are strong enough to seize windows of opportunities once they open? That's a really good question. Somebody want to take that one? So I'm happy to offer a couple of thoughts on the pre-existing networks question just from a sort of general perspective. And then I'd love to hear from sort of each of the activists and others here about sort of specific movements as well. I mean, I think this existence of pre-existing networks, I mean, I agree with the premise of the question that in many cases these are absolutely crucial for maintaining mobilization. In the moment, individual large-scale protests may seem entirely spontaneous, but there are oftentimes these long-standing existing organizations that can serve as mobilizing structures, that can connect different segments of society in order to lead to these sort of massive moments of mobilization. I think in particular, I mean, I'd be curious, as I was to hear your thoughts, you brought up the Sudan Professionals Association beforehand as sort of one of the key factors that linked together different groups in the uprising in Sudan. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this question. Yeah, sure. So this is exactly what happened in Sudan, that most of it, it was all of these groups and interest groups and some of them are professionals, some of them are interest groups like those who suffered from land grabbing or those who are from underdeveloped areas. All of them, like, did their own mini-movement, if you will. They had most of the tactics, doing the picketing, doing the mobilization, having their own messaging, but they were all scattered in a way. What happened during the resolution is all these small groups that already had some experience in the field of mobilizing and already have established their consistency, they already have their own integrity, and they already have paid their dues, whether being arrested or being subject to torture or whatever. So they already gained the trust of their communities. They came together. The bigger umbrella was the Sudanese Professionals Association, which was made up of seven organizations. There were mainly white-collar organizations like teachers and doctors, syndicates and engineers. But also they were wearing multiple hats as well, whether by geographic associations, some of them were from war zones, some of them were affected by other underdeveloped parts that have different reasons. So they were kind of like veterans, and what they did is they became an umbrella and they came with this declaration of freedom and change, which was the manifesto, if you will, for the movement, and people started to sign to it. And most of the signatories to the Freedom and Change Declaration were already people who had their own share of organizing and grassroots movement on the ground. So the thing is like the learning or the teaching of tactics of nonviolent resistance was very minimal. What happened for the FDA is to streamline this massive effort from components and sectors of the society into one channel and make it like go in one stream together. But I feel like had not these groups already worked and had their own experiences in mobilizing and nonviolent resistance already, even if they don't know it and if they don't call it that, it would have been much slower progress for the movement to move in. Because people were ready, they knew what a protest means, they knew what it means to do messaging, they knew how to keep secrets, they knew how to respond to counter messages, they already had their share. And I think because again, this did not start in 2018, this has started way long before that, and it was incremental and it became, and we have two waves of popular protests in Sudan already in 2013 and 2016. So already people had, these tactics have been ingrained in their psyche and people were like already ready. So it was there all along, it just needed an activation and the catalyst was the protest, the worsening of the economic situation, and then you had this leadership already of people that you know and trust you've been already with in different battles with the government are telling you where to go. So I attribute a lot of the success for this movement, for the existing all interest group, grassroots group specifically, who were already doing their own battles and they were doing their own efforts. And then when the time came, they were ready to join and amplify and scale up. I might add something to Hang on guys just went so a colleague of mine who was watching the Facebook video before just sent me an email and said that the video has stopped. I'm not able to see it on Facebook either so I think we made Oh, it's still recording. It's still recording though. It is still recording. Okay, great, let's keep talking then. Okay, but I agree. I can see the Facebook live video. But let's keep on talking. I was going to say that trying to answer another question which is related to the evaluation of networks and how strong the relationship are to seize opportunities and I am in my opinion it's more a bet than a real evaluation, especially where when you are in the heat of the movement itself, but what helped us in 2011 in Tunisia and even after that in different protests sensitive during sensitive times is to see public figures to see personal personalities who never took positions before whether it was against the dictatorship or in other protests and see these people go in the streets and support the movement or gave a message to the public opinion to go in the streets that it might not be safe. But this is the moment to go there so you could have you could see in 2011 judges who would face severe oppression if the dictatorship have lasted after 2011. Sometimes I remember in two or three protests we on our way to downtown Tunis we faced police blockades and some of the policemen just made few steps on the side of the street to allow people to go beyond the blockage so it wasn't there were no direct communication between the protesters and the police but I mean this gives you a sign that the word is spreading, that the opinions are in accordance with each other whether it's between the protesters or with the police officers and again I think it's more better than a real assessment of the situation. Johnson or Ivan or Victoria do you have any thoughts on this question? So if I can say that you know we used to have like this funny saying back in the day we say that you know for success we need just three things and that's organization, organization and organization. So in a sense these kind of networks that are kind of already existing are important because they reflect the horizontal nature of the movement. It's not one organization it's actually like some sort of a mycelium that is happening under the ground. If they use the like a fungi as a so this is you know networks of organizations that are kind of growing underground and when the rain falls then the mushrooms pop up so the mobilization is the result of that effort and if you look at those regimes who are very very adamant at preventing social movements from popping up what are they doing? They're actually trying to limit the work of all these networks and existing organizations youth organizations professional organizations look at Russia and what Putin has been doing look at other countries where they're preventing people from self-organizing because they understand that self-organizing will one day be the springboard for kind of potential mobilization. Yeah on the organization point back to the well so there is a comparison between the 2014 and brand movement and the protest movement is occurring right now back to 2014 you know the protest was led by a network of organization and they were advocating non-violence and this is part of the reasons why in the movement that's five years ago a lot of people were forming a packet team and they were asking people to escalate their use of force but that was when things started to flip that a lot of leading organization in the umbrella movement they were challenged by activists and organizers who emerged in this movement and so I think one of the challenge to a traditional way or a traditional social movement organization in this century is most of the movement now a day are very decentralized and the first hole of facilitating or organizing social movement is also lower because you know people have more techniques in doing so like online campus and also it's really easy to connect people right now or think the same way as you do so how does traditional social movement organization deal with this kind of challenge will be a subject that need to think more about and building on this new ways of social movement mobilization it will also pose new challenge to the disciplines of protest because now you have people who are very diverse they are from different social background they may have a different perceptions of what is admissible and what is not and often time we will need more resources or time to deliberate and also to build consensus among the movement we don't have very much time left but I just wanted to allow and encourage our panelists to offer a final minute or so of reflection as we wrap up our Facebook live event today so Victoria how about we start with you so we just need to just one second Victoria when we're going to unmute you okay go ahead okay so the the last question before we got cut off was then how do people you know can when they're lying low and things are not in kind of like it just in recess how do you get prepared for when the opportunity opens up and then several speakers said that well yeah because they were actually probably existing networks so I bring that back to Hong Kong is that Hong Kong because for a long time has had the freedom to to get organized unlike in for example in Syria in other places where essentially the whole idea of the regime is to even stifle that kind of ability to get self organized and then the very distinctive feature of the movements now is this leaderless nature I would say that that is a really miss normal because you have many many different organizations working together the only problem is that there's no central leadership and then at the same time I will also say that people have taken the lesson that the umbrella movement failed because it was too disciplined in terms of not ever turning to anything not even throwing a piece of rock and also this after listening to the experiences of Tunisia and and Sudan and Evans and Serbia it kind of seems that the Hong Kong people have done a lot of the right things they have extensive grassroots support they have cross cross-class alliances they have cross-regional cooperation they've done all you know the whole range of nonviolent activities boycotts, strikes, human chain, landmarks in addition and also also they also have these people organizing into smaller groups to distract and divide the police it's like they've done everything but at the same time back to what I was saying earlier that Hong Kong is confronting with a very high capacity regime so that's the challenge and at the same time I think the biggest asset for Hong Kong to maintain resilience is this very strong society so which means that to go to the way forward is to think about organized boycotts is to think about you know other forms of strikes and also forming people already talking about forming this alternative yellow food democracy network and so these things are really should be explored better Thanks very much Victoria. Jonathan? Just one second Jonathan. Oh I got it. We only have about two or three minutes left so in the interest of giving sort of the actual activists here time to speak I will yield my time to the activists Okay sounds good. Johnson? Right so as a long-term nonviolent tactics practitioner this movement is really widening my horizon in understanding violence and also the use of fossil protesters So my first key takeaway I would say from this movement is we need more understanding of the capacities of why people are choosing one tactics and you know how different tactics can cooperate with each other and also facing such a huge capacities such the most powerful of our terrarium regimes in history with China what I learned from Sudan or from Serbia experiences is one movement or one moment it might not get us anywhere where a continuous pass patience and high commitment from its population it will be the wave forward so which lead us to the discussions of you know how do we build the resiliency of protesters and how external atta stakeholders like international community can pay close attention to continuous movement because what we are facing now is a lot of people more than five thousand and eight hundred people are already arrested forty percent of them are students many of them are charged with writing that will get them some of the ten years of imprisonment and to this individual the sense of injustice and the sense of unfairness would publicly drain them to support even you know more violent ways of struggle which is justifying because the injustice that happens on them is just so unreasonable so how can external atta to understand the grievances of the people who are suffering how we lay support build a strong support network that can help them to overcome the challenge that they are facing would be something that serve as a legacy to the next wave of protest movement in this movement lots of people are already saying that they are going to form unions like Victoria said we are going to form a pro-democracy network that will support businesses or also pro-democracy so this will be the legacy for the future movement and I think this is the beauty of people's power movement it's not going to stop at one point it's a continuous struggle thank you very much Johnson Azaz yeah so two things one first for what I learned observing Sudanese the revolution in Sudan is that the remaining grassroots gets you far it really takes you far first it makes it sustainable it makes it more persistent and it minimizes the use of force because you have your own people on the streets and people are invested more in it for it to win and it's easier for you to have people join you and it will be more authentic and more real one lesson learned that is a little bit of a bittersweet that came out of this revolution is that when the time came for the political part or phase most of the movements were not ready whether for lack of capacity or because they were not prepared for that there was not enough preparedness or readiness to have the same momentum and the same level or leverage when it came to the political one and this is a challenge is still happening now so it would be really interesting to see how movements transformed from active dissent into a state building into a little bit tapping into the not necessarily institutional ways but also at the same time changing their practice and ways in which they are engaged with the government that could be representative of the revolution but it's not necessarily addressing all the challenges and the grievances of the people so I feel like this is a little bit of a not a plateau per se but the movement now in Sudan is a little bit feeling of balance because they don't know how to deal with this new government that is supposedly to be a representative of the revolution yet it's still not addressing what the movement wanted or most of the major reasons why it comes to accountability and justice and they're finding that protect is not enough they're not having enough stakeholders joining in because there are people who actually have buy-in in the government more than the reasons of do-for-protecting so this is going to be an interesting moment to see how the movement or these interest groups if they're going to do a solidarity, if they're going to do a big union I don't know we're watching it and I'm watching it as well but I feel like this was one of the biggest back I don't know if it was the reddit or it's the circumstances or I don't know I'm yet trying to figure it out Thank you Remain grassroots, that's the main thing That's the message, Ziad I completely agree with as I said I think it was a key factor for the sustainability of the movement to remain as much close to its roots as possible the movement in 2011 in Tunisia is mainly or very often considered as being a leaderless movement because we had no face representing the protesters I much more like to prefer to say that it's a leaderful movement because everybody in the street acted and behaved as a leader when the time imposed that So it helped us even now in 2019 keeping the idea or the soul of the revolution alive in Tunisia and with all the bad things that happened after 2011 in Tunisia There are still many people believing in the core idea of the revolution and this is because we kept the movement close to its roots so I completely agree with as I said Thanks very much Ziad, Yvonne bring us home So you know kind of to say that when we are thinking about or we are worried about the repression that we may face we should also remember that the regime is worried as well about that repression And first because it's costly, second because it can backfire, third because I remember when we actually after Milosevic was brought down and we got to access the internal communication there was a point where Opor was declared a terrorist organization despite the fact that we never used violence and there was like this big crackdown Thousands of activists were arrested and all this stuff a year later when we actually got to see the internal communication we saw what chaos was behind and like everybody was like it was we thought we were facing like this formidable machine that is going to kind of arrest us all and put us down but actually when we saw what was going on behind was actually a completely different picture it was everybody was trying to save their own little turf and like to kind of shift the blame to somebody else if things go wrong people didn't want to get involved so in a sense when we worry about repression we should know that the other side is worried about and this gives us hope Thanks very much, Yvonne. Well, I wanted to thank this remarkable virtual panel of scholars and activists from around the world for offering their perspectives on what is I think a really timely and important topic of what how movements face repression and wanted to thank you all around the world for tuning in and for asking great questions and making such helpful comments and so on behalf of the Institute I want to thank everyone for joining and wish you all a fantastic morning afternoon or evening. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Stay safe.


Hi, Mars fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Pallie Mugen. I'm the CEO of Aira. Today, we're going to talk about link building and how to evolve your link building to its next phase and to improve what you do at the moment. So we're going to talk through three methods to improve your link building and evolve it and improve the results you get for clients. So firstly, number one, there is a bit of an issue sometimes with link building and the relevance of the content that we produce for link building. So one way we can actually improve that and make our content as relevant as possible is to use the customer journey to generate link building ideas. Now, there's lots of different ways of thinking about the customer journey, different funnels, different methodologies. One thing we use at Aira for this is the awareness, consideration and decision phases where the customer goes from being aware of the problem, paying points, something they want to fix, then looking at their options and trying to figure out who should I choose to solve that problem. And then finally, maybe getting their credit card out, picking up the phone, emailing, that kind of stuff to actually decide who they're going to go with. Now we can use this model to actually come up with link building ideas. I'm going to share how we do this at Aira. So there's four pillars we can use to try and figure out content ideas that are relevant to our customers. Firstly, we start with the audience themselves. So who are our audience? Who are we trying to speak to? Who are our audio buyers for the products and services that we sell? So that's where we start. We then move on to the paying points of that audience. So what kinds of things do I struggle with? What kind of triggers can actually make them start to look for a product such as yours or a service such as yours? And then thirdly, what solutions do you offer as a brand or website to try and fix those paying points for those customers and try to connect those things together? Fourthly, what keywords are you trying to rank for? What are you trying to rank for in Google? How does that connect back to your service and your product? And what that allows you to do is to tie together these stages into actual rankings, actual keywords that you're trying to improve with your link building and your content. The nice thing about using these four areas to try and come up with content ideas for link building is that it forces relevance. It's really hard to actually do this. If you stray too far away from it, your content ideas aren't very relevant. So if you stick really closely to it, it's a bit harder. That's kind of the point. What you're trying to do here is to draw a balance between ideas that can get links, but also content ideas that are very relevant to your audience and who you're trying to sell your products or your services to.  Second point, second thing we can do to evolve our link building is to move beyond big, shiny, interactive link building campaigns. Now we've built hundreds of these over the years era. We will continue to build them. I love a good, shiny, interactive hero campaign, but I believe there's more we can do when it comes to content-led link building. So there's four things we can do here. So firstly, try and make any campaigns, any content you come up with evergreen. What I mean by that is it shouldn't be a start and a stop campaign where you launch a campaign, do your outreach and then forget about it and move on to the next one. Try and create ideas and campaigns that you can outreach and promote over and over and over again. If you can do that, it continues to be relevant throughout the year, across multiple years. It isn't just one-off campaign that you're hoping will get links before you move on to the next one. The second thing you can do is actually not to stop the outreach. So most SEOs actually will outreach the campaign and then stop once that campaign's finished and move on to the next one. What you should be trying to do instead is create campaigns that you can always outreach and always promote. So try not to stop the outreach. And what happens over time is you build up multiple campaigns, multiple content pieces, and you end up with a nice big bank of content that you can continually outreach and get links to. So you're not relying upon one campaign after another to get links. Third point we can do is to look at existing content. So again, when you're thinking about creating link building campaigns, the natural tendency is to think of something new, right? To think about, okay, what can we create that's brand new, hasn't been done in full, completely new campaign for a website or a client? Actually, that's absolutely fine. But there may be some existing content on that website that is link worthy. So make sure when you start working with a website or a new brand, look at what they've got already, see which content they've got that may be link worthy, may have gotten links in the past, and try and outreach and promote that content whilst you're building new campaigns. And this works really well, particularly for agencies because when you're launching a campaign, that takes a bit of time to come up with ideas, do the production, do the design. Whilst you're doing all of that, if you can find existing content on that website that is link worthy, you can promote that and get links to that whilst you're building the big campaign. And you're offsetting the risk there as well and getting links in the short term as well as the long term. Fourthly, simplify your execution. Now, every content piece has to be big, shiny, interactive, four-page takeovers. It can be as simple as a blog post. It can be a small mini-infographic. Try not to worry too much about big, fancy executions. Let the idea lead the execution. And if that means that you write just a very, very simple blog post with a couple of images, maybe lots of copying and bullet points, that's absolutely fine. If that's the best way to execute your idea, then that's what you should go with and not worry too much about making something interactive or big just for the sake of it. Thirdly, the first thing we can do to elevate our link building is to aim for links that you didn't ask for. So a lot of the time with link building techniques, they rely upon outreach and outreach means sending emails, trying to get in touch with webmasters and link prospects and getting links from them. That's absolutely fine, we should continue doing that. But one place we want to try and get to is to create content where it naturally gets links on its own. So you may well do outreach and get links to that content, but as well as that, you're also getting people linked to that content naturally so you're not relying too much just on the outreach. Now there's three examples here of content you can create that actually will do this. Now the first thing to remember is actually content that ranks tends to get links because when people are doing research into different areas and trying to write about certain industries, they may look for content they can also link to. So for example, if you have a page that's about statistics and trends in your industry and someone's writing an article about your industry and trends in 2022, if they find your content, there's a good chance that they will link to it as well in the content they're producing. But if it ranks, they've got more chance of finding it. The second area is long-form guides, really in-depth, really detailed content. If you can find some good topic ideas to write about in the long-form way. Long-form guides tend to rank for a lot of long-tail and retail keywords. Again, if it ranks really well, it's very detailed, very techy. This works really well for very technical products and very technical services. If you can create content about your product or service that's quite technical, it's got a good chance of ranking well and also being referenced and linked to by other websites. And thirdly, industry reports. So actually, we did this ourselves at ERA. We produced a state of link-building report a few months ago. It's a report that gets referenced a lot by our industry because it's a standard in industry for link building and people think of it when they're writing their own content. So in your industry, if you can create industry benchmark reports, state of industry reports, surveys, that kind of stuff that actually shares knowledge and shares information with the industry, it's easier for people to reference that in their own content that they produce as well. But again, it needs to rank well for people to find it in the first place. So there's three ways to actually evolve your link-building and try to elevate it to the next level, beyond campaigns, beyond outreach, and actually trying to get links that you didn't ask for. So that's what we'll try to do for me. I'm Paddy Moogan. If you've got any questions, drop them into the comments below. I'll be happy to get back to you.