Hello, and welcome to this special episode of The Peace Frequency. I'm your host, Darren Cambridge. And for those of you who are not familiar with The Peace Frequency, we are a podcast series brought to you by the United States Institute of Peace, where we tap into the stories of people across the globe who are making peace possible and finding ways to create a world without violence. You can learn more about The Peace Frequency at ThePeaceFrequency.com. As you also know, this past Monday, Martin Luther King Day was celebrated and recognized across the United States, and yesterday was our first of three special Facebook Live episodes exploring the legacy and strategic insights of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More specifically, the six steps of nonviolent social change, oftentimes referred to as the six steps of King and nonviolence, that King laid out in his 1963 book, Why We Can't Wait. So, just to quickly recap, King's six steps of nonviolent social change are, one, information gathering, what's going on in the community that people want to see change, two, education. It's important to know about the history, the impact, the potential solutions to these issues. Step three, personal commitment. What work and sacrifices am I willing and able to do and make in order to participate in the movement? And those were the three steps that we talked about yesterday. Step four, negotiation. What is the movement's demand and is our opponent willing to meet it? And that's the step that we're going to talk about on today's show. Step five is direct action. If negotiations do not bring about the desired change, what can we do to elevate the conflict and build our collective power in order to return to the negotiation table with more leverage? And then six is reconciliation. How do we ensure that our victory defeats injustice, not people, that the future of our community is one that builds relationships, not destroys them? And that's the step that we're going to talk about in tomorrow's episode. So we have three guests for today's episode. And first, we have Dr. Maria Steffen. She is the director of the Nonviolent Action Program here at USIP. She is also the co-author of the book Why Civil Resistance Works, the Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. And she's also one of the main instructors in the online Civil Resistance course that we offer here through USIP's Global Campus. Also joining us is Sarah Thompson, who recently left her role as the executive director of Christian Peacemaker's Team and now works at the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. And third, we are also joined by Anthony Wanis St. John, who is professor at American University and is also the main instructor in the online negotiation course that we offer here at USIP. And I also want to welcome all the viewers who are tuning in on Facebook live. We welcome all of your questions, all of your comments throughout the show. So please type your responses, your questions, your comments in the discussion thread below this video. And my two colleagues, Nick Zaremba and Stephen Ruder, who are just here off camera, they're going to be moderating the feed and they're going to let us know when any of you have anything to share. So we'd love for you to influence and contribute to this conversation. So my first question goes out to all of our guests and it goes out to you, our Facebook viewers. So I want you all to think about this as well and type your response. And it's a question that's going to allow us to get to know each other a little bit. And so since we're going to be talking a lot about power, especially when it comes to negotiation, my question is, what do you do when you want to feel particularly powerful? What do you do when you want to feel powerful? So is there like a song that you listen to, an outfit that you wear, a meal that you eat, a mantra that you say over and over again? If you're going into negotiation that's really important and you want to feel powerful, what do you do? So I'm going to start with you, Maria. What do you do to make yourself feel powerful? That's a great question. Thanks, Darren. I guess to start, I would have a really strong cup of Vermont roasted coffee. Just to get the juices flowing, I would probably put on my brooks and my earbuds and go for a long run in the woods listening to some pumping music from Disturbed or Lady Gaga, something like that. And that would help clear the mind and help me to focus and be in the right frame of mind for negotiation. So those are a couple of things. Nice, I like it. I like it. Anthony, what about you? What do you do to make yourself feel powerful? Certainly getting my personal sense of confidence up, perhaps with music, meditation, but just as importantly, understanding who my counterparts are deeply, understanding what are their needs for agreement or their lack of a need for agreement and working hard to develop a broader coalition on my side, perhaps, and even strengthening my ability to walk away if necessary from the negotiation table, at least temporarily. Nice, great, thank you. And then Sarah, what about you? What do you do when you want to feel powerful? Well, definitely exercising and also just before I enter something I often will find a friend I can call who's with me where I can just babble everything that's in my head, everything that's coming up because as soon as I get that top layer of whatever scatterness is there, I can drop in and be present. And my posture makes a big difference to me growing up as an athlete. I remember triple threat position from basketball, one foot, just a little bit hatched up behind the other. And even just going from there where you have the possibility to shoot past or dribble and from Indiana. So we love that basketball. I can translate that into a powerful stand and position through which I can be both open and firm. So getting my body ready, talking it out and then standing strong. Awesome, awesome. Thanks to three of you. Do we have any responses from folks on Facebook that they're willing to share? Yeah, we have one from Francesco who says the meditation and breathing is their way of getting ready, is getting amped up and ready to go. Nice, excellent, excellent. Cool, well, let's jump right into step four of the six steps of king and nonviolence or steps of nonviolent social change, which is, of course, negotiation. That's going to be the main focus of our conversation today. I think the first thing that I want to point out is that negotiation is step four and it's listed before step five, which is direct action. I think this is an important thing to bring up because I think oftentimes when we talk about nonviolent movements and we're learning about them, we are presented with a variety of images and videos of people engaged in direct action. They're out there in the streets, engaged in protests, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins and so forth. So our image of nonviolent movements is often colored by the most dramatic aspect of those types of movements, which is, of course, direct action. But negotiation actually, as King laid out in his strategy, comes before direct action. So why do we think that is? I think some people might think, wait a minute, shouldn't we do the protests and street demonstrations first before we go to the negotiating table? So why do you think King thinks that negotiations should come first? Maria? Yeah, I mean, I think the negotiations come before nonviolent direct action because it's kind of the opening gambit. It's the time when you're facing your opponent for the first time, you're kind of learning about where they're coming from, what their interests are, and you're expressing grievances for the first time.  And so just having a clarity of message out there, which becomes kind of a rallying cry for nonviolent direct action afterwards. And it's also kind of an assessment opportunity. We talked a lot about assessment yesterday with the guests. And it's a way to just better understand the context, again, where your opponent is coming from, and that just strengthens your position both at the table and then off the table when you're doing nonviolent direct action. OK. Sarah, what do you think? And actually, before you share with us, I mean, you work at the King's Center, which is one of the best places to go to get information about the six steps of Kingian nonviolence, the six principles of Kingian nonviolence. Could you share with us the URL so folks could visit that website to learn more about the King's Center? And then you let us know why you think negotiations are important to come before direct action. www.thekingcenter.org. I really think that for Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and those doing the strategy at that time that developed into Kingian nonviolence, I think they were heavily influenced by their context. This is the Southern United States and Dr. King and others had some proximity to power. They knew where to find the people they wanted to negotiate with and they knew what they wanted to say already having created councils like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, having already had conversations with NAACP field organizers. And so they were able, based on the civic organizations that they had to know some of what their demands are and then through the organizing structures that they had, which were relatively hierarchical at that time, they were able to mobilize their particular power and call upon those who they wanted to negotiate with. Also Dr. King and others, they didn't want to embarrass anybody. They didn't want to have to get out there and have to dramatize the pain in true Southern style. They would prefer to talk about the issue and resolve it. And so I do think both King's proximity to power, their proximity to the power they wanted to negotiate with, the civic organizations that they already had and their hope to believe in the system that they were negotiating with had influenced them to put a negotiation first because they didn't actually want to get out there and have to march and do all those things because it is extremely dangerous for them to do so. So you're gonna go the path that it hopes keeps most people alive and safe. And that's why I think they tried to start with negotiation and wanted those things to happen in good faith. And it was deeply disappointing when the powers that be in fact did not come through with that good faith. And then they had to put themselves on the line leading with the belief that the suffering that they were going to show would bring those people back to the negotiation table, which is sometimes did and sometimes didn't unless the movement goes on. Thank you, thank you. So Maria, you mentioned something about negotiating basically being the first stage of a campaign letting your opponent know this is what we want. And then Sarah, you mentioned that through all that information gathering and education from the community that is seeking change that Dr. King and others in the civil rights movement they had a good sense of this is what people want to see changed. And that needs to be communicated effectively to the powers that be. Anthony, I wanted to jump to you now because this connects to a publication that you helped co-write not too long ago here at USIP called Negotiating Civil Resistance. And in that document, you talk about a nonviolent movement putting forward a strong demand that is collectivizing that is collectivizing. Dramatizing and momentum gathering. So first, perhaps we could share a link to that publication for folks on Facebook so they can download it and read it on their own. But Anthony, can you tell us these three elements of a strong demand for a movement when they go, first go to the negotiating table. I'd like to make a prior point if I may as well. Sure. And that's that part of the importance of negotiating before direct action is that you're identifying yourself as somebody who fundamentally believes that there is one legitimacy in your cause and two that the power structures that exist should take it seriously. And that there might be some good people among them who want to do the right thing that might not prove to be the case but it's a sort of bet on human nature. And it's also good negotiating to just ask for what you need early because you never know, you might get it. It often turns out not to be the case that without some leverage of direct action you don't get anywhere and they don't take the demanders seriously but it's important to start by talking to set the tone and to identify yourself and your movement and to make sure that there is legitimacy in it. The collectivizing and dramatizing are part of, I think move us into several of the domains of negotiation that we identify. My co-author Noah Rosen and I in our paper and the collectivizing is about the mobilization piece. There is negotiation in a civil resistance movement to expand the coalition of friends and allies to get like-minded movements to buy in to the cause and to broaden the popular appeal of for example, a desire to bring down an authoritarian government or to change a set of repressive laws. And the dramatizing that gets you into some demonstrative acts of nonviolent civil resistance. They may not be all the way to the more coercive sides of direct action but they may be about making sure that the people who are not part of your mobilization hear about it and that the powers that be hear about it and that they take notice and that there's some almost cinematic aspect of this. People need to have their attention drawn to the fact that numbers of people have signed up and have come on board to a demand for change, political, social or otherwise. So the collectivizing and dramatizing I think are connected to points to steps four, five, four and five of the Kingian six step process in their own ways. Great, thank you. So this brings up another point that I've heard a lot of people talk about when they're talking about movements, not just here in the United States but all over the world where movements and campaigns and activists and organizers are really good at and instinctually able to say no to something. Like this is the bad thing that we want to see ended but maybe they struggle a little bit in articulating the yes, this is what we want in place of this or instead of this. I'd love to hear your comments on this. Maria, can we start with you? Yeah, I mean, so a lot of what civil resistance entails is the strong no. You're saying no to injustice, no to oppression and oftentimes it's absolutely necessary particularly in cases where you have great power imbalances and asymmetry. So you have to be able to organize and make that strongly demonstrated no but of course to bring about positive social, political, economic change you need to be able to say yes. So you need to be able to articulate what you're fighting for and that's also important to keep a movement together over the long haul because if people get tired just going out on the streets and saying no but keeping people engaged and sustaining the energy of a movement requires saying yes, what we stand for what the compelling vision is for people to be able to participate in and then you have to be able to to be able to make change you have to say yes to the alternatives and what that alternative means in law in policy changes, in institutional behavior. So you need a strong no but you also to make sustainable change need a really strong yes. Sarah, I want to bring you in on this and perhaps you could share with us your insights on King when it comes to leading a movement that knew how to identify the injustice and say no longer will we accept this but also that skill set to put forward a vision that a lot of people can get around. Can you elaborate a bit on King's ability and strengths and not just providing a no but also the yes? I would say there are two major stories that provided a yes or a this injustice needs to stop we are open to each other as human beings these two hands are not violence and the passing of what he was holding on to in terms of the developing vision of the beloved community brings both these streams together. The first stream is the one that influenced him deeply being a Christian, a follower of Jesus in the tradition of the black church which of course is one that though Christian slave masters used trying to use a faith to keep people down people back in the sentence country recaptured it and instead no to enslavement and yes to a liberating vision and so that liberating vision of abolition of deep freedom that carried on right through the Jim Crow south and through the civil rights movement through till today and informs how we celebrate the work of the movement and King's leadership so he was very grounded in a long, long not only struggle liberation but also the promises that you find throughout the biblical texts about being taken care about being belonging to a community that is cared for by the universe and so that was one major stream and you often hear his other major stream his other appeal he was saying yes at that point to what he understood the United States to be said I have a dream and it's deeply rooted in my dream and although I would consider the construction of the American dream problematic and unsustainable by linking on to the general story that was a yes story for the public he was able to invite people to say look we want in this story too and people knew what that story was and given that there were many Christians in the United States at that time people also knew what that story was and so his ability to draw on deep stories is where I think that yes came from and he was showing where those stories which he wanted were saying no to him and to people that looked like him how that did not match with what people said they actually believed and so his no is actually an ability to unveil what they wanted in the deeper yeses which frankly relates to empathy and the desire to defeat injustice not people because King also knew that many people were saying yes to those stories as well. Thank you for that. Let's jump now into some of the specific skills that are required to be effective at the negotiating table and as I mentioned in the intro Anthony is one of the main instructors in the online negotiation course that we offer here at USIP and he lays out a number of different skill sets for us to develop to be effective negotiators one of those is empathy and assertiveness so Anthony I'd love for you to share with us and our viewers what do you mean by empathy and assertiveness how do they work together how do they compete with one another when we go to the negotiating table? Empathy and assertiveness are often portrayed as two ideas that are intentional with each other when in fact I think they're complementary parts of our emotional intelligence empathy is of course the ability to stand in the shoes of others and see the world or see a situation or a problem from their point of view it's an incredibly important quality of our humanity of our shared humanity while assertiveness is not the opposite of empathy but assertiveness is the ability to put forth your point of view and it's certainly possible to envision doing both although some people myself included occasionally in certain circumstances veer more to one of those than the other and negotiation has often in the past emphasized asserting one's position asserting one's posture or point of view or interests and priorities at the expense of listening to what other parties are interested in and over time I think we've come to realize that you don't really get to put a valuable proposition on the table until you've understood a shared problem from your adversary's point of view so having some empathy even for your adversaries is completely consistent with Kingian ideas and also really important as just plain old negotiation wisdom I can't propose something of value to you that you'll say yes to unless I know how your mind works and what your priorities are and what you will say yes to everything I'm likely to propose is not necessarily going to sync up with your needs and priorities so empathy is critical before we get to a certainness but both need to be in balance with each other I think. Great, great, thank you. I wanna remind our viewers too if you have any questions for any of our guests you can type them in the discussion thread underneath this video and we'll bring them into the conversation and I wanna pose this question to you Maria and you Sarah as well and all of you watching on Facebook as well because you may have some insights on this which is empathy, this idea of being empathetic to our opponent at the negotiating table seems like a really big hurdle for non-violent movements whose opponent has inflicted tremendous amounts of harm and injustice and oppression on them and to ask people who are gonna be part of those negotiations to put themselves in the shoes of their opponent and try and understand their perspective seems like a really tough pill to swallow so if we're looking at this skill set this negotiation skill in the context of non-violent movements particularly when the conflict has been so brutal and so oppressive how does a movement develop that empathy? Maria can we start with you? Yeah, no I agree that it's a very hard challenge in general to be to have empathy but in the context of really tough struggles where you and people you know you love have endured abuses, repression, death it's incredibly hard to put yourselves in the shoes of the other and the adversary but I think one thing movement leaders have done is and it comes a bit from the negotiation tradition of separating the people from the problem and really focusing on the systems and the structures that individuals are part of and really focusing on that one thing that came up in the conversation yesterday was the whole idea of there's no such thing as a monolithic adversary any structure that perpetuates oppression, repression is comprised of people in different pillars of support whether it's the security forces, religious institutions government institutions and people within those pillars if you will have different loyalties they're not all equally committed to the repression to the status quo and so a lot of the art of movement building and organizing is trying to shift the loyalties of people within those pillars but if you put them all in one box and it's a monolith and it doesn't change it makes it very difficult to understand how through nonviolent action you can prompt shifts in those pillars so I think kind of dismantling the image of the monolith is one really important way to put empathy into action when you're an organizer or a movement builder. Sarah, what are your thoughts on this and I'd love if you could also connect this idea of having empathy at the negotiating table in a civil resistance movement to some of the principles of king and nonviolent so we've talked about the steps of king and nonviolence but then there are also the principles of king and nonviolence like Maria you touched on one where we're trying to defeat injustice not people but again that seems like a tough principle to fully embrace if you've been on the receiving end of the injustice so I'd love to hear your comments on this principle and this idea of empathy. In addition to what Maria said what I found within the movements I'm a part of now but which have inherited a great deal from civil rights movement is it's actually the moment to develop a self empathy and to know also that the violence being done to you is not your fault and so a movement's ability to be successful I think is also related to how well they take care of each other. What do I mean by that? Not only figuring out how to collectifies our demands to get that together but asking one another are you hungry? Do you need some food? Do you need babysitters for your kids? Like making it possible for people to show up as their full self. So that's that physical area and then emotionally it's embracing people's grief and rage and not shaming them for being really mad at white supremacists not telling them that they should that they've had it okay and that they should get over patriarchy but really just seeing that these pillars of support not the people but the pillars are very deep they're operating within us and so when we start to see the brokenness and we start to be able to express the grief and pain being able to show up for one another in that context will build because if someone receives empathy for those in a Christian standpoint so with King those who have been forgiven much and when we talk about negotiation we're not yet at the step of reconciliation but someone who has felt forgiveness or reception or empathy it's much more likely to be able to extend it because they're in a psychological space in which we know what that feels like they know what that release feels like and they can come together as a more whole person and that sense of coming together again as whole people has a lot to do with it with a trust with the principle six that the universe is on the side of justice that what is happening in our astro ecological world matters in that there's constantly a birthing and blooming of diversity to help enhance the world and that this beauty and diversity of the ways that we show empathy of the ways that we show our colors of the ways that we show up is part of what justice looks like and so being able to work on that personal level within the movement to embrace one another's grief and rage to know what breaks one another's hearts to know and ground and gratitude that we're a part of something that's beautiful and not something that is destructive even though people will say oh, you are disturbing the peace oh, you're making me uncomfortable to know in a reframe that we are doing healing episodic work is one thing that can be really helpful and that often starts within the movement how we take care of each other and then beginning to extend that to the people who are part of upholding those pillars of support. Thank you. And again, to our viewers on Facebook if you've got ideas, thoughts on empathy and nonviolent movements empathy as a negotiation skill particularly when you're dealing with oppressive opponents we'd love to hear your thoughts as well you can share them with the group. Let's turn now to another skill that is having a strong walk away or a baton and I'm gonna have Anthony kind of explain what that is. So Anthony, what is a baton and what is a strong walk away and why is that important to be successful in a negotiation? The baton terminology I believe comes from Roger Fisher and his colleagues in their work getting to yes decades ago and it's an acronym that means the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Counter-intuitively they propose it as a concept that you use in your preparation for negotiation. Try to understand what will happen if things don't go well at the negotiation table.  Over time people have come to realize that having a good baton is what protects you from saying yes to inferior offers to betraying your core principles. So being able to have multiple ways to satisfy your interests is part of empowering yourself as an individual, as a movement, as an organization. So even though it's about thinking about the failure of negotiation, it's geared to getting to success in negotiation. So that's what baton is all about and it's a key part of, key part, not the only part of developing leverage in negotiation. Cool, thank you. So you touched on this a bit, Anthony, that it's a lot of work that is required before you actually go to the negotiating table to know what your alternative is if the negotiations don't go the way that you like it. So if we are thinking about nonviolent movements, they're going to their opponent to make their demand and are prepared to not get what they want. They need to have done, I would assume, a lot of pre-work to have that alternative set up when the negotiation potentially doesn't go their way. So what are some of the things that a movement can do, Maria, to establish a strong walk away or baton? Yeah, I mean, I think this is where the power and importance of an organization comes in. Organize, organize, organize, because that allows you to strengthen your position at the negotiation table and you have something to fall back on if your demands are not met. So strengthening the coalitions that you build, bringing in new allies, including influential people who can kind of strengthen your cause and the legitimacy of your cause, building resilience in your movement both through the self-care that Sarah talked about, but also investing in parallel structures and institutions. So whether they're educational, whether they're social institutions, whether it's fundraising, whether it's having a strike fund so that, for example, if you don't get what you want if you're a worker, for example, you have something to survive on and your family has something to survive on. So really investing kind of in the organizing and the infrastructure that would allow you to continue to engage in nonviolent direct action to strengthen your hand even more and to increase the chances that you'll succeed at the negotiation table. Great. And Sarah, I'd love to turn to you with that same question and perhaps provide us with some examples from the civil rights movement and King and others' experience around setting up those parallel structures, there are those alternative institutions, those support structures, so that if the negotiation did not go their way and whatever campaign it was throughout the civil rights movement, they had that walk away. This is a place where it gets quite difficult and in the sense that Black America, let's say, could only walk so far, though one said a way to think about walking away were some of the back to African movements or like the pan-Africanist movement and like actually imagining, even if it wasn't completely possible but imagining other futures or imagining other configurations. So even just before we can actually create constructive program, we have to be able to imagine what else might be able to exist and then also led to, I think some of the religious diversity that we saw among Black folks beginning in the 1960s. Again, like the movement of Black Hebrew Israelites, the movement of the nation of Islam, they were thinking about alternative structures to the way that they saw Christianity and Christianity participating in oppression and so diving into other spiritual truths that could move. So I wanna point to that because I do feel like the religious, the diverse religious movements of the civil rights movement also added to how people of color and others were beginning to express themselves. I think also there was a sense of that some held on, I particularly wanna give a nod to Bayard Rustin and his ability to have an intersectional analysis during the movement about not only did we need different structures around race, but also around family and around how we're building community together and how the movement functions. So the Montgomery Improvement Association, for example, who Rosa Parks was worked with very closely, was already a structure that had been birthed by roses and other people's work, Nisi MacGray and others who spoke out against the sexual assault that were happening to Black women in the 1940s. That's where she was first mobilized and it was some of those ladies who had helped, who had got their start in the 1940s that then were the robust backbone of the Montgomery Improvement Association. And so the sense that, even though they didn't necessarily get justice for we see back in the 1940s, their ability to still say like, this is not a linear process, this negotiation, this direct action, both in our homes and in public, we'll need to keep going. We know that whatever we're trying to build is valuable for the next generation. So then holding out a vision that, and King said this too in his last speech, I may not get there with you to really see how these alternative structures and how this thing looks in the end, but we are building, we're building up a new world to quote Vincent Harding as well. And so I think all three of those people moved both inside structures and outside structures and recognized that you might go between step four and five multiple times that's not linear and that the ability to mobilize your resources to take a conflict that was underground and covert into the overt space, that that in of itself is an indication of faith that things can change and that faith is what creates the imagination for what structures can be. And so I actually think that that is probably one of the gifts of civil rights movement, even though they didn't build a lot of the alternative structures and even though integration in the end wasn't just like exactly equal, there's still had a lot of problems with it but that imagination I think is a gift and that can be encapsulated if anyone runs through to anything by King and others about the beloved community. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. And Anthony, I wanna go back to you on this. We're having a strong walk away and a strong BATNA and this idea of transparency. How open should a movement be in letting their opponent know, hey, this is what we want. If we don't get it, we're gonna walk away and this is what we have. It's kind of showing your hand and being transparent about that, a good move to make at the negotiating table or not or does it depend. And then, Maria, I wanna turn to you as well because Sarah talked about constructive program, some of the other institutions, alternative institutions that were there during the civil rights movement and I'd love for you to kind of point our attention to some movements that have happened in other parts of the world throughout history that have successfully set up alternative institutions or engage in some type of constructive program.  Certainly one walk away is to engage in direct action and mass mobilization. So that might be an important signal to send if we start with the premise that the King had a good point in saying start with negotiation, he wasn't doing so naively. He was being, again, having faith in the idea that the counterpart might just say yes if you ask them for what you need and don't over claim but also don't hide what your real interests are or yield too much early on. But it's okay to be transparent about what happens next if we don't have these demands met within a reasonable timeframe. If we're not seeing progress, here are steps that we can take unilaterally. I don't see anything wrong with being pretty transparent about those things. In fact, it sends an important signal to the counterpart. Maybe the when and where are tactical questions. Maybe the how is a tactical question that you can have some thoughts on. And I'll refer to Maria perhaps on some of those. But I think it's an important thing to note that as Sarah said, you can go back and forth between four and five negotiation and direct action multiple times in a sort of nonlinear fashion because that creates pressure as King noted, as Gandhi noted, as others have noted. And that pressure is relieved by getting the parties back to the table. All right, back to you. Yeah, I mean, on the issue of, you know, again, kind of the constructive program which Gandhi made famous in his nonviolent resistance to the British colonial regime, I think the idea there is that, you know, there's organizing and there's mobilizing. And in order to allow a resistance to sustain itself, you have to do the hard work of self-organizing. And certainly the Polish solidarity movement is one really classic example where, you know, when martial law was declared in the 80s, the movement had to go underground and there needed to be self-organizing structures and they needed to continue to communicate, disseminate information to, you know, fundraise, all these things. And so there was a really strong focus on self-organizing. In the first Palestinian intifada, you know, self-organizing in the constructive program was at the heart of all the organizing that paved the way to the nonviolent uprising in the late 80s. So popular committees, victory gardens, underground schools, and I would note that women, Palestinian women were often in the forefront of a lot of this parallel institution building. And it's interesting, a film was actually just released called Nyla and the Uprising, which is a lot about the role that Palestinian women played in the constructive program in the lead-up to and during the first Palestinian intifada. So it's a really visual, dramatic example of why you need that to sustain a movement. That's great. And what's the name of that film? Nyla and the Uprising. It was a film produced by JustVision. And it's just come out. It will be shown on PBS this year, the Women War and Peace series. So it was a recent release. Okay, great. Maybe we could share that on Facebook so folks who are watching could get access to that. I think another great JustVision resource, one of the most widely watched TED Talks was Julia Bakka's TED Talk, which, let's remind our viewers, what was the name of that TED Talk? And perhaps we could post that as well. Well, I don't remember the exact title, but it was really about women in nonviolent resistance and how women historically have played a critical role in both the organizing aspects, the behind-the-scenes work, but also in kind of the direct action leadership over the course of history. And so she chronicles that and that certainly helped inspire the next documentary film about Palestinian women. And it also looks at how Palestinian women allied with Israeli women as part of kind of a joint nonviolent resistance during the first Intifada. So, fascinating story. Yeah, so we'll share that on Facebook. I want to go back to you, Sarah. We've been talking a bit about movements that have happened in other parts of the world throughout history and given your in-depth knowledge of King's approach and strategy to nonviolent social change, are you seeing or have you seen other movements around the world that have really turned to that specific strategy? Those six steps or those six principles, when they've been doing their organizing and mobilizing, have movements reached out to the King's Center or other organizations that are using this type of strategy to say we want to employ a similar strategy because we're facing a similar type of struggle. Thank you. I'm aware of deep connections and conversations with folks in Liberia, folks in Colombia, folks in Venezuela, folks in Palestine, in many places. And it very much is a touchstone and I also love how I have seen people innovate on these and contextualize for what they understand works in their context as well. I personally think that that ability to be a more robust conversation with Navajadra Action movements all over the world is a place that the King's Center could invest and they're at a moment right now where they're looking at having been around for 50 years and to look at what is the world asking at the King's Center right now? So that's actually an open question for how we want to resource our movements in the future. However, I do think people have felt free to connect with this legacy of the civil rights movement and what it felt like and what it meant because it was so pulsating with love instead of hate. If you want to look at that principle there that non-violence chooses love instead of hate. And I think it did show that via the help of the television that the suffering that we underwent as like people in this country and I want to include native folks in that as well that it did have a redeeming quality and we're still seeing the fruits of that redemption come to pass. So when we start speaking more about sense of urgency I'll share a story from Columbia that relates to that work, International Connections. Okay, great, great. Yeah, this is an interesting conversation because as King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And we can talk a lot about the legacy and the impact of the civil rights movement on other movements and campaigns that are happening here in the United States but as we become a more globalized world, a world where people are more aware of the injustices that are happening in other parts of the globe there's that necessity to say, okay, it may not be impacting me directly right here in my home but it still threatens justice as we understand it more broadly. And Darren, I think this also just shows the power of King's legacy. You can go anywhere around the world and recently we were talking with activists from South Sudan and they know Martin Luther King, they know his strategy and they know the violent repression that African-Americans endured and yet they persisted and persevered. And these stories I think have just captured the imagination of activists and organizers around the world. And as you say, I mean, there's just a real beauty in the learning that is taking place between activists and movements from around the world, how to sequence tactics, how to be creative, how to use the arts, like all these things now has a global audience and I think more than ever before activists are learning from each other and drawing on the wisdom and ingenuity of people like Dr. King. Yeah, and I think also touching on the kind of historical story of the development of nonviolent movements and nonviolent social change is that rich history of African-American leaders, religious leaders, traveling to India in the 40s and 50s and learning about what Gandhi and others did in their struggle to free themselves from British occupation, taking those lessons, bringing them back to the United States, contextualizing them for the specific issues that blacks faced in the United States and developing it further. And I think it was, no, I think I know it was Gandhi who said that the true test of nonviolent action would be found in the experience of black Americans because the main difference that he realized was that Indians were the vast majority in India during their struggle. There were far more Indians in India than there were British who were part of the occupying force there. The United States was different. Blacks were very much the minority. So could nonviolent direct action actually work in a context where those who were using civil resistance were in the minority? And I think history has shown us that, yes, it in fact can work. Let's move on now in our last 10, 15 minutes on this final skill and that is of timing and urgency of negotiations. And this point has been made a couple times before I hand it over to Anthony that these six steps of nonviolent social change that King lays out for us are not linear. They're always happening time and time again. It's kind of a circular thing. So negotiations happening and then direct action, perhaps, and then more information gathering and education about certain issues to then go back to negotiating table. So we don't wanna make people think that this is some linear process but that these are all happening coterminously in many ways. So this is why none of our episodes are looking specifically at direct action. And I said this at the intro and I think that's because a lot of people, there's enough attention and enough love given to the direct action experience of nonviolent movements. Darren, I don't know about that. You don't know about that. Yeah. All you have to do is Google nonviolent social change and you'll get a lot of those images and just because they're filmable, they're easy to photograph just like any type of conflict. But this idea of information gathering, education campaigns, negotiation, reconciliation, dialogue, they don't get as much love. But direct action is part of all those in many ways. So that brings us to this idea of timing and urgency. So, Anthony, I'd love for you to explain to us the importance of timing and this concept of urgency when it comes to being successful at a negotiation. There's long been discussions about when is the right moment to negotiate change, whether it's transactional or a peace process to end the war or to get social and political change to nonviolent resistance. And creating a sense of urgency in your counterpart that this is the best time and this is the time that you'll get, this is the best time for policies to be enacted that will get us to the right changes and that the cost of doing so will just go up later. I think is an important part of the preparation for and thinking about negotiation. Some people think there are objective ways to measure the right time for negotiation or the right time for mediation. And there's been a lot of thought about the concept of rightness, when is the right moment for us to negotiate. And some folks say there isn't really an objective way because that's about perceptions. And I think that it's important to maximize the perceptions of urgency in your counterpart. Syrian activists five years ago probably didn't have the ability to create a sense of urgency in the Syrian regime that they needed to start thinking about democratizing and reducing the systems of repression that exist in that regime today. And nonviolence direct action certainly can help create a sense of urgency. And I think the most important organizers and movements understood that, that you can create momentum, that you can create a sense of, hey, this is happening, this is coming. Do something about it if you're among the powers that be. Before things get worse, because we're gonna raise the cost for you. That said, negotiation cuts across a wide range of areas of civil resistance that we haven't touched on too much, but certainly it comes about in the organization, the part we made earlier. But it comes about in eroding the pillars of support. It comes about in getting defections from repressive military or from brutal police forces or from parts of a regime who might not be so sympathetic with their, shall we say repressive agenda. And then of course, negotiation comes both before and after direct action in the transformative ways in which we have discussions about what's next. Change has been identified, the need for it has been identified, but then the what comes next is really all about negotiation. It doesn't come about only by direct action. There have to be conversations with people. So that's all because a sense of urgency has previously been created. All right, thank you. Sarah, I'd love to turn to you. I know you've got a story from Columbia that connects to these ideas of timing and urgency. So I'd love for you to share that. When the farmers in Las Palvas went out to their land and heard in the distance tractors and earth movers around, they wondered what was going on, they went, they found their plantain crops chopped up, they're being scattered, the cowbushes ripped up and they said, what's going on? They found that their land had been sold out from under them and given to a company called Dabone who wanted to monocrop palm oil. They called Christian peacemaker teams right away to say, will you come and be with us in front of these tractors? They, we went out together. And it's at that moment when you're holding a line and when you're confronting initial confrontation, which is in this case, part of information gathering, but having your allies there. They went and they found out who the company was doing this work. They asked two CPTers to stay and others to go and find out where was Dabone selling this palm oil? Community lawyer came and was also present. We found it was going to the Body Shop, which prides itself as an ethical and a green company. So we immediately told the Body Shop at CPTers, we said, look, this is what's being done in your name. The Body Shop said, sorry, it's a subcontractor. At that moment, they created a problem. They turned us away from that negotiation table. We didn't even have a real table. This is a now a time in which we're trying to do a negotiation across class and across nation. And frankly, it should not have taken people with US passport privilege and English language privilege to tell the Body Shop to stop. That's how far the community of Las Palas who had the right to be on their land and farm in peace. That's how far they were from Body Shop executives. And so being a leveraged point then, we consulted not only with ourselves who had just got turned back to the negotiation table, but immediately to those who are most impacted. And so here's where I think the direct action felt connected to the parts of the movement that were about reconciliation, that were a part about education and information that were about community building and empathy the whole time. We said, what is it that you would like to see happen? And how can we ally with that? And we offered what we thought the pressure points would be. Together, we developed a strategy in which they would continue day after day to go out and stand in front of the earth moves and tractors. And we at CPTers went directly to Body Shop stores and consumers. We took the video in the film and the pictures, at that time it was film, that we printed out and we showed the consumers what their purchase is that palm oil were doing. Regardless of what the pictures in the Body Shop that showed happy farmers and beautiful people with these elements of cacao and palm, we showed the reality of it. Well, people get upset when they mess up their shopping experience. The stores and corporations do not like disruption in business as usual. But what we drew on information of boycotts from the anti-epartite movement in South Africa, we drew on letter writing campaigns just like many anti-nuclear movements and the sit-ins of the civil rights movement. So of course we went in and we were trained for arrests. We were trained for what may happen to us if we indeed disrupt business as usual, just as the farmers were disrupting business as usual day in Columbia. And if we did that together, what could happen? So after a year and a half of pressure, the Body Shop got tired of all of us and they ended up cutting that contract with Dubone, which was the central demand. And because of that, then Dubone had to pull out of where they were in Las Palmas and those farmers are back on their land today. So that's an example that I want to give of how to make urgency and often the urgency comes when you're disrupting business as usual. And what that can feel like in the bodies of the activists that are doing it can take a big toll, but when you start to feel that static and that nervousness, that's how you know you're starting to turn against the grain of business as usual. And just have that love in your heart and that goal that you have and a connection with those who are most impacted and that will reveal to the people who you're working with that there is a fierce urgency of now and that they have a choice to make and you would like them to come with you into freedom of liberation and justice for all. It's an invitation and it's an urgent one. Thank you for sharing that, it's an amazing story. We're coming to the end of our show, but we've got a question from one of our viewers, so we'll take that and then we'll close out our show. So, Nick, go ahead. Yeah, sure, well, we actually have two questions, so if we have time, we can cover both of them. Monica asks, it seems that direct action and public marches have become a way to establish commitment and as a catalyst for movement organizing. And it also creates pressure by people that directly face oppression and violence. She wonders if this is something that we have seen where commitment in the form of public action happens first and then the movement begins. So that's the first question. The second question is from Jackie and she wonders about strategies to move situations that seem stuck between steps four and five. She's thinking of Sudan, for example, where negotiations have occurred time and again and where protests are occurring once again as well. The protests are again being responded to with severe repression, yet there is no trust that any new negotiations would produce a different outcome than previous efforts. There seems to be no quote sense of urgency on the part of the government of Sudan to negotiate with its citizens. She asks, is it a matter of just growing the protests even in the face of severe repression? Cool. Let's go to each three of our guests and you can choose to respond to one or both of those questions, whichever you so choose. So the first one was about engaging in direct action in order to demonstrate your commitment and then the second one was about Sudan specifically and moving from steps four to five and some of the challenges of that. So Maria, do you wanna tackle one or both of those questions and then we'll move on to Sarah after you. Sure, I mean, I think the idea of using direct action to demonstrate commitment and solidarity frankly makes a lot of sense. There's a strength in numbers and sometimes the question was about you need to see others that they share the grievances that they're willing to take action before a movement itself can coalesce. So for sure, some type of collective action just to see that you're not alone, that the grievances are shared and people are willing to take risks and take action I think is really an important part of kind of the pre-steps of movement building and part of movement building. In terms of Sudan being an example where there maybe is not yet synergy or symbiosis between nonviolent action and negotiations I think that's an accurate assessment. It's a very highly repressive environment doing street protest demonstrations historically has been met by severe forms of repression and I think that the movements in Sudan have not quite achieved the leverage and level of organization that they would need and a channel for that to make political change. There've been courageous efforts in a very difficult environment but we're not quite seeing the kind of the strength and the organization of opposition activities and pressure that would give the opposition a strong place at the negotiation table. So one would hope in the future that the movement will strengthen and that will make meaningful negotiations and democratic development possible in Sudan. All right, thanks. Sarah, we wanna tackle one or both these questions and then we'll go on to Anthony after you. Thanks, I just wanna affirm what Maria said and thinking about the role of the international community particularly related to this second question. So when it feels like things are stuck and the movement itself wants to continue in direct action it's really important that the international community doesn't send the movement back to the negotiation table that the international community supports those who are most impacted by saying what is it that you need us to do similar to the story in Colombia? This is why it's very important that we go all the way back to something that could be in the education category which is work around anti-racism which is work around understanding what's happening in terms of our climate which will give international people who may not feel close to those of South Sudan though we ought to because we're all human but for reasons of the ways that our structure separates us the international community is not matching on paying attention and working really hard to come alongside them with immediate urgency. And so the education pieces that we can do is for everyone who's listening today to go Google South Sudan and learn what you can and start there so that the urgency can build in you so that when the request comes because these folks cannot do it alone just as injustice is connected everywhere our justice forces is as well and learning and studying about what happened in the international community in 1994 with Bosnia-Herzegovina Croatia and Serbia and the silence, the deafening sounds of the international community also Rwanda we need to learn our lesson on that. So let's try to hear from the most affected and figure out what we can do to support the movement's growth and cohesiveness there. So that's what I would add in terms of the way that it can almost operate like a boomerang so there's not the possibility to throw something forward in one direction but if we can go around and garner power from the international community and not directly confront it it can give the movement time to build the coalesce and develop empathy among themselves and what they need and then come around from another angle to try negotiations and to try different types of actions. Thank you. And Anthony your thoughts on either one of these questions or both. We know from Maria's work and other studies that ultimately nonviolent action, nonviolent movements can prevail even over highly repressive governments and top of them. So what's missing in the South Sudan example in Sudan it's about developing broader international solidarity maturing the internal network of organizations and civil resistant action that can take place so that it overwhelms the repressive structures of government but it's also about learning how to erode those pillars of support get defections from perhaps from the armed forces get defections from different political parties and get people away from supporting illegitimate governance and repressive violence against citizens and those I think are part of what will happen as that nonviolent movement that Jackie talks about matures and grows back to you. All right, thanks. So that brings us to the end of our show. Got one final question for our three panelists. We can make it brief in the spirit of learning more about nonviolent movements strategies for nonviolent social change movements abroad the civil rights movement MLK. What is one resource that you would recommend to our viewers watching us on Facebook that they can find online pick up at the library the bookstore rent on Netflix or whatever one resource to learn about any of those topics negotiation, civil resistance or MLK. Sarah, can we start with you? Going to send people out into the natural world. That's the resource hopefully developing into a relationship to know that we're a part of this great living body of Earth and having that sense of life I believe will decrease our fear of what it means to live at this creative precarious moment. So I think I would suggest that the resource is for people to get close to the natural and build environments around them. I love that. I love that. Anthony, what about you? I say you go with Maria and Erica Chenoweth's work and read all about how history proves that nonviolent civil resistance overcomes repressive government. That's awesome. That was my second suggestion. And what's the name of that book that you co-authored? The name of the book is Why Civil Resistance Works and I will give both of you $20 after the end of the show. And what's one resource that you would recommend to our viewers to learn more about these topics? Oh, Darren, there are so many resources. I think one classic documentary film that has inspired a lot of people around the world is A Force More Powerful and I always recommend that because it's been translated in so many different languages. I mentioned Nyla in the uprising as a new resource but also as kind of a non-film. I think the Global Nonviolent Action Database is really nifty because it just allows you to learn about lots of different campaigns and movements from around the world that you may not have even imagined. So I'm sure they'll post the link but it's the Global Nonviolent Action Database and it's a wonderful resource for activist, organizer, students, teachers and I highly commend it. Awesome. Well thanks to our three guests, Maria, Anthony and Sarah. Thanks to all of you who've been watching online and thanks to Nick and Stephen for moderating the discussion. This has been a special episode of The Peace Frequency, a podcast series brought to you by the United States Institute of Peace where we tap into the stories of people across the globe who are making peace possible and finding ways to create a world without violence. You can learn more about The Peace Frequency, listen to past episodes at thepeacefrequency.com. I've been your host. Tune in tomorrow again at 11.30 to 12.30 where we are going to be looking at these concepts of reconciliation, dialogue and the beloved community and how those can be part of a nonviolent movement and nonviolent struggle as well. So until then keep learning, supporting and building peace.


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. It's my great pleasure and privilege to introduce to you the President of the United States, President Ronald Reagan. Thank you very much. Superintendent Sang, Secretary Bennett, members of the Congress who are here. All of you, thank you very much. I'm going to keep my remarked brief. I'm not going to take a chance on being voted in your yearbooks, the President most likely to talk until June. You know, it's good to get out of Washington where we spend a lot of time worrying about things that are only important there. Here you have perspective and realize what the important issues are. Who's got a Christmas dance date and who hasn't. But now before I get started, I have a special message from Nancy. Whenever I speak to students, she asks me to remind you for your families, for your friends, just for yourselves, just say no to drugs and alcohol. And by the way, there's an important event taking place elsewhere in town today, the White House Conference on a Drug-Free America under the leadership of Lois Harrington. Nancy and I applaud her team's efforts to rid America of drugs. Today is not just a high school convocation. It's a family day as well. So let me ask, the parents who are here today, would you stand for a moment just so we could see you? Mothers and fathers, your dedication to your children and the schools has made this community what it is today. Your support is the foundation on which the success of Duval County Schools has been built and on which your own children's success will be built throughout life. Today, all of us say to you for all you've done, for all you're doing, and for all you will do in the bottom of our hearts, thank you. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett tells me that wherever you find parents and communities who care, principles who set goals and keep track of progress, teachers who pay attention to basics and students who work hard, in those places you find America's great school systems. He also tells me that Duval County has some of America's great schools. Now I'm going to talk to you for a few minutes about your great public schools, but I know you have great private and parochial schools as well. You know, it makes me think that quality and Duval County just seemed to go together, but yes, since Herb Sang took over as superintendent 11 years ago, you in the public schools, teachers, principals, parents and students have made your mark on American education. You've sprinted to the head of the class in improving test scores, cutting dropout rates, winning teaching awards, winning more national merit scholarships, and winning a better future for every student and for this entire community. And that's why you're on all lists of the best school systems in America. And for anybody wondering who should be at the top of those lists, you've given your answer by winning four of your seven national academic super bowls. Yes, there's just one word for Duval County and its students, teachers and schools. The word is winners. I've heard that you have a slogan around here. Winners are finishers. It means stay in school, stick it out through tough times as well as good, finish, and you'll be a winner too. But I can't help thinking, doesn't that have a lot to do with how your school system itself became a winner? Success wasn't handed on a platter. It didn't come because you had lots of money. In fact, your spending per pupil is regularly below the national average. But as Dr. Sang has taught, progress and money are not the same. And boy, that's one lesson in Washington. We should write a hundred times on the blackboard. No, you didn't do it with lots of money. You did it with the courage to be different. When others had lost faith, you did it with your belief in hard work and real standards and with the American tradition of trusting in the future and your ability to build for it with your own hands and your own minds and your own determination. You didn't look to Washington for an easy way out. You did it yourselves. It was the British philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon, who said that by far the greatest obstacle to true progress is found in this, that men despair and think things impossible. I found that's true in almost every area of life, whether it's building better schools or better mousetraps or a better country. You know, a favorite story of mine is about some advice that was supposedly a wise man gave a president of the United States. The president was William McKinley, and the supposed wise man was the head of the United States patent office, the man in charge of keeping track of new inventions. In 1899, the head of the patent office told President McKinley to close down the patent office because, as he put it, everything that can be invented has been invented. Well, if America is to be prepared with jobs, skills, and technology for the next century, we must make way for people who see what can be done and what is possible, not what isn't. Make way for people like those who rebuilt this school system. In Washington, some things haven't changed much since President McKinley's time. Almost everyone can still tell you 20 reasons why you can't do things, why you can't cut tax rates, why you can't lower federal spending, why you can't reduce the number of Soviet and American nuclear weapons, and why you can't develop a strategic defense against ballistic missiles. But America wasn't built by people who said, I can't. Every pioneer who crossed our frontier said, I can. Every man or woman who ever started a new business discovered a new invention, explored a new idea, said, I can. You will graduate from high school because you said, I can. The two most important words anyone can ever learn are those words, I can. You know, I've always thought that the best hope for America's future was to get as many things as possible out of the gloomy pessimistic halls of Washington and back to the optimistic air of the real America where people don't say, I can't. They say, I can. More decisions outside of Washington, fewer inside. Fewer federal rules, more opportunity. That's the idea behind our support for choice in education. Let parents choose the schools they believe will best prepare their children for the jobs and opportunities of the future. It's the idea behind our enterprise zone proposal. And when Congress failed to act, Florida and 25 other states said, we can. And they went ahead with their own enterprise zone programs. And now there are thousands of jobs and choices in areas where there were few before. And while we're talking about the American people making choices, not Washington, don't you think that each morning when you start your school day, you should have the same voluntary choice every member of Congress has every day to bow your head to God in prayer? I've come here this morning with a simple message about your future, you who are students, and that is that America's freedom is a precious opportunity. And the first step to using that opportunity is to say, I can. One of America's greatest philosophers, Henry David Thoreau, reminded us that to Americans, this world is but canvas to our imaginations. If you use your imagination, set goals, make plans, work hard, keep at it, and don't worry too much about who gets the credit. There's no limit to what you can achieve. The federal government does a lot to shape the future. And there are many times when it would be helpful if government just left things alone. Our goal should be to make government the servant of the people and not the other way around. That is one of the reasons that over the last seven years, our administration has pushed for more individual freedom and less government interference. In dealing with the federal budget deficit, our goal has been to provide those services that are necessary, to provide for our national defense, and to do so at the lowest cost to the average American taxpayer. Because what we spend today will be a burden to you tomorrow. I feel it's time for us to step forward and provide a clear direction for continued economic growth and opportunity. Eleven days ago, I joined with the bipartisan leaders in Congress in forging a budget compromise that will put the nation on a road toward a balanced budget and keep us on that track. I said it was time to roll up our sleeves and get the job done. Well today, I hope you will join with me in this crusade to balance the federal budget. Let's commit ourselves to do all that we can now and to do even more in the years ahead to continue our economic expansion. It's time to put aside partisan and personal preferences and join together. It's a time to say I can and I will. That's how America itself has moved the entire world toward true peace and greater freedom in the last seven years. And that's how we restored America's strength. And I hope you won't mind me adding with some pride that it's how our men and women in uniform rescued freedom in the small Caribbean country of Grenada. In just a few days I'll meet with General Secretary Gorbachev of the Soviet Union. We will sign the first arms reduction agreement in the history of relations between our two countries. It's a good example of what I'm talking about. Many years critics around the world have insisted that it would be impossible to get an agreement along the lines we've now worked out. Six years ago when I proposed the elimination of an entire category of U.S. and Soviet Intermediate Range Missiles, they sneered and said I couldn't be serious. It was a sure sign they said that I was against arms reductions altogether. And they added that I ought to offer something the Soviets would agree to, even if I didn't believe it was in America's best interest.  We set goals. We made plans. We worked hard. Many of those same critics also said that it was provocative to tell the truth about repression in the Soviet Union. About Soviet overseas adventures. About Soviet violations of past agreements. We said that the United States of America must never be afraid to tell the truth about anyone. Well now, as a result of lots of hard work and patience, we're about to sign an agreement that would do just what I proposed six years ago and that the critics said was impossible. For the first time in history, we will wipe an entire category of American and Soviet nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. After the summit, we'll keep our negotiators working on an agreement that could lead to cutting the U.S. and Soviet long-range nuclear arsenals in half and reducing the disparities in conventional forces. That is the armies that face each other in Europe. Those disparities favor the Soviets. With the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Agreement, we take a first step across the open frontier toward a safer world for you and your children. And my plan, our plan, should be to keep right on marching. But in the excitement of the summit, the treaty signing, and all the rest, we must not forget that peace means more than arms reduction. More than a decade ago, there was a warning, or warming, I should say, in U.S.-Soviet affairs that we called detente. But while talking friendship, the Soviets worked even faster on the largest military buildup in world history.  They became more oppressive at home. We do not want mere words. This time, we're after true peace. One Eastern European dissident thinker has written that respect for human rights is the fundamental condition and the sole guarantee of true peace. Well, I believe he's right. True peace and freedom are indivisible. That's why it's important to all of us that the Soviets have released over 200 political prisoners over the past year, and that they appear to have eased censorship somewhat in the arts and media. It's also why we're concerned that many more political prisoners remain in jail, internal exile, and psychiatric hospitals. As many as 10,000 Jews await permission to emigrate. Persecution of religious believers continues, some including Ladmila Androshenko and Father Alsona Svarinskas. Wait in prison. Their only crime, they wanted to practice their religion and worship God as they pleased. Well, Mr. Gorbachev and I are going to have a few words about that. We're also going to have words about Soviet expansionism around the world. For example, in Afghanistan, since the Red Army invaded eight years ago, the Afghan people have suffered a million casualties, and at least four million others have been driven to exile as freedom fighters have taken up arms against the invader. Who are these freedom fighters? Well, many of them would be your classmates if they lived here in Jacksonville. That's how young they are. They've taken up arms against one of the largest and best-equipped armies in the world because they've seen what communist oppression means. To some, it means being prevented from living by the rules of their religions. To others, it means parents murdered and crops, and even entire villages destroyed in random and repeated Soviet raids. Or it means a little brother or sister whose hand was blown off by Soviet mines disguised as toys. Oppression means many things. There are many reasons to fight for freedom. The simple people of Afghanistan pose no threat to Soviet territory. They don't now. They never have. The Soviet Union has no legitimate purpose in this war. And I will tell Mr. Gorbachev, it is time for the Soviets to set a date certain for withdrawal, to talk with the freedom fighters and to allow the people of Afghanistan to determine their own destiny. I will also say it's time for them to leave Cambodia, Ethiopia, Angola, and Nicaragua. Even as the five Central American countries search for peace, the Soviet bloc continues to pour billions of dollars in guns, planes, bullets, tanks, and other assistance into Nicaragua. Why? To quote one of our leading national strategist, Zbig Brzezinski, potentially at stake in Central America is America's capacity to defend Western interests throughout the world. And he adds, if the Soviet Cuban President, Presence in Nicaragua destabilizes the entire region, the United States will inevitably pull back from Europe and the Pacific to defend our own border. Well, I want my meeting with Mr. Gorbachev to help build a true peace that will last for your lifetime and that of your children and of their children. And that's why we will review our areas of agreement, but also emphasize our points of disagreement. Some say it will be impossible for the Soviets to listen, but we've come a long way already by being strong, steady, and determined. We Americans set our goals. We were realistic about how to go after them. We kept on working in good times and bad. We believed in America's strength and in America's ability to use its strength to make the world better. For the last seven years, through us, through all of us here today and millions of others, America has said, I can. And around the world, because of that, peace is more secure and freedom more widely shared. At home, because of that, we're in the longest peacetime economic expansion on record. And unlimited opportunities are waiting for you after graduation. Think of what those two words I can have meant to the story of our nation and the world in our time.  It's about a college professor, quite an eminent scholar, who was flying on a trip over to the Soviet Union. He was a great student of Russian. He could speak Russian fluently. But here, taking a taxi cab to the airport, he had a young cab driver and he got him in conversation. And in the course of things, learned that the young man was still getting an education and driving cab on the side to help finance that education. And he said to him, well, what are you planning on doing when you finish your education? And the young cab driver said, well, I don't know. I haven't decided yet. Well, the professor made his trip to Moscow, got in a cab there and started into the city. And by coincidence, had a young fellow looked about the same age as the one, the cab driver in America. And being able to speak Russian, he got into conversation with him. And found out this young man was still getting his education in addition to driving a cab. And so he finally asked him that same question, what did he plan to do when his education was finished? And the young man said, I don't know. They haven't told me yet. That answer is a pretty good one. It's summing up the great difference between us. So when you leave here today, please remember the blessings of American freedom. Think of how God graced you when he set you down in this land of liberty and a peace and of opportunity, this land of neighbor, helping neighbor, family, helping family. I have often thought, maybe you call it mysticism, if you will, but I've thought that God placed these American continents here between the two great oceans for the most adventurers, the bravest and the most resourceful people on earth to find our ancestors. People from every corner of the earth who had a little extra love for freedom and an ambition that brought them here and settled them here in this land of ours, bringing you here by deciding how you want to use America's opportunities, and then by saying, I can. I just have one other thing that I'd like to leave with you. I'm sure in this year of the 200th anniversary of our Constitution, you probably have been taught a little extra about the Constitution. But if not, I would like to tell you something that I have read a lot of constitutions. Every country has a Constitution, it seems. And then I was struck one day by, well, they talked about freedom of this and that and freedom to do such and such. Well, then why was our Constitution so different? And finally, the answer came to me. All those other constitutions said, we the government allow you the people to have the following freedoms and do the following things. Our Constitution says, we the people allow the government to do certain things, and it can do no other things than are covered in this document. I told that story at a state dinner in the White House to the princess, wife of the crown prince of Japan, and she added another line to my story. Because when I finished saying what I've just said to you, she very quietly said to me, our Constitution too says, we the people. And I couldn't hide my surprise. That's right. After the war, when we stopped being enemies, they had a new Constitution. And so there's now another country in the world that says what it does, that the people are in charge. Well, that's enough for me. I know right now that the superintendent's saying has something to contribute here and tell you what the next step is. Mr. President, your aides have indicated that you might give us a few more minutes. And our... Prior from Andrew Jackson High School... You have some friends here. And my question is, how will I as a youth be affected by the summit meetings? How will you as a student be affected by the summit meeting? Well, if the summit meeting carries out as we optimistically think today that it will, that for one thing, we will have started down the road to the elimination of nuclear weapons. We will have done away with those weapons of ours that are based on the NATO line. They were put there in response. We did not put them there first in response to the Soviets aiming what are called SS-20 missiles at all the targets of Europe. And we tried to persuade them not to do that. This was before I was in office and they didn't stop. And then Europe asked us to give them something to counter this threat. And by that time I got here and fell to me to be in charge of placing our weapons there. And they objected very strenuously on the other side. In 1981 I proposed the answer was the elimination, zero, on both sides of those particular weapons. And four years later they came back and we started negotiating about that. So I think we're going to sign that agreement this time, complete with verification. But for all of you, this threat that's alive in the world today of missiles that can, well I have said that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought. By never being won I mean that by the time two great nations exchanged the thousands of nuclear missiles firing at each other, where would those people who weren't blown up, who still remained alive, where would they live? The very soil would be poisoned, the radioactivity. There would be no place for anyone to live. So I think that we haven't been able to do it all at once. But if we've started down that path and as you come up and take over from the rest of us, maybe there'll still be some of the job done, we can once and for all rid the world of nuclear weapons. And that I think will make for a far better life for all of you. Thank you. Mr. President, my name is Jason Dolman from Fletcher Senior High School. And I would like to know in terms of conventional warfare, how will this proposed treaty affect the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union? Well now that's something that we have looked at down the way in the future. And it is no question the Soviet Union has outbuilt NATO, not just the United States, like two and a half times as many tanks, three times as many artillery pieces and so for it. But there is a weapon still in the battle lines. There are nuclear weapons that are called tactical weapons. These are among other things, shells fired from artillery from cannons. But when the shell explodes, it isn't gunpowder, it's an atomic explosion, a nuclear explosion. And so both sides have those. Now I think that we've got a lot of people in both sides standing in the wings waiting now for us to approach that problem, that kind of weapon. And I have determined, we have determined, that when you start to talk about eliminating those, then you must at the same time discuss the balancing of the conventional weapons. Because if we all eliminated, right now our nuclear battlefield weapons can balance things up. But if we all did away with those weapons, both sides, we would have given the Soviet Union then a hard and fast advantage because of their conventional superiority. So when we come to discussing those short-range battlefield weapons, we must also discuss and get from them a concession of conventional weapons being equal. It means a reduction from both sides. Yes, I've got that. Mr. President, my name is Tracy Pugh, and I bring you greetings from Joan Rebalt Senior High School. I'd like to know if you would reiterate the importance to our future of developing and having a Star Wars space-based missile defense system. Now I didn't hear just the beginning because there were some people still cheering you. I would like to know if you would reiterate the importance to our future of developing and having a Star Wars space-based missile system. Oh, I'd be delighted. There is so much misinformation out about that. This started several years ago. I asked our people in the Defense Department if it wasn't possible to see in this modern day of technology if there wasn't a weapon that could be designed that could intercept nuclear missiles as they came out of their silos. For example, from the Soviet Union, if they fired their missiles at us, those missiles get here in 30 minutes or less. You've got a half an hour to doing anything. And they agreed that possibly there was, and so a study went into effect. And what we are working on now is a system. I just visited one of the plants where some of this is going forward out in Colorado last week, and I was amazed and gratified to see the miracles that are being performed. What we have in mind, Strategic Defense Initiative, it's called, that's the SDI. What we have in mind is a defensive system that can begin by hitting those weapons as they come out of the silos. And those that manage to get through those warheads, there is a second stage then that goes up and catches them before they come back into the atmosphere, and finally a third stage to catch any that might come through. The main thing about it is it could really make nuclear weapons obsolete because what country would if we have such a system, even if they thought that some might get through, they wouldn't be certain enough to start a nuclear attack because they would know our ability to attack them back. So what I have in mind is that I won't be around by the time we've got it completed, but what we should do is when that is completed and we begin to deploy that, we should say to the rest of the world, including the Soviets, if everybody, including us, will get rid of our nuclear weapons, we'll give this to everybody because we all know how to make them. So someday we can't be sure that there might not come a madman someplace like a Hitler who, knowing how to make them and knowing that no one else in the world had them, he might decide that he was going to do it. I've likened it to our people as when we got together after World War I and everybody decided that we would no longer use poison gas, but everybody kept their gas mask. Well, I think of this as a gigantic gas mask and maybe this will be the thing that could bring about the end of nuclear missiles. Yes, I'm Shane Green from Sandowood Jr. Senior High School. Mr. President, do you feel that Mikhail Gorbachev's rising popularity across the world as a young dynamic reformer will pose an added pressure to your position at the Summit? And do you think that the American public, as a result, might perceive Communism as less of a threat in the future than it should? I have more faith in the American people than that. We're a pretty independent people. You find that out in any number of things that go on any day on the city streets. And I think that the American people are aware of the shortcomings of Communism, the thing of the boy that can't tell you what he's going to do with his life until they tell him what he's going to do. You know that in graduation in high schools in that country, they come into the rooms where they've got the graduates and they pick them out and tell them who's going to go to college and who's going to go to work in the factory and who's going to they assign them to these places. So I don't fear America doing that. And I don't mind that Gorbachev has been, let us say, quite different than past Soviet leaders. I've met with a number of them and he is different. Now at the same time, I'm not going to tell you that he doesn't believe in their system. He was born and raised in that system and he believes in much of their propaganda. But he is the first one. No other Russian leader has ever agreed to eliminate weapons they already have. He is the first one to do that. Now there is one other thing I'm watching. He is also the first Russian leader who has never reiterated before the great National Communist Congress that the Soviets are pledged to a world expansion, a one-world communist state. That has been the stated goal of previous leaders. He, his Nets, said no such thing. And I know when we first met, my first words to him, just the two of us in a room and an interpreter, and I told him, I said, we're very unique in this moment. Here we are in a room, the two of us. And literally in our hands could be the peace of the world or war for the world, nor the two nations could bring that about but us. And he agreed that, yes, that we should start working for peace. And I don't resent his popularity or anything else. And good Lord, I co-starred with Earl Flynn once. Mr. President, my name is Michael Davis from Rory Lee Senior High School. And my question is, if an agreement was reached on conventional or nuclear weapons, what would the actions be taken to ensure that both sides upheld the agreement?  I'll try again for it. My question was, if an agreement on nuclear or conventional weapons was reached, what actions would be taken to ensure that both sides upheld the agreement? Ah, you have touched on what has been the touchiest point all the way, verification. And we have, this is what's been going on now in these meetings between the foreign minister, Chevronat and our Secretary of State, George Shultz, is to try and iron out this thing of, yes, how do we establish that there is no cheating and that we're really destroying the weapons that we're supposed to destroy. And we apparently have worked out an agreement that is the strongest verification agreement that has ever been worked out in any kind of arms negotiations. It will have us with the ability to not only supervise areas where such things would be made, but also to make spot checks, just decide we want to go and take a look. And they can do the same, of course, with us. And I think that that is, well, that was the absolute essential thing. As a matter of fact, I'm no linguist, but I did learn a very brief Soviet proverb, which I made it a point to recite to General Secretary Gorbachev when we first started negotiations. It goes, dovii, no provii. Trust, but verify. Mr. President, I'm Stephanie Burnett from Paxson Senior High School. And the question is, if you could ever give advice to Mr. Gorbachev, what would it be? If I could ever give advice to Mr. Gorbachev to really stick with his program of glasnost and with this worry that they have about people wanting to emigrate from their country to make their country like ours to the place that people don't want to leave. And I would begin with the most important part of that. I think when the day comes that the people of the Soviet Union can worship God as they please and in the way they want to, that must be the first step toward that freedom.  And I'm quite sure that if they were allowed to practice their religion, to have their synagogues, to allow rabbis to be taught in their country, that not very many of them would want to emigrate. And I happen to be a friend of a man you all know the name Billy Graham. Billy Graham, as you know, has been invited and has held great meetings there in the Soviet Union. And he has told me that he believes that underlying everything else among the Soviet people is the hunger for religion. And he says, you become aware of it, that even though they don't dare admit it. And he told me one time that he said sometime if on television you see the little old ladies going to church as they do with the Orthodox church is allowed to go on. And they're watched, the KGB watches to see who goes to church. And he said, look closely sometime at the faces under those babushkas of those little shuffling figures. And you'll find some very youthful faces that the youth of the Soviet Union is hungry for God. I have a little Bible in a plastic cover about that high and no thicker than my finger. And inside are just a few, some verses that have been, are in there. When they get their hands on a Bible, it is so difficult there and they're not supposed to have them. They cut them up and make them into these little books so that everybody has just a few verses of their own of the Bible. And one of those was sent to me to show me what what they do. So efforts like that, they're going forward. And yes, I may find myself bending his ear on that very subject and telling him maybe his problems would be a lot less. Thank you and God bless you all. Mr. President and appreciation of your being here. Our students have a couple of presentations they'd like to make to you at this time. Mr. President, we are sincerely grateful for you coming to Jacksonville and addressing students and parents this afternoon. We'd like to present to you this plaque as a reminder of your stay here and a reminder of our appreciation and best wishes. And I'd like to read the inscription. A salute to President Ronald Reagan for outstanding support of public education and the Jacksonville, Florida public schools, presented December 1st 1987 by Herbet Singh, superintendent of schools and Wendell C. Parker, chairman of all county school board and students, faculty and parents. Thank you. Time of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The bell has served as a symbol of freedom and hope for the future. The bell has also been a symbol of education since it was traditionally used to call the class to order symbolizing the importance of education and representing our best wishes for your success in your upcoming summit. The students of Jacksonville present you with this bell with the precious inscription, let freedom ring. Thank you very much. Class dismissed.


Julie Tree says, hi Matt. Considering I have had a horrific childhood, I always have a problem with saying, sorry, how do I overcome this?  Second is owning up to your thinking and behavior. So really taking ownership of it. Because once you take ownership of you doing it and what you're doing, then you can actually change it and do something else if you want to. Third is changing your belief systems around what you deserve. Fourth is forgiving yourself for having a toxic childhood or getting into toxic relationships. And fifth is deciding today that you're going to create a new future for yourself and doing something completely different.