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