Unjust Systems of Power are Solvable

is an extraordinary moment. We're living through a global pandemic, and in the United States we're experiencing the most powerful protest movement of my lifetime against police brutality and racial injustice. It's a time of great possibility. Our society seems to be open to the kinds of moral and social transformations that we're much harder to imagine before the virus and

before the killing of George Floyd. For this our second season, I'll be joined again by my Pushkin co founder, Malcolm Gladwell and journalist and friend Dan Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and staff writer at the Atlantic. To start this season, we're focusing on two problems, racial injustice and the twenty twenty election. We can have an election that is participatory with robust turnout in twenty twenty. Justice isn't blind. We have to be far more critical and thoughtful and

have that lens on. On today's episode, we hear from an international expert on non violent protest. Let's solve this one big issue, Let's have more racial equality, and then we're going to look at our narcissism of small differences. Later, when the outcry went up over George Floyd's killing, peaceful demonstrators took to the streets in Minneapolis, then another cities across the country and across the globe, and a problem arose.

It's a problem we've seen elsewhere, bad actors, outliers with destructive agendas, overtaking the news coverage by engaging in retaliatory violence. This isn't a new issue, it's one peaceful protesters have long faced in South Africa, Egypt, Ukraine, Tunisia, and during Occupy Wall Street. Sergia Popovitch is a Serbian activist and scholar of social movements. Organizers from around the world have turned to him for advice about how to strengthen and

propel their movements. Popovitch is the executive director of the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies or CANVAS. He literally wrote a user's manual for successful social change. Our host Anna Applebaumb lives in Poland. She spoke to Papovitch from his home in Belgrade in Serbia. Here's their conversation. My soula boys, is to create social change through the successful and strategic non violent movement. So, Sergia, why is

this your solvable? In other words, what makes this issue personal to you? Well? First of all, I started very young. On my freshman year on the university. We were faced with a crazy regime in Belgrade back Daryan nineties, and you kind of had two choices. You can fight or you can flee. I guess I was too stubborn to flee,

so I stayed and fight. Together with a group of friends, we launched a movement called Oddpoor, which is a Serbian work for resistance, and then built from eleven people to seventy thousand people, eventually getting rid of the bad guy Miloshevic and I kind of went addicted to the idea of the social change group people power movements. Ever since you originally began oddpoor you and your friends, we've had

any experience. You hadn't run protests before, you hadn't organized a movement before, you know, and now you're able to advise people. So how did you begin thinking through the problem in the beginning? Was it just spontaneous or did you plan? First of all, we started by doing it without planning, which is why it took us nine years to actually do it. So ninety two we did a little bit of locking ourselves in the campuses, singing for peace kind of stuff. It didn't work because it didn't

involve the rural people. Then ninety six ninety seven, a lot of people were mobilized. We expanded to the smaller places. We protested for one hundred days, day by day by day. This will we figure out that every day protest is probably not the best way to do it because it's very exhausting. So we figure out that it is the unity thing that we are missing. Most of the protesters in the world getting involved in a protest, and then

they say we are too busy to plan. So learning by doing and making mistakes is actually the best way to do stuff, but it's very slow. So would strongly advocate to the people to start reading books and learn from other people mistakes rather than learning from there on. How did you break it down in dissolvable pieces? How should people who want to create change think about that? For a successful protest, you need so much more than the protest. You need an idea what should be different,

what you call vision of tomorrow. Then you need to share this vision with the different groups. Then you need to work with the people you are not normally alike and probably disagree on many other stuff to really get

to the change. So you need to take a really sober look at the groups you need, and then, without politicizing and ideologizing, thank you, approach these groups and then you try to figure out how you work together for the change that benefits everybody, because you need to understand social change is a very kind of selfish for many people. And the trick in these thanks is to find this unifying prop position which is the smallest common denominator from

the groups you want to mobilize and very important. Do you want to agree on what you agree, but you also want to agree what you disagree, So this is not about the things that are different among us. We leave this thing for layer, But let's solve this one big issue. Let's get rid of communism, let's get rid of Miloschovitch, Let's make more racial equality, and so on and so forth, and then we are going to look at our narcissism or small differences later. Tell me about

the nonviolent piece of it as well. Because the civil rights movement in the nineteen sixties was successful, you know, not only because people were extremely brave and very disciplined in their non violent tactics. Well, what about the argument that because those demonstrations existed alongside more aggressive protests by groups like the Black Panthers that brought attention to the nonviolent movement? Is that a you know, do you need some element of danger in order for people to admire

and follow nonviolent leaders? Well, first of all, need to understand that there is a historic proof that the non

bounced the works. And there is a very serious study done by two American scholars, Maria Stephan and Erica Chanot, and they were looking about three hundred twenty three different movements in the last century and actually figure out that the non violent movements are twice more likely to succeed the Stein's actually studies and we're looking at the movements that actually had the violent flank, and that's the flank

that sometimes resort to the violence. And they actually prove that the movements without the violent flank are more likely to succeed and the movements with violent flank, for example, the Unti Appretiated movement in South Africa did have the violent flank, which is the solely reason why why Nelson Mandela was sitting in jail for so many years. They are more likely to succeed when they get rids of this flank. For successful non VLAN movement, you need participation.

The more people participate, and also the more diverse people participate in the movement, the more you're likely to success. And there are numerous studies that show that if there is a protest about whatever topic in the world, which is likely to be cheerful, massive, peaceful, nice, with a lot of music and probably some pranks, I will probably come in. I'll bring my wife and I will bring my kids. And they're at this point four and six. By the way, the kids are these these lovely creatures

you hear in the background. If this is the place where somebody will burn the building and burn the car, and then it will be a tear gas I'll probably come without the kids. And then if this is the place where somebody will shoot around live rounds, I'll probably not appear at all. So when you take a look at the level of risk, it's really connected to the participation. So the more non violent you make it, the more peaceful you make it, the more you put the risk

bar down, the more people are likely to participate. The more people are likely to participate. And the same study proves that you need being three and five percent of the society to participate in the campaign to get a successful campaign. So taking a look at this, the movements really developed skills to overcome the violent groups, to build a non violent discipline. It's actually a skill. What do you mean by skill? What's give me an example of

a skill that people can learn. So if you play violence against the state, this is selecting the boxing ring to play against the Mike Tyson. Your opponent has a social contract use violence here, or she has a police he or she has a military. So this is your place of weakness. So whatever argument you use this is the first level is explain to your people that you are weaker if you're using violence. Step number two is

select tactics which are less likely to produce violence. So violence of cures on when you use tactics of concentration, the protests, the marches, speaking common language. This is where your troops meet their troops. This is where the violence happens. So if you instead boycott things, and this is what the South African movement did, if you instead hit pots and fans from the windows, if you instead use other methods of dispersion, there will be no conflict. If you

must have tactics of concentration. You're angry. You want to shape short numbers. The people want to go out in the street. The people are really upbeat about the marches and stuff like that. Organize your own security. You have seen people in US protests. You have seen people in many protests across the world organizing their own security. The purpose of the security is to protect your own people,

but also to protect police from your own people. So if you take a photos of Burmese protest, you see monks in the front range. If you take a look at the Serbian protest, you'll see girls, disabled people in the front ranks. Why so because they are less likely to attack the police. So this is how you structure your organization. When you go to the protest. You want to control your own people because there may be you know,

crazy heads there. They'll maybe drunk people, they may be aged prok tours that are infiltrated in your group in order to start violence, which has been done with the protest group in the history. The thing is, you need to be committed to non violence. You need to preach it and teach it to your group. You want to train your people not to resort to the violence. Remember, in almost none of the cases, it is not the

police that you're targeting. You're targeting the government. You're targeting injustice, you're targeting the bad rules, you're targeting corrupt officials. So basically, you really want to police pull police on your side. You actually want them to join the protest. But the only way to do it is not throwing objects on them, but talking to them. Yeah. Well, well, in the US, as you see in the last couple of weeks, some police have joint protests and very notably in a few places.

But what about in other situations where the protest is about the police. How do you prevent protesters from from lashing out, and why shouldn't they remember It's like every time it comes to human rights violation, it is the person with the name who does it. What do you mean, a person with a name? So the police didn't do it.

The person with a name did it. So it's not about a police because this four policemen did it, and they have names and badges and numbers, and they should be punished and prosecuted while the rest of the police should be there to preserve law in order. And it isn't the best interest of all of us to take this rotten apples out. I'm what about the argument that you know, sometimes a police force or you know, is simply structured in a way that it can't be changed.

I mean, there's a and this, by the way, is not just an argument you here in the US. You know, we heard it in communist countries after the fall of communism. There was this idea that, you know, you need to ban or abolish secret police forces because you know they'll just come back in a new form. And these are people who are unreformable. Are are there unreformable institutions? So when you have a situation like this, especially with history

of racial abuse, and racial intolerance. Like in US, you need to build confidence. You need a joint place where us and then meet. It is the US and them mentality which brought us here at the first place. So where we are talking about the social clubs, where you're talking about the UK recreation clubs, either place where people can touch a policeman or a policewoman, where they can talk to him or her and figure out that they are. You know, there are people like ourselves and also these

people from the police force. They need the way to communicate with a culture they will be policing. This is very, very difficult problem to solve. It has been solved in many countries. But actually bridging this social distance and bridging this cultural distance and building this joint space is where you solve the cause of the problem. Overseeing police, putting cameras on the police, you're curing the symptom. But the real problem with this illness is that people don't understand

the self. They're coming from a very different world and they're coming from the history of intolerance. And this is where I think systemic problem like this should be addressed. And that works for you, as that works for any given movement in the world. Why do you say it works for any given movement in the world. Don't we all have deep cultural differences, aren't there? You know, profound you know differences between United States and the Philippines and

South Africa and Poland. I mean, how can you how can you give advice to these very different kinds of movements with different histories and ethnicities and different kinds of education. Well, what happens when you when you meet the group? I mean the way, the way my organization works is that we get invitation from the group, invitations from a variety

of different groups. And that can be a anti restist activist in the US, and that can be a you know, gender right activists who is care about abortion legislation coming in Poland, and that can be something in Uganda fighting the brutal dictatorship. And every time they come in with the same sentence like, okay, our case is different. So yes, it worked well great in your own case, but in our situation you need to figure out everything is different.

And this is true. The contexts are different, the mentalities are different, The level of existing political and social space is very different in Uganda, Poland than us. But when you take a look at the principles throughout the history of the principles are more or less the same. You will never win without knowing what you want. So most of the movements that died in an early phase died because they knew what they are against, but they didn't

really knew what they want. You will never never win without building the wider coalition of the people and building the unity and holding to this unity through the rough times. Successful movements are always carefully planned. Only two types of movements in this world. They're either spontaneous or successful. They can't be both. And you will never win without understanding that one single act of violence can send all of

your non vound efforts on their ice. So if you apply these principles, then it will work in Maldives, in Poland and Georgia and Ukraine and Egypt and everywhere. If you kind of make mistake in some of these principles, it is very likely that you will fail. A lot of research, a lot of practice, a lot of movements have tried this in the past, and actually, however different you are, you will never win without these three principles. And that's something you figure out when you deal with this.

For about fifteen years. So, Sergia, what are three or four things that people listening to this to this podcast can do right now to help fix the kinds of problems they see around them. Well, first of all, they can get active, and they need to figure out that every change in the world comes from us. So watching it and waiting for somebody else to solve the thing, or posting and sharing it and liking it, it's not enough. You need to get involved. You need to get invested.

You need to get your friends in, you need to recruit more people if you're passionate for the change. Second, read books, watch movies. They are amazing books and movies written on the matter, starting with a little forty five minutes ten videos which you can fight on our website on how to build a successful movement. So if you want to invest forty five minutes of your life, go

and can Alsoppedia dot organ check it. But most important, you need to figure out that the world won't change by itself, that even the smallest creature can change the destiny of the world. And whether or not you are the big front of the Lord of the Rings. You need to imagine yourself as a hobbit and every time. It's a hobbit. So you need to understand that without your things will change, and don't watch get involved. If you're angry, try to figure out how from the sanger

into hope. If you are hopeful, mobilizing more hopeful things, you have talents and skills, please join some of the progressive movements and disappointment and never ever lose hope. Sergia, thank you so much. Thank you on such a pleasure and thrill working with one of my most favorite journalists on this point, and one of my favorites too, that was Anna Applebaumb speaking with Sergia Popovich. Sergia is the executive director of the Center for Applied Non Violent Action

and Strategies or CANVAS. You can find a link to the videos he mentioned on the Solvable website and at canvas Opedia dot org. Solvable is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Camille Baptista, Jocelyn Frank, and Katherine Girardo. Mia Lobell is our executive producer. Special thanks to Kadija Holland, Heather Fame, Carle Bigleior, Eric Sandler

and the whole Pushkin team. We'll be back next week with the next episode in this mini series about organizing and racial justice, I'll talk with Inscha Rachman about how to solve mass incarceration. I hope you'll join us