Translator: Parvathi Pappu Reviewer: Claire Ghyselen
Are we obliged to advocate?
Whether you feel you can or you can't, you could or you should,
I have five easy steps to guide you through your advocacy journey.
One: lock down those motivations.
Advocacy, at the core, is a deeply embedded sense of purpose
for it's defined by an act that aims to influence the decisions
within social, economic and political systems and institutions.
No small act.
And if done right, it's a life's work.
Two: establish some role models.
Tanya Hosch
is an Australian rules football executive.
However, she wants to see Aboriginal people
represented in the Australian constitution.
Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head at 15 years old, going to school.
She lived to receive the Nobel Prize.
Elon Musk wants to build a city of a million people on Mars.
While Bryan Stevenson represents young black boys
in America's criminal justice system.
Products of mass incarceration on an astronomical scale
similar to the incarceration rates of Aboriginal males in Australia.
Bryan's grandmother was born a slave.
Yet Rosa Parks told him that his life's work
was going to make him tired, tired, tired.
Three: understand your historical context.
My grandfather took my mother to sit-ins in Chicago in the 1960s.
If you are not familiar with sit-ins,
that's where a group of people will go to a place -
like a restaurant or a cafe or a library -
and sit,
hoping to be served, usually humiliated,
and unceremoniously shown the door.
And potentially arrested.
My father was killed in police custody in 1987.
I was eight years old.
And he was unarmed.
My step father spent 30 years in a major American corporation,
marginalized in middle management,
dutifully providing for a middle-class family
in Middle America.
And to me,
I represent the first generation
born with the entitlements of civil liberties
that we all understand as basic human rights:
voting, education,
access to crappy diner food.
(Laughter)
Focus. That's number four.
Focus those benefits of your historical context;
focus those beliefs
and those observations.
Now, I am a sports administrator,
and I do believe in the power of sport
as a viable and extremely constructive tool
for social, political and economic engagement.
You?
What do you believe in?
Now, we can sit back and let those beliefs simmer,
or we can challenge them.
I prefer to sit back.
Let you reveal yourself.
Let your sincerities surface,
and let the venom bubble over
if that's the case.
And as far as observations?
Whether it's a right or a privilege or a choice or an obligation,
it doesn't really matter;
it's all about perception.
Because what is a right up close
can be perceived as a privilege from afar.
Number five: a way forward.
I stood on the shoulders of a middle manager,
and I saw a way.
I couldn't stomach another 50 years for an incremental step forward.
Now, some of you are different.
You are probably more selfless.
You could commit your life for minimum recognition
and minimum reward,
operating under common misconceptions
and distorted perceptions.
Are we obligated to advocate?
I don't know.
But hopefully now, we understand how to.
You lock in those motivations;
make them unshakable.
You establish some role models or become one yourself.
You understand your historical context
and the histories of people around you.
You focus all those beliefs and all those observations
to push a way forward.
More simply put,
as an advocate, first, you take a step in.
And you take a few steps back, and then you step up.
Now, many of you,
you may not need anyone to speak up for you,
you may not need anyone to understand your perspective.
But if you do,
and you can't find the words, you don't have the voice:
tell me about it.
Tell somebody.
Because we are all advocates.
Thank you.
(Applause)