>>Srdja Popovic: I am a little nervous.
I will start with an anecdote.
It is December 15, 2010, and you are meeting a strange guy on a street.
And he offers you a bat.
And he says, "I'll let you look in a crystal ball and the crystal ball will tell you how
the 2011 will look.
But there is one condition.
You need to go to the BBC studio and tell to this guy and to the rest of the world what
have you seen in the crystal ball."
And because, of course, curiosity kills the cat, you accept.
Next thing you know, you are sitting in a lovely, shiny BBC studio and you are telling
the story.
And the story is as follows.
Before the end of the two hundred one, Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt will be
down.
Saleh of Yemen will begin his leave.
Assad of Syria seriously challenged.
Moammar Gadhafi and Osama Bin Laden would be dead and (saying name) would be in heck.
This would be one of the worst years for bad guys ever.
Now, you know the anchor gives you a strange look in the eye but you still continue.
On the top of it, you will have hundreds of thousands of young Greeks and Spanish people
and even the landowners and Americans struggling for the social justice all across Europe and
the world saying that they got their inspiration from young Arabs.
Okay.
This was enough.
Two big guys in white appear in a TV studio.
You get a funny shirt.
You are taken to the nearest mental institution.
Well, what we are trying to look upon, the thing is that, yes, this was 2011.
Yes, this was really what happened.
What we are really trying to discover is: What is this thing, what is this power behind
the very bad year for bad guys?
And there is a name for it, and we tried to define it.
We traveled throughout the world after being involved in Serbian movement as a young revolutionary
-- I accept stop being young -- formed a organization called Centre for Applied Non-Violent Action
and Strategies.
And I have the best job in the world.
I travel around the world, try to teach people how to be free.
And we work with people from 46 different countries, trying to understand what is really
making this social revolution possible.
And there is a name for it, and the name is people power.
And to define the people power really, it is just to say that, you know, once the people
decides not to obey, rulers cannot rule.
So now we need to look into what really makes this revolution happen.
And wherever you look across the globe now, it is already taken by the global media.
And you want to look at Egypt.
You want to look to the Arab Spring.
You want to look to the rest of Europe.
You don't want to forget places like Zimbabwe.
You don't want to forget places like Burma where they have the opening.
And you look at these things and say: Is this really a force more powerful?
And the answer is clear.
There is a great study done by two young American academics, Maria Steffen, Ericka Jenowick.
They examine 323 cases of non-violent revolutions from 1900 to 2006.
Guess what?
By violent struggle, we have only 26% of chances for success.
By non-violent struggle, it is 53.
So advice to the people in the places like Syria is the moment you take weapons, you
cut your chances by half.
Even better as the people on the stage before me said, they were examining into what comes
next.
And they were intersecting the society's five-year after the violent and non-violent campaigns
with one simple question: Is there a durable democracy?
Results are shocking.
You have 4% of chances ending up in durable democracy if your change is made by violent
means.
Compared to 42% of chances ending up in democracy through the non-violent struggle.
Why?
It is a popular process.
The people participate.
And once people become the shareholder of the change, it's very difficult to put the
spirit back in a bottle.
So those who were very eager to criticize Egypt and what is happening there, don't forget,
once this period is released from the bottle, it is very difficult to put it back in the
bottle because non-violent struggle really changes the way the people see themselves.
We were also looking at the principles and saying, Okay.
What do you really need to win in non-violent struggle?
And examining so many different cases, so many different religions, so many different
mentalities, we came to the very short list of three things.
You can't win without the unity, meaning unity of purpose, unity within the organization.
You can't win without a strategy.
There is no such thing as a successful and spontaneous non-violent revolution.
You need strategy.
You need to plan your way all the way back there.
The laws, but not of least importance, you need non-violent discipline because you can
have 100,000 people in a peaceful march standing for the biggest values of this world.
And then you can have two drunk guys or agent provacateurs, whatsoever, throwing stones.
Guess what?
Who will be on the cover page of tomorrow's newspaper?
These two guys.
So planning and non-violent discipline are critical in achieving a successful social
movement.
Now, there is this line of sociologists who were telling the real revolutionaries should
be serious because revolution is serious business.
You can hear all the TV analysts talking about the conditions.
You need as much educated people to have a successful revolution.
You need Internet penetration.
You need demographic distribution, but somehow they're missing the emotions.
And what we have learned working with people from throughout the globe is that this is
this tiny balance between fear, which is the air dictators breathe, and enthusiasm.
If enthusiasm goes up and you see people making jokes with the police instead of being afraid
of the police, then you have a game-changer.
And within this game-changer, there is a great role of humor.
So this is a nice time to introduce the new term in the world's revolution which is called
"laughtivism."
We know about the clicktavism, hacktavism.
We need to talk about the laughtivism because it is humor which has a tremendous role in
melting fear, building the morale of your troops because this is when your moment really
becomes cool and everybody wants to join.
There is something with the dictators and humor, they can't stand being mocked.
Spending so much time watching their faces on TV and on billboards, they start taking
themselves too seriously.
Then there is a bunch of crazy guys making fun of themselves.
In '99, we had this big barrel in Serbia, just a small group of activists.
There was Milosevic's face painted on it, a hole in the top.
You go there.
You put a coin in.
You buy or sell the right to hit the guy with a baseball bat.
There is a boom!
Big sound.
200 downtown shoppers standing in the line for their chance to hit Mr. President.
We went out drinking espressos.
Guess what?
The police arrive.
They didn't know what to do.
We are not there to be arrested.
No arresting shoppers.
And you can bet they have done the most stupid things.
They arrested the barrel, and now this picture of the two policemen dragging the barrel into
the police car was the best opportunity for reporters.
Everybody got the cover page.
You want to see more of it?
Two months ago in anti-election fraud protests in remote town of Barnaul, Siberia, a bunch
of very inventive young people came out with the idea that because they can't protest,
toys maybe can.
So they came out with a lovely toy protest against the election fraud and because the
police was a bit upset, they needed to file a request for this protest.
And guess what?
The government banned it.
The government officially banned protest of 100 Kinder Surprise toys, 100 little people,
20 model soldiers, 10 toy cars because they are not citizens of Russia.
[ Laughter ] I would die to have this piece of paper.
So next time they will probably need to work on toy passports or something like that.
So where do we go from this?
Of course, His Majesty Internet, we are here at the Google conference, so many titles,
Facebook Revolution, Twitter Revolution.
That is important because it makes things faster and cheaper and puts a huge price tag
on the state-sponsored violence.
It is also a powerful tool for educating people.
17,000 downloads of our book from the Internet in June 2009 from Iran only.
Compared to the idea of distributing these books and you have a very, very good idea.
But this -- don't mix tools with substance.
These revolutions and struggles are done in the real world and in the streets.
So don't get blurred into just by clicking something, you have saved your soul.
Things need to be done properly and need to be done on the street.
So at the end of this process, where do we go from now?
Are the brave men and women of far of worlds so successful in replacing and challenging
their harsh dictators find their courage, strategy and unity to do the less sexy but
equally important part of building a democracy?
It is a question -- a million-dollar question.
And then what will happen with what started as Arab Spring, spread it to Mediterranean
summer, places like Greece, Italy and Spain all the way across the ocean to Occupy Wall
Street.
So will these guys struggling under the banner of 99% find the answer to the questions of
what they want instead of just coming out with the endless list of what they don't want?
Will they find their courage?
Will they find their strategy to change the world?
I don't know the answer to this question.
But what 2011 really taught us is a big lesson, not only affirmed the idea of the people power
but gave a lesson to the people like me, people like you, people around the globe with good
intentions, good connections, maybe some money, maybe some knowledge to share.
It is probably the best world's investment into how to educate these people to wage their
struggle because you can train 80 people in non-violent struggle for the price of one
gun.
This is exactly what we need to think about.
How can we help these people?
What is the message we can send to the world to enforce people power?
Because this is how we can contribute our little share in making this world a better
place.
Thank you very much.
Proud to be with you.
[ Applause ]