In 2011, the Arab Spring Revolutions swept across the Middle East;
From Tunisia to Egypt, Bahrain, and Syria.
For more than 50 years, a quiet American scholar
has been helping people bring down their dictators.
His tactics of nonviolent resistance have been used
in revolutions from Serbia to Ukraine and Iran.
To be counted as a threat to a tyrant is a matter of pride, I would say.
It means we're effective. It means we're relevant.
This is the story of the power of people to change their world,
the modern revolution, and the man behind it all.
Gene Sharp's tactics and theories are being
practiced on the streets of Syria as we speak now.
My name is Gene Sharp, and this is the work I do.
How To Start A Revolution
Boston, Massachusetts.
- What do you do? How would you describe your work?
- Oh, that's always a problem, describing my work.
Primarily, I try to understand
the nature and potential of nonviolent forms of struggle
to undermine dictatorships.
This is a technique of combat.
It is a substitute for war, and other violence.
His handbook to revolution –From Dictatorship to Democracy–
has been smuggled across borders and
downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.
We don't know quite how it's read,
but it certainly did into 30 some languages
in different parts of the world,
on all continents except Antarctica.
The hallmarks of Gene Sharp's work can be
seen in revolutions all over the world.
Colors and symbols
signs in English
civil disobedience
and commitment to nonviolent action.
Gene's books contain a list of 198 nonviolent methods of resistance.
Oh, the famous 198 methods.
There seems to have been an extraordinary response.
That's simply the 198 specific methods.
These specific forms of abstract are economic boycott,
are civil disobedience, are protests.
Exactly the counterpart of military,
different kinds of military guns or bombs,
any military struggle.
Unless they have something instead of violence and war,
they will go back with violence and war every time.
In 1983, Gene Sharp founded the Albert Einstein Institution
to spread the knowledge of nonviolent struggle.
For years, people living under dictatorships
have been coming here to East Boston for help.
Jamila Raqib has worked for Gene for more than 10 years.
I began learning about the work at a very basic level.
I did most of my reading and learning as
soon as I started working at the institution
and I was hooked.
I didn't start out to do this.
I had a religious background that
led me to want to leave the world in a bit
of a better place and better condition
than when I came here,
and how to do that was always a problem.
Korean war, 1950-1953.
In 1953, Gene was sent to jail for refusing
conscription to fight in the Korean War.
I had a two-year sentence. I did nine months and ten days.
In those days you counted the days as well as the month,
but I don't think that my action there did any good whatsoever.
It was just to keep my sense of my own integrity
so I would carry on in the work that I thought was really important.
I never met Einstein,
but I wrote to him. I don't know how I got his address.
I said: “Well, I'm about to do such and such and go to prison,
but by the way I've written this book on Gandhi
three quite different cases from each other
about Gandhi's using nonviolent struggle for a greater freedom
through just nonviolent means.”
And he wrote back that he was very much hoped, but couldn't know
that he would have made the same decision I did
and he would be willing to look at the manuscript
which I had sent to him, and he did so and
wrote a very kind introduction to the book.
Oxford University.
While studying at Oxford, Gene had his Eureka moment
a new analysis of the power of people to bring down a tyrant.
If you can identify the sources of a government's power,
such as legitimacy,
such as popular support,
such as the institutional support,
and then you know on what that dictatorship depends for its existence.
And since all those sources of power are dependent upon the good will
co-operation, obedience, and help of people and institutions,
then your job becomes fairly simple.
All you have to do is shrink that support,
and that legitimacy, that co-operation, that obedience,
and the regime will be weakened,
and if you can take those sources far away, the regime will fall.
- And how did you feel at that point?
- At the point, that Eureka point?
- Yeah.
- Oh, greatly relieved.
- Greatly relieved, because that's what made it all reality.
Harvard University.
While teaching his theories at Harvard, Gene was
about to meet an unlikely champion of his work
Vietnam War hero, Colonel Bob Helvey.
I first met Gene Sharp at Harvard University.
I was an Army Senior Fellow up there for a year,
and one day I saw a notice on the bulletin board
about a program for nonviolent sanctions at two o'clock this afternoon.
So I had nothing to do, so I went to see who these peace necks were
and to confirm my preconceived notion
that they probably had rings in their noses and ears
and dirty.
And so I went up there just to see them
and surprisingly they weren't there.
I saw regular looking people there.
And a few minutes after we all sat down
this little short, soft-spoken gentleman comes to the front of the room and says:
"My name is Gene Sharp
and we're here today to discuss how to seize political power
and deny it to others.”
I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle,
and we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence
who try to justify with pretty words
that kind of combat.
Only with this type of struggle, one fights with psychological weapons,
social weapons, economic weapons,
and political weapons,
and this is ultimately more powerful against oppression,
injustice, and tyranny than is violence.
That got my attention.
This is the flag of the 5th Battalion, 7th United States Cavalry.
The 7th Cav, as you know, was the Regiment of General Armstrong Custer,
who fought and died at the battle of Little Big Horn.
That's me in my younger days.
A full head of hair.
This is the award for the Distinguished Service Cross, that I got in Vietnam.
Vietnam, 1968.
In 1968, Bob was deployed in Vietnam.
He was decorated for bravery during a Vietcong ambush.
But his experiences there would change his
views on the way conflicts should be waged.
I think Vietnam influenced my view about the importance of nonviolent struggle,
and particularly the importance of getting Gene
Sharp's ideas out to the rest of the world,
because we must have an alternative.
Vietnam convinced me that we need to have an alternative to killing people.
Burma, 1992.
As a US defense official in Burma,
Bob had seen the military dictatorship
there, persecute the minority Karen people.
After leaving the army,
Bob traveled back to the rebel camps to teach the
Karen Gene's lessons in nonviolent resistance.
I was talking to one of the Karen Commandos
and he says: “Where in the hell has this information been?
We've been fighting and killing people for 20 years.
How come we didn't know this?”.
Some of the Burmese came up to him and asked
if he would write something for the Burmese on
how to move from a dictatorship to a democracy.
That's the origin of why the book was written:
The Burmese.
I couldn't write about Burma honestly, because I didn't know Burma well,
and he said not to write about something you don't know anything about,
so I had to write generically.
If there was a movement that wanted to bring a dictatorship to an end,
how could they do it?
And so I wrote those theories,
and they were serialized there,
and published in English and in Burmese,
and I thought that was it.
In 1989, Gene traveled to China at the height
of the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen Square, 1989.
It would shape his views about the importance of planning and strategy.
Lesson 1: Plan a Strategy.
I'd gone to Beijing
after the Tiananmen Square protests were well underway.
That whole event, which it should be remembered, was not just in Beijing
but reportedly in 350 other cities of China,
similar protests were going on.
But they were not planned. They were not prepared.
There was no strategic decision.
There was no advanced decision how long you
stay in the square and when you leave.
The students had no plan.
They were improvising all the way through,
and later on we know that many of those
Chinese people who were out on the streets,
in another day, were shot and killed.
The attitude that you simply improvise
and improvisation will bring you greater success is nonsense.
Exactly the opposite.
That if you don't know what you're doing,
you're likely to get into big trouble.
Serbia, 2000.
The government of Slobodan Milosevic, in Serbia,
presided over years of crimes against humanity and brutal internal repression.
The regime fueled the creation of new democracy
groups in the country fighting, for his removal.
I went to Budapest at the request of the International Republican Institute,
which was providing support to the Serbian Opposition Movement,
and one particular part of that opposition movement was Otpor.
That's a Serbian word for resistance.
He's a retired colonel, and he has this type of military approach,
and the way he speaks is really something that
creates a strange impression with a bunch of student leaders.
We talked for a while, and I said: “Well, there's something missing here.
We haven't talked about who's leader of this organization.
Who is the leader?”.
And then one guy said: “We don't have a leader.”
And I said: “Well, wait a minute guys. I did not
fall off the turnip truck coming over here.
Somebody has to lead an organization that
has mobilized the entire Serbian society.”
So we spent probably one hour fooling him about some stuff,
and the reason for this was that we were not
very comfortable about giving the details
about the organization to the foreigner.
And then they explained to me, why there's no quote “leader”.
To keep it away from the government. The government doesn't know who's in charge.
And I later found out I was talking to the leader,
Srdja Popovic.
Belgrade
Bob began teaching Gene Sharp's lessons to the new Serbian revolutionaries.
When Bob Helvey gave us the Gene Sharp's politics
of nonviolent action, we were quite amazed.
Partly I was ashamed that I didn't know about such a book before,
even if there was a translation of From Dictatorship to Democracy in Serbian,
but I had never seen it.
And seeing the knowledge of how power operates,
and pillars of the support operates,
and all this stuff, we needed to learn the hard way throughout our experience
written systematically on one place was quite an amazing thing.
One of Otpor's first tasks was to create a
symbol of resistance to help unify the people.
It's obvious that we are a majority.
If we can just recognize all of those who are against Milosevic
by saluting each other with a fist, he
would probably be over within a few years.
Lesson 2: Overcome "Atomisation"
“Atomisation” is
when a regime attempts to make every individual in this society
an isolated unit.
It's one of the main ways that took over their
systems, seek to control their populations,
make them all fear each other, fearing to speak out and to act together,
never telling your neighbor or even sometimes
a family member what you really think.
By seeing the example of the demonstration
and bravery by other people:
Now it's "we", now it's "we", and we can do something that I alone could not.
During the 96-97, we were walking day after day after day,
and the police was walking streets, and our numbers would start falling
because it was obviously too boring for the
people to demonstrate every day in harsh winter.
So we said: “Okay, why won't we go home and
try to make noise from our balconies.”
We were doing it from 7:30 until 8:00 pm, as a response to the state TV news.
That was the answer... we don't watch your crap.
We do our own thing.
From the pots and pans to doing the stickers,
so the stickers can be doing in every building,
and also the things like,
“Will you go and prosecute the kids for wearing Otpor t-shirts
when there is not one single law which bans wearing anything on a t-shirt?”.
So for the policemen, getting inside high schools
and arresting high school kids only because they were wearing the t-shirt,
and then going home and talking to their wife
whose friend was complaining because her son was arrested.
Getting a dialogue of your kids was coming now from his school
where nobody wants to spend time with him or her
because their father is now beating kids from my neighborhood.
And now, this systemic oppression doesn't work.
Lesson 3: Pillars of Support.
These pillars are holding up the government,
like my fingers are holding up this book,
and I developed a strategy to undermine each of those pillars:
The police,
the [???], the religious institutions, the workers,
whatever, every organization.
And as they weaken and start to collapse, the government will collapse
when those pillars are broken.
Ideally we want those pillars not destroyed,
but transferred over to the democratic movement.
If you want these pillars to shift sides, you need to co-opt people.
It's exactly what Otpor has done.
We were telling the police that we are both victims of the same system.
There is no reason to have war between victims and victims.
One of the victims wear blue uniforms, Other victims wear blue jeans,
but there is no reason for this conflict.
And this worked, really worked.
And it worked in Georgia. It worked in Ukraine.
It worked in many other places in the world.
This is the way you do.
You go and co-opt from this course of pillars.
You don't throw stones at the police.
Lesson 4: Resist Violence.
The many people in conflict situations that would like to use violence,
but their opponents really have more
military weapons and weapons of violence,
usually physical weapons,
than the potential resistors have,
the resistors choose to fight with violence.
Their opponent has all the advantages in that
situation because you're choosing to fight
with your opponent's best weapons.
But you can choose to fight with a totally different
kind of weapon in these nonviolent forms,
which are much more difficult for the opponent to counteract.
Big concentration tactics are very difficult to control.
You have 20,000 peaceful demonstrators
and one idiot breaking out a window.
These people got all the media.
So this is the message which can efficiently undermine your movement.
You would go on a march and there is a risk of the people getting arrested,
so what would you normally do?
Instead of putting the big guys in front,
you will put the girls in front,
you will put the grandmas in front,
you will put the military veterans in front.
So the police is now faced with the friendly faces.
And these people are actually carrying the flowers and the banners and smiling,
so you make the situation less threatening,
so you make the possibility of a violent outcome very small.
October the 5th should be seen in the context of successful strategy,
and that was not the day like many spectators or media, like CNN.
They just see it as a big bunch of people,
revolution, boom, and it's all over.
It was, first of all, ten years of attempts and failures,
and two years of resistance of Otpor, five different campaigns,
and we were setting the victory on the elections.
Serbian National Election September 2000.
In September 2000, Serbia went to the polls.
But Otpor expected Milosevic would fix the election.
We knew that Milosevic will lose,
and we knew that he will not accept the fact that he has lost.
So around 3 pm, you hear like two to 300,000 people on the square,
and there was a nonviolent takeover of the physically of this building.
And this is where the people who broke into the building, on October the 5th,
found many leaflets pre-marked for Milosevic.
So this is where, actually the physical cheat was
taking place on the second floor of this building.
It was more like a symbolic takeover,
because what was the real takeover was that Milosevic lost power that day,
because police disobeyed,
because he ordered the military to get through
the barracks after 3 pm and they disobeyed.
This is where he lost the power.
What you are looking at on the TV and physical overtaking of the building,
was just a symbol of him, losing authority that day.
I think what we learned from Bob and what comes
and derives from Gene Sharp thinking and writing,
influenced the way we think,
and also made our struggle more efficient in a very important point
when we were preparing for a resistive struggle.
And yes, I think what Bob and Gene are doing are precious around the world,
and we strongly believe that the nonviolent
revolutions cannot be exported or imported,
but the knowledge on how to successfully implement nonviolent struggle
can and is transferred from one group to another as we speak.
Well, I felt good that here was a revolution that occurred non-violently.
There was no violence on the part of the democratic opposition,
and it shows that what Gene was talking a bout year after year after year,
There are realistic alternatives to violent conflict.
Well, I mean, after Serbia, we were working with
Georgians and Ukrainians and Lebanese and Maldivians
and Iranians and Zimbabweans and Colombians
and Guatemalans and West Papuans
and the groups from places in the world I couldn't literally find on a map.
Georgia, 2003.
Then, from Serbia, the news spread to Georgia,
which was under a very repressive regime,
and then to Ukraine, which again had problems, and it spread there,
and then to a series of other countries in the
southern tier of the former Soviet Union.
Ukraine, 2004.
Vlodymyr Viatrovich was a leader of Ukraine's Orange Revolution.
He used Gene's book to convince activists that
there was a powerful alternative to violence.
The protester community had various schools of thought.
In particular, there were people ready to use some kind of force.
The book in question
is Gene sharp's book, From Dictatorship to Democracy.
The central concept of that book,
fighting dictators non-violently, was very pertinent for us.
That was the idea that pretty much shaped the protest
that led to the Orange Revolution of 2004.
We're united, we're many...
I think that tens of thousands of people, no more,
ever received Sharp's ideas directly from his book.
But the ideas themselves, no longer linked to Gene Sharp,
reached hundreds of thousands of people in the Orange Revolution.
We're united, we're many, we won't be conquered!
So if we're to speak of his ideas,
even if the people didn't know they were Sharp's,
they were still widespread and influential.
Yushchenko! Yushchenko!
On the top floor of Gene's home is his orchid house,
a refuge from the work below.
They take quite a bit of work.
They became very important because it was something I could treat,
as they needed to be treated,
and not expecting miracles,
but if you don't treat orchids right or anything
else in life, then it's not going to thrive.
- How did it feel watching your work spread?
- Oh, that spread was really quite remarkable, I always think.
I'm still amazed.
To have this piece that I regarded as very introductory,
I think it's maybe 70 or 80 pages,
to take off like that was a confirmation
that the analysis was more or less accurate.
It didn't spread because of good propaganda,
or some sales pitch.
It spread because people found it usable.
They found it important.
The books are there. The literature is there.
It's online. It's in people's homes and people's hard-drives,
and it's being disseminated at a level where
that cannot stop, and it cannot be stopped.
People go to great lengths to discredit this work,
and there was one case where President Chavez had referred to our staff as
“the bunch of gringos at the Albert Einstein
Institution don't understand Venezuela,”
and I thought: “Well, it's true that we may not
fully understand the situation in Venezuela.
It's probably quite complex, but I'm not a gringo.”
Gene Sharp, George Bush,
and the ideologues of this soft coup with a slow fuse…
Gentlemen, you can forget this plan of yours in Venezuela.
In 2008, the Iranian government broadcast a propaganda video
accusing Gene of working for the CIA.
The White House, Washington D.C.
Gene Sharp, the theoretician of civil disobedience
and velvet revolutions,
who has published treatises on this subject.
He is one of the CIA agents
in charge of America's infiltration of other countries.
Well, you've seen our office. You can see how well funded we are.
In a way, I was impressed that we were on the radar,
that they had Gene Sharp sitting at the White House, and in a way, I thought
I wish those in the White House would listen to
us, I wish they would request a meeting with us,
but they don't.
We sit here. We operate out of our Tourem office.
We have no connection with the White House.
It just didn't happen.
We don't do that.
We are absolutely not a CIA front organization,
and it's really ironic because we see this charge in the press
and among various groups quite often,
and we always wonder, where is this coming from?
After the Iranian elections in 2009,
opposition groups declared the result was a fix.
Iran, 2009.
There are thousands upon thousands of people
streaming down through the main boulevard,
all heading in the same direction.
It's quite something. They're waving green flags.
People are hanging out of cars giving the 'V' for victory sign.
I was not sure people would turn up given the warning,
and I'm wrong.
Thousands of protesters exploded onto the streets of Tehran.
The government response was brutal.
During the uprising, a young Iranian student, Neda
Agha-Soltan, was shot by a government sniper.
Her image would become a rallying call for the opposition.
Lesson 5: Political Ju-Jitsu.
When people are slaughtered, when they are beaten,
this produces a process I call 'Political Ju -Jitsu, '
in which the opponent's supposed strength
is used to undermine the opponent
by alienating more people from supporting that regime,
mobilizing more people into the act of resistance.
It's a kind of backlash effect.
If the regime is so brutal, and instead of
intimidating people which the regime intends,
it causes other population groups and institutions
to withdraw their cooperation and their obedience
and that loss of power and control that more people are joining the resistance.
Iason Athanasiadis was arrested by Iranian
Intelligence while reporting the Green uprising.
When I went to see the Chief Prosecutor on the second day that I was in prison,
he looked at me when I took off my blindfold, sitting in his office,
and he said: “Do you know why you're here?”.
And I said: “No, I mean, I've no idea. I've just been arrested two nights ago”,
and he said: “Well, there's a very serious accusation against you.”
And I said: “What is that?” And he said: “Are you sure you don't know?"
"Espionage."
The interrogator kind of patted his laptop and said:
“You know, this laptop contains a Persian language translation
of Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship To Democracy"
which is a handbook for insurrectionists,
and it gives them several dozen easy ways by which,
if they only follow these ways, they can overthrow a government
a legitimate government, any kind of government.
And I have read this book, and so have my colleagues."
When the organizers of the uprising were arrested,
they were charged with using over 100 of Gene Sharp's 198 methods.
What this work does is show people that they
themselves can be responsible for their own future,
for their own liberation.
People are beginning to liberate themselves,
They don't have to depend on an outside power.
This is Srdja, my cat,
named after Srdja Popovic.
But they don't have to depend on an outside power.
They can do it themselves.
And can you imagine how good that makes a country feel?
That we did it ourselves.
And that's why it's so important that we transfer this skill and knowledge.
There's no reason for the United States to be occupying anybody.
We're not good at occupying anybody.
Neither was the Soviet Union good at occupying people.
Let the people alone.
Give them the power to change their government if they want it changed.
To be counted as a threat to a tyrant is a matter of pride, I would say.
It means we're effective. It means we're relevant.
It means, out of this very small office, we produce work that threatens regimes,
and I think that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Tahrir Square, Cairo, 2011.
This was the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution.
The uprising was spontaneous, but Egyptian democracy
groups had been working on the strategy for years.
Egyptian democracy group Kefaya first visited Gene in Boston in 2006.
Five years later, former Serbian revolutionaries
were training new groups on the outskirts of Cairo.
Egypt's Muslim brotherhood posted Gene's work in Arabic on their website.
When the moment came, these groups were ready to guide the revolution.
Well, let's go live to Tahrir Liberation Square.
We can speak to a freelance journalist who joins us on the line now,
Ruaridh, we were hearing about those heightened
security measures today around Tahrir Square.
Is there a different atmosphere here compared
with say yesterday and the day before?
Ah, yes. It's an incredible atmosphere today.
That cross section of Egyptian society that left
Tahrir Square yesterday is back in force now.
They've managed to re-energize the protesters.
There's very young children, women, older men here.
People are singing and dancing. There are many instruments in the square,
and it's more full here than it has been in days.
Ahmed Maher was a leader of Egypt's April 6th democracy group.
We waited for an incident, the spark,
that would move all the people.
There were many reasons to act, but we were waiting for the spark.
And that was Tunisia.
Tunisia, 2011.
In fact it was...
There has always been rivalry in soccer
between Egypt and Tunisia.
So maybe we started before Tunisia
but Tunisia beat us and started the revolution, so why not us?
People saw on the web "The answer is Tunisia".
Leave! Leave!
Of course there was a strong influence
from Gene Sharp's writings articles and books.
We got them from the internet, read them
and we learned quickly
and understood the essence of non-violence.
We also saw many documentaries on the internet
about the experiences of people applying non-violence.
The idea itself was very inspiring
whether it came from the documentaries or the books.
As the peaceful protest grew in Tahrir Square,
President Hosni Mubarak intimidated them with weapons of war.
Our experience may be slightly different to Otpor.
Before the revolution, they won the army and police over to their side.
It was different with us.
We had a very big battle with the police
and the army was always neutral
but eventually intervened on our side.
The experience is different to an extent
between us and Otpor in Serbia.
Even after violent clashes with police, the
revolutionary leaders restored nonviolent discipline
in the face of overwhelming force.
The protesters faced brutal attacks from police and security forces,
but they held their ground.
Of course, technology played a big role
in faster communication,
in delivering the message to the people and mobilizing them.
Also, technology played a role
in the internal organization.
You have groups in various governments
and need to be in constant contact with them
so instead of holding a meeting every fortnight
you can, through a secret group on Facebook,
via conference on yahoo, Skype or Abouttalk
via any program, constantly communicate.
All those helped so much in spreading ideas.
As Muslims and Christians guarded each other while they prayed,
the leaders of the revolution were persuading
the army to support the protesters.
I believe the army eventually helped us
because the army is of the people.
The army conscripts come from the people,
and the army has a big patriotic role.
The police may have fixed elections, protected the corrupt,
they've been involved for many years
and were protecting their interests and existence.
I was returning to Tahrir Square,
just entering the square through the permanent search gate.
There was a cafe which had the TV on very loud.
In the name of God the Merciful.
Citizens,
in these difficult circumstances
that the country is going through.
President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has decided
to step down as President of the Republic.
It took him a while to step down.
I just went crazy when I heard the speech.
I started crying, thinking that at last
the dream we've had for years and endured so much for
has come true.
It was a really tough moment.
I then ran screaming into the square.
Everyone was just crying, screaming,
laughing, dancing, singing...
It was a historic moment.
I just couldn't believe it.
For a few days I wondered if it was possible.
But somebody knew what they were doing,
and we don't need anyone claiming credit for us or me or anyone,
if it's not deserved and if it's not documented.
Syria, 2011.
Massacre in Juma, 15 so far killed.
Ausama Monajed is a communications expert and
one of the leaders of the Syrian Uprising.
This is a video of a kid that'd been shot at.
One boy was shouting: “My brother, my brother!”.
He co-ordinates a network of secret cameras all over the country.
It's just a basic HD camera linked to a satellite modem,
and we upload it on streaming websites where we can get the live feed,
and we managed to get this Al Jazeera today.
Gene Sharp's tactics and theories are being
practiced on the streets of Syria as we speak now.
What we did is promote these tactics and explain them
to people through the Facebook pages that we have
and also the YouTube channels.
This is how they're applied, from putting flowers on the spots
where fallen heroes fell and frustrations
from the campaign while you marched,
from cleaning streets and making it nicer and better
because we can do something even better than the
regime can do in terms of services, so yeah.
From Dictatorship To Democracy gives you the inspiration, the assurances
that this could really be achieved and this can really happen.
In Summer 2011, after a brutal onslaught by the Syrian military,
Ausama traveled to Boston to meet Gene.
- When were you last here?
- I can't remember exactly. Was it 2007 or 2006?
Yeah, years ago,
when it was only a few people thinking about
nonviolent resistance scenario in Syria,
and only quite a few believed this can really happen in a country like Syria.
Ok. All set.
- Gene. - Hello.
- Hi. - How are you?
- Hi, good to see you again. Good to see you. Good to see you.
- Good to see you.
- Good to see you too. How are you doing?
- Not too bad.
- I'm happy to see you. It was so good you have
time in your schedule to come to say, “Hello.”
- Well, the pleasure is mine.
I was really delighted, and I can tell you there's a lot to talk about.
- This is new territory for us.
- Yeah.
- We've never been there personally. The cases we've studied don't exactly match.
He's so humble and down to earth to a limit that you feel how amazing this is,
like all these great writings coming from
a very tiny little office in Old Boston.
It's rather interesting.
Maybe there's one thing that's been “learned”
in quotation mark, may become Tunisia and Egypt
which I think is a mistake, a major mistake.
And that is that the existing ruler has to resign.
He doesn't have to resign.
You take all the supports from out from under him, he falls,
no matter what he wants to do.
This is the distinction in the analyses between nonviolent coercion,
in which he has to resign but he's forced into it,
and disintegration, when the regime simply falls apart.
There's nobody left with enough power to resign.
If Einstein was the genius in physics, so Gene Sharp is the genius in freedoms,
and how to achieve freedoms.
Lesson 6: Don't Give Up
I feel good in a way that we're spreading the
word, and if people follow Gene's advice
on how to think about waging an unbalanced struggle,
sooner or later they'll win.
See, the advantage that we have using this form
of struggle, the people against the tyrant.
As long as we don't surrender, we never lose,
and that's a key.
As long as you haven't given up, you haven't lost.
I think, in the long term, Gene Sharp will be a household name.
I think his books will be in every library in the world,
and they will be translated into most languages.
Can we survive until then? Can this institution survive until then?
Well, we certainly hope so.
Politically significant nonviolent action has
occurred in at least the following countries:
Guatemala, Australia, Thailand, Burma, China, Japan, …
…Georgia, Iran, Kurdistan, Russia,
Serbia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe,
and there's bound to be a couple more.
I think there's the father-daughter relationship developing there.
They can sit down and talk, and they're on the same wavelength.
She protects him,
and I think she loves him as a daughter who loves a father.
Gene Sharp is someone who is, of course, my personal mentor,
but I think he has served as that role for multitudes of people.
He is someone who has dedicated his life
to providing the means by which oppressed
people can self-reliantly gain liberation,
and that is something which I believe has changed the world
and will continue to do so in dramatic ways,
It's really personal stuff.
Sometimes people ask me what I really want.
Do I have a dream?
And I do.
I dream that the oppressed people of the world
will be able to learn from the available records
and new experiences that this type of nonviolent struggle
can be used to liberate all oppression and
replace military and violent conflicts,
so that you won't have to carry on struggles against terrorism anymore
because the people who might have become terrorists
have instead chosen to use this kind of
struggle to help out the oppressed people.
This can change the local systems throughout the world.
My name is Gene Sharp,
and that is my dream.