Defending Human Rights worldwide - Learning from the best
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Goel, Sanjay
Jagger, Bianca
Altenfelder, Felipe
The world is waking up to injustices and inequities. And it is happening simultaneously in various countries and communities. And now these communities are beginning to inspire and help each other. This phenomenon, facilitated by the internet and technology, is leading society into completely unchartered territory. We will discuss how and why this is happening, and where this will lead. NOT TO BE MISSED!
 Good morning. Sorry, good afternoon. It's still morning in California where I came from. Pleasure to have you here. I'm really excited to have some very eminent guests with us today. I'll introduce you in more detail later, but Bianca Jagger has flown in from London and our colleagues Felipe and Rafael have flown in from Brazil for this event. So I'm very, very excited to have them here. I want to just set the stage initially for a few minutes to talk about this event, our panel and discuss basically what some of the learnings that I've had over the course of the last two years working the area of human rights, activism, change makers, etc. So my assessment is that a lot of activists are usually very frustrated and very angry because they do a lot of very, very hard work and they don't always see immediate successes or any successes. So I'm here to actually bring some good news and some help. And the reason for that is that from the work that we are doing, we have seen some trends, we have identified some trends that may not be immediately obvious. So that's what I want to talk about very briefly and then Bianca and Felipe will give you more details of the work that they're doing. But so we are an organization that works worldwide for a news platform and we have established a very deep contact with networks, activist networks, news networks, grassroots, bottom-up networks all around the world. And through that contact, we've had a lot of very deep insights into many phenomena worldwide that may not be hitting the headlines at the moment. And so the assessment is that we are very near, and when I say very near, I'm speaking in a civilization timeline, to a brand new horizon. I know it sounds like a cliche, but I will try to explain why I believe that. A new horizon which will be very different than anything we are used to and anything we have seen before. So there is a few interesting trends that we have observed. So one of them is all the different ways in which our society is divided. And the debates that we have, the narratives that are established and the way we divide ourselves. And there's always a new way in which we can divide ourselves as a society. So there is an east versus west divide. There's left wing versus right wing. I assume most of you would consider yourselves left-wingers, right? People's conservatives, different political parties, countries, nations themselves are a cause of division. Races are a cause of division. It's very easy to differentiate, to divide people by race because it's something very visible, it's very obvious. And it elicits a lot of emotions. Religion again is a very obvious way to divide people. But so the reality actually that we have come to conclude is that all of these are just distractions. None of these divides are actually real. They're manufactured. So the real divide that we believe is between the empowered or the entitled or the powerful and the disenfranchised. And this is the claim I'm making is that this is a divide that is universal. It's not by country or by race or by religion. Actually it's a universal divide. That's the only divide that actually matters. That's a real divide. And that's a divide that needs to be overcome. So what are we doing about it? And what can be done about it? So what is happening is the second category, the disenfranchised, the unempowered, they are now beginning to come together for the first time. Well, they've always been coming together, but I would say they're coming together like never before in a very new way, facilitated by technology and the internet. So that's really the new thing, the key new thing that is happening. That is going to change our world in the coming years. And this is becoming a global movement. So if you noticed the headlines over the last few years, the Brazilian riots which started with the bus fare situation started in the same year as the Occupy movement in the US, riots in Turkey, the Arab Spring, all of them happened within a course of two, three years. So there is something happening which is global and which represents the disenfranchised, the unempowered to actually coming to a state of realization that all the games that have been played on the global stage have nothing to do with them. It's a game being played between different empowered people. And now they're saying, actually, it's not about you guys, it's not about left or right, it's not about different political parties, it's about us. So that is a very new thing and I hear that all the time in different countries within different communities. And that's really beginning to break down the artificial barriers and focus on the thing that is important. And it's about self-empowerment, that it's the single most important word I can use today, it's self-empowerment. So the empowered and the entitled actually have absolutely no incentive to empower the unempowered. The only way there is going to be change is when the unempowered assume power. And the only way they will do that is by self-empowering. And that is actually happening in a big way, all around the world. And the next important thing is that so you have these people unempowered who are now empowering themselves. And they have already started organizing themselves into different groups and networks. And all these networks are spread around the world in different communities based on different themes. So it could be, for example, a political movement in Brazil, or it could be a social movement and LGBT movement in Asia, in Hong Kong, or it could be a social political movement in Egypt, et cetera, et cetera. So they're all networks based on a certain location or a certain theme. And the new thing that is happening that we observe by being again in touch with all these communities is that they're all now beginning to coalesce. They're beginning to come together. They're beginning to learn from each other. They're beginning to be inspired by each other. So this is becoming, taking on an exponential form. And so this is the key point, is that independent networks who are actually very busy developing their own following, their own users, their own influence are now beginning to work with each other around the world, right? Because the barriers across the world have been broken down by the internet, by cheap flights, people can fly easily, get to meet each other, look each other in the eye and say, hey, what are you doing? And how can we help each other? Also by new collaborative consumption concepts like Airbnb and staying in each other's, sleeping on each other's couches around the world, et cetera, et cetera. So it's very grassroots, but it's very powerful at the same time. And so this is the prediction, right? It's a bold one, but the prediction is that in the coming years, the collective power of the unempowered will overcome the unique power of the empowered. And that's what's going to create a new society. And where do we fit into this? Why am I talking about this? So we established a news network all around a global news platform called Oximity. And one of the things we are doing is we are becoming a network of networks, which is again a very new thing. So we are beginning to connect existing networks that I was talking about earlier. So some examples, there are many more examples, but some of them are Asuda Niz independent journalist network, a media ninja, a grassroots activist organization in Brazil, which you're going to hear from in a second. Global voices, I'm sure most of you are familiar with global voices. They're a frequent speaker in this event. DRIK News is a Bangladeshi grassroots organization. Video volunteers makes videos about neglected communities in India. Brave New Films is a Hollywood producer, and they make films about basically injustices happening in America, for example, the prison industrial complex, et cetera, et cetera. So all these are now coming together on one network. And the power of this network is basically going to surpass previous or existing power structures. So that's our assessment. And because of that, we believe that the world in the coming years will be very different from the world that we have ever seen before, or we can probably even imagine. Because most of us tend to extrapolate the past into the future, and we believe that the world will be incrementally better. But actually, we believe there's going to be a point of inflection, a tipping point, beyond which you will see a very, very different world, a world that is much more just, much more equal, and much more fair. So I know it sounds like a dream, but I believe that if we stick with everything that we are doing, all of us, then that dream is not too far away. So with that, I will introduce you to Bianca Jagger. Bianca has been involved for many decades, through three decades, in the fight for human rights. So I'll just read you her bio. So Bianca Jagger is the founder and chair of Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, Council of Europe, Woodwill Ambassador, and member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council of Amnesty International USA. She's a prominent international human rights social justice and climate change advocate. For over three decades, she's been a voice for the most vulnerable members of society, campaigning for human rights, civil liberties, peace, social justice, and environmental protection throughout the world. She's the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards for human rights and humanitarian work, including, in 2004, the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. 1997, Amnesty International USA Media Spotlight Award for Leadership. 1994, the United Nations Earth Day International Award. 2006, the World Citizenship Award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. 2004, World Achievement Award by Mikhail Gorbachev. 1997, the Green Globe Award from the Rainbow Alliance. So you get the idea. She has three doctorates, honoris causa, the doctorate in law from the University of East London in 2010, a doctorate of human rights from Simmons College, Boston, in 2008, and a doctorate of humanities from Stohen College, Massachusetts in 83. And we're really, really honored and proud for her to join us today. So I'll hand it over to Bianca. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you, Sen. J., for that kind introduction. Please can you do me a favor? There are some empty seats in the front, and I would love to see you rather than to have you so far away. So if you could come, come closer to me. It is very exciting to see you and to see so many people from all walks of life willing to live by Gandhi's word to be the change you wish to see in the world. And you know, I have lived by that principle because I believe that individuals can make a difference. And I know that this conference is so special because you, the people here, believe that we can make a difference. And we can. And we must realize that no matter how powerful the special interests, corporations, and governments who do not want to do what is necessary to save our planet, they will listen to our, if we are together, cohesive, and if we understand that we have the power to make a difference in the world. And so contrary to some celebrities, some people who say to you, don't vote. I will say to you, please be engaged. Please vote. Please make sure that it is one of us that is elected to office, that it is one of us that is elected to rule the world and to rule your countries. The world today stands on the cups of various tipping points, environmental, economic, nuclear. We are going to need every one of you to make a difference. For those of you who don't know me, and I hope that a lot of you understand English, and I know that Germans are good at speaking other languages, contrary to many other countries, I have campaigned for over 30 years for human right, social justice and environmental protection. I was made Council of Europe for the abolition of the death penalty in 2003, and I was honored to receive the Rye Lovelyhood Award, otherwise known as the alternative Nobel Prize in 2004. And with the prize money, I founded the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, BJAHRF, in 2005, to be a force for change and a voice for the most vulnerable members of society. I am in great pain, so I hope that I will be able to convey my message to you. But I thought it was really important that I come to Berlin, a city that I love, to speak to all of you. I would like to tell you a little about myself, because it is not good for you to see people that come and give speeches, and you don't know anything about them and what has motivated them. Because often people ask me, why? What makes you change? What makes you the person that you are? And some people think that perhaps I changed the day I divorced my ex-husband. But I wanted to let them know that no, I didn't change the day I divorced. I was born in Nicaragua. I was born under an oppressive government, and that is what made me change. When I was 10 years old, my parents divorced, and my mother found herself single, without a profession, with three small children to care for. I watched her being discriminated because of her gender and status. This painful experience inspired me to commit myself to speaking up for women's right. During those years, I believed that I could have made a difference because of what my mother taught me. As a teenager, I felt powerless when I learned of the terror inflicted by Somoza's National Guard in Nicaragua, and all I could do was participate in demonstrations against the government's brutality. Earlier in my life, I made a decision to seek an education that would protect me from enduring my mother's fate. I was determined not to be treated and regarded as a second-class citizen because of my gender or my status. I never wanted to feel powerless in the face of discrimination, of atrocities committed by powerful oppressors. And that is why I have such a hope when I see all of you here together, when I know that young people, and not only young people, are determined to see a change in the world. With my mother's support, I left Nicaragua with a scholarship from the French government to study political science. They have been very epiphany in my life. That's the most important one was when I was visiting a refugee camp in Honduras. When the death squads enter, cross the border, enter the refugee camp, and enter to abduct the refugees to take them back to be killed in El Salvador. And I was a member of a U.S. Congressional delegation. And the five of us, plus the relief workers, the mothers and the daughters and the families of the people that have been abducted, we decided to follow the death squads which were about 30 people. And they were wearing bandanas and military equipment and radio sophisticated radio and ACA 47. And so we decided to follow them along a riverbed. And at one point, they turn around and they say to themselves, and we could almost hear that this son of a bitch are catching up with us. And for unbeknown reasons, perhaps because they thought that they would have to kill us all and that we were screaming in Spanish that they would have to kill us all, but that they couldn't get away with it, that they turn around and they left and go. Well I want to tell you that that was for me a turning point to know that because some people were there. Some people perhaps that they thought were American, I am not, I'm British and Nicaraguan, because they thought that perhaps they would have to kill too many, that they decided to relieve the refugees. And that was the beginning of my life as a human right defender. And I came back to the U.S. to testify about what I have seen in Central America and to warn Americans that there was the regionalization of the war and that was just before the Contra War in Nicaragua. My foundation has various campaigns. And the most important campaign at the moment that we have declared is to end violence against women and girls and to call on to world leaders to include ending violence against women and girls in the Millennium Development Goals. And you believe that in 2000 when they met world leaders, forgot to include ending violence against women and girls. I don't know if you have been following what is happening in Nigeria. It made my blood boil. I couldn't sleep last night. When I saw that three weeks later the president of Nigeria has finally spoken about the 270 something girls that were abducted. But until today we don't know if they are doing anything to be able to recover those girls. And I know we can make a difference. And when we talk about making a difference, what is really inspiring for me is to see that women today I really determined to end violence against women and girls. There are 60 million girls on the way to school that are sexually assaulted. And so I call on Mrs. Merkel to be the leader that will call on other leaders to include ending violence against women and girls on the post-millennium development goals in 2015. It is really important. It is crucial. And I know that they can do it. They can do it. And they must do it. So one of the things that I would like you to be able to do is please to use the hashtag ending violence against women and girls in 2015 and to focus yourself on what is happening today in Nigeria. The BGHRF has another campaign which is we calling for a reform of our model of development. A model of development that includes respect for human rights, good governance, and respect for the environment. What we have throughout the world are companies that on the name of progress and development have been destroying our environment. And one of the works that I have been doing is supporting indigenous peoples throughout the world. And perhaps if we can talk about successful campaign, is the campaign that we launch in India together with Amnesty International and ActionAid because I believe that we can do more and we can be more effective when we work together. I believe that if we work with grassroots organizations, if we work with you people throughout the world, if we organizations instead of working one against each other, we work together, we can make a difference. And it is what we did in support of the KON people in Orisa, India. And the KON people won in the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court decided that they could say whether they wanted this big mining company called Vedanta, which is an English company from India that wanted to mine Bauxite in the beautiful mountains that they believed that it was sacred. What is it what I did? Well, I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of India, Momahansing, at the time. I wrote a letter to the Chief Minister of Orisa, who I knew before he became the Chief Minister. I put that on Twitter. I put it on Facebook. I got people to Twitter about it and to make a noise about it. I went there. I went to see and I went with Action Aid. And I worked together with Amnesty International and attended the annual shareholders meeting. It is so important for us to be at shareholders meeting. It is so important for us to buy one share so that we can go in. It is so important for us to have our voices heard among them. It is, perhaps you will say, it is easy for you, Bianca, to be able to be shoulder to shoulder with these people. Well, I'm not shoulder to shoulder with them, but I want them to hear my voice. I want companies like Chevron who destroy the environment and really indenture the life of people in Ecuador to know that we will hold them accountable, that we will not forget what they are doing, that we will demand that they be hold accountable in a court of law. And the other campaign of the Bianca Jagger Human Dry Foundation that we are working on is to establish crimes against present and future generations so that we can not only hold accountable companies, but that we can hold accountable CEO and the management for the decisions that they made for irreparable damage to the environment for grave human right, for grave human right crimes. You know, if you follow me on Twitter at Bianca Jagger, you will see that every day I try to give a voice to those who have no voice. I try to hold accountable companies. I try to give you all the information that you need about Monsanto because I believe that we must defeat a company like Monsanto because I believe that we must move away from fossil fuels and embrace renewable energy, that we must move away from nuclear power. I believe that we can achieve all of that. I will really believe that we can make a difference because our planet is at a stake. And we have the capacity and we have the power to be able to make a difference in the world. So thank you very much for being here and thank you, and I hope that I will see you on Twitter. Take care. Thank you. Is it working? Thank you Bianca. As always, extremely inspiring. I've heard her other speeches. They're all on YouTube. And every time I hear her speak, I get even more excited and inspired. Our next panelist, next and last panelist is Felipe Altenfelder. He is flown in from Brazil. He's the founder and chief editor of Media Ninja. It's an organization that either you've already heard of and if you haven't, you will soon. And you should. Ninja stands in English. It won't translate very well for the acronym, but it stands for independent narratives, journalism and action. In Portuguese, it does work. In English, it doesn't. And it's a Brazilian free media collective with 2,000 collaborators and more than 200 collectives connecting Brazil and Latin America. And he's also responsible for organization of an off-axis circuit which runs more than 150 independent festivals in Brazil. And the thing that strikes me personally most about Felipe and their 2,000 collaborators is that they actually live their dream. They live in collectives and their full-time 24-7 occupation is to create deep social change in Brazilian society. So I'm again very honored to have Felipe here. Well, good afternoon everybody. I'm calling Rafael too. He works with us on this and he will be moving something while we talk. Well, first of all, it's very special to us to be here. We thank to the Republic Organization, to Sanjay, not just for inviting us to be here, to is building a new platform with us. And the idea to be here talking about human rights and I think that the best way that I can collaborate, it's just sharing our experience, things that we leave it in Brazil in a reality where we had to transform a lot of difficulties into opportunities. And the Mijaninja as an initiative is not something that came from an idea, is not some like few guys brainstorming and saying, whoa, let's create an independent channel. It's something that we just have because of a process, of historical process already. And our first step, initially at five years ago, six years ago, when in Brazil we had the collapse of the music industry and there was no underground scenario being structured before. So the opportunity that we had in this situation is to propose a new practical model to give a new life to one of the most available things of the Brazilian culture, which is our music. So we just realized that we could change the old model, that it works basically with commercial recording companies, paying to commercial radios to revelate very few artists per year. And we could change it into a very grassroots and potent experience connecting independent festivals all over Brazil. We started all this thing in a kind of a very favorable environment. We had Lula's government starting since 2002. We have Gilberto Gil as Ministry of Culture. So it was a very good time to start to work collectively and to start to connect networks all over Brazil. So we kind of grew very fast. We started connecting five collectives and after five years we were talking more than 200 cities. We started making five independent festivals and very fast we were talking about a platform with 150 events. This works like 5,000 gigs per year. It's about 30,000 independent arts using this new map that we built with lots of people. In 2011 we just felt that our concept, the off-axis things, it was something that we started connecting cities far away from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. And then we just felt that we were already in a good point to move to São Paulo and start to shake the things from one of the main cities of Brazil. And once we went to São Paulo, some very interesting things happened. I will tell you two of those things. The first one is that to build this festivals network. We always had to do our own media. The thing that we thought since the beginning, it's okay. The traditional Brazilian media system will take a long time to understand what we are and once they understand it, they will not like it a lot because something is doing to break the way that they work. So we just created our own media platform since the beginning. And once we moved to São Paulo, we started to get closer to more traditional social movements and we started to apply our independent media tool not just to promote an underground music scene but to give visibility to lots of different social fights and social issues. So we get together with the environmental movements, doing campaigns about some laws that were being voted. We get together with the movement that is proposing a new drugs policy to Brazil. We get together with the movement which is fighting against homophobic crimes and this kind of thing. We get together with groups that were working with urban mobility questions and we start to hang out with these people and get our media system as a more activist media system. And another thing that happened that we started to be like interviewed by lots of journalists. We live in a collective house with 30 people and lots of journalists went there to say, oh, how are you guys? How do you work? And once they had the experience to be sometime with us, they liked that and we started to talk together and we get a very interesting conclusion. We saw that we were living in the communication industry in Brazil, a very similar kind of crisis that we could observe five years ago in the music industry. So we just got the perfect scene to put together people that came from a cultural circuit with journalists, with activists to start a new media system and that's where Mijaninja came from. We just released a Facebook page. We traveled to Tunisia last year to the World Social Forum. It was our first coverage. It was good to be there. Tunisia is the place where it started the whole global spring thing. And the World Social Forum, it's a very important event for the Brazilian movements. So we just get back to our beginning to start. We came back to Brazil. We went to the deep part of the country covering some environmental fights. And then suddenly in June of the last year, it just started a very big wave of protests. Actually starts with people fighting against the rays of the bus fare, but police did a very brutal repression and this repression generates a big wave of commotion and huge crowds of like million people, 60,000,000 people, 700,000 people start to went to the streets to protest. Not just for the bus fare, but for human rights, for the democratization of the media system, for a new drug policy, for politics that thinks better, the utilization of the public space and whatever. In this moment, our traditional media was just unprepared to deal with the situation. So they were like filming the thing from a helicopter and it's reaching from a studio miles away from the protests. And we just get our mobiles, our cameras, we went very into it and did a real time coverage. So when people get back to their homes, they was watching the massive media. They were being criminalized. They were being called vandals. And when they went to our page, they saw strong images, they were feeling much represent, and this made us grow very fast in terms of visibility and credibility. I have time yet? Okay. It was a night during the confederations cup. It was a Coca-Cola panel on Paulista Avenue, Sao Paulo downtown. And after a protest, a group of anarchists, they just went to destroy this panel. And in this moment, there was no media vehicle there during any kind of live coverage. And we were live streaming it with a mobile. And suddenly, thousands of people started to watch this transmission. In the end of the night, we have been reached 180,000 people. This in the Brazilian system to measure TV audience is the same than two points. And there's lots of TV channels that have to spend lots of money to get a point, a point and a half. So it totally shake the communication debate. It was that mobile, like it's a broken iPhone with 40 ha, prepaid plan, and we got the same audience than lots of TV channels. We shake the debate of communication. And it was interesting because then the media started to treat us like a team. In the morning after that night, our mailbox just woke up with lots of interview requests. Oh, we want to talk to you guys, see what's this new thing. In this moment, we got two options. We could have a more radical posture and say, okay, no, we are not talking to massive media. We don't believe you. We're going to keep on our way and we're going to build our credibility on this sense. But we have another option that it would be to accept this dialogue and understand that it would be our best opportunity to go a step ahead on a classical challenge of the free media movement, which is to talk to more people that for the ones that already follow the political debate, to talk to the not organized people. So we just accept this challenge. We went to lots of media exposition and then we had a second boom and we started to talk with massive audience since very cheap platforms. Once they are cheap and once the technologies are very simple, we could also share our technical knowledge, our statistical knowledge, and we help to inspire a very big network as lots of collectives. This image here, it's a mining data study. It was produced in one of the main tough weeks of protests in Brazil. All those names here, they are independent media collectives. So when they are connected, talking about the same team on the networks, we are able to reach even bigger audience and to try to face equal to equal challenge with the traditional massive media system in Brazil, which is a very conservative media system and we need to break it day by day. So after we realized this bigger movement, we started to be very incisive in very important public questions. So we are giving more visibility to social fights like of the indigenous people or like the things that are happening in Rio de Janeiro now. We are very close to the World Cup and there is a pacification policy going on. They are sending lots of militaries and armies to the favelas to help the people calm to the World Cup. So there is lots of violence going on. The country is leaving lots of contradictions and we are involved in giving visibility to these issues. The moment that we are leaving now, it's a very intense year. We are doing a football metaphor, it's a year with two halves. We have the World Cup in the first half, we got the elections in the second one. And what we believe in this moment is the moment where the activists and the movements, we need to be very creative, we need to be very smart because if we go to try to march again during the World Cup, we are going to be repressed by the army that is doing the security on the city now and we will have the public opinion against us because everybody wants to see the football matches. So the matter is how can we be pacifically, how can we give a party characteristic to the movement. So what we are planning to the World Cup is to be doing a kind of occupation in a very big square downtown in Rio de Janeiro where we will be connecting activists of lots of different social movements and it's a moment where the whole world will be looking to Brazil and we just know that it's the proper time to send messages, to get this concept that we built of narratives and to show the world prototypes of new possible words using what we call social technologies is when you recognize that the popular knowledge produced outside of the university, it's also science. If you systematize it and if you share it. So we can learn about a lot with Brazil in this moment about being creative, about being solidarity. This image is very good image. It's a street cleaners strike and they just stop their work during the carnival in Rio this year. It's a moment where you got a million tourists in the town so the garbage just started to go all over and in the beginning the mayor went to global, the biggest TV channel and he just said okay this is strike cleaners, they are not all the workers, it's just a minor group who is forcing this strike and we just get again the mobiles, the cameras, we went into it and we just showed that it was workers, that they had a very fair ring vindication and after one week of strike they succeed and got a very significant raise. But that was what I was saying before to close is that we have a very special moment in Brazil. We have a very intense environment of collectives, of networks with lots of experience to share and we are here in a very special moment to us announcing this new platform that we are building together with Oximity, it will be media-ninja.oximity.com and it's put things in a much better perspective once you will be able to check already translated the content being produced for all our collaborators in Brazil. Well we are here more days, we will be lots of time to change ideas, we are going to open now for some questions and thank you. Excellent. Thank you, Felipe, again very, very inspiring, two very different approaches to achieve the same objectives as we have heard today. How many of you are going to the World Cup in Brazil this year? Nobody? Well you can watch it all on Oximity, you will see the alternate version, the one that, the real version of what's happening in Brazil which is what Felipe and his organization will be talking about and portraying versus the official version, the shiny, clean, happy version that you will hear from mainstream news media. Bianca wanted to talk about her work and her observations about Brazil, so please go ahead. It's better for me to stand up, let's paint. Many people have a very close image of what's happening in Brazil, but I wanted to tell you that in Brazil under the government of President Dilma Rousseff, you have, she has a project to build 40 dams in the Amazon. Currently they are building the monstrous project of Belomonte, the Belomonte dam will be, if it's ever built, will be the third largest dam in the world. I wrote an article for the Havana Post about the Belomonte dam being an environmental crime. Now the Belomonte dam is causing tremendous harm to many indigenous tribes inside Brazil. Very little is known about them, even though there is a huge campaign going on against the Belomonte dam. Many people don't understand that of course in Brazil they could have renewable energy, they have the sun, the wind and every opportunity to be able to have renewable energy to substitutes dam and to substitute fossil fuels. So if you ever can, please support the campaign of the indigenous people against Belomonte. But I wanted to talk to you as well about, because I didn't have time to say that I was born in Nicaragua and currently Daniel Ortega, which is no longer the great Daniel Ortega that many of us supported when we supported the Sandinista revolution, Daniel Ortega has changed the constitution three times and now he can be elected president for life. He has a monstrous, another monstrous plan to build a canal in Nicaragua, a canal that will destroy our natural resources that will cost billions of dollars and he's doing that with a Chinese partner and that will destroy not only the two great lakes that Nicaragua has but it will destroy rainforests. So there you have two countries, Brazil, a very powerful country that doesn't understand the president, that doesn't understand the value of the rainforest, which is not only a value for the Brazilians but is a value for the entire world and who is going to cause a tremendous damage to the cultures of indigenous tribes that depend on the shingoo, the river shingoo. So I urge you to please go to the articles of Bianca Jagger in the American Hapiness Post where I write about all of these issues. But let's, when we leave this conference, let's not just go and have left another conference, just think how we positively can make a difference, how we can possibly stay together and how we can possibly make a difference in the world. How can we influence our government? In fact, I must say I admire the Germans because it was your resilience, it was your commitment to demand from your government that you didn't want nuclear power, that the government changes view. We have done and we have not been able to do that in the UK. We have a president that promotes not only nuclear power but do promote fracking and so fracking will cause us tremendous amount of damage throughout Europe and the US and many other countries. So if anything I can say is let's stand together against fossil fuels, against major dams like the Belomonte, against fracking and against everything that is destroying our planet and against Monsanto. Thank you very much. Thank you Bianca. It's very clear the passion that our panelists have for the work they're doing. We have about five minutes left. I would like to ask the audience if you have any questions for any of us. While you're thinking about your question, I would like to ask a question to both of you, a challenging question. So beyond all the passion, beyond all the great work you're doing, can you share real success stories that you have been through and define it and explain it first what the problem was, what you did and what was a successful result all in one minute each? Well for us it was a step by step of making difficult into opportunities in the beginning. There was no independent scene, independent bands to play. We started to organize festivals. There was no people knowing about it. We did a divisibility to that. Then we need money to finance all of that. We create an alternative currency based on systematizing of work. We moved to Sao Paulo and the thing just blew as I told you. It was fast. For example, the recent rulings on net neutrality that you were involved in. That's a very good topic and I think there's a few of interest here. There's a law that it was approved in Brazil two weeks ago. It's the Marcos Civil of Internet. It's like the first package of laws to about Internet and we get guaranteed three vital points. It's net neutrality, net privacy and freedom of speech. This law, it was a concoir of the civil society. The document, it was wrote collaboratively for 400 people in a website. We put it into the Congress. It was four years. We did the pressure a lot. We do strong campaign, the social networks and it's not helping us a lot because when he went to Brazilian television telling about the Juma was being spied, the thing just get more visibility. We thank him and us to do that. Bianca, would you like to share any success stories? Well, it's more than a success story. During the 90s, I went to Bosnia and I was asked to evacuate two children. Sabina and Mohammed. Mohammed was suffering from a blue baby syndrome which means he was born with a hole in the heart and he was eight years of age. Sabina was suffering from leukemia. I was asked to evacuate them. But of course the international community didn't want to allow refugees to come running to Europe and to the US and open the floodgates. So I had to evacuate these two children together and it was a half successful story. Mohammed was able to come back with me to the US and to have an operation and he was saved even though it was a very difficult thing to do. And Sabina, unfortunately, we waited so long on the United Nations High Commission and the Amperfor, the protection forces, didn't want to allow us to use the airport in Tuzla. And by the time Sabina and Mohammed, we got to split, Sabina had a brain hemorrhage. But if they had provided us with a helicopter, she would have had an 80% chance of survival. And it is so many children throughout the world who are dying in wars, who we do not want to help, that the international community has a responsibility, has a responsibility to the children that are dying today in Syria, that has a responsibility to the people of Rohingya in Burma, and our total indifference to that. Yes, there was a success story, but there is so much more than we, the international community and governments, can do to stop the killing of innocent children. Thank you. Excellent. Well, if there are no more questions, I would like to finish here. Sounds like there aren't any. So I would like to finish here. Thank you very much for coming and attending, listening to us patiently. And good luck for the rest of the conference. We'll be here most of the three days, and we'd love to talk to all of you. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
 Good morning.  Sorry, good afternoon.  It's still morning in California where I came from.  Pleasure to have you here.  I'm really excited to have some very eminent guests with us today.  I'll introduce you in more detail later, but Bianca Jagger has flown in from London and  our colleagues Felipe and Rafael have flown in from Brazil for this event.  So I'm very, very excited to have them here.  I want to just set the stage initially for a few minutes to talk about this event, our  panel and discuss basically what some of the learnings that I've had over the course  of the last two years working the area of human rights, activism, change makers, etc.  So my assessment is that a lot of activists are usually very frustrated and very angry  because they do a lot of very, very hard work and they don't always see immediate successes  or any successes.  So I'm here to actually bring some good news and some help.  And the reason for that is that from the work that we are doing, we have seen some trends,  we have identified some trends that may not be immediately obvious.  So that's what I want to talk about very briefly and then Bianca and Felipe will give you more  details of the work that they're doing.  But so we are an organization that works worldwide for a news platform and we have established  a very deep contact with networks, activist networks, news networks, grassroots, bottom-up  networks all around the world.  And through that contact, we've had a lot of very deep insights into many phenomena worldwide  that may not be hitting the headlines at the moment.  And so the assessment is that we are very near, and when I say very near, I'm speaking  in a civilization timeline, to a brand new horizon.  I know it sounds like a cliche, but I will try to explain why I believe that.  A new horizon which will be very different than anything we are used to and anything  we have seen before.  So there is a few interesting trends that we have observed.  So one of them is all the different ways in which our society is divided.  And the debates that we have, the narratives that are established and the way we divide  ourselves.  And there's always a new way in which we can divide ourselves as a society.  So there is an east versus west divide.  There's left wing versus right wing.  I assume most of you would consider yourselves left-wingers, right?  People's conservatives, different political parties, countries, nations themselves are  a cause of division.  Races are a cause of division.  It's very easy to differentiate, to divide people by race because it's something very  visible, it's very obvious.  And it elicits a lot of emotions.  Religion again is a very obvious way to divide people.  But so the reality actually that we have come to conclude is that all of these are just  distractions.  None of these divides are actually real.  They're manufactured.  So the real divide that we believe is between the empowered or the entitled or the powerful  and the disenfranchised.  And this is the claim I'm making is that this is a divide that is universal.  It's not by country or by race or by religion.  Actually it's a universal divide.  That's the only divide that actually matters.  That's a real divide.  And that's a divide that needs to be overcome.  So what are we doing about it?  And what can be done about it?  So what is happening is the second category, the disenfranchised, the unempowered, they  are now beginning to come together for the first time.  Well, they've always been coming together, but I would say they're coming together like  never before in a very new way, facilitated by technology and the internet.  So that's really the new thing, the key new thing that is happening.  That is going to change our world in the coming years.  And this is becoming a global movement.  So if you noticed the headlines over the last few years, the Brazilian riots which started  with the bus fare situation started in the same year as the Occupy movement in the US,  riots in Turkey, the Arab Spring, all of them happened within a course of two, three years.  So there is something happening which is global and which represents the disenfranchised,  the unempowered to actually coming to a state of realization that all the games that have  been played on the global stage have nothing to do with them.  It's a game being played between different empowered people.  And now they're saying, actually, it's not about you guys, it's not about left or right,  it's not about different political parties, it's about us.  So that is a very new thing and I hear that all the time in different countries within  different communities.  And that's really beginning to break down the artificial barriers and focus on the thing  that is important.  And it's about self-empowerment, that it's the single most important word I can use  today, it's self-empowerment.  So the empowered and the entitled actually have absolutely no incentive to empower the  unempowered.  The only way there is going to be change is when the unempowered assume power.  And the only way they will do that is by self-empowering.  And that is actually happening in a big way, all around the world.  And the next important thing is that so you have these people unempowered who are now  empowering themselves.  And they have already started organizing themselves into different groups and networks.  And all these networks are spread around the world in different communities based on different  themes.  So it could be, for example, a political movement in Brazil, or it could be a social movement  and LGBT movement in Asia, in Hong Kong, or it could be a social political movement in  Egypt, et cetera, et cetera.  So they're all networks based on a certain location or a certain theme.  And the new thing that is happening that we observe by being again in touch with all these  communities is that they're all now beginning to coalesce.  They're beginning to come together.  They're beginning to learn from each other.  They're beginning to be inspired by each other.  So this is becoming, taking on an exponential form.  And so this is the key point, is that independent networks who are actually very busy developing  their own following, their own users, their own influence are now beginning to work with  each other around the world, right?  Because the barriers across the world have been broken down by the internet, by cheap  flights, people can fly easily, get to meet each other, look each other in the eye and  say, hey, what are you doing?  And how can we help each other?  Also by new collaborative consumption concepts like Airbnb and staying in each other's, sleeping  on each other's couches around the world, et cetera, et cetera.  So it's very grassroots, but it's very powerful at the same time.  And so this is the prediction, right?  It's a bold one, but the prediction is that in the coming years, the collective power  of the unempowered will overcome the unique power of the empowered.  And that's what's going to create a new society.  And where do we fit into this?  Why am I talking about this?  So we established a news network all around a global news platform called Oximity.  And one of the things we are doing is we are becoming a network of networks, which is again  a very new thing.  So we are beginning to connect existing networks that I was talking about earlier.  So some examples, there are many more examples, but some of them are Asuda Niz independent  journalist network, a media ninja, a grassroots activist organization in Brazil, which you're  going to hear from in a second.  Global voices, I'm sure most of you are familiar with global voices.  They're a frequent speaker in this event.  DRIK News is a Bangladeshi grassroots organization.  Video volunteers makes videos about neglected communities in India.  Brave New Films is a Hollywood producer, and they make films about basically injustices  happening in America, for example, the prison industrial complex, et cetera, et cetera.  So all these are now coming together on one network.  And the power of this network is basically going to surpass previous or existing power  structures.  So that's our assessment.  And because of that, we believe that the world in the coming years will be very different  from the world that we have ever seen before, or we can probably even imagine.  Because most of us tend to extrapolate the past into the future, and we believe that  the world will be incrementally better.  But actually, we believe there's going to be a point of inflection, a tipping point,  beyond which you will see a very, very different world, a world that is much more just, much  more equal, and much more fair.  So I know it sounds like a dream, but I believe that if we stick with everything that we are  doing, all of us, then that dream is not too far away.  So with that, I will introduce you to Bianca Jagger.  Bianca has been involved for many decades, through three decades, in the fight for human  rights.  So I'll just read you her bio.  So Bianca Jagger is the founder and chair of Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation,  Council of Europe, Woodwill Ambassador, and member of the Executive Director's Leadership  Council of Amnesty International USA.  She's a prominent international human rights social justice and climate change advocate.  For over three decades, she's been a voice for the most vulnerable members of society,  campaigning for human rights, civil liberties, peace, social justice, and environmental protection  throughout the world.  She's the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards for human rights and  humanitarian work, including, in 2004, the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative  Nobel Prize.  1997, Amnesty International USA Media Spotlight Award for Leadership.  1994, the United Nations Earth Day International Award.  2006, the World Citizenship Award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  2004, World Achievement Award by Mikhail Gorbachev.  1997, the Green Globe Award from the Rainbow Alliance.  So you get the idea.  She has three doctorates, honoris causa, the doctorate in law from the University of East  London in 2010, a doctorate of human rights from Simmons College, Boston, in 2008, and  a doctorate of humanities from Stohen College, Massachusetts in 83.  And we're really, really honored and proud for her to join us today.  So I'll hand it over to Bianca.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Good afternoon.  Thank you, Sen.  J., for that kind introduction.  Please can you do me a favor?  There are some empty seats in the front, and I would love to see you rather than to have  you so far away.  So if you could come, come closer to me.  It is very exciting to see you and to see so many people from all walks of life willing  to live by Gandhi's word to be the change you wish to see in the world.  And you know, I have lived by that principle because I believe that individuals can make  a difference.  And I know that this conference is so special because you, the people here, believe that  we can make a difference.  And we can.  And we must realize that no matter how powerful the special interests, corporations, and governments  who do not want to do what is necessary to save our planet, they will listen to our,  if we are together, cohesive, and if we understand that we have the power to make a difference  in the world.  And so contrary to some celebrities, some people who say to you, don't vote.  I will say to you, please be engaged.  Please vote.  Please make sure that it is one of us that is elected to office, that it is one of us  that is elected to rule the world and to rule your countries.  The world today stands on the cups of various tipping points, environmental, economic, nuclear.  We are going to need every one of you to make a difference.  For those of you who don't know me, and I hope that a lot of you understand English,  and I know that Germans are good at speaking other languages, contrary to many other countries,  I have campaigned for over 30 years for human right, social justice and environmental protection.  I was made Council of Europe for the abolition of the death penalty in 2003, and I was honored  to receive the Rye Lovelyhood Award, otherwise known as the alternative Nobel Prize in 2004.  And with the prize money, I founded the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, BJAHRF, in  2005, to be a force for change and a voice for the most vulnerable members of society.  I am in great pain, so I hope that I will be able to convey my message to you.  But I thought it was really important that I come to Berlin, a city that I love, to speak  to all of you.  I would like to tell you a little about myself, because it is not good for you to see people  that come and give speeches, and you don't know anything about them and what has motivated  them.  Because often people ask me, why?  What makes you change?  What makes you the person that you are?  And some people think that perhaps I changed the day I divorced my ex-husband.  But I wanted to let them know that no, I didn't change the day I divorced.  I was born in Nicaragua.  I was born under an oppressive government, and that is what made me change.  When I was 10 years old, my parents divorced, and my mother found herself single, without  a profession, with three small children to care for.  I watched her being discriminated because of her gender and status.  This painful experience inspired me to commit myself to speaking up for women's right.  During those years, I believed that I could have made a difference because of what my  mother taught me.  As a teenager, I felt powerless when I learned of the terror inflicted by Somoza's National  Guard in Nicaragua, and all I could do was participate in demonstrations against the  government's brutality.  Earlier in my life, I made a decision to seek an education that would protect me from enduring  my mother's fate.  I was determined not to be treated and regarded as a second-class citizen because of my gender  or my status.  I never wanted to feel powerless in the face of discrimination, of atrocities committed  by powerful oppressors.  And that is why I have such a hope when I see all of you here together, when I know  that young people, and not only young people, are determined to see a change in the world.  With my mother's support, I left Nicaragua with a scholarship from the French government  to study political science.  They have been very epiphany in my life.  That's the most important one was when I was visiting a refugee camp in Honduras.  When the death squads enter, cross the border, enter the refugee camp, and enter to abduct  the refugees to take them back to be killed in El Salvador.  And I was a member of a U.S. Congressional delegation.  And the five of us, plus the relief workers, the mothers and the daughters and the families  of the people that have been abducted, we decided to follow the death squads which were  about 30 people.  And they were wearing bandanas and military equipment and radio sophisticated radio and  ACA 47.  And so we decided to follow them along a riverbed.  And at one point, they turn around and they say to themselves, and we could almost hear  that this son of a bitch are catching up with us.  And for unbeknown reasons, perhaps because they thought that they would have to kill  us all and that we were screaming in Spanish that they would have to kill us all, but that  they couldn't get away with it, that they turn around and they left and go.  Well I want to tell you that that was for me a turning point to know that because some  people were there.  Some people perhaps that they thought were American, I am not, I'm British and Nicaraguan,  because they thought that perhaps they would have to kill too many, that they decided to  relieve the refugees.  And that was the beginning of my life as a human right defender.  And I came back to the U.S. to testify about what I have seen in Central America and to  warn Americans that there was the regionalization of the war and that was just before the Contra  War in Nicaragua.  My foundation has various campaigns.  And the most important campaign at the moment that we have declared is to end violence against  women and girls and to call on to world leaders to include ending violence against women and  girls in the Millennium Development Goals.  And you believe that in 2000 when they met world leaders, forgot to include ending violence  against women and girls.  I don't know if you have been following what is happening in Nigeria.  It made my blood boil.  I couldn't sleep last night.  When I saw that three weeks later the president of Nigeria has finally spoken about the 270  something girls that were abducted.  But until today we don't know if they are doing anything to be able to recover those  girls.  And I know we can make a difference.  And when we talk about making a difference, what is really inspiring for me is to see that  women today I really determined to end violence against women and girls.  There are 60 million girls on the way to school that are sexually assaulted.  And so I call on Mrs. Merkel to be the leader that will call on other leaders to include  ending violence against women and girls on the post-millennium development goals in 2015.  It is really important.  It is crucial.  And I know that they can do it.  They can do it.  And they must do it.  So one of the things that I would like you to be able to do is please to use the hashtag  ending violence against women and girls in 2015 and to focus yourself on what is happening  today in Nigeria.  The BGHRF has another campaign which is we calling for a reform of our model of development.  A model of development that includes respect for human rights, good governance, and respect  for the environment.  What we have throughout the world are companies that on the name of progress and development  have been destroying our environment.  And one of the works that I have been doing is supporting indigenous peoples throughout  the world.  And perhaps if we can talk about successful campaign, is the campaign that we launch in  India together with Amnesty International and ActionAid because I believe that we can  do more and we can be more effective when we work together.  I believe that if we work with grassroots organizations, if we work with you people  throughout the world, if we organizations instead of working one against each other,  we work together, we can make a difference.  And it is what we did in support of the KON people in Orisa, India.  And the KON people won in the Supreme Court.  And the Supreme Court decided that they could say whether they wanted this big mining company  called Vedanta, which is an English company from India that wanted to mine Bauxite in the  beautiful mountains that they believed that it was sacred.  What is it what I did?  Well, I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of India, Momahansing, at the time.  I wrote a letter to the Chief Minister of Orisa, who I knew before he became the Chief Minister.  I put that on Twitter.  I put it on Facebook.  I got people to Twitter about it and to make a noise about it.  I went there.  I went to see and I went with Action Aid.  And I worked together with Amnesty International and attended the annual shareholders meeting.  It is so important for us to be at shareholders meeting.  It is so important for us to buy one share so that we can go in.  It is so important for us to have our voices heard among them.  It is, perhaps you will say, it is easy for you, Bianca, to be able to be shoulder to  shoulder with these people.  Well, I'm not shoulder to shoulder with them, but I want them to hear my voice.  I want companies like Chevron who destroy the environment and really indenture the life  of people in Ecuador to know that we will hold them accountable, that we will not forget  what they are doing, that we will demand that they be hold accountable in a court of law.  And the other campaign of the Bianca Jagger Human Dry Foundation that we are working  on is to establish crimes against present and future generations so that we can not  only hold accountable companies, but that we can hold accountable CEO and the management  for the decisions that they made for irreparable damage to the environment for grave human  right, for grave human right crimes.  You know, if you follow me on Twitter at Bianca Jagger, you will see that every day I try  to give a voice to those who have no voice.  I try to hold accountable companies.  I try to give you all the information that you need about Monsanto because I believe  that we must defeat a company like Monsanto because I believe that we must move away from  fossil fuels and embrace renewable energy, that we must move away from nuclear power.  I believe that we can achieve all of that.  I will really believe that we can make a difference because our planet is at a stake.  And we have the capacity and we have the power to be able to make a difference in the world.  So thank you very much for being here and thank you, and I hope that I will see you  on Twitter.  Take care.  Thank you.  Is it working?  Thank you Bianca.  As always, extremely inspiring.  I've heard her other speeches.  They're all on YouTube.  And every time I hear her speak, I get even more excited and inspired.  Our next panelist, next and last panelist is Felipe Altenfelder.  He is flown in from Brazil.  He's the founder and chief editor of Media Ninja.  It's an organization that either you've already heard of and if you haven't, you will soon.  And you should.  Ninja stands in English.  It won't translate very well for the acronym, but it stands for independent narratives, journalism  and action.  In Portuguese, it does work.  In English, it doesn't.  And it's a Brazilian free media collective with 2,000 collaborators and more than 200  collectives connecting Brazil and Latin America.  And he's also responsible for organization of an off-axis circuit which runs more than  150 independent festivals in Brazil.  And the thing that strikes me personally most about Felipe and their 2,000 collaborators  is that they actually live their dream.  They live in collectives and their full-time 24-7 occupation is to create deep social change  in Brazilian society.  So I'm again very honored to have Felipe here.  Well, good afternoon everybody.  I'm calling Rafael too.  He works with us on this and he will be moving something while we talk.  Well, first of all, it's very special to us to be here.  We thank to the Republic Organization, to Sanjay, not just for inviting us to be here,  to is building a new platform with us.  And the idea to be here talking about human rights and I think that the best way that  I can collaborate, it's just sharing our experience, things that we leave it in Brazil in a reality  where we had to transform a lot of difficulties into opportunities.  And the Mijaninja as an initiative is not something that came from an idea, is not some  like few guys brainstorming and saying, whoa, let's create an independent channel.  It's something that we just have because of a process, of historical process already.  And our first step, initially at five years ago, six years ago, when in Brazil we had  the collapse of the music industry and there was no underground scenario being structured  before.  So the opportunity that we had in this situation is to propose a new practical model to give  a new life to one of the most available things of the Brazilian culture, which is our music.  So we just realized that we could change the old model, that it works basically with commercial  recording companies, paying to commercial radios to revelate very few artists per year.  And we could change it into a very grassroots and potent experience connecting independent  festivals all over Brazil.  We started all this thing in a kind of a very favorable environment.  We had Lula's government starting since 2002.  We have Gilberto Gil as Ministry of Culture.  So it was a very good time to start to work collectively and to start to connect networks  all over Brazil.  So we kind of grew very fast.  We started connecting five collectives and after five years we were talking more than  200 cities.  We started making five independent festivals and very fast we were talking about a platform  with 150 events.  This works like 5,000 gigs per year.  It's about 30,000 independent arts using this new map that we built with lots of people.  In 2011 we just felt that our concept, the off-axis things, it was something that we  started connecting cities far away from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.  And then we just felt that we were already in a good point to move to São Paulo and  start to shake the things from one of the main cities of Brazil.  And once we went to São Paulo, some very interesting things happened.  I will tell you two of those things.  The first one is that to build this festivals network.  We always had to do our own media.  The thing that we thought since the beginning, it's okay.  The traditional Brazilian media system will take a long time to understand what we are  and once they understand it, they will not like it a lot because something is doing to  break the way that they work.  So we just created our own media platform since the beginning.  And once we moved to São Paulo, we started to get closer to more traditional social movements  and we started to apply our independent media tool not just to promote an underground music  scene but to give visibility to lots of different social fights and social issues.  So we get together with the environmental movements, doing campaigns about some laws  that were being voted.  We get together with the movement that is proposing a new drugs policy to Brazil.  We get together with the movement which is fighting against homophobic crimes and this  kind of thing.  We get together with groups that were working with urban mobility questions and we start  to hang out with these people and get our media system as a more activist media system.  And another thing that happened that we started to be like interviewed by lots of journalists.  We live in a collective house with 30 people and lots of journalists went there to say,  oh, how are you guys?  How do you work?  And once they had the experience to be sometime with us, they liked that and we started to  talk together and we get a very interesting conclusion.  We saw that we were living in the communication industry in Brazil, a very similar kind of  crisis that we could observe five years ago in the music industry.  So we just got the perfect scene to put together people that came from a cultural circuit with  journalists, with activists to start a new media system and that's where Mijaninja came  from.  We just released a Facebook page.  We traveled to Tunisia last year to the World Social Forum.  It was our first coverage.  It was good to be there.  Tunisia is the place where it started the whole global spring thing.  And the World Social Forum, it's a very important event for the Brazilian movements.  So we just get back to our beginning to start.  We came back to Brazil.  We went to the deep part of the country covering some environmental fights.  And then suddenly in June of the last year, it just started a very big wave of protests.  Actually starts with people fighting against the rays of the bus fare, but police did a  very brutal repression and this repression generates a big wave of commotion and huge  crowds of like million people, 60,000,000 people, 700,000 people start to went to the  streets to protest.  Not just for the bus fare, but for human rights, for the democratization of the media  system, for a new drug policy, for politics that thinks better, the utilization of the  public space and whatever.  In this moment, our traditional media was just unprepared to deal with the situation.  So they were like filming the thing from a helicopter and it's reaching from a studio  miles away from the protests.  And we just get our mobiles, our cameras, we went very into it and did a real time coverage.  So when people get back to their homes, they was watching the massive media.  They were being criminalized.  They were being called vandals.  And when they went to our page, they saw strong images, they were feeling much represent,  and this made us grow very fast in terms of visibility and credibility.  I have time yet?  Okay.  It was a night during the confederations cup.  It was a Coca-Cola panel on Paulista Avenue, Sao Paulo downtown.  And after a protest, a group of anarchists, they just went to destroy this panel.  And in this moment, there was no media vehicle there during any kind of live coverage.  And we were live streaming it with a mobile.  And suddenly, thousands of people started to watch this transmission.  In the end of the night, we have been reached 180,000 people.  This in the Brazilian system to measure TV audience is the same than two points.  And there's lots of TV channels that have to spend lots of money to get a point, a point  and a half.  So it totally shake the communication debate.  It was that mobile, like it's a broken iPhone with 40 ha, prepaid plan, and we got the same  audience than lots of TV channels.  We shake the debate of communication.  And it was interesting because then the media started to treat us like a team.  In the morning after that night, our mailbox just woke up with lots of interview requests.  Oh, we want to talk to you guys, see what's this new thing.  In this moment, we got two options.  We could have a more radical posture and say, okay, no, we are not talking to massive media.  We don't believe you.  We're going to keep on our way and we're going to build our credibility on this sense.  But we have another option that it would be to accept this dialogue and understand that  it would be our best opportunity to go a step ahead on a classical challenge of the free  media movement, which is to talk to more people that for the ones that already follow  the political debate, to talk to the not organized people.  So we just accept this challenge.  We went to lots of media exposition and then we had a second boom and we started to talk  with massive audience since very cheap platforms.  Once they are cheap and once the technologies are very simple, we could also share our technical  knowledge, our statistical knowledge, and we help to inspire a very big network as lots  of collectives.  This image here, it's a mining data study.  It was produced in one of the main tough weeks of protests in Brazil.  All those names here, they are independent media collectives.  So when they are connected, talking about the same team on the networks, we are able  to reach even bigger audience and to try to face equal to equal challenge with the traditional  massive media system in Brazil, which is a very conservative media system and we need  to break it day by day.  So after we realized this bigger movement, we started to be very incisive in very important  public questions.  So we are giving more visibility to social fights like of the indigenous people or like  the things that are happening in Rio de Janeiro now.  We are very close to the World Cup and there is a pacification policy going on.  They are sending lots of militaries and armies to the favelas to help the people calm to  the World Cup.  So there is lots of violence going on.  The country is leaving lots of contradictions and we are involved in giving visibility to  these issues.  The moment that we are leaving now, it's a very intense year.  We are doing a football metaphor, it's a year with two halves.  We have the World Cup in the first half, we got the elections in the second one.  And what we believe in this moment is the moment where the activists and the movements,  we need to be very creative, we need to be very smart because if we go to try to march  again during the World Cup, we are going to be repressed by the army that is doing the  security on the city now and we will have the public opinion against us because everybody  wants to see the football matches.  So the matter is how can we be pacifically, how can we give a party characteristic to  the movement.  So what we are planning to the World Cup is to be doing a kind of occupation in a very  big square downtown in Rio de Janeiro where we will be connecting activists of lots of  different social movements and it's a moment where the whole world will be looking to Brazil  and we just know that it's the proper time to send messages, to get this concept that  we built of narratives and to show the world prototypes of new possible words using what  we call social technologies is when you recognize that the popular knowledge produced outside  of the university, it's also science.  If you systematize it and if you share it.  So we can learn about a lot with Brazil in this moment about being creative, about being  solidarity.  This image is very good image.  It's a street cleaners strike and they just stop their work during the carnival in Rio  this year.  It's a moment where you got a million tourists in the town so the garbage just started to  go all over and in the beginning the mayor went to global, the biggest TV channel and  he just said okay this is strike cleaners, they are not all the workers, it's just a  minor group who is forcing this strike and we just get again the mobiles, the cameras,  we went into it and we just showed that it was workers, that they had a very fair ring  vindication and after one week of strike they succeed and got a very significant raise.  But that was what I was saying before to close is that we have a very special moment in Brazil.  We have a very intense environment of collectives, of networks with lots of experience to share  and we are here in a very special moment to us announcing this new platform that we are  building together with Oximity, it will be media-ninja.oximity.com and it's put things  in a much better perspective once you will be able to check already translated the content  being produced for all our collaborators in Brazil.  Well we are here more days, we will be lots of time to change ideas, we are going to open  now for some questions and thank you.  Excellent.  Thank you, Felipe, again very, very inspiring, two very different approaches to achieve the  same objectives as we have heard today.  How many of you are going to the World Cup in Brazil this year?  Nobody?  Well you can watch it all on Oximity, you will see the alternate version, the one that,  the real version of what's happening in Brazil which is what Felipe and his organization  will be talking about and portraying versus the official version, the shiny, clean, happy  version that you will hear from mainstream news media.  Bianca wanted to talk about her work and her observations about Brazil, so please go  ahead.  It's better for me to stand up, let's paint.  Many people have a very close image of what's happening in Brazil, but I wanted to tell  you that in Brazil under the government of President Dilma Rousseff, you have, she has  a project to build 40 dams in the Amazon.  Currently they are building the monstrous project of Belomonte, the Belomonte dam will  be, if it's ever built, will be the third largest dam in the world.  I wrote an article for the Havana Post about the Belomonte dam being an environmental crime.  Now the Belomonte dam is causing tremendous harm to many indigenous tribes inside Brazil.  Very little is known about them, even though there is a huge campaign going on against  the Belomonte dam.  Many people don't understand that of course in Brazil they could have renewable energy,  they have the sun, the wind and every opportunity to be able to have renewable energy to substitutes  dam and to substitute fossil fuels.  So if you ever can, please support the campaign of the indigenous people against Belomonte.  But I wanted to talk to you as well about, because I didn't have time to say that I was  born in Nicaragua and currently Daniel Ortega, which is no longer the great Daniel Ortega  that many of us supported when we supported the Sandinista revolution, Daniel Ortega  has changed the constitution three times and now he can be elected president for life.  He has a monstrous, another monstrous plan to build a canal in Nicaragua, a canal that  will destroy our natural resources that will cost billions of dollars and he's doing that  with a Chinese partner and that will destroy not only the two great lakes that Nicaragua  has but it will destroy rainforests.  So there you have two countries, Brazil, a very powerful country that doesn't understand  the president, that doesn't understand the value of the rainforest, which is not only  a value for the Brazilians but is a value for the entire world and who is going to cause  a tremendous damage to the cultures of indigenous tribes that depend on the shingoo, the river  shingoo.  So I urge you to please go to the articles of Bianca Jagger in the American Hapiness  Post where I write about all of these issues.  But let's, when we leave this conference, let's not just go and have left another conference,  just think how we positively can make a difference, how we can possibly stay together and how  we can possibly make a difference in the world.  How can we influence our government?  In fact, I must say I admire the Germans because it was your resilience, it was your commitment  to demand from your government that you didn't want nuclear power, that the government changes  view.  We have done and we have not been able to do that in the UK.  We have a president that promotes not only nuclear power but do promote fracking and so  fracking will cause us tremendous amount of damage throughout Europe and the US and many  other countries.  So if anything I can say is let's stand together against fossil fuels, against major dams like  the Belomonte, against fracking and against everything that is destroying our planet and  against Monsanto.  Thank you very much.  Thank you Bianca.  It's very clear the passion that our panelists have for the work they're doing.  We have about five minutes left.  I would like to ask the audience if you have any questions for any of us.  While you're thinking about your question, I would like to ask a question to both of  you, a challenging question.  So beyond all the passion, beyond all the great work you're doing, can you share real  success stories that you have been through and define it and explain it first what the  problem was, what you did and what was a successful result all in one minute each?  Well for us it was a step by step of making difficult into opportunities in the beginning.  There was no independent scene, independent bands to play.  We started to organize festivals.  There was no people knowing about it.  We did a divisibility to that.  Then we need money to finance all of that.  We create an alternative currency based on systematizing of work.  We moved to Sao Paulo and the thing just blew as I told you.  It was fast.  For example, the recent rulings on net neutrality that you were involved in.  That's a very good topic and I think there's a few of interest here.  There's a law that it was approved in Brazil two weeks ago.  It's the Marcos Civil of Internet.  It's like the first package of laws to about Internet and we get guaranteed three vital  points.  It's net neutrality, net privacy and freedom of speech.  This law, it was a concoir of the civil society.  The document, it was wrote collaboratively for 400 people in a website.  We put it into the Congress.  It was four years.  We did the pressure a lot.  We do strong campaign, the social networks and it's not helping us a lot because when  he went to Brazilian television telling about the Juma was being spied, the thing just get  more visibility.  We thank him and us to do that.  Bianca, would you like to share any success stories?  Well, it's more than a success story.  During the 90s, I went to Bosnia and I was asked to evacuate two children.  Sabina and Mohammed.  Mohammed was suffering from a blue baby syndrome which means he was born with a hole in the  heart and he was eight years of age.  Sabina was suffering from leukemia.  I was asked to evacuate them.  But of course the international community didn't want to allow refugees to come running  to Europe and to the US and open the floodgates.  So I had to evacuate these two children together and it was a half successful story.  Mohammed was able to come back with me to the US and to have an operation and he was  saved even though it was a very difficult thing to do.  And Sabina, unfortunately, we waited so long on the United Nations High Commission and the  Amperfor, the protection forces, didn't want to allow us to use the airport in Tuzla.  And by the time Sabina and Mohammed, we got to split, Sabina had a brain hemorrhage.  But if they had provided us with a helicopter, she would have had an 80% chance of survival.  And it is so many children throughout the world who are dying in wars, who we do not  want to help, that the international community has a responsibility, has a responsibility  to the children that are dying today in Syria, that has a responsibility to the people of  Rohingya in Burma, and our total indifference to that.  Yes, there was a success story, but there is so much more than we, the international  community and governments, can do to stop the killing of innocent children.  Thank you.  Excellent.  Well, if there are no more questions, I would like to finish here.  Sounds like there aren't any.  So I would like to finish here.  Thank you very much for coming and attending, listening to us patiently.  And good luck for the rest of the conference.  We'll be here most of the three days, and we'd love to talk to all of you.  Thanks a lot.  Thank you.
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