 And welcome, it truly is a joy and an honor to be here to do a 30-hour course in 45 minutes. And thank you, Premier Clark, for inviting me. I used to do the radio show once in a while on her radio show, so it really is a joy to be here. I talk fast. Those of you who've ever heard me know I do it. Don't talk as fast as I used to. This is gray hair and I'm 65. So that'll answer some of your questions. I'm also, as Premier alluded to, a former Franciscan nun, obviously former with a husband and three kids. And now I didn't marry a priest, and yes, I met him after I left the convent. So that'll answer all you Catholics' questions for the day. And before I start on mine, coming from a family with police officers, I would just extend a gentle piece to all of you today in the police force, dealing with a tremendous loss of one of your own. So it is a bit somber to have to deal with that and faced with all that we're dealing with today. So I do wish you a gentle piece, because our families deal with this. We have the NYDP. I'm from New York originally. And yes, I am an American. I love Canada. I'm on way to the Yukon. It's a little colder there. I thought I could Skype up there, maybe instead of going, but I will go. The title of my work is the bully, the bully, and the bystander, William Burroughs. The English author said it so beautifully, there are no innocent bystanders. What were you doing there in the first place? And my role as an educator, as a grandparent now, as a community person and someone who works all over the world, my goal is to raise a generation of kids who are the fourth character, that ally, that witness, resister, and defender. And that high status social bully says to all the other girls, I don't like the new girl. You want to be in my group, you won't eat lunch with her either. You see, I want the young people here, and I want all of us who have sons and daughters, and grandsons and granddaughters to have a kid who says, that's me, that's cruel. And has the courage to go sit next to the new girl, because it takes a lot of courage to do that. Because she's not going to get scratch intensive stickers and stars, lunch with the principal, catch them being good award. She's going to get, I'll miss goody two shoes, or you're next. And I want your sons, when their friends say, look at that kid over there, different skin color, religion, gender, physical or mental ability. The big five for hate crimes? What makes a hate crime different than any other crime? It's criminal bullying. Let's go mess him up. I want your sons to be the one to say no. When the burden's heavy, when their friends say, what are you, chicken? What are you, just like them? No. But how on earth do we begin as a community to raise a generation of kids who will stand up for values and against injustices, who are not easily led, who don't do depletes, who have what Carl Sagan said all three-year-olds have? And the beauty of what we're talking to so many of the young people here is you have that, that gift of skepticism and wonder. Why and wow? Wow, look at the spaghetti, wow, look at the snow, wow, look at the rain. Wow, wow, wow. And why, why, why, why? Well, I want 16-year-olds to have that wow and why that three-year-olds have. They tend not to harm themselves and others when they do, when they have that wow. And the why, when their friends say, let's go vandalize that building, they go, why would I do that? But how do we begin to raise a generation who are not swimming in a culture of mean, but are truly interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent, who recognize what Martin Buber said, I am I and you are thou. I'm unique, you're unique, and we have a common humanity. That's the we. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called about the ubutu, our connectedness. I tell students, you do not have to like every kid in this classroom. You don't. But you must honor their humanity. You must treat them with dignity and regard. How many of you have an adolescent at home right now? I bet some of you do not like your teenager right now. You do not like them. You say, oh no, politically correct, I don't like his behavior, you don't like him. You don't want to go home. But you love them deeply and you would be there for the haul. They get in trouble, you'd get down there as fast as you can, put your arm around them and say, we love you. You're in trouble, we know you can handle it, brought a list of lawyers we think might take your case, good luck buddy. But you're there. You see, that's what I'm asking young people to be, is to be there. When all those other kids decides it's cool to be mean. And they themselves get locked in what is known as the trap of comradeship. Now I work in Rwanda with orphans from the 1994 genocide. Don't ever ask Stephen Lewis if there's anything you can do for him. You will end up in Africa. Yes. No, I love it. And these kids, in 100 days almost a million human beings were machete to death. And we as a community in the world set by and watched. We were those disengaged onlookers. And the premise of my genocide book is that it is a short walk from schoolyard bullying to hate crimes, which is on the rise in your country and mine, to genocide. Genocide is not an unimaginable horror. It was thoroughly imagined, meticulously planned, horrifically carried out by people who turned other human beings into an it. Not a thou, but an it. And once you're an it to me, I can do anything to you. And not feel any shame or compassion. I can take a Matthew Shepard, beat him up, time to a fence post, leave him to die in Laramie, Wyoming. And when those two young boys were arrested, they said, yeah, but he was gay. Take a black man in Jasper, Texas, James Bird, drag him in the back of a pickup. And when those three kids were arrested, they said, yeah, but he was black, Renee Burke. 100 kids knew about her death before her parents and the police. 25 of her normal classmates cheered those kids on as they broke her arms before they drowned her. And one of the young girls charged, said, well, she was brown, ugly, and fat, I didn't like her. Another girl said, I couldn't stand the sound of her voice. And another girl said, well, I was only doing what they told me to do, utter contempt for another human being. You see, conflicts, normal, natural, and necessary. Bullying is none of that. It's not a rite of passage. It's not normal things that kids do. No, it's about utter contempt for another human being. And that is a learned behavior. I'm old enough to know the song from South Pacific. You have to be carefully taught to hate. Before you're six, seven, or eight to hate the people your relatives hate. So how do you treat hired help? How do you treat somebody moving through the grocery store a little slower than you'd like them to? How do you treat that new neighbor who looks different than you, has different culture, different languages of first language, different skins of different color, faith traditions different. English is not their first language. Your children are watching. And by the way, how do you treat that bigoted relative at the family gathering? Now we all have bigoted relatives somewhere in the family tree. Some aren't on the branches yet. They're right there at the dinner table, spewing racist and sexist comments thinly disguised as a joke. Can your children hear you saying, I'm bothered by that, I was mean or that was cruel. When all the other relatives roll their eyes and say, what can't you take a joke? Not that kind. And you know you've had an impact when you walk back in the dining room and everybody shuts up. But you've had an even bigger impact on your children. As your mother-in-law is saying, look, it's Uncle George. Can't you just let it go? No. Because your children need to see you standing up for a value and against an injustice when it's uncomfortable to do it. If we are ever going to ask these young people in a closed system called school to go sit next to the new girl at cost to say to the other kids in the locker room, back off, leave them alone. You see, there are those three characters in this horrific tragedy that goes from bullying to hate crimes to genocide. You see, a hate crime is that social assassination that Teresa talked about. But it began with bullying and escalated to criminal bullying, the hate crime. And in Rwanda, a genocide. You see, they didn't kill Tutsis in Rwanda. They killed cockroaches. And what do you do with a cockroach? You exterminate them. In Nazi Germany, they didn't kill Jews. They killed vermin and bacteria eating at the fabric of our society. What do you do with vermin? You exterminate it. But it didn't start with the death camps. It started with verbal bullying, making somebody into an it. And that's why you and I have to say, no more, not here, never. This is safe harbor for every kid in our schools. Well, I only called her a gross name. Only called her a gross name? No. That is step one. And Herbert Kelman, who wrote about genocide, there are three conditions for a genocide. And one of the things the Premier is looking at is creating a different climate where kids aren't swimming in a culture of mean, where it is one of deep, deep caring. And if these three conditions exist for a genocide, then where does it start? Somebody once said to me, interviewing me when I put the book out on genocide, I thought you talked about parenting. I said, what do you think it starts? Three conditions. Unquestioning obedience to authority, the routinization of cruelty, and the dehumanization of another human being. Unquestioning obedience to authority. That's why it's so critical that we ask these young people to know how to think, not just what to think. Because they have to question that high status social bully. He says, I don't like the new girl. We're not going to eat with her. Wow. Why would I obey her? And that's why we don't want to raise children who will do to please us when they're little but will do to please their peers when they're older. Are any of you raising a strong-willed child? You say, that's why I got here early. Staying late. Get out of the house. Let me tell you something about a strong-willed child you may not fully appreciate yet. They're easier on us in the older teen years than compliant children. But if you think about it, it makes sense. You see, compliant children are very easily led when they're little for two things, they're just as easily led in the teen years for those same two things, approval, and to please their peers. Now, strong-willed children, if you can get them up to puberty with both of you still excited about life, are never easily led by anybody, first by you, but also not by their peers. So I want you to go home and give that kid a hug and say, I knew there was a reason we were getting you up to puberty. You see, we want them to stand up for values and against injustices. But they must believe at a very young age that they can make lots of decisions accountable for their behavior. Then they believe they have agency in their life and that they can stand up for that other person, to be that witness, resistor, and defender, to be that ally. And we say, you know, but he's only in middle school, how can he do that? I ask a lot of people about stories when I was writing the book, Derek Okubo, internationally renowned for his working conflict resolution, told me a story that happened to him 35 years ago, as if it happened yesterday. He was the only Japanese-American child in Denver, Colorado in that Grade II classroom. His parents and grandparents had been interned much as David Suzuki was in Toronto, being ripped from this province during World War II because of his ethnicity. But Derek's grandparents and parents were interned and his father served in the Air Force. He had a lot of anti-Japanese sediment as he was the only Japanese-American in that Grade II classroom. He had to do a toe-heel-toe-heel together activity. Wasn't doing such a good job of it. His teacher walked over to him, picked him up and said, you get a UU, little yellow jab. Can teachers bully? Absolutely. This little boy who had come to school so alive was now broken and he went back out on the playground and a group of kids emboldened by what the teacher said to go back where you came from, you little yellow jab. He said, but one boy, Scott Russell, remembers his name 35 years later came running over seven years old and said, stop that, that's mean. He said, Derek, come play with me. You don't need those boys. And Derek said the rage that was growing in me was cooled by a little boy willing to stand up and speak out. But he did that at cost because the next day the other kid said you don't have to play with me if they're going to call you those names. Scott Russell, seven years old, said it's their problem, not mine. That's the kind of kid you want. That's the kid who will break this cycle of violence. That's that fourth character. Unquestioning obedience to authority. The routinization of cruelty. I'm often asked if I'm concerned about violence kids are exposed to. I am. But you know what? I'm just as concerned about the humor they're exposed to. Bill Cosby said it so beautifully, you miss the days when comedy wasn't mean, when it wasn't at the expense of another human being. What is bullying? A conscious willful deliberate activity intended to harm where you get pleasure from somebody else's pain. It's about laughing at their pain. That's not normal, natural, or necessary. We need to grimace at somebody else's pain. We need to be upset that somebody is in pain. But bullying is the antithesis of that. It's everyone standing around laughing at somebody in absolute distress. So the routinization of cruelty where it becomes the norm, where people will say ah, it's just part of growing up. Boys will be boys, girls just want to be mean. It is not. It should never be a part of any kid's childhood. And the third, the dehumanization of another human being. And that's why it is so critical that we stop the most common form of bullying, verbal bullying. Boys and girls do that one equally well. You know that adage, sticks and stones may break my bones, or words that never hurt me is a lie. Ask Donmarie Wesley's mom. Donmarie hung herself with a dog's leash, having moved from Ontario to British Columbia. Left a suicide note naming the three girls who had only verbally tormented her every day. And the two tools kids use today, those of us who are older here never had to deal with them. Cell phones and the internet, the cyber bullying. The last thing Donmarie Wesley heard on her cell phone was one of those girls saying we'd all be better off if you were dead by morning she was. We ignore this at every kid's peril, but that dehumanization has got to stop. We cannot tolerate it. And as I said, I'm a former nun so I'll throw this in. Intolerance, bigotry and hatred cloaked in the garb of religion is still intolerance, bigotry and hatred. And we need to get a handle on that and be willing to stand up and speak out when somebody spews utter contempt for another human being. And then cloaks it in a faith tradition. How dare we? It can be a vessel or a tomb, a weapon or a tool. And it's how it's expressed. Our cultural norms can be any of those as well. It's how we express it. And our young people have to be taught to hate. And we mustn't be vessels for that hatred. We have to be the ones to say no. But there is a bully circle because bullies don't tend to do this alone. In the center we have the target. And why do I use that word? Gavin De Becker, who worked with people who had been stalked. He wrote the book Gift of Fear. Fascinating book. He talked about how that inner fear, that natural fear keeps us alive. We don't want to be fearful. But we want to listen to our clues, our body speaking. And many of the people who had been stalked were beating themselves up for having been in the wrong place, wrong time, don't know. You were targeted by that person. The problem's not with you. You were targeted. I want young people to know you can be targeted because you're short, you're tall, you're developed early, you're developed late, you're race, religion, gender, you're economic status, the fact that you're new, you're developed early, you're developed late. The one thing all targeted kids have in common, somebody targeted them. Now you can be weird, dorky, odd, strange. I'm a special ed teacher. My degrees are in LD, ED and MR. You used to say I was the emotionally disturbed teacher. I meant that in more ways than one on some days. But you can be weird, dorky, odd, strange. Have ADHD, ospergers, missocial cues? Nothing justifies mean nothing. You can have social anxieties. That doesn't justify somebody being mean to you, as Jay talked about. Nothing justifies. Do we work on the weird, dorky, odd, strange? Absolutely. But you are the target. And that's what I want young people to understand, is somebody targeted you. Problem's not with you. It's with them. Now at the very top of the bully circle, you have the bully. Now we have this idea that all bullies have some problems of their own. Many do, but not all do. I've spent far too much time dealing in bullicide with high status social bullies. Those kids in the school who had a sense of entitlement, a liberty to exclude and an intolerance toward differences and thought they could get away with it because they always have because they had that sense of entitlement. I was involved with the Phoebe Prince case. Phoebe was from Ireland, new girl, beautiful, had an Irish lilt, I'm Irish, very seductive lilt, and a group of kids decided that they could treat her with utter contempt and they did for five months till she killed herself. Couldn't take it anymore. Now people often say, you know but she had lots of problems and the like Suicide's very complicated and I can't say that she would not have killed herself that January with a silk scarf that her sister gave her for Christmas. I can't tell you that but what I can assure you is had those kids not targeted her had somebody stop them when they started to target her had the school when they first found out about it done something and they knew early on folks had their parents been aware of the mean and cruel cyberbullying they were doing on this young girl been tuned into what their kids were doing and had Phoebe not been so horribly weakened by all of this she may not have committed suicide but one thing I can promise you is the last five months of her life would not have been hell that I do know and those kids need to be held accountable for what they did we don't know and I often hear studying the most recent suicide here that oh she had a lot of problems a lot of issues yes and a lot of that was compounded by what was happening to her it doesn't happen separate and every kid that fed into that not so innocent bystanders by tweeting by sending messages by ostracizing have to be accountable for what they did because the bully circle that trap of comradeship is there right at the top you have the bully now we often don't believe targeted kids by status social bully amazing to me even after the six kids were held with complicity in the death of Phoebe Prince and you know they showed up at the Cotillion three days later wearing silk scarves mocking to hang themselves they defaced her memorial page made a new one mission accomplished with a noose in her name utter contempt for Phoebe but even after all of that the superintendent was quoted in the news saying but these were nice kids they came from nice homes when Tyler Clementi leapt off that bridge and the young boy complicit in videotaping and then spreading it on the net inviting friends to watch that intimate encounter that Tyler had had that would be there forever there is no delete button on the internet people rush to his town and then when he was charged Rafi said was but he's a nice kid nice kids can be real mean I need kids who are kind not mean you can be nice and usually nice to adults but mean to that kid you've targeted right below them we have our bullies henchmen now you didn't raise him or her to be a bully but you raised her to do the please she got all those s plus pluses in behavior got the catch and be and go to ward lunch with the principal but now she's doing what that high status bully tells her to do kids who are praise dependent reward dependent make wonderful henchmen and right below that is the active supporters those are the kids that cheer the bully on get their cell phones out and video it put it up on YouTube the active supporters are part of the problem passive supporter adults we won't know about them unless we watch carefully and listen carefully and we over here a young person say ha ha ha do you know what those kids did to that new kid or ha ha ha do you know what they did to that boy in the locker room they're not doing it but they're getting pleasure you know what they're part of the problem at the very bottom of the circle is a deadly lot and all of us adults here can be guilty of this the disengaged onlooker who turns the blinds eye and say oh boys and be boys girls just want to be mean it's part of growing up on the upswing we have that potential witness that's that young person here who is raised to act with integrity and civility and compassion but she's afraid of the bully she's afraid if she steps in she'll be next she's afraid if she steps in she'll make it worse for the target or she's simply afraid all of these kids are locked in a trap of comradeship and we'll begin to justify their meanness by weakening the target even more by saying well he is dorky he is weird he does have bad he's you know he doesn't quite fit dark curly hair and you know she's new and you know what she doesn't play rugby very well trying to fault the target don't let that happen what we need every one of us to be is that witness, resister and defender standing up and speaking out stepping in doing the right thing when the burden is heavy it's easy to do it when we're all sitting here but when the burden is heavy and it's in those hallways and you know what it isn't just our school hallways it's the climate we create in our communities we just went through a horrific election and my state finally went blue pardon my political bias comes out here but I could not believe the vitro we need to be able to disagree without being disagreeable in our politics and when I work with young people I talk to them about an old Sufi saying Sufis are people of wisdom in the Muslim tradition that our words must pass through three gates and I would love to put it on every parliamentarian's desk and every congressperson's desk that our words must pass through these three gates before you push send this is the kind of information we need to give kids first if it's true, if it's not true don't say it if it's kinder true maybe true half true or rumor don't even go to the next two gates put it back it's not necessary to say something maybe true but not necessary to tweet all over the place and the last gate is the hardest gate for all of us to get through is it kind if it's true, necessary and kind push send but if it's not any of that and you can say things that disagree with somebody else but not be disagreeable with it and still push send and when you get a message in your inbox and you know it's coming from somebody who's bigoted and sends racist comments thinly disguised as a joke do you retweet it do you send it on then you're a henchman do you cheer them on and invite other new ways for them to spread that rumor you're the active supporter do you sit there and laugh and show your friend then you're the passive supporter do you say I'm not even going to open it because I know what's in it you're the disengaged onlooker the potential witness sits there and goes I wish they wouldn't send this to me but the gutsy one the witness resister and defender says I'm sending a message back please this is a bigoted comment thinly disguised as a joke I don't want to be a party to this would you delete me well you might get a bit of grief about that they may re-send your message around but others then might say you know what I didn't have the courage to say that but if she's going to say it then I can send a message say I don't like it either you see one person taking that you out of bullying when you take you out of it that trap of comradeship begins to break down and when it begins to break down and swings in the other direction then we are beginning to create a deeply caring community there are three virulent agents ripping apart the fabric of our humanity today and we've got to look at those if we're going to create the kind of community that will erase bullying hating other human beings with utter contempt putting them outside our circle of caring making them into its hoarding me mine and more instead of us ours and enough and harming with lying and cheating and stealing I know we're at Simon Frazier University any of you from Simon Frazier I always use this as an example they had a scandal in their graduate school people were cheating on their ethics exams yes you know what's wrong with lying and cheating and stealing first it destroys your own personal integrity secondly it destroys your relationship with the thou and when we don't have a relationship we cannot get community and cheating and stealing so what are the antidotes to hating hoarding and harming and what's so beautiful in British Columbia and what excites me a lot when Premier Clark called me and asked me to be a part of this is I do work all over the world and I had always been very impressed with what New York is doing compared to so much of what's being done in the rest of my country they had an anti-bullying and a dignity for all students act but they were the first in my country to connect those two intimately British Columbia truly is a leader here because you didn't connect to you made them an integral part that it isn't just anti-bullying I'm not a real big fan of anti-bullying programs that you drop in because that's what happens and people's eyes get the glaze over and we begin to see everything is bullying and don't take it as seriously it needs to be taken but you have the three P's in place strong anti-bullying policies strong anti-bullying procedures and more critically programs not anti-bullying programs but programs in place to work against those three most virulent agents hating, hoarding and harming the antidotes care deeply, share generously help willingly the more we can get our young people in our communities starting at a very young age to care more deeply about one another now caring more deeply has two elements the must to relieve somebody else's suffering and wishing them well we're hardwired to care you know babies will cry when another baby's in distress 18 month old runs over with that blanky to soothe the baby and they're in distress because the baby's not calming down yet 2 year old figures it out he needs milk mom get him some milk and a 4 year old raised in a deeply caring environment sees a child without a cookie she'll break her cookie and share he said well sweetheart that was nice why did you do that she looked at you and that lady's hungry and that's before bible study catechism class and character ed programs it's in them to care you have to cover it over with an awful lot of muck to get somebody to put somebody outside their circle of caring you had a wonderful example of this two winter olympics ago here in canada when a canadian skier broke her pole in the middle of a race norwegian coach cheering his own team on reached out handed her pole you folks came in second silver medal norwegians fourth no metal what was that man thinking people handed him why'd you do it why'd you do it and he shrugged his shoulders wasn't a big deal somebody else had done it I not done it he wonderful canadian sent him 500 gallons of maple syrup he's still trying to figure out what to do with 500 gallons of maple syrup on the fourth day third day really a camera crew cornered him and said why'd you do it he looked into the camera and he said because she needed a pole you see that's the must to relieve somebody else's suffering and wishing them well and not thinking it through Dr. Phil and I had a minor disagreement about this he said we were on the AC 360 Anderson Cooper show and he was going on before me and he said if only and he meant it and he's very active in anti bullying to his credit but he said if only bullies knew the pain they were causing their targets they wouldn't do it I said that's not true Phil if only they cared that they were causing the pain it's the difference between ignorance and apathy the head of the anti bullying committee in south Hadley massachusetts was one of the six charged with complicity and Phoebe's death he knew what bullying was he didn't care you see it's that awareness to care we do have to give kids information on what bullying is and what it isn't we have to go way beyond that and that's what a race bullying is all about trying to stay on your time schedule here no it's important for everybody else so to care deeply share generously help willingly to have those three peas in place we need to be sure that that's happening and I began my book with a quote from the movie chocolate and in the movie chocolate a community was going through the Lenten season now almost every faith tradition has a time of removal a time of fasting a time of reflection they were going through this and feeling very good about themselves what they were giving up what they were resisting and the like but the real test of Lent came when a new group moved in their community who looked different, acted different customs, different rituals and these people going through this time of purification were mean and cruel to this new group so Pierre Henry father Henry chucked his Easter sermon and he said we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we resist what we deny and who we exclude we must measure our goodness by what we embrace what we create and who we include what we embrace what we create and who we include and a death camp survivor was asked how on earth can we break this cycle of violence and he said each one of us must do three things so I would invite each one of you as you go on your way in the various roles that you play and especially our young people here three things pay attention to what's going on around you get involved and never ever look away thank you