 BS and Notre Dame are located on Pockegan and Pottawatomie land. The Pockegan Pottawatomie have been using this land for formation and education for thousands of years, and they continue doing so. My name is Jana Hunter Bowman, and I'm Assistant Professor of Peace Studies and Christian Social Ethics at AMBS and a member of the Crock Institute Advisory Board. I'm joined by Jason Schenk, a Quaker minister and organizer here in Elkhart, who's a co-facilitator of the colloquium in Welcoming You. In this co-sponsored series, voices from different streams of non-violence, including communal, liberationist, and strategic non-violence, are speaking as witnesses to the power of non-violence in action. We're exploring urgent issues of racialized violence and high stakes election scenarios, as well as strategic non-violent responses. Two of the world's most prominent voices on strategic non-violence are with us today to discuss election-related mobilization. We are asking, what can we and our communities do to help ensure a peaceful electoral transition and reduce the risk of violence at Black Lives Matters protests? It is my great pleasure to introduce you to David Courtwright, one of the co-conspirators of this series, and my co-host from the Crock Institute today. David is the director of the Global Policy Initiative and professor emeritus of the practice at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Previously, David was the director of policy studies at the Crock Institute and director of the Institute's Peace Accord Matrix Project, the largest collection of Peace Accord implementation data that exists. Now, his qualifications to speak to the topic of non-violence are perhaps most visible, not in his job titles, but in his writing. Quite a few of the 19 books he authored or co-edited respond to the questions of students or fellow citizens. Non-violence is nice, but is it practical? These books, his responses include civil society, peace and power, Gandhi and beyond, non-violence for a new political age, this is now in its second edition, peace, a history of movements and ideas, and uniting against terror cooperative non-military responses to the global terrorist threat. And those are just a few of the titles. In this far too brief sketch, I have not done justice to David's life work. I want to underscore that these impressive qualifications and accomplishments are expressions of my dear friend and mentor's tireless dedication to peace. Thank you, David, for your witness to the power of non-violence, and I hand it over to you to introduce our guest speaker today. He's muted. Okay, is that better? Thank you. Well, hello everyone. Sorry for the little technical glitch. Of course, there would be at least one. And thank you, Janna, for that very generous, overly generous introduction. I try to introduce, try to recognize myself in that. Thank you. But I am very grateful for that. I'm delighted to be with all of you and thankful that you're here for this important conversation. And especially pleased and honored to be able to introduce a colleague and friend, Maria Steffen, who has done so much to enlighten us and expand our horizons of understanding about the power of civil resistance, nonviolent civil resistance. Maria and her colleague, Erica Chenoweth have really revolutionized our understanding around the world on these issues. In their 2011 classic, it's already a classic book, Why Civil Resistance Works, The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. And most don't know that three years before that they published their core thesis and their data in the journal, International Security, with the same title, Why Civil Resistance Works. In a journal that normally is focusing on military deterrence and strategic theory and military strategies. And here comes this seminal article using data to show that nonviolent civil resistance is more than twice as effective as the use of armed struggle and violent means. And they have continued to publish other articles showing that nonviolence is more effective than violent means. And also helping us to see what are the dynamics within the data that they've collected on more than 300 conflicts around the world and now hundreds more since they first published their materials in 2011 in the book form. Through hundreds of cases now able to demonstrate that nonviolence is indeed more effective. So it tells us all that nonviolence is not only the right thing to do, the morally appropriate choice, it's also the politically effective means for bringing about significant social change. And it helps us also understand that those who would be tempted to use violence, engaging in fighting and destructive acts may think that they're helping the cause but often those kinds of tactics tend to be counterproductive. They undermine the overall strategic goals may dampen the degree of mass participation which is so key to the effectiveness. And we may end up actually hurting the movements that we're trying to help when we resort to more violent means more destructive means. It's the power and dignity of organized discipline nonviolent civil resistance that can bring about political change. So let me turn it over to you, Maria, if you could say more about that and especially in the context of our current dilemmas in this country dealing with impending election and great uncertainty about the outcome and of course the violence that's been visited upon some of the Black Lives Matter protest movements. All right, there we go. Well, David, thank you for that kind introduction and I want to thank you and Jana and your colleagues at AMBS and at the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame for inviting me to participate in this colloquium series on understanding and engaging engaging movements for justice in 2020. I can't think of a more important and timely topic right now, especially in this country. And, you know, we're having this conversation today about just over a month before a really consequential election. And some of you may have seen the debate last night, depressing in many ways but also for me at least motivating to roll up my sleeves and work even harder in the month ahead. So the stakes are really high now. We're also in the midst of pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed over 206,000 Americans has definitely exposed and exacerbated inequalities and injustices, including structural racism in this country. And we're also having this conversation in the wake of nationwide protests against police brutality, following the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Optman Arbery and countless other Black Lives. And I would note that those protests led by Black Lives Matter and the movement for Black Lives were the broadest and the most persistent in US history, according to my colleague Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues at the crowd counting consortium. So I think Jason's going to post a link to that article in the Washington Post that explains that really interesting statistic. So I guess just my first message and plea is for everyone who's joining this webinar and colloquium to please get out and perform your civic duty to vote and encourage friends and family to vote, have a plan, volunteer to be a poll worker. We'll have some resources on a slide at the end of this presentation, but I guess that's just my bottom line up front, if you will, to start the conversation. And so as David mentioned, I've spent most of my professional life focusing on political violence and its alternatives, including nonviolent civil resistance. And just as a definition, when I say civil resistance, I'm referring to a means for ordinary people to advance rights, freedoms, justice, peace, using active nonviolent means like protests, vigils, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, non-cooperation. So all active nonviolent means, but without threatening or using violence to inflict harm on other people. So David mentioned the research and the work with Erica Chenoweth, which I'll turn to in just a second. But I've really, I've spent, you know, most of the past couple of decades working with activists and movements who have been involved in different nonviolent struggles around the world, including in Syria during the nonviolent phase of the popular uprising that happened in Sudan in 2011, working with activists and movements in Sudan, where we saw last year a popular nonviolent uprising removed a 30-year military dictatorship, quite remarkably. Also have been working with activists and movements in Nicaragua, which also saw a popular movement emerge last year that's been led by students, women, religious leaders, campesinos, advocating and pushing for a more just social society. So I've also, as part of this research and work, studied authoritarianism and authoritarian resurgence around the world, including in this country, the United States, whose democracy scores have actually been falling considerably. And that's something that's been recorded by the Freedom Watchdog, the organization that monitors civil liberties and political rights called Freedom House. And so around the world, you know, we're seeing this rise in nationalism, xenophobia, the hollowing out of democratic norms and discourse and institution. We're seeing a lot of dehumanizing of the other criminalization of dissent that we're seeing in different places, including in this country. We're seeing a rise of disinformation, the idea of fake or false news, and efforts to make people believe that there's no such thing as objective truth. So this is a trend that is actually quite global. It's been going on now for almost two decades, and it's hit home, certainly in the United States, so definitely concerning. So at the same time, though, that we've kind of seen this resurgence of authoritarianism globally, we've also seen a rise in people power movements around the world. And I would note that last year, 2019 had the largest number of protests and popular movements ever recorded around the world. And you can think about the cases of Sudan, the popular movement in Algeria, Chile, Nicaragua, the climate protests. There was a massive explosion of people power globally. So I think that the positive sign is that while there are obviously huge problems with governance and rising nationalism and kind of shrinking of civic space, we're also seeing a resurgence of civic voice and people demanding that their voices be heard and participating actively in civic and political life. So, you know, the research that I've done on nonviolent resistance has certainly informed my recent conversations with domestic organizers and movement leaders in the US. And I've been learning a ton from them from movement for Black Lives, Sunrise, Indivisible, you know, a whole host of different kind of grassroots movements that have been active on a number of causes in the US. And, you know, what's been interesting is that they in turn have been interested in learning about the research on civil resistance and hearing from global international examples of how other people have waged nonviolent struggle in places where, you know, either there's democratic backsliding or in the context of violence. So it's been a really interesting kind of exchange and back and forth over the past few weeks, which, you know, has been really, really interesting. And, you know, folks are especially interested in the nonviolent struggles that around the world in places like Serbia, Ukraine, the Gambia, where people organized and mobilized to ensure that the results of elections were protected when after they were stolen, essentially. When the incumbent presidents tried to steal the election, people rose up non violently and ensure that the results were respected in the rule of law was upheld. So American organizers now in this context are very interested in kind of learning from some of these examples. I think I'll just spend a couple of minutes, you know, going over some of the key findings from the research that I conducted with Erica, all those years ago, as David mentioned, so in the study that culminated in the book why civil resistance works. Erica and I examined over 330 major campaigns, violent and nonviolent from 1900 to 2006. So these were large political campaigns challenging incumbent regimes and vying for territorial self determination. And so the central question at the heart of that research was which form of resistance, violent or nonviolent has been more effective at achieving its major political goals. To, you know, cut a long story short, the major finding of that book as David noted was that the nonviolent campaigns have historically been twice as effective as the violent campaigns. They succeeded about 53% of the time compared to 26% of the time for the violent campaigns. And we also found that over the longer term, the nonviolent campaigns tended to contribute to democratization and were less likely to result in a society that fell back into civil war or violent conflict after. So both in the short term, and in the longer term civil resistance was more effective than violent struggle. And so I'll ask Jason to post a second link of an article in the Washington Post that kind of summarizes some of the research. Even if you don't get around to reading the whole book this is kind of has some of the findings in a nutshell, if you will. So the, the main reason if, if I were to distill the main findings of the book and a couple of lines, the, the most significant variable, explaining the outcome of these campaigns and the reason why nonviolent campaigns have been so much more effective than armed campaigns is that the nonviolent campaigns tend to attract mass diverse participation, participation, far more participation than armed resistance campaigns. When you think about it, lots of people, anyone can participate in nonviolent campaigns, young or old men or women, you know, elderly youth, you know disabled able body, there's something for everyone in nonviolent resistance because there are so many different things available, you know, from silent vigils to wearing of symbolic, you know, wearing of symbols or, you know, engaging in a consumer boycott or a labor strike there's so many things people can do. And when you have large numbers of people from different parts of society who stop obeying and engage in organized non cooperation that tends to result in a lot of power and makes, you know, nonviolent movements, particularly effective, even against kind of violent opponents. So the nonviolent campaigns were something like 15 times larger than the violent campaigns in our in our data set so mass diverse participation was key. We also found that nonviolent discipline in the face of violent repression was really key to the success of this movement and this is something that David mentioned. Violence is often used against peaceful protesters around the world. In fact, in over 90% of the campaigns that we examined violence was used against the protesters. And so the kind of strategic problem with mixing violent and nonviolent tactics is that it tends to decrease participation. It increases levels of violent repression and decreases the participation of ordinary people in the movement. And since you really need large diverse participation to succeed. That's the problem. It also adding violence to the mix tends to muddy the waters it makes it kind of it makes it easier for an opponent to justify the use of counter violence, even though of course it's not a justify but it makes it easier to make the use of counter violence that we're responding to violence and chaos and we're restoring yes law and order, which is a very common refrain, kind of used by by by different governments and regimes around the world. So, you know, maintaining nonviolent discipline through codes of conduct through marshals through, you know, establishing the DNA of a movement to be nonviolent is really key to ensuring, you know, large numbers of people participating in the movement. And so the most memorable I would say in a key ingredient to success is tactical innovation, again something that's really key in this moment. So the thing about nonviolent resistance is that it's so much more than street protests and demonstrations. They tend to get a lot of the attention and kind of the media focus. But in reality, some of the most powerful tactics in nonviolent resistance tend to be things like consumer boycotts think the, you know, the consumer boycotts who own businesses in apartheid South Africa, incredibly powerful tactic, the labor strikes in Poland during the solidarity movement that help shut down the country and apply, you know, tremendous economic pressure, you know, so nonviolent resistance is so much more than kind of the protests and movements that are able to alternate between kind of marches rallies sit ins to these other tactics of stay away sit ins strikes tend to be more resilient to repression and more effective. And the last point I would note that I think is really relevant to our current moment is that there has been further research that Erica Chenoweth has conducted that has found that women's active participation in nonviolent movements is very strongly correlated with the success of those movements. So, you know, women's participation tends to increase nonviolent discipline in the campaign, and we see this now with women kind of being in the forefront of the protests and Belarus. So there's a lot, you know, of, you know, there's something to be said about empowering the voices of women in these movements. So I think this these findings are particularly relevant in this context where, you know, we're dealing with an upcoming election we're dealing with with national racism and protests that have frankly forced a national reckoning in this country around race and racism. We're facing, you know, rising inequality in this country, we're facing a rise of far right violence and this is a really important thing to know. There's a lot of kind of attention to Antifa and kind of a left wing violence. We know the experts have kind of said definitively that the number one domestic terrorism risk in the United States is far right violence. And so this is kind of the thing the proud boys and beyond is a significant challenge right now, as David and Jenna mentioned and kind of their opening. So I think one kind of important point to highlight from all of this is that you know, while there's a lot of talk about protester violence and chaos in the streets in Portland and all this, the vast, vast, vast majority of protests in this country since Trump's election in 2016 have been nonviolent. So violence property damage constitute a minute portion of the protests that we've seen looting and vandalism which does occur. I'm not saying it doesn't occur, but it tends to be committed by opportunists, rather than people who are actively involved in the movement. So I'll ask Jason to post a statistic in an article that shares, you know, the statistic that in fact 93% of racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd have been peaceful. And this is according to the armed conflict location and event data or ACLID, which was launched by the US Crisis Monitoring Report with the Bridging Divide Initiative at Princeton. So I'll also post the ACLID data just to give you a sense of kind of what the big picture is on protests and violence and nonviolence in the US, just to put it into larger context when you see kind of the emphasis on violence and chaos in the streets. And I think it's especially important to really center and uplift the voices of community leaders, movement leaders, notably black and persons of color who are leading these movements, who can often explain the strategies, who can explain the mechanisms that are being used to mitigate violence, defuse violence, and their story should be at the forefront of media coverage of protests, especially in this period of leading up to the election. So I guess, you know, in kind of wrapping up remarks so that we can get to the discussion. I did want to mention a resource that has, it's an article that's gone viral by Daniel Hunter from the organization Training for Change. Daniel Hunter co-founded a group called Choose Democracy, and he's written a piece that I think is very sobering and important to discuss in this moment, which is called 10 Things to Know about How to Stop a Coup. And so the gist of the article is that even though all attention right now should be focused on getting out the vote and ensuring mass participation in the electoral process, we as Americans need to also prepare for the possibility of a coup, or an auto-golpe, meaning an executive kind of takeover of power. So the reality is that Trump may not acknowledge, he may stop the vote, or he may not acknowledge the results. We don't know if it will happen, but there's enough evidence to suggest that we should prepare for it. And so I'll just kind of read out the 10 things that he said we need to know about how to stop a coup, just for purpose of discussion later on. So the 10 things are number one, don't expect results on election night, and we know it's going to take days if not weeks for mail-in ballots to be counted. So number two, do call it a coup if there is an attempt to stop the vote count or to kind of dismiss the results. Do call it a coup. Number three, know that coups have been stopped by regular folks. Number four, be ready to act quickly and not alone. Number five, focus on widely shared values, not on individuals. Number six, convince people not to freeze or just go along, so encourage them to act. Number seven, commit to actions that represent rule of law, stability, and non-violence. Number eight, yes, in fact a coup can happen in the U.S. Number nine, center in calm, not fear. And number 10, prepare to deter a coup before the election, which is the ideal scenario. I would encourage folks to take a look at that piece. There's also a Choose Democracy pledge at the end that I would encourage you all to review and sign if you feel called to do so. And so I think all, and we're getting, I think at our bewitching time now by asking Jason just to post a slide, because I imagine the group that's participating is practical in nature and is interested in things that they can do in this moment. So I pulled together just some resources about kind of maximizing voter participation, which is really key in this moment, and maybe I'll wait for Jason to catch up with the slide. Okay, if I might just jump in while we're waiting for that. In a minute we're going to go into breakout rooms for everyone and we'll have you address that question that Jana raised at the outset, namely, what can we do in our communities to ensure a peaceful election transition and to try to prevent violence at Black Lives Matter protests. Yeah, that's great. And this is meant to segue right into that conversation, just provide some resources and links to kind of act on ongoing initiatives, both focused on getting out the vote, how to serve as a poll worker. And then how to power to the polls. So that's kind of all on the GO TV side. And then, you know, on the how to ensure that all votes are counted and defending the integrity of democratic processes. I would commend the resource hold the line, a guide to defending democracy, which focuses on how to organize local election protection groups so kind of how to do community organizing around the election. And in particular, it suggests ways to think about mass nonviolent action in the event that, you know, the results of the election are not upheld. So it draws on international cases of nonviolent resistance to kind of inform what ordinary people can do to protect the results of the election. And then to David's point about the real necessity of preventing and mitigating violence in communities. And this is where kind of again community leaders, religious leaders, women again are going to play such an important role, I think, in kind of being the glue to keep communities together to resolve conflicts to fuse violence. So that's a few initiatives that are focusing on violence prevention initiatives, including online virtual trainings that folks can can participate in Pachi Bay and a East Point Peace Academy cure violence DCP team they're all offering courses in kind of violence in third party by, you know, bystander intervention and the like. So I guess, you know, I'll just end with that, you know, repetition of the theme of vote vote vote. And then, you know, the necessity of centering vulnerable communities in, you know, this electoral period and certainly what follows, there's already been an uptick uptick in violence targeting vulnerable people black brown people of color. It's so important to center their, their, their voices, their experiences and their leadership in the movements that we are participating in, you know, going forward. So, I think, you know, the bottom line is that we, we do have all the tools at our disposal, I think to build a more just and peaceful society and and so there's a lot of work that that remains but I think I think we can do it so I'll conclude with that. Wonderful, wonderful inspiring and very, very helpful. So we'll have about seven minutes everyone to be in breakout groups. And in a second Jason's going to put it on the screen and just click on their join. And then after that we'll come back and you'll have some questions put them into the chat and then we'll continue this discussion. So Jason want to get us into the rooms now please. Great, and just want to make sure we have the prompt to share. So the prompt that I'm going to put it in the chat here. And I'll also say it out loud. What can we in our community do to help ensure a peaceful electoral transition and reduce the risk of violence at Black Lives Matter protests. So again, I'm going to put that in the chat. And then, again, what can we in our community do to help ensure a peaceful electoral transition, reduce the risk of violence at Black Lives Matter protests. We'll also discuss that in a breakout room so when you get the pop up on your screen, just click join, and that'll send you into a room with a number of other participants here. And we'll see you back in seven minutes. Again, welcome back from your breakout sessions. I hope you had a chance to get to know someone else and articulate some of your responses in your thoughts to our speakers. So please put your questions, your comments in the chat box, and I'll be collecting those and posing questions to David and Maria. I have one here from some students. Maria, you mentioned the reference to the Proud Boys in your in your talk. And last night in the debate, we heard the president say stand down and stand by. And we learned this morning that overnight there was a significant increase in people who felt that that was a call. And the question then becomes, what can we do to engage and neutralize this kind of mobilization, particularly as we're thinking about prevention, prevention of violence. There we go. Yeah, that's a really, that's a great question for me that was kind of the startling moment of last night when I heard that comment and it was kind of a, a shock entirely, but very, very disconcerting and concerning. I mean, I guess what I would say is here is where, you know, strong influential voices within communities are going to be really important to send out the counter message that we will not tolerate or support this type of far right paramilitary white nationalism, white nationalist behavior. And, you know, we will organize against it. I think, you know, one thing that we've seen in a number like responses to far right rallies, for example, after Charlottesville, other places is that kind of the counter mobilizations have been so much larger and bigger and bolder that it's kind of, you know, put the far right groups off their pedestal, if you will. I think out organizing and kind of outnumbering in general is really, really important. I think, you know, thinking about ways to counter their message without just relying on street confrontations and clashes so expanding the repertoire of nonviolent actions to, you know, kind of send a strong signal through symbols through, you know, going slow. There are lots of kind of ways that, you know, you can kind of send a strong community message that go well beyond kind of just the traditional street rallies and demonstrations. So, I mean, I think centering the voices of community leaders and amplifying their counter messaging and what they stand for and inviting people to join them, centering and amplifying those messages, like, you know, expanding the repertoire of nonviolent tactics, I think is really key and just the connections, the organizing the coalitions, activating them within communities, I think are, you know, three things that immediately come to mind. Just to put a little research on that question, Oliver Kaplan has done some research on Columbia and how communities, for example, have organized against paramilitary groups and kind of militia actors. What was really key finding in his research was that communities that were in that did the most self organizing so that form kind of parallel structures, institutions were very organized were the ones that were able to prevent these militia groups from having a lot of violence and harm in communities, and we're already seeing that across the country with Black Lives Matter. In Minneapolis, there was an excellent article by Hari Han in the New York Times about how community leaders, religious, secular came together and organized to counter far right violence, opportunism, looting, all of that kind of stuff. So it's really like organization, organization, organization. And we have a series of questions on, on that point that have come in in the course of this conversation so clearly there's a high degree of interest and concern around what it means to organize in response to paramilitary action. So we'll just note that that is a high level, there's a high level interest in that. There's also a high level of interest here in thinking about how we understand property damage and how do we, and categorizing property damage and distinguishing it from violence. One particular articulation of the many that are coming in, isn't there an important distinction between violence and property destruction? Is there ever a role for property destruction in nonviolent protest? I'm thinking for example, Daniel Berrigan burning his draft card as a nonviolent protest that nevertheless included symbolic property destruction. Okay, here we go. So those were also excellent questions and I would just, you know, maybe one rejoinder since there's a lot of interest in the paramilitary groups. The other kind of tactical thing I would put out there is kind of the role of joy and humor, encountering far right paramilitary activity. Their kind of their actions are grounded in fear and anger and divisiveness and sometimes developing tactics that highlight joy and unity and even humor can be effective counters to those groups. And I'm thinking of one example, you know, during the Charlottesville far right protest and there was an initiative to like have an Oompa Oompa Band kind of marching at the end of the far right parade, if you will, and kind of like sending a totally walking counter message and just, but like, you know, very different from what one would expect. So I think thinking creatively about counter messaging and counter tactics that center joy, humanity and humor are really kind of other ways to think about countering these these groups. So on the on the on the question of property damage. This is the kind of perennial topic of discussion for activists about you know what constitutes violence is property damage. You know what is it considered and the reality is that it's in a gray murky area. And so, it's true property damage that has been strategic thoughtful part of an overarching campaign. For example, some of the targeting of nuclear facilities the bear again actions, they, you know, were arguably very effective because they were part of a campaign and people knew why they were being done and how they were connected to the overarching goal. So sometimes the challenge of kind of more spontaneous, you know, property damage looting things like that is that people perceive it again it's it's less about is it violent or nonviolent that's almost less important than how do other people perceive it that you want to join your movement or that you want to support your movement. And the challenge with some of these, you know, some of these actions is that they kind of they they signify chaos and disorder, and people generally don't want to be part of actions that are kind of chaotic in nature and so I think that's kind of one of the challenges and the reasons why it's kind of a slippery slope if you will when you start kind of bringing some of these tactics into the mix. And so I think, you know, there's a difference between tactics and strategy. So there may be some tactical rationale for using counter violence or you know, self defense, you know, we can think of a number of examples for that. And, but then there's the bigger picture of what is most strategic, what is going to attract the maximum support and participation in the cause, and what how does that affect how I think about kind of the tactics so I would just, you know, offer that but this is always a big long conversation in activist meetings. Thank you. Yes. Well, there is another series of questions, another theme here is the questions coming from people located outside the United States, one from Canada, one from South Korea, it looks like, and I will read one articulation of that question as to how people can be acting in solidarity with movements located in the US at this time. I write this question from Canada, what sort of advice for solidarity movements can you suggest in a time of pandemic induced closed borders. Could you talk about how nonviolent solidarity voice amplitude amplification could happen meaningfully online. Yeah, international solidarity I mean I think this has been one of the defining features of the black lives matter movement I mean you recall seeing the the actions of solidarity all around the world. You know, I think it was a great test, following George Floyd's murder so it was just, you know, incredibly powerful and heartening, I think to be to see the level of support for anti racism work around the world. You know, the, the messages, the, you know, the gatherings so those the symbolic protests of support that are posted on social media to demonstrate the scope of interest and support I think is really important for morale and then beyond for pressure coming from different different places. I think around this election, kind of centering the message of count every vote is going to be really important and kind of uplifting and amplifying that message is, you know, something that maybe groups and different countries and around the world could do. And, you know, just continuing to focus and highlight in your social media messaging and the like, the really amazing work of grassroots groups like black lives matter sunrise poor people's campaigns like kind of, you know, the more that those kind of voices can be centered in the social media messaging. And, you know, in the shows of solidarity, I think the better. Thank you. I'd like to turn this over to David now to comment on some of these questions. Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Maria, I agree completely with your remarks on the question of property damage and and violence. There's a quote now that many of us have heard that's very important from Dr Martin Luther King Jr. because he was often asked about urban uprisings that took place in the 1960s. And he said and reminded us that, as he put it, the riot is the voice of the unheard. It's a response of immediacy to oppressive and unbearable conditions and acts of egregious abuse and violence. We have to understand that those who to who neglect the needs of communities and continue oppressive policies are the ones who are creating conditions that lead to those sorts of uprisings. But at the same time, Dr King was very clear and insistent that property damage rioting, any of these sorts of destructive acts should not be part of our repertoire of strategy. If we bring about political change and social change, we need to recognize the power of nonviolent action itself and a disciplined nonviolent commitment in order to bring about the change and as we know from the history of the civil rights movement, the major significant changes for the voting rights act in 1964 the 65 the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They came about through a strategic nonviolent action. And that's an important distinction for us to make perhaps that's from Dr King's time that I think is still relevant today. And that's just the last thing I would say substantively as, as Maria has been pointing out, the organizing opportunities and needs are huge, or many things that we can do and that we need to prepare. Really it means we need to organize starting now and have the discussions now in our churches and community centers in our classrooms and in our universities and colleges and high schools to begin to think about what we can do what will we do if it turns out badly. And so as we mobilize to turn out the vote, we need to mobilize and start thinking about what those strategic actions will need to be for us in our communities. And then at the national level, and that can happen effectively, if we're not starting to prepare even now. And thanks Maria for giving us all the insight and wisdom but also those wonderful resources in terms of information. And also some of the places we can go now to begin to have conversations with groups nationally about the things we can do and prepare for the coming several months of uncertainty in our country. David, can I ask you one more question here that's coming from a number of directions. That is there are a number of people who are asking specifically about working with youth, and those who are articulating a question that may be shared by others besides just use and that is to say, there are certain groups that are eager for fast results. And I think one of the other rights my fear is that because of impatience, they decide to choose violent means, rather than nonviolent ones. So, what would you say to those who are already feeling impatient with nonviolent tactics in our organizing what are what have you found useful in that regard. We take time often for significant social change, and we have to go step by step in reforms often, but there are also moments when there's this dramatic transition that takes place. When we think about for example how equality of marriage and same sex marriage was condemned so widely, and then all of a sudden over a course of just a few years and with some major court decisions, our country has become much more accepting on this issue. And with the black lives matter movement that we have more than 15 million people who've been participating according to the figures and the data that Maria was showing sharing with us. It shows that dramatic action can be possible. I think we have to be persistent, most of all, and continue to take action and recognize that the challenges before us are overwhelming but on this issue of an election transition. What we're about is saving our democracy, saving our country, and we are the majority, we have a massive majority in this country. On behalf of that position that the President does try to steal this election will be isolated, and we'll have to organize wisely to bring the whole country together to call for the fundamental justice and to end any up to steal the election to have a coup, as Maria was saying. So, we do have support we are the majority we have power, and let's be smart about organizing it. We don't have to use violence for that we use violence actually our chances of success would be diminished. Thank you so much, David. And thank you so much Maria for generously sharing of your time and coming here and participating with us sharing of your expertise and putting it very much into practice during the best of what we know from your work to rise to the challenges and opportunities that are today so thank you ever so much for for being with us. One more word about what's coming up. Next week, Liz Theo Harris from who is co coordinator of the poor people's campaign will be joining us. That's October 7 at 1230 Liz Theo Harris will be with us. And then the after that the capstone of the four part series will be a October 10 half day online non violence direct action training, and that will be taking place from two to five p.m. needs this all of this is eastern time. What you're seeing what I'm sharing with you is on the colloquium homepage. So all information is available there. And please let us know if you have questions and we look forward to seeing you next time.