 Whoa, okay. I am Kristen Embrie from Decatur, Georgia, and I am a world history teacher. Part of the reason I applied to be a peace teacher is because my work teaching world history to students, I often talk about war, ethnic conflict, and genocide. The work is heavy and challenging, and being a peace teacher provided a different lens that was solution-oriented and different. And my students, you know, welcomed the opportunity to hear about something that gave them some hope. Part of this work includes studying influential change makers and a great example of that is Senator Warnock. Senator Warnock was elected to the Senate in 2021 and represents the state of Georgia. Prior to being elected, he served as a senior pastor for over 16 years at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where the great Martin Luther King is once ministered. Senator Warnock has devoted his life to fighting for justice and equality at the community, state, and national level in our country and abroad. His commitment to advocating for the rights of the marginalized and vulnerable echoes in the legacies of Martin Luther King and President Nelson Mandela. Growing up in Atlanta, I was inspired by the work of Dr. King and Ebenezer Baptist Church, their outreach loomed large throughout many areas in my life. This work is represented in the world of peace building and it's an honor to be here and introduce Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock from the great state of Georgia. Thank you. That's Atlanta, Georgia. With your permission, Mr. Senator, we hope to spend the next half hour, 45 minutes, as much time as you'll give us, talking about the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the implications of this legacy for the work that peace builders do. We'd like to start by looking at the relationship between activism and governing. Before he was a political prisoner and later a statesman and Nobel Prize winner, Nelson Mandela was the leader of a political movement, the African National Congress, that at one point embraced violence and it struggled in the Partite and South Africa. Mandela himself was the head of its military wing, a wing that conducted bombing, sabotage, other acts of violence. Mr. Senator, we're very interested in what we can learn from Mandela's remarkable journey from guerrilla leader to peace builder. And we know that the transition from opposition to governance is often a very difficult one, yet it is crucial to societies and to states and to individuals that are emerging from strife and reaching for peace and stability. As an activist yourself, did you find the transition from activism to governing difficult? And any advice you want to share with all of us on how to navigate this evolution? Wow. Well, hello everybody. Thank you so much. It's wonderful, first of all, really, to be here at the United States Institute for Peace. And I am thrilled to be here. I come with a great deal of respect for your mission. And we all know how important that mission is in the world at all times, but especially now. Nelson Mandela was one of my heroes. And I regret that I never got the chance to meet him personally. But I went to South Africa shortly after I actually came to the Ebenezer Baptist Church. I've been the senior pastor of Ebenezer Church now since 2005. I travel back to my church every Sunday because I don't want to spend all of my time talking to politicians. I'm afraid I might accidentally become one. But shortly after I came to Ebenezer, I went to South Africa and I did go to Robbins Island. And I was just deeply, deeply moved by his journey, by standing there at the jail cell that he actually occupied. And I thought about his time as an activist and the depth of his commitment to that work which led to 27 years in prison. And the hard labor, I think, of literally splitting rocks and the effect of that that had on his eyesight. His eyesight was dim, but his vision was always clear. And he took that vision from prison under the president. He went in that jail cell six feet tall. He walked out 50 feet tall. And so as I try to do my work in the Senate, I don't see a contradiction between my years as an activist, as a pastor, as someone whose view of my own faith tries to center justice-making and peace-building. I'm sitting in a different chair now, but it's the same project. And Mandela, among others, is an important example for me. And I think quite frankly, we need more folks in government who are coming there having been advocates and activists. I don't know that, you know, at the risk of offending some of my colleagues. I don't know that a professional class of politicians has served us all that well. There's something to be said about representative democracy. I think there's nothing wrong with folks who've been on that road their whole lives. That's fine. But I do think that they're in the mix, we get something different. So I serve in the Senate, but this is not my first trip there. I actually came to the United States Capitol in 2017, been there on many occasions, but I'm thinking particularly about my trip in 2017. Standing in the rotunda of the Capitol, I was making the argument for food security. Because part of the way you make peace in the world, whether you're just talking about in your own country or around the world, is to make sure that all gosh children can eat. And so I was in the rotunda of the United States Capitol making the case in 2017. I couldn't argue on the floor of the Senate. I was a preacher and an activist. And we were busy giving the riches of the riches of the rich in our country a $2 trillion tax cut. Meanwhile, there were challenges to the SNAP program, which provides nutrition assistance to people who are on the margins. And so I remember going to the Capitol and saying that a budget is not just a fiscal document, it's a moral document. Show me how a nation spends its money and I'll tell you what it values. And if America were given an EKG, this budget suggests that America has a heart problem. And we've come to do moral surgery. So I stood there with other colleagues in the ministry. Well, they listened to my speech. You're not able to stand in the rotunda and sing and pray as we did that day. And so I got arrested that day, the Capitol police listened to my speech and then they arrested me. I'm not mad at them. And they were just doing their job. But I do find it ironic and I laugh sometimes when I'm walking through that same routine tunnel on my way to my office. I have tried to translate my protests in the public policy, my agitation into legislation. And I'm trying to do that in such a way that even as I occupy the halls of power, that I don't lose the sensibilities of an activist, that edginess. And so I'm trying to stay in conversation with the streets. And I think that's the beauty and the power of somebody like Nelson Mandela, like somebody like Martin Luther King, Jr., like John Lewis, like so many others who shook sometimes from the outside, Fannie Lou Hamer, who didn't hold office but who shook the country up so much that when she was on television arguing the case for voting rights, the Democratic president found a clever way to get her off of TV because he was more afraid of Fannie Lou Hamer than he was of Martin Luther King, Jr. So that's what informs my work. Sorry for the long answer, I'm a Baptist preacher. And this is your choir. Mr. Senator, we wanted to look at political pragmatism. And we know that you have made working across the aisle a key aspect of what you do in Congress. In politics and international affairs, the need to speak up against injustice with moral clarity, as arguably, never been greater. And the growing polarization that we're witnessing globally means that doing so increasingly raises tensions with our allies and those with whom we might form coalitions to advance shared interests and solve problems. There's a tension here. And we look forward to your guidance and advice because many of the people in this audience would say about themselves, we're pragmatists. We want to find practical solutions to building peace. So for those of us who are pragmatic, idealists, what advice do you give us? You have to take the long view. And, you know, change is slow. It is difficult. Anybody who's really in the fight and is not just an armchair, a philosopher about change, knows that it's how difficult it is. It comes in fits and starts. You look at our own democracy. There are moments in the history of the American democracy when the democracy expands. We've got these ideals, but we, you know, we struggle to live up to them. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Jefferson said that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights among them, life-liberating the pursuit of happiness. When he said all men, apparently he meant men. When he said all, didn't mean all. But the history of our country is the history of people who are on the underside of that pushing us closer towards our ideals. And so I like the fact that in here in this city, there's the Jefferson Monument, which I love to visit, but I also love that on the other side of the title basin stands a black man named Martin Luther King, Jr., who's standing there looking at Jefferson with his arms folded. As if to say, did you really mean what you said when you said what you said? And so that, and that's the history of America, women standing up for their suffrage. Members of the LGBTQ plus community saying we are dignity also deserves to be honored. So in that fight, in the push towards common sense solutions in the real world, whether it's geopolitical or local, you've got to find ways to reach across the aisle to talk regularly to people with whom you don't agree and that's something that I try to do all the time. I went to Congress in 21 and out of 100 senators, it was easy for me to remember my number in seniority. I was 100 out of 100, but I was listed as the 18th most bipartisan senator in the Senate. And I'm proud of that because I was up for reelection, so that means Republicans knew I was up for reelection, but I was able to get enough of them to work with me to get the 100th most senior senator in the Senate to be the 18th most bipartisan senator in the Senate. So here's why I know we can, we can, the world is difficult, conflicts are serious. Here's how I know we can have peace. I did an amendment with Ted Cruz. That means we can get world peace now. Mr. Senator, when we were preparing for... Let me tell you about that. So Ted Cruz and I are both on the Commerce Committee and most of the time when he's talking, I'm sitting there thinking, really, is this why you came here? But one day he wanted to get something done that I also wanted to get done. And we couldn't get it done in committee, so we had to take it to the floor of the Senate the day, the night we passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill. And Ted Cruz stood up to argue about why he thought we should do this thing. We each had three minutes to make our argument, and he made his argument about why we should pass this amendment. The War Knot Cruz Amendment. And then I stood up on my side of the aisle and I heard myself say things that I'd never imagined hearing myself say. Mr. President, I'd like to associate myself with the views of the Senator from Texas. And most of our colleagues laugh like they were in disbelief, but I think they say, well, if he's for it and he's for it, we better pass this thing. They passed it unanimously. I don't know that most of them even knew what was in it, but they said they didn't. If he's for it, he's for it, we'll pass it. So they passed it. And on Twitter, we all live in these silos, which team are you on? Folks who see the world the way I do are wondering, what is this you've done with Ted Cruz and people on his side of Twitter world are asking, what are you doing? And it was very simple. There's a road that runs through Texas, I-14. It's only about 25 miles long. He wants to see that road built. That same road that runs through Texas also runs through Georgia. And so I also wanted to see that road built out. And so we came together to get that done. We didn't get the road built, but we moved a little closer by getting it named a priority corridor. So we got a little closer to getting that work. And so for me, that's a symbol, a metaphor, if you will, for the work that all of us have to do. It is the recognition that there's a road that runs through our humanity that's more important than race, that transcends religious identity, that transcends geographical identities. And our job is to try to make haste to that road, to build out the road. You build the road no matter whether you're a red or blue Democrat or Republican, you can use the road to get where you need to go, with the church or the temple or the synagogue. This road runs through all of our humanity. And as Dr. King said better than no one said it better, that we're tied in a single garment of destiny, caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. And so there will be moments when your allies won't understand why you did what you did. And that's good too, because they keep you honest about what are your values. But it is in that dance and that tension that you can actually get something done in the real world. Mr. Senator, we took a lot of time to prepare for your fireside chat with us. And we had colleagues from all over the institute that wanted to ask you questions. And one of the ones that came up the most was about nonviolence. And we looked at what Nelson Mandela thought about this, having been the head of a military wing, then eschewing violence and becoming the world's most famous peacemaker. So Nelson Mandela once said of Gandhi, we discovered, he said his philosophy contributed in no small measure to bringing about the peaceful transformation in South Africa and in healing the destructive human divisions, the ones you've just been describing, that have been spawned by the abhorrence practice of apartheid. And Nelson Mandela went on to say, in a world that's driven by violence and strife, Gandhi's message of peace and nonviolence holds the key to human survival in the 21st century. From your experience and your perspective, what role does nonviolent struggle for justice create in building peace? Well, Dr. King said that the choice now is not between nonviolence and violence. He said in 1960 that the choice is between nonviolence and non-existence. It's a recognition that in a nuclear world, nuclear age, with all the other attending dangers, that nonviolence is not only a moral choice, it's a very practical choice, that we all have a stake in trying to set the table for peace. I also think that the commitment to nonviolence is the rejection of a kind of fear-based logic that drives too much of how we work in the world. And I think the fear-based logic is what creates all of these conflicts all over the world. I think it's what's happening in our country right now. And I think in those moments, there are always demagogues who are trying to stir up that fear. And part of what they do is they dehumanize the other. There's a certain kind of language that starts getting used when human beings are getting ready to prosecute the unthinkable against other human beings. They got to make them appear to be something other than human. And so listen, no matter who the actors and who the talkers are, listen to the talk and hear the words between the words, because I think there's a way in which we have to convince ourselves to be inhumane to other human beings. And so I'm deeply committed to the principles of nonviolence. And that I do with a tough mind and a tender heart. The world is dangerous. There is the struggle in real time about how you, how do you hold at bay in any given moment the forces that are inimical to one's humanity. That was the threat that we faced in World War II. And it's not easy, it's not simple. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was somebody who was informed my thinking in my work, he was the German activist and pastor during Hitler's Third Reich. Sadly in Germany, much of the church capitulated to Hitler's Reich, they became Reich Christians. And they gave in to the, to this, they either, most either facilitated it, they certainly didn't put up much resistance. And in the end, as they were wrestling with what to do about Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian pacifist, came to the conclusion that when there is a madman on the street, you know, you can try to be a spoke in the will to mitigate it, but at some point, somebody's gotta do something about the madman. And he came to the very difficult decision of actually becoming a part of the conspiracy, the pacifist, to assassinate Hitler. And with the recognition he said that at the end none of our hands are clean. And that this is the complexity of the existential situation that we found ourselves. So I'm saying that not to offer any, to say that it's not easy, it's not simple, I'm not saying this in any simple way, but the goal has to always be peace. And there's a way in which the means are tied up with the ends, as Dr. King reminded us. And if our solution, our quick solution is always to go to war, to go to the arms, you never get to peace. And in fact, you set the conditions for more conflict. So the last thing I'll say on this point is that in the end, here is what we all have in common. People who have totally different worldviews, I think. This is not the senator talking or the pastor, it's the sappy dad. Dad of a seven-year-old, darling little girl and a son who's almost five. Maybe I'm so sappy because I was almost 50 when they were born. Here's what I do believe. I think that at the end of the day all of us love our children. And we love our grandchildren. That's as universally true as almost anything. We all love our children. And I think in this moment when we're dealing with these conflicts in Ukraine, in Israel and Gaza, and lots of other conflicts all over the world, my prayer is this, I wish we could just see each other's children. Like literally really see each other's children and look into the eyes of other people's children and see our own. That won't solve the world's problems, but I think that's the starting point through which we ought to engage questions around very complicated public policy. What do we want for our children? Finally, Mr. Senator, Representative John Lewis tried to get legislation that was passed that would have honored the tradition of Gandhi and King. And after he passed, Congress adopted that legislation. This institute benefited from it. Congress entrusted a mandate to us to create the Gandhi King Global Academy. We're very proud to host it. We've been asked to arrange exchanges with peace builders all across the world through this academy. If you allow me to take a minute and to ask the members of the audience who work for the academy if you could please raise your hand, stand up, let the senator know. They are desperate to ask you this question. They want to know, as the final point, Mr. Senator, what should this academy be doing? Oh, wow. So you should be doing exactly what you just said to me, John Lewis was doing, who dreamed about this, right? And finally, posthumously, you got the funding to do that. Is that correct? So that's a lesson in that point alone. I was John Lewis's pastor, but he was the mentor. And I had the honor and sad duty of officiating his funeral. And the night before his funeral, I asked myself when 23-year-old John Lewis was crossing that Edmund Pettus Bridge with nothing but a trench coat on and a backpack he and Hosea Williams. Don't forget that Hosea Williams was there too. What was he thinking? Troopers armed on the other side of that bridge. And I was talking to one of his staffers the other day and like all the civil rights heroes that I've met and we've got a lot of them in Atlanta. We just walk among giants all the time. They were happy warriors. They always had a sense of humor. One of the things I do know John Lewis's coordinates did say that day was he looked over to Hosea, he looked at the bridge, looked down, and he said, Hosea, do you know how to swim? These folks were amazing. So, but I asked myself what was John Lewis thinking crossing that bridge? Was he thinking that one day at the end of his life the whole nation would pause to observe his funeral and there would be three American presidents there on both sides of the aisle. He couldn't have imagined that. Was he thinking that one day he'd be the recipient of the presidential medal of freedom? That's not why he did it. I think John Lewis that day and he covered it in the humor. Dr. King, by the way, used to laugh and joke about his own death as well. And he would preach in these moments, these private moments, he would jokingly preach his own funeral. It's the recognition that laughter is not the gated things. It's the grown made gay. But I think John Lewis was just trying to stay alive that day so he could fight the next day. He took the long view. He recognized that he might even lose his life in the struggle, but he took the long view. I think he was just trying to stay alive that day so he could fight the next day, but by some stroke of grace, mingled with human endurance and resilience, that day he bent the arc a little bit closer towards justice. He built a bridge while crossing the bridge and all of us are the blessed beneficiaries of his enduring lifelong commitment. And then you say to me today that he wanted this program. This was his dream. And it finally happened after his death. It's just like John Lewis to teach us not only how to live, but also how to die. You should commit to a life's project that's longer than your lifespan. If your life's project can be done during your lifetime, it's too small. And thank God for those of you who are committed, all of us who are committed to the work of peace making in the world. It's not easy work. There's a way in which people might say you're crazy. Commit your life to bringing peace. It sounds too, you know, ethereal and mystical. But it's the future of our children that's at stake. And I hope that you will continue to dream big and dream of a world and a reality that will take more than your lifetime to complete and that knowing that brick by brick by brick, we build what Dr. King called the World House, the beloved community and all of us are blessed to be on the journey. So thank you so very much. Pauli, we're going to ask if you can stay in your seats for just a moment as the Senator departs. We hope you all join us for the dedication of the Nelson Mandela Plaza. We'll be right outside these doors. I hope everyone joins me in saluting the exceptional Senator Warnock. Thank you very much. Thank you.