 Good afternoon, and welcome to our speaker program for African American History Month. My name is Jane Carpenter Rock, and on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, I'd like to thank you for joining us for this important program on resilience and nonviolent activism in the African American community. Today we welcome participants from all across the planet, Kampala, Accra, Nairobi, Tunis, London, and Colombo, to name a few. I look forward to being your moderator for this very timely discussion. Now I will turn the microphone over to my colleague, Chris Brown, in Kampala, Uganda. Good morning, Jane. Good afternoon to everyone here in Kampala, and good day to everyone joining us around the world for this podcast, for this webcast and discussion. Jane, thank you very much for that introduction and for writing an overview of our program today. I'm very pleased that we will be joined in a moment by Mark Morial of the National Urban Leading. And thank you for joining us, and we're speaking with us on this important topic today. Mr. Morial's distinguished 25-year career includes serving as the mayor of New Orleans, as a Louisiana State Senator, as a professor at Xavier University, as an attorney, entrepreneur, and currently the most recently as Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban League, the nation's largest civil rights organization. But before we hear his remarks, it is my honor and pleasure to introduce our host here in Kampala today, Ambassador Deborah Malik. Ambassador Malik is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, who has served with the U.S. Department of State since 1981. Ambassador Malik previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia and as well as the Director of the Office of East African Affairs at the State Department in Washington. Ambassador Malik, thank you very much. Thank you, Chris. And thank you to everyone here in Kampala and to all those posts joining us around the world for what is a very important conversation. And I'd like to offer my special thanks to Mayor Morial for taking the time from his busy schedule to be our guest speaker today. As many of you know, February is the month dedicated in the United States to observing Black History Month, a time when we recognize the many achievements that African Americans have made and continue to make to our country. In the arts, science, literature, sports, politics, and many, many other areas. But this month also reminds us that despite these many accomplishments, race relations in the United States remain troubled. Events of the past few years demonstrate that for all the progress that we have made in civil rights as a country, we still have our own problems to resolve on this issue. We all recognize that there are no easy answers to these problems, but it's important that we have an open and honest conversation and not try to pretend it doesn't exist or that America is a perfect country. We are not. We are 240 years of continuing to strive and to try to continue to make progress on these kinds of issues. And it's important for those of us who serve as U.S. diplomats to have that same frank discussion with our local audiences to explain what's going on in America and to separate myth from fact on an issue that's talked about all over the world. It's in that spirit that I welcome all of you here today, and I encourage you to ask tough questions, but also to keep an open mind. It's my hope that some of this discussion will be relevant to your own communities as well. Since many of you are also wrestling with questions about how to find balance between protecting freedom of speech and civil rights and maintaining security and order for everyone. So thank you again, and I'm happy to turn this back over. Mayor Morial, the virtual floor is yours. Good. First of all, let me say good afternoon to all of you. And here in the United States where I am in the New York area, it is morning. So I've just arisen after flying out in Arkansas where I was yesterday and the day before for a series of meetings. Let me thank the ambassador for her gracious remarks for her important service to our nation and certainly for her important contributions that she's making in her current post. I also want to thank Jane and Chris for extending this invitation and also for facilitating this remarkable ability that we have this morning to be able to communicate through the use of 21st century technology. This is absolutely remarkable that you can see me and I can see you and we're thousands and thousands of miles away. So I also took my hat to the brilliant minds of men and women who have this very sophisticated technology that is way above my pay grade. My ability to really understand how it works, but the important thing is that it works. So good morning here in the States and good afternoon to all of you who are in Africa or in Europe. It's so great to be with you. Let me tell you what I want to do this morning because I'm anxious to get to the part of this conversation where we can engage. You can speak to me. I can speak to you. You can share some questions with me, but I wanted to in the spirit of Black History Month and in the spirit of the topic of today's conversation, which is about resistance and protest to sort of frame up why here in the United States we celebrate Black History Month and we celebrate Black History Month and we've done so for almost 100 years because of a great scholar, an intellectual and Black leader by the name of Dr. Carter G. Woodson. Carter G. Woodson earned his PhD and attended Harvard University way back in the early part of the 20th century. This was a remarkable accomplishment for this man. He was a brilliant scholar. He studied the history of Africa. He studied the very important contributions that Black people had made to the United States and Black people struggles in the United States from slavery through emancipation and then into the days of segregation because he was operating and living in the early part of the 20th century. Woodson believed rightly so that the contributions, the struggles and the history of Black people in America had been suppressed, had been diminished, had been distorted and had by and large been misunderstood and he wanted to elevate the idea that there should be a new focus. Of course, as an author, he had written a number of important books. As a scholar, he was in the classroom teaching and as a public intellectual, he was moving around the country speaking. So Woodson decided in 1925, I believe, was a year to suggest that we celebrate what was then called Negro History Week. One week set aside to elevate the contributions of quote, unquote Negroes, Black people, African-Americans here in the United States. Negro History Week grew in its popularity and its prominence. And in the 1970s, after the Civil Rights era, after the era of Black power and Black cultural awareness, Negro History Week became Black History Month. And therefore, for the past 40 or so years, we've celebrated a month dedicated to Black History. Now, interestingly, why February? Well, February happens to be the month in which Abraham Lincoln was born. And to African-Americans and Black people and those who loved justice and freedom in the early 20th century, Abraham Lincoln was a seminal figure because it was Abraham Lincoln that signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's vision that gave us the 13th and 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, which ended slavery, which provided citizenship rights to African-Americans, and was also designed with the 15th Amendment to protect and secure the right to vote to Black people in the United States. So in the early 20th century, Lincoln was a most important figure, as was the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Their lives were celebrated. So because Lincoln's birthday was in February, that was one of the reasons why Woodson chose the month of February as Black History Month. Now, it's also important to recognize and understand what was happening in the 1920s in the United States, what social trends, what demographic trends were occurring. What was occurring in the first 25 to 30 years of the 20th century is that African-Americans that had by and large lived in the southern part of the United States because of the rural and agricultural economies where our forefathers and foremothers in the United States were enslaved and worked the cotton farms, and the sugar cane farms, and the indigo farms, and the tobacco farms in all of the southern states were leaving those southern states to come to northern American cities, to New York City, to Baltimore, to Boston, to Chicago, to Detroit, to cities like, if you will, Grand Rapids and Muskegon and Cleveland and Columbus and Cincinnati, cities in the United States to get away from the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, to get away from what had occurred in the late 1800s after the period, just after the Civil War, when there was a reconstruction period where African-Americans gained newfound rights, were elected to public office, began to own property, there was a backlash beginning with the 1896 Plessy decision, which basically began to strip away voting rights, property rights, and began the era of legal segregation in the United States. So it was during this demographic transformation, this sense that black people who had fought along with many of their white allies to achieve a sense of freedom and equality, the rug was being pulled out, it was being stripped away. So it was in that environment that Woodson and many, many others began to advocate loudly and forcefully. It was in that period that our great civil rights, historic civil rights organizations were founded. The organization I lead, the National Urban League founded in 1910, the Venerable National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or the NAACP, founded in 1909, founded as a reaction to this stripping away of rights, through this taking away of very hard, far gains. And so there was a concerted effort, and indeed Woodson was a part of that broad renaissance and resistance effort that began in the early 1900s. Now it's important, and I think this is parallel and related, that there was also going on in the United States in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, a suffrage movement for women. That movement, the women's suffrage movement sort of culminated in 1920, when the United States Constitution was amended, amended in order to provide and secure and guarantee that women would have the right to vote. I placed that and raised that because it's important that the protest tradition that we see in the United States today, massive protest taking place just yesterday and indeed almost every day since the beginning of the new presidency. That protest tradition is rooted in American politics for a very long time. One who is a student of history would go back and look at the early 1900s and see that women stage mass marches in New York and in Washington and cities across the nation to advocate for their right to vote. That the protest tradition that came of great precision and effectiveness in the 1960s began in the United States much, much longer before the period of the 1960s. That protest tradition is rooted in this important component of the United States Constitution. The first amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to one freedom of speech. Number two, freedom of press. Number three, freedom of religion. Number four, freedom of assembly, which means that people can have meetings, they can have discussions, they can walk the street. It's the right to peacefully assemble, which guarantees people the right in this country to peacefully protest on the streets of our cities in parks in our cities. And of course, cities have a right to require a permit, but those permits cannot be withheld for political purposes or for frivolous purposes or for meaningless purposes. So this protest tradition that I want to talk to you about goes all the way back. So Woodson, again operating in the 1920s, this is 30 years before the beginning of the end of segregation in the United States. And while some believe that the protest tradition and the 1960s marches were the beginning of the use of nonviolent resistance, it was actually a gentleman by the name of A. Philip Randolph, A. Philip Randolph, a great labor leader, an African American labor leader, the only African American who sat on the central body in the 1930s, 40s and 50s and 60s of the American Federation of Labor, C.A.F.L.C.I.O., who in 1941 threatened to hold a mass march on Washington when Franklin Roosevelt was president in order to encourage the president to force the president to allow African Americans to work in war industry jobs, to work in the factories and the plants that were building the boats, the planes and munitions that were being used in World War II. Now, just the threat of that march in 1941 caused Roosevelt to take action and he took action to integrate or to allow, if you will, African Americans to be working in those war industries. But the modern protest movement in the United States, the modern black protest movement is really thought to have begun in 1954 and 1955. In 1954, our Supreme Court issued the very important decision of Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. 9-0, our Supreme Court said segregated schools were illegal and violated the United States Constitution. Shortly thereafter, in Montgomery, Alabama, the efforts to extend that ruling to public buses began when the legendary civil rights heroine Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, thereby and thereafter spurring the Montgomery bus boycott. That bus boycott was one of the first very prominent, if you will, prominent organizing efforts to utilize the concept of peaceful protest to send a very strong message. In Montgomery in the 1950s, buses by law, there was a law, a city law in Montgomery, which required buses to maintain separate seating. Blacks had to sit to the back, whites sat to the front. There was a screen in between blacks and whites. That was indeed the law. The Montgomery bus boycott was designed to get the city to repeal that law, but not talked about is that in addition to peaceful protest taking place, the NAACP had also challenged that law, that Montgomery city law, which required separate seating in the federal courts on the United States of America there in Alabama. So the strategy was that the protests created economic pressure to support the litigation that was taking place in the courts, which through which civil rights lawyers were asking that the Brown v. Board principle that segregation was illegal in schools be extended and expanded to other public utilities and public facilities. That boycott, of course, that civil disobedience, that protest action was indeed successful, because ultimately the court struck down the Montgomery bus boycott, the Montgomery separate segregation, separate seating court ordinance, and the pressure brought on the leaders of Montgomery, their ability to be able to inflict some economic pain on the owners of the private bus company at that time hastened and helped to shift the thinking of some of Montgomery's business leaders that they had to think differently about segregation because of the willingness of the community at that time to challenge by not riding the buses, which was really a sacrifice by people in the community. Many people didn't have cars, a carpool, Martin Luther King and his lieutenants and ministers and activists organized carpool so that people would have an opportunity to go to work and they wouldn't risk their jobs because they wanted to support the Montgomery bus boycott and support the effort to challenge segregation. Of course, King, as you know, had been a student of Gandhi who had used peaceful protests in India to challenge British colonial rule. It was King and many of his lieutenants who wanted to utilize the very same strategies here in the United States to challenge segregation. Now, there was a real strategic battle going on in those days. There was some in the civil rights leadership who felt the best way to challenge segregation was to exclusively use the court system to work through the courts to bring lawsuits that ultimately would force all of these segregation, state laws, city ordinances, federal statutes to ultimately be wiped out and struck down. And then there were younger King at the time of Montgomery was 26 years old. He was a young activist. The young activists felt that the judicial path was too slow, that the judicial path would take a long time, maybe multiple generations because of the pace of the judicial system. And they felt very strongly that peaceful protests, that challenging segregation was a very important, if you will, tactic that needed to be utilized to dramatize how morally reprehensible the system of segregation was here in the United States. So what you see is the if you will differences based on generation. Many of those who favored litigation only as a strategy, Thurgood Marshall interestingly being one who felt that way in the middle 1950s and others were older. They had been at it for a very long time. They saw Brown versus the Board of Education. Not only it's a significant and historic victory that it was, but also as a validation of validation of their thought processes about strategy, courts work. We need to continue in the courts. Younger activists, however, took a different approach and that different approach involved peaceful protests. So King really began King began that effort in the 1950s and as you know that effort to some extent had it's if you will in 1963 with the mass march on Washington where 250,000 people of Blacks and whites came from all across the nation to challenge segregation and to say that the Congress of the United States should pass a Civil Rights Act in 1964. And so I want to begin to open the floor for some conversations and questions. I'll fast forward and say this. Today you see a rise and a regeneration of protests, although protests has always been a part of American civic engagement. It's always been a part of civil rights. You see in the United States today there was a mass march of women that marches by immigrants that marches against police brutality. Many people utilizing protest as a way to express their opinion on very important issues here in the United States today. My own view is that that tradition is very important, but that to make change and to bring about change, one needs not only protest, one needs participation in voting, one needs to be involved in holding elected officials accountable. We have to utilize our actions to make sure that we are active that makes sense. But we in the civil rights community in the United States reject abhor and do not support violence in any way shape or form. So let me open the floor for any questions or any comments. Let me again say good afternoon. I'm glad to be with you. Let's have a short discussion. Thank you. We hope to stay with you. So I will begin by inviting our audience. For those of you who will be able to take a few questions from our audience here in Kampala before we turn it over to our global audience. So if you'd like to ask Mayor Morial a question please raise your hands and we'll go around and call on individuals. I ask that you identify yourself when you come up to the mic and ask your question. So who would like to be the first person to come forward? Yes please. Thanks very much. I'm Irene of 1G from the Women's Lawyers Association. The question I have is how do you sustain the gains? Because often I get a sense in this sort of work that we have cycles. So you have some momentum, you have some changes, and it's very important that you have some changes and then you get to versus. So what do you need to do to sustain the changes the positive changes that arise from? That's a really important question. I would say you must be eternally vigilant. Eternally vigilant because the truth of the matter is if you study human history if you study human history, if you go back three to five thousand years and you study the movements of people, the progress of people it is fraught with many many steps forward and then many steps backward. It requires eternal vigilance and it requires that there be people like you and people like others who are going to be if you will protectors, accountability agents, guarantors of progress. That's why we need a very robust civil society or civic sector that embraces its responsibility to say we're going to hold government officials, private participants accountable to make sure that what we work for and fought for retains. We are undergoing in the United States right now a new backlash against many of our hard fought gains. We recognize in the civil rights community that we may have some battles ahead of us that some thought we had won forever. We have to be eternally vigilant in defense of civil rights in defense of human rights in defense of economic if you will sufficiency and human dignity we have to remain vigilant in terms of that and not believe that when the battle is won it's time for a party, time may have a celebration and move on to the next fight. We must be vigilant. Yes, please. Good morning man. I'm called Donald McCarrick from Freedom House Uganda and my question is looking at your topic balancing enforcement and freedom of expression. There's two big things from the experience which I see is about 92 years in this movement in 1925. Here in Uganda we are struggling with the whole question around rule of law or rule by law where we see the system using a number of laws to push back especially with the police and that's my second part of it. In terms of what do you see the role of the police in balancing this because most often I see here and also in the states that the police seems to play a very pivotal role in balancing this very being able to articulate freedom of expression at the same time using the law as a big stick to kind of cover us back. So what's your experience in rule by law and the role of the police in this very interesting domain? Well as you know in this country in the days of civil rights in the 1950s in the 1960s law enforcement in many instances were used as wedges to suppress to suppress peaceful protest. There's a celebrated incident that took place in the 1960s in Birmingham, Alabama went on a Sunday on a Sunday. The community decided to protest after attending church and part of that protest was that they would bring their families and their children to downtown Birmingham and the then sheriff in Birmingham or the commission of public safety, the police chief in Birmingham a man by the name of Eugene Bull Connor turned on the fire hoses and brought out German shepherd dogs to repel the people. I think it is important it is critical that police officers and police leaders be trained to respect the right of people to peacefully protest. I also think it's important because we've seen this in the United States where peaceful protest have been infiltrated by provocateurs who began throwing rocks who began starting fires and then they disappear and run away. We've seen that at a number of these police brutality protests that have taken place. Those that organize protests also have to be very disciplined and vigilant that a protest is an organized political act. It's not just a bunch of people showing up to chant it is an organized political event but police have to be trained have to be taught it requires a very, very special discipline for police to recognize and respect the right to people to peacefully protest. That's why I think that governments and when I let a city of New Orleans we would want to sit down with the protestors and work out what route they were going to use accommodate their ability to protest so that they would agree to some parameters so that no one would get hurt so that they'd have the right to get their message out but that the police would be there to protect and want to in any way suppress so it is important right now we have every nation in the world does not have this bedrock constitutional protection that protects the right to peacefully assemble the right to protest the right to speak out every country does not have that tradition I think it's important for countries to create so that people can peacefully protest but it is an important balance this is why King's movement was so powerful he was so powerful because he embedded in those that marched the principle of moral superiority through nonviolence the idea that people would remain nonviolent and thereby thereby have moral superiority to the police and law enforcement that sought to suppress them and sometimes beat them it's an important question but again I think that also the lessons of protest in the United States I've seen I've seen protests that are very well organized where everyone knows why they are there what the specific demands are it's going to take place for three hours and then it's going to be over and I've also seen protests that are disorganized and therefore through their own disorganization don't achieve the objective that they are designed to achieve but as far as law enforcement is concerned I really believe that it takes a special training by law enforcement it begins at the top it begins by the commanders the police chiefs the police superintendents who instill in their officers the idea that do not react to people because they're protesting because they have an absolute right to protest and do not resort to provocative violence in this country many of our acts of riot that have occurred have always been sparked by an incident of police brutality of police misconduct whether it was Michael Brown and Ferguson whether it was Rodney King 25 years ago in Los Angeles whether it was the riots in Los Angeles and Newark in Detroit in the 1960s and other cities they were sparked by an overreach by the police next question thank you very much Mayor my name is Kampura Justice and I'm a student at Marker University it is very important to contextualize this debate why in the US relations are also good it still has some good levels of civility let me help you try to hear what is happening in Uganda the context in which we view in which non-virus civil disobedience the challenge that it faces you have a police that is partisan, highly partisan that is to maintain a certain regime in power now a constitution that is always visited in the interest of the dictator and you have a civil society that has somewhat gone to bed with a dictatorship at the same time it has gone so silent and here you have a young person with very high percentages of unemployment nothing to do they want the bad governance to go away I mean there are students of non-virus civil disobedience they really do not want to use violence but all the avenues have their voices heard of course what do you do does non-virus then become something forget and result other means you know I would you know it is perhaps not my expertise to offer political advice to those in Uganda but let me offer some observations from the context of here the challenge of young people not having work and jobs is throughout history the most destabilizing force for any country any city or any society the idea that the next generation that you are most talented you are most energetic those that are at the very top of their beginning of their careers beginning of their lives cannot find work cannot find economic self-sufficiency and therefore human dignity is a problem for society at large in the United States my organization is very loud about the need for there to be an initiative around youth unemployment to focus on young people in fact we do that work but the commitment by our government through successive administrations has never been sufficient is never strong enough to deal with the depth of the disease of youth unemployment that we face in this country so I couldn't say what I would say is that that problem that all leaders leaders who do not focus on that issue that problem make that challenge for their governance and administration are playing with fire and I understand the realities that nations face that cities face in the United States but there ought to be a high priority on providing opportunity now secondly violence right I would argue that in many in most instances resort to violence ends up being counterproductive this is why it becomes counterproductive people get hurt and usually it's used by people in power as a justification for further crackdowns further repression further activities further offering advice to you particularly here today but I do want to just say that I stand in solidarity with young people everywhere who want to and should speak out loudly to governments the private sector and leaders about the challenges they face when it comes to basic jobs and economic opportunity thank you very much my question is about litigation here in Uganda litigation can take over 10 years if you want to pursue an issue and I wonder how human rights can wait that long if the issue is very urgent the other issue is about the regime of notification and authorization we see the police yes they can monitor or supervise the demonstration but here we have a regime where they use where it should be notification that you can notify them and then you sit down and arrange how you are going to cut out your demonstration as a regime of authorization I would say in one reason why people historically have resorted to protests and to challenging governments is when you have a judicial system which is not designed to be on the side of social and economic change and I can understand the frustrations of long litigation because then it needs a litigation may not be an avenue to protect human rights in the United States we struggle with that issue thankfully we have a fairly efficient not perfect judicial system in the United States there is a tradition where the independence of the judiciary is guarded most recently the judiciary in the United States of a pellet court struck down an executive order signed by the new president Donald Trump around immigration he has a brand new president who signs an executive order and in less than 30 days the court puts a stop on the entire thing a trial court and an appellate court now Donald Trump didn't particularly care for it but in this country we have this tradition and protection of judicial review where judges can review actions by the president of the congress they can relate the law or run a file of the constitution maybe perhaps your country may not have that type of well established tradition but I would say that that's why and historically why people will pursue the protection of civil and human rights through other means in this country earlier Dr. King and others young activists in the 1950s and 60s thought that the courts would take too long and would take five years and would take a long time to whine its way through the appellate process so I can clearly understand that frustration which is why the pursuit of human rights the protection of civil rights should use all means that that do not hurt people do not engage in violence all means that are permissible and necessary and I would say look the traditions around protest I recognize that in many countries governments feel highly threatened when people protest all I can say is that in this country we fight hard and in 1963 when Dr. King wanted to stage a protest and the the state of Alabama refused to give him a permit he went to federal court and the courts ordered a permit to be given but again I'm speaking about the traditions of the United States and perhaps the traditions in Uganda may not be the same although it's taking a long fight if you will to really ensure that those provisions protections are protected but as I said earlier we have to always be vigilant because there's always efforts to undercut the law coming for those opposed to the protection of civil and human rights one last question here from before we turn it over to the field yes my name is Mildred from imagine Africa my question is how much should we take in as human rights for example yes, my grants have their rights you look at some of the issues while we have so many immigrants in the USA and some other countries is because we don't have enough time to resolve some of our political issues, we think running away is way to solve everything, for example if you look at the situation in South Africa South Africa is where we despite the apartheid they stayed in and formed back if you look at the black Americans they never came back to Africa when they were suffering from suffrage they stayed in and fought for their rights so my chance to shout that we need human rights civil rights, I think we have to look back on how we ban us the human rights second of all yes, I'm speaking from the gender perspective to become a gender specialist this also concerns me when we shout about human rights yes, a woman has a right to abort but how about the unborn baby what is the unborn baby's right, you see how much should we take in as a balance with the human and civil rights, thank you you've asked a very broad question I think that human and civil rights are at the center of human dignity and quality of life I think that the idea that people have the right individuals have the right families have the right, communities have the right to pursue and have access to quality education quality healthcare quality jobs and economic opportunity I believe those are human and civil rights in the 21st century those economic rights, the right of women to be treated with dignity and respect those are to some extent human rights and civil rights have a moral underpinning the very essence of what is right and indeed what is wrong and I think we have to continue to use the term civil rights, use the term human rights, define what it is and we have to also in this country what was remarkable is after the civil rights era you had a whole generation of elected officials politicians who got elected to office and one of their most important agenda items was to protect and promote human and civil rights if we had not had in the 1960s president Lyndon Johnson who was willing to push the envelope who was willing to sign a civil rights act who was willing to endorse a civil rights act and a voting rights act and a fair housing law and an anti-poverty movement we would not have been able to totally turn the corner and achieve some of the victories we achieved now we put pressure in those days on Johnson, Johnson responded to the public crisis and to the protest and to the fact that the time was now so I hope that offers some thoughts I know there's some other folks who want to ask some questions from outside of Uganda but I hope that gives you some perspective Excellent yes sir thank you very much this is Jane back in Washington and we do want to take a look at some of the questions that are coming in from other viewing audiences and Kampala thank you so much for those excellent questions so turning to the first one the first question is was the nonviolent civil rights movement recognized by the international community in a positive and meaningful way and did this international recognition help to strengthen the nonviolent movement in the United States I think it's important in historical context to note and underscore that the nonviolent movement for civil rights in the United States paralleled the anti-colonial movement in Africa and many of the freedom movements which were nascent in places like Latin America there's no question that international support that international recognition indeed it was in 1964 that the doctor came travel to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and that was a remarkable accomplishment because it was a recognition by the Nobel Committee which is an international body of King's value and King's importance so I think there's no doubt Mandela of course when he visited the United States after his release from Robin Island in the early 1990s noted the important role that the civil rights movement played in encouraging the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and I think you could go from country to country that began to achieve independence of course we've got a beginning in 57 but all the way through the 1970s and certainly with South Africa and Namibia in the late 80s and the early 90s and I think there's no doubt that both of these movements inspired and encouraged the others I remember as a high school student we followed because the radio stations that we listened to had news from Africa and we followed the freedom movements and there were wars in Angola, in Mozambique and in Guinea-Bissau we studied and were active as young people in the 90s in the 80s rather in the anti-apartheid movement here in the United States encouraging the United States to slap sanctions on South Africa encouraging city, states and corporations to divest their investments in companies that did business in South Africa these movements had synergy these movements inspired each other Excellent, thank you Okay so now we have a question from Tunis as you know there's been a proliferation of hashtag movements all around the world most notably the hashtag Black Lives Matter movement I know you're very familiar with can you talk about your assessment of movements like Black Lives Matter and their ability to maintain the tradition of resilience and resistance of the black community in the United States particularly in light of the growing violence in our cities So Black Lives Matter has been a very important movement, an important response that grew out of these horrific police brutality incidents which occurred beginning with Trayvon Martin untimely and unfortunate death in 2013 and Black Lives Matter really came of age with the again unfortunate death of Michael Brown in Ferguson I think there are two things to note about the Black Lives Matter movement one is the power of social media the idea that the consciousness movement of Black Lives Matter and its organizing underpinnings really really were able to take off because of the power of social media in another era, in another time it would have taken a lot more time, a lot more grassroots organizing effort one can organize people through the use of social media in a remarkable way many of the protests we see in the United States the large women's march which took place really organized itself within six to eight weeks primarily through the power and the use of social media number two, Black Lives Matter has provided and given the young people of this generation a stronger voice on issues like police brutality conduct and criminal justice reform and other issues, that's positive because we need young people to be engaged in the political process and to the extent that Black Lives Matter is a way that young people are engaged in the political process it is indeed a positive thing now like any movement that is edgy and challenging and confrontational there will be those that will misunderstand it or feel threatened by it I think we should embrace it because its underpinnings are the suggestion that Black people in the United States have not always been afforded equal respect equal dignity, equal access, equal opportunity and that Black Lives Matter is designed to raise awareness about those gaps that exist and say that this country needs to continue to address it and that needs to be a major agenda item okay thank you sir okay so now we have a question from the UK how do you feel about unifying Black History Month celebrations that occur during different months throughout the year all over the world in order to effectively highlight the history and culture among the African diaspora and the American communities and how could this be achieved well that's a great question and I think it's a great concept as to whether you could link what we do in the United States to broader celebrations and recognitions around the world I think there's no doubt that that is indeed a possibility anything and everything is possible with technology we're here today having a discussion with some people in Europe some people are in Africa and I'm here in the United States and it's all live and we're having this powerful discussion so I think it's a great idea how it could take place I think that like so many of these movements somebody's just got to envision it and to some extent drive it I'd be curious to learn more about what other African history or Black History Month activities, events and celebrations take place around the world so now a question from Namibia how can we apply the lessons of peaceful Black activism in a world that's becoming more polarized and divided how can we demand rights without having to quote burn down buildings I'm going to say what I continuously said and that is that I believe very strongly in the tradition of peaceful protests and I think history has demonstrated that peace approaches yields if you will when sustained, when well organized, when consistent more results but people shouldn't pretend that going to one or two protests is going to change things you've got to have a multiplicity of strategies in the United States we have to have an electoral strategy to get people out to vote, to encourage people to vote and encourage them to vote on the issues that they care about and that they protest about and ask people who are running where you stand economic opportunity, educational equity criminal justice reform, police community relations where do you stand on those issues so I just believe and I'm speaking obviously from the perspective of someone in the United States I'm not in Namibia, I'm not in Uganda I'm certainly not in Tunis so my perspective I know is to some extent governed by and limited by my perspective here in the United States that this idea of peaceful protest to raise awareness is a very important part of civic engagement and all too often I've seen violence used as an excuse for crackdowns and repression So moving on to our next question from London infringements on civil rights is an issue that penetrates the wider minority or underrepresented communities around the world how can black Americans work with other minorities and underrepresented groups to combat racism and advance their human rights I would say that to the extent that the experiences of black Americans the experiences of civil rights human rights and the movement for economic and social justice in this country can shed light can help educate can offer perspective for other peoples in other countries across the world then I certainly think that we would be open to it and encourage it what I would say is that one of the things we have in the United States in the African American community is a very very robust very rich civil society I think might be the term civic sector so I lead a national civil rights organization there are about a dozen national civil rights organizations that focus on the African American community there are probably another half dozen to a dozen that focus on the Latino community then in both the African American and Latino community we have a very large community of professional associations black doctors, black lawyers, black dentists, black social workers black engineers, African American teachers and labor leaders I think it is very important because we were so excluded for such a long time we built this infrastructure which gives us, if you will, an organizing methodology I think in African communities in Caribbean communities and black communities in Europe and in other parts of the world I think it is very important to build civic infrastructure to build community-based groups to build advocacy-based groups these advocacy-based groups like the NAACP and the National Urban League and the Legal Defense Fund they were the ones that brought the lawsuits they were the ones that organized the protests Southern Christian Leadership Conference we were the ones who came together in 1963 it would precede the ability to do this was that people had organized their energy and their activities and pooled their resources I suggest that many of these black communities particularly in Europe are relatively new in terms of having a large number maybe 20 to 30 to 40 years although there has always been an African community in Europe that these communities have to work to organize themselves so that they can be a collective force in terms of the discussions with governments the discussions with multilateral organizations to the extent that we can shed light offer any wisdom and counsel on how to do it I know that all of us would be very open to doing that okay thank you and along those lines you talked earlier about movements should have multiple strategies in order to achieve their goals can you talk a little bit about leveraging purchasing power as a way to affect social change leveraging purchasing power is one of the most persuasive tactics but also one of the most difficult tactics because in many instances people used their purchasing power to purchase the necessities of life food clothing shelter household items hygiene items the Montgomery bus boycott which was a real effort to if you will use purchasing power as a lever was effective because it was targeted at one company the bus company in Montgomery and it had a logical clear and unambiguous demand and that demand was change your policy about separate if you will see now what we've seen in the United States in the last 30 days is something very interesting coming from the immigrant community there was a day a week ago I think 10 days ago when many of the immigrant owned bodegas in New York those are corner grocery stores corner markets decided not to open for a day in protest President Trump's executive order on immigration that included the ban on Muslims so you could see a new beginning in terms of using economic leverage it is so critical though that it be used in a way that's going to be designed to either get attention or get results because people when you ask people to not buy or to withhold sometimes the impact could be very directly on them and their families so it's a strategy it's a tool it's something that I think has to remain an option I think we saw something similar too with Uber and the backlash during one of the immigrant protests as well moving on to one of our last questions can you talk about are you able to identify the top three lessons from the civil rights movement's commitment to nonviolence that we can apply today around the world the most important thing about the civil rights movement in 1960 is it got results it changed the course of American history it got results it was able to pass a comprehensive civil rights bill in 1964 which the civil rights community had been advocating for pleading for and asking for literally for 50 plus years and had really demanded for the 15 to 20 years proceeding 1964 it got the voting rights act put into law to protect the right to vote we know that the Supreme Court recently undercut it which is a tragedy in and of itself it was able to get the Fair Housing Act passed and it was able to participate in the enactment of the war on poverty community based programs like Head Start Job Corps and the like it got results the lesson is is that it had clear demands was designed to dramatize those demands had a moral message and that that moral message resonated beyond the black community resonated with whites and others resonated that the system of segregation was morally unsustainable and that's one of the most important lessons of the civil rights era of the 1960s it was its ability to define things in moral terms and we have to look back with history and say it was successful because it got results today sometimes a protest is designed to raise awareness which I think is very valuable in an age of media with television coverage and cable TV and social media so it's a tool to educate people as well as a tool to demand people you now have actions taking place in the United States where citizens are showing up at the town hall meetings being sponsored by members of Congress they're going to the meeting to intelligently raise questions it's a form of protest it's a form of the right to peacefully assemble that we see all of this is accelerating because of the new tool of social media and the pervasive awareness of cable TV perfect thank you okay so I guess I just want to offer you an opportunity if you have any closing thoughts or summarizing thoughts that you would like to share with us before we close I just want to say thank you and I look forward to visiting Kampala and Accra and Tunis and London and coming to meet some of the folks who participated today I just want to thank you all for inviting me and encourage all of you all to follow the National Urban League on Twitter at Nat Urban League or follow me on Twitter at Mark Moriel and visit our website at NUL.org to keep up with some of the very important work we're doing in the area of civil rights and economic opportunity excellent alright thank you so much sir I just want to offer my thanks to you for your very poignant and timely remarks we really have appreciated your insight and the vision that you've sketched for us I also want to thank Ambassador Malik and Embassy Kampala for serving our primary host today and thank everyone who joined in for participating for asking your questions and we really appreciate your participation we hope the conversation has shed a little bit more light on how to advance civil rights throughout the world thank you so much thank you and thank you to the technical team here with me here in New York and also there Kampala who jumped through hoops to make sure this would be a flawless connection thank you all