 Hello, everyone. I'm Jim Garrison and I want to welcome you to this session of Humanity Rising as we begin a five-day program on the situation in Ukraine. As you all know, the conflict between the United States and Russia, between NATO and Russia in Ukraine, has gotten increasingly serious, bringing us to probably the most dangerous moment in our lifetime, certainly since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. It's hard to know how to update the situation over there, but perhaps the the most accurate recent update it was provided by Jack Texera, the young 21-year-old National Guardsman in Massachusetts who released hundreds of documents, the classified documents, onto the Internet to indicate that US and NATO troops are now on the ground in Ukraine fighting alongside the Ukrainians, in addition to massive amounts of weaponry, both advanced weaponry, but also just shells to be used for the artillery barrages from the Ukrainians. So that is a dangerous escalation. Simultaneously, the Russians are in the process of deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Bilo Rus, just north of Ukraine, to counter the nuclear weapons that the United States has put in Eastern Europe, in Romania, and elsewhere, very close to the Russian border in Turkey, and so forth. One of the main conclusions of the declassified or released classified documents is that the war is essentially at a stalemate. The territory that has been seized by the Russians very shortly after their incursion into Ukraine in February of 2022 is holding. There's a lot of artillery exchange across that land bridge connecting the Eastern European, Eastern Ukrainian sections that the Russians have seized with Crimea. There is a revelation, though, that the Ukrainians apparently are suffering about seven to eight losses for every one Russian loss. So the casualties on the Ukrainian side are significantly more than the Russian side. And that's very predictable in warfare. The offensive side generally suffers far more casualties than the defensive side, because the Russians are now essentially in a defensive position just holding the territory that they've taken. There is also indication of massive corruption on the Ukrainian side with everyone from Zelensky on down, skimming off the top of the massive amounts of money that's pouring into Ukraine, including selling much of the actual weaponry that has been transported to Ukraine. So Ukraine now, as most wars evolve into being after they get started, just if you think of World War One, it's just become more or less like World War One, where there's a lot of trench warfare and not a loss or gain on other side, but an increasing escalation of hostilities, tactical nuclear weapons, U.S. and NATO military presence in Ukraine. And as was said between Khrushchev and Kennedy back in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, their eyeball to eyeball. And at this point, nobody's blinking, which makes the situation as dangerous as it is. And what we're going to be covering this week are many aspects of what's going on over there, but today we're going to be accentuating the possibilities of what has been called Track Two Diplomacy, the opportunities that many of us had during the 1970s and 80s and 90s during the peak of the Cold War in many ways, where citizen diplomats, as they came to be called, working in the private sector, went to the Soviet Union, not only from the United States, but Western Europe, and ended up making a real difference in how the diplomacy played out. So the question that we're going to ask today is what did we learn from the citizen diplomacy back then that might be applicable to possible citizen diplomacy, which right now does not exist in any meaningful way between the United States or Russia, between NATO and Russia. There seems to have been a complete breakdown of communication either at official levels or unofficial levels. And that's one other factor in why the situation is increasingly dangerous, because there seems to be at this point a virtually a complete absence of any meaningful dialogue. So that will be our program today. And over the next five days, we'll be talking with various people who know a lot about the situation to get their view. But the whole framework of this week is how can we in the non-governmental sector both understand more deeply what's going on, but also contribute to some kind of track two diplomacy that might, as we succeeded in doing back 40 years ago during the Cold War, in making a difference and building the peace that all of us know in the end we need to have to make for a safe and abundant world. Our partner for this week as it was during our last summit is Code Pink. And the co-moderator with me is Jody Evans, who is one of the co-founders of Code Pink, and has been a citizen diplomat and a political activist for I would say most of her adult life, like many of us have been. So I want to invite Jody now to make her own opening comments for this week. So Jody, thank you so much for helping to shape this program and just welcome you to say whatever you would like by way of welcome to our global audience at Humanity Rising. Thank you, Jim. And thank you for organizing this because it's so important that we have a place to go to learn and listen outside the mainstream media that's driven is driving war. And so I just say good morning to you and thank you for your concern for peace and being with us this morning. It's also the beginning of Daniel Ellsberg week. And I hope you're all aware of layers and layers of events that are happening to celebrate Dan and all whistleblowers this week. Something Dan's always done, he celebrates and supports others because he knows the plight and the loneliness. And I mentioned this because Daniel's my hero, he was with us in our last sessions and he stood for peace and contradiction to the violence of those he worked for. And he paid a huge price, even if he's not behind bars like Julian Assange and Daniel Hill, even to this day, he's sad about the entire life he lost and the friends that's still to this day have never spoken to him again. I speak of this because we don't want, we don't run the risks that he did, but we need more than ever to stand for peace. We need to share what we learned this week. We need to learn outside the mainstream media because it is driving war. And we have to be strong tuning forks for peace more than ever, because others are just being swallowed up into what feels too complex to speak for them or some story that they feel where they're doing the right thing by sending bombs to Ukraine. But diplomacy is what leads to peace. And you are needed now and we're going to hear more from some amazing citizen diplomats today. But Jim spoke about a breakdown in citizen diplomacy, but that's because Biden refuses to talk. And I just want to note that we're watching also this party divide, which isn't going to play out so well in the 24 elections. And last week, and senators led by Senator Lee, who has been our partner in getting the War Powers Act through, you know, the War Powers Act to end U.S. bombing in Yemen, which no president has signed. It's gone through Congress four times in the Senate twice with a yes. And now China's negotiated the peace, negotiated, sat down, talked, got the people to the table, the thing we've been asking for for eight years. But that Senator Lee, who's been our partner, Republican from Utah, has now put forth a call for diplomacy by 10 Republican senators. So, you know, it really, as you listen this week, as you hear from the courageous voices, just a reminder to take it, it's to take in, to be emboldened and fed, and then to move out into the world as a tuning fork for peace. Peace needs us more than ever. And I also just want to say we're finishing up three days of non-stock action on Earth Day, where we brought the cost of the Ukraine War to the planet, to Earth Day celebrations across the country. And what was great about that is more and more people understand that the cost of war to the planet. And I'll put a link in so you can see the cost of the Ukraine War to the planet, because it doesn't matter what else we do. If we don't end war, we've lost the numbers. The science says, you know, it doesn't turn this into a chaos killing hundreds of millions, if not a billion people. And I also want to note that a show launched on Netflix this last weekend called The Diplomat, which is such a rare thing, because usually the media is pushing war, so much of our media is supported by, funded by, counseled by the State Department, the CIA. And here we have one that looks like it's going to take the pants down a little bit of how foreign affairs takes place in governments and how it is decisions of too few people that affect the lives of too many. But there is a speech by an ambassador in it that says the only way to end war is talking, that we must talk with our enemies, with terrorists, and with those who we've told stories that they're the most horrible people on the planet, even as we're not looking in the mirror. It's how we get to peace. Let's remember that as we listen to these citizen diplomats today. Thank you for joining. Thank you, Jodi. And now everyone, before we dive into our program, let us just take a moment to just breathe together. Conscious coherence is a quality that we all need to cultivate with a real priority in our lives as the world gets increasingly turbulent and chaotic. So we invite our listeners every time we do a humanity rising session to simply breathe together. So in a moment, you're going to hear the sound of a bell. When you hear this bell, just breathe in for about five and a half seconds. You'll hear the sound of another bell and breathe out. We'll take 10 breaths together. And in the spirit of conscious breathing, then we'll begin our program. Thank you, everyone. Welcome to humanity rising. And thank you for joining us for this summit on Ukraine. Thank you, everyone. It's now my great pleasure to introduce a very good friends of mine who during the last period of citizen diplomacy that I mentioned earlier were really at the forefront of citizen action from the United States. As I look back over my life, I would say that period of working directly with the Soviet Union in the way that we did and bringing about the creative intelligence of hundreds and in fact thousands of individual Americans and Europeans that gave a priority to reducing the threat of nuclear war by just simply reaching out to the enemy, simply reaching out to the Soviet people and discovering friendships and possibilities for creativity that astonished us and astonished the governments and astonished the world and helped bring about the reproach ma that we saw at the end of that decade. That's with particular pleasure that I want to introduce Jim Hickman. I would say that Jim Hickman was acknowledged by just about everybody as the preeminent and premier citizen diplomat working with Michael and Dulcy Murphy and the Esalen Institute and people like Joseph Golden and others on the Soviet side. Jim really opened up possibilities that really astonished all of us and astonished the world. And so, Jim, I just want to begin by acknowledging your mastery at that particular art form and what you created for all of us who worked in your wake actually to take the work that you did in the Esalen Soviet American Exchange program to different levels. Jim and I have became fast friends during that time and we've been working together ever since including till the present day. And so, Jim, thank you for everything that you've done in the service of humanity and why don't we begin with you just telling a little bit about your story and I know you have a few slides and then we'll move on to our second guest Harriet Crosby who I'll introduce more fully when you're finished. Thanks, Jim, and welcome. And thank you, Jim. I would first underscore a couple of your comments that an important part of, in a sense, our success that thousands of people who engaged with Soviets was our understanding and commitment to engage as human beings together, not as capitalists and communists or various individuals responsible for conflict. But in in fact, this was the beginning of the inspiration for Eviquity University that what we learned was there is so much more for the human being to develop into. And there are literally millions of people around the world who want to engage in such a practice that it was a part of the inspiration for Jim and me and a couple others to start ubiquity as a way of educating ourselves and others about the tremendous possibilities of the human expression that evolution built into us and we have only begun to really bring into the world. An important initial exploration of this was initiated at Esalen Institute. Many of you probably know something about Esalen and its emphasis being, Michael Murphy used to say, in this work with the Soviets, let's take the high ground together. Let's find that place in which we connect as spiritual beings and move into that space more dramatically than we ever have before, either separately or together. So it was a part of the initial foundation that we set. I first went to the Soviet Union in 1972 and that was because I was involved in an area of research about extended human possibilities, specifically in the psychic area, psychic research, which the Soviets had been doing for quite some time. And I went in 72 to a conference over there. I was invited to talk about the work I had done to replicate some of the Soviet research. And that introduced me to a number of Soviet academicians, researchers, thinkers who in our private talks over dinner, and I have to say over a lot of vodka, we exposed the deeper parts of ourselves and agreed that there's more to what we could do than just exchanging scientific facts and research. I started working with Esalen in the mid-70s and Michael Murphy, founder of Esalen, became my first real meditation teacher. And he taught me about how to move into life from the inside out, spend time reflecting on who we are and what wants to happen before we rush out and take a lot of action. And that helped a lot from 1979 on when I, over the next 10 years, took over 150 trips to various parts of the Soviet Union and engaged with thousands of Soviets, both academicians and political analysts and advisors, along with Michael and his White Dulce and the resources that Esalen Institute brought to the table. One of the things that was important in that time was learning about something that Jody referred to, was learning about sort of the history of how we got to where we were. So I wanted to just share two slides that give you a sense of a few events that were in advance of what we call citizen diplomacy, but were very much in the service and in the center of what emerged. And then a second slide that summarizes what we learned and who we were and what our guidelines were to interact in a sense with the enemy. And the last thing, before I begin that, is to say that it's interesting that in 1979 and 80, earlier obviously, but in the 70s, the United States was really challenged by what of course was the Cold War, but the possibility of nuclear armageddon. And I remember when I was in elementary school, actually, in the late 50s that we were taught. We used to have, now they call them fire drills, we used to have nuclear explosion drills. And we were taught that if a nuclear bomb hit on the playground, everyone needed to get under their seats, put their hands over their head, and then they could survive. That's how little we knew in those days about nuclear weapons. And what I was struck by recently, about three months ago, for the first time since all of that nuclear, what we used to call the fear of frying, began to disappear as primarily Reagan and Gorbachev brought a certain kind of governmental agreement to the table. A couple of months ago, I got an article, the first one I've seen in probably 20 years about how to survive a nuclear explosion in your vicinity. And it describes how far away the explosion itself affects you. And if you're X number of miles away, then it's best, then you'll probably survive. And I thought, I haven't seen this since the Cold War, but it underscores what Jody and Jim were saying, that we live in a time now that is not dissimilar in terms of how close we are to either a miscalculation or an on purpose exchange of nuclear weapons. And one of the things I would emphasize in this is that one of the lessons we've learned is that once the Cold War, in a sense, came to a conclusion, and we had a nuclear agreement between the countries about cutting back on nuclear arms, what happened was most of us forgot about it and went on with our lives. And people like Jody and others spent a lot of time focusing on it, but the majority of people allowed nuclear proliferation to occur because we withdrew from the activity that we were pursuing. And so one of the things we've learned is once we get to an initial and an ongoing citizen diplomacy activity with what's going on today, we can't stop once it looks like we've solved the problem because the problems will continue. And back to my initial comments, my view is the focus has to be on developing more fully engaged human beings. Just a peace treaty doesn't stop the long-term challenge. We need to continue to work on becoming more fully human as we also practice citizen diplomacy. So let me show you a few things, and then I'll turn it over to Harriet for her stories. But one of the things I learned was a little bit of history that what was called track two diplomacy grew out of an educational sense of private individuals meeting unofficially can create some common ground. And one of our close colleagues in those days, Joseph Montville, who was a Foreign Service Officer in the State Department, first put down the term track two diplomacy in foreign policy magazine 30 years ago. So it's been around for quite some time. And of course, governments viewed it as kind of a feel good exercise. But we know four decades later that that era of unconventional conflicts required unconventional solutions. And the same thing applies today. And then there were two important events in that history. In 1960, a U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviets. It was over Soviet airspace. And President Eisenhower at that time asked his friend Norman Cousins to convene what became known as the Dartmouth Conferences, unofficial American and Soviet delegations coming together at Dartmouth College. And it became the blueprint for track two diplomacy. So literally on May 1, 1960, the plane was shot down. That was almost next Monday is the anniversary 43 years later. The track two was set in motion. And then 19 years later, 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. And that and then all cultural exchange was cut off. And that was a very important inspiration for Michael and Dulcy Murphy, Estlin Institute, myself and others to say, let's just start engaging with the Soviet people in a way that avoids the political conflicts and emphasizes that we are all in this together. And how can we create some private solutions, unconventional solutions that could filter into the more official ranks of the governments? And I remember that what happened with Estlin is that we then began to meet a number of Soviets who were very high up in the Soviet hierarchy, advisors to the premier. One particular man was the leading expert in the Soviet Union on US nuclear policy. One of the areas that we had to manipulate was obviously the work of the intelligence agencies, the CIA, the KGB, the FBI, etc. And they were always interested in what did you learn? Who do you talk to? What do they think about stuff? When we brought Soviets to the US, often they were housed at the Soviet Embassy in San Francisco, because we would then go down to Estlin and Big Sur, and we would have conferences in San Francisco. And this particular man, one of our early guests, was staying at the Soviet Embassy and I went to pick him up and we walked out the door and I noticed a car with two men in it watching us. And I said to Andre, you see that car over there? Those are FBI agents. When we walk down the street, they will follow us because they want to know what it is we might be doing that compromises national security. And Andre turned to me and said, Jim, why are you playing this game? We are not doing anything that compromises national security on either side. You should call the FBI, tell them what we're doing, and have someone assigned to you so that you can brief them every time we come to the US and we don't play these spy games together. So that was the man who was the senior Soviet expert on US nuclear policy saying to us, let's tell all the intelligence agencies what we're doing because we are not doing anything that is either secret or compromises national security. And that initiated a several-year ongoing briefing experience with the KGB, the CIA, the FBI counterintelligence groups, all of whom obviously tried to compromise us, but we had a rule. We will tell you everything you want to know, but you have to ask the right questions, and if you ever ask us to do something for you, we won't talk to you again. So that led us into some of the principles that we developed. And if anyone's interested, I don't want to read them all, but you can look at them. If anyone's interested, I'm glad to send these to people, but it starts with know your ideals, values, and be true to them. So that's really important to each of us who is entering into this realm in these days. Who are we really? And let's be true to ourselves and design projects that illustrate and embody these values. The process is as important as the product. The means are the ends. And then, as I learned, the right ratio of surrender into the deepest parts of ourselves and listen to what wants to happen and take action from that inspiration. And that served me well for a number of years in the variety of projects I helped develop, like getting the astronauts and cosmonauts together for the first time the governments had tried for a number of years and failed. And then, down here, seek out the brotherhood, sisterhood, for reflection. Work with your allies in both governments. I was once briefing a group of Pentagon employees, let's say, stimulated by the Defense Intelligence Agency. And there were about 20 people in the room. And I gave a briefing on what we had been doing and what we had been seeing, that there was an expanding group of people in the USSR who had similar ideals as ourselves and wanted to create a different kind of world. And we needed to engage with them. After I was done, one of the men came up to me and said, could we have lunch together? As it turns out, one of the things that the Soviets had done was build the subways as fallout shelters. So, Jim, you might remember, Harriet, that in the subways, which were way deep underground, at the end of each subway stop, there were very thick metal doors, walls that would come down. And the plan was, if the U.S. ever sent nuclear weapons, get everybody down in the subways, block it all, and that would save many of our people. So, this man's job at the Pentagon was to design missiles that, when they hit the earth, they would bury themselves, penetrate into the subway system so that you couldn't escape it. The nuclear weapons would dig into the earth deep enough that they would explode the subway. This is the kind of mentality that we're dealing with here. And he said to me, I hate what I have to do, and I'm really interested in what you're doing. Is there anything I can do to help you? And I tell this story because there are tens of thousands of people like this in the military, in the governments, in both sides, who want a different way. And what we can do as individuals is assist in creating that different way. And so another couple of things here that are important, see the world through the other's eyes. See both and rather than either or. It's not one country's fault or another's. We're in this together. And we need to tolerate our differences. Contact is the appreciation of differences. The more we accept ourselves, the more we can accept the other. And then, as I said, work with both governments. I had friends during those days that refused to talk to the US government. And my father was a military officer. I grew up in the military. So for me, it was easy to go to the Pentagon and talk to military people. But it's important that we collaborate and don't do what they want you to do because they have their own agenda. And allow the goal to emerge from the process, willingness to be in the unknowing. And one of the things Joseph Golden, Jim referred to him earlier, he was a dramatically energetic young man in Moscow, whom I met at that night in 1979, when I went to the first conference on the unconscious, which had been illegal up at that time and presented some of my research. And Joseph and I became friends. Joseph eventually was put on the board of Essam Institute. But Joseph used to say, if one person tells you no, then go to the next person. Don't ever accept no as an answer. Ask someone else the same question somewhere else. And eventually, you'll get to yes. Criticize their weaknesses with equal fervor that we do our own. And the last point I would make is what I was saying in the beginning. Make a long term commitment to the process. And this is one of the great strengths of the Essam Institute and Michael and Dulcy Murphy. They have never stopped being citizen diplomats since we started in 1980. And so I really give kudos to Michael and Dulcy as senior citizen diplomatic leaders in this whole thing. And then the last thing I'd say for now is my main principle. Have fun along the way. Really important. So one of the people I became very close friends with through this process was Harriet Crosby. And partly this is because Harriet lived in the house of Arthur Hartman, who became the ambassador to the Soviet Union under Ronald Reagan. And therefore, with Harriet, we had access to again, as I said, to very high ranking people in the U.S. government. One of whom, for example, I mentioned earlier Afghanistan, and then we caught off call to exchanges and the essence are going. One of the friends of Michael and Dulcy Murphy was a man named Marshall Bremant, who is the senior advisor on Soviet affairs to the president of the United States. And Marshall told us then, Michael, Dulcy, Jim, we will not be doing exchanges with the Soviet Union for a long time. And so what you're doing is essential that we move forward together in a way that when the government start collaborating, you build a platform upon upon which success can be built. And so with Harriet, we used to have parties at the ambassador's residence in Moscow. When I brought John Denver on a concert tour, it happened that the Muppets were there. And John and Miss Piggy gave a concert together in the ambassador's residence with very high ranking Soviets in the audience. And I just have to say I remember now that in one of those gatherings, I met Putin. I don't remember it, but it's been told to me from people who were there and whom I know, because Putin was a low ranking KGB officer at that time. And none of us had any idea where he would rise into. But it just shows that all of the people we criticize for being the problem that we're trying to solve have deep roots into more than just who they are today. And the last thing I would say is that one of the great events that Jim Garrison organized was a two week tour by Mikhail Gorbachev to the U.S. to meet with both political and entertainment leaders of the country. And I was asked to be the sort of behind the scenes administrator, which is what I do best is set a platform for the stars to shine. I like to be behind the scenes and be making things happen, but have other people be the ones who get the credit. So we landed in Santa Barbara and Ronald Reagan greeted us because then Gorbachev went with the Reagan's to their ranch. And in that first luncheon we had, part of my job was to stand behind Gorbachev and somewhat protect him along with his security people. And so I watched Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev interact. And I have to say that it was an enlightenment type of experience for me. I saw two men bonding in a way that for me told me this was a historic trajectory made to happen, that these two men and their energies came together in a way that created what they were able to do to bring the world back from the theorizing and the edge of destruction. And it showed me that a part of what we want to do is recognize that much of what we're doing is a part of a bigger awareness that is emerging throughout our cultures, our countries, the planet, and ourselves moving us forward into something that can create a different kind of civilization together. And what ubiquity has been committed to and what we found was the most important aspect of our success in citizen diplomacy, be aware of who we really are and bring that deepest part of ourselves into the equation in the discussion. Back to you, Jim. Thank you so much, Jim. I've brought back so many memories just listening to you talk about the Murphy's and Esslin and more about Joseph Golden and Harriet and Hartman's and Spazo House and the Soviet adventures we had together. It was a great, great, great time. And in that spirit, Harriet, I want to invite you in since you were there right at creation along with the bunch of us and just invite you like I did, Jim, just to tell your story and in any of the principles that you learned during that time, because Harriet was the founder of the Institute for Soviet American Relations, which grew out of all this work. So Harriet, share with us what you did and what you learned and what you think might be applicable today. It's so nice to be able to speak after Jim Hickman because he really was the inspiration and now you can see why it was such fun to be working with Jim Hickman in those heady days of Glossinost and Perestroika in Russia, staying at the ambassador's residence and being able to go off and interview psychic healers that were part of Esslin's research that Jim had been doing over there. I mean, I just want to celebrate the fun and what a great time it was to be there at that time. When we got lost in the subways, Jim Hickman would say, where are the KJB when we need them? He got us all laughing and at the same time, bringing our best selves, taking the high road in our work with the Soviet officials. We weren't working with Shepard Nazi, who was the ambassador from Tbilisi, Georgia. We were meeting with really interesting, thoughtful people and of course, we respected and we honored every relationship that we were being introduced to and the Russians they were Soviets at that time. Those were the days of the Soviet Union before the republics were separated into the separate republics. And we were doing all kinds of creative things. We were bringing the, ISAR grew out of the Esslin-Soviet-American exchange program and Esslin to Jim built on the foundations built up. We were able to bring high-level Soviet academicians, military planners, citizen activists, thoughtful people over to Esslin to soak in the hot tubs. And we kind of thought that we could end the Cold War if we could get these Soviet high-level people to disrobe, take off all their clothes and get into the hot tubs together. It was called hot tub diplomacy. And we were bringing into the Cold War and bringing a new climate to Soviet-American relations in which we could work together to solve the global problems we were already facing, global warming, the damage being created to the environment, working to protect the environment with our Soviet counterparts, exploring the human potential among work that was going on, working with psychic healers. I remember at one point taking the ambassador and his wife to visit one of our psychic healer friends in Moscow. And of course, well, you know, diplomats as opposed to citizen diplomats, you know, official diplomats were kind of like the night of old time, the armor dressed in armor, and having to move very slowly, gradually, cumbersomely dragging their coat of armor around with them where citizen diplomats could be agile and quick and nimble and quick to move to responsibility, bringing out the best in their counterparts, you know, the reflective citizen diplomats could engage in real dialogues with people. And it was so, it was fun for the ambassador and his wife to go and visit our citizen diplomat comrades. We took, we took ambassador and his wife to visit one of our psychic healers and she, of course, he could pull the whole thing of psychic healing, but she was able to run her hands over the auric field of his body and find where he'd had as a child a broken bone and they had to insert a metal pin in their bond together, something he'd never told his wife or anybody about, but she could feel it in his energy field. And it was the coming together of the two worlds of the rational, materialistic world of the ambassador's embassy and the, the creative work with psychic healers who could feel the whole energy of the body and, and act as healers. She'd been the healer of one of the previous presidents, I can't remember his name, who it was, but we were able to do a lot of innovative creative things. I remember we had regular meetings at Joseph Goldin's place, what he called the headquarters. And as more and more Americans started coming to do peace work with Soviets, we met at the headquarters and Joseph Goldin would give us directions, go out and meet with this person and that person. So we're infiltrating and building a series of relationships that were really in the thoughtful way that Jim Hickman mentioned was bringing out the best in people, showing what we could be doing together. And out of those, out of the spirit that Jim Garrison brought to this, emerged these space bridges in which Jim Garrison had linked up with the founder of Apple Computer, Steve Wozniak, because of relationships, personal relationships, Mary Payne, we've known both Jim Garrison and Steve Wozniak. We created the first space bridge and we began to show how we could use modern technology and satellites in the air to bring large groups of people together to sing and dance and make music together. And the first, the first space bridge was a music celebration of sharing music between California and Moscow. And we did a whole series of space bridges. And I remember with Jim Hickman, the excitement of being able to go into studios in Moscow, that's still a radio stations where there were military guards at the door, you know, in a cold weather position of protecting their country from enemies. And Jim was able to, with people to walk into the Gusto LaRadio studios that no, well, Americans, probably no Westerners were going into because they were military, they were guarded by military personnel and use satellites to get people on the opposite sides of the world singing and dancing and making music together. And we showed that technology could be used for communication purposes to bring our nations together to prevent nuclear war. So the space bridges evolved into a communication prevent an accidental nuclear war because we realized that everybody agreed with us in saying an accidental nuclear war would be a bad idea. More than a bad idea. An accidental nuclear war could bring devastating consequences to the planet. And so getting people to talk about it, we moved in that period of time from prevention of nuclear war being a telegraph system in the basement of the White House, telegraphing the other side. In other words, nuclear weapons were so advanced that we could launch nuclear weapons and get them into the air before, if the other side had started a nuclear war, before they could get their missiles out of the ground. We were on air trigger nuclear alert. Say you've got it, if there's a launch, you've got to get them out. You've got to get your missiles out quickly before their missiles came in and took them out of their source air trigger nuclear alert meant you couldn't return once a nuclear weapon had been sent, you couldn't recall it. It was a very dangerous situation and there was no way there was in the early days of the work you're doing, there was no way of preventing an accidental launch of missiles say if a flock of geese had flown over the radar in Alaska, that could have triggered their thinking that nuclear missile attack was coming on and they had to get their missiles out of the silos before they were launched. And we thought it would be a bad idea if we started nuclear war because of a flock of missiles activating the radar in Alaska. And during while we were working, we moved from the telegraph system in the basements to using satellites to communicate rapidly to talk with each other so that one side could say, hey, we made a mistake, we launched a missile. It's not an attack missile, it's a mistake. Don't try to destroy it on site, but if it lands, know that we didn't really mean it. So don't launch yours. I'm oversimplifying. But we really put it, we started using these space bridges, satellites for communication to communicate with each other so that we wouldn't even launch nuclear missiles in the first place. But the telecommunications revolution in our ability to do space bridges really reduced the likelihood of an accidental nuclear war. But space bridges were more than that. We began using space bridges because there were a whole series of them going on after the original one to get people in the Politburo talking with members of Congress. And the Russians had never allowed these communication of their gas to the radio, what they told the people, what was designed from the Kremlin was very controlled, politically controlled. But we were able to do space bridges in which members of Congress were able to talk with members of the Politburo, live and unedited, going out to all the distant areas, regions. The Soviet Union was so big, it was like eight different time zones from Moscow, all the way out to Siberia, a lot of Ostok. And people living in the villages out there had never seen anything on their televisions other than the government-prescribed program that was going out. And they could see Moynihan, Senator Moynihan in the U.S. Congress questioning members of the Politburo about human rights abuses and what was happening to dissidents in their country that the government of the Soviet Union had never let the Russian people know about. And here their members, individual members of the Politburo were answering questions from people like Moynihan in the Senate, questioning about their treatment and their abuse of citizens and the dissidents. And so it really was the ending of the iron curtain that had been allowed the Russian to control what was coming in with the satellite. Live communications back and forth with satellites really melted the iron curtain that was keeping our countries apart. And we were using satellite technology to be talking with each other. Citizens with citizens, members of Congress, members of Congress, nuclear strategists with ways of preventing mistakes in the launching of nuclear missiles. Satellite communications really became a very effective way of communicating direct and live communications and really ended, brought down the Cold War. And as we'd say in excellent terms, the hot tubs of excellent work melting the Cold War by people to people beginning to link and work together. There were all kinds. ISAR started just as a program of bringing the people. ISAR put out a magazine called Surviving Together. And we put out tremendous in those days in which we became aware of the danger and the threat and the consequences of nuclear war. Brought all kinds of people working together. We were doing joint Soviet American mountain climes. We climbed with Cynthia Laszloff. Sorry, she couldn't be with us today, but we're very much mindful of the US-USSR Youth Exchange that she organized working with Greg Buroff, who was the cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow, to bring an equal number of kids under the age of 21 in Russia and America, Soviet Union, America to climb Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in the USSR, I think 19,000 feet. And it was just, we had a Soviet American mountain climb just before Reagan and Gordechov met for the first time. And the youth of our two countries could get to the top of Mount Elbrus, put their ice axes in the ground, and says this symbolizes a summit between the people of the United States and Soviet Union, showing that we can cooperate and then trust our lives together, climbing a mountain on ropes, trusting our life to the person who was holding the rope at the top. If we could trust our lives to our joint mountain climbers, we could hope that our leaders could meet Reagan and Gordechov in a summit to bring our people together to work in cooperation to deal with issues on the planet Earth. So we were working with symbols a lot and bringing our people together to communicate, to climb mountains together, to engage in sports events together. There were meetings of economic trade. There were ISAR catalogs, all the meetings of trade councils meeting between the two countries, conferences on nuclear winter. Even if only one side attacked the other with a nuclear winter, it could cause nuclear winter by putting so much dust up into the atmosphere that the sun couldn't come through enough to blow crops around the world that the nuclear winter was a threat to the side that started nuclear war, even if the other one never responded. But getting communications around these issues, we were working with a fellow by the name of Sam Keane, who had written a book called Faces of the Enemy, that we really looked at how in a war-like situation, one side tends to dehumanize the other. Is it they're less than human? And our work together was to humanize the enemy and in those days Soviet Union was the enemy. And we worked with Sam Keane to learn all the ways that we belittled and treated the enemy as if they were less than human. In other words, we were bringing respect into relations between citizens, as well as diplomats, as well as military planners. Probably the name of Steve Cole was staying at the ambassador's residence, interviewing Russian military planners and American military planners using the ideas of Asa Jolie, an Italian psychologist who said people have multiple sub-personalities, and he was using Asa Jolie's ideas of sub-personalities to interview Soviet military planners getting their way of thinking of why their threats would stop the other from launching nuclear weapons. In other words, they're thinking behind strategic military planning to recognize that they were more likely to get into a war with that way of thinking, and he was able to get different sub-personalities, talking with each other in, within the individual that he was talking with, for them to see the other side's point of view. So it was very sophisticated psychological work that he could bring military planners from the two countries, both standing to see the other as the enemy, into communication and understanding how the other saw the strategic planning that they were doing, which brought a psychological awareness into military planning of both sides, enough to see how the other side was thinking. I'm just giving you some examples of how citizens engaging with their counterparts on the other side were manifesting what Jim Hickman was just talking about, of taking the high road, bringing out the best in each other, and using humor as a way of lightening very intense situations by building bombs and recognizing that we're all in the same boat together. That was our awareness of coming into contact with our Russian Soviet counterparts, that we're all in the same boat together, and really working together. And I want to end on that note, although there's lots more I could say and share stories with you of those, those heady times in Soviet Gorbachev opening Plasnost and Perestroika to create possibilities. What would be very interesting for our conversation to proceed is how did we go from those days of possibility of Plasnost opening up our societies and new thinking and new ways of working together? How did it happen that things have come to where they are today? That's the question I'd like to ask our other speakers and how we can bring some of that creativity that we experienced in the early days of citizen diplomacy and proactive diplomacy into the situation you're living with in Ukraine today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Harriet. And now I'd love Jody who is a citizen diplomat of her own right to jump in. And Jim, if you could turn on your video, we can have a conversation. But Jody, I would love to have you add whatever you would like to add to what Jim and Harriet have said. And then we can turn to the issue that Harriet just raised of what's the applicability of all those successes back then to what's happening now. Thank you, Jim. And thank you, Harriet. Such beautiful stories and memories of that time and also the potency of that time, Harriet, you speak to where we are now and seriously and with intention when they see things working, when the war machine sees things working, they work against it. And we look out right now and see the lack of engagement, the confusion, and even throughout history, young people are leading. It's the really swallowing up of our minds into lies and distortions. And we're not netting enough. We're not bringing the stories back enough. We're not humanizing enough. And it's really that humanization and Harriet, as you were speaking, I was thinking about when we work on transitioning from the war economy to the peace economy, so many times in doing the pivot from whatever the war economy forces it to behave like into what the peace economy in nature is and how we behave, people will go, oh, there's this field of generosity or there's this field of peace or we're not, we live in a war economy. We exercise all day long the habits of a war economy because that's how we succeed. And it's really being in that space you're both describing of living from peace, being from peace that creates a field that isn't seen but is felt. And that field we're not creating. I mean, Code Pink, it's our first thing we do. We go to the place where war is about to happen and be in relationship with the people. And across the world, all people know, except for in the United States of America, we'll arrive and it's like, you're not Bush, we're not whoever the leader is. That first happened when we were in Iraq right before the invasion. And I was like, we're about to bomb you. Why are you being so kind to us? You're not Bush, we're not Saddam. People around the world understand power in a way, for some reason, the United States is too not. I call it one of the downsides of living in an empire as you get empire thinking and you don't intend to, but it becomes part of who we are. So again, it's why it's so important for all of us here today to remember that we are peace activists to remember that we need to be what we're hearing described, that diplomat in our conversations, in our relationships reaching out, in bringing the world to one, because we are one. We are on a planet that no matter what we do, it affects all of us. This war in Ukraine is affecting the globe and the globe is responding. So I've been around the world and in so many war zones and the other thing is it's the humanity that is felt in a war zone. It's a little bit too what I hear you, Harriet and Jim describing is that humanity when you're close to war, when it's breathing down your neck, when you're educated on the costs of nuclear weapons that seem to have also Harriet been part of what's been diseducated is we don't take that. There's a lack of seriousness about it, except if you're talking to people who are educated and know the chance of a mistake is what we're talking about. We're not talking about what's planned, we're talking about when we get close to these moments, there's a chance for a mishap, a chance for a mistake and we don't want to get close to those moments. That's why we're so many so few seconds away from midnight in the in the tick tock of the clock. So yes, let us remember as the media tries to demonize other first of all to look in the mirror and see where we live because there is no greater terrors on the planet than the United States of America and that was back in Martin Luther King Vase when he said that it's become much worse. And it's our task to be peace activists, to be the tuning fork for peace, to be that energy that is so missing in the confusion and the lies and the distortion that was constantly being now revealed. When we were saying it a year ago, it wasn't much known, but that truth is getting more and more revealed about how integrated the US is into what's happening in Ukraine and not showing up at the table of diplomacy is a crime. It's a crime against these people who have been murdered and what it's like to be in Ukraine. We talk to the women, it's horrific. It's horrific and frightening. And now we look at bombings and our nuclear plants and it's just frightening. So and that part of it has also left the news. We know this about war. They drive it, they fuel it, and then they abandon it as we can, you know, as the people in Iraq and Afghanistan can attest. So may we all be citizen diplomats inspired by Harriet and Jim today and also this week with Daniel Ellsberg week. Let's be courageous and speak out for peace. Thank you, Jody. Thank you so much. So let's use the balance of our time on the foundation of what these three very thoughtful citizen diplomats have articulated about their experiences and the principles of citizen diplomacy to think through what we can do now in Ukraine. So Jim, let me start with you. If you are going to start citizen diplomacy with Ukraine under these conditions, which are very different than 40 years ago with the Cold War and all of that, what would come to mind for you to say or to suggest can be done? Because there doesn't seem to be hardly any citizen diplomacy happening at all in this moment. And then Harriet, I'd love to hear from you. Well, I, you know, look at it a little differently. I relate to what John Crick said, talking about war leads to war. Talking about peace leads to peace. And so I'm more interested in setting a platform, and this is something I wanted to emphasize, that it's important that we create a platform for a different kind of relationship between the Ukrainians and the Russians, between the US and the rest of the world. I mean, for example, you know, Jody's point about the US and its image of itself as so important in the world. I live in Bolivia. I've been here for 16 years, and I can tell you that no one here agrees with what was said about the US. Here, the US is seen as one of the big problem makers. And so we, and as I've said, you know, Jim, in ubiquity, there's a larger world than the US, Russia, and China, and it's beginning to become more active. So what I wanted to emphasize was find, and not through your cognitive sense, but through the deeper parts of who we are, find the ways into peace in a way that is not about a peace treaty between the Ukrainians and Russians, because that, you know, we had a peace treaty after World War II, and there has never been a year in which there hasn't been war somewhere in the world since World War II. These treaties don't lead to peace. They only stop current problems that are underway. We need to have a bigger approach, and one way is creatively find ways in. I just wanted to make one point, because Harriet talked a lot about the space bridges and other people and the listeners and remember them. The first space bridge, as Harriet described, the space bridge was a breakthrough in communication between the US and the Soviet Union. At the time we did the first space bridge, the only direct communication being the White House and the Kremlin was a teletype machine. I don't know how many of you remember what a teletype machine, but it's just an electronic typewriter. That's the only way we were ready to communicate. And so in order to get it done, we had to be very creative. And a principal person was the astronaut we were bringing to the Soviet Union to work with cosmonauts. And when we first proposed this at the state television radio that controlled this kind of communication, we took our astronaut friend, Rusty Schweikert, and the man who could make the decision said, no, I don't think we can do this. And I was proposing it, and this is for me to remember, think about what makes sense to the people you're working on to bring peace. So the first us festival was scheduled for Labor Day. So I said, it's a Labor Day celebration. Labor, bring your workers, et cetera. And we proposed and we scheduled men at work as the rock band from the US festival to broadcast to the Soviets, men at work, it's Labor Day, et cetera. But it was actually the astronaut who had been meeting with some high-ranking official. And the man at Gusler Radio called while we were there, the high-ranking official, who came back to say, I think we're going to get the astronauts and cosmonauts together. And so that's what gave permission for the US festival to happen. Not, it's a really unique thing, but they needed a way to have permission to break down all of the communication barriers. So my point is, think creatively about ways to initiate a new kind of relationship. Like Jody was saying, energy of peace, peace activists, bring the energy of peace into the into the situation on both sides and begin to work toward a longer term. Remember what we talked about earlier, make a commitment to the long-term process, because that's what makes a difference for the for the civilization that we're trying to move into for our kids. Beautiful, Jim. Thank you so much. And just so a little slight correction, Harriet, you referred to Jim Garrison and the Space Bridges. It was Jim Hickman. It was Jim Hickman. I was there, but I was admiring the great man who was pulling it all off. And so it was it was you got the Jim Wright as just the it was Hickman. So Harriet, what would you say as someone who was involved then, how would you think about citizen diplomacy now with what's going on in Ukraine? Oh, you're you're on mute. Thank you. I can see it happening in the Ukraine. There's a lot of the ways the citizens of the Ukraine are working together to prepare for the strikes of income. They're taking care of each other. They're thoughtful. They're creative. I come to admire that Ukrainian people a lot. And we see another kind of citizen diplomacy happening within Belarus in now is the citizens are organizing to prevent the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in their country. They're beginning to organize to identify where the tactical nuclear weapons are going to be deployed, identifying those sites, working with the unions in the at the various sites to boycott and labor. The citizens, the Belarusian citizens do not like nuclear power. They do not like nuclear weapons. They're not happy about tactical nuclear weapons being brought into their country. And they're at the point of organizing to actually block the railways and the roads, trucking routes to bring them in. And then they're working organizing around the deployment sites to actually block. Because if there's one thing the citizens of Belarus don't like, it's tactical nuclear weapons in their country, the elected president of the Belarus is a woman by the name of Svetlana and his last name I can't pronounce. She strongly disapproves of bringing tactical nuclear weapons into their country. And the current president of Belarus, Yuka Shanka, is that the right pronunciation of it, is in close collaboration with Putin because the Russian forces helped put him into power and he's a military ally of Putin is really strongly disliked by the Belarusian people. He was put there by Russia, basically. And he's detested by the people of Russia. So we're seeing a growing mobilization of the Belarusian people to protect their country from nuclear weapons. And I see that activation as citizen diplomacy within Belarus. And I'm looking for ways that we can support those people in preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in that country. Yeah, I think those are important. But I would wonder whether it's citizen diplomacy in the way that we conceived it in the 1980s, where in Belarus, it's an organizing in Belarus against the government policy in Ukraine, it's an organizing among the Ukrainians given their situation. But I think what we're talking about, and Jim, you may want to come back in for this, how do we bring Americans and the Russians together at this moment? And how do we bring the Ukrainians and the Russians together at this moment? Because that's the divide that somehow needs to be bridged. But it's happening at a moment when, strangely, apparently, all communication has ceased. And that's what makes it so doubly dangerous. And because I don't see any Ukrainian Russian interactivity at the level of citizen diplomacy, nor between the United States or NATO and Russia. And I've talked to most of the people who were involved in citizen diplomacy back in the 80s and 90s and so forth. And none of them have really any idea how what we did then would be applicable to what is happening now. And so I want to probe it. And I know we're getting short of time. But my heart kind of breaks inside because, as you know, Harriet, we talked about it when I was in Washington last. And Jim and I have talked about it. I've talked with Michael and Dulcey Murphy, Kim Spencer, Vladimir Posner. And there seems to be kind of a paralysis among those who were so skillful back then in knowing even how to take some first steps, given the tension that's been built up. It's like the situation is worse now than even during the Soviet days. It's quite an extraordinary situation in which we find ourselves, which contributes to the danger. So any thoughts? Maybe, Jim, do you have any thoughts than Harriet? Well, just a comment that one of the challenges is the nature and the nature of communication, the way it happens is so completely different now than it used to be. So for example, Russian news programs find US news programs that have the suggestion that Russia is doing the right thing and they rebroadcast them in the Russian news. And Fox News is their favorite. They rebroadcast a lot of Fox News on the national news as a way of showing the Russian people who are still there that there's some people supporting what Putin is doing. Now, one of the challenges is that so many of the people who are opposed to this left Russia in the very beginning. And so the ones who are left are more prone toward supporting Russia, Mother Russia, let's say, which is in the form of Putin. But with all of the social media, it has changed the way we know everything. And so what I'm getting to is what we need is young people who understand the technology in a way to get very involved in the act in the peace activists movement, not just a bunch of old people who reflect on what happened 40 years ago, but young people who know how to communicate with their generation and bring up a kind of activist generation that wants to change things in a peaceful way, not overthrow the government and all that, but are willing to engage in conversation through a wide variety of social media. And that's something that many of us are not really good at. But it's something that's being exploited by the Russian media in a significant way. And, you know, part of what we're learning is that there are a lot of young people in Russia today who are both hesitant to express their discontent, but they're creating networks on social media in which they can express a lot of what their disappointment is about what's going on. And so that's sort of a kind of collective community that we may want to reach out to and develop relationships with, but it takes younger people who know what to do and know how to communicate in significant ways that the governments don't understand. I mean, look at the TikTok congressional hearings the other day, one of the congressman says, is this actually online? Is it on Wi-Fi? And somebody said, do you know that you're on Wi-Fi right now? And the congressman, oh, no, that can't be true. So I'm just saying that what I believe is the future is in the hands of the younger generations. And we need to stimulate them to create a kind of what Jody was talking about, a peace activist movement among younger generations and move it into the world of the Ukraine and Russia, but also the US and Russia and China. Because that, you know, these problems are going to be solved once there's some peace agreement. And we need to motivate younger generations to begin to interact on an international stage and create a platform on which people everywhere, young people can work together to create a different kind of civilization for the future, because it's a long-term process. Yeah, well put, Jim. Thank you for that. Harriet, any closing comments you'd like to make? I'm always inspired by both of you, Jim and Jim. And to take Jim's points, evolution of consciousness that we're really about, the work begins with us. The work, real citizen diplomacy begins with finding our inner quiet center that you do, Jim, with our morning 5.5 meditation. And then it's based on our values and our beliefs. And right now what unites all of us is care for Mother Earth, because the life on Earth is being destroyed, biodiversity is being lost, species are going extinct, we're on the precipice, the tipping point of possible catastrophe of loss of extinction of life on the planet of human beings and of life itself. That's got to be what brings us together. And this is a point you make very well, Jim. We have to be brought together with our common passion and love for life. What's that, which is life affirming, with the life of Mother Earth and caring for Mother Earth, because she's sustained and birthed and kept us going. And I think it's that love of our common mother and working together on environmental issues that can bring us together. I know Cynthia Lazaroff has been concerned about what unites the people of Soviet Union, of Russian America, is our love of life and of stopping global warming. And just one comment quickly, Jim, because I like what Jane Norton has said in the chap thing. What about working with youth climate change groups? Because there are youth climate change groups that have emerged and are working hard and integrate peace and climate issues together. It's not just about Mother Nature, but it's about peace and war as well. And so there are those young initiatives going on. And people like Jody and others can stimulate hopefully and inspire some of those to include the peace activist side of the climate situation that we're all in the midst of. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Harriet. That brings us to a close for today. But I would like to just leave us with this ongoing question of how peace initiatives in the past can inform us at this very critical moment now when peace is so desperately needed, but a peace movement is so conspicuously absent at any levels that would even begin to compare with what happened with Iraq or during the Cold War days. So we have, I think, a deeper dialogue to have and hope to have over the next couple of days with various other people who will be coming on is how do we create a pathway for peace? That's the bottom line. I think, as Jim very insightfully pointed out in his initial remarks, you know, if you're going to get to peace, you've got to honor the other side. Yes. You've got to lay your accusations at the door because the accusations go both ways. And so we've come to that moment in Ukraine. So that's the whole ethos of what we're seeking to achieve is not only deeper understanding, but some creative breakthrough that we can organize around en masse as we did back in the 80s to help ease the politicians into doing the most obvious thing in the world, and that is to create the protocols and treaties necessary for at least the cessation of the conflict, if not the beginnings of real peace. So that's all I mean. If I could add to that, Jim, I think we have to overcome the polarization that's taken place in our media. There's the good and the bad, and you know, you're almost being induced to hate the bad rather than, and I think we have to recognize that we are polarized on this issue and that everything we do is working toward bringing the two sides together, acknowledging both sides have made mistakes, have missed opportunities for peace, have been to blame for different parts of the stalemate that we're at now, but our work should be finding what we can agree on and finding what a negotiated settlement would actually be composed of, of the real needs of both sides, not the positions, not the arguments, recognizing on deep underlying needs of the people of both countries and really be working toward what both sides could agree on and overcome the psychological tendency to blame, project the shadow onto the other side. We have to get away from that hatred and toward bringing loving kindness and our evolved consciousness being able to deal with more and more complex. We're having to deal with very complex realities and we need to come together and work together to find something we can all agree on and I think everybody's going to agree we have to bring this to an end and we have to use our creative higher more complex order of thinking and evolving as individuals in this society to come to a solution. One last comment quickly Jim because I'm working on a course for ubiquity on citizen diplomacy and so you and I will talk further about this but I think that's one part educating people about what has been done and what can be done and how to move into that space and that's something we can do at ubiquity and so we'll talk further about it soon. Yeah. Thank you Jim. Thank you Harriet. Thank you everyone. This has been a very stimulating session. You're all welcome to the after session chat group. You'll see the link in the chat box that Stan is putting in and then we'll see you tomorrow. We've invited Larry Wilkerson who was the chief of staff to Colin Paul when he was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff back around the Iraq war and so we thought it would be good to get a military perspective from someone very seasoned and deeply immersed in that domain on what's happening and the prospects for peace. So that'll be our session tomorrow. Thank you everyone. Bye for now. See you in the afternoon. Bye bye. Thank you Harriet. Thank you Jim. Thank you Jim.