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CARASSO: I want you guys to know I'm pretty honored to be here. We--our story is really
a story of an accident in a lot of ways and I think that, you know, we're not--we were
sort of never geared or trained to be experts in this area. But we fell into something that
we couldn't ignore and have sort of begun the process of becoming experts in it. And
so, I think there's a lot to be gained from the sharing of stories. So, if it's all right
with you guys, I just want to share ours a little bit, give you guys some insight into
why we're fighting and sort of what we're doing, and then we can sort of talk a little
bit more about what can be done. My story really begins with a film called Invisible
Children. Have you guys seen Invisible Children? It was sort of this documentary that some
friends of mine had made about Northern Uganda. And they had sort of brought this documentary
to us and shown us these stories of these children who were dying in this war in Northern
Uganda. And it was sort of like, "Oh my gosh." You know, I was 23, it's like, "We got to
do something." And, you know, it's kind of that reaction that people have when they see
something that's so big, it's like, "We got to do something." That's like, "Well, what
something?" and "I don't know. Something, something. Like something big." "What's what
big?" "Like, I don't know. Big, big. Like, something historic." "Like, what's historic?"
"I don't know." You know what I mean? This whole, like, thing that you--especially when
you're young and it's like we just have to do something. It doesn't really matter what,
we just have to respond. And so what was happening in Northern Uganda at the time was kids were
being basically abducted out of their homes. And they were sleeping in these community
centers, these verandas, like, sleeping side by side to sort of escape being abducted.
And so, what Invisible Children said was for one night, all across the country, let's do
the same thing; let's leave our homes and sleep side by side and close our eyes in order
to open up the world's. And so it was like, "Cool, let's do this." We're going to do a
protest, right? Sort of this, like, global protest that none of us had ever done anything
like this before, but we're going to organize. And it was the first year that Facebook had
sort of begun the process of hitting critical mass, right? It was the very beginning and
when we sort of, like, beginning this process of not just the tech industry being connected
and not just sort of first responders being connected, but kind of the masses being connected.
And so we sent the word out and about four weeks before the protest, we had about 4,000
people signed up nationwide, which is pretty shabby. And then it just sort of hit, like
the way that things can only hit the Internet era and we saw the numbers go like this. And
so, there was this moment, the night of the protest, you know, as me and my six best friends
and--have you guys ever seen Newsies? Newsies is, like, my favorite Disney musical. And
we're sort of sitting in Austin and we, like, got our banners and our shirts, you know,
the whole thing and we're wondering, like, "Is anybody going to show up?" Right? Are
we just complete fools? We've, like, put our reputations on the line for this thing. And
we're sort of looking around like, "What's going to happen?" And all of a sudden, my
friends looked at me and they said, "Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh."
And there were just people, thousands and thousands of people coming out. It was the
largest protest for Africa in American history. Over 80,000 people came out that night. And,
you know, for many of us, it was the first time that we'd ever gotten the chance to put
our collective values on display. Right? These sort of things that we all kind of agree about
like these fundamental truths, like, sort of all people are born equal, all people are
born free. It was the first time, especially for our generation, that we'd ever gotten
the chance to sort of say that out loud. And, you know, it was kind of this moment where
we're, like, text messaging everybody like, you know, in different cities. "Are there
are thousands of people where you're at?" They're like, "Thousands of people where we're
at." "Thousands of people where you're at? Oh my gosh." Some people had just come out
and the result was that just a few weeks later, the State Department started referring to
the conflict in Northern Uganda as an emergency. First time in 22 years of war, the State Department
had acknowledged that this war was an emergency. Almost no one organizing it was over 25. And
they were sort of like, "Oh, we just changed the State Department. Right? We can do this.
What else can we do?" And so the next year, we decided to do it again, and this year,
it was even bigger and we did it in less cities so there was higher concentration. Again about
80,000 students came out. All across the country we built displacement camps out of cardboard
in every major city. And the result of that was that the State Department appointed $20
million to the peace process and a senior level diplomat, bringing the war as closest
as it had been to ending in 23 years. Almost no one organizing that was over 26. And right
about that time, a buddy of mine started a company called TOMS Shoes. Have you guys heard
of TOMS? So, it's a shoe company where for every pair of shoes they sell, they give one
to a kid who needs shoes. And so this was sort of--I'll just show this picture because
it makes me look cool. It was just--sort of the original idea was, like, elevate your
soul. Right? You're like jumping and you're giving and so soul and soul. You guys get
it? Nobody really cared, it was a stupid campaign and it never really worked. But TOMS really
worked. And so, TOMS was able to go from selling, like, a hundred shoes and in a very short
order, it just sort of hit, again, the same constituency of young people that really wanted
to help that sort of embraced this idea, and they sold 50,000 shoes. And it was like, "Oh
my gosh. Now we have to give away 50,000 shoes. How do we do that?" And so the option came
to do our first shoe drop in South Africa. And so I quit my job and hightailed out to
South Africa and ended up on this continent. So, this is the first day in South Africa.
And I just show this picture because the only way that I know of to describe this is like,
cocky little ***. You know, like a stupid white kid who doesn't know anything about
anything, but we're going to change the world, hoorah. Right? Like--and so going on to this
continent not knowing anything and for two weeks, we gave away shoes. We had 50,000 shoes
to give away, so we just gave them away. We gave away shoes and we gave away shoes and
we gave away shoes and we gave away shoes and we gave away shoes. And the thing about
shoes is that it's not water, and it's not education, right? It's not, like, sustainable
development. It's not what you want. But shoes provide this stunning moment of connection
between two human beings who would otherwise never have been connected. Right? Sort of,
I mean, this moment, these kids ran up to our van and they're, like, you know, "Hey,
hey, do you have any food? Do you have any water?" And we're like, "Ah no, but what size
shoe are you?" And they're sort of like, "Huh, we've never owned shoes," right? And it's
like, "Right. Stupid white people," like, yet again, right? It's sort of like our ignorance
kind of on full display. But you, you know, you give them these shoes and now you're a
part of each others' lives, right. It's brief, it's momentary, but there is a moment of connection.
And I think connection is maybe the currency that makes our world go round. It is not to
be underestimated in a lot of ways. And so, from there, I just wanted to get lost. I don't
know if any of you guys have ever wanted that before. That sort of, like, uncontrollable
desire to just break free and get lost. And we used this quote by Herman Melville, he
says, "It is not down on any map; true places never are." So the idea was to find true places,
right? True people. Hear sounds I've never heard before. Smell smells I never smelled
before and just go. And so we wandered. We explored and we explored. That's Hanson. Just
kind of random, we met them on the continent. Kept exploring, kept exploring and ended up
in Northern Uganda. And this is a girl named Rosaline (ph) and, you know, it was my job
to just spend a couple of weeks with Rosaline and just sort of film her and tell her story
so that the Western audience could sort of know who she was. And, you know, Rosaline
was 14. She had been born with AIDS inside a war. And we spent two weeks together and
as you do with anyone that you spend two weeks together with, right, you get very close.
And at the end of the two weeks, it's sort of pouring down rain, we're saying goodbye
and I'm so thankful for the rain because, you know, we're all crying and you don't want
the Ugandan men to think you're a sissy. And she looks me in the eyes and she says, "Sean,
our skin is a different color, but our blood is the same. You're my brother. I'm your sister."
And you know, and there's an element of--I mean, here we are, right? We're sitting--and
I just want to be sort of really frank about this, we're sitting, you know, inside Africa's
longest running war with a girl who's born with a totally treatable disease, right? And
she gets what all of our great visionaries have always gotten and so few of us understood,
right, this idea that we are all the same, right, that we are in fact one. And she's
going to die, right? This 14 year-old girl is, like, destined to almost certain death.
And the question for me, you know--I'm a young man, I'm, like, 26 at this point--it's just
sort of like, "Why?" Right? Like for what purpose is she going to die? And there's this
moment I'll never forget. You guys remember, like, Bill Gates, he had, 12 years ago, decided
to save the world, right? And no way do I want to take away from the effort, I think
it's great, but he had sort of called together all the world's experts on all of our major
issues; health, the environment, water, war, all of it. So, he's surrounded by all these
gray hairs with, like, charts and graphs and easels, and they're explaining to him all
these problems that are so entrenched. And he's sitting there with his hand on his head
and he just says, "It's just the distribution problem. Like, we can solve all of this if
we just distributed better." So, the question for me as a young man, sort of looking into
this girl's eyes was, like, "Why aren't we?" Right? And like, "Why don't we? Why haven't
we?" Now is very much to the question as I sort of continued to wander through the continent,
continued to get lost. If any of you like to dance, I beg you to go to the continent
of Africa because you will never dance here the way that they dance there. This was a
graduation ceremony in a displacement camp and these people had done this microeconomic
program and this camp had taken the GDP from zero to thriving in a matter of two years.
And so these are people who are celebrating their first shot at a job. Their first shot
at a life for themselves, right, one that they could earn on their own merit. And so
this is four in the morning with, like, dust so thick it clogs your lungs but you dance
anyway. People celebrating their first opportunity. First moment when they can have pride and
claim a job as their own. Continued to get lost, continued to get lost and ended up in
the Demographic Republic of Congo. So here's, like, the New York Times' version of Congo,
which I think is a terrible way to introduce a country, but let me give you guys, like,
vital statistics, so you have some context. Congo is--right now, it's the country--it's
a country the size of Western Europe. It's the size of the United States east of Mississippi.
So, take Mississippi, draw a straight line north, right? Go east, that's how big Congo
is. It's also home to our world's deadliest war. Currently, you're dealing with over 6.9
million people dead. This is the deadliest war since World War II, right? You're dealing
with about 1,500 people dying every single day and about 1,200 women being *** every
month. Seventy percent of the world's rapes are taking place in Congo. Of course, we knew
none of this when we walked in. We had just heard there was a lot of problems and we wanted
to stick our noses where they didn't belong and kind of explore and understand. And so,
we went in and started to--sticking our noses where they didn't belong. And this is, you
know, signs of destruction everywhere. This is a van that had been exploded by a rocket
propelled grenade case. You know, abandoned children literally by the thousands sort of
littering the streets. And on the end of the fifth day, we found a military encampment
that was holding escaped child soldiers they was beating for war crimes. So, these are
five boys who had been abducted and they had been forced to kill, right, forced to fight,
forced to force others to kill. And they had escaped. These were sort of among the most
clever ones. And they'd escaped and they had run to the National Army for refuge and the
National Army was torturing them and treated them essentially as enemies of the state.
So, we kind of freaked out. You can imagine, right? I was 26. I had never seen anything
like this before. We just started frantically calling everybody we knew, trying to get them
pulled out. You know, "You got to pull these kids out. You got to pull these kids out.
Oh my gosh, you got to call these kids--get these kids out." And no one would return our
phone calls and no one would really respond to our request because who are we? We're,
like, 26 year-olds and we don't anybody. We don't have any influence or power. And so
because no one would listen, we spent the next eight hours just listening to their stories,
right. You're sort of sitting there with them and staring them in the eyes and hearing their
stories. And, you know, storytelling is strange and storytelling is powerful. We had very,
very little in common. I grew up in San Diego, went to a university in Austin. You know,
they were born in the jungle, right, taken at 8, forced to kill at 10; at 12 they're
being tortured. But as we shared each others' stories, it's like, you know, we feel hunger
the same way, right. We feel thirst the same way. We sort of laugh at the same jokes, although
there's, like, a 30-second delay because of the translator. Right. We sort of long for
our families the same way; they had been away from theirs for four years. I had been away
from mine for about four months. As we spoke, it was sort of like the commonalities were
overwhelming. And these boys told us that the kids who were too small to carry a gun
were being sent to the frontlines armed with only a whistle. They're being sent out as
human shields. Has to make enough noise with the whistle to scare away the enemy and then
failing that, they were supposed to receive the bullets with their bodies and in following,
create a blockade for other soldiers to hide behind. You know, look, I mean, what do you
do with information like that? Like, how do you, like, even begin to process? One of the
boys had a shirt that said Extinct Forever which felt very suiting given what had happened
to his childhood. We exposed the encampment to the U.N.. The kids got pulled out. The
encampment got shut down. It was a pretty intense day, right? Certainly more intense
than any day we'd had up to that point, and I went home that night and just bawling through
tears and sort of chugging down red wine and punching holes through walls. Wrote this blog
called Falling Whistles, sent it out to about 80 friends and family. It was my Google group
at the time actually. I had set it up just before I had left. And everyone in that Google
group forwarded the blog all the way around the world. I woke up the next day and had
thousands and thousands and thousands of messages in my inbox saying, "What do we do? How do
we help? Why is this happening? What's going on?" And it was like, "***, I have no idea."
I just got here. I know nothing, right? I've never studied this region. I've never studied
their role in our world or our role in their world, their influence and sort of the way
that we've developed, our influence and the way that they've developed. And how is it
possible that I had gone through 23 years of education and never been asked to study
this vast continent? Right, I've never been asked to study this place that had really
been the center of world history for centuries when looked at through a certain prism. So,
we decided to figure it out. We made fake press passes and decided to go out. We went
out, we went out, we went out, we went out. What we discovered w as a vast country as
beautiful as anywhere I've seen. The second largest rainforest in the world, more natural
resources in Congo than anywhere else in the world. Estimate that it's $27 trillion worth
of natural resources are in Congo today. Put that in context, that's larger than the U.S.
and European GDP combined. I found a beautiful people, women who wear these, like, ornate
headscarves with almost as much as fabric as their dresses, right? Men who wear these
meticulous suits, they might live in a hut and have to walk through a muddy sort of road
in order to get to the meeting, but by the time they get to the meeting, they will have
polished their shoes and made sure that their shirt is pressed down tightly. A people group
who have been battered down for over 120 years but who carry themselves with enormous pride,
right, tremendous dignity. We also found a people group who had been pillaged by war.
Note to self, when hanging out with child soldiers, don't smile. I didn't know what
to do, I was just a little bit nervous. I've never done anything like this before. This
boy was taken at nine, this him at 19. You can see that there's not a trace of a child
left on him. These boys were both in their teens. We went deep into the base camps of
the surrounding military groups. Warlords, rebel leaders asking, "Why is this happening,
what's going on? Who's funding you? Who's behind it?" This man to my left or to my--to
my left is a man named Major Alexi (ph). Major Alexi was 21 studying poetry and philosophy
at university. In this photo, he's 29. War broke out; he went and fought for the side
he thought was most patriotic. Since then, he's done unspeakable things, right? He's
*** women and taken children, burned villages, killed thousands. You know, when you sit down
and have a cup of coffee with him, he still feels a whole like that 21-year old who was
studying poetry and philosophy, right? Is he a monster? Absolutely. Does he deserve
justice? Absolutely. The deeper we dug, the more we saw humanity in even the most evil
of creatures. This boy had been tied up and beaten by the warlord, Nkunda. We asked this
boy to draw what he had seen; he drew a tree on fire and a gun with blood coming out of
it. You can see by this time, it was a different trip from the one that we had intended for
it to be. Found war, more war, more war, and more war. This man is Nkunda; he's wanted
by the International Criminal Court. He's currently arrested in Rwanda. We spent the
day together. Found war, so much war. By the end of it, I was just ready to get the hell
out of Dodge. This is me in my first day at home with a mimosa to my side. Glad to be
back home. And what do you do? I mean, I want to, like, honestly ask you guys, like, what
do you do in a situation like this, right? You sort of, like, have this enormous amount
of new knowledge, this enormous amount of new understanding about what's really happening
and what's behind it and no resources to channel any of it, and so I just sort of went a little
bit crazy and just started writing. And I like wrote and I wrote, and I wrote, and I
wrote. And I would go to parties with my friends and I would just scream and everybody on that,
"Kids are dying, kids are dying, this is happening right now, right now, right now, this is real.
Women are being ***; children are dying at this moment at an emergency *** right
now, right now." Like, eventually, you just stop getting invited back, right? Like, who
wants to hang out with that kid? And so, in the midst of my craziness, one of my best
friends, a guy named Marcus, street artist in San Diego, he went and he got an old vintage
whistle and he gave it to me. He put it around my neck and he said, "No matter where you
go, keep those boys alive in your heart." All of a sudden, we could go to parties and
we didn't have to scream at anybody anymore, because everywhere we'd go, people would ask,
"What's the whistle?" We got a chance to speak up for the boys in a way that, you know, sort
of elevated the conversation rather than destroyed it. I started saying--basically, the whistle
became our symbol of protest as we pursued solutions in a region where they're in short
supply. We started saying, "Make their weapon your voice, be a whistleblower for peace."
We started studying this history of whistleblowers. This was us, our first day in the office.
Sort of screaming at the world, right? Our first piece of furniture was a bucket. We
studied this history of whistleblowers. People who had said what needed to be said long before
it was popular. Long before they had the answers, they said what was right because they knew
it to be true and they couldn't allow themselves not to. People who'd spoke out in defiance;
the prevailing systems and in pursuit of what could be. Sort of selling them out of our
back pockets, I was sort of like the Timex guy, like selling whistles, putting them on
people's necks and saying, "Go and speak for peace, go and speak for peace, go and speak
for peace." It worked. They wore them and they went out and everywhere they'd go, they'd
have this conversation about what was happening in Congo, a conversation they'd never had
before, and it was just explosive. We had $150. We started with $5. We raised $150.
We knew we would have to reach the entire world with what was happening. And so, a friend
of mine hitchhiked from Austin to New York City. He hitchhiked over the course of four
months into over 40 cities and he sat down with small groups of people just like this
and he said, "We don't have all the answers. In fact, we have almost none; that's all right,
but we're not going to be quiet about this problem. Join us. Be whistleblowers for peace."
He got picked up by an ex-convict in Tennessee. He got picked up by, like, these death metal
kids in Alabama, and when he told them that he didn't like death metal, they dropped him
off in front of a cop and blew pot in front of his face so that he would smell bad and
get picked up. He got picked up in Philly by a guy who bought him a jacket and a pair
of shoes because all he had was a hoodie and a holey pair of TOMS on; it was about 20 degrees
outside. We had three college students who rode their bicycles from Florida to San Diego,
stopping in every city and saying the same thing. "We don't have all the answers but
we're not going to be quiet while six million people lose their lives. Join us." We had
a kid sleep out of an attic for four months to do design work for free; that's why we
have a website. We had a kid sell his company in Houston, move out to L.A. to run finances
for free. We've now had 40 interns come from all over North America, sleep in bunk beds
and work out of our crappy little garage, demanding more of the world. It worked. They
wore them, they wore them, they wore them. And everywhere they went, they had new conversations.
The Falling Whistles campaign was born, Campaign for Peace in Congo. This is our garage, we
got desks out of dumpsters. And where we piled in enormous amounts of people. And what we
do now is we sell the whistle with the original story that was sort of that moment that made
me sort of wake up, the moment that made so many of our readers wake up, and we sell it
in stores, we sell it retail. Steven Alan, this designer came to us and he said, "I love
your whistles. Can we sell them in our stores?" And we said, "Can we do that? Is that possible?"
And he said, "Yes." So, we went to our friends at TOMS, we learned how to sell in stores.
We started selling in stores. This was in Fred Segal. We started building these income
generating museums. It says, "Could this little whistle end the world's largest war?" We built
the whole thing, floor, walls, ceilings. And what we found with this museum, for example,
was Michael Segal came to us and he said, "You know, in the three months that you've
been here, you've been in the top five selling brands of our entire year. You helped keep
Fred Segal alive." And so, the three months that we were in Fred Segal when we first launched,
we helped keep one of the most powerful retailers alive. We earned enough money to rehabilitate
267 kids, open up an office in D.C., and we educated over 20,000 people about the problem.
From nothing, right? The whole thing cost us about $200 to build.
>> Rehabilitated kids...? >> CARASSO: Yeah, I'll tell you about it.
Yup. And so we build these museums, right, in stores. This one was built in SoHo. The
cool thing about this is it's literally like eight bolts, you can pull it off the wall
and bring it to another store. It's been on rotation from store to store to store. The
stores love it because they make money; they're able to make money living out their conscience,
right? They drive press, destination, customers, and here's the most exciting part about this,
is that what we're doing is we're giving them financial incentives to educate their community
and advocate for peace. Because the more educated their community is, the more whistles they
sell. And so, we made this one in Donna Karan's store, and the cool thing about this is that,
you know, we didn't actually build this. We just emailed the files to Donna Karan's people
and because they had financial incentive, they made it themselves. So, these sorts of
decisions are happening that the things that are sort of around Congo are happening in
closed doors in D.C., right? The reason why they're able to perpetuate century after century
is because none of us know about it and the media doesn't print it. And so, what we're
saying is we're going to skip the media. We've now opened up an office in D.C. and they're
behind these closed doors getting this information, passing it to us in L.A., we'll beautify it,
make it sexy and then distribute it out to retailers to go directly into the hands of
communities. Skipping the entire media and also, in some ways, skipping the Internet
and just going right into their communities. We've built these all over the country. We
built this one in Portland, light boxes, illuminating stories that have been held in shadows for
centuries. They're very visual, very educational. Right, educating people about the roots of
the problem. What we've done in Congo is we found visionaries, young local visionaries,
who are already doing the work. We come along behind them essentially like a venture capital
firm in a lot of ways, help them professionalize, help them create world-class systems of accountability,
transparency, then we're giving them the tools they need to stop the cycles of violence inside
their region. Right, rehabilitating children now and eventually women. Program's totally
holistic. Takes them through expression therapy, job skills training, nutrition, basic education,
psychosocial support, ultimately reintegration, which is actually much harder than it sounds.
On that first day in the encampment, we found that two of the boys have fought for opposing
rebel groups, and I asked them, "Does that make you enemies?" And one of them looked
over to the one and he kissed him and said, "We are only boys. How can be enemies?" And
it was sort of like ballgame. Right, that's the whole deal right there. If we can connect
people before they become defenders of the systems that sustain them, hold them accountable
for those connections, we'll live in a different world in 10 years. Because this is real, right?
I mean, this happened. The turn of the century bicycles became very popular and then beyond
that, the automobile. And so, there is a new need for rubber. And what Mark Twain said
is "The horseless carriage has brought the world closer together." What he's obviously
referring to is the way the automobile has changed the way our world operated, right?
Cars, changed the way our communities operate. He was also referring, too, is that in our
pursuit of rubber for the automobile, 10 million people were killed in the Congo. From 1880
to 1900, 20 years, there was a holocaust of almost unprecedented of proportions, 10 million
people were killed. It was literally half the country. The same thing has happened today.
Oh, real quick, there--when the--when they didn't turn in enough rubber, their hands
were cut off. This was sort of their punishment for not bringing in enough of the rubber.
We put in place a man who stole billions and billions of dollars of resources; made sure
that Western companies had those resources to thrive. This is real and this happened
as a result. The same thing is happening today. The resources in Congo are what are used to
create many of our electronic products and it's the illicit trading of these minerals
that fund this war. Minerals necessary for processes, coltan, cazurite, tungsten, tin.
This technology has brought the world closer together in extraordinary ways; you guys know
it more than almost anyone else. My blog never would have been read by thousands of people
had we not had that capacity. The resources necessary for this technology is causing another
genocide, another holocaust of mass proportions. So, what we did was we took the "W" from "We
the People" or we took the "P" from "People" and turned it into an "F." We are Falling
Whistles for a freer world. How the unfree people ever become free? They're whisteblowing,
right? The individual protest and the collective rising of a people group. And so, I'm here
at Google asking for your partnership in solving one of the deadliest problems of our time.
It's a hell of a challenge, but I think that most of you are probably entrepreneurs in
one way or another. And if you are, then you love problem solving. So do we. And there
are areas that you guys have capacities in that we absolutely don't. So, what we're doing
right now is we sell the whistle. We use the money to partner up with local visionaries
to stop cycles of violence in the region. We're also creating sustainable distribution
that has the potential to be global through retail. The key insight here is that whoever
controls--because you're dealing with a problem that's never been talked about in mass, right,
by the mass media. So whoever in control of distribution of information controls perception,
and whoever controls perception controls paradigm, and whoever controls paradigm at a pretty
fundamental level controls reality. For those us who want to change reality such as living
in a 21st Century without mass atrocities, living in a 21st Century without genocide,
all we want to do is create new distribution channels for new kinds of information that
psychologically impact people in new ways. That's why I think retail is so important
because it's outside of the paradox of choice, right? You're not at a newsstand, you're not
at a bookstore and you're not on the Internet but there's so much information coming at
you. You're sort of like hanging out with your family or your friends or you're walking
to a beautiful store with beautiful people and beautiful lighting and they're smiling
and all of a sudden, you're engaged in a subject that you've never heard of before. You're
encountering this museum sort of educating you about something that you've never even
imagined before and you're open, the way that you wouldn't be otherwise. So, we're going
to use retail to build what we hope will be the widest, broadest, most inclusive coalition
in history. It will have to be in order to deal with the problem of this size, demanding
an end to this war. There are enormous technological solutions available. So, one of them is this.
This will be my challenge and I want to hear all of your thoughts afterwards. But in 2011,
in September, Congo will be having its election. And in Congo today there are more peacekeepers
than anywhere else in the world, 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers. The U.N. is spending about $1.2
billion on peacekeeping in Congo and they're not doing almost anything. In fact, in many
ways, they're counterproductive. But the boots are on the ground, the people are there, right?
The capacity to respond exists in a way that it doesn't anywhere else in the world. So,
here's the idea. Let's get Android technology with a live streaming app into every--into
the hands of every single election monitor in Congo and let's have real-time, live streaming
election monitoring so that every form of coercion, violence, corruption can be immediately
reported and we can send that enormous amount of people that we have immediately there and
respond. And let's help the Congolese people have the freest and fairest elections in African
history. It would be historic. It would be world changing and only an organization like
Google could help pull it off. So that's what we're asking. We're asking for solidarity.
In many ways, charity is demeaning, right? It is--it has guilt, it has pity and I hope
none of you feel any of that. I hope none of you feel that from us because we don't
have any of that with us. The people who we're working with in Congo are nothing short of
extraordinary. They don't deserve our pity and they don't deserve our guilt. I mean,
think about how hard it was to start an organization in America where we had everything going for
us; they did it in a war zone where they had nothing going for them. They are visionaries.
So, what we are saying is we're looking into their eyes and we're saying, "We are with
you," right? Until the boots are off your throat, we are with you. Solidarity. Yves
here as well, I'd love for you guys to meet Yves afterwards. Yves is from the Congo, 10
years old; he left because there was war. And he has an extraordinary story that I'd
love for him to share with you guys. But what we are about in the very end, in the final
measure, is free men and free women using the thing that is most fundamental to our
freedom, our speech, in order to fight for others. There's a short film that I'd love
to show you guys, if you guys have a couple more minutes and then we can talk a little
bit and do some question and answer. Would that be cool? Great. Can you hit it?
>> Welcome to our program. >> My friend Sean had just gotten back from
the Congo. An empty warehouse, listening to reports from the ground. We moved in to understand
the deadliest war in our world, and what we could do to help.
>> I'm calling out for my native country, country I call home from a continent that
we all call home. You and me, me and we, we're the free, so hear me. An American seeks this
war now. >> The great war of Africa fought on the hills
and plains of the Eastern Congo, this kills more people than any other conflict since
the Second World War. And they're still killing there.
>> Mortality survey found as many as 5.4 million people have died from war related causes in
the Congo. >> Armies of business. They went into Congo
not to track down killers but to see the country's unbelievably immense mineral wealth, to grab
it, and to sell it out to New York, to London, to Paris, to the developing world. People
have looked to Congo for over a hundred years and they've seen a great big pile of riches
with some black people inconveniently sitting on top. This is not a distant type of war
that has nothing to do with you. It's a war whose trail of blood leads absolutely directly
to our world and indeed to your own apartment. >> Militia groups are targeting civilians
and there is widespread killing right in our midst.
>> Men no longer fighting each other so much but instead targeting the other side's women.
>> For Congolese children, the tragedy is endless.
>> Massacre in their villages by machetes or recruited as child soldiers. Hundreds of
thousands of children are victim and many have become murderers.
>> The child soldiers then told us that the kids too small to carry a gun were being sent
to the frontlines armed with only a whistle. >> An emergency exists right now.
>> 5.4 million people have died from war related causes in the Congo since 1998.
>> We didn't have much. >> That's true.
>> But out of
the void, an idea. >> Sent to the frontlines armed with only
a whistle. >> Yes I lay down, I lay down.
>> Hear me, brothers and sisters. Their weapon could be our voice.
>> To try to take it on here. >> We did what anyone would. We sold the whistle
to rehabilitate the most vulnerable. >> We have to sing up here.
>> And for all the children in Congo, I say we should come together and go back to rebuild
our country. >> Lord, have mercy.
>> We found Congolese visionaries and partnered with them to rehabilitate hundreds of children
and lead the future generation. >> Lord, have mercy.
>> This is only the beginning. What we need is peace.
>> But as the broadcast continued, we knew that there is more for all of us to do.
>> And it's a real disgrace to us because last time there was this scale of mass slaughter
in Congo, was when the Belgians colonized it and killed 10 million people.
>> So, the situation that occurred under King Leopold a hundred years ago is basically what
you've got in Congo today. >> There were mass campaigns across the developed
world led by people like Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle. Then there were questions asked
of Senate. There were huge mass mutinies in London. The same thing has happened in our
lifetimes and we've done virtually nothing. >> We needed a symbol that would stand for
peace and drive towards the end of the largest war in the world. And the whistle, it sounded
like this. >> If we believe as they believe that all
are born free, then give us a day for peace. >> We didn't have all the answers but dreamed
that Falling Whistles could turn towards peace in Congo with four forward steps. First, we
must educate. >> The torch has been passed to a new generation
of American, unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights.
>> Our past is filled with the history of whistleblowers standing up against impossible
odds. We will learn from these giants and published solutions from better minds than
our own. We call it the free world leader towards ending the violence in the Congo.
To educate is one thing but we knew we have to get the message out for a free Congo. We
have to disseminate the idea that peace is possible. So, we build museums in the heart
of retail stories, telling a story of Congo and the path to peace. The message is out
there and brave men and women are responding individually. However, we need a place to
congregate together around ideas that will lead to peace, like the speakeasies of old
gathering in defiance of unjust law. Whistler societies will grow to gather people to participate
in solutions and end the violence of an unjust war. And finally, free men and free women
who'll use that which is most fundamental to our freedom, our speech. Speak truth to
power and advocate. We will go on to petition lawmakers for conflict free electronics and
stamp our protest towards a full resolution, not stopping until that final day, the day
we see peace in Congo. >> We are all immigrants, we are all refugees.
My refugees have to free. Be a whistleblower for peace.
>> Most of our countries now face the same problem of a swiftly changing world. Same
question of how to bring our abundance and our technological progress to the fulfillment
of all men and the liberation of all mankind. So, I come here to Africa learning to live
together in mutual respect for the rights and the well-being of all of our people.
>> Rehabilitate, educate, disseminate, congregate, advocate. If this wheel is rolling then we
are on the move and peace is the new frontier. We believe. Do you?
>> CARASSO: Thank you, truly, for giving us time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, guys.