[00:00:00.03]
[film reel rolling]

[00:00:11.03]
- I think this moment is
the biggest opportunity

[00:00:16.09]
I have experienced in my lifetime

[00:00:18.09]
to make major change for justice.

[00:00:21.07]
♪ ♪

[00:00:24.07]
If you look at history,

[00:00:26.04]
the biggest positive changes happen

[00:00:29.07]
in periods of enormous polarization.

[00:00:32.08]
I'm thinking about the climate crisis,

[00:00:34.08]
and there's a reason
for standing right here,

[00:00:37.05]
because this bank is
financing the development

[00:00:41.00]
of fossil fuels that's responsible

[00:00:43.02]
for the wildfires in California,

[00:00:45.04]
for the floods right here in Pennsylvania.

[00:00:48.01]
They are creating the problem right now

[00:00:50.08]
by financing the problem.

[00:00:52.06]
Polarization is a time
when we can stop them,

[00:00:55.02]
because we can build the mass movements

[00:00:57.04]
that are needed to do that.

[00:00:59.02]
- [Sara] George is a force,

[00:01:01.03]
unequivocally committed to justice.

[00:01:03.07]
♪ ♪

[00:01:07.08]
- [Zein] He's big and he's unapologetic.

[00:01:10.04]
- [Dwight] He is a rebel.

[00:01:11.06]
[protesters chanting]
♪ ♪

[00:01:13.05]
He's got the full jersey and warmup pants,

[00:01:15.07]
he's got everything, the
headband that says "Rebel."

[00:01:17.07]
That's who he is.

[00:01:19.01]
- [Dwayne] I think George
wants to see a world

[00:01:20.03]
where everybody's at peace,
that nobody's in poverty,

[00:01:22.06]
or suffering, that
everybody can be recognized

[00:01:25.02]
for who they are and respected for that.

[00:01:27.04]
- [Johnny] George's big vision

[00:01:28.07]
is that all the movements get stronger

[00:01:31.02]
and join together into
a movement of movements

[00:01:34.00]
that's able to ultimately win the day,

[00:01:36.05]
so that we get to live in the
world that we wanna live in.

[00:01:39.00]
- [George] We're not slaves
to conventional thinking.

[00:01:41.03]
People will spontaneously innovate.

[00:01:44.01]
- [Alexa] Change does
happen in fits and starts,

[00:01:46.07]
but it's the kind of steady
year in and year out work

[00:01:50.08]
that I think George has
been doing for decades

[00:01:53.04]
that has had an impact on the world.

[00:01:56.03]
- [Dwayne] Fighting around disarmament,

[00:01:58.02]
fighting around civil rights,

[00:01:59.07]
fighting for LGBTQIA rights,

[00:02:01.09]
he's still going strong at 85 today.

[00:02:04.05]
You have to be deeply rooted in hope,

[00:02:07.02]
and you've got to love humanity enough

[00:02:09.00]
that you wanna see humanity do better.

[00:02:11.01]
- We don't deserve the
United States of America

[00:02:13.09]
the way it is right now.

[00:02:14.09]
We deserve a transformed United States,

[00:02:17.08]
but we can only do it with huge
numbers of people in motion

[00:02:22.04]
to take on the forces that oppose us.

[00:02:25.06]
Let's do it.

[00:02:26.05]
♪ ♪

[00:02:38.06]
[protesters talking]
[train clanking]

[00:02:43.07]
[train horn honking]

[00:02:47.01]
- Chester was Pennsylvania's
first city that was founded.

[00:02:50.08]
William Penn came here, and
Martin Luther King came here.

[00:02:53.01]
Have a rich history,
but nobody knows that.

[00:02:56.00]
The residents don't know that,

[00:02:57.06]
because they were told their
value is what they see.

[00:03:00.09]
And when they see their
environment was full of trash,

[00:03:03.08]
they feel like they're trash.

[00:03:05.03]
They feel like they're not worth anything.

[00:03:06.09]
- Chester has been an
intentionally defunded

[00:03:10.00]
toxic dumping ground

[00:03:11.09]
because it is a predominantly Black city.

[00:03:15.00]
[protesters cheering]
♪ ♪

[00:03:15.08]
- Our existence on this
planet is being put

[00:03:18.03]
into increasing question, of
course, by the economic elite.

[00:03:22.02]
- The oil refinery is
owned by Delta Airline.

[00:03:25.04]
Guess who's the biggest
investor in Delta Airline?

[00:03:28.01]
- Vanguard!
- Vanguard.

[00:03:30.01]
- Chester is a majority Black city,

[00:03:32.02]
it is a textbook case of
environmental injustice.

[00:03:36.09]
There's an oil refinery,
there's a chemical plant,

[00:03:40.02]
there's an incinerator.

[00:03:41.08]
Industry after industry
polluting the community,

[00:03:44.09]
and when we started to dig into it

[00:03:46.09]
we realized that most of them
are Vanguard investments.

[00:03:50.04]
Vanguard is one of the biggest
asset managers in the world.

[00:03:53.07]
- We want everything that
every other human being wants,

[00:03:57.07]
the right to live in a
clean and decent place.

[00:04:00.09]
And we got the frickin' right to breathe!

[00:04:03.01]
[protesters applauding]

[00:04:04.00]
- We are here the very
first day of this long walk.

[00:04:08.01]
- In the tradition of the
civil rights movement,

[00:04:10.02]
we decided to have a walk
from the city of Chester

[00:04:13.09]
to Vanguard's headquarters in Malvern.

[00:04:16.09]
- I was barely out of my teenage years

[00:04:19.08]
when I was recruited into a long walk.

[00:04:22.06]
The cause was that there was
leukemia being caused in babies

[00:04:27.03]
by nuclear testing in the atmosphere.

[00:04:30.00]
That long walk gathered
energy in such a way

[00:04:34.00]
that the movement could grow,
and the movement won.

[00:04:38.07]
And that's what this long
walk is about, as well.

[00:04:41.07]
♪ You gotta walk the walk ♪

[00:04:43.06]
A walk not only gets publicity,

[00:04:45.07]
but it also builds people's confidence

[00:04:49.01]
in each other and in themselves.

[00:04:51.01]
It's a safe and smart way
of changing the world.

[00:04:55.02]
♪ We're gonna live our lives for justice ♪

[00:04:58.06]
♪ Live our lives for justice ♪

[00:05:02.00]
- It takes a leader of a certain kind

[00:05:04.00]
to actually cultivate and
nurture other leaders.

[00:05:06.09]
♪ Never turning ♪

[00:05:08.01]
George has so much wisdom,
he has so much experience,

[00:05:10.08]
but I've seen him lead by following.

[00:05:14.08]
- Woo!
[protesters cheering]

[00:05:17.02]
He wants to see everyone
lead in their communities

[00:05:20.04]
in big, bold, visionary ways.

[00:05:23.04]
- My dad is such a good Quaker.

[00:05:25.02]
He's such a good Quaker.

[00:05:27.00]
It was just such a funny thing,

[00:05:28.03]
like, what does it mean to
be a good Quaker, right?

[00:05:31.07]
What I think it means
is to have integrity,

[00:05:35.09]
to, like, live your purpose.

[00:05:39.07]
It doesn't mean that
you're a perfect being.

[00:05:41.09]
It's not about an ego trip.

[00:05:43.04]
It's not about, like, "How
do I get on the front page?"

[00:05:46.04]
It's really about, "What is
Spirit calling on me to do?"

[00:05:50.05]
And that's part of his Quaker
activist special sauce.

[00:05:55.01]
♪ Turning back ♪

[00:05:56.04]
♪ Never turning back ♪

[00:05:59.01]
[traffic noise]
♪ ♪

[00:06:06.07]
He's lived this incredibly
courageous, big life

[00:06:11.06]
that his parents could
never have imagined for him.

[00:06:14.09]
- So this is the house where I grew up.

[00:06:19.01]
Full of memories, and a house
with a lot of joy in it.

[00:06:25.06]
The town I grew up in

[00:06:26.08]
is a small town surrounded
by huge piles of slate.

[00:06:32.06]
I come from a tribe of miners.

[00:06:35.05]
My uncles, my grandfathers,

[00:06:37.09]
my dad had all spent at least
part of their working lives

[00:06:42.01]
in slate mines, so it was a very robust

[00:06:45.04]
working class identification.

[00:06:48.09]
Bangor had no Black
people in its boundaries,

[00:06:51.09]
it was all white people,

[00:06:53.05]
and so this town had a lot of racism.

[00:06:56.02]
♪ ♪

[00:06:57.05]
Well, my dad believed in racial equality,

[00:07:00.05]
and he was a very argumentative Dad.

[00:07:02.03]
I learned to argue from him.

[00:07:04.00]
And one of the ways that he would like to

[00:07:05.09]
stir things up at the
workplace was he would say,

[00:07:08.02]
"I have an idea.

[00:07:09.05]
"I want Ralph Bunche,"

[00:07:11.00]
who was the best known Black person

[00:07:12.07]
in American political life at that time,

[00:07:15.00]
"to run for President so
I could vote for him."

[00:07:18.05]
Everybody would turn on him

[00:07:20.03]
and just eeally, really rag on him

[00:07:22.09]
for the very preposterous idea

[00:07:25.05]
that a Black person should
be in the White House.

[00:07:27.04]
And he came home very proud
to tell us all about it,

[00:07:30.07]
and we were, like, cheering him on.

[00:07:33.09]
I was brought up by a mom
who was extremely religious

[00:07:38.07]
and very connected to
the Evangelical Church.

[00:07:42.00]
♪ ♪

[00:07:44.03]
This is the church I grew up in.

[00:07:45.08]
♪ ♪

[00:07:48.02]
I was very much at home in my church.

[00:07:53.00]
This window is really central for me,

[00:07:55.04]
because it was a totally
caring presentation of Jesus.

[00:08:00.08]
That was what I wanted,

[00:08:02.04]
a God who cared about me
and cared about all of us.

[00:08:06.03]
♪ ♪

[00:08:07.08]
At age 12, I stood out as a
particularly religious boy

[00:08:12.05]
who also liked to talk.

[00:08:14.08]
Some of the elders in the church thought

[00:08:17.09]
I might have the makings
of being a child preacher.

[00:08:21.06]
And so the minister told me,

[00:08:23.08]
"George, a month from now,

[00:08:25.09]
"you're going to be in the pulpit

[00:08:27.08]
"and you're going to deliver a sermon."

[00:08:29.08]
♪ ♪

[00:08:34.01]
I prayed earnestly for a theme,

[00:08:36.04]
a message that God wanted me
to bring to the congregation,

[00:08:40.00]
and what came to me most clearly was

[00:08:42.06]
that God wanted me to tell
people that it was His will

[00:08:47.05]
that there should be racial
equality in the land.

[00:08:52.02]
And so that was the sermon I wrote.

[00:08:56.04]
My heart began to pound

[00:08:57.09]
when I opened the tall
doors to the sanctuary

[00:09:01.01]
and walked to the front,

[00:09:03.00]
the organ swelling on the
early notes of the Prelude.

[00:09:06.08]
The Minister and I sat in
matching heavy oak chairs,

[00:09:11.01]
as hard and uncomfortable

[00:09:12.08]
as much the theology that inspired them.

[00:09:15.06]
[George chuckles]

[00:09:16.05]
My legs were going like this.

[00:09:17.08]
They were shaking.

[00:09:18.07]
I was really terrified.

[00:09:20.08]
I felt very much like a 12-year-old.

[00:09:23.02]
[laughing]

[00:09:25.01]
Finally, the moment
for the sermon arrived,

[00:09:27.06]
and I went for it, lacking the confidence

[00:09:30.02]
to release my full
passion but nevertheless

[00:09:33.05]
speaking loudly and emphatically.

[00:09:36.08]
"God", I preached,
"wants racial equality."

[00:09:41.04]
I cited biblical references

[00:09:43.02]
and what I thought was common sense.

[00:09:46.04]
I couldn't tell from looking
at the faces of the grownups

[00:09:49.02]
how they felt about what I was saying.

[00:09:52.03]
As the nervousness lessened,
I thought to myself

[00:09:55.03]
that the sermon was coherent,

[00:09:57.05]
persuasive, an airtight case.

[00:10:01.07]
After the final hymn, I went
with the Minister to the door

[00:10:04.09]
of the church to shake hands
as people left the service.

[00:10:08.05]
Did I pass my audition?

[00:10:11.00]
Would I be encouraged to
become a boy preacher?

[00:10:15.03]
No one commented on the sermon

[00:10:17.07]
except in the most general
and condescending ways.

[00:10:22.01]
I expected the preacher and the elders

[00:10:24.00]
who had asked me to preach

[00:10:25.06]
to circle up and
congratulate me on the sermon

[00:10:29.02]
and discuss next steps in my
formation as a boy preacher.

[00:10:33.09]
Instead, when the last member
left, they hastily dispersed.

[00:10:40.02]
The message was clear: "Don't
call us, we'll call you."

[00:10:46.08]
I couldn't understand
what was so objectionable

[00:10:50.06]
about the nature of the
sermon that I preached,

[00:10:54.07]
and figuring that out
was an important part

[00:10:58.02]
of my adolescence, realizing, yes,

[00:11:01.09]
God does want racial equality,
but that doesn't mean

[00:11:04.09]
that all His people are ready for that.

[00:11:07.03]
♪ ♪

[00:11:10.02]
- Growing up in a white
working class town,

[00:11:13.04]
he was like a fish out of water.

[00:11:15.05]
He would just put himself out there

[00:11:18.02]
even though he was so different,

[00:11:21.03]
which I think sometimes was lonely.

[00:11:23.01]
♪ ♪
[birds chirping]

[00:11:26.08]
[book pages turning]

[00:11:30.04]
- Oh my gosh, I looked like such a geek.

[00:11:34.06]
I was a geek.

[00:11:36.03]
And a fun loving one, if
that's possible to be both.

[00:11:39.04]
[laughing]

[00:11:41.03]
George Lakey, band, librarian,
student director of the band,

[00:11:47.00]
"'Don't be a conformist'

[00:11:48.08]
"will undoubtedly be the
advice George will give.

[00:11:52.00]
"His favorite pastimes are
music, literature, and talking.

[00:11:55.08]
"For the latter of these
avocations, however,

[00:11:58.06]
"he will be longest remembered."

[00:12:01.04]
[laughing]
♪ ♪

[00:12:07.07]
- One of the things about
George that I find intriguing

[00:12:09.07]
is that this is a man that
can go in any community

[00:12:12.03]
and build relationships.

[00:12:13.07]
♪ ♪

[00:12:16.05]
I was fascinated when I found out

[00:12:18.01]
that he went to Cheyney University,

[00:12:19.09]
the oldest Black
university in the country.

[00:12:23.07]
George went to Cheyney in the '50s,

[00:12:26.01]
when that would've been
unheard of for a white person

[00:12:28.06]
to go to a Black university.

[00:12:30.04]
And I think that that says
something very much about him,

[00:12:32.09]
that there's a deep desire

[00:12:34.05]
to be with the other and to be the other.

[00:12:37.01]
♪ ♪

[00:12:38.06]
- I was the only white
student in the dorm,

[00:12:40.09]
and as it turned out

[00:12:42.00]
there were students
who didn't want me here

[00:12:44.06]
because they found it a relief

[00:12:46.07]
not to have white people
around to worry about,

[00:12:48.08]
and then there were students
who really welcomed me.

[00:12:51.08]
So I just threw myself
into the campus life.

[00:12:55.00]
Lots going on intellectually,
lots going on socially.

[00:12:58.01]
I became the pianist for the
choir, and loved it here.

[00:13:02.02]
Of course, I must have
made a zillion mistakes,

[00:13:04.07]
I must have been very annoying.

[00:13:06.09]
But I was lapping up new experience.

[00:13:09.07]
♪ ♪

[00:13:13.07]
♪ ♪

[00:13:16.01]
When I was in college, I was searching.

[00:13:19.09]
I wasn't so sure that there was a God,

[00:13:22.05]
as I had been earlier,

[00:13:24.04]
and I was curious about how other people

[00:13:26.06]
dealt with that question.

[00:13:29.02]
There was no church of my
denomination in that college town,

[00:13:32.03]
and so each Sunday I would
go to a different one.

[00:13:34.06]
I'd find out, what are
the Presbyterians up to?

[00:13:36.04]
What are the Baptists up to?

[00:13:37.06]
And so I was sampling
all these different ones.

[00:13:40.04]
One of them was a Quaker meeting.

[00:13:42.04]
♪ ♪

[00:13:43.09]
And without any orientation,
I was amazed that people

[00:13:47.09]
just sat there silently.

[00:13:49.02]
[laughing]

[00:13:50.01]
I kept waiting for the service to start,

[00:13:52.04]
and then I got "Oh, yes,
it's already started."

[00:13:58.03]
In a Quaker meeting, people sit in silence

[00:14:00.07]
until someone's moved to speak and share.

[00:14:07.05]
I was used to quiet being
just an intermission

[00:14:10.01]
between something happening.

[00:14:12.05]
And instead, what I found
in that Quaker meeting was

[00:14:15.04]
that it was the quiet that was happening.

[00:14:20.03]
It was in Quaker meeting
that I went deeper.

[00:14:22.05]
I felt more responsiveness
from Spirit, more guidance.

[00:14:27.05]
♪ ♪

[00:14:32.06]
On the way out,

[00:14:34.04]
one of the things on the
bulletin board was a message

[00:14:38.00]
that Quakers should be
writing their Congress members

[00:14:41.03]
to oppose the military draft.

[00:14:44.00]
And I thought, oh, that's right.

[00:14:45.07]
Quakers are pacifists.

[00:14:48.00]
Well, that's not me then.

[00:14:50.04]
That's really a kind of a
ridiculous, off the wall idea.

[00:14:54.08]
My dad had been in the
military in World War II.

[00:14:57.09]
I'd actually lost an
uncle in World War II.

[00:15:01.02]
Everybody in my family assumed,

[00:15:03.02]
as did the mainstream
of the whole country,

[00:15:05.04]
that the military way is
the way to defend yourself

[00:15:08.00]
and violence is necessary.

[00:15:10.09]
I spent a year wrestling with
this question of pacifism,

[00:15:14.06]
and it seemed that the
moral weight is on the side

[00:15:17.08]
of trying something other than
hurting or killing someone,

[00:15:22.02]
which is actually very hard to justify

[00:15:24.08]
if there's an alternative.

[00:15:26.01]
♪ ♪

[00:15:28.04]
When I was 19, I spent the
summer with a Quaker work camp.

[00:15:34.00]
It was in Lynn, Massachusetts,
which has a wonderful beach,

[00:15:37.04]
and I loved walking on that beach

[00:15:40.06]
when I needed alone time.

[00:15:43.07]
Something that was very
much on my mind was,

[00:15:46.05]
what's my life about?

[00:15:49.00]
And it really came to a head one night.

[00:15:52.08]
I walked for hours and hours,

[00:15:55.04]
back and forth, looking at the sea,

[00:15:58.00]
and asking God,
"What am I really to do?"

[00:16:01.07]
And the message became clear as crystal.

[00:16:06.02]
My life was to be about social change,

[00:16:09.07]
about moving society toward justice.

[00:16:12.07]
♪ ♪

[00:16:14.02]
That was to be my mission.

[00:16:15.09]
- No more fossil fuels!

[00:16:17.09]
- [Protestors] No more fossil fuels!

[00:16:19.04]
- Keep it in the ground!

[00:16:20.09]
- [Protestors] Keep it in the ground!

[00:16:22.05]
- [George] I've been
on a Grandparents' Walk

[00:16:24.05]
for climate justice.

[00:16:25.09]
- The environment is
connected to everything.

[00:16:28.03]
There's no economic justice
without climate justice.

[00:16:31.05]
- [Protester] Yes, that's right.

[00:16:32.08]
- Our children need to be
studying in healthy environments,

[00:16:36.08]
not in environments where there's asbestos

[00:16:39.03]
dripping down from the ceiling.

[00:16:40.06]
- [George] The grandparents among us,

[00:16:42.01]
and in some cases great-grandparents,

[00:16:43.08]
like I'm a great-grandparent,

[00:16:44.09]
are just thrilled to be on
this particular mission,

[00:16:48.06]
being out front about how deeply we care

[00:16:52.01]
about the young ones having a future.

[00:16:54.08]
[protesters chanting]
♪ ♪

[00:16:56.07]
Looming climate disaster
is a pressure that means

[00:17:00.07]
that we don't really have much choice

[00:17:03.00]
about whether we change.

[00:17:04.01]
♪ ♪
[rhythmic drumming]

[00:17:06.06]
With sea levels rising,
we can't just, like,

[00:17:09.04]
"Oh yes, well, let's do our
polite little tea parties."

[00:17:12.07]
It will be disaster after
disaster, larger and larger,

[00:17:15.04]
until everybody gets it
that we have to change

[00:17:18.05]
and change drastically.

[00:17:20.02]
[protesters chanting]

[00:17:21.06]
- [Ingrid] So there are a couple ways

[00:17:22.05]
I feel like people come at protest,

[00:17:24.02]
and some it's really about stopping a harm

[00:17:26.06]
and we have to do that.

[00:17:27.08]
There's another piece though,
and that's about the hope.

[00:17:31.01]
What do we wanna create as a society?

[00:17:33.03]
It's also about love, and about vision,

[00:17:35.08]
and about what does liberation
for all of us look like?

[00:17:39.01]
- [George] I expect that at 105

[00:17:41.08]
I'll be here in my
wheelchair doing something

[00:17:44.06]
because I think everyone's responsibility

[00:17:47.06]
is to continue to be a
citizen until we die.

[00:17:50.03]
Why not?

[00:17:51.03]
We can die as Americans.

[00:17:52.07]
♪ ♪

[00:17:54.09]
[police siren wailing]

[00:17:58.06]
I really love my country,

[00:18:00.09]
and I so much want for it
to live up to its potential.

[00:18:05.03]
[police siren wailing]

[00:18:08.02]
♪ ♪

[00:18:11.07]
Getting mentored by Quakers

[00:18:14.03]
meant new opportunities opening up,

[00:18:17.05]
and one of them was going to an

[00:18:19.06]
American Friends Service
Committee summer youth project.

[00:18:23.08]
One of the first things
I did was fall in love

[00:18:25.08]
with another college
student, a woman from Norway.

[00:18:30.00]
- He was tall, gangly,
had a very short crew cut,

[00:18:34.01]
and he played the piano,

[00:18:35.09]
and he admitted that he didn't
even know where Oslo was.

[00:18:41.04]
[laughing]

[00:18:42.05]
- I was still, I was
still that small-town boy,

[00:18:45.03]
but nevertheless, I was
enormously attracted to her

[00:18:48.08]
and she was happy to tell
me where her country was.

[00:18:51.07]
[laughing]

[00:18:53.02]
- But I forgave him pretty soon.

[00:18:55.09]
- [George] Berit and I had
a marvelous summer together

[00:18:58.08]
getting to know each other.

[00:19:00.03]
- By that time, it
started to be real clear

[00:19:03.00]
that this was not a
fly-by-night relationship,

[00:19:05.09]
so he proposed.

[00:19:09.03]
I thought about it for a
minute, and I said yes.

[00:19:13.00]
Then we had only a few more weeks together

[00:19:15.06]
before I have to get on the
ship to go back to Norway.

[00:19:20.01]
- [George] So I thought,
well, I will come to Norway,

[00:19:22.05]
and we can get married and live there,

[00:19:24.08]
and then I can get to know your family

[00:19:26.05]
and get to know your
language and your culture

[00:19:29.01]
and all of that.

[00:19:30.04]
And who knows what the future will bring,

[00:19:32.01]
but that's what we'll do.

[00:19:33.09]
- [Berit] While he was in Norway,

[00:19:35.04]
he was teaching music
at a local high school,

[00:19:39.04]
and he was also starting
his sociology studies

[00:19:42.00]
at the University of Oslo.

[00:19:44.01]
He got to know somebody called Gene Sharp,

[00:19:46.04]
who was a researcher on
peace and nonviolence.

[00:19:49.06]
- I say nonviolent
struggle is armed struggle,

[00:19:52.07]
only with this type of struggle one fights

[00:19:55.02]
with psychological weapons,
social weapons,

[00:19:58.05]
economic weapons and political weapons,

[00:20:01.08]
and that this is ultimately more powerful

[00:20:04.05]
against oppression, injustice and tyranny

[00:20:09.00]
than is violence.

[00:20:11.06]
- [Berit] And so it really
got George into studying

[00:20:14.06]
some of that work.

[00:20:16.04]
And then of course he
lived in Norway long enough

[00:20:18.06]
to see the different government

[00:20:20.02]
under the social safety
network system in Norway.

[00:20:25.00]
- And by the time two thirds
of that year had passed,

[00:20:28.04]
I was clear that Norway was in great shape

[00:20:32.06]
and that the US was the
country that needed me.

[00:20:36.00]
- I think he's always
had a sense of mission.

[00:20:41.01]
And I think the other thing is he always--

[00:20:44.01]
for better or for worse, always
has a sense that he's right.

[00:20:48.00]
[laughing]

[00:20:51.00]
We didn't really talk about it too much.

[00:20:52.08]
George decided that the action
was on this side of the ocean

[00:20:55.08]
and so we were gonna go back here.

[00:20:57.08]
[jet engine rumbling]
♪ ♪

[00:21:02.05]
[indistinct chatter]

[00:21:08.01]
- [News Reporter] It was unprovoked,

[00:21:09.09]
but this is what Russian
President Vladimir Putin

[00:21:13.00]
unleashed on Ukraine.

[00:21:14.03]
[explosions echoing]

[00:21:15.06]
And there are civilian casualties.

[00:21:17.07]
Local officials say this
apartment building...

[00:21:19.08]
- Good morning, very glad to be here.

[00:21:23.07]
Ukraine has been heavy on my heart,

[00:21:26.07]
as it no doubt has been for many of you.

[00:21:30.02]
It's been hard to watch.

[00:21:36.07]
Especially from a distance,

[00:21:38.05]
because I'm an activist.
I like to be involved.

[00:21:42.05]
But one way I can honor their struggle

[00:21:45.03]
is to learn what I can from it.

[00:21:48.09]
And because I'm a Quaker,
an important starting point

[00:21:52.09]
in learning about anything that's going on

[00:21:56.03]
is to go to that place of Spirit.

[00:21:59.09]
Spirit leads me in making
the key decisions of my life.

[00:22:05.02]
And I turn to Spirit for
that kind of guidance.

[00:22:09.04]
- George, one question that
didn't get asked at the assembly

[00:22:11.07]
that I think might be kind
of interesting to these guys.

[00:22:14.00]
Which arrest are you proudest of?

[00:22:15.08]
[students laughing]

[00:22:17.02]
- Oh...

[00:22:19.02]
the first one.

[00:22:20.01]
- The first one?

[00:22:23.01]
- The first one, because
I was so clueless about,

[00:22:27.02]
you know, everything.

[00:22:28.06]
♪ ♪

[00:22:31.01]
- [News Reporter] The latest in Chester's

[00:22:32.02]
year-long racial troubles came yesterday,

[00:22:34.01]
when officials ordered all public schools

[00:22:36.02]
closed indefinitely.

[00:22:37.05]
That action was prompted by a new round

[00:22:39.03]
of sit-ins on the school steps.

[00:22:40.09]
36 demonstrators were arrested.

[00:22:42.08]
Overnight, more than 200
others were picked up

[00:22:44.08]
after a series of violent
street demonstrations.

[00:22:47.02]
♪ ♪

[00:22:48.09]
- There was a major civil rights struggle

[00:22:51.07]
going on in Chester in the early '60s,

[00:22:54.04]
inspired by the civil rights
movement in the south.

[00:22:57.02]
[protesters chanting and clapping]

[00:23:00.02]
Berit and I settled in Philadelphia

[00:23:02.04]
so I could go to graduate school,

[00:23:04.02]
but I was reading every day
about the unfolding story

[00:23:07.08]
of this struggle in Chester,
near Philadelphia,

[00:23:10.07]
♪ ♪

[00:23:13.08]
and thinking, there's something
very wrong about this,

[00:23:17.00]
because everybody who's being arrested

[00:23:19.07]
to deal with racism was Black.

[00:23:23.07]
So I thought it was really my
responsibility as white person

[00:23:27.00]
to get out here to Chester
and join the movement.

[00:23:29.07]
♪ ♪

[00:23:31.07]
♪ ♪

[00:23:33.02]
The civil rights movement
had things really organized,

[00:23:36.03]
so the people who were
volunteers, like me,

[00:23:38.06]
could go to a dispatching
center, it was a storefront,

[00:23:41.04]
and be dispatched to wherever
the action was that day.

[00:23:45.07]
My name was called, and the person said,

[00:23:48.00]
"You will go with those four people,

[00:23:51.03]
"and you'll all go together
in your car to City Hall.

[00:23:55.08]
"Go inside and sit down,
and you'll be arrested."

[00:23:59.02]
So we set off for City Hall,
which was full of the media

[00:24:03.06]
and the police and demonstrators.

[00:24:06.01]
And so I said, "We have to
go find a parking place,"

[00:24:08.09]
and they said, "Well,
let us out, let us out,

[00:24:11.00]
"and then you go find your
parking place and join us."

[00:24:13.08]
It took a while to find
a safe parking place.

[00:24:16.04]
Who knew how long I was gonna be in jail?

[00:24:18.03]
Then I get back here, and I look

[00:24:20.09]
and I didn't see my comrades.

[00:24:22.06]
I was very scared of being arrested alone.

[00:24:25.01]
I'd never been arrested before.

[00:24:27.02]
The police were all over the place

[00:24:28.07]
but they didn't try to stop me,

[00:24:29.07]
I think because I was white

[00:24:31.02]
and I was wearing a, you know, nice shirt.

[00:24:33.05]
I think they figured I came

[00:24:34.07]
to pay my water bill or something.

[00:24:36.02]
♪ ♪

[00:24:40.02]
I came into a very large,
quiet and darkened lobby

[00:24:45.03]
with a series of office
doors around its edges.

[00:24:49.03]
I was alone, except for
three police officers

[00:24:53.00]
hanging out in the far corner from me.

[00:24:56.01]
"Where's my team?" I fretted.

[00:24:58.06]
I began circling the lobby,

[00:25:00.06]
looking through the windows
in the office stores

[00:25:02.09]
to see if my comrades
were inside an office.

[00:25:06.00]
The offices were deserted.

[00:25:08.09]
The trio of officers sauntered over to me.

[00:25:12.06]
"Can I help you?" inquired one of them.

[00:25:16.01]
"I'm looking for the sit-inners," I said.

[00:25:18.04]
"I've come to sit in."

[00:25:21.00]
The three smiled incredulously.

[00:25:24.03]
"You what?" asked the first one.

[00:25:27.05]
"I'm with the movement," I said nervously,

[00:25:30.00]
"I've come to sit in."

[00:25:32.07]
The three started to grin.

[00:25:34.08]
"Well," said the first one,

[00:25:36.06]
"why don't you just go ahead and do it?"

[00:25:40.01]
"What?" I said.

[00:25:42.03]
This was not turning out
anything like what I expected.

[00:25:45.07]
I continued, "Right here?"

[00:25:48.07]
He spoke again, gesturing
toward the lobby floor.

[00:25:52.05]
"Pull up a tile and sit down."

[00:25:55.03]
And so I did, grateful for
one action I could take

[00:25:59.06]
in the midst of my bewilderment.

[00:26:02.01]
"All right," he said, "now you can go home

[00:26:04.05]
"and tell your friends you're a hero."

[00:26:07.05]
He paused as I continued to sit.

[00:26:10.07]
"Go on now, go home."

[00:26:13.05]
"Oh, no," I said, my
voice getting stronger.

[00:26:17.01]
"I am serious about this.

[00:26:19.05]
"This is about civil rights.

[00:26:21.08]
"I'm sitting right here."

[00:26:24.08]
"Okay," he said, turning to
the other two police officers.

[00:26:28.08]
"Arrest him!" he said.

[00:26:31.06]
The two grabbed me by my
armpits and yanked me up.

[00:26:35.04]
They threw me against
the wall, patted me down,

[00:26:38.07]
and handcuffed my hands behind my back.

[00:26:41.07]
At last, something was happening

[00:26:43.02]
the way I imagined it would.

[00:26:46.01]
One on each side, the police walked me

[00:26:48.01]
toward the back exit of the lobby.

[00:26:50.05]
I remember the echo their
shoes made in the empty space.

[00:26:55.03]
I suddenly felt very alone.

[00:26:59.00]
Behind the lobby was a stairway

[00:27:00.06]
that led to the back door of City Hall.

[00:27:03.05]
"You wanna walk him over
to the station to book him

[00:27:06.04]
"or call the wagon?" one asked the other.

[00:27:11.01]
That's when I made my
second mistake of the day.

[00:27:14.07]
"I don't mind walking," I said.

[00:27:17.08]
Calling attention to myself triggered

[00:27:21.00]
their fatigue and resentment.

[00:27:24.00]
One of them started to beat me.

[00:27:26.07]
Immediately, I remembered
what Dr. King and the others

[00:27:29.02]
had been saying for the last few years.

[00:27:31.08]
I took a deep breath, unlocked my knees,

[00:27:34.08]
opened my hands, and prayed.

[00:27:38.04]
After a bit, the other officer spoke up.

[00:27:41.05]
"Let's use the bus" he said.

[00:27:43.06]
"Let's get this over with."

[00:27:46.05]
They led me to the parking
area behind the building,

[00:27:49.06]
and a yellow school bus had drawn up.

[00:27:52.09]
They half pushed and half
threw me into the bus.

[00:27:57.03]
And with that, the bus
took us to the county jail.

[00:28:01.03]
I realized that coming out here to do this

[00:28:03.06]
would be the biggest risk
that I had taken so far.

[00:28:07.05]
And I thought I was up for that

[00:28:11.05]
because if we don't risk,
we don't gain, really.

[00:28:14.09]
And being outside our comfort zones,

[00:28:17.00]
we grow in our power, as people.

[00:28:19.02]
♪ ♪

[00:28:21.04]
My bed was in a block with
about 30 single-person cells

[00:28:26.02]
arranged around an open space.

[00:28:29.05]
It was easy to communicate with neighbors,

[00:28:31.05]
and we had two exercise times each day

[00:28:34.08]
to mingle in the open space.

[00:28:37.05]
Campaign leader Stanley
Branche was in our block,

[00:28:40.05]
and during exercise time

[00:28:42.03]
he had us quickly marching back and forth,

[00:28:45.07]
singing freedom songs.

[00:28:48.02]
I remember one.

[00:28:50.01]
♪ We are soldiers in the army ♪

[00:28:55.00]
♪ We've gotta fight ♪

[00:28:56.04]
♪ Although we have to cry ♪

[00:28:59.00]
♪ We have to hold up the freedom banner ♪

[00:29:03.02]
♪ We have to hold it up until we die ♪

[00:29:07.08]
The warden became nervous
about our high spirits

[00:29:10.08]
and the possibility of that
infecting other prisoners,

[00:29:15.07]
so he took an exercise
period away from us.

[00:29:19.04]
That set us to banging our
metal beds up and down,

[00:29:22.09]
clanging our cups against the bars

[00:29:25.03]
and howling like banshees.

[00:29:27.06]
We refused to stop until
the deputy warden came,

[00:29:30.09]
and after negotiating with Branche

[00:29:33.05]
gave us back our second exercise period.

[00:29:38.00]
After a week in jail, my day
in court was as surprising

[00:29:42.03]
as everything else had been.

[00:29:44.04]
The judge asked me to state
my story, which I did briefly.

[00:29:48.01]
The judge leaned forward and
turned to the police officer.

[00:29:51.07]
"Did you say to Lakey, 'Pull
up a tile and sit down?'"

[00:29:57.01]
"Yes", said the officer.

[00:29:59.08]
"Then the charge is invalid."
The judge glared at him.

[00:30:03.06]
"When a police officer invites
someone to break the law,

[00:30:06.07]
"we call that entrapment".

[00:30:09.06]
The judge snorted.

[00:30:11.04]
"Case dismissed."

[00:30:13.04]
[gavel slamming]

[00:30:16.01]
♪ ♪

[00:30:21.05]
♪ We shall overcome ♪

[00:30:27.02]
♪ We shall overcome ♪

[00:30:32.08]
♪ We shall overcome some day ♪

[00:30:37.08]
♪ We shall overcome some day ♪

[00:30:42.07]
♪ Oh deep in my heart ♪

[00:30:49.07]
♪ I do believe ♪

[00:30:55.03]
♪ We shall overcome some day ♪

[00:31:00.02]
♪ We shall overcome some day ♪

[00:31:04.02]
♪ ♪

[00:31:06.03]
Thank you.

[00:31:07.03]
[audience cheering and applauding]

[00:31:11.05]
- Let's do this.

[00:31:12.06]
[audience applauding]

[00:31:15.07]
[audience applauding]

[00:31:17.00]
Good evening.

[00:31:19.08]
This is my first time
meeting George in person,

[00:31:22.06]
but I feel like I have
known him for the decade

[00:31:26.04]
that I have been organizing.

[00:31:28.02]
He is a movement and mentor grandpa to me.

[00:31:32.01]
He has mentored my mentors.

[00:31:34.02]
He, for me, is an example of
what it means to take action

[00:31:39.02]
even if you're scared,

[00:31:40.09]
and to not let your fear

[00:31:44.00]
hold you back from taking
your place in history.

[00:31:47.08]
Thank you so much to that
beautiful, beautiful choir.

[00:31:51.09]
George and I were just standing
backstage listening to it.

[00:31:55.02]
How did that feel?

[00:31:57.01]
- Very emotional.
- Yeah.

[00:31:58.04]
- We were holding hands,
because I was in, you know,

[00:32:01.06]
we sang that a million times
in the civil rights movement

[00:32:03.07]
and we never did it without
holding hands with somebody,

[00:32:06.03]
and usually a circle or 1,000 people,

[00:32:09.03]
or you know, 100,000 people,

[00:32:11.02]
and it was the soul of the movement

[00:32:15.08]
expressed in music.

[00:32:17.04]
- Wow.

[00:32:18.02]
- And supported us to risk
our lives for racial justice.

[00:32:22.07]
- The summer of 1964
will be marked in history

[00:32:26.00]
as the summer of civil rights.

[00:32:27.08]
♪ Oh freedom ♪

[00:32:31.06]
♪ Oh freedom ♪

[00:32:34.08]
First, because of the Civil Rights Bill,

[00:32:36.06]
which has passed the Senate,

[00:32:38.08]
and because of a program,

[00:32:40.05]
the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.

[00:32:43.02]
- The Negroes there are
subject to a reign of terror.

[00:32:46.00]
In the southwest corner of Mississippi,

[00:32:47.09]
they're what amount to
modern day lynchings,

[00:32:50.03]
which are shootings of Negroes
at night, on the roads.

[00:32:54.09]
This has been by the Ku Klux Klan.

[00:32:57.05]
- The civil rights movement
knew that it's very tough

[00:33:00.08]
to face a gun or a knife
or a noose on your own.

[00:33:04.07]
So the solidarity of acting
with others is very important,

[00:33:08.02]
but also very important is training

[00:33:10.07]
to know how to face the threat.

[00:33:15.00]
I had the privilege of
joining the training staff

[00:33:18.00]
for Mississippi Freedom Summer,

[00:33:19.08]
the time when about
1,000 northern students

[00:33:23.01]
were recruited to go to Mississippi

[00:33:25.02]
and work alongside Black people

[00:33:27.05]
to break open that segregation.

[00:33:30.06]
- [Reporter] This is a meeting
of Freedom Summer volunteers.

[00:33:33.06]
They were warned their
mission will not be pleasant.

[00:33:36.02]
- If people wanna turn back,
they can turn back now

[00:33:39.05]
without understanding
the tremendous dangers

[00:33:41.07]
that are involved.

[00:33:42.07]
People should be expected to get beaten,

[00:33:44.09]
they should expect to spend in jail,

[00:33:46.05]
and they should expect possibly
somebody to get killed.

[00:33:49.07]
- I got to be in the
training of these students

[00:33:53.00]
and teaching them the
most essential skills

[00:33:55.09]
that they would need when they went down

[00:33:57.06]
and faced the Ku Klux Klan and the rest.

[00:34:00.00]
[martial drumming]

[00:34:00.09]
- Go ahead.

[00:34:02.07]
- [Reporter] They are
taught how non-violently

[00:34:04.05]
to protect themselves when attacked.

[00:34:06.01]
- [Activist] He can't hit you right here

[00:34:07.07]
if you can pull yourself
across a little bit more.

[00:34:10.02]
The only place he can hit is
right up and down the ribs,

[00:34:12.09]
across the back and across the rump.

[00:34:14.09]
- The whole idea of preparing

[00:34:16.07]
and acting out through role
play the possible responses

[00:34:21.01]
that would be most effective

[00:34:22.08]
was put on the map by the
civil rights movement.

[00:34:25.08]
- [Reporter] A group of students
portraying an angry mob.

[00:34:28.00]
They are supposed to jeer and curse.

[00:34:30.00]
- We also want the white
students who are playing the mob

[00:34:32.09]
to get used to saying
things, calling out epithets,

[00:34:35.04]
calling people n-----s and n----r lovers.

[00:34:37.02]
- Without the training,
it's very hard to get

[00:34:39.07]
a lot of people to do the right thing

[00:34:42.03]
when the pressure is on.

[00:34:44.00]
In that way, it's very like the military.

[00:34:46.06]
When soldiers go to war, first of all,

[00:34:49.02]
they go through a training period.

[00:34:50.09]
And if they didn't, they
would be in very big trouble.

[00:34:54.07]
In the civil rights movement,

[00:34:56.01]
we see extraordinary strategic
smarts that enabled people

[00:35:00.09]
to make the most of that situation.

[00:35:03.01]
They faced the longest
running terrorist organization

[00:35:07.02]
the US has ever experienced,

[00:35:09.03]
and we can use the experience
of the civil rights movement

[00:35:13.01]
in order to understand how
to overcome the opposition

[00:35:18.01]
and be able to make progress.

[00:35:19.07]
My life is trying to teach people

[00:35:22.01]
what has been learned by others.

[00:35:25.04]
♪ ♪

[00:35:29.09]
- We were living in a little
apartment in West Philadelphia.

[00:35:34.00]
It was a fourth floor walk-up

[00:35:36.09]
George persuaded me at some point

[00:35:38.07]
that we should buy a piano, and we did.

[00:35:41.07]
But the people who came
to deliver the piano said,

[00:35:44.05]
"Where's the elevator?"

[00:35:46.07]
"There's no elevator."

[00:35:49.02]
I don't know what their language
was exactly at that point,

[00:35:52.01]
but the piano did manage to get upstairs.

[00:35:56.03]
George was studying and I was working.

[00:35:59.01]
We decided that things
had settled down enough

[00:36:01.08]
that we should consider children,

[00:36:04.01]
but we went through that trying period

[00:36:06.07]
of trying to conceive
and it wasn't happening.

[00:36:10.08]
- But we got eager, and so we
went to an adoption agency.

[00:36:15.02]
We got to adopt a
delightful three-month-old,

[00:36:19.05]
and we named her Christina.

[00:36:22.00]
- I'm Esther Christina Lakey,

[00:36:24.03]
and I'm George's oldest daughter.

[00:36:27.07]
My memories growing up
were really happy ones.

[00:36:33.04]
We traveled a lot, which really
shaped how I view the world.

[00:36:38.07]
My father was always involved

[00:36:42.02]
in some type of activism.

[00:36:45.03]
I thought everybody's
parents were activists.

[00:36:48.00]
I didn't know.

[00:36:49.00]
You know what I mean?

[00:36:49.08]
Because that's all I knew.

[00:36:51.06]
He's a very principled person.

[00:36:54.02]
He's very committed to
what he believes in.

[00:36:58.00]
He's very loving, and I
think that he genuinely cares

[00:37:02.07]
about society as a whole

[00:37:04.08]
and wants the world to
have a good way of being.

[00:37:10.08]
[audience applauding]

[00:37:13.09]
- Ladies and gentlemen.

[00:37:15.07]
This evening, I came here to
speak to you about Vietnam.

[00:37:20.06]
America has entered
with its material power

[00:37:25.06]
and with its moral commitment.

[00:37:27.09]
♪ ♪

[00:37:31.04]
[muted explosions]

[00:37:32.06]
- The US Empire was
totally out of control,

[00:37:35.03]
dropping more bombs on Vietnam

[00:37:38.03]
than had been dropped on Europe
during the second world war.

[00:37:42.08]
It's just amazing slaughter going on,

[00:37:46.02]
being paid for by US taxpayers,

[00:37:48.05]
not realizing those were human beings.

[00:37:51.06]
And as I watched it escalate,

[00:37:53.05]
I joined others in
organizing a Quaker group

[00:37:57.05]
that would focus on direct action.

[00:38:00.06]
Because we were wanting to
reach the American people,

[00:38:03.02]
we needed a dramatic way
to call people's attention

[00:38:07.00]
to the fact that the Vietnamese
people were actually people,

[00:38:10.00]
not just some kind of obstacle

[00:38:11.07]
in the way of the American empire.

[00:38:13.07]
We needed a media story

[00:38:16.00]
that the mass media are attracted to.

[00:38:18.05]
♪ ♪

[00:38:20.08]
- [Reporter] The yacht Phoenix,
a self-ordained mercy ship,

[00:38:23.04]
manned by a crew of
determined American Pacifists.

[00:38:26.04]
Its mission?

[00:38:27.02]
To bring medical supplies

[00:38:28.05]
to the North Vietnamese port of Haiphong

[00:38:30.08]
despite Red Cross warnings

[00:38:32.02]
and without State Department clearance.

[00:38:34.01]
♪ ♪

[00:38:36.06]
- The plan was to get a small sailing ship

[00:38:39.09]
and a crew to sail through the
United States Seventh Fleet,

[00:38:44.08]
which was blockading the Vietnamese coast,

[00:38:47.06]
and get to Vietnam with a
boatload of medical supplies.

[00:38:52.06]
Totally crazy thing to try to do.

[00:38:54.09]
[jet engine roaring]

[00:38:56.03]
How do you get through the
might of the American empire?

[00:39:00.03]
I had a baby, and as a proud young dad,

[00:39:04.02]
the thought of going over
there and not coming back

[00:39:06.07]
was a heartbreaking prospect.

[00:39:09.05]
And yet I found myself led
by Spirit to join the voyage.

[00:39:14.00]
It felt like God was
tapping me on the shoulder.

[00:39:18.06]
And so I went to Hong Kong,
and we sailed to Vietnam.

[00:39:23.02]
♪ ♪

[00:39:36.00]
I'd been in scrapes and
many vulnerable spots

[00:39:38.08]
with regard to the civil rights movement,

[00:39:40.02]
but this was the first time

[00:39:41.04]
that I was really putting
my life on the line.

[00:39:43.07]
♪ ♪

[00:39:50.09]
[ominous blaring]

[00:39:55.05]
[ominous blaring]

[00:39:59.08]
[jet engine whirring]

[00:40:03.00]
We did indeed find
ourselves in a war zone,

[00:40:06.01]
[artillery booming]

[00:40:07.05]
locking horns with gun boats
that wanted us out of there.

[00:40:11.05]
♪ ♪

[00:40:13.08]
They sent boats out to harass us,

[00:40:18.00]
shoot bullets parallel to our ship.

[00:40:19.08]
[machine gun rattling]

[00:40:22.05]
We were partially disabled,
our mast was broken.

[00:40:26.08]
♪ ♪

[00:40:28.05]
I'm human.

[00:40:29.03]
I wanna live a long life

[00:40:30.08]
and certainly not die in my 20s

[00:40:32.07]
in an ocean halfway around the world.

[00:40:34.04]
♪ ♪
[helicopter blades whirring]

[00:40:41.00]
- [Crew Member] Oh boy.

[00:40:42.09]
They've got him surrounded now.

[00:40:46.00]
- George, are you okay?

[00:40:50.06]
- This is George Lakey.

[00:40:52.08]
After Harry went into the water

[00:40:54.05]
and was picked up by Navy vessel 610,

[00:40:58.02]
I jumped into the water and swam over.

[00:41:01.05]
A young man asked me if I would go

[00:41:03.08]
and I told him I would not go voluntarily,

[00:41:06.03]
and we had a profound
opposition to this war

[00:41:09.03]
and we're determined to get Da Nang

[00:41:11.05]
to bring our medicines there.

[00:41:13.03]
♪ ♪

[00:41:17.07]
[indistinct chatter]

[00:41:21.08]
We finally got through the Seventh Fleet

[00:41:27.06]
thanks to the tremendous
concern among Americans

[00:41:32.01]
about what's gonna happen
to this little ship

[00:41:34.08]
and the realization on the part

[00:41:36.07]
of national leadership in Washington

[00:41:39.03]
that it would not look
good for the Phoenix

[00:41:42.02]
to be bombed out of the water.

[00:41:44.05]
It was a wake-up call for Americans.

[00:41:47.00]
"Look at what you are doing."

[00:41:49.00]
"You are supporting a
government which can't even bear

[00:41:53.04]
"to have Vietnamese
civilians get some medicine

[00:41:58.04]
"when they are inadvertently
bombed by our bombs.

[00:42:02.07]
"And you need to do something about it."

[00:42:05.01]
- [Reporter] Anti-war demonstrators

[00:42:06.04]
protest US involvement in the Vietnam War

[00:42:09.03]
in mass marches, rallies,
and demonstrations.

[00:42:12.03]
- Which of course eventually did happen.

[00:42:14.07]
Finally, the American people did stand up

[00:42:17.01]
to the war establishment.

[00:42:19.08]
♪ ♪

[00:42:27.06]
♪ ♪

[00:42:30.06]
Beret and I wanted to
keep our family growing.

[00:42:34.08]
And so Christina had a sibling
who we also adopted, Peter.

[00:42:39.07]
♪ ♪

[00:42:41.03]
So we thought, this is our
perfect two-child family.

[00:42:45.01]
Two parents, two children,
that seems just about right.

[00:42:48.05]
And then we were delightfully
surprised [chuckling]

[00:42:52.07]
when we made a baby anyway.

[00:42:54.02]
♪ ♪

[00:42:55.07]
- I grew up in a really beautiful
family, and I'm grateful.

[00:43:01.00]
I'm sure for some people, like,

[00:43:02.03]
your parent goes off to a 9-to-5 job,

[00:43:03.09]
you have no idea what they did all day.

[00:43:05.09]
I actually did have a pretty good concept

[00:43:08.00]
of what my dad did, because
he included me in a lot of it.

[00:43:12.03]
So I grew up as an activist
in an activist household.

[00:43:17.06]
There were very many
demonstrations and protests

[00:43:20.01]
that I went along, a lot
of very early mornings

[00:43:23.03]
to get on the bus that was
going to DC or New York.

[00:43:26.09]
Which was amazing, to be this kid

[00:43:28.09]
surrounded by these very cool,
interesting people around me.

[00:43:32.06]
- This is about my son, Peter.

[00:43:36.01]
At age six, I found myself
wanting six-year-old Peter

[00:43:40.01]
to try his hand at activism.

[00:43:42.05]
Some friends were helping out

[00:43:44.06]
in the growing consumer
boycotts of lettuce

[00:43:47.09]
that had been called by
the United Farm Workers.

[00:43:50.02]
They were going to start picketing

[00:43:51.06]
at our neighborhood supermarket.

[00:43:53.09]
I explained to Peter that
the aim of the boycott

[00:43:56.01]
was to improve the lives
of children like himself.

[00:43:58.06]
He immediately volunteered
for the picket line.

[00:44:02.01]
He walked up to somebody and said,

[00:44:04.00]
"Don't go in there and buy
that scabbage lettuce."

[00:44:07.01]
[audience laughing]

[00:44:08.06]
I guess Peter had heard
us talking about "scabs,"

[00:44:11.02]
or strike breakers, who were
being hired by employers.

[00:44:15.00]
Scabbage lettuce.

[00:44:17.00]
She kept walking and Peter
kept backing up in front of her

[00:44:20.01]
until he backed right through the doorway

[00:44:21.09]
and into the store.

[00:44:23.04]
Hardly a minute later,

[00:44:24.06]
the store manager came outside,

[00:44:26.06]
pulling Peter by the hand.

[00:44:28.03]
"Whose boy is this?" he demanded.

[00:44:31.05]
I raised my hand proudly.

[00:44:33.03]
"He's mine."
[audience laughing]

[00:44:36.04]
♪ ♪

[00:44:38.01]
- For him as a parent,
my dad is good at listening

[00:44:40.07]
to what is it inside you
that is ready to come out.

[00:44:44.06]
My experience of him as my dad,

[00:44:47.09]
so much of it was about, like,

[00:44:50.01]
"Come on Ingrid, you can do it.

[00:44:51.08]
"You can do that street speaking
in the park when you're 10,

[00:44:56.00]
"telling Ronald Reagan you're worried

[00:44:57.07]
"about nuclear Armageddon.

[00:44:59.04]
"Go for it!"

[00:45:00.03]
[laughing]

[00:45:01.02]
You know, and supporting
me to get through the fear

[00:45:03.06]
that I had about that,
but never in a way of, like,

[00:45:06.06]
"You must, and you
should, and you have to."

[00:45:08.07]
It was all about, like, "It's in you."

[00:45:11.02]
♪ ♪

[00:45:13.02]
- [George] How can we live
at home on planet Earth?

[00:45:16.08]
The human race groans under
the oppressions of colonialism,

[00:45:20.08]
war, racism, totalitarianism, and sexism.

[00:45:24.06]
Corporate capitalism abuses the poor

[00:45:27.05]
and exploits the workers,
while expanding its power

[00:45:30.05]
through the multinational corporations.

[00:45:32.07]
The environment is choked.

[00:45:34.05]
What shall we do?

[00:45:36.04]
We now declare ourselves
for nonviolent revolution.

[00:45:41.01]
- I grew up in a house with my parents

[00:45:43.08]
and my big brother and big sister

[00:45:46.04]
and about eight other people.

[00:45:49.02]
We were part of a group called
Movement for a New Society,

[00:45:52.02]
which was like an urban commune,

[00:45:54.00]
and we were part of this larger collective

[00:45:56.00]
of several houses in West Philadelphia,

[00:45:57.09]
really trying to live in a different way.

[00:46:00.03]
♪ ♪

[00:46:03.01]
- We're in West Philadelphia,

[00:46:05.07]
and this is what we
called the Stone House.

[00:46:08.05]
It was our village well of our community.

[00:46:11.07]
This was the center of the
Philadelphia Life Center,

[00:46:14.07]
which was itself part of the
Movement for New Society.

[00:46:19.03]
At its height, we had 22 households

[00:46:22.07]
all scattered right here
in this neighborhood,

[00:46:24.08]
and we had 125 people.

[00:46:28.01]
The core was in the name, Life Center.

[00:46:31.07]
We wanted to center on life.

[00:46:34.07]
And for us, life meant creativity,

[00:46:37.02]
and life also meant
opposition to the death center

[00:46:41.08]
that was going on under this

[00:46:43.09]
capitalist imperial military operation

[00:46:47.01]
that was not a good way
for America to keep going.

[00:46:49.09]
- I had been radicalized
by the Vietnam War,

[00:46:53.04]
and was really angry at the way

[00:46:57.01]
things were going in my country,

[00:46:59.07]
and I'm looking for a community of people

[00:47:02.05]
that are doing really good things.

[00:47:04.04]
♪ ♪

[00:47:06.01]
- [George] The promise was support,

[00:47:08.05]
because everybody was feeling kind of raw,

[00:47:10.09]
and also the ability to be more effective

[00:47:14.03]
than we could be as individuals

[00:47:16.00]
in making change for justice and peace.

[00:47:18.06]
- We all had the same goal of
changing how society works.

[00:47:23.00]
We had a training program

[00:47:25.00]
to help people become
community organizers,

[00:47:28.05]
and people came from all over the world.

[00:47:31.00]
- It was really to learn together
about the world around us

[00:47:35.05]
and act in a political,
nonviolent, direct action way.

[00:47:41.02]
Another things were we
focused on the environment.

[00:47:45.02]
So, simple living.

[00:47:47.01]
♪ ♪

[00:47:48.07]
- We were really into
"make your own stuff."

[00:47:50.07]
So we made our own bread, we
made our own peanut butter,

[00:47:52.08]
we made our own granola.

[00:47:54.05]
And I would take my sandwiches to school,

[00:47:57.02]
and, like, my sandwich
would just fall apart.

[00:47:59.03]
The bread was, like, so dense.

[00:48:00.09]
And all of my classmates had
white bread, like, Wonder Bread

[00:48:05.00]
with the bologna and a piece
of, like, American cheese,

[00:48:08.08]
and maybe with Miracle Whip.

[00:48:10.00]
And to me that was, like, the actual,

[00:48:12.08]
that was the holy grail of
lunch, and it was elusive for me.

[00:48:16.09]
[laughing]

[00:48:18.00]
- One of the beautiful things
about collective living

[00:48:20.01]
is that it's cheap,
and we made thee most of that.

[00:48:23.07]
Most people had part-time jobs
to pitch into the collective

[00:48:27.03]
that would be running the house.

[00:48:29.00]
And therefore, we had
abundant available time

[00:48:33.08]
to do activism and to
experiment with new approaches.

[00:48:37.03]
We were busy as bees

[00:48:39.02]
because we were making
a nonviolent revolution.

[00:48:41.05]
♪ ♪

[00:48:43.06]
This street was the favorite street

[00:48:46.04]
for the Life Center children.

[00:48:48.02]
At one point we had 15
or 16 raucous youngsters.

[00:48:52.00]
They would play against the
grownups on street games,

[00:48:55.01]
and no matter who, in fact, won,

[00:48:58.00]
the kids always said at
the end, "The kids won!"

[00:49:02.04]
- One of the rules was we
all had to share the work

[00:49:05.08]
for the cleaning, the
cooking and the childcare.

[00:49:09.01]
It challenged our old sex roles.

[00:49:11.09]
So it was really like
living in a laboratory.

[00:49:15.00]
- Somebody would be assigned
to make a meal each night,

[00:49:17.04]
and it was a very efficient way to live

[00:49:19.08]
and complicated way to live, figuring out,

[00:49:22.00]
okay, who didn't do the dishes tonight?

[00:49:25.03]
Relationships were even more complicated

[00:49:27.05]
'cause you had so many
permutations of relationships

[00:49:31.04]
and people connecting with us.

[00:49:33.07]
George used to say that Life
Center was an army of lovers.

[00:49:38.09]
And after a while he said
it's an army of ex-lovers.

[00:49:42.08]
[laughing]
♪ ♪

[00:49:45.08]
- We lasted almost 20 years,

[00:49:47.07]
which I think is a long time considering

[00:49:50.07]
the kind of cookery it was of
bringing raw, young people in

[00:49:55.05]
with sage, older people, and
lots and lots of changes.

[00:49:59.07]
Women's movement was
happening in those days,

[00:50:01.07]
the gay movement, and so on.

[00:50:04.02]
We had a mission of working
for freedom and justice,

[00:50:07.04]
but we would also discover
beautiful things about ourselves.

[00:50:12.00]
The idea wasn't to homogenize,

[00:50:15.04]
but instead the idea was
to glory in our diversity.

[00:50:19.07]
♪ ♪

[00:50:25.00]
As a boy, I had a sense that
there was tons inside me

[00:50:29.05]
that I didn't understand [laughing]

[00:50:31.06]
but that would have to do with my future

[00:50:33.08]
and how I could contribute to the world.

[00:50:36.03]
But I was in mystery about so much of it.

[00:50:38.08]
♪ ♪

[00:50:41.05]
In 1974, there was an annual
Quakers national gathering.

[00:50:45.09]
Over 1,000 people were there,

[00:50:47.09]
and the organizers of
the conference had asked

[00:50:51.00]
Berit and me to talk about community.

[00:50:54.06]
So she spoke first, she's
a wonderful speaker.

[00:50:57.07]
It really held the attention
of the 1,000 people.

[00:51:00.06]
And then it was my turn.

[00:51:03.02]
And then I finally told the
truth about my sexuality,

[00:51:07.07]
that I can love men as well as women.

[00:51:09.05]
♪ ♪

[00:51:13.04]
The place was shocked.

[00:51:17.03]
There were people crying in
various parts of the room,

[00:51:20.04]
people who shared a different
identity, sexual identity,

[00:51:24.05]
and "Oh my gosh, this is at
last said publicly," right?

[00:51:29.03]
And there were other people

[00:51:30.06]
who were brimming with hostility.

[00:51:33.00]
There were a couple of guys
I thought would slug me.

[00:51:35.01]
Quakers? What?

[00:51:36.04]
- I don't remember it, I was three.

[00:51:38.07]
But to this day, I will
still run into Quakers

[00:51:41.07]
who were there for whom it
was, like, a huge moment.

[00:51:47.01]
This was not a time

[00:51:48.03]
where there was a lot
of people coming out,

[00:51:51.00]
certainly not a lot of married people.

[00:51:54.03]
And my dad was becoming a
pretty well-known Quaker,

[00:51:57.07]
a leader at that time,
and he was risking a lot.

[00:52:02.02]
- The impact on my life
was enormous in terms,

[00:52:05.09]
personally, of feeling freer
and feeling more powerful

[00:52:10.02]
because I'd done this really hard thing.

[00:52:13.01]
- There was never a change in
my relationship with my dad

[00:52:15.03]
'cause to me he's my dad,
and he was always a gay man.

[00:52:20.00]
But one of the really
wonderful experiences for me

[00:52:24.01]
was being able to, like, go
to gay pride parades with him

[00:52:29.08]
and with all these, like,
uncles and aunties around

[00:52:32.05]
just lovin' me up, and feeling at home.

[00:52:36.06]
Feeling at home.

[00:52:37.05]
♪ ♪

[00:52:40.00]
- Just as the civil rights
movement found the tactic

[00:52:42.06]
of sitting in in lunch counters
and buses and other places

[00:52:47.05]
which were segregating
against Black people,

[00:52:50.03]
also, we found a tactic.

[00:52:52.08]
That tactic was coming out.

[00:52:56.04]
Homophobic oppression depends upon

[00:52:59.04]
our cooperation by hiding.

[00:53:02.04]
And when we refuse to cooperate

[00:53:04.01]
and instead come out,
it is a contradiction.

[00:53:07.03]
- Homosexuals have needed,
for a long time, role models,

[00:53:10.01]
or someone who could come
out smilingly and say,

[00:53:13.00]
"Yes, I'm homosexual, and
yes, I'm happy about it."

[00:53:15.08]
- And until people in this country

[00:53:17.00]
include it and embrace it,
substantial change won't happen.

[00:53:21.00]
- [George] Using that tactic
over and over and over.

[00:53:23.05]
People in pulpits, in churches, right?

[00:53:25.06]
Coming out.

[00:53:26.04]
People in leadership positions coming out.

[00:53:28.07]
Every time, that's
non-cooperating with the bigotry,

[00:53:31.08]
and it opens a conversation.

[00:53:33.06]
It keeps changing people's minds

[00:53:36.01]
because they can't look
away from the reality.

[00:53:39.08]
- Feel the power of this moment

[00:53:42.02]
and carry the message to the Capitol!

[00:53:45.03]
We will have full human rights

[00:53:49.04]
for lesbian and gay people!

[00:53:51.07]
[cheering and applauding]

[00:53:52.08]
- It's enormously powerful.

[00:53:54.07]
We had power on our side,

[00:53:56.04]
and that's why we could change society.

[00:53:58.03]
♪ ♪

[00:54:00.09]
I've had beautiful relationships since,

[00:54:02.09]
and one of the things that
made them more beautiful

[00:54:05.06]
is that they could be open,
and people could deal then

[00:54:09.03]
not with a bogey like homophobia is,

[00:54:13.03]
this scary, scary goblin,

[00:54:14.09]
but instead the reality of
two men who love each other.

[00:54:18.04]
And I mean, how upset can we really be

[00:54:21.04]
about people loving each other.

[00:54:29.03]
Where is my great
grandson when I need him?

[00:54:33.02]
He was here last time we did this.

[00:54:34.05]
- He was just here.

[00:54:39.00]
I love that he sees me as a
person who is still growing,

[00:54:43.03]
and he sees himself as a
person that's still growing.

[00:54:46.00]
And we need love,
we need patient attention,

[00:54:49.02]
we need forgiveness, but
mostly we need each other.

[00:54:52.08]
The way we're here for each other

[00:54:54.03]
is the way that we love each other.

[00:54:56.02]
- Yay, let's sing.

[00:54:58.07]
♪ ♪

[00:55:01.06]
♪ To life, to life, l'chaim ♪

[00:55:05.00]
♪ L'chaim, l'chaim, to life ♪

[00:55:08.04]
♪ It gives you something to think about ♪

[00:55:10.09]
♪ Something to drink about ♪

[00:55:13.01]
♪ Drink, l'chaim ♪

[00:55:16.05]
♪ To life ♪

[00:55:17.09]
[group laughing]

[00:55:19.08]
♪ ♪

[00:55:22.04]
♪ We plow the fields ♪

[00:55:24.03]
♪ And scatter the good seed on the land ♪

[00:55:30.06]
♪ But it is fed and watered ♪

[00:55:34.07]
♪ By God's almighty hand ♪

[00:55:37.09]
- I was 39-years-old

[00:55:42.02]
when I was diagnosed with
diffuse histiocytic lymphoma,

[00:55:49.01]
a very extreme kind of cancer
that was expected to kill me.

[00:55:54.00]
♪ ♪

[00:55:59.03]
I was just tremendously shocked.

[00:56:02.03]
I felt like still so much to
learn and so much to give,

[00:56:06.00]
and suddenly this happened.

[00:56:09.05]
I was feeling pathological

[00:56:12.09]
because I had this terrible cancer,

[00:56:15.00]
and on the other hand

[00:56:20.03]
there was somewhere inside me a belief

[00:56:23.01]
that there was something good.

[00:56:25.04]
So I needed to reach for that.

[00:56:29.02]
I realized, "Well, George, you understand,

[00:56:31.08]
"social movements are built by campaigns.

[00:56:34.03]
"This is a campaign for your life."

[00:56:37.00]
- He changed his diet,
he changed the way he lived,

[00:56:40.04]
he changed his relationships,
he cried his heart out.

[00:56:44.08]
He did the all the chemo treatments

[00:56:47.03]
and the stuff the doctors said.

[00:56:48.09]
He did alternative therapies,

[00:56:50.07]
he did healing work in the church.

[00:56:53.04]
- And used prayer and meditation,

[00:56:56.00]
and the strong love of friends and family,

[00:56:59.02]
and day after day after day

[00:57:01.02]
of reaching, reaching, reaching
for that healing sunshine,

[00:57:08.06]
this came to me.

[00:57:10.02]
[monitor beeping]

[00:57:12.03]
Imagine my surprise when,
17 days after surgery,

[00:57:16.09]
still in the hospital, with
tubes coming in and going out,

[00:57:21.04]
missing my children and feeling
broken, helpless, useless,

[00:57:27.06]
I had this revelation which
I recorded in my journal.

[00:57:31.09]
Inside me is a cathedral, grand,

[00:57:36.05]
like St. Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol,

[00:57:40.00]
a gothic gem.

[00:57:41.03]
♪ ♪

[00:57:46.06]
Inside me is exquisite
color shining on walls,

[00:57:51.03]
on floor, and most brilliantly seen

[00:57:53.09]
when the glass is directly apprehended.

[00:57:57.07]
Great peals of the organ resound

[00:58:00.06]
in the cavernous stone recesses.

[00:58:02.09]
♪ ♪

[00:58:05.03]
The merriest music available,

[00:58:07.09]
like that favorite Bach
cantata we sang in the choir.

[00:58:14.06]
I am vast inside.

[00:58:19.02]
Tapers are lit, dramas occur,
continuities are maintained.

[00:58:25.07]
Fresh words are uttered for new days.

[00:58:29.01]
Doors swing open, sunshine comes in.

[00:58:32.07]
I am clean and healthy and wholesome,

[00:58:36.03]
and love is everywhere,
completely without apology.

[00:58:39.08]
♪ ♪

[00:58:43.06]
I came out of it a better person,

[00:58:45.01]
a person more in touch with my power.

[00:58:47.05]
Things can look really, really bad,

[00:58:50.00]
but that doesn't mean
that we can't win through

[00:58:54.07]
and come to a better place.

[00:58:58.00]
And I did.

[00:58:59.02]
♪ ♪

[00:59:02.04]
- George is good at dancing with history.

[00:59:06.09]
He pays attention to what
particular issues are happening,

[00:59:10.07]
and then thinks about how
social change campaigns

[00:59:14.07]
can take advantage of that.

[00:59:17.01]
Nonviolent direct action
is not just something

[00:59:19.05]
that you're born knowing how to do,

[00:59:21.04]
so one of his big passions
has been helping people

[00:59:24.09]
to see that this is something
they could step into.

[00:59:28.00]
- Being an activist, a big
part is about your heart,

[00:59:30.03]
it's about your yearning for justice.

[00:59:32.06]
But there are real skills
that are really important.

[00:59:36.01]
- There's a craft in social change.

[00:59:38.09]
We become way more
powerful, way more effective

[00:59:41.08]
as social changers when
we learn those skills.

[00:59:44.02]
- He realized for our movements to create

[00:59:46.05]
the kinds of change we need,
we need to skill up.

[00:59:49.05]
So he created a training center
called Training for Change.

[00:59:53.00]
- Training for Change
really was a place for him

[00:59:55.03]
to channel so much of
the tools and methodology

[00:59:59.02]
that he and others around him
learned about leading groups

[01:00:02.01]
and doing training for social change.

[01:00:05.01]
- And when we turn on

[01:00:06.02]
to the intentionality inside ourselves

[01:00:08.03]
and the resource in each other,

[01:00:10.01]
there will be nothing that can stop us.

[01:00:12.09]
- For far too many people,

[01:00:14.01]
they think the world happens to them

[01:00:15.08]
as opposed to them happening to the world.

[01:00:18.00]
And training helps them to understand

[01:00:19.05]
that they can flip the script on that

[01:00:21.02]
and be able to own their own agency,

[01:00:22.08]
and be able to create the
change that they need.

[01:00:25.00]
- Training for Change was set
up as a series of workshops,

[01:00:29.02]
and people came to this house, you know,

[01:00:31.03]
from all over the world.

[01:00:32.06]
They would take all of these trainings,

[01:00:34.03]
and then go back and
train their community.

[01:00:37.03]
- George was oftentimes
going to countries in Europe,

[01:00:40.08]
or responding to the most
grassroots organizers

[01:00:45.01]
that wanted training

[01:00:46.07]
for some of the most radical change work

[01:00:48.09]
going on in the world.

[01:00:51.09]
- [Activist] What you are doing!

[01:00:54.01]
- You're taking over my city.

[01:00:55.00]
- [Reporter] This is not a real argument.

[01:00:56.09]
These are protesters learning
how to deal with police

[01:00:59.05]
and others who may confront
them while demonstrating

[01:01:02.04]
during the Republican National Convention.

[01:01:04.04]
- We're encouraging people
to be their nonviolent best

[01:01:07.09]
when they're on the streets,
even when the pressure's on.

[01:01:10.04]
Everywhere I look it's protesters,
protesters, protesters.

[01:01:12.08]
- [Reporter] George Lakey has
been training demonstrators

[01:01:15.06]
since the 1960s.

[01:01:17.01]
- [Activist] Come on now,
break it up, get out!

[01:01:19.03]
[protesters yelling]

[01:01:20.01]
- We think it gives people
some inner confidence

[01:01:22.01]
so that they can deal
nonviolently with the events

[01:01:24.04]
that we haven't thought
through in advance.

[01:01:26.07]
- You and your damn beard!

[01:01:28.05]
- So that they can inject

[01:01:29.07]
as much a spirit of goodwill as possible

[01:01:31.08]
into that confrontation.

[01:01:34.02]
- [Ingrid] He was really part
of helping to think about,

[01:01:36.03]
how do we go to the deeper level?

[01:01:38.04]
What's the personal growth
that people need to do

[01:01:41.04]
to take on authority?

[01:01:43.07]
- A train that goes off the
rails can just go off the rails.

[01:01:47.06]
And with activists, that's like triply so,

[01:01:50.04]
'cause we're assholes, we're rebels.

[01:01:52.08]
The goal of training is
to increase our learning,

[01:01:55.04]
not just to practice being
a-holes to each other.

[01:01:58.04]
Your generation never
faced a timing problem.

[01:02:01.09]
The timing of climate change is limited,

[01:02:04.00]
so we only have so many years.

[01:02:05.07]
- [George] Actually though,
we perceived ourselves

[01:02:08.05]
as in that boat with
the nuclear arms race.

[01:02:11.02]
- The first time that I heard about George

[01:02:12.09]
I was still in college at the time.

[01:02:14.03]
I got invited to go to George's training.

[01:02:17.05]
And there's a particular moment
where George said something

[01:02:20.09]
that I thought was
oppressive or something.

[01:02:23.01]
I raised my hand, I was
like, "This is not right."

[01:02:25.08]
And George said, "Okay,"
you know, listened to me

[01:02:29.03]
and then he explained his rationale.

[01:02:31.05]
He said, "No, I don't read it that way,

[01:02:33.02]
"I think it's this way."

[01:02:34.05]
And I was ready to burn it to the ground,

[01:02:36.08]
and I said, "This is wrong.

[01:02:38.09]
"We shouldn't do it."

[01:02:40.00]
And he said, "Daniel, you've
made very clear your position.

[01:02:42.06]
"I've made clear my position.

[01:02:44.00]
"I'm not squashing you,
if you believe it's wrong

[01:02:46.04]
"you should absolutely not do it.

[01:02:49.06]
"And if you believe it's so wrong

[01:02:51.03]
"that everyone shouldn't do it,

[01:02:53.01]
"you should stop trying to convince me

[01:02:55.02]
"and you should go organize
everybody in this room

[01:02:57.07]
"to stop doing it."

[01:02:59.03]
And it was the first
time in my entire life

[01:03:01.08]
that any teacher educator
had ever taught me

[01:03:04.09]
how to be a better rebel.

[01:03:06.08]
- ...stories in there.

[01:03:07.06]
- My grandpop is a very savvy guy.

[01:03:10.01]
I like to call him Yoda

[01:03:11.05]
because he makes everything
so complicated so simple.

[01:03:15.07]
And you know, whenever I was going through

[01:03:18.03]
a hard time in life,

[01:03:19.05]
I always knew who to go to
to talk about my issues.

[01:03:22.06]
- George has a fundamental belief

[01:03:24.07]
that everybody has a role to play

[01:03:27.09]
and that everyday people
can do extraordinary things,

[01:03:31.04]
and it's just a matter of
inviting people into their power.

[01:03:36.02]
[explosion booming]

[01:03:41.02]
♪ ♪

[01:03:44.07]
- The coal mining industry
had chosen in Appalachia

[01:03:49.05]
to level entire mountains

[01:03:52.05]
in order to get the coal
out of the mountains,

[01:03:55.06]
because it's cheaper for
them to dynamite a mountain

[01:04:00.01]
than to pay workers to
do the traditional thing

[01:04:03.02]
of tunneling into the mountain
in order to get the coal.

[01:04:05.08]
[explosion booming]

[01:04:07.03]
The amount of destruction and nasty stuff

[01:04:10.05]
that gets into the streams and the rivers

[01:04:12.04]
and into the atmosphere,

[01:04:14.00]
it was a disastrous course of action

[01:04:16.08]
that was being financed by banks.

[01:04:19.08]
And we found the number
one bank in the country

[01:04:23.01]
for financing mountaintop
removal coal mining

[01:04:25.05]
was in our town.

[01:04:28.03]
- PNC had Quaker roots that
it liked to brag about,

[01:04:31.08]
and it claimed to be a green bank.

[01:04:34.03]
That really clicked as a
thing that we could take on,

[01:04:38.04]
the financing of this terrible practice,

[01:04:41.00]
and the goal was to get
PNC to stop lending money

[01:04:44.08]
to the companies engaged in this.

[01:04:46.07]
- We borrowed from the
civil rights movement

[01:04:48.09]
the strategic concept of,

[01:04:50.09]
you get something done by campaigning.

[01:04:53.01]
The one-off expression of
opinion doesn't make sense.

[01:04:56.08]
It's as silly as if a
politician announced,

[01:05:00.00]
"I want people to vote for me,

[01:05:01.09]
"so every once in a
while I'll make a speech,

[01:05:03.09]
"but basically I'll keep
doing whatever I do."

[01:05:06.01]
No, politicians don't do that.

[01:05:08.03]
They have to get out and campaign.

[01:05:10.06]
- We took advantage of a
National Quaker Conference

[01:05:13.07]
to recruit Quakers from
around the country,

[01:05:16.01]
and then offered trainings in their region

[01:05:18.08]
so that people could lead
their own bank actions.

[01:05:22.02]
- [George] We had to grow from being able

[01:05:24.00]
to invade their banks in Philadelphia,

[01:05:27.02]
to several counties, to several states,

[01:05:30.09]
till by year five we were able to do

[01:05:33.07]
simultaneous bank actions in 13 states.

[01:05:38.00]
- PNC has a choice to make.

[01:05:39.08]
Invest in the future.

[01:05:41.04]
[protesters chanting and singing]

[01:05:48.01]
- Quakers are known for silent worship,

[01:05:49.07]
but today we're speaking out.

[01:05:51.05]
- [George] We ended up doing 125 actions.

[01:05:54.07]
- If you do not wanna
get locked up, leave now.

[01:05:58.02]
- [George] The bank got the message.

[01:06:00.02]
This is a group that may be a small group,

[01:06:03.01]
but they are tenacious.

[01:06:04.07]
[protesters shouting]

[01:06:06.06]
And they will not let go until we give up.

[01:06:10.02]
♪ ♪

[01:06:11.08]
And we did indeed force PNC Bank

[01:06:15.02]
to give up this lucrative
source of income,

[01:06:17.09]
and they even acknowledged
that it had to do

[01:06:20.07]
with the pressure that we put on them.

[01:06:23.01]
♪ ♪

[01:06:26.09]
♪ ♪

[01:06:30.05]
My mission in life was social change.

[01:06:34.06]
But this family, which I thought

[01:06:37.02]
could comfortably work out
alongside this mission--

[01:06:40.09]
people have a job, and
people have a family--

[01:06:43.00]
turned out to be way way more than that.

[01:06:47.02]
- Well, what didn't make my family unique?

[01:06:48.09]
[Ingrid chuckling]

[01:06:49.08]
My dad is gay, my mom's from
Norway, so she's an immigrant.

[01:06:53.08]
My parents adopted my brother and sister,

[01:06:56.01]
they're African American,
my parents are white.

[01:06:58.05]
We're Quakers, and we lived
in a collective household.

[01:07:02.07]
Almost every issue of American families

[01:07:05.05]
got expressed in our family.

[01:07:07.02]
And each of us, I think, had
our own part of seeing that

[01:07:10.05]
or experiencing that.

[01:07:12.09]
- When George and I put in
an application to adopt,

[01:07:16.08]
we said we were quite willing
to take a child of color.

[01:07:21.07]
The agency was wondering
what we were trying to prove,

[01:07:25.00]
and we said, "Well, we just want a child."

[01:07:28.00]
And we thought, we're not prejudiced

[01:07:30.05]
and we live in a mixed community,

[01:07:32.07]
and that would be all right.

[01:07:35.05]
In retrospect, I realize that
we didn't really understand

[01:07:39.09]
what that was gonna be
like for the children.

[01:07:43.08]
- You know, I really
didn't know about race

[01:07:46.07]
until I was probably seven or eight.

[01:07:49.09]
I was at a Phillies game,
'cause I had this best friend

[01:07:53.03]
and her dad would always
take me to the Phillies game.

[01:07:56.01]
Now, they were white.

[01:07:59.03]
I mean...

[01:08:00.04]
And this boy called me a
n----r at the Phillies game.

[01:08:04.04]
And I remember saying, you know what?

[01:08:06.09]
I came away from that just
like, yeah, I am different.

[01:08:11.06]
I didn't even know what n----r meant.

[01:08:13.05]
You know, I could tell
by the way he said it,

[01:08:14.09]
it wasn't a good thing.

[01:08:16.05]
♪ ♪

[01:08:18.07]
- Christina was a happy child,

[01:08:22.08]
and then had a very very
hard time as an adolescent,

[01:08:26.02]
so we went through a lot of

[01:08:27.09]
the kind of turmoil that that generates.

[01:08:30.00]
- The way we view the world
is totally different, I think,

[01:08:35.01]
so my view of what he thinks

[01:08:39.03]
is not realistic to me

[01:08:44.07]
based on my life experiences, you know.

[01:08:47.08]
He adopted biracial kids

[01:08:49.05]
because he doesn't wanna
have racism in the world,

[01:08:53.00]
but he doesn't understand what
it is to be Black in America.

[01:08:58.09]
He never will.

[01:08:59.09]
It's impossible.

[01:09:01.01]
He's a white man.

[01:09:02.00]
There's no way that that could happen.

[01:09:04.09]
- [George] Peter did not have
a good start in the family

[01:09:08.01]
that had him first, a foster family,

[01:09:11.05]
and never got over the
anxiety that he brought to us.

[01:09:18.03]
- He had a very hard life.

[01:09:20.07]
He was a damaged child.

[01:09:24.01]
So he had a hard time.

[01:09:27.02]
That upsets me to talk about him.

[01:09:29.06]
♪ ♪

[01:09:33.02]
- Peter became addicted
to alcohol and cocaine.

[01:09:38.08]
We got a place for him at a
treatment center in Maine.

[01:09:42.09]
We got friends to help us pay for it.

[01:09:45.07]
It cost an arm and leg.

[01:09:47.09]
But it was like, okay,
this is gonna have to--

[01:09:51.05]
We have to do this to save his life.

[01:09:54.03]
And we found there that
40% of the youngsters

[01:09:58.01]
who were there were adopted.

[01:10:00.06]
So we learned more about the whole issue

[01:10:02.09]
of the tensions around identity.

[01:10:07.00]
As far as George and myself,

[01:10:10.05]
through all the difficulties,

[01:10:12.00]
what was important in a big picture

[01:10:14.02]
was important to both of us.

[01:10:15.09]
But personally, and how
we related to children

[01:10:20.01]
and to each other and to other people,

[01:10:22.01]
were really, really different.

[01:10:24.04]
And, long before this,
George had come out as gay,

[01:10:29.01]
and more and more that was
becoming part of his identity.

[01:10:33.09]
♪ ♪

[01:10:36.01]
We held it together for a good long time,

[01:10:39.04]
but eventually, you know, the
marriage ran out of steam.

[01:10:43.06]
♪ ♪

[01:10:54.00]
- When I was growing up,

[01:10:55.01]
and my dad was doing all kinds of actions

[01:10:56.09]
all kinds of places,

[01:10:58.02]
I was mostly not worried about him.

[01:11:01.01]
The time I did get worried about him

[01:11:03.03]
was when he had gone to Sri Lanka

[01:11:06.05]
to become a nonviolent bodyguard.

[01:11:09.06]
- In the late '80s,

[01:11:10.09]
Sri Lanka, a small island
off the tip of India,

[01:11:14.07]
was struggling to deal with
a mass movement of peasants

[01:11:20.01]
that wanted economic justice

[01:11:21.08]
and was being strongly
supported by students.

[01:11:24.09]
[protesters shouting]

[01:11:27.06]
[tear gas canisters pinging]

[01:11:29.03]
So they were arresting
students and torturing them

[01:11:32.05]
to get information on
which students they knew

[01:11:36.00]
were actually part of
that peasant movement.

[01:11:38.04]
If a student was seized,
the parents would go

[01:11:40.07]
to a human rights lawyer

[01:11:42.04]
and get that student out
of the hands of the police.

[01:11:45.01]
So the police started assassinating

[01:11:48.00]
the human rights lawyers.

[01:11:49.01]
♪ ♪

[01:11:51.03]
So that's what brought the issue to me.

[01:11:53.06]
There was an international organization

[01:11:55.05]
called Peace Brigades International,

[01:11:57.02]
which came to me and said,

[01:11:58.03]
"We want to put a team

[01:12:00.02]
"of civilian protection into Sri Lanka

[01:12:04.02]
"to accompany the human rights
lawyers to keep them alive

[01:12:09.05]
"while they're doing this necessary work

[01:12:11.06]
"of protecting students."

[01:12:13.01]
The idea was, if the police
came to assassinate the lawyer,

[01:12:17.06]
we would be there.

[01:12:19.04]
I was foreign.

[01:12:20.08]
Hit squad wasn't instructed
to kill foreigners

[01:12:23.07]
because that might make major
trouble for the government,

[01:12:26.04]
which was responsible for the hit squads.

[01:12:29.05]
- I will admit, I was scared.

[01:12:31.08]
It was the thing that felt so directly

[01:12:35.05]
about him putting his
body between an assassin

[01:12:40.00]
and their target,

[01:12:41.07]
fully aware that part of
what would keep him safe

[01:12:45.01]
was being a six-foot-three
white American in Sri Lanka.

[01:12:50.02]
He absolutely was clear

[01:12:51.06]
what all the privileges that he carried,

[01:12:54.01]
and he was gonna use that to protect

[01:12:57.08]
a human rights lawyer across the globe.

[01:13:02.04]
How could I not support that?

[01:13:05.08]
- And so I went to Sri Lanka.

[01:13:07.08]
♪ ♪

[01:13:11.03]
I remember one lawyer I
was protecting who said,

[01:13:14.04]
"I'm very worried about

[01:13:16.02]
"somebody knocking at the door at night."

[01:13:19.04]
[muffled knocking]

[01:13:20.06]
"And I, thinking it's a
distraught parent who's saying,

[01:13:24.04]
"'Quick, quick, quick save my son,'

[01:13:26.02]
"and I open the door

[01:13:27.03]
"and it turns out it's
the assassination squad,

[01:13:30.08]
"who shoots me down.

[01:13:32.02]
[frantic knocking]

[01:13:33.02]
"So I need you to open the door."

[01:13:35.08]
♪ ♪

[01:13:39.02]
I was scared the whole time I was there.

[01:13:40.09]
It was three months of fear.

[01:13:42.07]
People were being killed around me.

[01:13:45.05]
Every time I passed a
religious institution,

[01:13:48.00]
I would duck in and calm myself, pray,

[01:13:51.08]
and experience the love that reminds us

[01:13:54.06]
why we're here on earth.

[01:13:57.09]
And if I should die here, so be it.

[01:14:00.02]
But I did want to participate
in this pioneering way

[01:14:05.01]
of saving lives.

[01:14:06.04]
♪ ♪

[01:14:09.03]
♪ ♪

[01:14:15.03]
- The last time I saw Peter,
we had dinner together,

[01:14:18.08]
and then we talked on the phone afterwards

[01:14:21.00]
and he said how hard it was

[01:14:22.08]
to be cross-addicted
to alcohol and cocaine.

[01:14:29.08]
He couldn't hold it together.

[01:14:32.00]
♪ ♪

[01:14:34.06]
- My dad was in Sri Lanka at the time,

[01:14:37.00]
and almost immediately he flew back

[01:14:40.09]
and we just, you know,
held each other and cried.

[01:14:46.03]
And our family has cried
and cried and cried

[01:14:50.07]
over losing my brother.

[01:14:55.01]
And we continue to, and
it's been, you know,

[01:14:58.01]
more than 30 years since he's been gone.

[01:15:01.09]
- [George] Where are we?

[01:15:03.03]
- "You'll Never Walk Alone."

[01:15:05.07]
You okay Dad?

[01:15:06.08]
I sang this at my brother's memorial.

[01:15:09.04]
♪ ♪

[01:15:15.04]
♪ You walk through a storm ♪

[01:15:20.02]
♪ Hold your head up high ♪

[01:15:26.05]
♪ And don't be afraid of the dark ♪

[01:15:31.05]
♪ And don't be afraid of the dark ♪

[01:15:36.04]
♪ At the end of the storm ♪

[01:15:41.05]
♪ Is a golden sky ♪

[01:15:43.01]
It's just such a searing pain
that doesn't ever go away.

[01:15:48.06]
It's, like, a part of all of our lives,

[01:15:52.02]
and for sure my dad's.

[01:15:56.01]
Being able to listen to
him now as a parent myself,

[01:15:59.08]
to be able to listen to him
talk about what it was like

[01:16:02.08]
to try to figure out what to do

[01:16:07.06]
for this boy who was
suffering so, so much,

[01:16:11.03]
and not being able to save his son

[01:16:15.05]
despite heroic efforts on
both of my parents' part.

[01:16:21.00]
And that's part of the pain of addiction,

[01:16:22.06]
it's...the suffering is everywhere.

[01:16:25.07]
♪ And you'll never walk alone ♪

[01:16:30.07]
♪ And you'll never walk alone ♪

[01:16:34.08]
♪ You'll never walk alone ♪

[01:16:39.05]
♪ You'll never walk alone ♪

[01:16:47.07]
♪ You'll never walk alone ♪

[01:16:52.03]
♪ You'll never walk alone ♪

[01:17:14.07]
- This is how I feel
about parenting overall

[01:17:18.07]
with most folks.

[01:17:20.05]
You do the best you can with
what you got at the time.

[01:17:23.03]
There's no book that says,
"Hey, when this happens,

[01:17:26.05]
"go to page eight, chapter,
you know, paragraph nine,

[01:17:30.07]
"and there's the answer."

[01:17:32.07]
You just do the best you can.

[01:17:34.00]
I think my father made
some mistakes with Peter,

[01:17:36.05]
as he has with me, as well.

[01:17:38.06]
However, he did the best
he could do at the time.

[01:17:41.09]
I know that he loves us.

[01:17:43.04]
You know, I know that he loved Peter,

[01:17:45.06]
and he still has a lot of guilt and grief

[01:17:49.05]
over Peter's death.

[01:17:52.01]
But it was nothing that he could have did

[01:17:54.08]
one way or the other that
would've stopped him from dying

[01:17:57.09]
the day that he died.

[01:17:59.04]
♪ ♪

[01:18:07.02]
- So after my brother died,
we decided to plant a tree

[01:18:10.03]
for my brother in our local park.

[01:18:13.08]
It was so beautiful, and
we sang around the tree

[01:18:16.03]
and we planted some of
his ashes with the tree.

[01:18:21.05]
And then at Christmas time,

[01:18:22.08]
we as a family would go
and decorate the tree.

[01:18:26.04]
We'd put tinsel on it and, like, you know,

[01:18:29.00]
little Christmas balls and stuff,

[01:18:30.05]
as part of our, like,
remembering my brother.

[01:18:33.07]
♪ ♪

[01:18:36.08]
There's something powerful
about having a living memorial

[01:18:39.00]
'cause it keeps growing
and changing as we do, too,

[01:18:41.06]
even though we've lost
this incredibly important

[01:18:43.05]
person in our lives.

[01:18:45.02]
So, it's been a real
blessing to have that.

[01:18:48.04]
[bells tolling]

[01:18:58.02]
- There are alternatives to
the paradigm in most cultures

[01:19:03.03]
that violence is the
only way to exert power.

[01:19:07.02]
The theory that if you wanna win,

[01:19:09.07]
you have to be willing to
hurt people is so incorrect.

[01:19:13.04]
That is as incorrect as the
flat Earth theory was once.

[01:19:16.07]
Well, we've gotten rid
of the flat Earth theory.

[01:19:18.08]
Now we need to get rid
of the violence theory,

[01:19:21.05]
and instead understand
that nonviolent power

[01:19:24.00]
is actually more powerful
than violent power.

[01:19:28.01]
- I first met George

[01:19:30.01]
when I was a student
at Swarthmore College.

[01:19:32.06]
He was a visiting professor there.

[01:19:34.01]
And I enrolled in his course
researching case studies

[01:19:37.04]
in social movement campaigns

[01:19:39.05]
that were using nonviolent direct action.

[01:19:42.04]
- In the US, civil rights
movement is kind of, you know,

[01:19:45.05]
key period that we know some, you know,

[01:19:48.04]
collective action happened,

[01:19:50.01]
but in terms of opening our
eyes to the rest of the world,

[01:19:52.06]
George wanted to show the successes

[01:19:55.02]
of nonviolent collective action

[01:19:57.08]
throughout history and across the globe.

[01:20:00.06]
- I ask them to write up cases

[01:20:03.07]
for a publicly available database

[01:20:05.07]
that we would create and put on a website,

[01:20:08.04]
and what their job would
be would be to take a case

[01:20:11.06]
of struggle somewhere in the world,

[01:20:13.08]
where people went after something

[01:20:16.04]
or defended themselves against something

[01:20:18.03]
that was coming at them, nonviolently.

[01:20:21.01]
- Every week, we each researched

[01:20:24.01]
and then wrote one case study.

[01:20:26.02]
And I remember I did a case study

[01:20:27.06]
on the apartheid divestment
movement from the '80s.

[01:20:30.05]
- [Alexa] I wrote about
case of the occupation

[01:20:33.02]
of Alcatraz Island by Indigenous folks.

[01:20:35.08]
I wrote about nonviolent
action in the Middle East.

[01:20:39.00]
- [Stephie] Cases about, like,

[01:20:40.01]
taking down dictators
in different countries,

[01:20:42.09]
so it sort of went across the gamut.

[01:20:45.00]
- Case after case after
case in which people

[01:20:47.09]
won hard fought struggles nonviolently.

[01:20:52.00]
We ended up with a database of 1,400 cases

[01:20:55.05]
from around the world.

[01:20:56.09]
♪ ♪

[01:20:58.06]
- The work really exposed
social change is happening

[01:21:01.09]
all around us, all the time,

[01:21:04.05]
and it offers a really
dramatic competing narrative

[01:21:08.03]
that the world only moves
forward with violence,

[01:21:11.07]
and the world only moves forward

[01:21:13.04]
when people in authority
say it's time to change.

[01:21:15.09]
- It is so empowering to know

[01:21:17.08]
that the people can act in ways

[01:21:20.02]
that aren't hurting and
killing other people, and win.

[01:21:24.02]
What's better than that?

[01:21:25.06]
[laughing]

[01:21:26.07]
- Being in the spaces
that George has created

[01:21:29.06]
and is part of in a broader
movement showed me that,

[01:21:31.07]
"Oh, there's actually a
science and an art to this."

[01:21:34.07]
♪ ♪

[01:21:35.08]
[protesters chanting]

[01:21:39.01]
The crew of us who were
part of those experiences

[01:21:42.00]
at Swarthmore moved to Philly together,

[01:21:44.04]
and when there was plans
to expand fossil fuels

[01:21:47.04]
in Philadelphia, we got
to work knocking on doors

[01:21:50.08]
and talking to neighbors,

[01:21:52.00]
and we shut down the largest
oil refinery on the East Coast.

[01:21:56.03]
We did that as a group of everyday people,

[01:21:59.06]
just like, you know,
the cases in the database.

[01:22:02.05]
"Gets the goods," as George says.

[01:22:05.04]
- I'm an organizer with
the Sunrise Movement.

[01:22:07.09]
Sunrise is a movement of young people

[01:22:09.08]
that is organizing to
tackle the climate crisis.

[01:22:13.04]
- We are here to say to our politicians,

[01:22:15.04]
"We need you to back a Green New Deal."

[01:22:18.00]
- [Stephie] The moment
that really sent Sunrise

[01:22:19.07]
into the national sphere

[01:22:21.06]
was a sit-in at Nancy
Pelosi's office in 2018,

[01:22:24.08]
right after the midterm elections.

[01:22:26.07]
- Ladies and gentlemen...

[01:22:28.07]
[indistinct crosstalk]

[01:22:33.03]
- I just wanna let you
all know how proud I am

[01:22:36.04]
of each and every single one of you

[01:22:40.01]
for putting yourselves and your bodies

[01:22:42.06]
and everything on the line to make sure

[01:22:45.09]
that we save our planet, our
generation and our future.

[01:22:49.08]
- A hundred young people took action,

[01:22:51.04]
and it changed the
conversation in US politics

[01:22:54.02]
and affected things that,
like, presidential candidates

[01:22:56.04]
and, like, now-President
Joe Biden was saying.

[01:22:58.08]
- As President, I have a responsibility

[01:23:00.06]
to act with urgency and
resolve when our nation

[01:23:04.00]
faces clear and present danger.

[01:23:06.03]
And that's what climate change is about.

[01:23:11.03]
- [George] That kind of
action by a small group

[01:23:13.05]
can be repeated over and over and over.

[01:23:16.02]
♪ ♪

[01:23:18.00]
We will make bigger and
bigger and bigger changes,

[01:23:20.06]
because a change in one
area inspires people.

[01:23:24.07]
♪ ♪

[01:23:26.05]
- Putting together that
global nonviolent database

[01:23:29.02]
offered a resource to
the rest of the world

[01:23:31.07]
for people who are looking for models

[01:23:35.00]
of how to do social change,

[01:23:36.05]
and what social change
movements have actually worked.

[01:23:39.06]
That's just an extraordinary
gift to folks worldwide

[01:23:44.03]
who are seeking liberation.

[01:23:46.08]
- There's a George quality
that has rubbed off on me,

[01:23:50.03]
and I'm so grateful for it,

[01:23:51.06]
that at some point, just be in motion.

[01:23:54.00]
- [Eileen] The 2020
election was approaching,

[01:23:57.05]
and there was a lot of anxiety

[01:23:59.05]
about what the outcome of
that election was gonna be.

[01:24:02.04]
- [Daniel] George and I got on the phone,

[01:24:03.07]
and we were chatting about Trump,

[01:24:06.06]
and so what's up with Trump?

[01:24:08.06]
- As far as the ballots are
concerned, it's a disaster.

[01:24:11.07]
This is going to be a fraud,
like you've never seen.

[01:24:14.04]
- The question on our minds was twofold.

[01:24:16.05]
One, how likely is a coup?

[01:24:19.00]
And the second was,

[01:24:20.07]
how likely is it that leftists,
progressives and Democrats

[01:24:24.04]
get so obsessed with the first question

[01:24:27.00]
of how likely is a coup,

[01:24:28.04]
that we'll spend all of our energy

[01:24:30.02]
completely enraptured in
angst, concern, worry,

[01:24:34.05]
so we won't actually do the
things that we need to do?

[01:24:36.08]
- [Eileen] And so they said,

[01:24:37.07]
"Well, what we could do is offer training.

[01:24:39.09]
- We wanna really welcome
the emotions of this moment.

[01:24:43.07]
The fear, the anxiety, the hope, the joy,

[01:24:45.06]
the rage, the grief.

[01:24:46.08]
- George and others organized
a series of webinars

[01:24:50.04]
to really give people the blueprint

[01:24:52.05]
of what to do if there's a coup.

[01:24:54.02]
How are we building skills
and mindset and strategy

[01:24:58.01]
to activate our local communities?

[01:25:00.08]
- [Eileen] They looked at examples

[01:25:02.09]
where average people had
nonviolently thwarted a coup,

[01:25:07.02]
and they pulled out some key lessons.

[01:25:09.02]
- Strategically,
countries that encountered

[01:25:12.03]
a violent response, the ones
who have been successful

[01:25:15.03]
have been those who've taken that violence

[01:25:18.00]
and used it as a backfire mechanism,

[01:25:21.00]
as a kind of boomerang.

[01:25:22.09]
- In a matter of weeks,
we trained 10,000 people.

[01:25:26.04]
So many people came to these
trainings full of anxiety.

[01:25:30.00]
And I think part of the role
that Choose Democracy played

[01:25:33.02]
was helping people channel that anxiety

[01:25:36.03]
and understand that there
were things they could do.

[01:25:39.06]
American exceptionalism leads us to think,

[01:25:42.01]
"Oh, a coup would never happened here,"

[01:25:44.04]
but in fact it is possible,

[01:25:47.02]
and we can learn from
these other countries.

[01:25:49.09]
♪ ♪

[01:25:51.08]
- [Reporter] We can now project

[01:25:53.00]
that former Vice President Joe Biden

[01:25:54.09]
has been elected President
of the United States.

[01:25:58.04]
[crowd cheering]

[01:26:00.05]
Donald Trump, the 45th
President of the United States

[01:26:03.02]
has vowed not to concede.

[01:26:05.02]
- [Trump] Now it is up to Congress

[01:26:06.09]
to confront this egregious
assault on our democracy.

[01:26:11.00]
[crowd cheering]

[01:26:12.03]
We're gonna walk down to the Capitol,

[01:26:15.03]
because you'll never take back
our country with weakness.

[01:26:19.08]
[crowd shouting]

[01:26:23.01]
- One of the really important
legacies of Choose Democracy

[01:26:26.06]
is that I think it helped play a role

[01:26:28.08]
in convincing
counterprotesters to stay home.

[01:26:32.04]
And in the newsletter, especially, saying,

[01:26:34.04]
"On January 6th,

[01:26:35.08]
"we know that Trump supporters
are gonna go to the Capitol,

[01:26:39.06]
"and we are not gonna show up.

[01:26:41.08]
"They want us to show up.

[01:26:43.02]
"They wanna have conflict with us.

[01:26:45.03]
"We're gonna stay home and
let this all be about them."

[01:26:50.02]
There are so many issues

[01:26:52.01]
where nonviolent direct
action can be deployed.

[01:26:54.09]
My hope is that training will
nurture that seed in people.

[01:26:59.04]
- I bet every person in
this room and in the country

[01:27:03.00]
knows people who disagree
with you politically.

[01:27:06.02]
Get on the phone.

[01:27:08.04]
Reach out to people with
a different point of view

[01:27:11.04]
from yours on this or that issue,

[01:27:14.09]
understanding that we have
this great common interest

[01:27:19.00]
in a democracy, whether
we're Republican or Democrat.

[01:27:22.05]
It's the apple pie issue.

[01:27:26.01]
We all have a stake in
an American democracy.

[01:27:30.00]
♪ ♪

[01:27:36.00]
This is my favorite place.

[01:27:38.03]
♪ ♪

[01:27:41.01]
Sometimes I come down at night
when it's pretty quiet here,

[01:27:44.06]
and reflect on what this
building means for me.

[01:27:48.06]
This was a building where
tremendous innovation happened.

[01:27:52.02]
We announced to the king that
we were no longer willing

[01:27:55.01]
to live under his rule.

[01:27:58.02]
The very assertiveness of
going up against the king,

[01:28:02.09]
and they put their lives on
the line in order to do it

[01:28:05.06]
and to declare independence.

[01:28:07.08]
♪ ♪

[01:28:09.09]
I've made grievous errors in my life.

[01:28:12.04]
You know, I'm a mixed
bag like anybody else,

[01:28:15.09]
and like my country is.

[01:28:19.01]
I want to give my country the love

[01:28:21.01]
and affirmation that it needs and deserves

[01:28:24.00]
at the same time as acknowledging

[01:28:26.09]
that we fall short in many ways.

[01:28:30.00]
The people who met here, sure,
they didn't create utopia,

[01:28:33.04]
left an awful lot of problems still

[01:28:35.07]
for the rest of us to handle.

[01:28:38.04]
But the degree of change that
they started inspires me.

[01:28:42.09]
♪ ♪

[01:28:46.04]
♪ Don't give up hope ♪

[01:28:48.00]
♪ Don't give up hope ♪

[01:28:49.07]
♪ You're not alone ♪

[01:28:51.04]
♪ You're not alone ♪

[01:28:53.02]
♪ Don't you give up ♪

[01:28:55.00]
♪ Don't you give up ♪

[01:28:56.07]
♪ Keep moving on ♪

[01:28:58.06]
♪ Keep moving on ♪

[01:28:59.09]
♪ Yeah, we gotta put ♪

[01:29:01.06]
♪ One foot in front of the other ♪

[01:29:04.08]
♪ And lead with the pull ♪

[01:29:08.07]
♪ Of one foot in front of the other ♪

[01:29:11.09]
♪ And lead with love ♪

[01:29:15.01]
♪ I know you're scared ♪

[01:29:15.09]
- Whether you're Black,
you're white, you're Brown,

[01:29:18.03]
you're Indigenous, you're
Asian Pacific Islander,

[01:29:20.06]
you're urban, suburban,
rural, Democrat, Republican,

[01:29:24.00]
socialist, working families,

[01:29:25.06]
whether you run a corporation

[01:29:27.01]
or you are an underpaid worker,

[01:29:29.02]
whoever you are, whoever you are,

[01:29:31.03]
this Earth is your home!

[01:29:34.03]
[protesters cheering]

[01:29:37.05]
We all belong, we all have a right to it.

[01:29:41.00]
We all have a right to enjoy it.

[01:29:42.09]
We need each other.

[01:29:44.00]
We need our air, our water,

[01:29:45.07]
our soil, and a livable planet,

[01:29:48.02]
and we need each other, including
Vanguard, to divest now!

[01:29:53.04]
Divest now!

[01:29:55.00]
[crowd chanting] Divest now!

[01:29:57.05]
- We're at the end of a week of walking,

[01:29:59.05]
and so we now arrive
today at the headquarters

[01:30:03.01]
of an $8 trillion corporation.

[01:30:05.00]
And what we're saying is,

[01:30:06.03]
"You're taking people's retirement money

[01:30:08.08]
"for their future, to safeguard.

[01:30:10.07]
"On the other hand,
you're destroying the future."

[01:30:13.00]
- They can't say that they're investing

[01:30:15.00]
for our retirement when
there won't be a world

[01:30:17.03]
for us to retire on.

[01:30:19.00]
[protesters cheering and applauding]

[01:30:21.03]
So please, Vanguard, choose humanity.

[01:30:25.03]
Choose the Earth, choose
your children, choose life,

[01:30:30.02]
and do not choose dirty money.

[01:30:32.04]
So as you can see, there are some folks

[01:30:34.07]
standing in the driveway.

[01:30:36.01]
These folks are willing to risk arrest.

[01:30:38.03]
[protesters cheering and applauding]

[01:30:42.01]
- We're going to lie across the driveway

[01:30:44.06]
and basically, you know, say,
"Well, we're here.

[01:30:47.08]
"It's your job to get rid of us."

[01:30:49.09]
And we refuse to accept failures

[01:30:52.04]
from business and world leaders.

[01:30:55.00]
I lie down in solidarity
with those at risk

[01:30:58.07]
and with those who resist!

[01:31:00.08]
[protesters cheering]

[01:31:07.02]
♪ And when I rise ♪

[01:31:08.07]
♪ And when I rise ♪

[01:31:10.04]
♪ Let me rise up ♪

[01:31:11.09]
♪ Let me rise up ♪

[01:31:13.04]
♪ Like a bird ♪

[01:31:14.09]
♪ Like a bird ♪

[01:31:16.04]
♪ Powerfully ♪

[01:31:18.00]
♪ Powerfully ♪

[01:31:19.01]
♪ And when I fall ♪

[01:31:20.07]
♪ And when I fall ♪

[01:31:22.05]
♪ Let me fall down ♪

[01:31:24.01]
♪ Let me fall down ♪

[01:31:25.05]
♪ Like a leaf ♪

[01:31:27.01]
♪ Like a leaf ♪

[01:31:28.03]
♪ Gracefully ♪

[01:31:29.08]
♪ Gracefully ♪

[01:31:31.01]
- I really believe his
approach to activism

[01:31:33.05]
and nonviolent direct action

[01:31:35.01]
does what King and others

[01:31:37.06]
really thought strategically about,

[01:31:39.04]
but also philosophically about.

[01:31:41.04]
How do you make the general
populace have to make a decision

[01:31:44.01]
about what's right and what's wrong?

[01:31:46.01]
♪ Let me rise up ♪

[01:31:47.07]
George causing folks to
interact with his body

[01:31:51.06]
that's laying down on the street.

[01:31:52.09]
People might be annoyed,
people are, like, upset,

[01:31:55.09]
but there also might
be people who see that

[01:31:58.00]
and start to ask, "Why
is this 85-year-old man

[01:32:01.01]
"laying down in the street?"

[01:32:04.02]
The hope is that an action like that

[01:32:06.06]
helps to catalyze something
internal with an individual

[01:32:10.01]
to actually bring about the change.

[01:32:12.08]
I think that's so much part of

[01:32:14.04]
what nonviolent direct
action can do in a society.

[01:32:19.00]
♪ And when I stand ♪

[01:32:20.04]
♪ And when I stand ♪

[01:32:22.01]
♪ Let me stand up ♪

[01:32:23.08]
♪ Let me stand up ♪

[01:32:25.01]
♪ Like a mountain ♪

[01:32:26.07]
♪ Like a mountain ♪

[01:32:28.00]
♪ Solidly ♪

[01:32:29.03]
♪ Solidly ♪

[01:32:30.06]
♪ ♪

[01:32:32.03]
- It is important to me

[01:32:33.06]
to allow the feelings of sadness and anger

[01:32:38.08]
to be experienced by me.

[01:32:40.06]
I can't just whisk them away.

[01:32:43.05]
And I find at such times it's
easy for me to get shaky,

[01:32:47.08]
unless I go to the source of love,

[01:32:51.06]
unless I look inside myself

[01:32:54.00]
and also find in others the love

[01:32:57.05]
that actually is there in abundance.

[01:33:00.02]
♪ ♪

[01:33:05.00]
- We need George Lakeys

[01:33:06.04]
because if we didn't have George Lakeys

[01:33:08.03]
we'd all be robots, serving some masters

[01:33:10.09]
that decided they were
gonna take on the world

[01:33:12.05]
and make it their own.

[01:33:13.09]
The George Lakeys in the
world create an imagination

[01:33:17.01]
about what the world could be,
and then gives us the tools,

[01:33:20.03]
the training, the courage,

[01:33:21.09]
the encouragement to go make it happen.

[01:33:25.03]
- He's not an optimist.

[01:33:27.00]
He looks at the world the way it is.

[01:33:29.02]
You can't be optimistic
about how things are.

[01:33:33.04]
But he's hopeful.

[01:33:34.09]
♪ ♪

[01:33:37.09]
- He talks about his life

[01:33:39.04]
and how he thinks of the
work as dancing with history.

[01:33:42.07]
Despite how much there
is struggle and conflict

[01:33:45.09]
and difficulty in the work,

[01:33:47.05]
there's a way in which
he can still find joy

[01:33:50.01]
in living through it and
being a part of change.

[01:33:53.06]
[protesters chanting]

[01:33:55.08]
- I think in some ways the
largest impact has been

[01:33:58.08]
on the number of people he's trained.

[01:34:00.08]
He's trained thousands of people

[01:34:02.07]
who have, in turn, trained others

[01:34:04.09]
and led movements and campaigns.

[01:34:07.03]
- Our generation is ready
to take back our lives!

[01:34:10.03]
[protesters cheering]

[01:34:11.05]
- [Ingrid] That's a big boulder in a lake

[01:34:13.02]
to make ripples that we can't even see.

[01:34:15.04]
♪ ♪

[01:34:17.07]
- [George] When I was 19,

[01:34:19.02]
I decided my life was to
be about social change,

[01:34:23.00]
about moving society toward justice.

[01:34:26.04]
That was to be my mission.

[01:34:28.04]
- [Ingrid] I think he followed his dreams,

[01:34:31.01]
and ultimately I think
that's what matters.

[01:34:34.01]
♪ ♪

[01:34:37.01]
- George is knocking on nine
decades on planet Earth.

[01:34:40.09]
His legacy will be how much he loved,

[01:34:43.03]
and how well he loved.

[01:34:45.06]
Love in struggle.

[01:34:46.07]
Love in connection.

[01:34:47.07]
Love in celebration.

[01:34:49.01]
Love in grief.

[01:34:51.00]
I think we'll look back and
say that he really loved.

[01:34:53.07]
♪ ♪

[01:35:10.08]
♪ We are going ♪

[01:35:16.00]
♪ Heaven knows how we are going ♪

[01:35:24.03]
♪ We know we are ♪

[01:35:30.00]
♪ We will get there ♪

[01:35:35.03]
♪ Heaven knows how we will get there ♪

[01:35:43.07]
♪ We know we will ♪

[01:35:47.08]
♪ It might be hard we know ♪

[01:35:54.07]
♪ And the road will be stony and rough ♪

[01:36:03.01]
♪ But we'll get there ♪

[01:36:08.01]
♪ Heaven knows how we will get there ♪

[01:36:16.06]
♪ But we know we will ♪

[01:36:21.04]
♪ ♪

[01:38:22.07]
♪ We are soldiers in the army ♪

[01:38:27.02]
♪ We gotta fight ♪

[01:38:28.06]
♪ Although we gotta cry ♪

[01:38:31.00]
♪ We gotta hold up the freedom banner ♪

[01:38:34.06]
♪ We gotta hold it up until we die ♪

[01:38:39.09]
[George sighing]

[01:38:46.03]
It's a great song.

[01:38:48.01]
A true marching song.

[01:38:49.09]