How to Defend Democracy — and Fight Autocracy | Leopoldo Lopez | TED

51,719 views ・ 2024-11-04

TED


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So today I want to talk to you about something
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that has been at the core of my existence for the past years:
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freedom and democracy.
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I was elected mayor of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela,
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in the year 2000.
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I was reelected in the year 2004.
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And then in the year 2008, when I was running for higher office,
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I was banned to run for office.
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Because we were going to win.
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At that time, we started a movement,
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a nonviolent civil resistance grassroots movement that went all over Venezuela
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and worked with people all around the country
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to build a network that could face off the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.
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In the year 2013, Maduro was elected.
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He stole an election.
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And in January of 2014, we called for protest.
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Tens of thousands of people went to the streets.
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And that took me to prison.
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I spent the next seven years in imprisonment,
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four of them in solitary confinement in a military prison.
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The history of my country, Venezuela,
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is one, like many other Latin American countries, African countries,
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one of military rule,
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exile, imprisonment and politics.
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So I had read a lot about what it meant to be in prison.
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I read the usual suspects,
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I read about Mandela, I read about Gandhi,
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I read about my [role] model, Martin Luther King.
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But I also read a lot about the experience of Venezuelans,
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including my great grandfather,
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who had been a political prisoner for years
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and died in exile.
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Everything that they had to say was relevant to their own condition,
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but they all spoke about the importance of having a routine.
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So I had my own routine since day one,
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February 18 of 2014.
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My routine was simple.
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I would do three things every day.
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I would pray to take care of my soul.
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I would read, write, to do something with my mind.
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And I would do exercise.
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I did those three things with Spartan discipline every day.
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If I did them, I would feel that I was winning the day.
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But there was one thing that I would think about every single day:
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why I was in prison.
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And in fact, this is something that I'm sure happens to all prisoners,
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political prisoners or not.
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That's what prison, in a way, is made for.
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So every day I thought about what freedom and democracy meant.
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And it was there in a cell, two by two,
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in solitary confinement
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that I really got to understand what freedom was.
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And it became clear to me that freedom is not about one thing.
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In fact, freedom is about the possibility of doing many things.
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So the possibility to speak out, to express your mind.
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It's the possibility to move around in your country.
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It's the possibility to assemble with whomever you want to assemble,
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to pray to whomever you want to pray,
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to own property.
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And all of those things were taken away from me and from millions of Venezuelans.
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And it also became very clear to me
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that freedom and democracy were two sides of a coin.
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Were interdependent.
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You cannot have freedom without democracy.
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You cannot have democracy if people are not free.
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So that took me to think
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about the state of democracy.
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In fact, next month,
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in November,
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we're going to celebrate the 35th anniversary
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of the fall of the Berlin Wall,
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35 years.
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Back then, I was in grad school.
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It was the '90s.
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And I remember the excitement that was everywhere
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about spreading democracy,
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spreading freedom, human rights, all over the place.
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I remember my teachers
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going to different countries with students.
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But when we look back 35 years ago and we fast forward,
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things didn't really come out the way it was expected.
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Only 10 years ago,
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42 percent of the world's population was living under autocratic rule.
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That was 3.1 billion people.
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That's around the same time I was sent to prison.
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Today, 72 percent of the global population
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is living under some sort of autocratic rule.
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So let's think about this.
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This is 5.7 billion people in the world
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that don't have the rights that most people in this room have.
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They can't speak freely,
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they can't move freely, they can't pray freely,
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they can't own property.
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5.7 billion people in the world.
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After seven years of imprisonment,
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I was able to escape prison and went into exile.
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Exile is another form of imprisonment.
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At the beginning, it was tough.
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But then I started to meet other people like myself,
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who had been leading protests in their countries,
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who had been political prisoners,
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who were in exile.
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And we were very different in any way we could think about:
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our skin color, our religion, our languages,
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the story of our families, the history of our countries.
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We were very different.
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But when we spoke
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about what it meant to fight for freedom
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and to confront autocracies,
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I was with my buddies.
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It was the same people, the same movement.
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So we decided to create an alliance
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of democracy defenders and freedom fighters.
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So alongside with Garry Kasparov,
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from Russia,
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and an incredible woman from Iran, Masih Alinejad,
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we decided to create an alliance of freedom fighters
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and democracy defenders.
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And that's how we created the World Liberty Congress,
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which is an alliance of hundreds of leaders,
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many of them you have seen their work in Hong Kong, in Russia, in Belarus,
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in Uganda, in Zimbabwe, in Afghanistan, in Cambodia, Nicaragua, Cuba,
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in many countries.
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And we decided to work together, to come together
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with a single purpose:
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to stop autocracy
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and to bring democracy to our countries.
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But it became very clear to us
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that we were not only facing our local autocrat,
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we were also facing a network of autocrats,
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an axis of autocrats.
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And this is something that might not be obvious to many people.
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But in fact, autocrats work together.
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They support each other.
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In many ways: diplomatically, financially, militarily,
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through their kleptocratic networks.
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And this is not an ideological alliance.
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It has nothing to do with ideology.
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Right, left, conservative, liberals, nothing to do with that.
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It has to do with power, money and a common enemy:
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democracy.
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So that's why you have the nationalists from Russia,
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the theocrats from Iran,
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the communists from China,
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working together under a similar alliance.
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So if autocrats are working together
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and the world is coming to a point
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where 72 percent of the world's population is under autocracy,
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it's time to think about why should you care about this?
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Why should everybody, anybody care about this?
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Why should someone who’s living in the United States or in Europe
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or in a functioning democracy care about this?
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Well, if you care about climate change,
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if you care about gender equality,
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if you care about women's rights,
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if you care about human rights,
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if you care about corruption,
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if you care about migration,
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you need to be concerned about the rise of autocracy
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and the need for democracy.
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30 percent of the CO2 emissions come from China and Russia alone.
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80 percent of the world’s poverty comes from autocratic countries.
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90 percent of the forced migration,
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and we from Venezuela can speak about this,
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has at its root cause autocracy.
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So we need to care about this.
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And what can be done?
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What can be done about this?
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Well, I believe that we are now at a moment
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where we need to make a tipping point
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of the engagement of people around the world
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to create a movement towards freedom and democracy.
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Think about the climate change movement
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20, 30, 40 years ago.
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It was not mainstream.
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It was there, but it was not mainstream.
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But then what happened?
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Researchers, governments, policymakers, activists,
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artists, school teachers, students,
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children, everybody came together under the same cause.
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Because I remember during the 1980s, '90s,
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you would look up to the sky
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and you would think that there was an ozone hole in the sky
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that was going to destroy.
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So the threat was very clear.
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People came together, policy came together,
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and now it's mainstream.
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Things are being done.
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I believe we are at that point with respect to democracy and freedom.
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If that trend continues,
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today 72 percent, if that trend continues,
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maybe in the next 25 years, in 2050,
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the entire world would be autocratic.
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And that is less than a generation ago.
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So we must take action.
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What can we do?
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Well, the first thing I believe is
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to assume that we need to take the offensive.
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Stop legitimizing autocrats.
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Autocrats today are comfortable.
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They do business with governments, with businesses.
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We need to think of smart sanctions,
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of ways to make them accountable for the violations of human rights.
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Second, there needs to be a support for pro-democracy
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and freedom movements.
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In the United States,
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that is the most actively philanthropic society in the world,
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only two percent of philanthropy goes to democracy-related issues.
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Only two percent.
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And a fraction of a fraction of that two percent
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goes to promote democracy outside the US.
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It's not a priority.
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So supporting pro-democracy movements,
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supporting the people that want to be free,
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should be a priority for all.
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And I mean, let me give you some examples.
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Technology.
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Access to internet, to free and uncensored internet.
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Think of the potential transformational capacity
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to give people all over the world access to internet.
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Let me give you another example.
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Using new technologies like Bitcoin
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to promote and support the potential of these movements.
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We are doing this already.
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In the case of Venezuela,
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we supported more than 80,000 medical doctors and nurses
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using Stablecoins and Bitcoins
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because under autocracies you are under a financial apartheid.
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Give opportunities for training.
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Give opportunities for these movements to be part of a global conversation.
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And finally, we need to build a global movement.
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There is not one person,
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one organization, one government,
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that can do this by themselves.
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Similar to climate change.
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We need to think of this challenge as a network.
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We need to create nodes of network,
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nodes of network that activate all over the place.
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We need to activate anyone with the things that they can do.
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Musicians should think about singing for freedom.
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Artists, intellectuals, researchers, activists, governments.
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Everybody can create their own node with a similar goal,
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which is freedom and democracy.
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When I was in solitary confinement,
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I had a window,
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and I could see through the crack of that window that there was a tree,
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and in that tree there was a hawk.
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And I contemplated that animal for hours and hours and hours.
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I only think that you contemplate an animal that long
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if you're in biology or you're in prison.
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And one day, a guard told me,
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because I was always telling the guards about the hawk,
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he said, "You know, the hawk is injured,
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went through barbed wire, and he’s injured.”
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And I said, "Bring it to me."
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And to my surprise, they brought it to me.
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Maybe because they thought it was going to die.
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I fed that hawk.
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And that's the hawk in my cell.
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That's a drawing I made of the prison I was [in],
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of that tree and of the hawk.
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And then one day, after a couple of months,
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they came to my cell,
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they threw a blanket on the hawk, they took it away.
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Of course it affected me.
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But less than a day after, that hawk was in the same tree.
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And it reassured me that it doesn't matter how low you are,
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how low percentage possibilities you have to succeed,
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there is always possibility to do so.
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So I came out and being in exile,
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I met a tattoo artist, that put me a tattoo of Venezuela on my leg,
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so I now have that eagle here, and I have it always with me.
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(Applause)
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As a reminder,
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as a reminder that we can always rise up to all of the challenges.
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So I ask all of you to stand up,
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to speak out, to do something about our freedom.
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This is our time.
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Think of 25 years,
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and let's give our children a free world
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with human rights, democracy and respect for all.
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Thank you very much, thank you very much.
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(Cheers and applause)
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Thank you.
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(Cheers and applause continue)
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Helen Walters: Thank you, thank you, Leo.
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Audience: Venezuela libre!
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Leopoldo Lopez: Venezuela libre, hermano, Venezuela libre.
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HW: OK, Leo, I wanted to ask you a few questions,
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and actually Venezuela is one of them.
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So there were elections in July,
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Maduro says he won the election,
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observers says he did not.
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But what are you hearing?
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What is the situation in Venezuela right now?
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LL: Well, so let me explain this very briefly.
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The case of Venezuela has been an electoral autocracy.
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So we've gone to elections for years.
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And we've been developing the ways in which we can know exactly the results.
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On July 28, there was an election,
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we had a candidate, Maria Corina Machado,
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she was disqualified the same way I was disqualified years ago.
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So we had another candidate, Edmundo González.
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He was unknown three months before the election,
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but he became known by everybody.
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And on the 28th of July, he won with 70 percent of the vote.
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The decision of Maduro was to steal the election.
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But we were able to prove
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with elements of every single voting machine,
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that we actually won.
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Maduro decided to have a repression all over the country.
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We went to the election with 300 political prisoners.
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Now there are maybe 2,500 political prisoners.
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I wake up every day
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to get a message from someone from my movement
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who has been taken to prison,
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That's the situation now.
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But I can assure you that we will be free.
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Because one thing is to think that you are a majority,
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and a very different one is to know.
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Everybody knows that we are a huge majority,
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and that will not be sustainable for Maduro
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because we will never surrender.
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And we will be free.
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(Cheers and applause)
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HW: OK, so we were just chatting backstage
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and you mentioned that today is a very special day,
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and I want to bring up a photo.
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And I wonder if you can tell us what today is for you.
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LL: Well, today is the fourth anniversary of me meeting my family.
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This is my family,
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that’s my wife, Lilian, more than my half.
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You know, people say "my second half."
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No, no, it's just three quarters of who I am,
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my beautiful wife, Lilian.
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And these are my three kids, Manuela, who is now 15,
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Leo, who is 11 and Federica, who is one.
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And I had not seen them for almost two years.
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I had not seen my kids and my wife.
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And that’s the day, exactly four years ago,
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after I escaped,
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I met them back in Spain.
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So it's an important day for us.
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And I’m very grateful that Lilian is the woman
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who’s the mother of my kids.
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Because she was an incredible mother while I was away,
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and she was an incredible advocate
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for the freedom of all political prisoners when I was in prison.
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HW: Leo, you’re an icon.
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Thank you, Leo Lopez.
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LL: Thank you very much.
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