Lawrence Lessig: The unstoppable walk to political reform

99,180 views ・ 2014-04-04

TED


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00:13
So a chip, a poet and a boy.
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It's just about 20 years ago,
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June 1994, when Intel announced
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that there was a flaw
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at the core of their Pentium chip.
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Deep in the code of the SRT algorithm
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to calculate intermediate quotients necessary
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for iterative floating points of divisions --
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I don't know what that means, but it's what it says on Wikipedia —
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there was a flaw and an error
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that meant that there was a certain probability
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that the result of the calculation would be an error,
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and the probability was one out of every
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360 billion calculations.
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So Intel said your average spreadsheet
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would be flawed once every 27,000 years.
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They didn't think it was significant,
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but there was an outrage in the community.
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The community, the techies, said, this flaw
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has to be addressed.
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They were not going to stand by quietly
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as Intel gave them these chips.
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So there was a revolution across the world.
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People marched to demand --
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okay, not really exactly like that —
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but they rose up and they demanded
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that Intel fix the flaw.
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And Intel set aside 475 million dollars
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to fund the replacement of millions of chips
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to fix the flaw.
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So billions of dollars in our society
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was spent to address a problem
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which would come once out of every 360 billion
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calculations.
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Number two, a poet.
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This is Martin Niemöller.
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You're familiar with his poetry.
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Around the height of the Nazi period,
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he started repeating the verse,
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"First they came for the communists,
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and I did nothing,
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did not speak out because I was not a communist.
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Then they came for the socialists.
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Then they came for the trade unions.
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Then they came for the Jews.
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And then they came for me.
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But there was no one left to speak for me."
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Now, Niemöller is offering a certain kind of insight.
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This is an insight at the core of intelligence.
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We could call it cluefulness.
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It's a certain kind of test:
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Can you recognize
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an underlying threat and respond?
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Can you save yourself or save your kind?
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Turns out ants are pretty good at this.
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Cows, not so much.
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So can you see the pattern?
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Can you see a pattern and then recognize
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and do something about it? Number two.
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Number three, a boy.
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This is my friend Aaron Swartz.
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He's Tim's friend.
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He's friends of many of you in this audience,
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and seven years ago,
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Aaron came to me with a question.
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It was just before I was going to give my first TED Talk.
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I was so proud. I was telling him about my talk,
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"Laws that choke creativity."
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And Aaron looked at me
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and was a little impatient, and he said,
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"So how are you ever
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going to solve the problems you're talking about?
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Copyright policy, Internet policy,
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how are you ever going to address those problems
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so long as there's this fundamental corruption
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in the way our government works?"
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So I was a little put off by this.
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He wasn't sharing in my celebration.
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And I said to him, "You know, Aaron,
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it's not my field, not my field."
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He said, "You mean as an academic, it's not your field?"
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I said, "Yeah, as an academic, it's not my field."
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He said, "What about as a citizen?
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As a citizen."
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Now, this is the way Aaron was.
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He didn't tell. He asked questions.
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But his questions spoke as clearly
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as my four-year-old's hug.
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He was saying to me,
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"You've got to get a clue.
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You have got to get a clue, because there is
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a flaw at the core of the operating system
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of this democracy,
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and it's not a flaw every one out of 360 billion times
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our democracy tries to make a decision.
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It is every time,
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every single important issue.
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We've got to end the bovinity of this political society.
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We've got to adopt, it turns out,
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the word is fourmi-formatic attitude --
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that's what the Internet tells me the word is --
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the ant's appreciative attitude
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that gets us to recognize this flaw,
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save our kind and save our demos.
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Now if you know Aaron Swartz,
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you know that we lost him
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just over a year ago.
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It was about six weeks
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before I gave my TED Talk,
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and I was so grateful to Chris
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that he asked me to give this TED Talk,
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not because I had the chance to talk to you,
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although that was great,
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but because it pulled me out of an extraordinary depression.
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I couldn't begin to describe the sadness.
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Because I had to focus.
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I had to focus on, what was I going to say to you?
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It saved me.
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But after the buzz, the excitement,
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the power that comes from this community,
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I began to yearn for a less sterile,
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less academic way to address these issues,
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the issues that I was talking about.
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We'd begun to focus on New Hampshire
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as a target for this political movement,
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because the primary in New Hampshire
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is so incredibly important.
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It was a group called the New Hampshire Rebellion
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that was beginning to talk about, how would we make
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this issue of this corruption central in 2016?
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But it was another soul that caught my imagination,
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a woman named Doris Haddock, aka Granny D.
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On January 1, 1999, 15 years ago,
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at the age of 88, Granny D started a walk.
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She started in Los Angeles
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and began to walk to Washington, D.C.
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with a single sign on her chest that said,
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"campaign finance reform."
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Eighteen months later,
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at the age of 90,
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she arrived in Washington with hundreds following her,
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including many congressmen who had gotten in a car
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and driven out about a mile outside of the city
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to walk in with her.
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(Laughter)
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Now, I don't have 13 months
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to walk across the country.
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I've got three kids who hate to walk,
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and a wife who, it turns out,
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still hates when I'm not there
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for mysterious reasons,
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so this was not an option,
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but the question I asked,
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could we remix Granny D a bit?
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What about a walk not of 3,200 miles
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but of 185 miles across New Hampshire
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in January?
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So on January 11,
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the anniversary of Aaron's death,
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we began a walk that ended on January 24th,
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the day that Granny D was born.
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A total of 200 people joined us across this walk,
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as we went from the very top to the very bottom of New Hampshire
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talking about this issue.
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And what was astonishing to me,
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something I completely did not expect to find,
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was the passion and anger
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that there was among everyone that we talked to about this issue.
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We had found in a poll that 96 percent of Americans
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believe it important to reduce the influence
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of money in politics.
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Now politicians and pundits tell you,
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there's nothing we can do about this issue,
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Americans don't care about it,
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but the reason for that is
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that 91 percent of Americans
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think there's nothing that can be done about this issue.
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And it's this gap between 96 and 91
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that explains our politics of resignation.
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I mean, after all, at least 96 percent of us
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wish we could fly like Superman,
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but because at least 91 percent of us believe we can't,
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we don't leap off of tall buildings every time
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we have that urge.
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That's because we accept our limits,
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and so too with this reform.
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But when you give people the sense of hope,
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you begin to thaw that absolute sense of impossibility.
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As Harvey Milk said, if you give 'em hope,
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you give 'em a chance, a way to think
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about how this change is possible.
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Hope.
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And hope is the one thing that we, Aaron's friends,
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failed him with, because we let him
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lose that sense of hope.
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I loved that boy like I love my son.
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But we failed him.
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And I love my country,
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and I'm not going to fail that.
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I'm not going to fail that.
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That sense of hope, we're going to hold,
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and we're going to fight for,
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however impossible this battle looks.
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What's next?
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Well, we started with this march with 200 people,
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and next year, there will be 1,000
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on different routes
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that march in the month of January
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and meet in Concord to celebrate this cause,
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and then in 2016, before the primary,
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there will be 10,000 who march across that state,
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meeting in Concord to celebrate this cause.
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And as we have marched, people around the country
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have begun to say, "Can we do the same thing
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in our state?"
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So we've started a platform called G.D. Walkers,
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that is, Granny D walkers,
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and Granny D walkers across the country
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will be marching for this reform. Number one.
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Number two, on this march,
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one of the founders of Thunderclap, David Cascino,
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was with us,
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and he said, "Well what can we do?"
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And so they developed a platform,
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which we are announcing today,
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that allows us to pull together voters
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who are committed to this idea of reform.
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Regardless of where you are,
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in New Hampshire or outside of New Hampshire,
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you can sign up and directly be informed
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where the candidates are on this issue
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so you can decide who to vote for
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as a function of which is going
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to make this possibility real.
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And then finally number three, the hardest.
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We're in the age of the Super PAC.
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Indeed yesterday, Merriam announced
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that Merriam-Webster will have Super PAC as a word.
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It is now an official word in the dictionary.
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So on May 1, aka May Day,
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we're going to try an experiment.
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We're going to try a launching
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of what we can think of as a Super PAC
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to end all Super PACs.
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And the basic way this works is this.
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For the last year, we have been working
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with analysts and political experts
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to calculate, how much would it cost
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to win enough votes in the United States Congress
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to make fundamental reform possible?
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What is that number? Half a billion? A billion?
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What is that number?
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And then whatever that number is,
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we are going to kickstart, sort of,
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because you can't use KickStarter for political work,
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but anyway, kickstart, sort of,
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first a bottom-up campaign
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where people will make small dollar commitments
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contingent on reaching very ambitious goals,
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and when those goals have been reached,
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we will turn to the large dollar contributors,
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to get them to contribute to make it possible
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for us to run the kind of Super PAC necessary
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to win this issue,
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to change the way money influences politics,
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so that on November 8,
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which I discovered yesterday is the day
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that Aaron would have been 30 years old,
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on November 8,
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we will celebrate 218 representatives
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in the House and 60 Senators
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in the United States Senate
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who have committed to this idea
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of fundamental reform.
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So last night, we heard about wishes.
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Here's my wish.
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May one.
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May the ideals of one boy
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unite one nation behind one critical idea
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that we are one people,
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we are the people who were promised a government,
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a government that was promised to be
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dependent upon the people alone, the people,
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who, as Madison told us,
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meant not the rich more than the poor.
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May one.
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And then may you, may you join this movement,
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not because you're a politician,
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not because you're an expert,
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not because this is your field,
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but because if you are,
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you are a citizen.
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Aaron asked me that.
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Now I've asked you.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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