Srda Popovic : How to Topple a Dictator
Srda Popovic was one of the founders and key organisers with the Serbian student non-violent resistance group Otpor! He says that 2011 is already “A Very Bad Year For Very Bad Guys” and it is worth understanding how people power, or the real power behind the on-going dramatic events in the Arab Spring and beyond actually works.
ABOUT TEDx
TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, ‘ideas worth spreading’. The programme is designed to give communities, organisations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.
ABOUT Srda Popovic
“Srđa Popović is a native of Belgrade and one of the founders and key organisers with the Serbian student non-violent resistance group Otpor! He was raised in a political environment with both parents working in the media. His father was a prominent television reporter and his mother a popular News anchor on state television.
Srda’s main responsibility was Human Resources and training Otpor activists in non-violent action. Following the success of the non-violent movement in his home country, Srdja began advising people in other countries interested in non-violent resistance including: Georgia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Burma, Iran, and Venezuela.
Together with other ex-Otpor! activists, he founded a Non-Profit educational institution called the (CANVAS). CANVAS has now worked with people from 37 different countries on spreading the knowledge of non-violent strategies and tactics used by the Serbian pro-democracy movement.
The success of the Arab Spring this year demonstrated just how far ‘People Power’, or non-violent struggle, can go. Over the last 35 years, non-violent struggle has been a more powerful force than military struggle in 67 transitions, including Poland’s in 1989 – and has reached a new peak in the new wave of democratisation we witnessed in the Arab Spring.
Srdja speaks about, particularly after the Arab Spring, how ‘People Power’ is becoming the new normal form of popular uprising. Their non-violent campaign to unseat Serbian president Slobodan Milosovic met with success in October 2000 when hundreds of thousands of protestors converged upon and took over the Serbian Parliament, effectively ending Milosevic’s rule.
After the revolution Popovic served a term as member of the Serbian National Assembly between 2000-2003. He left the Parliament in late 2003 and co-founded the Centre for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), a group that supports non-violent democratic movements through the transfer of knowledge on strategies and tactics of non-violent struggle.”
The VIDEO
RELATED
1. Website: CANVAS
