(upbeat instrumental music)
(audience cheering and clapping)
- Wow, what can I do where I am?
What can I do to make
things a little bit better
where I live?
That's the question
that Toni Morrison asked
as a young editor during the middle
of the Civil Rights Movement
when there was change
occurring all around her.
What can I do where I am?
She decided to use her gifts,
her passion, and her position as an editor
basically to lift up the ideas
and the words and the voices
of people all around her,
to make sure that they
were being seen and heard.
She then become one of
those voices herself,
writing novels that made sure
that every face was seen,
that every voice was heard,
that every story was told
in a way that changed not just literature,
but helped define who we are as a people.
What can I do where I am?
That question and so
many questions like it
are at the heart of what we
at the Obama Foundation seek to do.
When people ask that question
or a question like that,
what can I do where I am,
we seek to have them be
inspired by that question
not to look to their
left or to their right
or to someone else,
but to look first within themselves
for the voice and the
power that they have,
but then to begin to analyze
what needs to be done in their community.
That is their responsibility.
We seek to empower them
whether they are in South Africa,
in Southeast Asia,
or right here on the
south side of Chicago,
not by giving them something
that they don't already have,
but with some tools
and some support so that
they can be more powerful
than they even imagine,
and then more importantly,
once we do that,
we seek to connect them.
We seek to connect this network
of change makers together
because there is a truth that all of you
are seeing here at this gathering,
that even though all of us have voice
and power and agency,
none of us do anything alone.
The things that we accomplish together
are far greater than what
we can do by ourselves,
and so gatherings like this,
you see it manifested
digitally with our online tools,
and our storytelling tools.
And then one day,
one day on the south side
of Chicago in Jackson Park
at the Obama Presidential Center,
there will be a place,
a place that will be a beacon
for people who, when
they ask that question,
"What can I do where I am?"
They know that there is a place
on the south side of
Chicago where hope lives.
That's what we are doing,
(audience applauding)
and when you draw people together
and you make connections like
the connections we've made,
and you witness how important it is
for a young person who is
beginning her leadership journey
to be guided and inspired
by someone who's a little bit
further along in their journey,
you see now how where I am
and what I can do
becomes real for so many people,
and so today, I am so proud
to introduce a conversation
that will let you see how we do that.
I'd like you to join me
in welcoming to the stage
four of our Obama Foundation
program participants.
I'd like to welcome DeAndre Brown,
Samira Koujok, Mimi Gonzalez,
and Awah Francisca Mbuli.
Please welcome them to the stage,
(audience applauding and cheering)
and these powerful young people
are gonna take part in
an amazing conversation
with a brilliant young actor,
organizer, and activist Yara Shahidi,
and ladies and gentlemen,
the 44th President of the
United States of America,
Barack Obama.
(audience applauding and cheering)
(mumbling)
(upbeat instrumental music)
(laughing)
- I don't--
- What's going on out there?
(mumbling)
All right, settle down, all of you.
(audience laughing)
- Hello, everybody.
I'm so honored to be here.
Can we just see how has
everyone's day been?
(audience cheering)
- Good, excellent.
- It's been pretty incredible,
and I'm really honored to be here
and share space with incredible leaders
in their own right
and start a fascinating conversation
that continues in the vein
of I think everything
we've heard this morning
and everything we continue to hear
about the importance of the individual
and the importance of our
communities that raise us.
And I think should we just jump right in?
Is that okay--
- Let's just jump in.
- Yeah.
- Why not?
- Well, what I loved is just
the theme of this conference
talking about place because I think for me
place is always really represented
in interacting with your history
and the legacy of where you are.
One of the only tattoos on my body,
this is a side note,
but it will make sense in a second.
- Mom's wondering where
this is going right now.
- We actually have tattoos
in the same place--
- Oh, there you go.
- She knows exactly where this is going,
but it's 1963,
and it for me represents the
work that was done that year
as well as the atrocities
that occurred that year
from the bombing of the Birmingham Church
and the assassination of Medgar Evers
to the March on Washington,
and more importantly a larger idea
of people continuing to work
towards a future they weren't
necessarily guaranteed
but deemed essential.
And I know that '63 was also
a pivotal year for Chicago
as 200,000 students boycotted segregation
of school policies,
and so in talking about place,
one of my first questions is just,
how do we as a community
continue in the legacy of the
work that's presented to us?
- Well, first of all,
I am just thrilled with
this representation
of amazing young leaders
that I've had the
opportunity to get to know
and to see and to learn from
and be inspired by all around the world,
and Yara, thank you for participating
and helping to moderate this.
The objective of the foundation
is to create more and more platforms
by which all of you
can thrive and succeed,
and one thing to remember
about 1963 is that
most of the leaders of
the Civil Rights Movement
were your age.
I mean, Dr. King, when he first started
with the Montgomery Bus Boycott
was 25, 26.
Think about that.
John Lewis, who is one
of the only remaining,
in fact, I think is the only living person
on the original program
that I have framed.
It was given to me as a gift
from the March on Washington,
was just barely 20, 21,
and so one place to start
when you think about, where do we go next?
How do we continue
to bring about greater equality,
greater justice, greater opportunity,
is to remind yourselves
that the same doubts,
uncertainties, struggles, difficulties,
challenges that sometimes
may weigh you down,
they were going through,
the same divisions and arguments about,
how should we approach social change?
Who should be in charge?
What are our best tactics?
They were having those same
discussions and arguments,
and perhaps most importantly,
I think it's really useful
to remind ourselves that they were part
of a continuum just as you
are part of a continuum,
so we were talking backstage
about the notion of
non-violent resistance.
Well, Dr. King and Civil Rights workers
had learned the idea of
non-violent resistance
by watching Gandhi in India
and the movement to achieve
independence from colonialism,
and so they were part of that continuum.
They were part of a continuum
of Charles Hamilton Houston,
one of the first African Americans
to attend Harvard Law School,
who helped to engineer the
strategy with Thurgood Marshall
that ultimately led to Brown
versus Board of Education.
That was another part of the river
that they were merging with.
Rosa Parks had learned to sit down
not just 'cause her feet were tired
but because the Highlander School,
which drew on some of
the activist traditions
dating back to the Great
Depression and before,
that was part of the stream.
So you're part of that continuum,
and the good news is that
when you start feeling
that you're a part of something larger,
that you're taking a
baton from somebody else,
and then you're running
your stage of the race,
and then you're passing it on,
A, you don't feel as alone.
B, it also gives you
a sense of perspective
and some patience
because it is very rare where
change happens overnight.
Now when you're young,
you're supposed to be impatient.
If you're too patient,
and you're young,
you may not get to where you want to go,
but the danger of impatience
is you can get discouraged
if change doesn't happen right away,
and I think that the most important thing
for all of you is to remember
that the work you're doing in this place
at this moment is not
gonna be the beginning,
and it's not the end.
And as long as you are doing
good work in that moment,
at that time, and
helping people concretely
move the needle a little bit,
push that boulder up the hill just a bit,
then you can take satisfaction with that,
and that's what builds over time,
but I don't know.
Does that make sense?
Mimi, what do you think
about the question?
How do you think about being part of,
as a really young person,
and you're trying to figure out
in your specific community
when you're out there
bringing about change,
are you thinking about the struggles
of people before you,
or are you just thinking,
"Man, this seems hard,
and, "How do I get this done now,"
and what do you think?
- Well, I'm not really focused
on if it's hard for me.
- Tell us a little bit
about what you're doing
just so that people know.
- So I'm Mimi.
I'm in the Hartford
Community Leadership Corps.
My project there,
we are trying to create an organization
called Wealthy Minds,
so don't think wealthy like money.
Think wealthy like wellness,
so Wealthy Minds,
and basically what we want to do,
so there's a lot of resources in Hartford,
but a lot of people don't
know where they are.
Maybe they're have an access issue,
or they just don't know how
to get to these resources,
so my group and I,
we want to create a platform and a space
where we can connect
these people in Hartford
with the resources we already have,
and while we do that,
we also want to connect
it back to the arts
because whenever there's
something going on
in the community,
the way we express pain
is through the arts.
Like sometimes we want to listen to music,
or we want to do spoken word,
or we go to see a film.
Whatever it is,
the arts provide an outlet for everybody,
and that's what we want to do,
so we had our first pop up
event actually two weeks ago,
and it was amazing.
We had about 50 people come out,
and we partnered with the
Jordan Porco Foundation,
Hartford Psychological Services,
and the Hartford Gay and
Lesbian Health Collective,
and they provided resources
that we could give
back to the people
already in our community,
and we had a drag performer perform.
We had a spoken word singer,
and it just felt like a space
of healing towards something better.
- Excellent, fantastic.
(audience applauding)
Do you want to move on
to another question?
'Cause I've got questions
for all these people.
(audience laughing)
- Yeah, then let's--
- 'Cause they're really much
more interesting than me,
(audience laughing)
or at least you've heard from me
more than you've heard from them.
- Okay, well, then for the sake of hearing
from somebody else,
let's actually hear from
DeAndre who has a question
about what catalyzes change.
- Okay, so good afternoon.
Got to be formal for the
television, you know?
But my question is,
I know what passion and drive it takes
to work hard and change something,
and to do something that
many other people can't do.
As a black man,
what made you believe that you
can change an entire country
or change things in an entire country
in a place where you were,
I have especially been
told that I can't do it,
and when did that happen?
- I was dropped on my head as a child,
(audience laughing)
and so I didn't have any sense.
I think this actually connects
with Yara's earlier question
about how do we sustain a movement.
There's a corollary to that,
which is, how do we sustain our own sense
of hope and drive and
vision and motivation,
and how do we dream big?
And for me at least,
it was not a straight line.
It wasn't a steady progression.
It was an evolution that
took place over time
as I tried to align what
I believed most deeply
with what I saw around me
and with my own actions.
One of the things that I used to do,
trainings for community organizers,
and we used to tell folks,
if you want to know what
your values are right now,
look at where you're putting your time,
your money, your energy.
You may tell yourself that you
are really community minded,
but if all your time, money, and energy
is going into going to the club
or playing sports,
then that's actually
what's important to you.
Now what happens is,
as a young man, I've said before
that I was kind of a goof off.
When I was your age,
I was not sitting on the stage talking
in some serious voice about,
(audience laughing)
I was out there
trying to get with some girl
or playing basketball
or doing things I
shouldn't have been doing.
But what started
happening was that I would
read, let's say, about Nelson Mandela
and the struggles in South Africa,
and I'm in a class,
and I'm raising my hand,
and I've some opinion,
or a representative of the
African National Congress
would come to campus,
and they were my age,
and they're risking potentially
getting thrown in jail,
or they're in exile
trying to struggle.
And I'm saying to myself, hm,
if I really do believe in that,
then what am I doing about it,
and what am I willing to give up,
and what am I willing to sacrifice?
And so there was this long process for me
of aligning what I said I believed in
with my behavior
and then testing what I could change
so that the world would align better
with what I believed in and my values,
and so the first stage
is just kind of figuring out,
all right, what do you really believe?
What's really important to you?
Not what you pretend is important to you,
but what is really important to you,
and what are you willing to
risk or sacrifice for it?
The next phase is then you test that
against the world,
and the world kicks you in the teeth,
and says, "You may think
that this is important,
"but you know what?
"We've got other ideas,
"and who are you?
"And you can't change nothing,"
and so then you get through a phase
of trying to develop skills
and courage and resilience,
and you try to fit your actions
to the scale of whatever
influence you have,
so I came to Chicago,
and I'm working on the south side
on trying to get a park cleaned up
or trying to get a school improved,
and sometimes I'm succeeding.
A lot of times I'm failing,
but over time, you start getting
a little bit of confidence
with some small victories,
and that then gives you the power
to then analyze and say, "Huh,
"here's what worked.
"Here's what didn't.
"Here's what I need more of
"in order to achieve the vision
"or the goals that I have.
"Now let me try to take
it to the next level,"
which means then some more failure
and some more frustration
'cause you're trying to expand
the orbit of your impact,
and I think it's that iterative process.
It's not you come up with a grand theory
of here's how I'm gonna change the world,
and then suddenly it all just goes
according to clockwork,
at least not for me.
For me it was much more me trying
to be the person I
wanted to believe I was,
and at each phase,
challenging myself and testing myself
against the world to see if in fact
I could have an impact
and make a difference.
Over time, you'll surprise yourself,
and it turns out that you can,
and by the way,
I took one particular path,
but I would imagine those of you
who, let's say, are teachers,
the first time you go in a classroom,
those kids are going to say,
"You clearly don't know
what you're talking about,"
(audience laughing)
and they'll be bored,
and they'll test you,
and you're frustrated,
and you're depressed.
I know because my sister is a teacher,
and then over time you
gain more confidence.
It's the same thing.
If you are running a health clinic
or you are trying to engage
in human rights work,
it's this constant of fine tuning,
of matching your values,
your actions, and your impact,
and that takes time,
so you shouldn't expect at 18
that you got a master plan.
Samira, you're doing extraordinary work
in some of the most
difficult imaginable places
with people who have
been severely traumatized
by a terrible conflict.
I'm assuming that you've had to go
through this similar phase
where there are a lot of times
where you say to yourself,
"How can I have any impact
"in something this large?"
Maybe you can share with people
what it is that you're doing
and then describe how have you thought,
because you're slightly
older than DeAndre.
You look the same age,
but you've already been able
to build up an organization
and focused your work,
so you're a little further down that path.
Tell us a little bit about
what that's been like.
- Well, to start with,
it's exactly what you were talking about,
the small victories that matters
because, yes, we resist.
We mobilize, and we fail,
but we always find some
kind of small victories
that gives us hope to continue
and keep on going,
but we learn from our failures.
And I work in the field of missing persons
from the Syrian conflict,
and, as you know,
I mean, conflict is all
over the Middle East,
and what we do is we try to,
one, allow people to have voice
because it's very important.
It's very important in
shifting narratives,
and once we're able to shift narratives,
we're able to mobilize more,
to have solidarity with
different individuals
who are going through the same things.
At the moment, the fight continues
because there is no peace yet in Syria,
but the people are empowered.
The people are empowered
through international advocacy,
through different mechanisms
available for them,
and through their own voice,
the stories that they write,
and here comes the
importance of human rights
and education at the same time
because it's not only building on now,
it's building on the youth,
and they are gonna actually
carry on in fighting this
until we are able to
reach somewhere beautiful.
(mumbling)
(audience applauding)
- I feel like what everyone's saying
also ties in to this conversation
that's being had of focusing
on impact over legacy,
and part of action is living
in such a consistent moment in the present
that you're not necessarily thinking
about what you're leaving behind,
but part of appreciating
the small victories
is acknowledging the impact
that's being made in every exchange.
- Look,
yeah, I used to have these sessions
at the end of the White
House internship cycle
where you'd get about
200 White House interns
typically that had interned
in various offices for about six months,
and I would come in at the
end of their internship
with a group session,
and they'd ask questions,
and these were all
high achieving, type
A, gotten straight As.
They did not act like
I acted at their age,
so invariably, somebody would ask me,
"Mr. President."
They wouldn't be this bold,
but it was basically,
"How can I be president?"
(audience laughing)
In the sense of they were asking,
no, in a sincere way,
they were asking,
"I'm inspired by the
idea of public service.
"What path should I take?
"How should I think about it?"
And the thing I used to tell them,
which was something an older friend
of mine had told me back
when I was still organizing.
I remember him telling me,
and I relayed it to these young people.
Worry more about what you want to do
rather than what you want to be.
Part of the problem of
politics is typically,
whether it's Washington, D.C.,
or any other capital around the world,
a lot of people got there
because they had an idea in their head of,
"I want to be a congressman,
"or I want to be a member of Parliament,
"or I want to be X, Y, Z."
And first of all,
you're playing the lottery a little bit
'cause there's a limited number
of those seats available,
but the other thing is
when that's your focus,
you may spend 10 years just
trying to be something,
and when you get there,
it turns out that you have no idea
what you want to do with it,
so you have no moral compass.
You have no issue or cause
that you're willing to
sacrifice everything for
or lose your seat for.
All that's important to you is to stay
that thing that you wanted to be,
or to be the next thing
on whatever the pecking order is,
whereas if you focus
on what you want to do,
the question you're asking is,
"How can I get these kids
"who don't have advantages
a great education?"
And I may start off teaching,
or I may decide I'm gonna
start an after school program,
or I may decide that I'm going to mentor
while I'm paying the rent,
doing something else,
or I may decide I'm gonna hire
some of these young people and train them.
And organically out of doing that thing,
it may turn out that
your influence expands
and you get expertise in that field,
and suddenly you're a leader
in advancing the thing
that you cared about,
and if you do end up
being in a high office
or in a head of a big
organization, what have you,
you're very clear about
what you're doing about it,
and by the way,
if it doesn't work out perfectly
exactly the way you planned,
along the way, all these
people have been touched.
All this good's been done,
and your life is full,
so, yeah,
chasing an office
or a position is a little bit
like just chasing money.
I don't want to belittle it
in the sense of like,
you need money to pay the rent.
You need a job.
That is honorable and right,
but after a certain point,
the people I find who end up
being most satisfied,
even if they're in business,
are the people who just,
they were really
passionate about this thing
they wanted to do.
That's what excited them,
and as a byproduct of that passion,
it turned out that they ended up
being very successful in business, so,
Awah, tell us about how
you've been thinking
about your passion,
and I know that you were
telling me backstage
that some of the things you wanted to do
haven't gotten done yet,
and so how do you process that,
and how do you deal with that
and keep on going?
- Thank you, excellency.
- And tell everybody--
(audience laughing)
- Being a survivor of human trafficking
and coming from a community
where everyone believes that
we have to (mumbling) in life
by traveling abroad,
and then trying to dissuade people
from that idea,
it seems so difficult,
but we have to break boundaries.
I go about.
I do my things my own way
with female survivors as well
because we are female led.
We go through the communities (mumbling).
We talk to people,
showing them short videos,
pictures of who were during that ordeal,
and the present (mumbling).
We have changed.
That suddenness is no longer there.
It's very difficult to convince them,
but our passion still lives.
Your passion can be food,
and if you don't eat,
you will not be happy.
My passion is to combat human trafficking,
so if I don't go there to make a change,
I feel as if something in me is lacking,
so always push forward.
We push so hard
that we don't even feel the pain.
We just feel the joy
because we are realizing
what we are doing.
From what we are doing,
many people have learned
what human trafficking is in my community
because at first, as (mumbling),
they saw it as a sign of prestige
in their community
or a source to a greater livelihood,
but our work is making changes.
It is cutting across boundaries.
People are reaching back to
us with positive stories.
We didn't end there.
We also start to do
some employment training
because some people will say,
"You don't want me to do this.
"You don't want me to go out,
"so what do I do?"
We try to empower the women
in economic employment
schemes, vocational training.
They (mumbling) can,
and they are doing well
in their community.
They have now realized that the resources
in their community can
also be put into use,
so our passion has been satisfied,
and the changes are being made.
Thank you, excellency.
(audience applauding)
- Wow.
- And so it feels like
there's this connection
of everyone in this room
of remaining purpose driven
and being united by our drive
to consistently be doing,
and at the same time,
we've also had this conversation on access
and the importance of access and resources
as well as the importance of
your personal circumstances
influencing or feeling like they influence
what you can or cannot do,
which kind of ties into Samira's question
regarding what happens when
there are certain things
that feel like they are impeding
you from the doing itself.
- Samira, you had--
- Actually, yeah, I have a question.
Thank you, Yara.
- Yeah, she teed you up.
(audience laughing)
- So you mention a lot the importance
of peace and peacekeepers
in transforming communities,
and we just spoke about the time it takes
and the little victories,
but sometimes there are peacemakers
and peacekeepers who
jeopardize their safety
when they are trying to step up
and fight and resist,
so what can we do when it comes to that?
- Well, this is something that we've been
struggling with in the Foundation.
I struggled with it as president.
There are parts of the world
in which being an activist
is not just a matter of
sacrificing higher pay
or having longer hours
or experiencing frustrations
'cause your issue isn't advanced
as quickly as you'd like.
There are parts of the world
where you'll be imprisoned.
There are parts of the world
where you may be killed.
There are parts of the world
where even if you're not
killed or imprisoned,
your family may be threatened
or lose their jobs and their livelihoods
because you've been exercising your voice,
and there are some
participants of this summit
who are operating with
extraordinary courage
in those circumstances.
And part of what my personal advice
to these advocates has been
is that you do what you can,
but this is a long path,
and so if at any point the threats
or dangers that are
presented from your work
get to be too great,
you should not feel as if
you are somehow compromised
if you say strategically,
"Okay, I have to be careful
"about how I approach these issues."
I'll give you an example.
We used to have these young leaders forums
around the world while
I was still president,
and if we were doing it
in most European countries,
a lot of the young leaders
were overtly political.
They'd be human rights activists,
or they would be young parliamentarians,
and they would be
challenging the status quo
and protesting and, et cetera.
When we went to Asia,
so for example in Vietnam,
we had a young leaders corps,
I think eventually had
like 70,000 members online
who would meet and discuss
strategy, et cetera.
Most of them were entrepreneurs,
so they were couching
their work as business
in a country in which
business was welcomed.
Entrepreneurship was welcome.
Overtly political work
might be endangered,
and so somebody who was concerned
about environmental issues there,
they might have a start up
designed to figure out,
how do we get clean
energy into a community,
or how do we recycle,
rather than directly say,
"Government, you need to do X, Y, Z."
And I think that it's useful
to just remind ourselves that
there are a bunch of different ways
to have an impact.
Now if what's inside of you
compels you to take great risks,
then that is magnificent,
and I, to the extent that I can,
certainly when I was president,
it's harder now 'cause I don't have
some of those formal levers,
want to create a ways of protecting.
So those who do engage
in that kind of activity
in countries where that is dangerous,
my best advice is to make common cause
so that you are not isolated.
(mumbling) if you are a journalist
in a country that exercises
severe censorship,
you being a part of an international
journalist organization
that knows who you are and sees you
so that if you are suddenly not around
are there to advocate on your behalf
and can bring some
international pressure to bear,
that becomes important.
And that's one of the reasons why
what one of the functions
of the Foundation over time,
my hope is that it creates
kind of sufficient connectivity
between people who are
working on these issues
around the world and inside this country
that nobody is alone.
When you're alone, it's tough.
Going back to the point you made
about the Civil Rights Movement,
everybody was scared.
You go out into Mississippi or Alabama
in the early '60s trying
to register folks to vote,
it was scary.
People were killed or beaten,
which is why courage was generated
from us collectively taking that leap.
- Yeah.
- What other questions do we have?
'Cause I want to make sure
I don't get into trouble.
I'll talk.
(audience laughing)
Who hasn't had a chance to ask a question?
- I have not.
- Go ahead.
- Okay, my question
(mumbling), your excellency.
- Your excellency makes
me feel old though.
(audience laughing)
You know?
You can call me Barack.
Barack's good,
Mr. Obama, I guess, if you have to.
- Okay, and I'm coming from Cameroon,
and we have an ongoing crisis there.
I'm not political,
but my question (mumbling),
how can we create economically
viable communities
for the people who serve in places
where conflict threatens progress?
- Well, that's a big question.
- Yeah.
- So maybe I'll broaden
it a little bit to,
one of the biggest challenges
that all of us face
in wanting to create a more just society
is there is some bedrock
material necessities
that people need to thrive.
It's not as much as those of us
in wealthy countries think,
but you do need food, shelter,
healthcare, clean water.
There are some basics,
and one of the things even
on the south side of Chicago
that used to be a challenge,
there was a saying in the black church
that it's hard to preach
to an empty stomach,
and so advocates on
behalf of social justice
cannot ignore economic justice.
- Of course.
- And it is important for
us to constantly incorporate
at least an awareness
of what may be the economic
impediments to justice,
so if you are advocating on behalf,
that's why the story you
were telling was so powerful
about young women being
vulnerable to trafficking
in part because they're trying
to figure out, how do I--
- Get a life.
- How do I live?
And if somebody comes to me and says,
"Oh, if you go overseas,
"that's the land of milk and honey."
- Of course.
- And you've got nothing,
you're more vulnerable.
- Of course.
- Well, there are versions
of that everywhere.
The young men who are in the drug trade
just down a few blocks from here,
it's because they are in a community
in which the fabric of regular work
has been broken,
and this is the economic
framework that they see,
and so we cannot ignore
the economic elements.
Now the strategies for
economic development
in rural Cameroon
are gonna be different than the strategies
on the south side of Chicago.
There is a basic prerequisite
for economic development,
and that is you can't have
people killing each other.
Syria's economy is not
gonna recover any time soon.
Those countries around the world
that are in the middle of ethnic conflict,
their economies suffer because,
I was talking to Bill Gates
about some of the terrific work
that his foundation does in terms
of vaccinations and other organizations
that do work developing these great seeds
that can increase agricultural yields,
but if all the farmers have fled
because a bunch of kids have AK-47s
and are shooting and robbing people,
you won't get economic development.
So there is a basic just,
people not dying or at war
in order to build some sort
of economic development strategies.
I can speak here to,
and this, by the way,
is why place is so important.
Let's just take the example
of the south side of Chicago.
Chicago is a wealthy city
in the wealthiest country on earth,
but there is a segment of this city
that does not partake of that
wealth the way it should.
Part of the reason Michelle and I decided
to locate the Presidential Center here
is so that it can serve as a catalyst
to stitch together the
economies of downtown Chicago
and north side Chicago
with south side Chicago
and eventually west side Chicago.
(audience cheering and applauding)
And by bringing a multi-million
dollar project here,
one of our goals is to make sure
that we're able to
create new opportunities for
the young people who live here.
In one of the sessions,
Charles Barkley was talking
about how he gets frustrated
that not enough young men
in the African American community
go into the trades,
being a plumber or a electrician.
Well, part of the reason historically
is they were discriminated and blocked
from joining the unions to
be part of those trades,
but part of it is also
culturally we somehow think,
well, that's not like a cool career.
It's very cool to be a carpenter
or a plumber or electrician,
and you make a really good living,
so when we started putting out bids
for who potentially could do the work,
we said, if you don't have
a plan to get young people
in this community on the path of training
for these trades so that at the end
of what will be a four year project,
we don't have just a building,
but we suddenly have a
whole bunch of young people
who suddenly now are able
to work on the next building
and the next project,
well, then you probably
won't be working for us.
(audience applauding)
We've got small businesses.
We've got small business districts
in the surrounding community
around the site where the
library will be located.
Some of them are struggling.
We anticipate 700, 800,000 people may come
to visit the library and
the Presidential Center.
Well, before it's built,
we need to be working
with that small local restaurant
or that local print shop or what have you
to say, all right, they're coming.
What do you need in order
to take advantage of this stream
of customers that are gonna be coming?
So that's an example of being strategic.
Our goal is to transform the world
and the country and the
south side of Chicago,
but in this place right now,
I've got this building
that's going to be built,
and that is an engine,
a mechanism for economic development.
In rural Cameroon, it might be different.
It might be the thing
that is really gonna make a difference
is if we can provide some
small loans to local farmers
so they get a small surplus
that allows them to buy a tractor
that they can share among five farmers,
which in turn increases their yield,
and maybe after several seasons,
they can now do their own processing
of that sorghum or maize.
And rather than have their profits
taken away by the guy who owns--
- The company.
- The processing plant,
they can do their own
processing plant on site,
sell it directly to a store,
and now they start
hiring a few more people,
and now you start creating jobs.
Each place is going to
have a different strategy.
Now I have to say this is
not an easy thing to do
because we now have global capital
that can move around
the planet in a second,
and the people who've got a lot of money
want more money,
and it's easier for them
a lot of times to say,
"Well, I'm just gonna invest
"in some luxury stuff downtown,
"or I'm gonna invest in the rich countries
"and come up with an app
"where a bunch of kids
will waste their money
"on a game rather than invest in farmers
"in Cameroon or a restaurant
on the south side."
So there's a bunch of decision making
that is global,
and you're trying to get some
of those resources local,
and that's where organizing
and being strategic about how we do that
is really important,
and that's why it's important
for social justice advocates
to connect with local businesses
and to connect with non-profits
and connect with other institutions.
If there's a university somewhere,
or there's a school somewhere,
how do we figure out,
whatever resources we have in this place,
how do we maximize that
in order to get some leverage?
And that's a hard thing to do,
but nobody said this was gonna be easy.
I mean,
(mumbling)
if you're looking for easy,
you're at the wrong summit.
(audience laughing)
- But your comments remind me
of something that an activist
named (mumbling) said to me,
and they had basically said the importance
of advocating for somebody or some people
other than yourself is that
if you only advocate for yourself,
all you're asking are for
colonial infrastructures
to work in your favor.
All you're asking for
is a shift of privilege
rather than this conversation
of placing yourself as a
part of a global community,
placing yourself as somebody
who is responsible to people
that it may not have interacted with
because that's a process
of de-privilegizing space
in the first place, to make up a word.
(audience laughing)
- That's a pretty good word,
but, no, look.
You're making a really important point,
and this is something that all
of us have to struggle with.
I had to struggle with it.
DeAndre, you're gonna
have to struggle with.
(audience laughing)
No,
you are talented obviously,
and there are going to
be opportunities for you
within the existing structure to do well
by the standards that are sold to us.
- Of course.
- About what it means to be successful,
and I think each of us have
to make constant decisions about
how we balance the need to pay the rent,
and we want our moms to
kind of feel proud of us
and know what the heck we're doing.
I remember when I told my mother
and my grandmother, grandfather
I was moving to Chicago to
be a community organizer.
They're all like, "Huh?
"What?"
(audience laughing)
And then I explained to them,
no, I'm getting paid $13,000 a year.
Even back in 1985, that was broke.
(audience laughing)
I mean, even back then,
even with adjusting for inflation,
like I was eating tuna every night.
I did not have an actual bed
'cause the place was too small,
so I had this little futon
mattress that I rolled.
Couldn't afford the futon.
Just had the ton.
(audience laughing)
I rolled that thing up,
put it in the closet,
rolled it back out.
I was alone most of that year,
waiting for Michelle, so,
(audience laughing and applauding)
where was I?
I got distracted.
It was so cold that year, but--
- Oh, man, that was funny.
- All my friends,
'cause I'd gone to a fancy school,
and so all my classmates,
they were all signed up for law school
or business school,
and there was a track that was set up,
and I had the privilege because I wasn't,
my family was not wealthy.
They were lower middle class,
but we had enough,
and I had a good enough education.
I said, all right, if I ever need
to get a job just to make money, I can,
so I can take some risks.
Some people don't have that luxury,
but to Yara's point,
each of us have to
constantly remind ourselves
we're born into a society.
We can't completely remake
society in a minute,
so we have to make some accommodations
to the existing structures.
You are working as an actress
as well as a student.
Samira, even as you're
doing your advocacy,
you have to fund it,
which means that you have to talk
to some people who have money,
and some of them may have money
from places that, if you looked at it,
you might say, "I'm not
crazy about what you do,
"but thank you very much."
(audience laughing)
We're all kind of adjusting
to here are the structures
that are presented,
but this goes back to the
point I was making earlier
about just constantly
testing ourselves about,
does this feel like the
accommodation I'm making
to this existing structure,
am I contributing more or less
to the things I want to change?
Am I part of the solution,
or am I part of the problem?
And this idea of purity,
and you're never compromised,
and you're always politically
woke and all that stuff,
you should get over that quickly.
The world is messy.
There are ambiguities.
People who do really
good stuff have flaws.
People who you are fighting
may love their kids
and share certain things with you,
and I think that one danger
I see among young people,
particularly on college campuses,
Malia and I talk about this.
Yara goes to school with my daughter,
but I do get a sense sometimes now
among certain young people,
and this is accelerated by social media.
There is this sense sometimes
of the way of me making change
is to be as judgemental as
possible about other people,
and that's enough.
Like if I tweet or hashtag
about how you didn't do something right
or used the wrong verb,
or then I can sit back
and feel pretty good about myself
'cause, "Man, you see how woke I was?
"I called you out."
(audience laughing)
I'm gonna get on TV.
Watch my show.
Watch "Grown-ish."
(audience laughing)
That's not activism.
That's not bringing about change.
If all you're doing is casting stones,
you're probably not gonna get that far.
That's easy to do.
(audience applauding)
- I think speaking about the importance
of media and social media
being like a cornerstone of that,
there's also this large move
of the importance of narrative,
which actually ties into
what Mimi had wanted to ask.
- She could be,
(mumbling)
oh, see, this is a Oprah level segues.
- Those are really good.
- You see how she's working it?
Go ahead, Mimi.
- Thank you for that transition--
- Very impressive.
- Hello, so given our theme
for this year's summit
and how place reveals our purpose,
the arts and film in particular
can influence our purpose as a nation,
so what is a film that
has greatly impacted you,
and can you provide
advice to young leaders
and filmmakers like me
on how to leverage their craft
to help shape our future?
- Wow, well, we were talking
about this a little bit backstage,
that there's a reason why we want
to incorporate the arts into
the Presidential Center.
One of our goals is to
create a recording studio
where young people can
come and train with Yara
or Steven Spielberg or
Chance the Rapper about,
how do they use the arts
to tell a story and to build communities?
And be able to have concerts
and readings and theater because
most social change starts with a story.
We go back to 1963 or even further.
The reason the Civil Rights Movement
got all that it accomplished
was not because John Lewis
and SNCC workers had an army behind them.
At first, they didn't even
have the laws behind them,
but they did have a story behind them,
a story about, do unto others,
and a story about, we're
all God's children,
and a story about, justice
rolling down like waters
and righteousness like a mighty stream.
There was a story that they tapped into,
and it proved to be more
powerful than armies
and billy clubs and dogs.
Just as I mentioned Gandhi earlier,
he had a story about what
the Indian subcontinent was,
and this 5,000 year culture,
and that the people
who appeared to be poor
were full of a life force
that could not be matched
by the great British Empire.
Stories start things off.
The Berlin Wall comes down.
No missiles are fired.
The other side had a better story,
so our goal is to make sure
that the Presidential Center incorporates
that understanding of stories.
Now to your question about,
I'm gonna broaden it not just to films
because I'll tell you.
When I was a black kid
and growing up in Hawaii,
films that influenced me
were like "Shaft" influenced
(singing)
because there were not
a lot of brothers around
who were cool.
That had an influence.
I was all like, man, look
at Richard Roundtree.
He's a bad.
(audience laughing)
For those of you who are not familiar
with (mumbling),
probably the things that changed me
the most were novels or essays,
James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time,"
or the autobiography of Malcolm X.
There were books about the
complexities of politics
and change and how individuals
get caught up in society,
books like "All the Kings
Men" by Robert Penn Warren
or "In Dubious Battle" by John Steinbeck.
There were books like "Song of Solomon"
by Toni Morrison that changed
my understanding of the beauty
of a very specific place
that people may not see
or the beauty of lives that are forgotten,
or there were books like,
some of the most powerful
things that changed me
were books of people who were not like me,
so I read "The Golden
Notebook" by Doris Lessing.
It's a novel.
It's actually a woman of British
background in South Africa
who moves to London
back in the '60s and '70s,
but it was one of the early books
to show women as not the
love interest or sidekick,
but as somebody who's complicated
and challenging her roles
and feels agency,
and it helped me get out of my own stuff
because that's the only problem.
You watch "Shaft,"
and then like that doesn't necessarily
help you with how you think about women.
There's all these ambiguities
that you got to figure out.
That's the thing about the arts.
If you are reaching out
and looking at enough different stuff,
I started reading Latin
American writers like Cortazar
or Fuentes or Rulfo,
and suddenly you realize,
"Oh, in Mexico or Argentina,
"they're going through
stuff I'm going through."
- That's right.
- That's interesting,
so that stuff is probably
what changed me the most.
I will say,
but I mentioned "Shaft,"
but it could have been a whole host
of things, Sidney Poitier.
For African Americans of my generation,
representation of black men
in positions of authority
or for black girls seeing,
like Diahann Carroll recently died.
She had a show on television,
the first black woman who had a show
where she wasn't just a maid or the help
or the best friends of,
but was actually the central figure.
That stuff ends up being important,
and so when you think about the arts
in whatever community,
thinking about, how are
kids imagining themselves?
I was going through our house.
We found an old book my mother used
to read to me called, "The Snowy Day."
Now some of you know.
See, everybody (mumbling).
For those of you who don't know the book,
it's just your classic children's book.
It's about a little boy.
He runs out.
It's winter.
He wants to build a snowman.
He gets like this snowball,
puts it in his pocket.
He gets really close to it.
It melts.
He's a little sad about it.
It's a very simple story.
It's sort of a collage.
My mom read it to me when
I was like three or four,
but it's the first children's book
by a major publisher,
the little boy was black.
Wasn't commented on,
it wasn't like, oh, ghetto boy.
You are in the snow.
(audience laughing)
It was like, no, no, it's
just a boy growing up.
He happened to be black,
and I didn't even remember it
until I looked at the book years later,
and I was like, huh.
That was probably important,
so that's how art moves me,
and in fact, going to children's books,
I've said this before.
I believe this.
I think pretty much
everything you need to know
is in Dr. Seuss books.
(audience laughing)
If you read about the Lorax,
then you know about climate change.
If you're reading about Lazy Mayzie
and "Horton Hears a Who,"
you kind of know, man,
don't be Lazy Mayzie.
Work.
Dr. Seuss covers most things.
That's not the answer
you expected, I'm sure.
(audience laughing)
I mean, I love "The Godfather,"
and I can give you a list
of movies I love, but,
(audience laughing)
all right, what else (mumbling)?
How we doing on time?
- Time, we've fallen just a little bit,
but I think I want to kind
of close out this session.
You've already talked about
the Presidential Center,
and we've had a sneak peek
of all of the incredible
things that are here to come,
but I think thinking of
the larger Obama Foundation
and how much you've done
to not only maintain
a sense of local community
and continue to invest in local community,
but also connect local with global,
all of the global initiatives
that you're doing.
And so as somebody that
is black and Iranian,
has family who is actually here
from the south side of Chicago,
who I think to me
encapsulates what it means
to be a leader
and what it means to invest in community,
I think I wonder how
the Presidential Center
is another form of doing that,
of making this a space for
young leaders to connect
and for us to create change?
- Well, I think you've described it well,
but Michelle and I,
when we decided, what
are we gonna do next,
there are a bunch of issues we care about
and we'll work on,
but the most important
thing we figured we could do
is pass the baton to as
many people as possible
and cultivate as much talent
as possible at every level.
And so all of you are a part
of that initial effort
to build a platform
where not only can we
provide training and ideas
and offer some experience
about how to bring about social change,
but also how can you connect
and learn from each other,
which is even more powerful?
And how can you make
sure you're not alone,
and how can you recognize
how your work connects with somebody
maybe on the other side of the country
or the other side of the world,
or maybe just on the
other side of the city?
And that's how our
programming is designed.
What we also realize, though,
and this goes to the importance of place,
that for us just to have some
office downtown somewhere
from which we
issue reports and occasionally
travel for photo ops
wasn't gonna cut it
because you can't understand how to change
a world if you don't understand
how to change a country,
and you can't understand
how to change a country
if you don't know how to change a city.
You can't know that unless you know
how to change a neighborhood--
- That's right.
- Because so much of what
has become our politics
and our movements is virtual,
which is great.
It's a tool,
but it's not that person right there.
It's not you and me in a conversation.
It's not me seeing what
you're going through.
It's not me experiencing what it's like
with some broken glass
under that little boy's feet
where there should be a playground,
or stepping off and seeing
the trash that's floating through a river
where all the fish are dead
and the fishermen's livelihoods
have been taken away.
You have to know that,
so our thought, okay,
we got to have a place,
and our place had to be the place
where I came of age
and where Michelle was born and raised
and where our babies were born
and where we got married
just down the road,
and where I taught law school
and Michelle was a dean
and where I ran my first campaign.
So this was gonna be the place,
and we joke about it a little bit
like this is the mother ship,
but another way of thinking about it
is we want this to be a university
for activism and social change
and a convening place for re-imagining
how we solve the problems
that your generation will confront,
and we will connect the
satellites and nodes
and branches all around the world,
but this is gonna be the heartbeat.
This will be the beacon
from which we are
sending out a signal that
the values we believe in are shared,
and that they're strong,
and that they can overcome
those who would try to undermine them,
and that we can make progress.
And the great thing about Chicago
and the south side of
Chicago in particular
is that same hunger for change
and hope and progress
that exists in communities
and neighborhoods
all around the world,
that same hunger exists here,
and the same barriers that
exist around the world.
People who are greedy,
or powerful people who
are abusing their power
or neglecting places because they're not
historically populated with the people
who people in power care about,
or this is a laboratory
for us to be able to make those changes.
- That's right.
- And as I indicated earlier,
we can also use the center
as a driver and an example
of the kinds of changes
that Awah and others were talking about
in terms of creating economic
opportunity and jobs,
and by transforming that landscape
and connecting it to other places,
it becomes of,
not just we're talking about change.
We actually have a concrete
manifestation of it,
so that's our goal,
and our hope is though, most importantly,
that this then becomes the center
around which people
like Samira and DeAndre
and you and Mimi and Awah that,
because you have 1,000,
a million counterparts around the world.
- That's right.
- Maybe not as advanced as you are
on their journey,
but they feel what you feel,
and our hope is is that over time,
what starts off with 1,000
grows to 10,000, grows to 100,000,
grows to a million
of young people who are
connected and know each other
and have a place that they
can always use as home base
for the work that they're doing,
and if they get in
trouble in their country,
they've got suddenly an activist network
of millions of peers
who are gonna say, "Hey,
what's happening there?"
And if they need to
help advertise an issue
that's important like human trafficking,
suddenly we're pulling everybody together.
(mumbling)
That's the goal.
Plus we'll have some
really good concerts here,
(audience laughing)
and, you know, some pretty fun park land
because I said earlier,
if you're looking for easy,
you came to the wrong summit,
some of this stuff also has to be fun.
Michelle reminded me often that,
and she still teases me about like,
oh, if it's fun or it tastes good,
he doesn't want it,
(audience laughing)
which is a little cruel,
but there's a little bit of truth to it.
There have been times in my life
where I just feel like I've got
to take myself so seriously and grind,
and she helped me to
lighten up a little bit,
and just as she's done so much for me,
so maybe that's a pretty good cue.
Should we?
- Let's do it.
- Hey, Michelle Obama, how
about coming up on stage?
(audience cheering and applauding)
(upbeat instrumental music)
Oh, did we catch her?
Oh, here she is.
Did you meet everybody?
- Hi, (mumbling) I'm Mimi.
Nice to meet you.
- Hi.
- Hey.
(mumbling)
- So I had to bring Michelle on stage
just 'cause you all
wanted to see her again,
(audience laughing)
but also because we just
wanted to take this opportunity
to say thank you.
First of all, how smooth
was Yara as a moderator?
- Great.
- Let's give her a big round of applause.
(audience cheering and clapping)
How remarkable were the
members of our conversation?
(audience applauding and cheering)
They were outstanding.
To all of you who have taken the time
to be a part of this,
to those of you who were on other panels,
who flew in,
we don't pay, so they're just doing it
out of the kindness of their heart.
For those who helped
to organize the event,
to all the volunteers and young people
who helped shuttle people around,
make sure credentials were passed out,
put everything together,
we are so grateful to you.
This is always a team
effort and a collaboration,
and you guys made us proud once again,
and to the city of Chicago
and to the south side of Chicago,
I just want to say thank you
for once again embracing us.
Our hope is that you are as excited
and jazzed by this vision that we have
for the Presidential Center
as Michelle and I have been,
and we can't wait to continue
to provide opportunities
for the young people
in this particular community,
but also around the world
to achieve their full potential,
and as a consequence
help lift this world up,
so you guys have been wonderful.
Thank you so much.
God bless you.
Appreciate you.
Great job.
