[Shannon Lee] I didn't meet Aaron through
a cause or by getting involved in a project.
I went over to a friend's house for dinner,
and the friend was sharing a room with Aaron
at the time, and the dinner was kind of experimental,
and my kids were just done by the time dinner
was over.
So as the grown-ups talked, the kids went
in the other room to play.
And after a while, they came back in sort
of delegation to ask very formally if it was
OK if they jumped on the bed.
And Aaron said, "That's a fantastic idea."
And so while me and my friend and my wife
sat and talked, Aaron and my kids went and
jumped on the bed.
So at this point, I'd like to make a space
for other people to share their ideas, their
reminiscences.
Thank you.
[John Perry Barlow] I will be brief.
I'm John Perry Barlow, and Aaron Swartz was
the embodiment and apotheosis of everything
that I've stood for for the last 25 years.
And it is paradoxical that even though that
was true, and even though he was profoundly
involved with most of my best friends and
greatest heroes, I spent almost all the time
that I ever spent with him one afternoon in
I think 1996, when he really was a very little
kid.
I'd been asked by the headmaster of North
Shore Country Day to come and speak to the
middle school, and for some reason, there
was this 10- or 11-year-old that was in among
the middle-schoolers.
And I spent the afternoon -- this was at a
time when I don't know that there were that
many people who felt the way I did about this
stuff.
Most of them are in this room now.
And I was promoting the idea that we could
make a world where anybody anywhere could
give his thirst for knowledge and his curiosity
everything that it wanted to know, and anybody
could know as much as any human being knew
about anything in the future.
And he didn't say much.
He was extremely memorable, however; he was
much younger, he was all eyes and mind and
spiritual radiance, in a way, and I scarcely
saw him again.
But years later, last year at one point, I
was with a bunch of, you know, copyright barons
in Paris at the eG8, and they were all talking
about how enforcement and education was going
to come out right, and it was going to be
just like the war on some drugs.
And I happened to be on a panel with these
guys, I said, "You know, you think you've
won this thing or you will win this thing,
but the truth is that you've turned a whole
generation into electronic Hezbollah, and
you will be dead when they are alive."
[applause]
[John Perry] I was thinking of Aaron Swartz
and it is really very difficult for me to
see that he is dead and they are alive.
But he is not dead and they will be.
[applause]
[Ka-Ping Yee] I've been thinking about Aaron
every day, since I heard the news.
When I think about Aaron, I remember the conversations
that we had about how he wanted to change
the world.
We sat in the dining room of my co-op, over
plain white bread.
He told me his ideas and I told him mine.
It's been amazing to see the outpouring, from
all over the world, so many people writing
about Aaron, so many people inspired by him.
Danny wrote, "Every page I open has his name
on it."
It's been like that.
It surprised me how so many people were so
moved by him, who didn't know him personally,
or maybe had never even heard of him until
now.
I think that's a testament of the power of
the causes that he stood for and the depth
of his commitment to them.
Aaron's causes are causes that touch all of
us.
For a long time I have admired his intellect
and his work.
But right now what I feel most strongly and
I think a lot of other people do too is that
I wish I had his conviction.
Maybe some of us are asking ourselves, like
I've been asking myself for the last little
while, "What could I do, if I had his conviction?"
Aaron was pragmatic.
He wouldn't be satisfied to see us just standing
around and talking about him.
He would want us to act.
So find a way to act.
None of us can be Aaron, but each one of us
has skills and resources and relationships,
strengths that are special to us.
Take a minute and think about what capabilities
you have, what privileges you have, what you
are able to risk and how you can bring those
things to bear on the injustices that surround
us, because, when we fight injustice, we are
taking care of each other and we have to take
care of each other.
We have to take care of each other.
Pick something that needs doing, and use this
moment when injustice is staring you in the
face, and use it.
Make a promise to yourself to follow through,
because not everyone is able to fight, but
we can.
Not everyone knows that they have to fight,
but we know, and so many more people know
now because of Aaron.
If you're listening to this, you're not a
spectator.
You're in this fight with Aaron and with all
of us, and there's so much that we have to
do.
[applause]
[Kevin Burton] Thank you.
My name is Kevin Burton.
I worked with Aaron Swartz on RSS 1.0, and
we spent literally hundreds of hours on IRC
just collaborating and working on projects,
and the thing that I always liked about Aaron
was that he was really passionate, but he
had a great way of just nailing every ethical
issue--copyright--and just completely taking
the right side on everything.
He was always kind of my hero, because there
are very few people in the world like that.
I mean, in our community there's maybe a hundred
of them, and we've lost one, and that kind
of sucks.
The other thing I thought I'd bring up was,
accessed, open data is really important.
Open access to scientific data is absolutely
paramount for the future of humanity.
I would like everyone in the room to just
do a little task, if you will.
The next time you hear a research paper that's
mentioned in the news, try to access it.
Try to read something that the news quotes
from a research journal.
You won't be able to get access to it.
You probably won't be able to access to it,
and you probably won't be able to get access
to it without paying $20 to someone.
For me personally this hit me recently, because
I've been dealing with a medical issue.
I have a very rare gene snippet, and I was
only able to...Unfortunately my doctors haven't
been able to help me with it, and I was only
able to cure myself by searching through thousands
of...I literally spent maybe 60 hours reading
medical journals.
I finally nailed it.
It turned out I just needed more broccoli.
[laughter]
I know, my mom has been telling me that for
years.
But the only way I was able to get access
to these journals was because--of Reddit,
actually--was because a friend of mine on
Reddit was willing to collaborate with me
and get access behind a private firewall,
give me the documents, and then I was able
to search.
Finally I found this paper that was written
and totally nailed it and I'm fine.
Anyway, I miss you buddy.
[applause]
[Robert] Two minutes.
120 seconds.
Aaron Swartz, I never met the guy, but he's
a huge inspiration.
I've learned all about him in the last week.
I'm Robert.
I started Organize San Francisco within the
Occupy revolution, and pretty much that was
all about sharing information, opening up
information, and what's going on in the world
today.
I just want to say, what I want to convey
to everyone here is that, yes, we all may
be tech literate.
We may all have some computer background.
But there are a lot of us still in the world
that do not, and what I want to open the idea
up to everyone here is to think about the
people who still have no idea of technology
or what it is or what it's about.
Just think of ways that you can possibly create
things to help them open up to the new things
of technology.
I mean, with the Occupy movement it's the
same thing.
it's just a huge gap in technology, and if
we open more people up, then it would be a
blessing to us all.
I think Aaron would appreciate that as well
as it would contribute to people accessing
information, the information they need, the
basics of information, the basics of living
a basic, wonderful life.
And it would be a great opening for everyone
and just it would create a catalyst for everyone
as well.
I was learning about Aaron and how much of
an inspiration he is.
I just hope that I can do something as great,
as powerful, or just a factor of the man that
he was when he was alive.
Thank you.
[applause]
[Sai] Hi, my name is Sai.
My handle is Saizai.
I didn't know Aaron personally, so I'm not
going to presume to speak of him as others
have already done so eloquently.
However, there are parallels with his life
and death that strike fairly close for me,
and I'd like to offer a couple of resources
for those of you who feel similarly.
Aaron is not the first hacker to die of suicide
recently.
Many of us, myself included, struggle with
serious depression on a day-to-day basis.
If you do too, I've put up a page of contacts
and resources at Psyzi.com/suicide.
Second, Aaron's actions in trying to free
JSTOR and PACER are ones that I think many
of us would have done in his place as well.
I certainly supported wholeheartedly.
Previous speakers have talked of the need
to reform specific laws, and again, I support
everything that they've said.
I'd like to add, however, that we also need
to open up the lower of legislating itself.
It is not enough to change a single law when
the power to make laws itself is closed to
an open community, when it's only available
to a select few.
If you agree, please come talk to me.
Thanks.
[applause]
[Virgil Griffith] Hi, I'm Virgil.
I worked with Aaron on the projects until
his death, so I'm working on them alone now.
So, last time I saw Aaron was in October,
and he was really stressed about the lawsuit.
I was talking to him about seeking asylum
in either China or Switzerland, just some
place...By the way, they don't extradite to
the US.
Those are good spots.
Honestly I'm kind of upset that he didn't
take me up, because I was serious.
I really was.
And as much as, like, USA number one, I presume
being in Switzerland is better than being
dead.
I mean, he didn't do it.
This is his lack of, like...I mean, he was
wrong.
He was wrong.
And I'm inclined to look at this from a different
perspective.
So, often like with AIDS, we hear that AIDS,
like, what kills you isn't the AIDS itself,
it's some little side thing like the flu or
something like that.
But we still say that AIDS is what killed
the person, not the flu.
In this case, I think depression's kind of
similar.
So, Aaron suffered from depression, and while
in this weakened state, it was a lawsuit that
killed him.
But in the end, it was the depression.
I think something we can learn from this is
that just, I mean, depression's a serious
business.
It really is.
I mean, a lot of people suffer from this and
they don't get help.
And if you don't, I mean, it can be fatal.
Case in point.
Yeah, take care of yourselves.
Really, it's important.
[applause]
[Tantek Celik] Hi, my name is Tantek Celik,
and I had the privilege of meeting Aaron Swartz
in 2001 at the very first W3C Technical Plenary
meeting in Boston.
I was amazed by this image of this young boy
who was dwarfed by his then brand new titanium
PowerBook G4, and was curious, chatted him
up, and quickly found a brilliant individual.
Quite clearly brilliant because he actually
understood RDF.
Watching him grow over the years was nothing
short of remarkable.
Another story I want to share is in 2004,
I encouraged him to contribute to the Technology
Developer's Contest, and he did.
He actually demonstrated how brilliant a hacker
he was, and I'll expand on that later, by
building a leader board for the politicians
that were mentioned the most across the entire
blogosphere, across millions of blogs.
Not across the few thousand news sites, but
across millions of blogs.
This was pretty remarkable, because he combined
politics, coding, hacking, and peoples' voices
all in one, and this was 2004.
In 2005, I had the privilege of carpooling
back from Foo Camp with Aaron, and that must
have been...The ride seemed like it took just
mere moments.
The entire time was this intensive, amazing
conversation, and I will just never forget
that opportunity.
Finally in 2007, one last memory I will share
with you, like on many a warm day in San Francisco,
a bunch of us were gathered in Dolores Park.
I recall distinctly ranting to Aaron about
some hypotheses about design, usability, user
interface, cognitive load, efficiency, all
these kind of things that various geeks think
about and talk about.
I remember very distinctly what he said.
I said, "OK, here are some of my hypotheses."
He said, "You should blog that."
We would argue a lot.
We would argue about metadata, we would argue
about a lot of things.
And so to hear something from Aaron so clearly
where he didn't even pick apart any arguments.
He said, "You should blog that."
A strong signal to me.
[?] Turned out to be one of the more popular
blog posts I'd ever made.
So, I want you to go with that message that
if you believe something passionately, you
should blog that.
Now, I mentioned about being a hacker.
Well, a lot of folks spoke of being a hacker.
To me, what being a hacker means is you passionately
explore something, if someone gains a deep
understanding of it, and then pushes the limits
of that knowledge and builds upon it.
You know who else does that?
Scientists and engineers.
To me, being a hacker is at the essence of
advancing humanity.
[applause]
I want to close with one more statement, and
that's that curiosity is not a crime.
When I met Aaron...When I was the age that
Aaron was when I met him, there was no CFAA.
There was no crime for exploring computer
networks in such a way.
This law is obsolete and should be repealed.
Thank you.
[applause]
[Ryan] It's a tall person's microphone.
When I was 14 I had the same experience Aaron
did.
I found the Internet, and I found peers.
When I was 14, I had the same experience Aaron
did.
I found the Internet and I found peers.
I'm going to read a short excerpt from something
that was important to me at the time.
"This is our world now, the world of the electron
and the switch, the beauty of the bond.
We make use of a service already existing,
without paying for what could be dirt cheap,
if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons
and you call us criminals.
We explore and you call us criminals.
We seek after knowledge and you call us criminals.
We exist without skin color, without nationality,
without religious bias and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs.
You wage wars.
You murder.
You cheat.
You lie to us and you try to make us believe
it is for our own good.
Yet we are the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal.
My crime is that of curiosity.
My crime is that of judging people by what
they say and think, not by what they look
like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something
you'll never forgive me for.
I am a hacker and this is my manifesto.
You may stop this individual, but you can't
stop us all.
After all, we are all alike."
[applause]
When I heard about him, I was ashamed.
I wasn't ashamed, because I was American,
because of what we had done for him or anything
like that.
I didn't really care about being American
very much.
I was ashamed, because I was an Internet person
and I wasn't brave enough to put JSTOR on
the Pirate Bay.
A lot of us here, when we were teenagers,
the Internet is how we met our peers.
They weren't at school.
They weren't in our neighborhoods.
Aaron was one of our brothers 
and we let him down.
[applause]
[Beth] Hi, I'm Beth and I'm a librarian.
When I became a librarian, in 2005, most libraries
were providing terrible online access to their
collections, at least partly because library
data itself was under questionable copyright.
Everyone was afraid of being sued and no one
wanted to stick their necks out to test the
law.
Aaron's work with the Internet Archive and
the Open Library played a major role in challenging
and resolving that legal limbo we were all
stuck in.
Since that time, there has been a renaissance
in the world of free and open source software
for libraries.
We are revolutionizing library access and
Aaron's work has been a huge part of that.
In 2008, Aaron wrote the "Gorilla Open Access
Manifesto" at a retreat in Italy hosted by
EIFL, Electronic Information for Libraries,
an international library consortium that advocates
for information access in countries with developing
and transition economies, in other words,
the poor people of the world.
At that time, I had just stepped down as Co-Chair
of EIFL's Free and Open Source Software Program.
I was thrilled that Aaron had joined EIFL,
and although I was sad to step down, I was
very happy to leave the cause I cared so much
about in Aaron's hands.
When Aaron published the Gorilla Open Access
Manifesto, the tactics he advocated gave me
pause.
I thought he was ethically right, but I was
unwilling to put my own livelihood on the
line, with such strong statements.
A librarian, who issued a manifesto like that
would be unemployable and that's something
that should give us all pause.
I am ashamed that it took something like Aaron's
death to remind me to go back and read my
own profession's code of ethics.
It reads, in part, "We librarians significantly
influence or control the selection, organization,
preservation and dissemination of information.
In a political system grounded in an informed
citizenry, we are members of a profession
explicitly committed to intellectual freedom
and the freedom of access to information.
We have a special obligation to ensure the
free flow of information and ideas to present
and future generations.
Thank you, Aaron, for reminding me of my ethical
duties.
I am heartbroken that we no longer have your
voice in the struggle.
Thank you for reminding us that we answer
to a higher purpose than license agreements.
[applause]
[Aaron Greenspan] My name is Aaron Greenspan.
I've thought about Aaron just about every
day, since January 11.
I've been trying to figure out why that is.
I met him once, exchanged emails, like many
here.
The reason why probably is because I went
through some of what he did with the US Attorney's
Office about five years ago and it was horrible.
It was so horrible.
Just thinking about that and knowing some
of what he went through...I was lucky.
I got off the hook.
I told the government about a bug in their
system.
That was my error apparently.
I'm here today to tell you about that, which
maybe I wouldn't have been.
But, knowing what he went through has made
me just angrier and angrier by the day.
When I get angry about things, I like to do
things about it.
I run a website called PlainSite, which is
based directly on Aaron's work with Pacer.
It let's you view court cases.
It lets you view judges and lawyers and law
firms.
Pacer has the same kind of bug today that
it had in 2008 that Aaron exploited and that
is that you can use $15 per quarter for free.
You have to have a credit or debit card, but
you can still use $15 and they won't charge
you.
What I'd like to do is put every US Attorney's
career on PlainSite and on Recap, which, if
you don't know, is actually hosted behind
all of us, in these various servers, thanks
to the Internet Archive.
Thank you Brewster.
But I think it would be fitting to put the
USAO online for everyone to see.
Maybe they are doing a great job.
Maybe they are not.
But I think it would be great if everybody
here could go, type in their credit card number
on the Pacer site and just use that $15, because
it's free.
It takes five minutes.
It's very easy.
Thank you.
[applause]
[Ted Nelson] I'm Ted Nelson.
I like to remember Aaron as he was when I
first met him, 14 years old and a fully-fledged
delegate to whatever conference.
He wanted a picture of Doug Englebart and
me, but we insisted on putting him in the
middle.
It's such a cute picture.
He looks like a happy little gremlin.
He was very, very short at the time.
But I hope, for most people, the agenda is
not the destruction of copyright.
It's very important to remember, for example,
what the GPL rests on.
We wouldn't have Linux if it were not for
the iron copyright law and lawyers behind
it.
My parents lived by copyright and I think
there still ought to be a way that talented,
hard-working people, whose work is popular
can earn enough to buy a house or whatever
and live on it.
I'm very sorry I don't have the chance to
discuss this with Aaron anymore, but it's
great to see how his spirit lives on.
[applause]
[Riana] Thanks.
My name is Riana.
The last time I saw Aaron in person was a
beautiful day, over Labor Day weekend, in
2010, in Chicago.
We both happened to be in town, so we decided
to catch up over hot dogs at a hot dog joint
called The Weiner Circle, which is well-known
in Chicago.
You get a hot dog down him.
Well, catching up turned into talking for
hours, hours about everything and nothing,
until the sun had set and we both were terribly
late for what other plans we had made for
that evening.
But it seemed more important to sit there
and talk and see what we could come up with
and where the conversation would go.
When we finally parted ways, it was dark.
I remember, as he walked off in his direction
and I walked off in mine, this impulse to
go back and grab him by the sleeve and say,
"Let's keep talking.
Let's see where this goes.
Let's see what else we can come up with."
But I didn't and I won't see him on this earth
again.
The venerable Bede, who was a medieval monk
and scholar and historian, in a monastery
with a wonderful library, famously compared
a human life to a swallow that flies through
the dark and then flies through the open window
of a monastery or a church and flits briefly
through the light inside, before winging back
out the other way into the darkness once more.
Well, a hot dog joint isn't too much like
a monastery or a church or a space like this.
But the light that Aaron left in this room
and in this life is a little bit brighter
and a little bit warmer for his having been
here.
Thanks.
[applause]
[Aaron] It's to my sorrow and shame that I
have not been involved much in the free software
movements or in the EFF.
I've had chances to do things in the world
to work towards helping people, who didn't
have the kind of resources that I have had
and that most of us have had and I haven't
taken all of those opportunities.
The story of Aaron Swartz, who I had never
met and never heard of, before his death,
is a wake-up call to me and, in a sense, it
should be a wake-up call to some of you, to
all of us and to some, who are listening and
to some, who won't hear,
You'll have to carry that message to them,
because they won't seek it out for themselves.
We are not good at finding the things on which
we can make a difference and choosing to make
a difference on those things, instead of seeking
to have fun, seeking to enjoy the moments
of our lives.
So we need people around us to remind us.
The people in your lives, who could be making
a difference, might be people like me, who
need a wake-up moment to realize that they
too can be the difference in the world.
Please be the person to remind them.
[applause]
[Mek] Hi.
The Aaron I knew had faith in people.
He, himself, was selfless.
We can't disappoint him.
He has been with me, in spirit, through many
of the most important days of my life, even
if we were not together.
When I was first founding a company, he immediately
agreed to meet with me and my co-founder and
discuss how he could help.
When I was a Hyperink discussing publishing
tools, he immediately agreed to work on projects
on how we could improve publishing, in the
open source community.
He has built many of the tools, which are
single-handedly responsible for me having
a career, including WebPIE and I have strived
to create tools like Waltz, which will help
other people do the same thing.
But I'm standing in front of you right now,
because I'd like to give something back, because
I haven't been as strong as he.
I haven't had the genius matched with the
will to do something real.
Currently I'm working on an initiative called
OpenJournal, which is an effort to do something
like Hacker News for academic journals, so
that people can collaborate and share academic
journals on the Web.
If any of you are interested, I'd love your
help and support, and figure out how we can
take the next steps to impact in the future.
Thank you.
[applause]
[Asaf Bartov] Hi, my name is Asaf Bartov.
I'm a soldier in the army described by Carl
Malamud since before I realized it.
In 1992, this is a long time ago, this is
before the public Internet, a friend came
over -- I grew up in Israel, spent most of
my life there -- a friend came over with a
CD-ROM that contained magic.
It had over 1000 text files of public-domain
works.
I didn't know it at the time, but then I read
the fine print, and it came from Project Gutenberg.
And this is something that I missed mentioning
tonight, Michael Hart, who we also lost not
long ago...
[applause]
...who we know in a big way, of course, was
there before most of us.
I got this CD-ROM, and for a teenager in Israel
with thirst for ideas, it was amazing.
I could read Plato's works in Benjamin Jowett's
beautiful Victorian English, I could read
Confucius and Voltaire, and I did, and it
was amazing.
And that experience stayed with me, that richness
that was brought to my computer on a CD-ROM
that went for $2.
That stayed with me for a few years, and in
1999, I was asking myself for the umpteenth
time, why don't we have a Hebrew Project Gutenberg,
damn it?
Why can't I find classics of Hebrew literature
online?
By then, of course, we had the Internet.
And because it was already the umpteenth time,
a voice inside me said, "Well, do something
about it."
That voice was Aaron's voice.
I didn't know that at the time.
But I did.
I started a Hebrew counterpart to Project
Gutenberg, I called it Project Ben-Yehuda,
named after the reviver of the Hebrew language,
and it has been going on since 1999 -- this
was before Wikipedia -- and has been making
available public-domain Hebrew works to the
public at no cost without advertising since
then.
I've done this with the help of hundreds of
volunteers.
And somewhere along the line, I figured I
need a catalog for this library that I'm building.
I didn't know anything about cataloging, but
I'm working on the Internet, I'm all digital,
so it doesn't make sense to use methods that
were devised for index cards like MARC.
So I did some research.
I studied library technology, completely as
an amateur over the Internet, because I could.
And I realized that some of the interesting
technologies related to libraries these days
are to do with linked data with the Semantic
Web, another way Aaron has touched my life
without my realizing it at the time.
I got interested in it at some point not too
long ago, I think it was 2010.
Out of sheer nerve, I wrote to the W3C and
said I want to join the then-new Library Linked
Data Working Group, because I run a digital
library, I'm a programmer, I'm into linked
data, I want to do something about it," and
they said, "Sure."
Again, inclusion that makes it possible.
Also, I wanted to convert the digital files
that I was making into a reasonable, sensible
format.
I recently picked MultiMarkdown because it
was the only thing that supported all the
requirements I had, including having hundreds
of footnotes per text.
And MultiMarkdown is an evolution of Markdown,
which Aaron co-wrote.
In all these things, as well as Wikipedia,
which used to be my hobby and now I work for
the Wikimedia Foundation, which is another
dream come true, in all these things, my path
and my work has crossed with Aaron's ideals,
passions, and work.
And I am grateful for that.
Fittingly, I am saying goodbye in the Internet
Archive where I met Aaron in person last year
for the first time.
Thank you.
[applause]
[Shannon Lee] At this point, I would like
to close the line to new speakers so that
as soon as we're finished with this line,
we can all go downstairs for refreshments.
Thank you.
[Phoebe Ayers] My name is Phoebe Ayers, and
I just wanted to say that in addition to all
these other things, Aaron was a great Wikipedian.
He wrote articles mostly about books and about
politicians, and every once in a while about
TV stars, in his off moments.
He loved our quirky in-jokes and weird community.
Along the way, he managed to, you know, write
one of the seminal pieces of Wikipedia research
that had been done.
He ran for the Wikimedia Foundation board
when he was 20.
But mostly, mostly he liked sharing what he
was curious and passionate about in articles.
We miss him.
[applause]
[Jake] Hi, my name's Jake.
I never met Aaron, but, you know, over the
last couple of weeks I've learned a lot about
him, and I think that one thing that's clear
to everybody is that he was a person who had
a lot of energy and a lot of love to give
and he really shared himself with a lot of
people.
And we all wish that things hadn't gone the
way they had.
And the same thing happened with Ilya, we
all wish that somebody could've been there,
and somehow, you know, things could've been
different.
And we couldn't.
So, the question now is, what can we learn
from this?
I believe that if you see people with a lot
of energy like that, you may not realize it
but they have dark times that make up for
that.
It's like, nobody is a superhuman, but if
people seem superhuman at some times then
it means that other times they don't feel
like a human at all.
It's something to think about, and there's
nothing wrong with talking to somebody and
asking them how they're feeling when they
don't need it, so just do it more often and
try and reach out to everybody.
[applause]
[Praveen] Hey.
I didn't know Aaron very well in person, but
I did follow him on the Internet on his blogs
and everything else for a long time, actually.
For over, probably, it feels like a decade.
So, I feel like I know him in some sense.
I didn't really have anything prepared, but
I thought that if I didn't speak here that
I probably wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't
speak here.
So, Aaron worked at Demand Progress and also
W3C, which are some of my favorite organizations.
I just want to share something that somebody
touched upon earlier tonight, just like a
little bit from, I guess, my country's history
of Gandhi.
A lot of you are probably very intimate with
this, some of you probably don't know.
But the British empire basically declared
that no Indian could buy salt unless it was
taxed through the British government, and
this left a lot of people without salt.
So, Gandhi did a march to the sea where people
went and marched by the thousands and by the
tens of thousands and got to the sea and picked
up the salt and brought it back to their houses
to show that one country or one group of people
can't control a resource for the whole world.
In the end, Gandhi won, and I really do believe
that Aaron was serving the best...If history
will look back and see Gandhi in Aaron.
So, thanks.
[applause]
[Bryce] There's this thing in astronomy called
the Kardashev scale.
It's the idea that stage two of a planet's
development is where it can harness all of
the energy in solar system.
We're not applying this same logic to people.
I've met hundreds of kids who could've been
Aaron.
I didn't know them, but I met hundreds of
ones who could've been him.
But the issue is that through a variety of
factors, they're silenced.
And so we end up with one who takes a gambit
and dies.
[applause]
[Taren] I just wanted to end with a reading
of a poem that a friend here in the Bay area
sent me a week ago.
It's called "When Great Trees Fall" by Maya
Angelou.
When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills
shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses,
and even elephants lumber after safety.
When great trees fall in forests, small things
recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond
fear.
When great souls die, the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe briefly.
Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines,
gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now
shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened as reduced to
unutterable ignorance of cold, dark caves.
And when great souls die, after a period,
peace blooms, slowly, and always irregularly.
Space is filled with a kind of soothing electric
vibration.
Our senses, restored, never to be the same,
whisper to us.
They existed.
They existed.
We can be, be and be better, for they existed.
Thank you, everybody.
