THE FIRST SOVIET AMERICAN CITIZEN SUMMIT

Barbara Marx Hubbard (Futurist, Summit co-organizer): Can you imagine a process big enough to allow everybody in our country to join with everybody in the Soviet Union to create something together? Our purpose here is to launch a process that can eventually be big enough for the people throughout the whole world, not just the Soviets and the Americans, to join together to create new worlds. 

Individuals have come from both our nations, and you will be joining together in task forces tomorrow. And in those task forces, we’re going to ask each person to speak not only from their hearts, both from their hearts and from their personal passion. What would you like to do? A new way of thinking leads to a new way of doing. We have a database of existing Soviet- American projects, so if you can come up with an idea, you do not need to reinvent the wheel. You can go find out what already exists and plug into it. We have a team of analysts for you, who will help both Soviet and Americans, will help you decide which project might be most important. We have an internal media system. The television cameras belong to the people here, they’re not outside. And their purpose is to communicate, to pick up your highest moments of creativity. If you’re having a great insight, call for a camera and we’ll send one in. Because we intend to change the concept of news—from that which is breaking down, to that which is breaking through. 

And there are 300 people who have come across this country to support the participants and the Soviet guests to create this Summit, and I told them not one of them is audience. They are all participants. Now it might overwhelm our Soviet guests, the number of people who want to create with you. You may have to tell the Americans to stop. But I want our Soviet guests to know they are outnumbered four to one. We could have had twice as many Americans here. We had to stop. And Henry was saying to me at dinner next year, Moscow.

I would just like to say a deep thought of mine is that I don’t think it’s an accident, that at this stage of history, in the nuclear age, that the Soviet Union and the United States of America find themselves on the stage of history as the two superpowers. I think it is because we are the two nations on this earth with the most radical vision of world transformation. And that this vision that has motivated the people in the United States—all men are created equal. And the vision that has motivated people in the Soviet Union—from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, we have come from other sides of the mountain. But as Teilhard de Chardin said, everything that rises converges. 

Rama Vernon (Summit co-organizer): I would like to welcome all of you who have come from every corner of the United States, and from many of the institutions and organizations from throughout the Soviet Union. This is so unprecedented according to the Soviets, because never before has there been such a large delegation of over 100 Soviets that have represented such a wide variety of organizations and public opinions and points of view that has ever left the Soviet Union before. I would like to share with you what I have found in taking 800 people to the Soviet Union—what a citizen diplomat is. And perhaps many of you have your own ideas, which it would be marvelous if you could share throughout the week. A citizen diplomat is a world citizen. It is one whose vision transcends the personal, the ideological and the political boundaries to see the oneness of all of humanity and human unity. A citizen diplomat is one who has the skillful art of holding two points of views simultaneously. Discriminating in that, the citizen diplomat can see the differences, but not judging and comparing those differences. A citizen diplomat is one also who allows the heart to speak. 

David L. Smith (Interviewer): Here you are in the Soviet embassy. What are your feelings?

Barbara Marx Hubbard: Well, it is such a great party people. The Americans were so desirous of coming. We were supposed to have only 60. We have over 100 at the door of the embassy. And there were people whose names we didn’t have, but they were so desirous of coming and the Soviet embassy let them in. This television crew did not get clearance. And when they saw you at the gate, they let you in, right? And it’s like walls are coming down, barriers are coming down. There’s a tremendous amount of warmth of friendship. 

(American): I experience warm toward Russians… (in conversation with Russian gentleman)

David L. Smith: What do you think’s happening in this room?

American (Child): A lot. I don’t know all. I can’t say.  

Russian Cosmonaut speaking with Rama Vernon: You have American dream. You, your people, was the people of pioneers. And now, you only see two years. Like if you are, yeah, you’re now not in a process. In the past, if you know us, we must go with us together to the Mars, like pioneer, real pioneers. 

Rama Vernon: Well, you have been in outer space and most people haven’t. The Americans are afraid off the Soviets? And do you think that’s one reason why we haven’t been planning joint trips to Mars and to explore the universe—because we’re afraid? The Americans are afraid. It’s a real question.

Russian Cosmonaut: Do you afraid me?

Rama Vernon: No (Joint laughter)

Russian Cosmonaut: You are American?

Rama Vernon: Yes

Russian Cosmonaut: That’s right.

Paul Temple (Summit co-organizer): Mr. Henri Borovik is the President of the Soviet Peace Committee. Please join me in giving him the warmest possible welcome. 

Henri Borovik (Summit co-organizer): I like to tell you that I have a great honor, to give you personal greetings of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. He was informed about this conference, and he thinks it’s very important. And he asked me to tell you that he wishes you every success in our common, normal and difficult work to promote better understanding between our countries and between our nations.

When we were going from the Embassy where we had the reception, …. together with the cars with the window pulled down as we were driving, and in front of us, we saw a small car with a sticker and on the back window which says anticipate miracles. Was it true? I think that we can call what happened in December, in the beginning of December of last year, a kind of miracle? But it was not just a miracle. People worked for this miracle long ago. Very much and very hard. And though only leaders of our countries can sign such a treaty, but we also should understand that we did much, all of us, for that—not only those who are here in this beautiful hall, but millions of people who marched, who tried to open their hearts, who tried to understand each other by eyes, by shaking hands, all by all means of what human being can do to each other.  I think that if we speak about pyramid and the highest level of it are two leaders signing this wonderful treaty. The basis of, you know, I mean our people. And Mr. Gorbachev told not once that the people are sometimes, and maybe always, ahead of politicians. Let’s be ahead. 

Is it possible that we allow some stupid politician or some robot, by mistake or by bad will, to destroy such a beautiful, long and very hard process of making human—human. I think that—can we allow the humanity to stop its existence, the civilization to stop this existence? I’m sure we don’t. We are not allowed to allow this. If the human being has to die before its natural death, let him die only because of unrequited love. And speaking about miracles, let us not anticipate them. Let’s make them.

Robert Muller: And I can tell you that after so many years of trying to understand what it was all about. And when you are in the United Nations sooner or later you wake up one day and you ask yourself, what is it all about? And then you become a spiritual person. And what is very interesting is that when you ask yourself this question, and you discovered that in your life you are doing what you were meant to do, and all your life is devoted to do good, and to help humanity find its peace and way, then I have discovered that the universe or God recompenses us with something tremendous—happiness. 

I believe that happiness is the price we are being paid for being in right relationships, for being in the right harmony with our planetary form, with each other, with the universe at this time. We should all be very happy to realize at this particular time of evolution, when we know so much and when there is a possibility of making so many resolutions and changes in the way we behave at this particular time. I believe the third Millennium will be a Millennium of peace. It will be a Millennium of unprecedented fulfillment, but the basic question will be. How are we now going to relate to this planet and to each other. 

American Woman (Convergence Center coordinator): The convergence center is a place where everything seems to converge. People and papers and computers. Well, you can see it all around you—of convergence, of everything coming together in the mind and the heart. And so in here we are mapping all of the projects that are coming out of the task forces. We have a research base of information that is available to the people here to make their projects very real. And we have a lot of computer equipment here to try to capture all of the information that is coming out of the task forces so we can give it back to everybody who’s here.

American Gentleman (Publishing data from the task forces): We’re in the process of doing our final edition of the Daily Summit, which is the Summit Daily, which is the daily newspaper to provide good news to the participants here at the summit.

David L. Smith (Interviewer): And that comes out every day. When do they receive it?

Publisher: They receive it at the plenary session each morning. It’s on the tables, and we have one for each of the participants. And we have also translated several key articles in Cyrillic, in Russian, to have available for the Russians.

American Woman: I came to make a phone call to a senator because we’re arranging a meeting for the two Soviet cosmonauts to meet with Senator Harkin this afternoon. Yesterday they met with the Congressman Tortelli, and that was wonderful. He agreed to going on the Mir Space Station if invited. So that’s a possibility. And he agreed to invite Grechko or Jeb Gretchko send replacement during hearings that he hopes to call for on the National Commission for Mars to study Mars, our joint Mars mission.

American Gentleman (Global Family representative): Well we have found our Soviet counterparts for Global Family in the Soviet Union—that’s the most exciting piece.

David (Interviewer): What’s Global Family, first of all?

Representative: Okay, Global Family is an international network of spiritually like-minded individuals, people who in their own sense of who they are beginning to go beyond their own personal boundaries and see themselves as part of a global family—see that we have to look at the world as one whole. And so Global Families is a nonprofit organization that supports people to have activities and gather in various activities and projects and events and get linked through a newsletter and this type of thing so that we can really create it as if we are a global family.

David: And you found a counterpart in the Soviet Union?

Representative: We have found two counterparts. It’s fantastic. Now we’ve watched them get together as a team.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: And the process includes you going to the task forces of your choice. Now I want to point out that there are two, there are actually three types of participants we have here. We have the Soviet delegation. And that Soviet delegation has been selected and been more or less asked to go to certain task forces. And that has been selected from Moscow. They looked at our list and the people were selected for those task forces. The second category of participants are the American counterparts of those Soviets. They also have been specifically invited to go to task forces in the area of their expertise. Then in addition to the participants. There are, as I mentioned last night, the delegates. Now the delegates have come to support this conference in two ways, one, through their financial support and, more important, through their very presence, they have been invited to select the task forces of their choice. There are also facilitators in every one of the task forces who will assist the chairpeople in maintaining the process, which you will hear about in just a moment.

We invite you to really help us with this design. Because if we can jointly create a process that emancipates human creativity, we will start a critical mass—not in the nuclear explosion this time, but a critical mass of creativity that will be a chain reaction, that won’t stop until it spreads around the world. So when you’re in these task forces, you will have chairpeople, you can tell them what works, you can tell them what doesn’t work, and you can be part of inventing the next stage of self-government.

American Gentleman (Marketing task force): … that would set forth for the Americans to know what products the Soviets have to offer and what the products in Americans… cooperated before it would and vice versa what products that the Americans would have that with the Soviets would be interested in, basically creating an information base similar to one that somebody brought up earlier this morning.

American Gentleman (Trade and Economic task force): … is to have a high-level conversion conference between US industrialists and their counterparts from the Soviet Union. What from conversion from military production to civilian production can mean to both economies. At the last meeting of the USSR Trade and Economic Council, Dwayne Andreas from Archer Daniel Midland, who’s head of the US side of the Trade Council, proposed in his opening that each one of our countries could take some $100 billion out of their military budgets to be used for our economies which both sorely need these funds. And even though it may not sound that it deals directly with trade, it has a tremendous importance impact on the question of how we work together on the economic basis and what this can mean to both of our economies.

Russian Gentleman (Health task force): … And then they turned out that they were able to fight these diseases and their problems that they had before. So my suggestion is tonight our efforts and on the way of developing the new way of fighting different diseases like AIDS and to join our efforts on this week.

American Woman (Education task force): … We do know that we will be linked nationally on a computer system as well as on our own educational satellite. We do see that interlinking working with global village prospects and people within the Phoenix area of the West Coast and Australia. And what we’re doing is we’re having communications right now about the education that’s going to go into the different global villages. We’re interacting with television networking and cable television shows to be able to put educators like the sister here, like all of us here to get us on cable and get us on television. So that when we work with the Olympiads, which I have, and all of those people who are working on the vision of educational change, that we can get it out to the people. And my part of the mission is literally to get it to the parents so that the parents can get it to the children.

American Women (Literacy task force): … programs to encourage young people to understand what people in the Soviet Union are thinking while they’re in high school. Because I think you can hardly begin too early. To be more realistic in our appraisals of different people and our cultures are not that different. One of the things that impressed me when I was in the Soviet Union, they read so much of our literature. They read all their books, even the ones that are banned or smuggled in, and they read it. But how many of us read any Russian novels, except for a very few. Every Russian child studies English and they know about us.

Russian Gentleman (International Security task force): … The main idea is to keep peace in the in the, you know, the comprehensive system of International Security. It means that that system should rely upon a military pillar, political pillar, economic pillar… ecological pillar, but those five pillars cooperation.

American Woman: So happy today. Frankly, I didn’t know what was going to be my project when I sat here. I had two or three things in mind. But when I saw Soviet brothers and sisters that are here, I thought, well, maybe this is the opportunity because we are of like mind.

Russian Gentleman: I know that 600 corporations, United States corporations, are involved in South Africa, and sometimes people don’t want to discuss that, and also military support goes there. You know that we do not have any trade, we against apartheid.

Russian Gentleman (Strategy session): … so one school is signing the documents and other schools in the United States American is signing the same document. It’s working this way. But if you go just to the streets, the document and it will be asking people, please sign this document, I don’t think in this country, I don’t know how many of them will sign this document because there are so many people asking for to sign this or that thing in this country. I personally saw it with my own eyes. I think that to be very practical to do this this way to find parallel organizations, school to school, nursery house and nursery house. I don’t know Ministry of Defense with defense on different levels. Yeah, this is I think the most efficient way.

American Gentleman (Environment task force): Some of the members of our group have been working with Soviet counterparts to put together a work camp in Costa Rica, probably in January of next year, and they will be working on a reforestation project. Another project idea is to have a team of Soviets and Americans, about five members of each team, go to a third country, perhaps India, to work on a project for one or two years together in a health or an environmental area.

Russian Woman (Third World task force): We, the Soviet Union and the United States both do a lot of good for the for the third world. But if we could do something mutually together, that would be very good.

American Gentleman (Filmmaking task force): Perhaps a summary of the things we’ve committed to, to work together on like the joint program working on production of films like The Cossacks in Texas, like the Future Wave film, the musical, the other things that we have now agreed on this board, we put our names on them, we signed on them, we’ve reached agreements to explore cooperative ventures in these areas.

Russian Clergyman (Religion/Spirituality task force): … because this would be a sign of the desire of us as the as the believers to save, to save humankind.

David L. Smith (Interviewer): I’d just like to see if, what kind of a project we have in broadcast media, just any project.

American Gentleman (Journalist At the computer): This is one right here that I’m working on. It’s called the Center for Documentary Corporation, and they’re working on the exchange and production of Soviet American programming and having a central place for planning co-productions.

David: Fantastic. And who are the project directors on that?

Journalist: Let’s see. The contact is Sally Millets and Sylvia—the contact person is Alexei Simonov.

David: Very good. How long you been doing this?

Journalist: I did some of this data entry before the Summit started, and then I’ve been doing it all day yesterday and today.

David: How old are you?

Journalist: I’m 15 going on 16.

American Gentleman (Convergence Center operator): Well, this is a mapping center, Dave. We’re taking all the project reports that have come in as surveys before the conference, and taking all the task force reports and information and connection forms that are being reported on by the task forces and entering them into databases, sorting them out, representing them graphically, projecting them up on the wall so that analysts and task force leaders can come in and begin to see the cross impacts between task forces so they got a picture of the conference as a whole and some of the connections that they might not see being isolated in their individual task forces.

American Gentleman (Independent Initiative Report): I have a Kellogg Fellowship to explore citizen diplomacy, the private sector aspect of Soviet American relations, and I have been involved in setting up a database that is a research function here on citizen-initiated projects, joint projects with the Soviet Union. And it turned out to be a little more extensive than I anticipated because of the incredible volume of projects that are coming in, this kind of outpouring of private sector initiatives.

David L. Smith (Interviewer): What are the high principles that guide your action?

Patricia Ellsberg (Peace Activist): I think it’s a combination of a very deep no and a very deep yes. And the no is to state violence, is to state murder, whether it be terrorism in Nicaragua or invasion in Afghanistan, oppression in Eastern Europe, the first use threats of nuclear weapons, which is the basis of our nuclear policy. Where we are at the cornerstone of our foreign our NATO policy is the threat to initiate nuclear war. So as a peace activist, I put the whole weight of my life in saying no to that kind of wanting violence. 

Then there is the yes. That yes is to the truth that we are one family, one species on the face of this Earth, is yes to respect and reverence for life? It’s yes to the principles of the founding of this country, of the equality of every individual on the face of this earth. It’s yes to cooperation. It’s yes to shifting our resources away from death and destruction to life and to the enhancement of this planet.

Willis Harman (Engineer, futurist): I think these citizen action movements, this kind of activity, is the most important thing going on in the planet, without fail. It’s a sobering fact to recognize that what we are dealing with, is not just holding hands across the ocean, however important that may be, not just learning that after all the Soviets or the Americans as they are, there’s the case may be, are actually human beings, and that we really can learn to get along. But what we have to learn to get along at, is this far vaster task of get together with all the rest of the population of the earth, making the kind of mind change that will allow us to have a viable planetary future for all time to come.

Russian Orthodox Bishop: When we communicate with the American people, we indeed see their open ways, they’re very friendly. They want to know us. And I would like to wish that we should not cultivate the image of enemy of each other. A little knowledge of each other brings us to a sort of suspicion of each other. But if we feel that we are together to create one global family, we must have trust and goodwill, confidence in each other.

Barbara Marx Hubbard: In this peace command center, in this Situation Room of the Peoples of Earth, what we do is we scan the whole world for what’s working, we map the process that people are now doing in their projects, we bring ourselves together and we communicate it live. Russian Gentleman (Task force report): We propose to leaders of the NATO and Warsaw Treaty countries to appoint a Joint Committee of their respective military chiefs of staff, to devise a mutual security system devoid of nuclear weapons that will guarantee mutual security of their members.

American Gentleman (Task force report): … the purpose of which is to develop specific proposals that encourage the US and Soviet governments to work together to eliminate terrorism.

American Gentleman (Task force report): First, there will be a prototype project where twelve young Soviet citizens, twelve young Americans and twelve young Costa Ricans sponsored by the Holy Earth Network, Earth Stewards Network and the Volunteers for Peace, will go with Komsomolskaya Providence Putnik to Costa Rica for a work camp to do a reforestation project. Secondly, we will be with the group Ploughshares and the Soviet Peace Fund. We are going to be sending a team of volunteers, American and Soviet, for one to two years to work on a life serving project in the Third World.

American Woman (Task force report): Our first proposal would be the first joint US, USSR UN initiative which we the proclamation of an International Year for Global Education. Also, the activation of thirty UN days, the establishment of a global association for peace for children of the world, a joint Soviet American Task Force and Advisory Board for Peace Land, which is a creative part for children in Moscow, a clearinghouse for information and open telecommunication lines between our two countries to facilitate all of the task force projects.

Russian Gentleman (Task force report): So we agreed to meet in three months in Moscow to start a joint Soviet American venture of farmers exchanges.

American Woman (Task force report): Number one, a petition to the heads of the Departments of Education in both the United States and the Soviet Union to make courses on healthy parenting and human relationships a standard educational program in our schools. Number two, is the establishment of a Soviet American Council on the Healing Arts.

Russian Gentleman (Task force report): On children’s tourism, to the various space centers and space museums in the cities around the United States, exchange of lecturers in space research, exchange of scientists, and even the exchange of astronauts and cosmonauts—a real exchange of Soviet cosmonauts going into space in an American spaceship, an American astronaut joining a Soviet space mission.

American Gentleman (Task force report): We have committed ourselves to planning for a joint manned mission to Mars around the year 2000. We are committing to studying ways of reconverting the massive space weapons industry and the nuclear arms industry into peaceful uses of space and other technologies.

Russian Gentleman (Task force report): A project called Faces of the Enemy, an animation film. An agreement has already been signed and work has already begun. We’re thankful to our American friends for having suggested making a film about Nicholas Roerich (Russian painter, scenic designer, writer), which we haven’t succeeded in making for years, although we have wanted to. We’re going to start working on that project shortly.

Barbara Marx Hubbard (Commentary): Maybe the main thing that I think has happened here with over 500 Americans and Soviets is that we’ve overcome the tyranny of bureaucracy. We have met as individuals, not even as organizations, and when people meet person to person to create together it doesn’t seem to be any of the obstacles that ordinarily stop us in bureaucracies.

Henri Borovik (Commentary): And that’s why the people, ordinary people, people are ahead of politicians—as Gorbachev said several times during his speeches. And I think we should agree, and we should ask politicians to follow us, to follow ordinary people.

Rama Vernon (Commentary): We cannot disarm as nations until we learn to trust one another as individuals. And it is to this effort that I feel that citizen diplomats, and I know the Center for Soviet American Dialogue is dedicated. We cannot trust each other as individuals until we become acquainted with one another, until we become familiar with one another, until we become friends with one another.

Paul Temple (Summit co-organizer): This is an open letter to Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and the next President of the United States. The letter is entitled “The Alexandria Appeal.” This letter represents the consensus of the Soviet American Citizen Summit convened in Alexandria, Virginia on February 1 to 5, 1988. About 100 Soviet citizens and 400 Americans have been creating new thinking in the nuclear age and designing Social Inventions for the Third Millennium—the title of the summit. 

Literally hundreds of programs, projects and concepts have been adopted which will improve understanding between our two countries, move relations towards normalcy, aid our economies, reduce fear and mistrust, increase our security, even provide a road map for Soviet American cooperation for many years to come. We see cooperation as the central imperative to emerge from this conference, inasmuch as we must cooperate with each other to end the arms race, which is the only way to regain healthy economies which can meet the needs of all of our people. We must cooperate with each other to eliminate nuclear weapons from the Earth, thus removing the possibility of nuclear annihilation. We must collaborate with each other to avoid the looming environmental crunch, for it is only by reversing these which we humans have brought upon ourselves that we will survive. 

There is a very long way to go before security can be realized for all our citizens. We want to convey to you our hopes and aspirations and yes, our demands for our security. For if the people of our countries are not secure, our leaders will have failed us. 

Henri Borovik (Summit co-organizer): The Anti-ballistic Missiles Treaty must be adhered to strictly and permanently. No weapon should be designed, tested, or deployed for use in or from space. Nuclear weapons must be eliminated entirely at the earliest possible time. In conjunction with this, conventional forces should be reduced drastically and oriented toward self-defense. Our countries should take the lead in eliminating the sale of and otherwise providing arms to developing nations. The urge that the United States and the Soviet Union enter into massive joint projects in cooperation with other nations, to realize our peaceful design and a destiny in space, and for the US and the Soviet Union to send manned space ships to Mars, to repair our damage to the environment and assist developing countries in solving their problems before they become our own problems, and other projects not yet imagined. We ask your assistance to us citizens diplomats in our quest to move toward civility and normalcy. We wish you all speed in carrying out our mandate. Thank you.

Voice Over The Credits

Barbara Marx Hubbard: We talked about what it might have felt like. in the early, early times on this earth, before there was any life., and the molecules are bumping against each other, and at some point they discovered the pattern of life., and they could see, and there was consciousness on this earth. As human beings now, are bumping together, more and more joinings have taken place, and yet there are still many who have not connected. Today, is about those who have joined, to actually bond in their heart because the magnetic glue that holds the projects together is the love in the hearts of the people. 

And as magnetism works on the physical level to attract particle to particle, love acts on the human level to attract person to person to create. So those of you who have found your projects, be sure today to take time to know each other personally, to take time to share with each other from the heart, because it will be that bonding that will allow you to have the energy and the perseverance to carry through the project. And those of you who are out there listening, please listen very carefully because this may be the chance of your lifetime to find what you need. And in some sense, every project is an act of creation.