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My mom is a strong black woman
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who raised her kids to have
the same sense of strength and pride.
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This spirit was epitomized
by a single wall
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in our small, two-bedroom apartment
on the South Side of Chicago.
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Two pictures hung proudly:
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one larger-than-life photo
of my siblings and I
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and the other a picture of my mom
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at 12 years old
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staring into the eyes
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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When I was younger,
I used to stand on my tippy-toes,
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stare at that picture,
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close my eyes tightly,
and just pretend that it was me
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gazing up at the man who revolutionized
the Civil Rights Movement,
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who marched on Washington
and who transformed a generation
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by his words, "I have a dream."
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But I did get to meet him.
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Now, obviously, I didn't meet Dr. King,
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but I met a man named Dr. Vincent Harding.
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He worked with Dr. King from day one
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and even wrote some of his
most iconic speeches.
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You see, this was a really
important moment for me as a kid,
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because it was the first time
that I realized
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that it wasn't just Dr. King
who led this revolution,
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but he was surrounded by a movement
made up of anonymous extraordinaries.
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Anonymous extraordinaries are people
who work selflessly and vigorously
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for what they believe in,
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people who are motivated by conviction
and not recognition.
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It took me a long time to realize
the significance of this moment,
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until I was much older.
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And like I said, I grew up in Chicago.
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I grew up in a rough, poor neighborhood,
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but it didn't really matter to me as kid
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because I literally have
the most incredible family in the world.
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Two things that I did
struggle with a lot
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growing up was one --
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that my dad has been sick my whole life.
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He suffers from Parkinson's
and pancreatitis,
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and as a kid, it was so hard
for me to watch my hero
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in so much pain.
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And my other issue was with me.
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I guess you could say
I had an identity crisis.
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I had to move four times
during high school,
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and my freshman year I went
to an extremely racist high school.
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Kids were so cruel.
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They gave us hate letters,
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wrote terrible things on our lockers
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and because I'm biracial,
they would tell me,
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"You can't be both.
You have to choose, black or white."
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And in the end
I just resented being either.
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And then all of a sudden,
my senior year rolls around, 2008,
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and being mixed, being racially
ambiguous is this new cool fad,
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like, "Natalie, now it's OK
for you to like you. You're pretty now."
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I was over it. I was tired of caring
about what other people thought
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and I just wanted to hurry up,
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go through my classes,
whatever school I was going to be at next,
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and graduate.
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It wasn't until I was 17
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and I saw a film
called "Invisible Children"
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that something happened.
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Child soldiers,
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children as young as my nephews
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being abducted,
given AK-47s and forced to kill,
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not just anyone, but oftentimes
forced to kill their own parents,
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their own siblings --
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a rebel army committing mass murder
for no political or religious reason,
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just because.
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25 years.
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25 years this conflict has been going on.
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I'm 20 years old,
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so that makes this conflict
five years older than me.
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One man,
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one man with one charismatic voice,
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started this whole thing.
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His name is Joseph Kony.
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When I saw this film, something happened.
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Something started
kind of stirring inside of me,
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and I couldn't identify what it was.
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I didn't know if it was rage,
if it was pity,
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if I felt guilty
because this was the first time
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I'd heard about a 25-year-long war.
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I couldn't even give it a name.
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All I knew is that it kicked me off my ass
and I started asking questions.
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What do I do? What can one 17-year-old do?
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You've got to give me something.
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And they gave me something.
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The founders and filmmakers
at Invisible Children told me
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that there was this bill,
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that if we could
just get this bill passed,
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it would do two things:
one, it would apprehend Joseph Kony
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and the top commanders in his rebel army,
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and two, it would provide funding
for the recovery of these regions
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that had been devastated
by 25 years of war.
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And I was like, done. Let me at it.
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I swear I will do whatever I can
to make this happen.
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So myself and 99 other
idealistic 18- to 20-year-olds
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hopped on a plane to intern
in San Diego with Invisible Children.
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I was postponing college.
We weren't getting paid for this
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and you could call it irresponsible
or crazy -- my parents did.
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But for us, it would have been
insane not to go.
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We all felt this urgency,
and we would do whatever it took
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to pass this bill.
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So we were given our first task.
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We were going to plan an event called
the Rescue of Joseph Kony's Child Soldiers
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where participants would come
in a hundred cities worldwide
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and rally in their city center
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until a celebrity or a political figure
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came and used their voice
on behalf of these child soldiers,
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and at that point each city was "rescued."
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But the catch was, we weren't
leaving the cities until we were rescued.
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I was given Chicago and nine other cities
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and I told my bosses, I was like,
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"If we're going for big-name people,
why not go for the queen bee? Right?
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Why not go for Oprah Winfrey?"
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They thought I was a little idealistic,
but I mean, we were trying to think big.
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We were doing an impossible thing,
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so why not try to reach
more impossible things?
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And so we had from January
to April to get this done.
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This is the number of hours
that I spent on logistics,
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from getting permits
to rallying participants
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and finding venues.
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This is the number of times
that I was rejected
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by celebrities' agents
or politicians' secretaries.
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That is amount of money
that I spent personally
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on Red Bull and Diet Coke
to stay awake during this movement.
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(Laughter)
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You can judge me if you want to.
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That is my hospital bill
from the kidney infection I got
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from an overconsumption of caffeine
due to this event.
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(Laughter)
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These were just some
of the ridiculous things that we did
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to try and pull this event off.
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And so April 21 rolls around
and the event begins.
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A hundred cities around the world.
They were beautiful.
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Six days later, all the cities
were rescued but one:
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Chicago.
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So we were waiting in the city.
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People started coming
from all over the world,
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all over the country to be reinforcements
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and join their voice with ours.
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And finally, on May 1,
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we wrapped ourselves around Oprah's studio
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and we got her attention.
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This is a clip from a film
called "Together We Are Free"
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documenting the rescue event
and my attempt to get Oprah.
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(Video) Oprah Winfrey:
When I drove into the office,
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there was a giant -- when you came in,
was there a group outside?
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Crowd: Yes.
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OW: Holding up signs
asking if I would talk to them
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for just five minutes,
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so I was happy to do so.
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And they are with a group
called "Invisible Children,"
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and I told this group outside
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that I'd give them a minute
to state their case.
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Man: Oprah, thank you
so much for having us.
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Basically, these folks out here
have seen the story of 30,000 children
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abducted by a rebel leader
named Joseph Kony.
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And they're out here in solidarity,
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and they have been out here for six days.
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This started 100,000 people worldwide.
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Now it's down to 500 standing strong
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so that you can raise
the profile of this issue
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and we can end the longest-running
war in Africa and rescue those kids
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that are child soldiers
still in East Africa.
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Oprah, I have to say
this girl Natalie here,
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she's 18 years old.
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She was an intern for us this year,
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and she said, "My one goal
is to get Oprah."
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She had 2,000 people come out on Saturday,
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but it rained.
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She stood here in the rain with 50 people.
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When they heard she was here,
hundreds started coming.
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People are here from Mexico, Australia.
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Natalie's 18.
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Don't think you're too young.
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You can change the world any day.
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Start now.
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Start today.
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(Cheers)
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Man: Was it worth it?
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Crowd: Yeah!
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Natalie! Natalie! Natalie!
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(Music)
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Together we are free!
Together we are free!
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(Applause)
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So you would think
that this is the moment in my life,
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the pinnacle that
made me an extraordinary.
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And it was an awesome moment.
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I mean, I was on top of the world.
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Ten million people
watched the "Oprah Winfrey Show."
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But looking back, that wasn't it.
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Don't get me wrong.
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Like I said, it was great moment.
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It made for a heck of a profile picture
on Facebook for a week.
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(Laughter)
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But I had been extraordinary all along,
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and I wasn't alone.
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You see, even though
my story was featured in this film,
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I was just one of a hundred interns
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who worked their tails off
to make this happen.
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I'm up in the air,
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but the guy that I'm sitting
on his shoulders,
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he's my best friend.
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His name is Johannes Oberman
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and Johannes worked with me
from day one in Chicago,
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just as long hours,
just as many sleepless nights as I did.
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The girl on the right,
her name's Bethany Bylsma.
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Bethany planned New York City and Boston,
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and they were seriously
the most beautiful events that we held.
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The girl on the left, her name's Colleen.
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Colleen moved to Mexico,
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moved, for three months,
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to plan five events there,
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only to be kicked out
the day before the events
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because of the swine flu.
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And then there was this family.
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This family, they didn't
get to come to the rescue.
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They couldn't make it out,
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but they ordered
a hundred boxes of pizza for us,
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delivered them to the corner
of Michigan and Randolph
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where we were all silently protesting.
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You see, it was people like this
doing whatever they could,
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simultaneously, single-mindedly,
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without a care to who was watching,
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that made this happen.
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It wasn't about us getting on Oprah,
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because when I got down
from their shoulders,
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the war hadn't ended.
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It was about that bill.
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Oprah was just a checkpoint
on the way to that bill.
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That bill was the point.
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That bill is what we had
our eyes set on from day one.
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That was going to help us
end Africa's longest-running war.
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And that is what brought
a hundred thousand people
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out to the rescue event
from around the world.
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And it paid off:
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10 days after we were on Oprah,
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the bill was introduced into Congress.
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A year after that, it got unanimously
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267 cosponsors in Congress.
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And then one week after that,
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President Obama signed our bill into law.
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(Applause)
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And none of us interns got to be there.
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We didn't get to be there in this moment.
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Our founders were there.
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They're the guys
cheesing in the background.
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But that moment right there
is what made all of it worth it.
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It's what a hundred thousand
anonymous extraordinaries
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worked for so hard to make that happen.
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You know, the Oprah moments,
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they prove that the supposedly
impossible can be done.
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They inspire us.
They boost our confidence.
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But the moment isn't a movement.
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Even a lot of those moments
strung together don't fuel a movement.
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What fuels a movement are
the anonymous extraordinaries behind it.
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You know, for me, what kept me
pushing on through the rescue
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was the thought of those child soldiers.
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It became personal.
I was able to go to Africa at one point.
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I met these incredible people.
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I have friends that have been
living in this conflict their entire life,
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and it was personal to me.
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But that doesn't have to be
what drives you.
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You know, you may want
to be the next Shepard Fairey
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or the next JK Rowling
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or the next whoever.
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It doesn't matter, but whatever you want,
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chase after it
with everything that you have --
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not because of the fame or the fortune,
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but solely because
that's what you believe in,
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because that's what makes your heart sing.
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That's what your dance is.
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That's what is going
to define our generation,
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when we start chasing and fighting
after the things that we love
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and that we want to fight for.
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I cared too much in high school
about what people thought about me.
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That's what so awesome
about this conference,
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is so many of you are so young.
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Find that thing that inspires you
that you love, and just chase after it.
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You know, fight for that,
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because that is what
is going to change this world
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and that is what defines us.
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Despite what people think,
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my Oprah moments,
my being on TED, doesn't define me,
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because if you were
to follow me home to LA,
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you would see me waiting tables
and nannying to pay the bills
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as I chase after my dream
of becoming a filmmaker.
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In the small, anonymous, monotonous
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every-single-day acts,
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I have to remind myself
to be extraordinary.
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And believe me, when the door
is closed and the cameras are off,
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it's tough.
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But if there's one thing
that I want to drive home to you,
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one thing that I can say,
not just to you but to myself,
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is that it is the acts
that make us extraordinary,
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not the Oprah moments. Thank you.