Deep Fried Neurons No 6: Resources for Anti-racism
Black lives matter. If that message is one that you are not comfortable with, or unwilling to get comfortable with fast, than it is safe to say that CRASH Space is not the right place for you.
There have been numerous private conversations at CRASH Space about what we can do, what the role of a hackerspace can or should be doing in the fight against racism. This week on Deep Fried Neurons ( Friday at 5:30 pm PDT ), we (Barb Noren (BarbMakesThings), Tod Kurt (todbot) and Carlyn Maw (carlynorama)) are going to take one of them public.
https://www.twitch.tv/deepfriedneurons (video archive)
For many of us, this kind of wicked problem does not play to our strengths. There really isn’t a piece of software to write or a thing to print that can dismantle hundreds of years of oppression. The killing of black people must stop. And that is only the first step.
But like privacy and security issues, anti-racism is a process and not a product. Becoming anti-racist, behaving in anti-racist ways, requires breaking down world views based on years of missing and withheld information, forming new habits. Racism represents both a systemic, exploitable fault in our society and systemic, exploitable fault in our minds as well. It’s important to look for methods and disciplines not just hashtags.
We had a different topic scheduled for this week and we spent some time talking about the best most useful thing we could do to support our community. We’re three people with white privilege talking mostly to other people with white or white passing privilege. But learning and education matter to all of us, and really it is not the job of black people to constantly put in the emotional labor. So we’re going to do our best to discuss some resources we’ve found to helpful in pushing ourselves further on the anti-racist journey. It’s not going to be pretty. n00b code never is.
Some of the links we’re exploring are below. I’ll update after the broadcast with a little more organization. These certainly aren’t exhaustive, by any means! These are mostly links that have crossed our plate in the last week. If you have something you’d like us to add or highlight please let us know.
Selected Resources
What we were drinking
- Loft and Bear Vodka: https://www.loftandbear.com/shop/
- Drink recipe by @DrinkingCoach: https://twitter.com/atlandco/status/1266155873883258883
- Uncle Nearest Whiskey: https://gastropod.com/the-secret-history-of-the-slave-behind-jack-daniels-whiskey/
- Black Girl Magic Winehttps://www.mcbridesisters.com/Black-Girl-Magic
“Start Here”
- Scaffolded reading list – i.e. there is a question/thought and reading to do based on that question, has recommendations based in multiple media
- video: Trevor Noah, Trever Noah interviews Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi about their book “Stamped”
- video: Kimberly Jones
- Safiya Umoja Noble Algorithms of Oppression – UCI lecture
Defund The Police
- https://peoplesbudgetla.com/actions/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
- Book: The End of Policing by Alex Vitale
- “Broken windows theory” & “stop-and-frisk”
- from scaffolded google doc
(turns out studying white identity is a robust field) - Ebook is 100% free on publisher site
- NPR Article: How Much Do We Need The Police?
- As N.K. Jemisen writes “Amazing to see something like this in a major national publication. This is the power of protest. And the harder the police come at the protestors, the more people are going to consider this question.”
- Video: How corporate media protects violent cops
- Video: John Oliver
- http://criticalresistance.org/abolish-policing/ – great infographic
Celebrations
- Afrofuturism
- Afrofuturism: From Books to Blockbuster (e.g. Black Panther, It’s Lit by PBS Storied)
- Afrofuturism Imagination and Humanity – Ytasha Womack
- Black Panther, obviously (and what he’s named for)
- Soul Live – Turn it Out
- Celebrating Black voices in Stem
- 50 brilliant Black women, nonbinary, and trans folks writing SFF works about Black people and Black communities: https://twitter.com/sirens_con/status/1269742719401734144
Full Resources
Lists of Lists
Several places are posting lists right now. Here are some of them. Buy books at black owned business when possible.
- Scaffolded reading list– i.e. there is a question/thought and reading to do based on that question
- Anti-racism resources google doc (May 2020)
- Eight Recommended Books by Women to Understand the Uprisings
- 45 books by black authors, fiction and nonfiction
- Anti-racist reading guide via @victoriaalxndr
- Save your Tears Directed specifically at White Women
- White Guyde To The Galaxy
- JSTOR list of reading on institutionalized racism
- https://creativemornings.com/blog/black-lives-matter
- Reading Towards Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness
- Bookshop.org book store curated by @baratunde
- https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/06/09/schomburg-center-black-liberation-reading-list
Action Items
- https://janeelliott.com/commitment
- http://indivisble.org/blacklivessolidarity
- Call your state assembly folks in support of AB 2054, the CRISES act
- 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice
- How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change (Barack Obama)
- https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-to-be-an-activist-when-youre-unable-to-attend-protests
- https://peoplesbudgetla.com/actions/
- https://www.joincampaignzero.org/ | https://8cantwait.org/ | https://useofforceproject.org/ <- as potential FIRST steps but has been criticized as potentially distracting from abolition efforts.
- http://criticalresistance.org/abolish-policing/ – great infographic
- https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/
- White Folks Hotline: https://discord.com/invite/5fjPHN / https://twitter.com/kurtkemple/status/1268927990265757701 / https://twitter.com/TatianaTMac/status/1268934333034725376
FYI – it’s very exciting that there has been any movement by the LA city council at all, but…
Black voices in STEAM (non-exhaustive, recent lists)
- https://mobile.twitter.com/EstOdek/status/1266366964261257218
- https://mobile.twitter.com/BlackAFinSTEM
- https://mobile.twitter.com/hashtag/BlackBirderWeek
- https://mobile.twitter.com/hackadayio/status/1267866858503446530
- My colleagues in #NatSec shouldn’t and can’t feel hopeless right now. a Thread
- https://diversityinnationalsecuritynetwork.com/2020/04/25/nextgennatsec/
- https://www.blackartinamerica.com/
- Why it can be hard for these voices to surface: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/deep-biases-prevent-diverse-talent-advancing-180975033
- https://bipocinfiber.com/
- https://github.com/samanthabretous/black-speakers-in-tech
- https://mobile.twitter.com/Robservatory/status/1268772523157491712
- https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/making-it-easier-breathe
Videos
- Free movies by Black Filmmakers Criterion Collection
- Trevor Noah this week
- Marques Brownlee On the Color of My Skin
- Safiya Umoja Noble Algorithms of Oppression USC Annenberg lecture
- Trever Noah interviews Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi about their book “Stamped”
- Brittney Cooper: https://mobile.twitter.com/stevegoldbloom/status/1268232148177174528
- Eyeo Talk Data on Police Brutality
- Youtube playlist of Black Voices / Black History
- Brown Eye, Blue Eye, Jane Elliot: (Short Clip | Longer)
- Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. – https://twitter.com/PACAF/status/1268794618461618177
- The Fire This Time: Race at Boiling Point – talk held June 5th
Places to Give
- https://www.naacpldf.org/
- https://www.splcenter.org/
- @blackgirlscode – https://www.paypal.me/BlackGirlsCode
- @devcolororg – https://secure.actblue.com/donate/devcolor, https://www.devcolor.org/
- https://www.hbcu.vc/
- @blacktechmecca – https://blacktechmecca.org/donate-1
- @AllStarCode – https://allstarcode.org/donate/
- @Code2040 – https://code2040-2020.funraise.org/
- List of reccs
About Tech’s Role Specifically
- Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Noble
- Rage Inside The Machine, Rob Smith
- Technically Wrong, Sara Wachter-Boettcher
- How Facebook and Twitter are dealing with racist posts and Friend of Pivot Baratunde Thurston on why “now is the time to step up, show up, or shut up” (Pod cast: Apple | )
- It’s Time We Dealt With White Supremacy in Tech
- https://hyperallergic.com/195049/where-are-the-women-of-color-in-new-media-art/
- Technology Perpetuates Racism by Design
- Supporting Colleagues
- https://hackernoon.com/hey-employers-do-black-lives-matter-9jei30li
- Race after Technology
- https://www.splcenter.org/hate-and-tech
- Why do online trolls call SWAT teams? Because the police hurt people.
- https://hipcityreg.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-blackness-in-venture
- https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/11/tech-companies-its-time-to-show-that-black-lives-really-matter-to-you/
Fictions and Narratives
- Free movies by Black Filmmakers Criterion Collection
- 45 books by black authors, fiction and nonfiction
- A list Carlyn made starting with books they read in her school.
- Joyful books: suggestions in the replies
- Afrofuturism video, recs and context
Misc
- CW: Very long thread (200+) examples of police violence in the past week. https://www.coursera.org/lecture/mindware/the-illusion-of-objectivity-Gq5av
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/01/george-floyd-riots-violence-damage-property-police-brutality
- https://medium.com/@blackgirls_code/finding-hope-in-uncertain-times-ff8c386885
- Frances Frei: Treating people equally is not the same thing as treating them fairly (Podcast: Megaphone)
- http://www.warscapes.com/column/esther-armah/armed-white-deadly-unarmed-black-dead
- Hope is a high risk project TED radio hour (also Brittany Cooper)
- Racism and Urban Design: https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2020/06/george-floyd-protest-urban-design-history-racism-architecture/612622/
- Cities and police fees: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/06/police-brutality-lawsuits-cities-settlements-credit-ratings/612301/
- Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore
- More cops don’t equal less crime.
- Police violence against black women specifically.
- The first use of the word “white” to mean British people in theater – 1613 https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/feb/19/theatre.race
- Some black journalists, activists, writers, academics journalists on Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/KarenAttiah/status/1267774334782881793
- https://blog.crashspace.org/category/events/civic-engagement-survival-guide/
- Healthcare and racism reading list: https://mobile.twitter.com/Arrianna_Planey/status/1269270624339451908
- https://rewire.news/multimedia/podcast/how-to-defund-the-police/
Some under reported aspects of history
- Cointelpro: https://twitter.com/clairewillett/status/1266894029498675200
- First person to die in American Revolution
- 1619 Project
- Juneteenth (June 19th)
- History of MLK Protest
Possible ongoing resources?
- White Folks Hotline: https://discord.com/invite/5fjPHN /
- https://ti.to/kim.crayton.llc/introduction-to-being-an-antiracist
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