The Future of data justice examines the impact that data collection and surveillance has on marginalized populations


On March 28th, The Digital Equity Lab at The New School will host a discussion featuring members of Our Data Bodies, (ODB) a research justice collective that recently created The Digital Justice Playbook, to help marginalized populations understand and fight back against punitive data profiling.

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New York, March 25, 2019 --Three years of research in Detroit, Charlotte, and, Los Angeles, has culminated in the creation of the Digital Defense Playbook: Community Power Tools for Reclaiming Data. The research examines the disproportionate way data trails can adversely impact marginalized populations. Our Data Bodies (ODB), a research justice collective, produced the playbook to provide affected community members with a series of tools for understanding, dismantling, and transforming the injustices of pervasive and punitive data collection and data-driven systems.

On March 28th, the Milano School of Public Policy at the New School will host the ODB for “The Future of Data Justice: Community Power and Data-Driven Systems,” a public discussion on inequality, privacy, surveillance, and data profiling, data justice research; community safety, and health.

The ODB panel consists of Seeta Peña Gangadharan, assistant professor at London School of Economics and Political Science and visiting scholar, School of Media Studies, The New School; Tawana "Honeycomb" Petty, data justice coordinator and community researcher for the Detroit Community Technology Project; (DCTP) Tamika Lewis, (They/Them/BLU) a Black Queer mother, artist, researcher, and community organizer who is focused on advancing Black, Queer People of Color, and marginalized communities, towards liberation through the dismantling of capitalism and all its forms of currency; Mariella Saba, co-founder and organizer of  Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and FAMILIA: Trans Queer Liberation Movement; and Kim M. Reynolds, film and media postgraduate student and tutorial leader at University of Cape Town. The panel will be moderated by Greta Byrum, the co-director of The Digital Equity Lab at The New School.

“What shows up in the data trails is deeply disproportionate and shows how financial data can follow people of color and members of other vulnerable and marginalized communities around for years,” said Byrum. “What appears in data can be a determiner of opportunity and advancement, and it can prevent people from getting credit. The research grapples with issues of surveillance and the risks of harm through data-driven systems.”

Byrum says that the focus of the conference is to push back against surveillance in a way that supports “power not paranoia,” as articulated by ODB’s Mariella Saba.

The Future of Data Justice panel will address the unique challenges members of marginalized communities face when dealing with data-driven systems and the strategies and solutions that can safeguard them against pervasive forms of surveillance.  

The Playbook itself builds upon community gatherings, workshops, and one-on-one interviews with hundreds of Charlotteans, Detroiters, and Angelenos, who provide valuable lessons in challenging everyday surveillance. ODB hopes the Playbook will energize community involvement in tackling surveillance, profiling, and privacy problems rooted in social injustice.

The discussion will be held from 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in the The New School's Auditorium, RoomA106, Alvin Johnson/J.M Kaplan Hall at 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY. Members of the public can register on Eventbrite.

Following the morning discussion, ODB will hold an afternoon Community Digital Defense workshop that will focus on how people can begin to collectively strategize around how their data is collected and used. For more information on the workshop and to request a participation code, please email [email protected]

 


 

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