Ruha Benjamin Profile picture
✍🏽 • RACE AFTER TECHNOLOGY: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code • VIRAL JUSTICE: How We Grow the World We Want • IMAGINATION: A Manifesto 📚

May 1, 2022, 14 tweets

On this 2-year anniversary of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, I’m happy to share some of the work coming out of the #IdaLab. Before I do, lemme say: NONE of this would be possible w/o the digital stewardship of @CierraRobson, associate director extraordinaire!

This semester one of the #IdaLab teams led by @PrincetonCITP emerging scholar, Kenia Hale, and rising @PrincetonAAS senior, Payton Croskey, focused on liberatory technologies.

The Liberatory Technology team created a GitHub repository (which they hope you will use!) that grew out of the research question: “how do people protect themselves from the state while also dancing in the sun?”

github.com/kenia-hale/Lib…

Of course, they also created an amazing zine to go along with the repository which you can visit here:

flipsnack.com/EBC8CD77C6F/li… #IdaLab

We’re slowly adding more Spring ‘22 work to our website, but in the meantime u can checkout out past playbooks, zines & other projects, including collabs with @ConMijente @BarredBusiness @ImmDefense and other wonderful folks: thejustdatalab.com/tools-1 #IdaLab

And while almost all of our work has been virtual, we were able to gather in person for final presentations—time together which we savored along with soulfood catered by Deltas in New Brunswick: deltasrestaurant.com

This summer the #IdaLab is working on a popular education model inspired by the 1960s Freedom Schools, focused on tech justice. When you hear that, what comes to mind? What existing formations should we be learning from? What should we call it… Tech Freedom Schools?

For starters, the #IdaLab is learning from Detroit’s Discotechs🎶 short for “Discovering Technology” — a replicable model for a multimedia, mobile neighborhood workshop fair developed by the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition.

detroitdjc.org/discotech/

The #IdaLab is learning from everything going down at @ColorCodedLA—community workshops, abolition tech, peoples tech project, ancestral tech and more! colorcoded.la

Oh! just found this short clip featuring my sista @Combsthepoet at one of the Detroit Discotechs 🎶

At the #IdaLab we are Design Justice stans, so the DS Principles are all up and through everything we aim to do: designjustice.org/read-the-princ…

Every semester the #IdaLab orientation includes Data Feminism among a number of other texts—the intellectual foundation of our popular education work this summer📚

mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-fem…

And as serious & sobering as all this can be, at #IdaLab we’re always striving to infuse fun, joy and creativity into everything we do, inspired to that end by @ConMijente’s Tech Wars series this spring!👇🏾

Finally, last thing I’ll say for now is that at the end of the summer, the #IdaLab will be presenting all our popular education learnings at the @CivicsOfTech conf Aug 4-5, so register and chat with us there! civicsoftechnology.org/events

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling