Thread by @twcnewsletter

THREAD~

Our favorite highlights from Issue 10.

First, @atav1k writes the workers' perspective, after 8 years escaping a string of startup jobs:

"It’s far from certain that the future of tech labor will be comfortable. Design history suggests the opposite..."

https://twitter.com/twcnewsletter/status/1301927139973959687

...after all, there was a time when operating a printing press was a professional job. I’ve watched out for dead-ends in my career, but I can’t say what no-code or machine learning will bring."
🤖🎨✨

Now, news from us: an open call for submissions!

We invite you to share your workers’ perspectives – even if just an idea – and we'll help you write. We also welcome tech labor news, historical highlights, song recommendations, & more.

😊 Click here:
news.techworkerscoalition.org/call-for-submi…

Facebook muddles through moderation in the US and India with fascism on the rise and deadly consequences, employees are speaking up – but without organizing around demands, not much is changing.

Divij Joshi explains Facebook’s real legal status in India:

https://twitter.com/divijualsuspect/status/1301124430098120709

Rent is due, yet again. @abbyhiggins & @OlufemiOTaiwo wrote about police & landlords evicting tenants with help from private surveillance companies. They use data for “automated background checks,” eviction proceedings without real hearings, and worse:

thenation.com/article/societ…

In solidarity with the @MuslimJustice’s demand to get the BRIC Fusion Center out of Boston, the Boston Tech Worker Organizing Group and @boston_twc started a pledge: #NoCodeforCops.

🛑✍️ Sign it here:
jotform.com/form/201663794…

As a critical alternative to police, the Anti Police-Terror Project @APTPaction launched MH First, a new model for mental health first-responders using a phone line and other community-based systems in development:

antipoliceterrorproject.org/mh-first-oakla…

We believe worker demands and innovation go well together.

@ArminSamii, a programmer turned Uber Eats delivery driver, for creating a browser extension that shows when Uber underpaid by distance 🏎️💸

Want it? Get it here:

https://twitter.com/ArminSamii/status/1295857106080456706

In front of the San Leandro Amazon distribution center, @AmazonArea formed a car caravan formed a blockade and played The Coup's “5 Million Ways To Kill A CEO.”

Watch a reply here: instagram.com/p/CEIBaPHAVAB/

Finally, our demands need to be about life, not just work:

https://twitter.com/beccalew/status/1301247519825985538

Don’t be that person.

https://twitter.com/beccalew/status/1301248441641824257

The true beauty of #BlackPanther #BlackPantherWatchParty isn’t utopian technology, but political vision. A huge, little-known volume of that never made it to screen. Professor @duanedeterville points us to powerful comics that didn't make the Disney cut:

hudlinentertainment.com/black-panther-…

Rise in Power, #ChadwickBoseman.

We honor what he stood for and how he lived, including organizing at
@HowardU to save arts education (see below), even if his Disney'd T’Challa left out deeper ideology from comics by Reggie Hudlin and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

https://twitter.com/blkwomenradical/status/1299715873389899782

A page from Hudlin's #BlackPanther where T'Challah says,

“Imperialism becomes a self-serving goal that undermines what you’re fighting for.

Look what happened to Christianity once they went from being an oppressed religion to persecuting ‘non-believers’ themselves.”

Rise in Power, @davidgraeber.

We’re grateful for Graeber's lesser-known essay Super Position, in which he discusses how superheroes live in and maintain an “inherently fascist space”:
thenewinquiry.com/super-position/

"if Red Skull, Kang, or Dr Doom ever did succeed in taking over the planet, there would be lots of new laws created very quickly. [Superheroes] remain parasitical off the villains...defenders of a legal and political system which itself seems to have come out of nowhere."😬

But-

#BlackPanther broke the superhero mold, fighting fascism as a system.

T'Challa:
“Americans don’t know how to kill someone and keep them dead”
“@official_capn didn’t know the Wakandans had already beheaded the Nazis days ago.”

Black Panther had vision, one we must keep alive.

✨@RicWilson:

I got bodily autonomy
And its policy is people over property
Treat us like pieces of monopoly
One day you’ll be nothing but the rich to eat
Uh, Defund the police
Abolish the prisons, or don’t speak a word to me
Stop ICE and let ‘em all free