Speaker 1: We can talk about the hardware and software all day,
Speaker 1: but social technologies like trust, like mutuality, we have to
Speaker 1: invest as much intellectual and emotional energy into honing those,
Speaker 1: building those practicing those. It doesn't come natural, and so
Speaker 1: part of what we're doing is trying to prototype new
Speaker 1: relationships amongst ourselves. Like well, our tagline within the lab
Speaker 1: is be careful with each other so we can be
Speaker 1: dangerous together. Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day,
Speaker 1: a podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a
Speaker 1: legal status. This season is all about how we practice democracy,
Speaker 1: what can we get rid of, what can we invent,
Speaker 1: and how do we change the culture of democracy itself.
Speaker 1: We're leaving the theoretical clouds and hitting the ground with
Speaker 1: inspiring examples of people and institutions that are showing us
Speaker 1: new ways to govern ourselves. I first came across the
Speaker 1: name Ruha Benjamin, such a great sounding name, during the
Speaker 1: peak of my rebellion against technology and my realization that
Speaker 1: it was causing a lot of harm. It was the
Speaker 1: fall of twenty eighteen. I was living in New York
Speaker 1: City and working out of a place called the Data
Speaker 1: in Society Research Institute. Which is about what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: They're focused on the impact of data centric technologies on
Speaker 1: society and how they affect people, especially those in marginalized communities.
Speaker 1: Ruha was coming through to talk about her new book,
Speaker 1: Race After Technology, a book that was saying out loud
Speaker 1: and imprint a lot of the things that I'd also
Speaker 1: been feeling and thinking and saying. In particular, she coined
Speaker 1: this phrase the new gym code. I mean, come on now,
Speaker 1: I'm a sucker for wordplay. That's amazing, And this is
Speaker 1: basically her definition of the new gym code. Using technology
Speaker 1: to reflect or even reproduce existing inequalities, while concealing that
Speaker 1: by promoting the tech with the language of progress and
Speaker 1: objectivity that masks the fact that it's built on the
Speaker 1: discrimination from a previous era. I cheered when I saw
Speaker 1: that because it echoed my own statements around the time
Speaker 1: that we might find the civil rights battles of the
Speaker 1: future harder to win because they'd be encoded in this
Speaker 1: technocentric language of progress and fairness and equality. But the
Speaker 1: systems will actually make us more oppressed by literally codifying
Speaker 1: discrimination in the data in tech that's based on our
Speaker 1: unjust past. We'd write history into our futures, and not
Speaker 1: in a good way. So Ruha was saying all that
Speaker 1: and so much more. When I saw her three years
Speaker 1: later at south By Southwest in twenty twenty two, she
Speaker 1: was moderating a panel on a virtual and augmented reality
Speaker 1: experience that beautifully honored the life of Brianna Taylor. Sadly,
Speaker 1: we know about Brianna because the Louisville Metro Police shot
Speaker 1: and killed her in the summer of twenty twenty. In
Speaker 1: this case, technology was being used to help a family
Speaker 1: and a community remember Brianna's life, not just her death,
Speaker 1: and ultimately help them heal. Ruha was helping show a
Speaker 1: different and more positive experience of technology and its impact.
Speaker 1: Along with bringing community connection and facilitation to the front
Speaker 1: of her fight for justice. Ruha is echoing that same
Speaker 1: joy and warmth that Adrian Marie Brown brought us at
Speaker 1: the start of this season, and her work connects to
Speaker 1: the way we think about citizen as a verb. Here
Speaker 1: at the show, our four pillars show up and participate,
Speaker 1: invest in relationships, understand power, and value the collective are
Speaker 1: things she practices, not just preaches, Especially on relationships and power.
Speaker 1: She does much of that practice as founding director of
Speaker 1: the Data Lab at Princeton, where she also teaches. The
Speaker 1: lab is focused on rethinking and retooling the relationship between
Speaker 1: stories and statistics, power and technology, data and justice. They
Speaker 1: invite community based organizations to partner with them on building
Speaker 1: technologies that meet their needs, from mapping the work of
Speaker 1: companies engaged in immigrants surveillance and developing tools for formerly
Speaker 1: incarcerated small business owners, to creating playbooks about black maternal
Speaker 1: mental health and resources for tenants facing eviction. And that's
Speaker 1: just naming a few. I consider Uja to be a
Speaker 1: kindred spirit and it's so cool to finally have her
Speaker 1: on the show. Now. We got together in front of
Speaker 1: a live i RL audience in New York in September
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. It was part of a conference and
Speaker 1: festival called Unfinished. I've been hosting that event for three
Speaker 1: years straight because it's so well aligned with what we
Speaker 1: do here at How to Citizen. This gathering is predicated
Speaker 1: on interpreting the project of a mer the possibilities of technology,
Speaker 1: even democracy itself, as well as Unfinished, especially in this
Speaker 1: moment where both democracy and technology feel like they're on
Speaker 1: the precipice of something, something great or something terrible. While
Speaker 1: it unfinished, Ruhat and I sat down for a special
Speaker 1: live taping of Hot to Citizen, which you'll hear right after.
Speaker 1: We pay for this podcast with an ad break. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: smatterings of applause are encouraged, encouraged, Thank you. We're here
Speaker 1: first context on the podcast, which I assume you all
Speaker 1: listened to religiously. But there may be one person who's
Speaker 1: never heard of podcasting and hasn't gotten around to the
Speaker 1: billion that exists in the world. The premise of our
Speaker 1: show is that we interpret the word citizen as a verb,
Speaker 1: and we see it as an opportunity to include people
Speaker 1: in the process, as opposed to this noun that divides
Speaker 1: us from one another, separating people across imagine every line.
Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting here with you, Ruha, because of
Speaker 1: your book, and I was I here yelling in these
Speaker 1: Internet streets about you know, the bias baked into the
Speaker 1: system and they're making us new digital slaves and black box.
Speaker 1: First of why I got to be a black box?
Speaker 1: Why can't just be another obfuscated box? Why I gotta
Speaker 1: be black? So I feel like you gotta reruha. You
Speaker 1: gotta reruha. So I came across Raced after technology the
Speaker 1: New You Gym Code, after having already read the New
Speaker 1: Gym Chrome many years prior. And I would love to
Speaker 1: know to start us off, how you're weaving of medicine
Speaker 1: and technology and technological systems with ideas of power and
Speaker 1: ultimately liberation, which we'll get to. Where does that come
Speaker 1: from for you? Yes, so many origin stories. First of all,
Speaker 1: Hi everyone, good to see you. I'm so thrilled to
Speaker 1: be in conversation with Bartunde, whose work I read I
Speaker 1: first started teaching as a young assistant professor BU and
Speaker 1: it was the first and only book that had me
Speaker 1: cackling on the airplane, like to the to everyone around.
Speaker 1: It was mad because I was reading this and just
Speaker 1: loved how incisive, how brilliant, how you use humor to
Speaker 1: get us to open our hearts in our minds. So
Speaker 1: thank you. So she's referring to how to Be Black, Yes,
Speaker 1: which if you haven't bought your Races, that's just the
Speaker 1: marketing sciences, not it's not accusing you back. So I
Speaker 1: just I have been a huge fan of bartun Day's
Speaker 1: work for a long time. Um, so so many origin stories,
Speaker 1: you know, when someone asked you, how did you start?
Speaker 1: And also I'll try to just distill perhaps two quick
Speaker 1: personal experiences or times in my life that have led
Speaker 1: me to this work. One is as a young in
Speaker 1: growing up in Los Angeles. Imagine little seven or eight
Speaker 1: year old Ruha in the back of her grandma's gold
Speaker 1: Chrysler cruising down Crenshaw Boulevar exactly and how many times
Speaker 1: have I heard that? So, you know, and just being
Speaker 1: you know, just a wide eyed young kid, you know,
Speaker 1: and passing by this one moment, passing by a group
Speaker 1: of boys from my school lined up against the fence
Speaker 1: very close to my house being patted down very aggressively
Speaker 1: and shamefully, and just kind of catching their eye as
Speaker 1: I'm in the back seat and seeing that very overt
Speaker 1: form of policing that wasn't just meant to shame them
Speaker 1: and control them, but it felt like a message to
Speaker 1: all of us about where we belonged and what we were,
Speaker 1: what we could expect, and that was reinforced and amplified
Speaker 1: in many, many different ways, most notably just the everyday
Speaker 1: audible experience of police helicopters rumbling overhead in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: you know, as a resident, and just the literal wall
Speaker 1: shaking in my grandma's house a periodic intervals. So I
Speaker 1: think of us as being in police occupied neighborhoods, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, as a young mother, then I remember times
Speaker 1: putting my boys to sleep in that same house and
Speaker 1: the lights of the helicopters shining in and waking them up,
Speaker 1: and so this very physical presence of policing. Then realizing that, oh,
Speaker 1: there are other less visible, less audible ways in which
Speaker 1: surveillance technologies are being deployed that perhaps are even more
Speaker 1: dangerous because I can't point to them, because I can't
Speaker 1: see them. And so it sort of led me to
Speaker 1: look behind the screen, look at things that are out
Speaker 1: of sight but are nevertheless classifying people controlling our lives
Speaker 1: and in very harmful ways. And so there's this experience
Speaker 1: of just being someone who understands what it is like
Speaker 1: to be watched and not seen that has led to
Speaker 1: this work. The other origin story comes from being a
Speaker 1: young mother. I had my sons in my twenties and
Speaker 1: living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and with my
Speaker 1: first son, realizing what the experience was probably going to
Speaker 1: be like with childbirth and the overly medicalized approach to
Speaker 1: childbirth in this country, and understanding that there are different
Speaker 1: schools of childbirth. There's the conventional obstetrics medicalized approach to
Speaker 1: childbirth that we're familiar with and that I Binge watched
Speaker 1: when I was pregnant with the birth story, and just
Speaker 1: understanding what I could expect if I had my child
Speaker 1: in a hospital, which is that the schedules of other
Speaker 1: people would proceed mine that I could expect various technologies
Speaker 1: that I may not necessarily need, that can be life
Speaker 1: saving in some situations but have become normalized. And for
Speaker 1: those who don't know, the experience of black women in
Speaker 1: particular in our healthcare settings and childbirth in particular is
Speaker 1: astronomically worse than everyone else. But I learned about midwiff free,
Speaker 1: a different approach where you can either have your child
Speaker 1: in a hospital, a birth center at home with the
Speaker 1: accompaniment of dulas and midwives birthworkers, and the experience is
Speaker 1: much much different. Centers the woman or birth in person,
Speaker 1: centers our autonomy, our dignity is based on respect and
Speaker 1: mutuality and trust, and that's what I chose to do.
Speaker 1: And that's when I became critical of both authoritative forms
Speaker 1: of knowledge, whether whatever sciences or medicine that is, but
Speaker 1: also that other forms of expertise that exist and that
Speaker 1: are often sort of marginalized and discounted in the form
Speaker 1: in this case of childbirthing knowledge, and also became critical
Speaker 1: of the overabundance of technology in our lives that we
Speaker 1: may not necessarily need. But that just gives you a
Speaker 1: sense of my critical take on when things are being
Speaker 1: sold to us as a straightforward good without thinking carefully
Speaker 1: about how they're actually being experienced. Would you describe this
Speaker 1: as your critical race theory? Yes, yes, I would, Yes,
Speaker 1: I would leap that out. I want the people a Georgia.
Speaker 1: But they hear this exactly. Midwifery is actually a good
Speaker 1: and unexpected segue. I'd like to spend the bulk of
Speaker 1: the remainder of our time in this word seeds and
Speaker 1: in midwifing new ideas of design, justice, of freedom, of thriving,
Speaker 1: of liberation. One effort that you've undertaken is to create
Speaker 1: the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab at Princeton. What
Speaker 1: is that? Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. Because
Speaker 1: that means we get to talk about my students, yes,
Speaker 1: which is where a lot of my optimism, hope, and
Speaker 1: energy comes from is getting to hang out with eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty two year olds all day who are both
Speaker 1: critical and creative in their approaches. And so Ida B.
Speaker 1: Wells I named it after Ida B Wells because, and
Speaker 1: now an explainer to today if you're not familiar. Ida B.
Speaker 1: Wells was a civil rights leader, suffragette, and investigative journalist
Speaker 1: who lived from eighteen sixty two to nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 1: She's best known for her work documenting racial terror lynchings
Speaker 1: in the United States, and her most famous work is
Speaker 1: The Red Record, an historic effort to quantify lynchings in
Speaker 1: the US after slavery. I named it after Ida B
Speaker 1: Wells because for many reasons, but one very personal reason
Speaker 1: is that her grandson was my dissertation advisor, doctor Troy Duster,
Speaker 1: and so I've felt a kinship with her, her family
Speaker 1: and that legacy because he's the one who brought me
Speaker 1: into this field of theology of science, knowledge and medicine,
Speaker 1: and so as a tribute to that legacy, and also
Speaker 1: because she used both statistics and stories to shine a
Speaker 1: light on what is ailing us and the forms of
Speaker 1: violence and injustice. And it's that combination those different tools
Speaker 1: that we need the data, but the data itself is
Speaker 1: not going to save us, because people can tell all
Speaker 1: kinds of stories about data to justify all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And so it's that marrying of the narrative with the
Speaker 1: statistics that she modeled so brilliantly in the Red Record,
Speaker 1: and that I wanted to use as a beacon for
Speaker 1: my own students. So these are students who aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: in my classes, some of them are. They come from
Speaker 1: many different disciplines from the STEM side, humanity, social sciences,
Speaker 1: but they share an underlying desire to engage in what
Speaker 1: we call tech justice, and so thinking about technol oology
Speaker 1: not just as hardware software, but taking the stories as
Speaker 1: seriously as we do the software. So we have artists
Speaker 1: up in there. We have people who didn't necessarily take
Speaker 1: a single computer science class, but who are bringing a
Speaker 1: different skill set and approach. And one of the ways
Speaker 1: that we've structured the lab is that we collaborate with
Speaker 1: community based organizations insanity, humane and consensual. That is not
Speaker 1: the technology that so many of us have been subjected
Speaker 1: to in an autocratic kind of way, literally as subjects
Speaker 1: to someone else's will, And say, you're describing really all
Speaker 1: those words, this consensual, respectful relationship where it is a
Speaker 1: feature not a bug, that someone who isn't a computer
Speaker 1: programmer is involved in the programming because non programmers are
Speaker 1: going to be living with these technologies. So what sorts
Speaker 1: of critical and creative work have been prototyped and researched
Speaker 1: in this last so as I was saying, we take
Speaker 1: our marching orders from the organizations that we collaborate with.
Speaker 1: Rather than study them or bring ideas to them, we
Speaker 1: ask what would help you as an organizer? What would
Speaker 1: help you as an organization do your work better? Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: are you listening? You have to prebake the solution, talk
Speaker 1: to those who are most impacted. Whether we have a
Speaker 1: team working on housing justice, we have a team working
Speaker 1: on workers rights, we have a team working on maternal mortality.
Speaker 1: And they collaborate with organizations all over the country, some
Speaker 1: in Canada and elsewhere. But again, so getting the questions
Speaker 1: from the source right, And so when we think about
Speaker 1: design justice, we think about collaboration. Most corners of our world,
Speaker 1: like if you go to NSF National Science Foundation and
Speaker 1: get a grant, they'll tell you better have a community
Speaker 1: organization involved. But oftentimes we're involving them much later in
Speaker 1: the process, right, And sometimes it's window dressing. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: theatrical in terms of showing that you have this community support,
Speaker 1: rather than starting at the very very beginning and find
Speaker 1: out what questions should we be asking as researchers, as
Speaker 1: a lab and get the questions and get the insights
Speaker 1: from the start that let that be directed by our partners.
Speaker 1: And so if you go to the Just Data Lab
Speaker 1: dot org and go to the projects tab, you'll see
Speaker 1: a wide range of projects that have come out of it,
Speaker 1: whether it's dealing with police surveillance. Oftentimes we're casting the
Speaker 1: light back on power, going back to how to citizen.
Speaker 1: Rather than studying the most vulnerable who are trying to
Speaker 1: navigate hostile systems, we say, who's creating this vulnerability, who's
Speaker 1: creating this risk? Let's actually point our digital lens and
Speaker 1: collect data and shine a light on upstream what's creating
Speaker 1: these problems. So I'm going back to the pictures you
Speaker 1: initially painted of these brothers with their hands up on
Speaker 1: the wall being subject to an ill system, and I'm
Speaker 1: imagining a world where your lab is talking to them, yes,
Speaker 1: and working backwards up the stream. What have been some
Speaker 1: of the results and at least feedback, especially from the
Speaker 1: community members, from being much more involved in creating their
Speaker 1: own solutions. Yes, and so you know, one example of
Speaker 1: one of the organizations that we have learned from is
Speaker 1: called Stop LAPD Spine Coalition. You may have heard of them,
Speaker 1: very subtle name. Well, I don't know if I know
Speaker 1: what they're about. Yeah, exactly, the Stop LAPD Spine Coalition.
Speaker 1: And so they have modeled for us in their advocacy,
Speaker 1: in their research is they base their own advocacy and
Speaker 1: organizing on talking to community members first. So they created
Speaker 1: a survey and with a whole range of questions about
Speaker 1: what it feels like to be watched and all of
Speaker 1: the different ways that people might not know what surveillance means,
Speaker 1: They might not know what predictive policing means. But when
Speaker 1: you break it down and say, has X, Y and
Speaker 1: Z have you experienced this? Have people in your family
Speaker 1: experiences has this happened to you? Then that is an
Speaker 1: abundance of knowledge that might not necessarily have the latest
Speaker 1: jargon and lingo attached to it, but it's a form
Speaker 1: of deep experiential knowledge upon which then they're organizing and
Speaker 1: their advocacy work has been built, and they have been
Speaker 1: so successful in actually beginning to change some of the
Speaker 1: policies putting moratory on certain predictive policing practices in LA.
Speaker 1: But that has been based on actually listening to people, right,
Speaker 1: so basic, Yeah, but it's also what I resonate with
Speaker 1: about that is how does it make you feel? Yes?
Speaker 1: What is it like to live like this? And I
Speaker 1: think we can be very abstracted away from other people's
Speaker 1: experiences when they're statistics and a word surveillance is not
Speaker 1: a deeply emotional word, factly but not trusting. Yes, we
Speaker 1: know that feeling and we don't like that feeling. And
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining some of the other words from my
Speaker 1: own experience that if we could build deeper sympathies and
Speaker 1: empathies around the shared emotion, we don't want to project
Speaker 1: that onto other people. It's something that we will want
Speaker 1: to experience ourselves. Yes, yes, anything else you want to
Speaker 1: brag on from from your just data student, now, I
Speaker 1: would just really encourage you know. Part of it is
Speaker 1: just as much about the process as the endpoints, the projects,
Speaker 1: or the outputs we call them outputs, yeah, that you
Speaker 1: can find. And so a lot of this has to
Speaker 1: do with creating new forms of relationships because we can
Speaker 1: talk about the hardware and software all day, but social
Speaker 1: technologies like trust, like mutuality, we have to invest as
Speaker 1: much intellectual and emotional energy into honing those, building those
Speaker 1: practicing those. It doesn't come natural. We have to actually
Speaker 1: price on it, no can't. You can't know, and so
Speaker 1: there's not as much invest in it, right, And so
Speaker 1: part of what we're doing is trying to prototype new
Speaker 1: relationships amongst ourselves. Like well, our tagline within the lab
Speaker 1: is be careful with each other so we can be
Speaker 1: dangerous together. So this is a way of you know,
Speaker 1: treating one another that yeah, okay, all right now, because
Speaker 1: you know, for me it's important because I have seen
Speaker 1: from the outside so many really noble undertakings where the
Speaker 1: end just you know, justifies the mean. Where when you
Speaker 1: actually are spending time with people, we're not treating each
Speaker 1: other in the ways that we want the world to
Speaker 1: mirror back to us. Psych is that what's a practical Yes,
Speaker 1: example or implementation of how internally, yes, you are careful
Speaker 1: with each other. Where's another institution focused on output may
Speaker 1: not be Yeah, so there's there's two. One is sort
Speaker 1: of you know, might seem less less grand, but it's
Speaker 1: you know, really respecting each other's time and commitments. So
Speaker 1: if we see we're going to do something at a
Speaker 1: certain time, don't just be respectful to me as the director,
Speaker 1: but I want you to have the same regard and
Speaker 1: respect for each other's time. So that's just everyday type
Speaker 1: of thing. But even sort of bigger picture beyond the
Speaker 1: lab for all of us to consider is to think
Speaker 1: about we're in this moment of this really flourishing of
Speaker 1: abolitionist thought and imagination. So it's this twin process we're
Speaker 1: trying to bring down or trying to grow. We're trying
Speaker 1: to plant these seeds. And so part of that is
Speaker 1: being critical of the way that punishment and policing has
Speaker 1: infected not just the obvious police, but so many of
Speaker 1: our institutions are punitive. Healthcare is punitive, Like I've heard
Speaker 1: nurses say that, you know, if a patient is a
Speaker 1: non compliant, they're supposed to call in the police or
Speaker 1: do x Y and Z school, we know is super punitive,
Speaker 1: and so if we're critical of that, but in our
Speaker 1: own relationships with each other, we are punitive. We punish
Speaker 1: each other for all kinds of things in ways. It
Speaker 1: can be passive aggressive or disaggressive aggressive, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I remember some years back being on this kind
Speaker 1: of traveling caravan with some wonderful colleagues going through South Africa,
Speaker 1: and one of the people on our traveling bus was
Speaker 1: the Angela Davis and she was standingble I know, she
Speaker 1: was standing in front of an auditorium full of students
Speaker 1: in Cape Town, and there was a question what do
Speaker 1: we do? Question? You know, like we're so excited, like
Speaker 1: what do we do? She was like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't be critical of policing out there if we're
Speaker 1: punitive in our relationships in here. We have to start modeling.
Speaker 1: We have to start prefiguring the world we want right
Speaker 1: in how we treat one another. And so that's part
Speaker 1: of the ethos to think about, like how do we
Speaker 1: show up and when people are not looking, when there's
Speaker 1: no lights, no camera, you know, behind closed doors, because
Speaker 1: if it's all just for the for the show, and
Speaker 1: we're not really practicing those new values that ethos. Then
Speaker 1: I don't think we have a strong foundation on which
Speaker 1: to erect these structures that we imagine we want. So
Speaker 1: in the lab itself, what does that look like? Then?
Speaker 1: Do you do you not punish people at all? Do
Speaker 1: you punish people for punishing people? There's accountability versus punishment.
Speaker 1: I think that's two very different things, right, And that's
Speaker 1: part of we think about, you know, the abolitionist approach.
Speaker 1: It's like it's not a free for all. We don't
Speaker 1: just do things and there's no consequence. But it's really
Speaker 1: about thinking about when someone does something that violates a
Speaker 1: norm or it's not respectful, if we really want that
Speaker 1: action to change, then we have to approach it in
Speaker 1: a way that fosters that invites that change, rather that
Speaker 1: punishment doesn't change people's behavior. And so really thinking about
Speaker 1: you know, when we had situations, I mean, we created
Speaker 1: the lab at the of COVID, which means people's lives
Speaker 1: are upside down and we want them to focus on
Speaker 1: work and research. I don't care how important it is.
Speaker 1: You have a whole life. You have parents dying, you
Speaker 1: have siblings who are sick, and so part of bringing
Speaker 1: this ethos inside the lab is to say we are
Speaker 1: whole people. We are students, sometimes we're professors, We're not
Speaker 1: our jobs. And so it's trying to build in that
Speaker 1: approach to put work in its place, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I think we can appreciate that in our own
Speaker 1: beyond what I'm talking about and thinking about the role
Speaker 1: of work and you know, getting things done, but also
Speaker 1: realizing that we are living in an extraordinary moment in
Speaker 1: which we're all hurting, we're all grieving, and so we
Speaker 1: shouldn't simply just put our emotions at the door. We
Speaker 1: should find a way to metabolize it in the way
Speaker 1: that we work and organize ourselves. Metabolizing and whole person
Speaker 1: reminds me of the dat First all you in person
Speaker 1: south By Southwest twenty twenty two, you were leading a
Speaker 1: discussion about an immersive art experience called Brihanna's Garden, which
Speaker 1: was erected to I think honor the whole person. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was Brianna Taylor, who many of us only know
Speaker 1: as a victim of gun violence, of police violence, of
Speaker 1: the state of no knock, warrants of black lives not mattering. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so to briefly summarize, this is an AR experience,
Speaker 1: a VR experience now that the family was a part
Speaker 1: of building. Yes, that has volumetric capture of Brianna's sister,
Speaker 1: the voice of her boyfriend. It's a you can drop
Speaker 1: this garden in the room right now. You can install
Speaker 1: it from the app store, and you encounter flowers that
Speaker 1: have voiced memos embedded in them. So as you touch
Speaker 1: a flower, you hear a message from someone who was
Speaker 1: moved by Brianna, whether they knew her or not exactly.
Speaker 1: There's voices from all over the world, most beautifully and
Speaker 1: non hideously. There's no Nazi graffiti in this space. There's
Speaker 1: no hate spewing. This is a curated experience, a moderated space.
Speaker 1: And so I saw you moderating this conversation, and I
Speaker 1: wonder how did you get connected to that project and
Speaker 1: what did that mean to you as far as a
Speaker 1: seed and an imagination of how we might be using technologies, Yes,
Speaker 1: in a way that cares for allows us to care
Speaker 1: for each other and create the systems we want to
Speaker 1: live in. Yes. So, first of all, you described it
Speaker 1: so beautifully. It's no movie to think about it. I
Speaker 1: think if Brianna's family was not did not co create
Speaker 1: this was not part of it from the beginning, was
Speaker 1: not asked permission for this to be created. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have come near it with a ten foot poll, even
Speaker 1: though I respected them Bleed designer, the team. To me,
Speaker 1: it was absolutely crucial that this was their wish, that
Speaker 1: they had input at every stage, and that in its
Speaker 1: circulation in the world, that a family member is present
Speaker 1: at all of you know, all of the yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I will say I knew the lead designer on
Speaker 1: this and how careful she was in Lady Phoenix and
Speaker 1: approaching the family, and her motivation was that she noticed
Speaker 1: that in the aftermath of Brianna's murder that they there
Speaker 1: was no place online, which is how especially young people,
Speaker 1: there's no separation like your life is online that they
Speaker 1: could grieve or express themselves. They were being harassed and
Speaker 1: sent death threats and getting all of these messages, and
Speaker 1: so like, the seed for her was what if we
Speaker 1: could create a space for the family to express themselves
Speaker 1: their love, their care, their grief around this, And that
Speaker 1: was where Brianna's Garden was first born. But she went
Speaker 1: and said, is this something that you would want again
Speaker 1: asking permission, and if they had said no, she wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done it no matter how. Now it's won all
Speaker 1: these awards, it's getting all this attention, but that was
Speaker 1: not the purpose. The purpose was for the family to
Speaker 1: have a space. And what happened, as you describe, is
Speaker 1: that it has become a space for so many people
Speaker 1: not only to express their emotions around Brianna, but their
Speaker 1: own unprocessed grief at all of the loss that people
Speaker 1: have experienced over the last two years. So it's really
Speaker 1: become this model for how we can curate and shape
Speaker 1: and design different values and create spaces intentionally for healing
Speaker 1: and for solidarity. And so yes, that is the story
Speaker 1: of how I was pulled in, and I think why
Speaker 1: I was because I'm so critical of technology. So they
Speaker 1: were like, if we can get hurt of like that, man,
Speaker 1: we must be doing something good. So it's kind of like, okay,
Speaker 1: ruins on the panel. So so I went to that
Speaker 1: panel and I installed the app from the audience and
Speaker 1: I popped it up in my hotel room. Later that night,
Speaker 1: I wept a lot just hearing other people and I
Speaker 1: was left my own message about you know, losing my
Speaker 1: mother to colon cancer at a pretty young age of
Speaker 1: sixty five years old. I ended up going months later.
Speaker 1: It's mayish and we had these twin foolish tragedies self
Speaker 1: inflicted in the US in Buffalo with the Masks, shooting
Speaker 1: at the Tops food market in Uvaldi at the school,
Speaker 1: and I was at I was at my end with
Speaker 1: like the whole thing. Just America. Yes, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: out here, pretty hottest citizen, done whatever, do your thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just I felt a bit broken, Yes, And
Speaker 1: I found myself in DC, where I'm from, and I
Speaker 1: went to the FM Museum and a friend works there,
Speaker 1: and I said to her, like, I need to be uplifted.
Speaker 1: I get it. The problems are problematic, problem is going
Speaker 1: to problem. Yes, my heart is broken in pieces. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to skip the basement of the museum, which
Speaker 1: is all about the origin of the slave trade in
Speaker 1: Belgium and the ships. And she's India Company. I'm like,
Speaker 1: can you take me to a higher level? Literally literally
Speaker 1: climbed the mountain together. And she showed me a few
Speaker 1: of the dark things, just to like reconnect. But one
Speaker 1: of the most beautiful things she showed me is that
Speaker 1: Brihanna's in the museum. Yes, there's this beautiful portrait. And
Speaker 1: I popped open my phone and I put Brihanna next
Speaker 1: to Brianna in the museum, and she had never heard
Speaker 1: this curator and so she saw this, She's like, oh
Speaker 1: my God. And it just felt like, all right, My
Speaker 1: heart was healed a little bit just having her in
Speaker 1: her own garden represent it in analog art and digital art.
Speaker 1: Of that augmenting our reality was something more beautiful than
Speaker 1: what the reality I was experiencing at a time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: powerful stuff powerful So and would I would be permiss
Speaker 1: if I didn't say, again, echoing Lady Phoenix, that the
Speaker 1: purpose for the whole team there is not to remember
Speaker 1: Brianna for her pain, but for her purpose. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: we know, she was training to be a nurse, she
Speaker 1: was working at the front lines of COVID, and so
Speaker 1: for the team and the family, she's carrying on her
Speaker 1: work of healing in doing this for all of us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I experienced directly, Yes, after the break, how reimagining
Speaker 1: our social technologies can help us grow the world we want.
Speaker 1: You have this book coming out, Viral Justice, which is
Speaker 1: filled with tales of more seeds that we might cultivate
Speaker 1: in water and grow into a garden that we would
Speaker 1: be happy to inhabit in terms of the way we
Speaker 1: structure our society. Can you share a bit more of
Speaker 1: the seeds that you're excited about, especially as they relate
Speaker 1: to our ability to self govern and maybe with that
Speaker 1: intersection of technology and science as well. Absolutely, so I'll
Speaker 1: try to just give you two or three seeds, literal seeds.
Speaker 1: I mean, like the beginning is like literally getting our
Speaker 1: hands dirty in terms of working with the earth. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a man named Ron Finley in my neighborhood in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles who the guerrilla gardener, the gangster garden gardener. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so part of it is like him just realizing
Speaker 1: the food and security, the food deserts, and the toll
Speaker 1: that takes on our health. And so he looked at
Speaker 1: these parkways that are all over La, the little patch
Speaker 1: of grass between people's homes and the streets, and said,
Speaker 1: what if we just created urban gardens. And when he
Speaker 1: first started, the city sided him right again, policing there
Speaker 1: they go, there they go again. And so people get
Speaker 1: you know, organized with him, and not only push that back,
Speaker 1: but this has flourished this whole, you know, over I
Speaker 1: think twenty urban gardens now using not just the parkways
Speaker 1: but all different kinds of spaces. And so it's one
Speaker 1: of those literal examples of not working in your backyard,
Speaker 1: but working in your front yard and just starting to
Speaker 1: create what we need more of, right and so thinking
Speaker 1: about that as a kind of you know, inspiration for
Speaker 1: all of the different ways we can get our hands
Speaker 1: dirty and just work right where we are. Definitely advocating
Speaker 1: for big structural policy change, is not taking away from that,
Speaker 1: but not waiting for that either. And so the book
Speaker 1: ends so if it starts with finlay, it ends with
Speaker 1: a group in Seattle called the Seattle Solidarity Budget, which
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years has managed by bringing
Speaker 1: together over two hundred different organizations throughout the city working
Speaker 1: on all kinds of things, from indigenous rights to environmental justice,
Speaker 1: to healthcare to housing to education. All of them have
Speaker 1: come together and have managed to slowly start reducing the
Speaker 1: policing budget and investing in all of these different things
Speaker 1: that actually make us safe. And so part of it
Speaker 1: is this coalition, and it's thinking about what do we
Speaker 1: have in common. We might have these different lanes that
Speaker 1: we're in, things we really really care about. But there's
Speaker 1: this bigger umbrella that's about thinking about budgets, as they say,
Speaker 1: are moral documents. Getting back to the data and understanding
Speaker 1: that the numbers, you know, that is values in those numbers,
Speaker 1: not just economic values, but our social values are reflected
Speaker 1: in those numbers. And so they say, if you look
Speaker 1: at the city budget, those are our values where we're
Speaker 1: putting the money. And so they've managed over time, working
Speaker 1: town hall meetings and zoom meetings you can attend and
Speaker 1: see how they have brought this coalition together and are
Speaker 1: having success in shifting the values literally of this entire city.
Speaker 1: And they provide a great model for me, a viral justice.
Speaker 1: Do you have any insight into how they are handling
Speaker 1: some of the backlash to these moments. There was a
Speaker 1: peak of people's budgets and participatory budgeting and shifting reallocating
Speaker 1: resources away from policing into more community healing, which got
Speaker 1: shortened somewhat unfortunately at times to defund the police, because
Speaker 1: there was another side to that argument. Now that graffiti's
Speaker 1: up and crimes up, and encampments are up, and some
Speaker 1: people who might have been along for the ride are
Speaker 1: no longer? Yes, How is the Solidarity Budget group there?
Speaker 1: How are they dealing with that? Yeah? I can't speak
Speaker 1: exactly to how they might be dealing with the backlash
Speaker 1: in Seattle specifically, but what I've seen as effective is
Speaker 1: people taking seriously this copaganda, these narratives about rising crime,
Speaker 1: and taking issue with policing as a solution for crime,
Speaker 1: which it's not because with inflated police budgets, the so
Speaker 1: called crime rates, you know, like those things don't aren't correlating,
Speaker 1: but also asking you know, what do we want to
Speaker 1: invest in and taking issue with all of these scare
Speaker 1: narratives around that. And so there's a number of people
Speaker 1: both in terms of social media pushback but on the ground,
Speaker 1: taking seriously the stories that are being told about our
Speaker 1: cities and about why people are houseless or why people
Speaker 1: are are precarious, and getting to the root of the
Speaker 1: problem without thinking that policing are ever going to be
Speaker 1: a solution to any of these. Do you have moments
Speaker 1: of surrender or total exhaustion? And if so, how have
Speaker 1: you pushed through them or moved beyond them or have
Speaker 1: you Yes? So, I'm travert, as my friends know, and
Speaker 1: so I am very careful to refuel, like as a
Speaker 1: matter of survival. And so that has to do with
Speaker 1: me person but it also has to do with thinking
Speaker 1: about when I'm working in groups and collectives in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, whether it's student groups or community groups,
Speaker 1: like balancing the play and the policy, like you know,
Speaker 1: we have to have that joy as much as we
Speaker 1: do the anger. And so I think just in integrating
Speaker 1: that has helped me sort of trug along like the
Speaker 1: little engine that could. And I think, as I said,
Speaker 1: working with young people and feeling like I can't give
Speaker 1: them this gloom and doom diagnosis of what's ailing us
Speaker 1: without offering with the other hand, like this is what
Speaker 1: we can do about it, you know, this is how
Speaker 1: people are already doing things about it. So for me
Speaker 1: as an educator, especially at a place like Princeton, where
Speaker 1: they're groomed to think of themselves as the solution to
Speaker 1: all of the problems, like create an app for that,
Speaker 1: creative new business for that, my mantra is find out
Speaker 1: who's already working on that, Listen to them, collaborate with them,
Speaker 1: learn from them, don't think of yourself as and so
Speaker 1: that it actually is an antidote for burnout and depression.
Speaker 1: Because you are working with people, you don't have to
Speaker 1: do this, but you don't have to do it, and
Speaker 1: you should not do this by yourself. And because that
Speaker 1: is another kind of hubrist it, burnout and hubrist like,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to be doing all of that. Why
Speaker 1: are you trying to fix a whole society? Please? You
Speaker 1: can't create one by yourself. Sit down? Yes, If two
Speaker 1: of you want to throw in a question or comment,
Speaker 1: this is the time to shoot your hand up with no,
Speaker 1: I see one? Anybody else want to get in the queue? Two? Okay,
Speaker 1: then let's hear from you. Let's hear a name, a
Speaker 1: geospatial reference as far as where you reside, as specific
Speaker 1: or general as you like, and then your remark. Please.
Speaker 1: My name is Bruce Traus. I live in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: about forty minutes away from Princeton. I have a website
Speaker 1: called One Common Purpose dot com. It's a holistic look
Speaker 1: at life. Now talking about let's say racism, which I
Speaker 1: call ending mistreatment, discrimination and hatred towards those who are
Speaker 1: different nationality, different religion, different race, different ethnicity, and different
Speaker 1: sexual irritation. There's aspects to that that I have never
Speaker 1: heard disgust see the person each of us talks to
Speaker 1: more than anyone else's oneself. There are things in life
Speaker 1: that affect the person. Affected in person means you have
Speaker 1: certain thoughts about certain things that have an impact on
Speaker 1: your life. So a racist basically has anti thoughts that's
Speaker 1: reinforced by a few other things. I don't want to
Speaker 1: keep it going too long, but to me, getting to
Speaker 1: people and there's a process to get to people when
Speaker 1: they're younger so that they can understand aspects like that,
Speaker 1: so that if somebody reads or sees or hears something,
Speaker 1: they can withstand it because they understand what could happen
Speaker 1: within their own mind. I accept your submission of a comment.
Speaker 1: There was not a question mark at the end of it.
Speaker 1: I don't think, but I want to thank you. Where
Speaker 1: at such a limited time, Well, the question is what
Speaker 1: do you think of that? Each of you? I don't
Speaker 1: know man to be Yeah, you shared a lot, but
Speaker 1: it was having a little hard time. Tracking and getting
Speaker 1: to people younger and relationship with self feel like two
Speaker 1: very important pieces of the puzzle. As I mentioned in
Speaker 1: our principles. To start with having a connection with yourself
Speaker 1: is very important, and I think on that score, so
Speaker 1: it's important before you go out into the world. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of young people actually feel a ton
Speaker 1: of pressure right now to have positions and stances and
Speaker 1: press conference ready statements about all kinds of complicated things
Speaker 1: that they might be new to. And so there's I'd
Speaker 1: like to apply some counter pressure or relief that says
Speaker 1: it's okay not to know. I heard something on this
Speaker 1: stage earlier today that the highest form of wisdom is
Speaker 1: total uncertainty, and I was like, Oh, that's a that's
Speaker 1: an ego check right there in terms of the value
Speaker 1: of hubrists that rue I was just talking about. So
Speaker 1: it's related, you know, to your operation and to your premise.
Speaker 1: We can talk more later about it, but thank you
Speaker 1: so much for the offering. I appreciate you. There was
Speaker 1: one more, Yes, you do because we're behind you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're surrounding You're being surveilled. Super quick question, doctor Benjamin.
Speaker 1: Have been following your work so so impressive. What would
Speaker 1: you like to be doing that you're not doing right now?
Speaker 1: And you can't say sleeping introverting um. Well, in addition
Speaker 1: to Viral Justice, I just finished another short book that'll
Speaker 1: be out in a year or two on imagination, and
Speaker 1: so it's called Imagination a Manifesto, And I would love
Speaker 1: to build out this space of creativity not just with students,
Speaker 1: but with artists and to really do some world building
Speaker 1: with colleagues and with people who I respect. And so
Speaker 1: it would be taking this in a more creative way
Speaker 1: and putting into practice some of the ideas that I'm
Speaker 1: working on on that Imagination book. I want to follow
Speaker 1: up on that one. Yeah, So imagining new worlds and
Speaker 1: practicing imagination something that we do naturally as children and
Speaker 1: get kind of trained out of us as we grow.
Speaker 1: Do you have any brief hacks, approaches, tools to just
Speaker 1: get us to flex our imagination muscles more. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: chapter five. It's called the Imagination Incubator. So there are
Speaker 1: lots of prompts and activities and things because it is
Speaker 1: a muscle. It's something that we have to practice, especially
Speaker 1: in collectives, because then our imagination gets challenged. So the
Speaker 1: key sort of thread in the book is that imagination
Speaker 1: isn't a straightforward good. We are in many ways living
Speaker 1: in a eugenics imagination, a techno utopian imagination. We're living
Speaker 1: in imagination not of our own design, and so imaginations
Speaker 1: can be corrupting and limiting. And so part of it
Speaker 1: is when we work in groups. Then we can see
Speaker 1: the edges of our own imagination. We can try to
Speaker 1: broaden the imagination in which all of us can flourish.
Speaker 1: But we can also see the ways that our imagination
Speaker 1: is infected with these really old, deep seated ideas about
Speaker 1: human hierarchy and superiority and inferiority. And so the goal
Speaker 1: is to take imagination seriously as a terrain of struggle.
Speaker 1: So when I say creativity, I don't just mean the
Speaker 1: literal arts. I mean all of the ways in which
Speaker 1: we are creators. We shouldn't simply submit to the designs
Speaker 1: that we're inhabiting, and we don't have to wait to
Speaker 1: be billionaires to be able to create something new. Like
Speaker 1: I'm a student of Octavia Butler. You know, when you
Speaker 1: go and you look at her papers at the Huntington Library,
Speaker 1: one of the things you see in her own notes
Speaker 1: before you even think about her work that's public, her
Speaker 1: stories and so on, you see her notes to herself
Speaker 1: in the margins of her notebooks, where she's building her
Speaker 1: own life, like she's saying I will be a New
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller. I will have millions of people. This
Speaker 1: is before when she was riding the bus to work
Speaker 1: at a potato chip factory, you know. And so part
Speaker 1: of it is her on the one hand, really thinking
Speaker 1: about her own agency in her own life. But it's
Speaker 1: also that you see her studying scholarship, You see her
Speaker 1: making notes about the headlines medical sociology, and so she
Speaker 1: ends up writing these stories. But it's based on a
Speaker 1: deep research and understanding, so understanding the porousness across these
Speaker 1: different fields that were gathered here in and to take
Speaker 1: agency back away from these, you know, these overdetermined ideas
Speaker 1: about power and inequality that we inhabit and infect our institutions,
Speaker 1: and beginning to seed something different now yesterday, seed something
Speaker 1: like justice, justice and joy and joy. Oh. I want
Speaker 1: to keep talking, but we can't take justice and joy
Speaker 1: with you. Spread it. Thank you so much, Rouha Benjamin.
Speaker 1: It should be pretty obvious that Ruha and I share
Speaker 1: a point of view, and I just find her to
Speaker 1: be healing and grounded and even humble, and how she
Speaker 1: practices what she preaches, even as a Princeton University professor
Speaker 1: who moderates panels of south By Southwest. I find her
Speaker 1: work to be so relevant because technology is increasingly relevant
Speaker 1: to our experience of democracy, and I want a democracy
Speaker 1: that we also build with people and not for them,
Speaker 1: because the one we're inside right now was built for
Speaker 1: and buy a very small group of people. When Ruha
Speaker 1: says that we've been living inside someone else's imagination, She's right.
Speaker 1: We've been living inside this eugenics imagination, and we have
Speaker 1: to reimagine ourselves out of it, democratically and technologically so
Speaker 1: we can live inside something better. I'm not just talking
Speaker 1: about widgets and databases and code. I'm talking about social
Speaker 1: technologies that define how we interact with each other and
Speaker 1: even how we envision and understand what democracy is, who
Speaker 1: it serves, and how we experience it. Ruha, She's all
Speaker 1: about prototyping new relationships with technology, with the community, with
Speaker 1: our colleagues, and that investment in relationships, that understanding of
Speaker 1: how those relationships relate to power. They're two of the
Speaker 1: core principles of how the citizen and when it comes
Speaker 1: to the progress we're trying to make in our workplaces,
Speaker 1: our neighborhoods, our families. Ruha stresses that it's as much
Speaker 1: about the process as it is about the outcomes, because
Speaker 1: if the ways we're working to improve things don't feel
Speaker 1: good or loving, how can we be sure we're headed
Speaker 1: in the right direction. Maybe by taking our lead from
Speaker 1: Ruha and working to be careful with each other, we
Speaker 1: can be dangerous together against these systems too. I really
Speaker 1: hope you check out Race After Technology Abolitionist Tools for
Speaker 1: the New Gym Code, along with Ruha's latest book, Viral Justice,
Speaker 1: How We Grow the World We Won. It's full of
Speaker 1: great examples of how we can bring democracy and collective
Speaker 1: decision making to our use of technology and to our
Speaker 1: imaginations of the world we can live in. And if
Speaker 1: you'd like to take a stroll through Brihanna's Garden, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. Download the AAR Experience for free in
Speaker 1: the app Store or head over to Brihanna's Garden dot
Speaker 1: com and check out the creator, Lady Phoenix's work on Instagram.
Speaker 1: She's at Yes Lady Phoenix In the show notes, we
Speaker 1: always have actions you can take after listening to each episode.
Speaker 1: We give you options to go inwards and feel into
Speaker 1: the material to become more knowledgeable, or to get involved
Speaker 1: with others to make an impact. For this episode, we've
Speaker 1: provided a suggestion for internal reflection that reminds us how
Speaker 1: witnessing others protective acts like standing up for each other
Speaker 1: can have large ripple effects. We've also shared two book
Speaker 1: recommendations from Ruha, The New Jim Crow and rest Is Resistance.
Speaker 1: You can find links to both these books and many
Speaker 1: more from past episodes at bookshop dot org, slash shop,
Speaker 1: slash how to Citizen, and if you're in the US,
Speaker 1: We've found several ways you can plug into your community
Speaker 1: with your existing skills and volunteer. These groups take the
Speaker 1: guesswork out of how to get involved on issues you
Speaker 1: care about. Don't wait, sign up for something, and meet
Speaker 1: your neighbors. If you take any of these actions, please
Speaker 1: brag about it online and use the hashtag how to Citizen.
Speaker 1: Also tag our Instagram how to Citizen. I am always
Speaker 1: online and I really do see your messages, so sender.
Speaker 1: You can also visit our website, howard to citizen dot com,
Speaker 1: which has all of our shows, full transcripts, actions, and more. Finally,
Speaker 1: see this episode show notes for resources, actions and more
Speaker 1: ways to connect how to Citizen with barrettun Day is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts and Row Home Productions. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Me barrettun Day, Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart.
Speaker 1: Our lead producer is Ali Graham, Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Donya abdel Hamid. Alex Lewis is our managing producer, and
Speaker 1: John Myers is our executive editor and mix engineer. Original
Speaker 1: music by Andrew Eapen with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Joel Smith from iHeartRadio and La Labina.
Speaker 1: Next time on how to citizen Building relationships with the
Speaker 1: people we're looking to help is vital. But what if
Speaker 1: you feel so at odds with the people in your
Speaker 1: community that you can barely talk, let alone work together.
Speaker 1: And what if you also think they are out to
Speaker 1: destroy you? Deepening identity based polarization is happening in this country.
Speaker 1: The good news is a lot of that is built
Speaker 1: on a lot of false perceptions of the other side.
Speaker 1: And so, for example, on several big issues, Democrats and
Speaker 1: Republicans misperceive the position of the other by fifty percent.
Speaker 1: And then you ask how much you think the other
Speaker 1: side dehumanizes you, It's off by fifty percent. And so
Speaker 1: what's happening is these metamsperceptions are adding fuel to how
Speaker 1: we think about the other side in this country. Conflict
Speaker 1: resolution expert Tim Phillips tells us how to be in
Speaker 1: community with people we really disagree with, and the risks
Speaker 1: of letting our growing nationwide division persist row home productions