Another Tech is Possible?
DFF’s third Speaker Series delved into the power of an anti-colonial lens when examining harmful tech and the states and companies who deploy it. Discover how it exacerbates racist policing, exploits workers, and devastates our environment. Watch the series for firsthand accounts from inspiring movements fighting back and building a better, more just world.
Movement Lawyering and Abolition of Digital Policing
Wednesday 15 March 2023, 15:30 – 17:00 CET
In this session, we explored how to build effective movements against digital policing. We focused on the following questions:
•How do colonial structures and legacies play out in law enforcement and policing?
•How do digital tools and systems reinforce longstanding forms of police surveillance and oppression?
•Which are the communities most affected by oppressive digital policing, and how can they organise against and resist these practices?
•What do we mean by movement lawyering, and how is it different from traditional forms of lawyering?
•What are the challenges and opportunities of movement lawyering when it comes to engaging with communities, resistance movements, and their broader structural objectives?
•Where could movement lawyering fit within a strategy of mobilisation to shift from a paradigm of surveillance and oppression to one which embraces abolition and liberation?
This session was live-streamed as part of DFF’s annual strategy meeting. The conversation was moderated by Sarah Chander, Senior Policy Advisor at EDRi.
Ife Thompson
Movement Lawyer at 1MCB Chambers, Founder of BLAM UK and Black Protest Legal Support UK
Laurence Meyer
Racial and Social Justice Lead at DFF
Anti-colonial Tech
Thursday 17 November 2022, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
The opening session saw Anasuya Sengupta and Bonnita Nyamwire explore some of the central questions around what it means to resist oppressive tech, as well as how to make and deploy technologies that serve our communities. The conversation was guided by the following questions:
- • What do we mean when we talk about the colonial roots of digital harm?
- • How do colonial structures and legacies play out in tech?
- • What is technology from an anti-colonial perspective?
- • What role (if any) could tech play in creating an alternative future and the (decolonised) world we want to build?
- • How can we organise to resist and work toward preventing and tackling the issues which emerge from the development and deployment of harmful tech?
- • Which initiatives are already hinting at a desirable future?
The conversation was moderated by Laurence Meyer, Racial and Social Justice Lead at DFF, and included an audience Q&A.
Bonnita Nyamwire
Research Manager at Pollicy Uganda
Anasuya Sengupta
Co-director and co-founder of Whose Knowledge?
Tech Workers Movements
Thursday 15 December 2022, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
This session saw Yigit Aydin, Yaseen Aslam, and Emilse Icandri discuss the challenges to workers rights posed by tech and platform companies and how workers are mobilising to fight back.
The questions discussed included:
- • How do tech platforms and digital tools reinforce longstanding forms of surveillance, manipulation, and exploitation of workers?
- • What new challenges do these digital technologies pose to workers’ rights and workers’ movements?
- • Which kinds of workers are most affected by these forms of oppression?
- • How are workers coming together to resist and tackle (digital) oppression and injustice, and what forms of resistance are most successful or worth pursuing?
- • What are the challenges that these movements are currently facing, and what new challenges might they be facing in the coming years?
- • What role could tech play in creating an alternative future for workers that is rooted in liberation, solidarity, and autonomy?
This session was facilitated by César Manso-Sayao, Legal Officer at DFF.
Yaseen Aslam
President of App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU), affiliated with the International Alliance of App-based Transport Workers
Yigit Aydinalp
Human rights activist advocating for sex workers' rights and Digital Rights Programme Officer for the European Sex Workers' Rights Alliance (ESWA)
Emilse Icandri
Delivery platform worker and Founder and Press Secretary of (SiTraRepA) the first delivery platform union in Argentina
Digital Climate Justice
Thursday 9 February 2023, 17:00 – 18:20 CET
The next session in the Another Tech is Possible? speaker series saw Madhuri Karak and Paz Peña explore some of the central questions around Digital Climate Justice.
This session explored questions such as:
• How do colonial legacies and enduring colonial dynamics driving the technological industrial complex play out in the climate justice landscape?
• What movements or initiatives have been successful so far when it comes to resisting climate injustices driven by digital technologies?
• What role (if any) could tech play in creating an alternative future rooted in sustainability, environmental regeneration and climate justice?
The conversation was moderated by Nikita Kekana, Senior Legal Officer at DFF, and included an audience Q&A.
Madhuri Karak
Independent researcher, writer, podcaster, and strategist
Paz Peña
Consultant on technologies and human rights and coordinator of the Latinamerican Institute of Terraforming