Likes and Shares
Clicking and commenting on campaigns online takes up more of our time than any other type of political work we do. In this episode I’m looking at how social media has developed over the past 12 years as a tool for social justice work. We’re adapting to an online environment that’s now been weaponized by the right, but the most important thing we can do is increase our commitment to face to face political work.
read moreDon’t Freak Out
Experts say instead of trying to keep your kids away from the dangers of the internet we should help them be prepared for it. Dr Victoria Baines, former UK police officer and exec at Facebook guarding kids in online spaces, says don’t freak out when your kids encounter disturbing material online. Let them talk to you about it.
read moreResilience Is Survival
In addition to being clarifying and affirming, resistance work also hurts sometimes. Facing where the United States is politically right now puts you in touch with the violence being done to people of color, immigrants, Muslims, people with disabilities and women. We haven’t even begun to turn the tide yet, meaning we deal with fighting from behind every day.
Resilience is survival for those of us who can’t shrug off corruption, the abuses of vulnerable populations or our responsibility to keep defending democracy.Yvette Thijm is the Executive Director of Witness.org and a pioneer of strategies for addressing the depression and PTSD that affects human rights defenders around the world. This week’s episode looks at the stories we tell ourselves that can either set us up to collapse when the stresses peak, or give us a steady grounding to keep persisting.
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Data Politics
The disruption of our political system since 2016 was partly due to the emergence of big data technologies, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The extraordinary amount of information big companies and many governments have about our lives from our phones, our online searches and the integration of massive data sets, is a “tool of social control”, and even an “existential threat,” according to Zeynep Tufekci, author of Twitter and Teargas, The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest.
Episode 20: Data Politics, brings you Zeynep Tufekci’s talk from RightsCon on the types of regulation that will help people benefit from these new technologies without giving up the privacy and autonomy they currently threaten around the world. In the context of the European Union’s new data privacy law, Zeynep Tufekci argues for approaching data as a public good, rather than a private asset.
Homestead
The US government continues to separate children who cross the border from their families and warehouse them at secretive child detention centers run by private, for-profit companies. Miami area resisters are holding a daily witness at the biggest such facility in the United States, in Homestead, Florida. Andrea Hildebran Smith interviews Kathy Hersh of the Miami Quaker Meeting, and Charlie, one of the people witnessing at the camp on a daily basis.
read moreAbortion Nexus – After The Ban
With the court stacked with right-wing justices ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, advocates and abortion providers look to technological and medical advances as the path forward for women needing abortions. Amy Weintraub of Progress Florida talks with us about the safe abortion medication that women can self-manage if abortion care providers are made illegal. We discuss which groups are picking up the work connecting people with new avenues for care and which are preparing for the deluge of criminal charges against women for their abortions and miscarriages.
read moreAbortion Nexus: Citizenship
If the abortion bans in 8 states have you freaking out, tune in to our four-part series, The Abortion Nexus. In the first episode in this series, Ashleigh McGuire of Planned Parenthood describes how their activists from Pensacola to Key West defeated this ban in Florida this year. As the pressure builds already toward 2020, the work starts now to hold the line against abortion bans here and across the country.
read moreReady or Not – The Abortion Bans
Across the country, hundreds of communities are protesting the recent passage of new abortion bans that strip women of the most fundamental decision-making power over their own lives. The decision whether to have a child or not, is at the crux of our control...
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