‘Working Towards an Ustopia’: A Community Tech Justice Practice Lab
I love bringing people together. A huge part of my practice involves convening and curating spaces in which fellow practitioners, peers, and comrades can gather to put heads together and explore.
There’s a fine balance to be found, too, between the need to convene and be in community to talk, strategise, learn, and dream, and also the need to ‘do’. The best spaces enable a bit of both.
Recently, in collaboration with the Promising Trouble team, I was able to bring together a small group of practitioners of Global Majority descent, engaging with questions of Tech Justice (in the UK, and connecting dots more widely) for a Practice Lab day in Birmingham. Continuing my ongoing work on Tech Justice, first embarked on whilst I was a campaigner at Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and continued more deeply as a Producer at Catalyst, the aim was to gauge where a small cross-section of us think we’re at with this work, and what we need from each other to continue it in the new year and beyond.
Inspired by the Tech Justice Research work I led at Catalyst and the Seeking Abundance Community Tech work led by Roseanna Dias, we brought together representatives from BOM Labs; Greater Manchester Systems Changers; Multitudes; Camden Giving; Catalyst and of course Promising Trouble to:
Create space for practitioners actively working on questions of Tech Justice and Community Tech to connect in-person and learn more about each other’s work
Build on work done last year and earlier this year on Tech Justice and the Seeking Abundance series
Seed and lay the groundwork for future collaboration opportunities
We opened the day with a full embodied welcome, acknowledging that we bring our whole selves to this work. And then we kicked things off with the framing of an ‘Ustopia’, by Ruha Benjamin. I’ve written about my own vision of an ‘Ustopia’ before, and no matter how many times I hear Ruha talk about her vision of what a just world looks like, I remain inspired and energised by its possibilities.
There was ample space throughout the day for discussion and exchange and for folks to share what they’ve been working on. We shared how we’re grappling with the intersections our work sits in, and the role of tech in some of the challenges we are facing (as well as the potential solutions we’re developing).
In response to Professor Benjamin’s provocations, we asked ourselves:
What is the role of our work in shifting power away from a ‘lop-sided imagination of those who monopolise power and resources to benefit the few’, towards benefiting the many?
What is the role of hope in our work?
What is the story we want to tell about a future world in which there is justice, and Tech Justice is part of that story?
We also enjoyed the wisdom of Joy Buolamwini and her provocations regarding AI and training tech to replicate or challenge (human) bias.
When we last convened as a group to explore questions of Tech Justice we asked:
In what ways are Global Majority self-identifying women, in particular, drawing boundaries around anti-racism, emotional burden/labour, rest as resistance and healing from being burnt out/extracted from? What role does tech play?
What role do funders play, if any, in shifting EDI work towards anti-racist, decolonial and equitable forms of Tech Justice at work?
How do we shift conversations regarding surveillance towards stronger considerations for people’s human rights, our freedom to privacy, and freedom of expression, alongside freedom from discrimination of any kind online (and in turn offline)?
How, in our work, are we able to/ going to ensure community groups, grassroots organisations, and members of the social sector - especially those working on the front lines, closest to where the need is - are centred, heard, and resourced in the design and development of technology, especially tech that impacts them. How do we shift away from the ‘tech being done unto us’ dynamic?
We ended the day with hope (and some joyful dancing!), and looking towards what the future holds for us a community of practice and folks engaging long-term with issues of Tech, anti-racism, anti-oppression and justice. Some of us are due to continue collaborating in the new year to build on the principles of the Tech Justice Manifesto, a key outcome of the Tech Justice research work. And no doubt more opportunities for meaningful collaboration will emerge along the way.
As a creative means to document the day, we were joined by one of Birmingham’s finest poets, Sipho Eric Ndlovu, who summarised our conversations in beautiful verse (his poem is included at the end of this blog post). Creative practice is an important part of any revolution we wish to see and, to borrow Sipho’s sentiment, ‘Hack the co-opted narrative’.
We closed with some final questions:
How do we activate the Tech Justice Manifesto into concrete action?
How do we build on the work we’re already been doing and identify any gaps that remain?
How do we resource ourselves to do this work and stay healthy as changemakers working on Tech Justice in hostile climates (literally and socio-politically)?
How do we write a new narrative and ensure Tech is not ‘done unto us’, but instead ensure we are empowered by and through its uses?
The work continues and I look forward to more collaborations with Promising Trouble and others around these questions and inquiries in the new year.
Written by Siana Bangura.
Tech Justice(S) by Sipho Eric Ndlovu
The poem was written to be performed and there are clues as to how it should be read in the layout of the text. Everything highlighted is a title and indication into a new section of the poem and should therefore be more pronounced.
I am grateful to all who participated and allowed an active poet in the room.
I listened and said the below:
- Sipho Eric Ndlovu
Written 26th November 2024
Edited 2nd December 2024
Tech Justice(S)
“How do I address you?
Heroes? Creatives? Conscious Experts? The real geeks who take tech and seek to help?
You inspired a Poet of old. How relevant it would have been if I was a Poet of code.
I notice a need for novices as we’re making notes for the missing voices. We exist in a society we didn’t have a choice in building and because of that, how have we technically been positioned to uphold a social code.
Who knows what’s above and what do you do? Do we do what has been done unto us?
And appropriate from the patriarchy. But there’s no seat to take back because it was in fact never thought that you would be sat in this space carving out the experiences that have been missed by the heads of cooperative tables.
When global execs met, their agendas discussed us as a threat. It was basic and in the foundations but what if what was to be embedded in our status quo or alphabet was:
A) Algorithmic
B) Biases
C) Causing
D) Destruction?
E) Engaging
F) Fiercely
G) Guarantees
H) Hierarchical Hegemony
I) Ignites
J) Justice
Tech Justice Is...
Asking, how do we give tech sight to tell it who it sees? What happens when I am not needed to be seen? Because what about me? My permission, my blessing and identity. It can’t just be an anecdote in tech for what used to be.
Artificial Intelligence is not A.I.
Artificial Intelligence is not Always Intersectional. In the society of white supremacy that projects its fragility, Artificial Intelligence is the guy it was designed by.
How do we include ourselves in systems of oppression?
I think data is desire and it need not be a dirty colonial obsession but from day dot our cultures have endured exploitation.
An UsTopia, it once was but sold back to you as YouTopia
There is a USP in the colonial archetype.
If we don’t gate-keep, how do we keep our blockchains that sustain us?
Tech giants give no favours even though it’s framed to us as a new flavour. The white saviour is a polluted medicine, you can’t savour.
And now we are repairing our association.
This is hope work
Socialising in different spaces to be able to engage in varied solutions
Hacking the co-opted narrative
Tech justice is…
Tech justice(s)
or
Tattooed restitutions
Leonardo da Vinci (Vitruvian Man) was wrong.
- Sipho Eric Ndlovu
Biography
Siana Bangura [pronounced ‘see-anna’] (she/her) is a multi-award winning writer, producer, performer, community organiser and root-causes systems change facilitator and coach, hailing from South East London, currently living, working, and creating between London and the West Midlands.
Siana is the founder and former editor of the Black British Feminist platform, No Fly on the WALL; she is the author of the critically acclaimed debut collection, ‘Elephant’, a book of poetry meditating on Black British womanhood and life growing up in London; the producer of ‘1500 & Counting’, a documentary film investigating deaths in custody and police brutality in the UK; the founder of Courageous Films, a social-justice focused documentary production house; and Curator at Siana Bangura Productions, a creative studio focusing on designing events, experiences, and programmes that bring art to life, engaging communities at grassroots level to enjoy work through multiple mediums.
As a playwright, Siana’s recent works include the play ‘Swim, Aunty, Swim!’, which was named Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards and recognised at the Black British Theatre Awards 2024.
A multi-disciplinary leader, Siana works and campaigns on issues of race, class, and gender and their intersections and is currently working on projects focusing on climate justice, the arms trade, Tech Justice, and state violence.
With a special interest in group dynamics in non-traditional structures, non-hierarchies, and decentralised networks, Siana was a campaigner at Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT),and is currently a member of the Transformational Governance Stewarding Group, facilitating experiments in meaningfully and intentionally transitioning from traditional to liberatory and life-affirming ways of working. She is also formerly a producer at Catalyst, where she co-created networks & ecosystems, and continues to network weave as a freelancer out in the field, taking a root-causes systems change approach to all her work, and being firmly grounded in Black Feminist Praxis.
With experience in indie publishing, journalism, comms and campaigns under her belt, Siana’s mission across her vast portfolio of work is to help move voices and experiences traditionally marginalised, from the margins, to the centre, and encourage shifts from passive forms of ‘allyship’ to more active forms of comradeship.
More at: www.sianabangura.com