"We're messy on purpose"
Organizing is messy work, so Rachel Kuo and Lorelei Lee creating this toolkit, a set of best practices to address common challenges found in community organizing. They draw on interviews with organizers in collectives like the BIPOC Adult Industry Collective, Lysistrata, Red Canary Song, Whose Corner Is It Anyway, California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, and Street Vendors Project.
For those attempting research within Asian American communities and/or a organizations hoping to leverage digital technologies for political mobilization - this research is for you
This survey assesses the landscape of Asian American and Pacific Islander politics in relation to contemporary social movements and digital technologies. We asked respondents how they use technology as a place for political community and organizing and explored the role of technologies in shaping racial politics. The aim of this survey has been to identify new ways for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to organize online. We are committed to developing racial and class consciousness amongst Asian Americans and also leveraging the technological tools necessary to do this work. We hope this research and data will be useful to academics seeking to do community research within Asian American communities as well as for grassroots and nonprofit organizations seeking to leverage digital technologies in political mobilization.
Data ethics codes conflate consumers with society and ignore asymmetrical amounts of agency
The moral authority of ethics codes stems from an assumption that they serve a unified society, yet this ignores the political aspects of any shared resource. The sociologist Howard S. Becker challenged researchers to clarify their power and responsibility in the classic essay: Whose Side Are We On. Building on Becker's hierarchy of credibility, this paper reports on a critical discourse analysis of data ethics codes and emerging conceptualizations of beneficence, or the "social good", of data technology. The analysis revealed that ethics codes from corporations and professional associations conflated consumers with society and were largely silent on agency. Interviews with community organizers about social change in the digital era supplement the analysis, surfacing the limits of technical solutions to concerns of marginalized communities. Given evidence that highlights the gulf between the documents and lived experiences, we argue that ethics codes that elevate consumers may simultaneously subordinate the needs of vulnerable populations. Understanding contested digital resources is central to the emerging field of public interest technology. We introduce the concept of digital differential vulnerability to explain disproportionate exposures to harm within data technology and suggest recommendations for future ethics codes.