Data Politics

Emmy Award-winning journalist and podcast producer Heidi Cuda discusses her transition to resistance work in 2016, and. now her new podcast, Radicalized, covering today's disinformation ecosystems.  Our conversation reaches back to the early impacts of Trump's rise to power and what lessons we carry forward from those days.

The new corona virus sweeping through our communities is deadly and disruptive, but its infinitely more toxic in an environment of corruption.

It will take organizing and action to get the testing, care and prevention measures our communities need.  The millions of us who have built up our protest muscles since 2016 will likely need to mobilize to demand public health measures that are basic standards of care worldwide.

Andrea Hildebran Smith interviews Sharon Fast from the University of Hong Kong about adjusting to social isolation policies and the cancellation of in-person schools, universities and workplaces for another 3-4 months due to the corona virus 19. How will people in the United States act to contain the COVID 19 outbreak as the epidemic surges through the American population over the coming weeks? Our discussion circles back to how corruption in health policy inform people's reactions to health emergencies.

Lebanon is just one of the places around the world where people are protesting on a massive scale for an end to corruption and restoration of democracy. Our guest, Luna Safwan, is a journalist covering the 9+ day demonstrations in Lebanon. Chat about the planning for mass demos in the US at ResistanceMom's Flickchat.

The crisis of the Trump presidency escalates with the open embrace of foreign interference in our elections and the betrayal of US Kurdish allies in Syria. It's time to look to leaders from movements that have successfully used mass protest to force corrupt leaders to leave office. Our guest today, Saadi Rosado, is a member of the Collectiva Feminista en Construcciòn, and helped organize the six weeks of sustained protests in Puerto Rico this summer that convinced their Governor, Ricardo Rosselló to resign.

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.

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.

Not looking away in this moment means letting some of the traumas around us take their place in your psyche. It's part of standing with people who are targets of oppression. Human rights workers around the world have dealt with the toll on staff members for decades. Yvette Thijm, Executive Director of Witness.org talks with me from RightsCon about how changing the narrative we use to define our work can make all the difference in the resilience of activists working in hostile and traumatizing environments.

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.

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.