Read & Repair feat. Race After Technology, by Ruha Benjamin
<http://varia.zone/en/rr-stone-throw-1.html>
Thursday, 23rd July 2020. 16:00-18:00 CEST

Housekeeping

Welcome to our pad for the workshop.

A few things you should know about this space:
- The pads are not listed on search engines, but anyone who knows its URL is welcome to read and edit it. 
- Varia makes its own backups, meaning the contents of all pads sit on our hard drives potentially indefinitely.
- The availability of the pads is subject to cosmic events, spilled drinks and personal energies.
- Both the physical and digital spaces of Varia are subject to our Code of Conduct <https://varia.zone/en/pages/code-of-conduct.html>

We have some guidelines for pad use here:
» Be supportive. Be curious. Consider that nobody knows you besides what you write. Meaning, be extra nice with your words. 
» If you have a question, ask. This is an experiment in reading together from a distance.» Don't delete text from other people, just add.

Today we are going to read parts of the chapter, Retooling Solidarity, Reimagining Justice from Race After Technology, by Ruha Benjamin
We are going to post the text from the book into the pad, and will send you a download link to the whole book at the end of the workshop.
We are not reading the whole book and we are not starting at the beginning.

Today is an experiment in distanced collective reading.
You can read at your own pace and / or we have a number of exercises prepared that we can use to start conversation.
amy, cristina and julie will add the exercises and quotes on the pad intermittently.

We will converse through typed out language here on the pad.

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Introduction coming now!

Today we are going to read parts of the chapter, Retooling Solidarity, Reimagining Justice from Race After Technology, by Ruha Benjamin
You can download it laterrr.
We are not reading the whole book and we are not starting at the beginning.

Today is an experiment in distanced collective reading.
You can read at your own pace and / or we have a number of exercises prepared that we can use to start conversation.
amy will add the exercises and quotes on the pad intermittently.

We will converse through typed out language here on the pad.
Parts of our typing will go towards stone throw, a temporary online work to share our resources and reflections.

In this process of learning together, we wish that our process is recorded as a way to share it with others, but that, like us, it takes a different shape with time. This is why the debris we gather today from the workshop will be recorded with your consent and put on a website (as a txt file), where each time it is viewed, the traces we leave today will be corrupted until eventually they will stop being accessible. The more they are viewed, the faster they fade away.
At the end of the sites life, only links to our references will remain.

Our Debris form an experimental exercise in consent giving. We will explain this again when when we come to the last exercise, but we want to highlight now that no text will be used without checking with you.
_DEBRIS_ consent
_DEBRIS_ no consent given

Exercise 1
Close Reading of the Introduction to Chapter 5 - Retooling Solidarity, Reimagining Justice

We will intermittently post 1 section at a time from Ruha Benjamin's introduction to the chapter.
As you read, you may wish to annotate or contextualise the writing in your own experience. We would like to add our comments around or inside of the text as a way to bring it closer to us.
We will remove the colour of the paragraphs, so we can see our personal colours, and recognise that other voices are on the pad. We welcome discussion.

We will be with this text for 45 minutes.

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Chapter 5
Retooling Solidarity, Reimagining Justice

The New Jim code refers to the Jim Crow laws which reinforced segregation in the southern states of the US, the New Jim Code is the authors name for continued segregation in digital technologies
Entangling seeming differences, distinctions not clear cut. 

Has the author mentioned examples in the prior chapters? Would love some ref .Yes, she mentions a few discriminatory designs. We will link the book at the end. e.g Is it web based / networked / an app ? the book? the 'design'. I am imagining some kind of interface but have trouble thinking into what else... there is a description of an app "appolition" below as example. Yes, one other such example is "new artificial intelligence techniques for vetting job applicants" which are biased against POC or women. Cool thanks! these programs are based on data of the past and therefore have the prejudices of the past built into them. Data is not neutral but biased by previous ways of collecting precisely
 or foundation).
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This is the end of the Introduction to Chapter 5.
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For Exercise 2 
First we have to make a Collective Decision.
There are 5 more sections of this chapter:


With the time we have left, can you write +1 next to the chapter you would like to read. You can add +1 to multiple chapters, if you are interested in more than one.
We will choose the most "popular" text to read.
Depending on group size, we may split into smaller groups and we will go to different pads, each with its own questions and chances for discussion. The exercise will continue similarly to this pad, but we made new ones for the different chapters, links to them are coming down here ...

For now the most popular are
Selling Empathy: https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/abolitionist_tech-selling_empathy
and
Beyond Code-Switching: https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/abolitionist_tech-beyond_code_switching

Let's split into two equal-ish groups (5 and 6 people) to read these texts.

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Exercise 3 (10 minutes)
This exercise is adjusted because we are going over time!
We wanted to go over our notes, on all 3 pads.
We want to skim through the conversations by others in the text, and see what resonates with us.

If we are not happy for a comment to be published then we do a strikethrough DEBRIS and we will not use it as DEBRIS.
We want this to be a practice of consent giving from you all.

Our debris will be presented on a temporary online site, stone throw, which will be a way to share aspects of this workshop with a secondary audience - but not forever.

Thank you all so much for visiting us here and learning together, we really appreciate your energy and thoughts!
Ruha Benjamin's epub can be downloaded here: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=9383965BB44F1EEAA77666F30B89D447
it's nice to have the epub but we should all think if we can also afford to buy the book and support the authors work if possible. We collectively own 1 copy but yes we should buy more! (yeah we were thinking about it as a loan for the few who joined as if it was a physical copy but it's true it is better to try to buy it if you can)
yes, a good point. for those who can afford it, you can buy it from: https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/race-after-technology
(just please NOT AMAZON!!):)

__PUBLISH__