The New England Telephone Company had planned to put a pole intheir front yard and workers from the company began digging the hole. Butthe Brewer sisters and Byington came out and sat in the hole, blocking theirefforts by sleeping there in a tent overnight. The telephone company installedthe pole across the road instead, making this a successful result fornineteenth-century Nimby activism.

I think we need more societal engagement among scientists.

I think we need to do much more of that. I totally agree with you. I actually think that we – and that's self-critical to me as well – I think we need to be more brave also going public with that engagement.

Could social systems be finally reprogrammed, at long last, ‘as if peoplemattered’ [ 8]?

As I was thinking through this on Friday, Culture Study subscriber and organizer Siena Chiang articulated the framework I needed. In a thread dedicated to the repeal of Roe in the Culture Study Discord, people were asking what so many of us were asking: what do we do. “Get organized,” Siena said. “Not just mobilized, which is showing up at a rally once or twice. Organized means acting in coordination with others who have a long term strategy. Finding a local group doing direct, tangible work and asking them how to help. They’re probably inundated right now so commit to following up in the coming month. Go in person if that’s appropriate, don’t just email. Show up thoughtfully. Be consistent and reliable. Follow their lead.”

(a) What are the key levers and leverage points in social systems that might drive transformative change towards sustainability? (b) How are these derived from and perceived within and across academic literatures and in practice? (c) How might the levers and leverage points work together?

Survived & Punished (S&P) is a national coalition that  includes survivors, organizers, victim advocates, legal advocates and attorneys, policy experts, scholars, and currently and formerly incarcerated people. S&P organizes to de-criminalize efforts to survive domestic and sexual violence, support and free criminalized survivors, and abolish gender violence, policing, prisons, and deportations

Do you despair because you’ve been writing free/open source software for decades but all your friends are still locked in walled gardens? Maybe you need to switch to volunteering at the local library or maker space to teach people how to use free software (from code to norms); or maybe you need to help a refurbisher outfit laptops with Ubuntu or another free OS (from code to markets); or maybe you need to talk to your town council, school board, or other local authority about changing their procurement rules so favor free/open code (from code to law).

according to Hao, Mark Zuckerberg wants to increase the number of people who log into Facebook six days a week. I’m not going to get into whether this is good or bad here, but it certainly shows that what you are doing, and how you are doing it, is very important to Facebook.

Help defend Monica from defamation! Stack Overflow, Inc. must repair the damage caused by their libel against Monica Cellio, cooperate with the community, be willing to talk, treat users with respect, learn about the world outside the United States, open the governance of the sites.

“every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community spirit of our own people, is a diplomatic victory over Moscow worth a thousand diplomatic notes and joint communiqués. If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in the face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit.”

Together we can continue to revise resistance

Everyday acts of resistance require literacy educators to navigate seemingly indissoluble contradictions.

For literacy educators, consciousness of inequality is only the starting point for resistance, a basis for asking more immediatequestions: What happenswhen literacy classrooms are sites of activism? How do teachers work within and against the systems they are a part of to disrupt or challenge ideologies of social reproduction through the literacy curriculum? How does this involve more capacious understandings of the literate practices students bring to schools? What are the challenges teacher activists face when they strive to work within and against an educational system that is structured around normal curve ideologies? How might we re-envision the variance of student potentials, in a way that is not organized around a hierarchy of academic ability or essentialized notions of intelligence?

You may not access or use the Site in any manner that could damage or overburden any MIT server, or any network connected to any MIT server. You may not use the Site in any manner that would interfere with any other party’s use of the Site.

In his influential book The Net Delusion and in earlier essays, Morozov argued that “slacktivism” was distracting people from productive activism, and that people who were clicking on political topics online were turning away from other forms of activism for the same cause.

End-Users

“la modernidad sabe cómo lidiar con aquellos que son anti-ciencia o anti-tecnología; no sabe qué hacer con aquellos que utilizan conceptos plurales de ciencia y tecnología”

La carta, escrita en el contexto de la tensa negociación de paz entre el gobierno y la guerrilla de las FARC, también contenía una acusación directa al Plan Nacional de Desarrollo del gobierno, uno de cuyos pilares o locomotoras es, precisamente, la minería. Para Márquez este modelo solo puede generar hambre, miseria y guerra. La implicación es clara: la paz será ilusoria sin transformar, radicalmente, este modelo y sin condiciones para la autonomía de los territorios. Nunca podrá haber paz, añadió en su segunda carta, si el gobierno “no es capaz de cuidar de la vida, si no pone la Vida de todos los seres por encima de los intereses transnacionales». Como recordara a todos en su segunda carta, menos de una semana después, «salimos a caminar para contarles que la minería inconstitucional y la minería ilegal nos está dejando sin familia, arrancándonos las raíces, robándonos la posibilidad de continuar viviendo donde nos enterraron el ombligo”.16 La carta fue dirigida «A las mujeres que cuidan de su territorio, como a sus hijas y sus hijos. A las cuidadoras y los cuidadores de la Vida Digna, Sencilla y Solidaria». La carta terminaba con el lema de la marcha: Los territorios y la vida no se venden —se aman y defienden.

sus académicos/as e intelectuales-activistas esperan visibilizar los entramados heterogéneos de vida que enactúan mundos relacionales no dualistas. La ontología política también tiene una orientación decididamente decolonial porque rearticula la diferencia colonial (la clasificación jerárquica de las diferencias creadas, históricamente, por la ontología dominante del MUM) en una concepción de múltiples formaciones relacionales onto-epistémicas. Esta rearticulación expone, de nuevo, la incapacidad epistémica del MUM para reconocer lo que lo supera y renueva nuestro entendimiento de ‘lo humano’ y de lo que existe en general.

El diseño a nivel de la comunidad también se utiliza para conectar la justicia ambiental, la memoria, el performance, la materialidad (e.g., toxinas en el suelo) y la tierra y el paisaje para mantener con vida, y renovar, la larga experiencia de protesta y resistencia de una comunidad al tiempo que se reimagina su futuro, por ejemplo, en el contexto de las luchas de justicia ambiental en Estados Unidos (K

The Stack es el nuevo nomos o geografía política de la Tierra. Es la dimensión que necesitamos añadir a la tríada analítica del Estado, la sociedad civil y el mercado —así que ahora también tenemos la Plataforma o The Stack—. Dentro de ella la nube y el usuario operan una sub-estructura, que Bratton llama Black Stack, una ‘totalidad computacional’ de hardware y software que produce una geopolítica acelerada y que media y da forma a las economías como a las subjetividades, transformando el significado de lo humano mediante la proliferación de sus habitantes y usuarios no humanos. Más aún, para algunos activistas, las infraestructuras digitales son el ancla y medio esencial de las nuevas tecnologías de gobierno de las poblaciones, más allá de los estados y los mismos intereses económicos, y su propósito no es otro que el control, así se sea bajo la apariencia de la libertad de interacción (Invisible Committee 2014). Esta geo/biopolítica de lo digital tiene profundas implicaciones para el diseño.

Podemos encontrar respuestas a estas preguntas, distintas pero complementarias, tanto en los mundos activistas como académicos.

¿Los nuevos diseñadores podrían ser considerados como activistas de transición? Si así fuera tendrían que caminar de la mano con quienes están protegiendo y redefiniendo el bienestar, los proyectos de vida, los territorios, las economías locales y las comunidades en todo el mundo. Estos son los emisarios de la transición hacia formas plurales de hacer el mundo.

overall, the character of the CCC was defined by the objective to form a collective of politically motivated technologists that would not only do things with technology but also act upon i

Thismaynotbestatedexplicitly,butthediscourseoninscribingdigitalrightsashumanrightsininternationalhumanrightslawoftenassumesthattheforceofsuchlawswillguaranteethatindividuals,states,corporations,andotherbodieswillperformthem.Thisassumptionfailstorecognizethathowpeopleexperiencebeingdigitalcitizensandhowtheyperformrightsbybringingthemintobeingthroughenactingthemselvesarethegroundsonwhichrightswillbeguaranteed.Howpeopleexperienceperformingrightsisthekeytounderstandinghowtheyinhabitthatspaceofrightsanddevelopapoliticalsubjectivitynecessarytomakingrightsclaims‘I,we,theyhavearightto’.Withoutsuchunderstandingandwithoutdevelopingconceptsandmethodsappropriatetosuchanunderstanding,mosteffortstoinscriberights,weareafraid,wouldremaininadequate,forthesewouldberightswithoutpoliticalsubjects.Conversely,thesamecanbesaidforthosewhoassumethattheenactmentofrights,ofimaginativelyandperformativelybringingrightsintobeing,wouldguaranteetheirinscription.Withoutunderstandingthelegalityofclaimsandtheirscopeorsubstance,suchenactmentswouldremaininadequate,too.Withouttheforceoflaw,thiswouldamounttosubjectswithoutpoliticalrights.Itisthatspacebetweeninscriptionandenactmentthatprovidescluestounderstandinghowdigitalcitizensareemergingaspoliticalsubjectsofoureraandthosewhosepoliticssidewitheitherinscriptionorenactmentaresomewhatmissingthesignificanceofthatrelation.

‘citizenjournalismunderstandspeopleashavingpoliticalroles,interestsandrelationships,andasactivelyinterestedinsharingnewstheydeemrelevant.Itunderstands,orperhapsintuits,thataknee-jerkdefinitionofallformsofjournalismasacquiringanddistributinginformationmissesthepoint.’

BoletteBlaagaard,forexample,arguesthatthecontributionofcitizenjournalismhasbeentochallengetheostensibleobjectivityofprofessionaljournalism.[4]Shearguesthatincreatingajournalisticobjectivity,professionaljournalismportrayedaknowingsubjectthatisdetached,unemotional,neutral,unbiased,andindependent.Bycontrast,citizenjournalism’scontributionhasbeentodemonstratethatpassionate,attached,affective,andbiasedyetfairreportingcanresultfromjournalisticsubjectivity

Inthisinstance,criticsprotestedthatTwitterwasinvolvedincensoringpoliticalcontent,butothershaveshownthatthecomplexalgorithmsoftheplatformorganizeandfiltercontentinwaysoftenbeyondtheintentionsoftheirdesigners.Ratherthanasimplemeasureofpopularity,thealgorithmisbasedonacombinationoffactors,andthosethatTwitterhasrevealedincludeidentifyingtopicsthatareenjoyingasurgeinaparticularway,suchaswhethertheuseofatermisspiking(acceleratingrapidlyratherthangradually),whetherusersofatermformatightsingleclusterorcutacrossmultipleclusters,whethertweetsareuniqueormostlyretweetsofthesamepost,andwhetherthetermhaspreviouslytrended

Toputitbluntly,fromourperspective,popularcriticshavebecometooconcernedaboutcyberspacecreatingobedientsubjectstopowerratherthanunderstandingthatcyberspaceiscreatingsubmissivesubjectsofpowerwhoarepotentiallycapableofsubversion.

Or,aswewouldputit,actingthroughtheInternetandmakingconnectionswithothersdoesnotreplace,displace,orsupplantotherwaysofactinginsocialorculturalspacesinwhichweareembedded.

the‘actofhangingoutonline[wasfoundtohave]enormouspotentialforcreatingthecivicnetworksthatsupportreal-worldpoliticalengagement.’

Theempoweringpossibilitiesofaccessingandworkingwithdataalsounderpin‘opengovernmentdata’programmes.Opennessisextendedtomakinggovernmenttransparentthroughapublicrighttodataandfreedomtoinformation,aversionthatisalsoadvancedbycivicorganizationssuchasmySociety.[19]Thesecallforthanimaginaryofcitizensasdataanalystsequippedwiththeskillsnecessarytoanalysetheircommercialtransactionsandthusmakebetterdecisionsortoanalysethetransactionsofgovernmentsandthusholdthemtoaccount.

Inequalityisexpressedasleadingtotwodivisions:betweenthosewhodoanddonothaveaccessandbetweenthosewhodoordonotcontributetocontentorleavedigitaltraces.

Wecannotsimplyassumethatbeingadigitalcitizenalreadymeanssomething,suchastheabilitytoparticipate,andthenlookforwhoseconductconformstothismeaning.Rather,digitalactsarerefashioning,inventing,andmakingupcitizensubjectsthroughtheplayofobedience,submission,andsubversion

‘Theforceoftheperformativeisthusnotinheritedfrompriorusage,butissuesforthpreciselyfromitsbreakwithanyandallpriorusage.Thatbreak,thatforceofrupture,istheforceoftheperformative,beyondallquestionoftruthormeaning.’[22]Forpoliticalsubjectivity,‘performativitycanworkinpreciselysuchcounter-hegemonicways.Thatmomentinwhichaspeechactwithoutpriorauthorizationneverthelessassumesauthorizationinthecourseofitsperformancemayanticipateandinstatealteredcontextsforitsfuturereception.’[23]Toconceiveruptureasasystemicortotalupheavalwouldbefutile.Rather,ruptureisamomentwherethefuturebreaksthroughintothepresent.[24]Itisthatmomentwhereitbecomespossibletodosomethingdifferentinorbysayingsomethingdifferent.

wewillspecifydigitalacts—callings(demands,pressures,provocations),closings(tensions,conflicts,disputes),andopenings(opportunities,possibilities,beginnings)—aswaysofconductingourselvesthroughtheInternetanddiscusshowthesebringcyberspaceintobeing

Deleuzethinksthat,bycontrast,incontrolsocieties‘thekeythingisnolongerasignatureornumberbutacode:codesarepasswords,whereasdisciplinarysocietiesareruled...byprecepts.’[67]Heobservesthat‘thedigitallanguageofcontrolismadeupofcodesindicatingwhetheraccesstosomeinformationshouldbeallowedordenied.’[68]ForDeleuze,controlsocietiesfunctionwithanewgenerationofmachinesandwithinformationtechnologyandcomputers.Forcontrolsocieties,‘thepassivedangerisnoiseandtheactive[dangersare]piracyandviralcontamination.

Butthefigureofcyberspaceisalsoabsentincitizenship

Civic hackathons have been hotly debated in recent years. Critical studies scholars have lambasted civic hackathons for aligning with middle-class citizenship(Irani, 2015)and co-opting participant labor (Gregg, 2014a). Silicon Valley is often the fait accompliin these perspectives, bringing a flawed ideology that seduces organizers and participants into transposing technological language onto civic issues (Also see: Barbrook & Cameron, 1996; Morozov, 2013). In this paper I refer to this perspective as an “imposed civic ideology.” The second perspective comes from design scholars interested in material participation (Marres, 2012) as cohering publics to work on particular social issues. Lodato and DiSalvo (2016) suggested that civic hackathons served two purposes. First, they help people think through civic issues using props — “objects, services, and systems that engage with issues” (p. 16). Second, they cohere ephemeral proto-publics for short-term engagement on issues of public concern. As they summarized, "what is important is not the inventiveness of a particular prototype product or service, but rather, how the event fosters opportunities for collaborative or collective issue articulation" (p. 15). They drew attention to how outcomes of civic hackathons may more likely be social and cultural than functional material objects. I refer to this design perspective as an “emergent civic subjectivity.”

“everyone who has been involved in organizing the space is a social justice activist, and that is often social justice outside of tech, so that is a little bit dif-ferent” (Wu, 2014: Interview with Sarah Fox and Rachel Rose Ulgado, 20 February). Organizers’ interests lay in serving their community, which was localized to the neighborhood.

The baroque succeeded because it expressed something all Latin American people (Indians, Africans, mestizos, and even sons and daughters of Spaniards born on the con-tinent) had in common: the rejection of the domineering and distant center. Carpentier (1995) explains that to understand “Why is Latin America the chosen territory of the baroque?” we must look at the people and processes that allowed them to finally own the continent: “Because all symbiosis, all mestisaje engenders the baroque. The American baroque develops [...] with the self-awareness of the American man [...] the awareness of being Other, of being new, of being symbiotic, of being a criollo” (p

Surman and Reilly (2003) focus on appropriation of networked technologies in a strategically, politically, and creatively innovative manner oriented toward social change. In this context of advocacy, effective technology appropriation includes strategic Internet use for collaboration, publishing, mobilization, and observation. Here, the delineation between the use and appropriation occurs when technology is adapted to reflect goals and culture. Camacho (2001) describes appropriation by civil society organizations at the pinnacle of a technology use ladder. In the middle of the ladder, organizations focus on adoption of conventional technology. Toward the bottom, organizations and individuals with constrained access or slow adoption rates lag behind and seek access to technology. At the pinnacle, however, pioneers and activists appropriate technology to promote causes, for instance, creating flash mobs through mass text messaging to instantaneously organize large groups of people for social protest

Civic hackers might be most appropriately described as utopian realists (Giddens, 1990: 154), a term Giddens employed to capture how assuaging negative consequences in a risk society required retaining Marx’s concern of connecting social change to insti-tutional possibilities while leaving behind his formulation of history as determining and reliance on the proletariat as change agents. He positioned utopian realists as sensitive to social change, capable of creating positive models of society, and connecting with life politics.

That “hackers” can model beneficial process disrupts the often presumed subversive nature of hacking as much as it does easy assumptions about a Foucaultian notion of governmentality. Prototypes act as working evidence to lobby for changing government process, particularly those that improve digital infrastructure or direct communication with citizens. The capa-bility of code to act as a persuasive argument has long been noted, and modeling can produce charged debates about the very meaning of “civic.”

The most popular apps to date have been highly instrumental ways to request services to fix city infrastructure, such as SeeClickFix, a platform that lets residents take pictures of issues that need repair, that are delivered to the appropriate city department as an actionable item. We might think of this as a base-level civic act similar to picking litter off the ground or paint-ing over graffiti. Other activities are thicker modes of participation by generating data or metadata. The primary effort of the 2014 CodeAcross effort was to map exist-ing sources of open data. The leader of the event, D.W. Ferrell, described “our role as citizens is to complement” efforts by the government and organizations such as CfA. Contributing to data repositories served purposes for multiple stakeholders:

dis-putes over community as a particular category threatens to distract from a general focus on solidarity by activating “social bases of discursive publics that engage peo-ple across lines of basic difference in collective identities” (p. 374). A mutable, popu-larized hacker identity may have this potential, capable of processing and interpreting abstract systems of regulation.

Data activism and advocacy ranges from civic engagement (Putnam, 2001) to more oppositional activism (Jordan, 2001). In this sense, it is a spe-cific association of technologically mediated participation with particular political goals (Lievrouw, 2011) resulting in a wide range of tactics. Although open government data is still evolving and is constrained by predictions for economic growth and self-regulation, I argue it enables civic hackers to participate in civic data politics. This is particularly important because data-driven environment is often distanced from pro-viding individuals a sense of agency to change their conditions (Couldry and Powell, 2014). Data activism and advocacy can take place through organizing on related top-ics, online through mediated data repositories such as Github, and in-person events such as hackathons.

First, FOIA provided accessible tools to put abstract ideas into practice. Everyday citizens started to attach various political notions to these activities. Second, information flowed into a journalistic ecosystem that was prepared to process and interpret it for everyday citizens. Information obtained through FOIA was being interpreted in stories that changed public opinion (Leff etal., 1986). Third, ability for individuals to request information led to alternate uses for activ-ists, public interest groups, and non-profit organizations.

Yet, the natural equating of “openness” or government transparency (Hood and Heald, 2006) with accountability increasingly became dubious (Tkacz, 2012). The move to “open data” was often an imperative that didn’t make clear where the levers were for social change that benefited citizens (Lessig, 2009). Still, I argue that civic hackers are often uniquely positioned to act on issues of public concern; they are in touch with local communities, with technical skills and, in many cases, institutional and legal literacies. I conclude by connecting the open data movement with a specific set of political tactics—requesting, digesting, contributing, modeling, and contesting data.

Civic hacking can broadly be described as a form of alternative/activist media that “employ or modify the communication artifacts, practices, and social arrangements of new information and communication technologies to challenge or alter dominant, expected, or accepted ways of doing society, culture, and politics” (Lievrouw, 2011: 19). Ample research has considered how changes in technology and access have created “an environment for politics that is increasingly information-rich and communication-inten-sive” (Bimber, 2001). Earl and Kimport (2011) argue that such digital activism draws attention to modes of protest—“digital repertoires of contention” (p. 180)—more than formalized political movements

Organizations such as Code for America (CfA) rallied support by positioning civic hacking as a mode of direct partici-pation in improving structures of governance. However, critics objected to the involve-ment of corporations in civic hacking as well as their dubious political alignment and non-grassroots origins. Critical historian Evgeny Morozov (2013a) suggested that “civic hacker” is an apolitical category imposed by ideologies of “scientism” emanating from Silicon Valley. Tom Slee (2012) similarly described the open data movement as co-opted and neoliberalist.

Successive waves of activists saw the Internet as a tool for transparency. The framing of openness shifted in meaning from information to data, weakening of mechanisms for accountability even as it opened up new forms of political participation. Drawing on a year of interviews and participant observation, I suggest civic data hacking can be framed as a form of data activism and advocacy: requesting, digesting, contributing to, modeling, and contesting data

Challenges have been mounted to those who view hackerspaces through simple economic and political lenses. One comes from viewing hackerspaces as a whole with a coherent ideology.

Maxigas (2012) used political ideologies to claim a differences between overtly politicized lineage of European hack labs and only partly political hackerspaces. By his reading, hackerspaces either came from a lineage of activism or had activist potential that had yet to be fully activated. Others have taken a middle-ground, using cultural approaches to hackerspaces

That hackers are created, not born, is hardly a new claim. In Coding Freedom Gabriella Coleman described how an open-source hackers’ identity emerged from a fervent brew of digital connectivity, technological concepts, and shared work (Coleman, 2012). Political awareness was connected to liberalism through open-source and code over time. Put simply, being a hacker is a trajectory with multiple points of origin and destinations. Neither is suggesting that hackers are ordinary meant to discard a concern with exceptional hackers. We should be concerned with the Chelsea Mannings and Edward Snowdens of the world, and the causes they have championed.

Ordinariness– the everyday, unexceptional, and mundane – is a useful hermeneutic to view collective action and identity in hacker and maker spaces (or simply “hackerspaces”) (Schrock, 2014). This framing is a response toassumptions about hackers as exceptional. Two types of exceptionality have emerged. Critical scholars praiseactivism in hackerspaces(Maxigas, 2012)orotherwise bemoan the invisible hand of “cyberlibertarian” ideology(Golumbia, 2013). Then there are writers who look tohackerspaces as the key toeconomic profitability(Anderson, 2012). Thedefinitional disputebetween activism and corporatization bears more than a whiff of similarity toa previous such dispute; Pekka Himanen’s “hacker ethic”(Himanen, 2001) idealized hackers as labor for modernity, while McKenzie Warkpositioned hackers as a resistant class (Wark, 2004).

She calls this style of off-the-cuff organizing “adhocracy.”

When you looked at the March on Washington in 1963, you were seeing the Civil Rights movement's organizational strength, the effort and discipline it took to be out in those numbers. The recent Women's March in Washington, D.C., was also very large, but it was the first step of a potential movement, not the culmination of a decade of work. Without a Twitter hashtag or Excel spreadsheets to do your logistics, you really had to build a lot of [organizational] muscle. If you want to be a credible threat to the powers that be, you need to build those muscles.

What’s Your (Digital) Activism?

Readers are thus encouraged to examine and critique the model. If they disagree, they can modify it into a competing model with their own preferred assumptions, and use it to argue for their position. Model-driven material can be used as grounds for an informed debate about assumptions and tradeoffs. Modeling leads naturally from the particular to the general. Instead of seeing an individual proposal as “right or wrong”, “bad or good”, people can see it as one point in a large space of possibilities. By exploring the model, they come to understand the landscape of that space, and are in a position to invent better ideas for all the proposals to come. Model-driven material can serve as a kind of enhanced imagination.

This is aimed at people in the tech industry, and is more about what you can do with your career than at a hackathon. I’m not going to discuss policy and regulation, although they’re no less important than technological innovation. A good way to think about it, via Saul Griffith, is that it’s the role of technologists to create options for policy-makers.

Case in point: the only harsh critiques I saw around Katy Perry’s yellowface were by Asian-American journalists and bloggers, whereas Julianne Hough’s blackface Halloween costume was roundly denounced.

But #NotYourAsianSidekick also proves that Twitter is the wrong place to have this conversation. 140 characters isn’t enough to express a lifetime of experiences — both oppressive and uplifting — and to be able to do it in a place where it can be heard and taken seriously.”

And the first aspect of activism that must be rethought is our notion of temporality.

While some may caution against immediate action by pointing out that societies often predict perils that never come, what is remarkable about our times is that the apocalypse has already happened.

1 in 3 youth activists would boycott a business if it goes against a cause they care about?

In August 2007, designer Chris Messina asked his followers how they felt about using the pound sign to group conversations on the micro-blogging platform, and thus became the first person to use the hashtag on Twitter.

But there's something valuable in making sure you're not surrounded by people who think like you. It helps you understand what you think better. And I appreciate that about Twitter. It's a cacophony of voices. Even when you don't agree, you at least understand different perspectives. The medium itself sets that up.

But what social media has done is that it has exposed the intensity of hatred in America.

When people think about protest, they think that protest is always confrontation, protest is always disruption. But protest is also intellectual confrontation and disruption.

So the goal was to be a hub of information. I think the first newsletter that went out had 400 subscribers, and we're at a little bit less than 14,000 now.

You are enough to start a movement. Individual people can come together around things that they know are unjust.

The people, in a very democratic way, became the voice of the struggle.

If we think about this as community building, and we think of community building as a manifestation of love, and we think about love being about accountability, and accountability about justice, what's interesting is that Twitter has kept us honest.

Missouri would have convinced you that we did not exist if it were not for social media.

Mainstream-media figures often portray social media as a buzzing hive of useless outrage.

The promise and potential of digital popular education is to formulate a means of empowering those on the margins with a means to fight back and organize to build equitable communities.

It is time for academe to move its research from being “inequality porn” to knowledge in service of the public, knowledge in service of a vision of transformative and restorative justice.

People across demographics are finding ways to analyze the social issues impacting their lives.

Hashtags are not only a means to having discussions but also a useful teaching tool that people organize around to distribute popular education. Making scholarship public

Popular education is a process that fosters the empowerment of dominated people to take control of their learning process and contribute to building social change, justice, and equity from the bottom up.

One thing that #BlackLivesMatter has managed to do as a collective movement is highlight the need for the people outside of academe to know what is being said about their lives versus the popular notions that we’ve all been told to believe.

BLM is seen as a movement that gives voice to many Black people, not just in the US but across the diaspora.

When creating a social media campaign, the approach should be action first, share second. In order to join the Facebook group, you must donate.

While there is no refuting the importance of social media’s role in social change, the impact of online activism, or clicktivism, may be more modest than we originally anticipated.

Effective digital activism employs a number of social media tools.

Digital activism is usually nonviolent and tends to work best when social media tools are combined with street-level organization, according to new research from the University of Washington.

does not see it as foreclosing political action or activism.

There are two broad narratives about politics that can be glimpsed between the lines here. Both are, in the argot of the day, problematic.

Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

But these features also make it ripe for conflict between sex worker activists and anti-trafficking activists who oppose sex work. One of the most frequent attacks on Twitter is that these activists are pimps pretending to be sex workers. This argument defeminizes sex workers into the masculine identity of a pimp and paints them as co-conspirators in trafficking. It’s a form of gendered shaming against female-identified sex workers that pits them over and against victimized women and girls

At a recent gathering in Berlin, we considered the idea of attaching a suggested action, like a petition or campaign, to web articles. The hope was to facilitate action at the moment people encounter issues online.