Digital Liberation News - June 2022
Welcome to the first issue of Digital Liberation News!
This newsletter aims to keep you informed and engaged in the discussion surrounding the surveillance of students in schools.
Schools are investing in technology that violates student privacy. This digital injustice causes severe harm in immediate and long-term ways that are still being revealed. We seek solutions that center young people, families, educators, and the community. We believe decisions about technology and safety should be informed by those most impacted. Technology should be a tool for school safety, not the answer.
Privacy matters!
Thank you for subscribing to DLN! When choosing a platform for our newsletter, we wanted to ensure that the privacy of our subscribers' data is protected and that nothing was being collected from them as they engage. We chose Buttondown for this reason: they never collect any private data from users and they allow us to turn off all analytic functions that would track your data as well (which we have). If you have questions or want to learn more about Buttondown, check out their blog!
The Digital Justice Ideathon
On September 24th and 25th, 2022, we will be hosting the first ever Digital Justice Ideathon at the Science Museum of Minnesota! By bringing together people from several communities of stakeholders, we hope to engage in discussion, develop solutions, and foster disruption of the systems causing harm to our students. You can sign up to participate on our website via the QR code below!
DLN in the community
As a part of Juneteenth festivities in the Twin Cities, Ceema and Marika hosted a teach-in titled "Black Bodies, Invisible Data: Confronting Race in Technology. They talked with students and community members about digital justice, surveillance in schools, algorithmic bias, and how they can protect their data privacy. They also gave away some fabulous t-shirts and stickers! As we continue to grow the Digital Liberation movement in the Twin Cities, we are very excited to continue attending events like this one to further engage with the communities most impacted by these issues.
Don't feed the algorithm!
Do you want one of these fabulous stickers on your laptop? Water bottle? As a bumper sticker? Of course you do! Save the date for our Pizza & Paint event on Saturday, July 30th at 4:30pm! We will have plenty of free stickers and pizza, and we will make some art, discuss digital justice, and prepare for the Ideathon happening in September. More details to come!
Meet our leadership team!
Kevin Ly (he/him/his)
Kevin is an incoming Master of Graduate Social Work student at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2020 with a degree in developmental psychology and a minor in neuroscience. Kevin is passionate about child development and hopes to specialize in clinical mental health track through their program. Most of his background has been in developmental research but is excited to to work with Dr. Samimi on the Ideathon project and again with children and young adults. In his free time, Kevin enjoys disc golfing, video games and football, SKOL!
Marika Pfefferkorn (she/her/hers)
As an interdisciplinary and cross-sector thought leader and community advocate, Marika is a change agent working to transform systems and scale successes across education, technology, civic leadership and entrepreneurship. Ms. Pfefferkorn works along the continuum from community to theory to practice, integrating collective cultural wisdom and applying a restorative lens to upend punitive conditions in education, and to reimagine education through a liberatory lens. She has successfully co-led campaigns to end discriminatory suspension practices in Minnesota schools, to remove the presence of police in Minneapolis and St. Paul schools, to increase investment in indigenous restorative practices in education and community settings and is currently supporting In Equality in helping education and criminal justice systems provide quality and continuous education for justice involved youth during COVID-19. Marika has served on the boards of a number of local and national organization as well as MDE task forces and design teams.
Ceema Samimi, MSSW, MPA, PhD. (they/them/theirs)
Dr. Samimi's research is broadly grounded in the idea of youth power - young people's ability to shape the communities and world they live in. As such, their work examines the intersections of service organizations, societal systems, criminalization, and race, and how these intersections impact young people. They believe that institutions such as the U.S. education system are responsible for uplifting the power of young people and that the school-to-prison pipeline is one of the most egregious displays of youth disempowerment. Dr. Samimi's goal as an academic is to do research that is not only useful to the community, but that transforms systems (such as the educational system) into loving environments that contribute to what hooks calls "homeplace" (hooks, 1990). They use critical race theory as my primary framework in order to center race and power in my analysis. They want their work to be useful not only to those most impacted but to those who make decisions about how that impact happens.
Zach Schmit (he/him/his)
Zach is a 2nd year graduate student in the Master of Public Health program at the University of Minnesota. He is studying Community Health Promotion with a focus on sexual health, and he is very passionate about health equity for people of color, adolescents, and LGBTQ+ people. In addition to working with Dr. Samimi on the Ideathon project, Zach is a graduate assistant at the Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy, an intern at Between Us Health, and a barista at Caribou Coffee. In his (very minimal) free time, Zach enjoys reading, cleaning and organizing, listening to podcasts, and spending time outside. He is very excited to be a part of this amazing team and can't wait to meet all of you!
Aniya Spears (she/her/hers)
Aniya Spears is a recent graduate from Lawrence University of Wisconsin, where she majored in Ethnic Studies and had a minor in Social Psychology. Aniya is the Community Coordinator at the Midwest Center for School Transformation within Twin Cities Innovation Alliance (TCIA). She has interned as the Cultural Inclusion research and community outreach assistant at Project for Pride in Living (PPL). The transformation of education systems and community programs into being an inclusive, truthful, and safe space (even in cyberspace) is a value of hers. Aniya is excited about developing the Digital Justice Ideathon with ARRYS and TCIA! She is looking forward to meeting, collaborating, and innovating with you all in September!
In the news
Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids
This article from The Guardian provides a fantastic introduction and explanation of the school surveillance issue in the United States, which is a $3 billion industry.
Should the algorithm play a role in child welfare decisions?
This podcast episode from Marketplace Tech discusses the use of algorithmic tools in child welfare. In one Pennsylvania county, an AP investigation suggests that the risks outweigh the benefits.
How a New Generation Is Combatting Digital Surveillance
This article from the Boston Review explores how younger voices are using technology to respond to the needs of marginalized communities and nurture Black healing and liberation.
Thanks for reading the first issue of Digital Liberation News!
For more information about the Ideathon and other related resources, be sure to check out our website!
Digital Liberation News is a part of a collaboration between the Anti-Racist Research in Youth Studies lab (ARRYS) and the Twin Cities Innovation Alliance (TCIA).