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Practitioner Profile: Yeshimabeit Milner
by Puck Lo
May 30, 2018
Yeshimabeit Milner, technologist, co-founder and Executive Director of Data for Black Lives, still remembers how it felt when she was suspended from school in sixth grade. She was in a computer class at her middle school in Miami, Florida.
“I was talking out of turn because I was excited about... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Noel Hidalgo
by Puck Lo
May 30, 2018
When Noel Hidalgo looks at data, he sees opportunities to correct injustice. During the last five years, Noel — a largely self-taught programmer, information technologist and proponent of open data — has taken on an ambitious task.
“I set on a path to understand how the New York City government... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Murray Cox
by Puck Lo
May 30, 2018
In 2014, Murray Cox moved to the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York, and quit his tech job.
“I wanted to do something that had value,” he said. “I wasn’t satisfied working in a tech company. I don’t believe that they change the world for the better.”
Murray was... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Kenyatta Forbes
by Puck Lo
May 30, 2018
Educator and Chicago native, Kenyatta Forbes, is in the business of encouraging people to think. She’s taught coding fundamentals to fourth graders via programmable robots, used iPads to customize Special Ed instruction in a public school classroom, and created a card game that forces players to talk about race and... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Josh Breitbart
by Puck Lo
May 30, 2018
Josh Breitbart’s plans for the future are both humble and huge: From his post as the first-ever senior broadband advisor at Mayor de Blasio’s office in New York City, he quietly sets up meetings between government planners and community organizers to wrest ever-evolving technologies of communication (high-speed wireless Internet, for... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Jess Kutch
by Puck Lo
May 30, 2018
What if there was an online platform that could connect low-wage workers, separated by distance, but who toil for the same global corporations?
The idea struck Jess Kutch back in 2011. It was November, and Jess was the Organizing Director of Change.org. A Target employee in Omaha, Nebraska, Anthony Hardwick,... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Jen-Mei Wu
by Puck Lo
May 30, 2018
LOL — or, Liberating Ourselves Locally — is the only people-of-color-led, gender-diverse, queer and trans inclusive hacker/ maker space anywhere.
“At least we’re the only group that calls ourselves that,” said Jen-Mei Wu, a social justice-minded engineer who lives in Oakland, California. She was the one who, in 2011,... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Aliya Rahman
by Puck Lo
May 30, 2018
Growing up in Bangladesh, technologist and social movement trainer, Aliya Rahman, remembers the “revolutionary energy” of her childhood.
“I grew up as the first generation after independence in Bangladesh,” she said. “You saw what happens after you get free, where you have to govern, and people need water, food. I... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Helyx Chase
by Puck Lo
September 29, 2017
On any given day at the office of the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) in Philadelphia, some dozen young filmmakers and activists taking a several-month course in video production “making media that serves movements” may be found hunched over shared computers, editing videos about local criminal justice reform, immigrant and labor... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Josue Guillen
by Puck Lo
September 28, 2017
Immediately after the election of Donald Trump, movement technologist, Josue Guillen, was overwhelmed with inquiries from social justice organizers and activist groups suddenly worried about their digital security. Digital security — the protection of an individual’s or organization’s identity, communications and assets via Internet, electronic or cell phone technologies —... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Berhan Taye
by Puck Lo
September 28, 2017
What are the technologies that intervene in war?
Former Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellow, Berhan Taye, grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. After studying International Relations in Sweden, Berhan’s passion for political transformation and restorative justice led her, in 2012, to a job as a communications assistant for CEWARN, a nonprofit... read more
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Focus Group Facilitation Guide
August 24, 2017
This guide was used to run focus groups in a variety of different communities of practice across the space of people who work with technology for social justice.
Feel free to use this guide, or a modified version, to run a focus group in your own community.
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Phase II Semi-Structured Interview Guide
August 23, 2017
This interview guide, which was the basis for all of the interviews conducted with practitioners in 2017, was collaboratively developed based on the concerns of the partner organizations on this project.
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Practitioner Profile: Jack Aponte
by Puck Lo
August 22, 2017
For many community organizations that work on social justice issues, just keeping the office computers running can be a challenge.
Jack Aponte, a genderqueer Afro-Boricua and self-described “technologist for movement(s),” remembers how in the mid-2000s, when they first began doing tech support for VOCAL New York — a group that... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Diana Nucera
by Puck Lo
March 7, 2017
Diana Nucera, Director of the Detroit Community Technology Project, has traveled as far as Brazil and stayed as close as a mile to her home, teaching people how to build low-cost, small-scale, high-speed wireless Internet networks. An autodidact who DJs under the moniker, “Mother Cyborg,” Nucera sometimes incorporates a disco... read more
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Practitioner Profile: Alfredo Lopez
by Puck Lo
February 28, 2017
In July, police shot and killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile — two unarmed Black men — in a 48-hour period. Videos of their deaths, filmed on cellphones by witnesses, went public almost immediately. Protests erupted across the US, and “Black Lives Matter” again became a rallying cry as thousands... read more