May First Movement Technology Podcasts

Lucas talks with May First/People Link Co-Founder Alfredo Lopez about technology, how it affects and is affected by the political situation in the country, and what plans are being made to address these issues.

The government’s answer to a failing society? Lock up the people who are most affected and most likely to rebel. There are over 3 million people in prison today; 8 directly affected by prison, parole and probation. There is no place in the world with a larger imprisoned populations. We are the world’s leading imprisoner and our government is the world’s most active prison warden.

They could never do this without information technology. Cameras that watch us, systems that record our every move, computer systems that track people for arrest and process them once they’re arrested. And the massive computer systems that keep track of people who are detained and hold their publicly accessible records forever.

We are under attack using the technology we effectively created and should control. What should we do? How bad is it? Can it be reversed?

In this month’s Need to Know, we experts in this area – people who are organizing this fight and know its ins and outs – explaining the problem and discussing, with you, some solutions.

Stop LAPD Spying Coalitions’s Hamid Khan is one of the country’s best-known activists working against police surveillance and its various impacts. Myaisha Hayes is the National Organizer on Criminal Justice and Technology for the Center for Media Justice. Jude Ortiz is on the National Lawyers Guild’s Mass Defense Steering Committee and has lots of experience in radical grassroots legal support.

Sainaba Ali and Praveen Sinha from Equality Labs, Nathan ‘nash’ Sheard from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Jamie McClelland from May First/People Link and the Progressive Technology Project are on board to the latest scandal surrounding Facebook: The personal information of 50 million Facebook users was captured or transferred, legally and transparently, by a right-wing consulting firm called Cambridge Analytics.

How dangerous is this? As dangerous as can be. What do we do about it? Precisely the question lots of activists are now asking themselves and we discuss in this latest Need to Know from May First/People Link and the Progressive Technology Project.

One of the leaders in the movement against police abuse and spying, Hamid Khan heads up the Los Angeles-based End LAPD Spying Coalition. He is one of the country’s foremost experts on the developing police state and how we can stop it from overtaking us and Lucas Lopez talks with him about this critically important subject.

In one of his Blacklist Podcasts, Lucas talks with Klast whose rare and intensive knowledge of gang and street culture combines scholarship with personal experience: a rare combination and a fascinating conversation. This is street culture coming from people who lived it.

Ambazonian activist, videographer and technologist Sphynx is a highly experienced and respected voice and authority on Africa’s situation and its liberation struggles. He speaks with Lucas about the situation in his home country and the region surrounding it and what people in the United States can do in solidarity. An information-filled interview that anyone interested in this topic should check out.

Veteran activist Jerome Scott talks to Lucas about the state of our society and the challenges we face in saving ourselves and our world. A facinating conversation with one of our outstanding leaders.

Highlander Research and Education Center’s Samir Hazboun, Free Press’s Jessica Gonzalez and Center for Media Justice’s Steven Renderos in a lively conversation about the Challenges to Our Internet Under Trump.

Sage Crump is a cultural strategist, one of this country’s foremost activists working at the intersection of art and social justice. She works in and with a variety of organizations, many in the South, including the National Performance Network where she coordinates the Leveraging a Network for Equity program. She works with the Southern Arts Federation and is on the Board of the Center for Media Justice. In this Points Taken, she talks with Lucas about her work, the situation of art in our communities and its role in our struggles.

May First/People Link technologists Jaime Villareal and Jamie McClelland explain this latest major vulnerability, ways to deal with it and what we’re doing about it.