Empowerment vs Power – Strategies for Justice & Equality · Disruptive Fridays #8

This episode’s speakers all have specific experiences from the fight for justice & equality, against racism, poverty, marginalization, homelessness, criminalization and police brutality. What can we learn from their struggles & achievements, to inform our own fights around the world?

Mutale Nkonde (Expert in Tech & Race, CEO of AI For The People, Fellow, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, US)
Mutale Nkonde is a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center of Internet and Society at Harvard University where she is conducting an ethnographic study on how congressional staffers learn about the impact of technology on society. Nkonde works at the intersection of race, technology and policy and has been working as a Senior Tech Policy Advisory and Fellow at Data & Society Research Institute in New York City since 2016. Nkonde was part of the team that helped introduce the Algorithmic Accountability Act into the House of Representatives in April 2019, She is considering how facial recognition technologies and other surveillance technologies harm black and minoritized communities.

Melissa Segura (Investigative Reporter, BuzzFeed News, US)

Melissa Segura is an investigative reporter with BuzzFeed News and an Emerson fellow at the think tank New America. Her reporting focuses on the intersection of justice, class and race. In 2017 she authored a landmark investigation detailing how a group of predominantly working class, Latina women from Chicago uncovered evidence suggesting a police detective framed at least 51 of their sons, brothers, or husbands. Her series, “Broken Justice in Chicago,” has led to the exoneration of 10 men who had each spent decades behind bars. In 2018, the series earned her the George Polk Award in Journalism for local reporting and recognition as a finalist for Harvard’s Goldsmith Award. She is at work on a book building on her Chicago story that examines the cracks in the criminal justice system and the hidden role that women play in correcting injustices. Before BuzzFeed News, Segura was a staff writer for Sports Illustrated. She received her B.A. in Spanish studies and communication from Santa Clara University.

Marshall Trammell (Music Research Strategist, US)
Marshall Trammell is a self-styled, Music Research Strategist and Common Knowledge Platform fellow at ProArts Commons based in Oakland, California. Deploying interculturally-situated technologies from the Underground Railroad, Trammell has created “Conduction (cc)”, a Creative Commons and Critical Creative Music conduction system from  reimagining fugitivity, “accompliceship” and self-determination from the era of chattel slavery the World. ProArts is committed to supporting the 22 unhoused artists arrested in front of City Hall for protest against gentrification and the displacement of Black and traditional working class residents.

Jonas Frankki (Disruption Network Lab, SE/DE)
Since 2014 Jonas Frankki designs and animates the visual identity of the Disruption Network Lab and each conference, and additionally researches speakers, networks and topics for future events. Jonas was born in Sweden, studied Marketing, International Relations, Political Science and Cultural Management in Gothenburg. Since 2012 he is also an Art Director at sinnwerkstatt, a Berlin media agency for sustainability. He is a member of the Disruption Network Lab e. V..

Photo Courtesy of the organisation