We Be Imagining The American Assembly

How does caste get articulated on the internet? Or where does caste creep in to our studies of media and technology? Can you dismantle Hindutva without dismantling caste? Black women organizers like Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie have emphasized police abolition in their work with survivors of sexual atrocities in the US, what are the overlaps and distinctions in how Dalit women activists are engaging with these political projects in the Indian context. This inaugural episode of season 4 for the We Be Imagining podcast interweaves commentary from Riya Singh, the founder of Dalit Women Fight, Murali Shanmugavelan, resarcher at Data and Society alongside some provocations from Thenmozhi Soundararajan of Equality Labs and the concluding plenary of the Dismantling Hindutva conference. 
Please write us at WeBeImagining@gmail.com with feedback on this episode or to share your perspective on caste and the digital :)
**Please note, there are some descriptions of sexual violence and killings within the episode due to the realities of caste violence and brahminism. 
Riya Singh is a doctoral researcher in Women & Gender Studies at Centre for Women’s Development Studies, Delhi - Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University, Delhi. She is a part of Core Leadership Group in India’s single and largest Dalit women-led collective, Dalit Women Fight. She works on ground with the survivors of caste based atrocities of Dalit community  in six states of Northern India.
Murali Shanmugavelan isa Faculty Fellow, Race and Technology at Data and Society. He researches caste in media and communication studies and digital cultures. Murali is currently working on the re-manifestation of caste and social hierarchies in digital cultures such as hate speech and platform economies. At Data & Society, Murali’s work will scrutinise communication and technology studies from (anti)caste perspectives. His work will analyse everyday casteism on the Internet and develop actionable policy recommendations and build pedagogic content about caste in communications and technology studies.
Lightly Edited Transcript Available here and you can find out more about We Be Imagining on our website or @WeBeImagining on Twitter and IG. 
IG + Twitter: @WeBeImaginingSupport Us: On PatreonHost: J. Khadijah Abdurahman Music: Drew Lewis
Links for Episode:Dalit Women FightEQUALITY LABSCaste-hate speech Report by Murali ShanmugavelanDismantling Global HindutvaDGH: Multidisciplinary Perspectives Closing StatementHow to write anti-caste solidarity textsCast(e)ing Indian Media: Unsettling Secular MythologiesPractice of Caste in USA - Series#1- Q&A with Dr. Balmurli Natrajan & Dr. Murali ShanmugavelanAdvocacy Group Fights India Caste System Discrimination in Silicon ValleyTrapped in Silicon Valley's Hidden Caste System | WIREDOpinion | California's lawsuit against Cisco shines a light on caste discrimination in the US and around the world - The Washington PostScheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989

IG + Twitter: @WeBeImaginingSupport Us: On PatreonHost: J. Khadijah Abdurahman and Ilan MandelMusic: Drew Lewis
Who is responsible for safeguarding the biometric data of refugees collected in a humanitarian and mass atrocities context? The canonical justification for collecting biometric data in a humanitarian context is to mitigate the risk of fraud by recipients. However, this claim has been thoroughly debunked including because it assumes fraud is most prevalent among recipients rather than the organizations that operate as intermediaries between donors and aid recipients. What is driving this competition between the UNHCR and the World Food Program (WFP) to create and own the largest multinational biometric database? Zara Rahman joins the WBI show to discuss these questions with a focus on how the Rohingya have resisted digital identification schemes that violate their collective autonomy.
Zara Rahman is a researcher, writer and linguist based in Berlin, Germany, and working internationally. She’s currently the Deputy Director at The Engine Room, an international non-profit organisation strengthening the fight for social justice by supporting civil society to use technology and data in strategic, effective and responsible ways. 
**This episode was recorded April 1, 2021, prior to this report being released, but please note Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented that the UN shared Rohingya Data Without Informed Consent
Links for the Episode:
Myanmar coup: What is happening and why?Black Lives Matter protesters aren’t being tracked with Covid-19 surveillance tech. Not yetRohingya refugees protest, strike against smart ID cards issued in Bangladesh campsBangladesh cuts access to mobile phone services for the RohingyaWhen technology improves the lives of refugeesBiometrics in the Humanitarian SectorAutomating Inequality | Virginia Eubanks | MacmillanDenied visibility in official data, millions of transgender Indians can't access benefits4 Cultural, Social, and Legal Considerations | Biometric Recognition: Challenges and OpportunitiesLiveCast Episode 13 Infant Identity Management – ID4AfricaHow Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual, BoukRohingya Refugees Protest, Strike Against Smart ID Cards Issued in Bangladesh CampsBurma: Amend Biased Citizenship LawAP Exclusive 'Leave no Tigrayan': In Ethiopia, an ethnicity is erased By CARA ANNAa fewA fiduciary approach to child data governanceDHS/USCIS/PIA-081 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Information Data ShareTested on millions Non-volunteers (Jordan EyeHood Technology)Use of Biometric Data to Identify Terrorists: Best Practice or Risky Business?Palantir and WFP partner to help transform global humanitarian delivery | World Food ProgrammePalantir's partnership with the UN World Food Programme has humanitarians worried.ID 2020 AgendaIrresponsible Data Risks Registering RohingyaThe Biometric Assemblage: Surveillance, Experimentation, Profit, and the Measuring of Refugee Bodies - Mirca Madianou, 2019Digital payments to refugees A pathway towards financial inclusionBangladesh Will Demand Biometric Data From All SIM Card UsersSharifa Sultana
Zara Recommends Native American DNA — University of Minnesota PressShe Would Be King

Prior to COVID-19, a significant percentage of academic revenue –particularly in terms of New York University (NYU) and Columbia University– came from real estate. COVID-19 has jeopardized the security of those assets and underlined the importance of teaching staff in order to establish value for classes that are online for the same full tuition as in person learning. So why is Columbia University refusing to agree to the demands of the Graduate Student Workers Union? Why are graduate students who typically make below the Federal Poverty Line having their pay withheld by Columbia in lieu of redistributing money from the university’s endowment?
Yasemin Akçagüner (representing the Columbia Graduate Student Workers Strike) and Dylan Iannitelli (representing the Graduate Student Union at NYU) join We Be Imagining to share an inside view of being a scholar during the austerity politics of COVID-19, the scope of their demands which include the right to neutral arbitration for workers experiencing sexual harassment and the stakes of their labor organizing given graduate students are the life blood of a university.
Yasemin Akcaguner Graduate Student Worker, 3rd year PhD and TA in History Department a member of Graduate Workers of Columbia University: GWC-UAW Local 2110 , UAW Local 2110 and Academic Workers For a Demcratic Union (AWDU)
Dylan Iannitelli  6th year PhD student in Biology studying neurodegeneration, a member of the Grad Student Union at NYU and a member of the Academic Workers For a Demcratic Union (AWDU).
**PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO THE COLUMBIA ACADEMIC STUDENT WORKERS HARDSHIP FUND Solidarity with Columbia Academic Student Workers
IG + Twitter: @WeBeImaginingSupport Us: On PatreonHost: J. Khadijah AbdurahmanMusic: Drew Lewis
Links for the Episode:The graduate workers union strike: explainedColumbia reports $310 million increase in endowment during pandemic while smaller schools flounderNYU strike authorization vote begins as graduate workers continue strike at Columbia UniversityIvy League Presidents Take Pay Cuts Up to 25% in CrisisColumbia TAs who say they can't pay their rent due to COVID-19 launch work stoppageColumbia University graduate students demand rent freezeColumbia People's COVID ResponseColumbia still refuses to give the GWC-UAW neutral, third-party arbitration. Is this indicative of a deeper institutional issue?FY 2020 Financial Statements for The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New YorkGSOC Petitions for NYU to Stop Stonewalling Contract NegotiationsColumbia Grad Students On Strike Over Wages And Harassment Policies, NYU Counterparts Voting On Similar ActionsColumbia canceled housing contracts, so 14,000 students moved into the city. What does this mean for the local housing market?

How do we think about “Nah” vs  the “I would rather not to” of Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville- in other words, how does Blackness re-situate refusal? Samaria Rice and Lisa Simpson, mothers of Tamir Rice and Richard Risher who were murdered by the police, released forceful statements calling out the opportunist infiltration of BLM LA and Shaun King into the movement. This inadvertently catalyzed a conversation on Twitter around “Abolish Black Men” This episode unpacks what that phrase means, What is gender abolition? How does class mediate this discussion around gender and is leaving the hood a precondition for Black studies? Marquis Bey joins the WBI show to vibe on Lil Wayne’s A Milli, Katrina, digital infrastructure for mutual aid, and the utility in being unrecognizable to the state. 
Marquis Bey is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English, and core faculty member of critical theory, at Northwestern University. Their work concerns black feminist theorizing, transgender studies, abolition, and critical theory. The author of several books, including Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism, most recently they are in the midst of revising a monograph entitled Black Trans Feminism to be published in 2022 with Duke University Press. Bey is committed to thinking rigorously and radically about subjectivity, blackness, nonnormative gender, and thoroughgoing abolition.
**You can send personal donations to the CashApps of $SamariaRice and $LisaLee693 and/or make contributions to the Tamir Rice Foundation
IG + Twitter: @WeBeImaginingSupport Us: On PatreonHost: J. Khadijah AbdurahmanMusic: Drew Lewis
Links for the Episode:Anarcho-Blackness: Notes Toward a Black AnarchismTina Campt: Black Feminist Futures and the Practice of Fugitivity - ClassroomMelville, Herman. 1853Spike Lee turns cameras on New OrleansSpike Lee Paid $200,000 By NYPD For Consulting On Ad CampaignFred Moten Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh)Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) – Dean SpadeDistributed Blackness: African American CyberculturesSamaria Rice Calls Out Prominent Black Activists In Scathing StatementSamaria Rice Has Demands for Shaun King, BLM Activists2Pac Speaks On Malcolm X Grassroots Movement 1992Otherwise Movements – The New InquiryNikki Giovanni Speaks on her "Thug Life" TattooDenise Ferreira da Silva – Hacking the Subject: Black Feminism, Refusal, and the Limits of CritiqueMama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book Author(s): Hortense J. SpillersAlondra NelsonThe Race for Theory by Barbara ChristianRecommendations:Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of BeingMAGIC: THE GATHERING

How do layers of content moderation infrastructure shape sociality and anti-sociality? What are the incentives motivating algorithms used by Facebook, Google and Amazon? How do algorithms shape our sense of time, how we register social information and what content is produced by users? What are the implications for digital consent?  Unsettling the myth of “organic content” we discuss Spam and who gets to decide which media is categorized as deviant.
Elinor Carmi joins the WBI show to discuss the history of Bell Telephone regulating sound as a form of urban planning in New York City-where Black Americans were deemed noisy (and certain decibels were criminalized), the way digital infrastructure mediates discourse around Israel/Palestine, and the connections between digital literacy and grassroots digital activism. 
Elinor Carmi is a Postdoc Research Associate in digital culture and society, at the Communication and Media Department, Liverpool University, UK. She’s the author of: Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise and Other Deviant MediaIG + Twitter: @WeBeImaginingSupport Us: On PatreonHost: J. Khadijah AbdurahmanMusic: Drew Lewis
Links for the Episode:
The Organic Myth — Real LifeMe and my big data: developing citizens' data literacyBeing Alone Together: Developing Fake News Immunity Being Alone Together: Developing Fake News Immunity- Faculty of Humanities & SocialTHE playlist – Media DistortionsDear Science and Other Stories - playlist by demonicground | SpotifySocial media's erasure of Palestinians is a grim warning for our futureBlack Siren Radio — The American AssemblyHe got Facebook hooked on AI. Now he can't fix its misinformation addictionArchitectures of Sound : Acoustic Concepts and Parameters for Architectural Design / Michael Fowler.Over*Flow: Digital Humanity: Social Media Content Moderation and the Global Tech Workforce in the COVID-19 EraSarah T. Roberts / University of California, Los Angeles – FlowNetanyahu presides over a social media empire. Here's how he runs it'Go home,' chant anti-Netanyahu protesters ahead of Israel's snap pollsOperation Restart (May 14 Social Media Walk Out)

What’s concealed by the American narrative around Wuhan’s response to COVID-19? Can we attribute the speed at which the virus was contained to the repressive top down measures of an authoritarian government or were there decentralized human infrastructures built up to provide mutual aid and fact check news reports at the height of the pandemic. Digital ethnographer, Tricia Wang (pronounced Wong which we discuss) joins the WBI show to discuss the role of hyperlocal networks on WeChat, how SARS-COV-1 racialized mask wearing and the importance of regulatory frameworks for indoor ventilation to mitigate the occupational dynamics of transmission. Tricia raises that the issue with the privatized infrastructure hyperlocal networks rely on, is not fundamentally about violations of data privacy but violations of personhood. 
PLEASE GIVE TO STRIKING COLUMBIA GRADUATE STUDENT UNION IF YOU CAN: Solidarity With Columbia Academic Student Workers (GoFundME)
IG + Twitter: @WeBeImaginingSupport Us: On PatreonWrite Us: WeBeImagining@gmail.comHost: J. Khadijah Abdurahman, Ilan MandelMusic: Drew Lewis
Links for the Episode:what disturbs me is how quickly the world can forget centuries of anti-Asian violence, each time the cycle of forgetting is the only certain thingCoronavirus: We Can Lean Something From The People Of WuhanUnmasking the racial politics of the coronavirus pandemicTricia Wang thinks hyperlocal collaboration thrives after Covid — QuartzChinese Americans fear loss of WeChat conduit to friends, familyChina's new vaccine passport could expand the state's already vast surveillance programCOVID Straight Talk /Hablando Claro del COVIDUnderstanding the real impact of the novel H1N1 influenza pandemic: Why your colleagues need to knowI'm A Survivor: The Rhythm of Public Health Systems East Harlem Neighborhood Health Action CenterNew EPA Rules Will Increase Air Pollution As The World Suffers A Respiratory PandemicOur Data BodiesLogic SchoolYou are not your data but your data is still youListen to 'The Daily': Wrongfully Accused by an AlgorithmOn Owed (with Joshua Bennett)Joshua Bennett on the Use of Animals in the Work of Black WritersMachine Bias — ProPublicaApple and Facebook's Fight Isn’t Actually About Privacy or Tracking. This Is the Real Reason Facebook Is So WorriedHe got Facebook hooked on AI. Now he can't fix its misinformation addiction1 - A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari ...https://www.youtube.com › watchGilles Deleuze - Philosopher of Difference
Recommendations:barbara smith | Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement BuildingSmith Caring Circle is creating The People's Pension