• Facebook
  • Twitter

Movement Strategy Center

  • Home
  • WHO WE ARE
    • PURPOSE
    • PRACTICE
  • WHAT WE DO
    • MSC APPROACH
    • TRANSITION COMMUNITY & STRATEGY
    • PROGRAM GALLERY
    • INNOVATION CENTER
  • RESOURCES
    • PUBLICATIONS & TOOLS
    • LET’S TALK
  • CONNECT
    • SUBSCRIBE
    • DONATE
    • CONTACT

Archive for month: September, 2014

  • by Tom Giebel, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Surveillance Kills: Racial Justice in the Age of Big Data

By Julie Quiroz   |  September 24, 2014
Reflections | 0 Comments

Surveillance kills people: we need to start saying what this is. This isn’t about the techies and Snowdens of the world; this is about our communities, our people, our lives.

– Lara Kiswani, Arab Resource & Organizing Center

At check and cash places, someone can file a suspicious activity report on you just based on how much money your check is for. If you’re a day laborer working in Beverly Hills and you show up for work ‘too early,’ apparently that’s suspicious too. 

– Mariella Saba, El Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California

The voices of Kiswani and Saba echo two themes which emerged in the 2014 Media Justice Knowledge Exchange sponsored by Center for Media Justice and Consumers Union.  According to the newly-released Knowledge Exchange report Digital Discrimination: Big Data, Surveillance, & Racial Justice:

  1. A veil of secrecy surrounds how and when information is collected and used, making it hard to gauge the depth, breadth, and impact of surveillance.
  2. Low-income communities and individuals who experience everyday acts of surveillance are operating within a culture of fear and shame that often prevents them from telling their stories.

Kiswani and Saba, along with 20 organizers and advocates, came together in this year’s Knowledge Exchange facilitated by MSC Innovation Fellow Liz Butler.

Begun as a bold experiment in 2007, the Knowledge Exchange has slowly nurtured relationships, collaboration and alignment between policy advocates working for media reform and organizers demanding media justice. The Wireless Bill of Rights and Voices for Internet Freedom were both born at the Knowledge Exchange.

Building on the work of the past gatherings – and using tools such as the Movement Pivots developed by MSC — the 2014 Knowledge Exchange focused on two core questions:

  • How can we connect currently isolated fights – such as constitutional protections, human rights in migration and criminal justice, and financial equity — into a movement capable of ending community surveillance and ensuring digital privacy?
  • How can we develop strategies for viable racial equity solutions in the age of big data?

Today, Digital Discrimination came out featuring the frontline observations of Kiswani and Saba and so much more. Reading through it, what struck me most deeply were the words that appear, quietly and powerfully, on page 13: the call to engage communities on the ground in deciding “what a surveillance-free future would look like.”

A future free of surveillance. Led by communities most targeted for discrimination, harassment, and violence.

That is a vision worth rolling up our sleeves for.

—

Feature photo: Tom Giebel, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

  • LA Movement Stance group

Shifting Our Movement Stance: Exploring “Movement Pivots” in LA

By Jeremy Lahoud   |  September 15, 2014
Reflections | 2 Comments

How do we embody––physically, mentally, and spiritually––the transformation we want to see in our movements and society?

How can we pivot to new ways of being that will strengthen and deepen our movement work?

Those were just two of the questions that brought together more than 30 social justice organizers and activists to Los Angeles from cities across California––including Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Ana, and Oakland––for the first-ever two-day Movement Stance session last week.

Like many other social justice organizers, I yearn for the time and space to practice a more holistic approach to movement-building––an approach that integrates mind, body, and spirit.

LA Movement Stance

After twenty years of practice in the field of youth organizing and nearly ten years of practice in the African-Brazilian art of capoeira, I consider myself fortunate to have been part of this initial Movement Stance session in my own backyard in South Los Angeles.

Facilitators from Movement Strategy Center partnered with Norma Wong, renowned Zen master and movement strategist from the Institute of Zen Studies–Applied Zen, to engage participants in physical movement, mindful practice, discussion, and “image theater” to explore those and other questions.

I came to Movement Strategy Center in 2013 out of the “trenches” of nonprofit youth organizing.  Being at MSC has allowed me to practice movement work in a way that balances who I am as an organizer, parent, capoeirista, and human being. But I don’t believe our movements and society can afford to hold holistic practices as a “luxury” for folks working with intermediaries. We can’t expect organizers to keep running for decades before taking a breath to sustain ourselves and communities.

That was the beauty of last week’s session. We were more than two dozen movement leaders from different sectors––including youth organizing, immigrant and environmental justice movements, movements to end violence and exploitation––from different ages and at different points in our careers and life trajectories. Everyone came into the session with openness to personal and social transformation and willingness to engage in physical practices that strengthen our ability to move from our core strengths.

Our dynamic group activities allowed us to examine the “movement pivots” MSC and others have observed ––the shifts in practices and orientation toward new ways of being that our movements need in order to initiate deep personal and social transformation. Among the pivots we played with were the need to shift from isolation to interdependence, from competition to strategic direction, and from control to creativity. For example,

  • How often have I allowed competitiveness over grant resources to stifle my ability to move in the same direction with organizational partners who embody different approaches and beliefs?
  • When have I tightened my control over a project, campaign, or organization, only to find that I have constricted creativity and relied on old approaches that deliver the same limited outcomes?

Through physical movement and group discussions, Movement Stance provided us all with the opportunity to unpack the ways that our “habits”––unconscious repetitive actions––limit our humanness, our joy, and our effectiveness. We took time to embody new practices that interrupt those habits. Participants who came together from the same organizations or families had space to brainstorm potential practices to take home that would foster greater personal and organizational alignment, allow us to step from the margins of their own organizations into leadership for the whole of society, and help us relinquish control and open up more creativity within their own families.

How can we continue to do more transformative practices in our own lives, work, and organizations?

How can this session begin a community of practice among movement leaders in Southern California?


These and other questions from Movement Stance filled me with hope for building movements grounded in mind, body, and spirit, and seeking truly new ways of being.

Let’s Talk

  • Interviews
  • News
  • Profiles
  • Recent blogs
  • Reflections
  • Year in Review

Topics

Alliance Building Alliance Tools Art & Culture Big Leap Series Climate Justice Economic Justice Education Justice Electoral Food Justice Gender Justice Series Healing Justice Immigrant Rights & Migration Media Justice Movement Building MSC Transitions Lab Next Economy Organizing Philanthropy Racial Justice Reproductive Justice Resources Strategy Transformative Movement Building Youth Organizing

Movement Strategy Center

MOVEMENT
STRATEGY
CENTER

436 14TH STREET
5TH FLOOR
OAKLAND, CA 94612
P (510) 444-0640
F (510) 680-3782

All content © 2013 - 2021 by Movement Strategy Center Credits