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Interview with Opal Tometi (#BlackLivesMatter)

There’s a lot going on in the United States, right. So there’s a lega­cy of struc­tur­al racism that’s been impact­ing Black com­mu­ni­ties in the United States ever since we were kid­napped from Africa and brought to the United States. And so what we’re see­ing today is actu­al­ly a con­tin­u­a­tion of the racist poli­cies and prac­tices of the United States. We’re see­ing state-sanctioned vio­lence with impuni­ty on black people. 

Virtual Futures Salon: Dawn of the New Everything, with Jaron Lanier

So here’s what hap­pened. If you tell peo­ple you’re going to have this super-open, absolute­ly non-commercial, money-free thing, but it has to sur­vive in this envi­ron­ment that’s based on mon­ey, where it has to make mon­ey, how does any­body square that cir­cle? How does any­body do any­thing? And so com­pa­nies like Google that came along, in my view were backed into a cor­ner. There was exact­ly one busi­ness plan avail­able to them, which was advertising.

The Algorithmic Spiral of Silence

A cou­ple of major plat­forms like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube, have become in many places around the world a de fac­to pub­lic sphere. Especially in coun­tries that have less than free Internet, less than free mass media. And these coun­tries have tran­si­tioned from a very con­trolled pub­lic sphere to a commercially-run one like Facebook.

Opal Tometi Keynote, Marching in the Arc of Justice Conference

It’s para­mount that our soci­ety rec­og­nize the role of anti-black struc­tur­al racism in the US. And that our 21st cen­tu­ry mul­tira­cial social move­ments uplift and cen­tral­ize the issues of those com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who are impact­ed and are liv­ing at the mar­gins. We know that if we do, we’ll get clos­er to real jus­tice for all of us. Moreover, it’s been wide­ly doc­u­ment­ed that the gains made by and with the black com­mu­ni­ty have always led to bet­ter stan­dards of liv­ing for all of us.

Why Black Lives Matter

Black folks have con­sis­tent­ly been denied the rights to priv­i­lege that come with cit­i­zen­ship that so many of us take for grant­ed. And that’s why so many of us are no longer sat­is­fied with the com­pro­mis­es and nego­ti­a­tions that hap­pen behind the scenes, that con­tin­ue to leave out too many peo­ple whose lives depend on the abil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the deci­sions that impact their lives.

Chardine Taylor Stone at Haunted Machines

Afrofuturism is real­ly about the black body and the black mind see­ing itself put into a space that is beyond the white suprema­cist struc­ture that we’re cur­rent­ly in at the moment.