Table of contents
Introduction & Part I: The Foundations of Surveillance Capitalism
Introduction, Chapters 1: Notes of Surveillance Studies – Through the Door of No Return & Chapter 2: Everybody’s Got a Little Light under the Sun – The Making of the Book of Negros
Join us for a conversation with Simone Browne, scholar and author of Dark Matters; Assia Boundaoui, award-winning filmmaker and director of The Feeling of Being Watched; Freddy Martinez, Director of the Lucy Parsons Lab; and Sarah Hamid, activist with the Carceral Tech Resistance Network. RSVP required.
Connect with an official chapter lead (or become one yourself!) to find out where and when your next meetup is!
Aw, one of the many things that connects us all around the world: surveillance. *insert cute emojis*
As organizers on the ground, many of us are constantly working on trying to build out global solidarity, transnational networks, and borderless collaboration. And yet, “terror tech” has beat us to it. Tested on Palestinians by Israel and sold to India’s occupation of Kashmir, or skill-sharing between local US police forces facial recognition surveillance of working-class Black communities and communities of color with facial recognition software enabling the Chinese internment camps of millions of Uyghur Muslims in Eastern Turkmenistan (also known as Western China), a borderless world has already been created: it’s just online and in government databases around the world.
But I don’t want to terrify you; I’ll let the readings and additional resources do that — I do want to quickly say a few words about why we here at #BecauseWe’veRead have decided to focus on this unit today. Tech developments are inevitable, but surveillance, surveillance capitalism, and intrusive tracking are not. We can live in–and even celebrate–a tech-driven world without submitting to the wills of power. It’s not “normal” for google to be able to track your every move, for Amazon to detect your accent and record your conversations when Alexa is supposedly “off”, or to step outside to a forest of cameras watching you, even if you “have nothing to hide.”
This is about not allowing corporations, along with their (highly profitable!) collaborations with structures of power, to set the conditions for who has control and access to our bodies and the intimacies of who we are, and in doing so, cataloguing, organizing, controlling, and criminalizing our everyday lives.
Terror tech and surveillance capitalism is terrifying, and you may even have to put the books down a few times to take in what you’re reading, but it’s not permanent–if we don’t want it to be. This unit we’re also sharing the work of and talking to organizers, activists, hackers, and creatives who are resisting the surveillance states many of us call home.
Finally, as tech is most definitely the exponentially growing future, I cannot really stress how important this unit is. This is not going away unless we understand it, understand why it is inherently unjust, how we can protect ourselves and communities, and resist on a global scale.
On that note with this unit we’re also launching two companion projects: a Digital Safety Worksheet to keep you and your communities safe, and a Global Surveillance Database, where we’re inviting you to document surveillance in your cities and share it with us as part of a community-compiled virtual database connecting the brands and equipment occupying our neighborhoods around the world. More on both of those projects below.
For this conversation, we’re so thrilled to be joined by a #dreamteam of some of our favorite scholars, activists, artists, and hackers fighting to keep us all safe at the intersections of surveillance, anti-Blackness, capitalism, the war on terror, and the carceral state.
Join us for a conversation with Simone Browne, scholar and author of Dark Matters; Assia Boundaoui, award-winning filmmaker and director of The Feeling of Being Watched; Freddy Martinez, Director of the Lucy Parsons Labs; and Sarah Hamid, activist with the Carceral Tech Resistance Network. | Watch the recording here
Did you really think we were just going to put out terrifying readings on surveillance and not give you info on how to keep you & your communities safe? This unit, we’re taking the next step to make sure that our BWR community is staying safe and protecting their loved ones. We’re launching two companion projects below that we recommend organizing with your friends or local BWR chapter. We keep us safe!
Whether you’re organizing protests or just communicating with friends and family, keeping your (and your community’s!) personal information safe from hackers, state surveillance, the far-right, and other threats is vitally important. We’re only individually as safe as the most digitally vulnerable person in our networks.
*p.s. this worksheet is totally free of course and we’re not requesting that you join our email list to access it, but let us be frank: social media’s increasing censorship of radical content will only the content that we release lower and lower on your timelines, if at all. We encourage you to sign up for email updates so you can make sure you have a copy of everything you need right in your inbox when we release new units and projects!
2. COMMUNITY-COMPILED GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE DATABASE
The title here is pretty self-explanatory: we’re watching back the watchers, globally. We’ve already learned how interconnected surveillance technologies–and the companies that produce them–are connected across borders, so we too should follow their transnational lead and collaborate with each other to watch, document, and catalogue the surveillance of our communities.
We’re asking our global BWR community to document the surveillance in our neighborhoods, on our commutes to work, and all around us: snap a photo of the surveillance cameras or microphones, note any brands or companies you can see, and upload it to our encrypted and anonymous submission form along with city information. We’ll be cataloguing all the photos on a public virtual gallery where we can start connecting the dots–and cameras–between our neighborhoods around the world, from Hebron, Palestine to Nairobi, Kenya to Chicago, USA.
bwr.seattle@gmail.com
bwr.londonon@gmail.com
Tech developments are inevitable, but surveillance, surveillance capitalism, and intrusive tracking are not. We can live in–and even celebrate–a tech-driven world without submitting to the wills of power. It’s not “normal” for google to be able to track your every move, for Amazon to detect your accent and record your conversations when Alexa is supposedly “off”, or to step outside to a forest of cameras watching you, even if you “have nothing to hide.”
For this conversation, we’re so thrilled to be joined by a #dreamteam of some of our favorite scholars, activists, artists, and hackers fighting to keep us all safe at the intersections of surveillance, anti-Blackness, capitalism, the war on terror, and the carceral state.
Join us for a conversation with Simone Browne, scholar and author of Dark Matters; Assia Boundaoui, award-winning filmmaker and director of The Feeling of Being Watched; Freddy Martinez, Director of the Lucy Parsons Labs; and Sarah Hamid, activist with the Carceral Tech Resistance Network.
The past week, the United States has witnessed what Angela Davis has called a possibly unprecedented moment in demands being made globally for radical and systemic challenges to racism and legacies of slavery. This moment is exciting, inspiring, painful, intense, beautiful, shocking, brilliant, and messy. And we’re here for all of it. But immensely important in these moments is also grounding: spiritual/religious grounding, community grounding, and historical grounding. This moment is both new and a legacy of what was made possible by the freedom fighters before us; both visionary and historic; we are speaking new languages and articulating new demands crafted from the alphabets of James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Malcolm X, Ida B. Wells, and so many others. So let’s dive into their words.
We’re excited and honored that the brilliant poet, singer, and songwriter Jamila Woods will be joining us as our discussant for this unit!
In light of the ongoing and accelerating Indian military occupation of Kashmir, lack of media attention, and urgent calls for international solidarity, #BecauseWeveRead is honored to be partnering with Stand With Kashmir to host this ‘Emergency Read’ on Kashmir. Join the brilliant Sanjay Kak (filmmaker & writer), Hafsa Kanjwal (professor & writer), & Mohamad Junaid (professor & writer) in a conversation describing & contextualizing what is happening on the ground in Kashmir, right now.
Referred to in the New York Times as “India’s most impassioned critic of globalization and American influence,” Arundhati Roy stands as one of the most influential writers in the world today. Her writing includes the award-winning The God of Small Things, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, among other fiction and non-fiction work. But beyond her writing, her work also extends into the streets: Roy is an outspoken activist, frequently working on and discussing issues related to India’s illegal military occupation of Kashmir, anti-Zionism, political repression, caste and class, and a myriad of environmental and human rights issues — many of which are discussed in our February/March 2019 read, The End of Imagination. We love a principled, badass woman.
In light of ongoing massive protests in Sudan, their lack of coverage in mainstream media outlets, and the dire need to contextualize these protest within Sudan’s own particular political and historical contexts (which many non-Sudanese and non-African people seem to lack knowledge of), we’re calling for a #BecauseWeveRead ‘Emergency Read’ for the month of January to help us better understand what is happening in Sudan right now, and how we can support. We’re joined today with Nisrin Elamin, a Sudanese PhD student in Anthropology at Stanford University. Her doctoral research focuses broadly on the phenomenon of “foreign land grabs” in post-secession Sudan. It seeks to understand how the differential impact of state-driven land dispossession is being negotiated and contested in several communities in the agricultural Gezira region.
To raise our collective awareness and understanding of global politics, race, capitalism, gender, religion, culture, history, colonialism, socioeconomic disparity etc, in ways that disrupt normative narratives
To uplift and celebrate stories of those whose identities are marginalized and whose voices are systematically silenced globally, as their stories are powerful models of effective resistance against power, and their lived experiences challenge state narratives.
To build & mobilize transnational communities, conversations, and movements united in shared struggle while simultaneously making radical literature more accessible to the communities that need them the most.
Every two months a new unit will be announced here on our website, in our newsletter, and on social media. Each unit has a central book that will always be made available as a free e-book, and is accompanied by additional multimedia resources such as essays, films, databases, poetry, photoessays, and other materials that complement the unit.
Think of each unit as a mini syllabus on a particular topic.
Throughout each 2-month long unit, all of our members (i.e. anyone who is reading with us around the world at any particular time) are encouraged to post their thoughts, reflections, favorite quotes, or other commentary related to the readings or unit on social media using the hashtag #BecauseWeveRead to be part of a global conversation.
Each unit also includes a Youtube Live discussion hosted by Hoda Katebi and a different esteemed guest. Past guests have included Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, and others. The Youtube Live discussions are open to the public and viewers are encouraged to ask questions and engage in the conversation with the host, guest, and each other.
You can find previous live discussions, many of which have also been adapted into podcast episodes, linked in each book post in our digital library, or on the “Community Discussions” page.
#BecauseWeveRead is unique for many reasons, but we’re most excited about our growing list of local chapters globally!
Smaller, more intimate conversations on a local level are an incredibly helpful tool to better understand and engage with texts while simultaneously learning from and building community.
Our global chapters are largely autonomously run by local leaders (most of whom are women and non-binary people of color!) who we train and support as needed. Each chapter hosts an open, local community discussion for each unit, and often hosts other events and projects related to the unit.
Our chapters have organized everything from sold-out panels and poetry slams on Islamophobia & Anti-Blackness to letter-writing events and book drives for people currently incarcerated to week-long event series at their local university supporting the struggles of Kashmiris under Indian occupation!
Get involved & find the closest chapter to you on our “Chapters” page!
Can’t find a chapter in your city? Get in touch with us if you’re interested in launching a new chapter and bringing #BecauseWeveRead to your community!
#BecauseWeveRead actively adapts and responds to major global crisis as they develop. To do so, we occasionally will call for one-month ‘Emergency Readings’ on a particular crisis that needs urgent attention.
Typically, we focus on situations that: a) lack global attention b) are deeply misunderstood/the general global public lacks major context c) are immediate and actively-unfolding situations in which people on the ground are asking for global solidarity in ways that #BecauseWeveRead and our chapters and members can clearly respond to
Unfortunately, there are countless important issues and causes globally that deserve to be uplifted. We are often inundated with requests to launch an ‘Emergency Read’ in respond to various ongoing local & global crises and unfortunately cannot focus on them all.
We want to name that several factors go into announcing an ‘Emergency Read’, and even if an official announcement is not made, often times many of our chapters will still focus on these issues on a local level.
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ALL POLICING IS SURVEILLANCE--both the cops and the technology they use. All of these forms of surveillance are violent, harmful and extremely racist in how they clearly target Black and Brown communities. (3/8)
🗣 we’re stil accepting submissions for the GLOBAL visual surveillance gallery!!
head to our website for more info https://becauseweveread.com/index.php/book/surveillance-capitalism-shoshana-zuboff-dark-matters/
readers in Kuala Lumpur!! 👇🏽
Hello! We’re the KL chapter of @becauseweveread, a radical reading club designed to challenge the way we see the world.
LIVE NOW!
A conversation about internationalism from below, uprisings, repression and solidarity in Thailand, Nigeria, Belarus and beyond.
Stream here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0kmiNy2asY
Here’s an important and super imperative checklist + guide on how to combat surveillance within our communities + free books c/o of the @becauseweveread homies. Engage + share and protect the homies within your communities.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pi4uRDjqGd-oyCNJyNJBCLm70hIF6ktf/view?usp=drivesdk
Join us & @istanbulandi for this month's international book club meet of #BecauseWeveRead focused on the relevant topic of 'surveillance capitalism'. With two thought-provoking texts, we welcome anyone interested to join our digital discussion. Details:
4https://www.facebook.com/events/398505471193410/
Join us & @istanbulandi for this month's international book club meet of #BecauseWeveRead focused on the relevant topic of 'surveillance capitalism'. With two thought-provoking texts, we welcome anyone interested to join our digital discussion. Details:
http://www.facebook.com/events/398505471193410/
“Surveillance is ... the fact of antiblackness.”
As we're reading Dark Matters by Simone Browne for this unit, time to learn more about how contemporary surveillance is rooted in antiblackness—a fact that often escapes notice.
#BecauseWeveRead
Our second #BecauseWeveRead Istanbul meeting is on Nov 25!
Assigned reading:
1. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
Introduction
2. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simone Browne - Introduction/Chapter 1
Sign up here:
http://tiny.cc/BWRIst2
JOIN US for the #becauseweveread book club event with 'Mapping Sanctuaries' aritst: @AlaaAlsaraji curated & facilitated by Maryam Abdullah @becauseweveread on Saturday, 7th Nov @ 1:00p!
To learn more & to sign up for this event, please visit http://bit.ly/MSBookClubEvent