Ep. 76 - Surveillance Capitalism & Abolitionist Tech, Pt. 1 ft. Alyxandra Goodwin

BrownTown spills the tea on surveillance capitalism and talks
abolitionist tech with Alyxandra Goodwin, who is recently
organizing the #StopShotSpotter campaign in Chicago. In part one
of this two-part episode, the gang unpack surveillance in various
forms from policing to social media while unpacking the many
intricacies and insidious ways it controls our lives from the
most intimate to the most systemic.


Alyx and the gang quickly digs into the relationship between
social media tech surveillance and large corporations, stating
that these industries are moving faster than state regulation can
keep up with or can even understand (see Zuckerberg vs.
Congress). Alyx unpacks her article The True Dilemma: Silicon
Valley, Race & Profit while BrownTown turns the
surveillance conversation to the prison-industrial complex (PIC).
As capitalism's output is always profit above all, we see the
PIC's usage of surveillance to further the protection of that
profit on top of uplifting the anti-Blackness, white supremacy,
and the overall quell of dissent that it was founded on.


BrownTown and Alyx sift through numerous related topics with
surveillance and social control at the forefront, centering the
current Chicago campaign to cancel the ShotSpotter contract with
Chicago Police Department (which several other cities have done).
LEFTOUT comrade and writer Todd St. Hill's article Where
Counter-terrorism Got Us adds weight to the turn of
surveillance in the U.S. after 9/11 as we reflect on the
two-decade-long war in Afghanistan and the new departments and
machines of surveillance that it yielded. David transitions the
conversation out by asking about media narratives and pop
culture's role in furthering copaganda and acceptance of new
technologies without interrogating the unaltered violent systems
that they often embolden. If technology is a mere puppet,
surveillance capitalism and the prison-industrial complex is the
puppet master. Originally recorded September 15, 2021. Listen to
Part Two!


GUEST


Alyx is currently a Deputy Campaign Director on Policing and
Incarceration at the Action Center on Race and the Economy
(ACRE), organizes with BYP100 Chicago, and is a co-founder and
writer with LEFT OUT Magazine. Her writing and activism are
centered around the momentum and challenges of building Black
power and self-determination. Her work at ACRE currently focuses
on the relationship between the finance industry and policing,
racialized capitalism, and how they exacerbate oppressions.


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Mentioned in episode and other information:


Shoshana Zuboff's work

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (book)


The Surveillance Threat Is Not What Orwell Imagined


'The goal is to automate us': Welcome to the Age of
Surveillance Capitalism (Naughton)




A Company That Designs Jails is Spying On Activists Who
Oppose Them (Fassler) on corporate counterinsurgency


Operation Legend is Bringing Surveillance Tech to Cities
(Schwenk)

Raptivist Bella BAHHS on the history of Chicago gangs and
machine politics (TRiiBE)

Chicago Drill 'n' Activism cross-platform documentary and
multimedia project on drill rap and activism

BnB Ep. 21 - Welcome to the Gun Show (on US vs. UK drill rap)

Texas police surveillance: HALO cameras, BnB Episode 73

Stingray technology for phone tracking

Erase the (Gang) Database in Chicago (coalition, SoapBox
project)


For Tech to be equitable, the people must control it
(Alyx Goodwin, LEFTOUT)

CPD Settlement for men wrongfully accused of murder (article,
SoapBox project)

EndPoliceSurveillance.com

ChicagoPoliceSurvelliance.com

Electronic Frontier Foundation



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Sign the #StopShotSpotter petition and take action with the
toolkit! Watch SoapBox's Stop ShotSpotter PSA
here!


Follow Alyxandra on Instagram and Twitter! Read her and others'
work at LEFTOUTmag.com and follow LEFT OUT on Facebook,
Instagram, and Twitter.


Follow ACRE on their site, Facebook, Instagram, and Medium; and
BYP100 on their site, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.


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CREDITS: Intro soundbite from SoapBox's Stop
ShotSpotter PSA edited by James Edward Murray and outro song
Feds Watching by 2 Chainz ft. Pharrell. Audio engineered
by Genta Tamashiro and Kiera Battles. Episode graphic by Ellen
Hao from South Side Weekly's Shot Heard Round the City
article.


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