Social Justice Collective “Mechanism Design for Black Lives” Think Tank, May 18-19, 2022
The Center’s Institute for Research, Civic Engagement, and Policy and its Social Justice Collective held a Mechanism Design for Black Lives Think Tank, which brought into conversation emerging and established leaders to explore the intersection of technology, the humanities, the arts, community organizing, and social justice. Rachel Harding of UC-Denver and the Veterans of Hope project, Jessica Finocchiaro of CU-Boulder and Mechanism Design for Social Good, Daniel Minter of the Indigo Arts Alliance, and Nathaniel Smith of the Partnership for Southern Equity convened in the Massey Leadership Building on May 18-19, 2022, to exchange ideas and explore how the Andrew Young Center can integrate the fields of data science and social justice work. The broader goal of the meeting was to develop a joint research and community engagement project to impact historically marginalized black communities in Atlanta.
The convening was designed to create cross-pollination across disciplines, with each participant leading a two-hour discussion of their area of expertise. The Institute Director Fred Knight began the conversation by presenting his current research on slave labor in the United States and the role of eldership in black community and kinship relationships. His presentation prompted a discussion about how lessons and values from history can be transmitted to current generations. In response, Rachel Harding pointed to her comparative research on Afro-Diasporic spiritual traditions that examines how people of African descent sought to reconstruct family, community and meaning in the Americas. Those traditions, Harding argued, provide alternative approaches to knowledge, to relationships between humans, and to connections between humans and the natural world that are relevant for our times.
Contributing insights from his work as a community organizer, Nathaniel Smith followed with an overview of his work as the founder and chief equity officer of the Partnership for Southern Equity. The organization is grounded in values-based decision making and giving people and communities the tools that they need to create change. For example, he describes his Metro Atlanta Equity Atlas, which examines racial equity across multiple sectors, as a way of “democratizing data.” To make it the most accessible to his target audience, the Atlas begins with storytelling rather than data. The Partnership has also launched the Justice 40 Accelerator, which they created to offer marginalized communities the resources and information they need to earn contracts from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Much of his work has been to discover the tools, tactics, and strategies that will position us to win collectively. Reflecting on Smith’s presentation, Jessica Finocchiaro pointed out the paradox that winning the game is essential to exposing how stacked the game is against the marginalized.
Looking at social change from the lens of history and religious studies, Professor Harding’s session centered on her scholarship, which draws on Jarvis Anderson’s concept of “Fugitive Pedagogy,” defined as those hidden, liberatory traditions through which black people have cultivated the humanity of learners, given hope to each other, and encouraged believing beyond limitations. Tracing the trajectory of her parents Vincent and Rosemarie Freeney Harding, Harding discussed the ways that they created spaces of respite and healing for civil rights activists who carried the physical and psychological toll of the work. The movement shook the foundations of the country and, Harding argued, became the grounds for all the progressive movements of the 1960s. Her research demonstrates how black freedom movement activists were undergirded by radical love and sustained by “spiritual accompaniment” in the form of music, kin relations, ancestors, dreams, contemplative practices, or sacred texts. Thinking about Harding’s work, Nathaniel Smith pointed out the challenges that cooptation and materialism pose to social justice movement work and the choices leaders must often make between “salary and significance.”
As an expert in mathematical and computational science, Jessica Finocchiaro demonstrated how her research and others in the field are working toward eliminating algorithmic bias. Realizing that algorithms are tools to exercise power, organizations like Mechanism Design for Social Good, Black in A.I., and the Algorithmic Justice League and computer scientists like Rediet Abebe are rethinking who codes, how we code, and to what effect. Finocchiaro also raised ethical questions that confront the field such as what the best role for and the proper limits on artificial intelligence are. She then provided a window into her research on how lenders use algorithms to make decisions about the extension of credit by taking the participants through an algorithm training exercise. Showing the power of algorithms to replicate bias, her broad conclusion was that algorithms should be subject to regular audits to improve fairness in their use in lending. The presentation resonated with Daniel Minter, whose art has treated currency and its links to the black experience. Because of the workshop, he planned to execute an art project that draws out that connection further.
Leading the final session, Daniel Minter took participants on a visual journey through his artwork. He provided an in-depth exploration of how his artwork conveys meaning through a set of “keys,” symbols filled with power and intent. For instance, brooms feature prominently in his work, and he drew on that cultural motif to link back to the Finocchiaro’s presentation on the algorithmic audit and to see it as a “broom” for ritual and community cleansing. Minter ended the session with a contemplative practice in which participants used stamps with key symbols to create a cover for a journal for personal reflection.
In bringing the Think Tank to a close, the participants considered next steps and created a vision of “rituals of liberation” inspired by Rachel Harding and Daniel Minter, a vision that supports scholars and activists to engage in ideation, imagination, reflection, reconnection, scholarship, and engagement. Aware of Nathaniel Smith’s admonition that “change happens at the speed of trust” and cautioned by Jessica Finocchiaro not to rush to a solution, they decided not to prematurely launch a research or community impact project. Rather, they agreed to build trust, work as a community of practice, meet periodically on the web over the 2022-23 academic year, and reconvene in person in the spring of 2023 to deepen the work.
