Portside

Thank you. I am honored to be here. I am honored to represent those who, too often, aren’t called to this table, aren’t heard in these halls. The 450K migrants in U.S. detention centers. 2.2 Million people incarceration in the U.S. The 9 million under the control of the justice system. People like my Uncle Kamou Sadiki, a former Black Panther who will spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. People like my mother, also a Black Panther, who faced the FBI head on when they burst into our house and demanded she testify against her San Francisco 8 comrades in a secret court proceeding. She said no, and died two weeks later from sickle cell anemia. People like Walter Scott, Eric Garner, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, whose Black bodies were murdered on video, and still incited zero police accountability. The thousands who have taken to the streets in the name of Black Lives Matter. I am honored to speak for them. Martin Luther King said in 1958, everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. I hope I am a long shadow.

I’m especially grateful to speak with you today, because we are on the precipice of an outstanding moment. A moment when migrant activists have put their bodies on the line to block deportation buses, when a movement for Black Lives has taken to the streets led in large measure by women, queer people, the disabled, and those whose voices are usually ousted from the collective practice of democracy. A moment like 1963, when, in all parts of this country, attacks on Black bodies by white police officers and vigilantes went unaccounted for, despite being in full view of a historically divided public.  It sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

1963, when the U.S waged a seemingly never-ending war halfway across the world for a democracy we could not taste, touch or see right here at home. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? 1963, a moment when widespread outrage over these epic inconsistencies between the story of America and her truth transformed into a civil rights movement. We are living in that kind of moment today. We know what this moment looks like, because we’ve lived through it before as a nation. We know that moments like these don’t come often, and while it’s hot right now, they don’t stay.

So, we have some tough decisions to make.  The decentralized power of the Internet has made much of this moment possible. But will the technology of serve a future of equity and democracy? Will it fuel a new era of civil action, a renaissance of human rights? Or will it drive a widening wealth gap, a more militarized state, a political economy characterized by structural inequality and persistent discrimination?

On the one hand, this digital age and era of big data holds extraordinary promise. It allows us to reach into parts of the world we never could before, learn in seconds what might have taken months or years, but, while these technological advances may speed and ease what this nation and economy can do, the issue at hand is what we will do.

For Black people to move about the streets safely in 1700’s America, we needed a pass. That was the surveillance technology of that time. A white person had to vouch for you. And every white person was deputized to enforce that system. In the 21st century, almost two thirds of incarcerated people and those under the control of the justice system are racial and ethnic minorities. Over 40% are Black. We live on databases, in ankle bracelets, between checkpoints. Today, we have some new technology doing some very old work. Here’s the thing. Technology can only serve democracy to the degree that it is democratized. People like me have always been watched. The only difference is the tool, and the time.

It was August, 2013. Jimmy Barraza, a migrant worker in New Orleans, was unloading a carful of groceries when agents pulled up with pistols drawn, handcuffing him as well as his teenage son, a United States citizen.  It was a typical random raid. The probably cause? He was Latino. A mobile fingerprint check of Mr. Barraza, who is also Honduran, revealed an old court order for his deportation. A judge said the end justified the means. I say, not in my name. We have some tough choices to make.

Will we be a nation that uses the Internet to bypass existing protections and facilitate mass deportation? That uses sound technology to clear protestors from the streets? Uses federally funded drones to spy on Muslim American communities with neither consent nor probable cause? Will our right to record police officers in the commission of their duties be consistently violated with threats, arrests, and illegal searches, and by the law itself? How much longer will the communities I speak for here today live scanned, tracked, and traced?

Cause that’s what migrant and Muslim communities are living with. That’s what Black people and all those disadvantaged by mass incarceration are living with. That’s what those working at or below the minimum wage are living with. That’s what the movement for Black lives is living with. That’s how I grew up. It’s why I am here today.  Because the Internet and the movement for civil rights and racial justice have grown up together—and privacy is not the fight we’ve been called to.

The fourth amendment, for us, is not and has never been about privacy, per se. It’s about sovereignty. It’s about power. It’s about the historic and present day overreach of governments and corporations into our lives, in order to facilitate discrimination and disadvantage for the purposes of control; for the purposes of profit. Privacy is not the fight we are called to. We are called to this question of defending real democracy.  We are not called to this distinction between mass surveillance and targeted surveillance, that’s a distinction being made for us by those who would seek to continue this notion that there are those less than human, whose rights should not prevail in a court of law, for whom the constitution should not equally apply.

But there is no true distinction.  When all or part of a society is surveilled, outside of the scope of a specific investigation and with neither transparency nor legal parameters, without protections of any kind, that is mass surveillance.  Spying on Muslim communities in New York is mass surveillance. Spying on entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles, is mass surveillance.  Spying on migrants in New Mexico or Arizona or Louisiana, is mass surveillance. Spying on low-wage workers at McDonalds and Wal-Mart, is mass surveillance.  The time for distinction between the systems that watch you and those that watch me has passed.

Today mass incarceration and mass surveillance walk hand in hand. Mass deportation and mass surveillance walk hand in hand.  Economic inequality and mass surveillance go hand in hand. Yet, the movements built to solve these problems do not.

Family, we have some tough decisions to make. Will the Internet and its digital derivatives be the most democratic communications system the world has ever known? Or will it be the greatest legal facilitator of inequity in the 21stcentury? Whether the Internet disrupts the status quo or reinforces it depends on us, the people in this room.

Last year, New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said 2015 would be the year of technology for law enforcement. And indeed, it has been. Predictive policing has taken hold as the big brother of broken windows policing. Total information awareness has become the goal. Across the country, local police departments are working with federal law enforcement agencies to use advanced technological tools and data analysis to pre-empt crime. In the name of community safety and national security. Relying on algorithms to mete out sentences, determine city budgets; automate public decision-making without any public input. That sounds familiar too. It sounds like Black codes. Like Jim Crow. Like 1963.

What does that mean for the rising tide of civic action emerging from all corners of the nation today? It means that our democracy is under direct attack by the technology we love. The technology I fought hard for during the ongoing battle for net neutrality. The technology I am fighting hard to ensure low-income access too as we battle to expand the Universal Service Lifeline program. I believe in the Internet. But I don’t control it.

We need a new civil rights act for the era of big data, and we need it now. No more piecemeal approaches. No more federal bills that leave people like me out. Without this level of rigorous constitutional protection, It means the 21st century will supplement 1963’s informants with 2016’s facial recognition software. It means there will be no telephone truck outside of my house reminding us that Ma Bell and Cointelpro are in cahoots- it will be AT&T, Verizon, Sprint in partnership with law enforcement instead, there will be Stingray cell phone interceptors, fusion centers to share information, biometric scanning software, license plate readers, and yes, body worn cameras. And as I, a proud member of the Black Lives Matter Network, attempt to organize to save my life in my city, I will not know who is watching me, why, or what I can do about it.

I will be my mother again, in 1963.

At my mother’s funeral in 2005, my uncle Jamal Joseph, one of the Panther Party’s youngest members talked about J. Edgar Hoover’s targeted attack against Black communities. He reminded us that files obtained during a break in at an FBI office in 1971 revealed that African Americans, Hoovers largest targeted group, didn’t have to be perceived as dissident to warrant surveillance.  They just had to be Black.

Speaking of surveillance, my niece sent me a quote on FB that said, “War is when the government tells you who your enemy is. Revolution is when you decide for yourself.” Surveillance has always been used to define our enemy for us, both foreign and domestic. To create racial profiles that would determine who has access to the state, to its resources, based on “empirical observation”. The point of surveillance at this level is not simply to invade our privacy, but to carry out the primary economic and social objectives of the nation, which too often are at odds with our own. It’s time to revolt and reject the use of technology to uphold the caste system in this country. MLK said, “Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.”

I’ve always wondered what he meant by that. Though the iconic civil rights leader spoke those words in 1958, almost 60 years ago, they are no less true in today’s digital age, when inequality is driven by an information economy whose Black codes and Jim Crow laws are coded in 1’s and 0’s; automated and hidden from view, but no less of a yoke around the neck, no less a warrantless search of the selves I carry in my cell phone, my computer; no less discriminatory and dangerous today.

But we are 1963, we are 2016. We are the culture jedi of the 21st century, armed with our bits and our bytes and our love and our humanity, we are a rising tide, and we will rise again and again until we win.

Malkia A. Cyril is co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice (CMJ). For more than 20 years, Malkia has organized social justice coalitions, resources, and advocacy for media rights, access, and representation across the United States. You can follow Malkia on Twitter @CultureJedi