Beautiful solutions; Palestine solidarity
Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation is out! Back in 2019 I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to contribute writing that connects the practice of free and open source technology to social movement building.
From the back matter, "Beautiful Solutions is a collection of ideas for changing our communities and our world." The reviews for the book are so overwhelming and the content so deep I don't know that any little blurb in this newsletter is sufficient. I encourage you to get this release on your radar. Pre-order a copy!
Sign up to attend the launch event for the book in New York on October 23, 2024 at the Francis Kite Club.
Please subscribe to the weekly IXP newsletter!
Even more content inspo
- Nick Doty spoke at the W3C's 30th anniversary celebration about human rights in Web standards. https://www.youtube.com/live/-LNUg5vDWDY?t=2091s
- The ITU-T just announced a new Focus Group on AI https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/ainn/Pages/default.aspx
- Last week the UN agreed upon the Pact for the Future. Here's a nice summary of the action points http://nissaba.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/pact-for-the-future-actions-summary.pdf
- Watch this UNGA event on Digital Emblems for Civilian Protection: Safeguarding lives and critical infrastructure in conflict https://www.youtube.com/live/7JebNH4oIR0
- Hot-tip for social web users: Filter your Mastodon timeline by keyword https://fedi.tips/filtering-your-timeline-to-hide-posts-on-mastodon/
- A global, shared research agenda for Technology Facilitated Gender-Based Violence: https://www.svri.org/topic-specific-research-agendas/technology-facilitated-gender-based-violence-global-shared-research-priorities
- CDT published a report about tech-assisted sexual harassment in schools https://cdt.org/insights/report-in-deep-trouble-surfacing-tech-powered-sexual-harassment-in-k-12-schools/
- The Rest of World publishes an overview of India's internet shutdown record https://restofworld.org/2024/india-internet-shutdown-record
- Marietje Schaake writes in Foreign Affairs about how countries can take back control from (US) Big Tech https://www.foreignaffairs.com/brazil/big-techs-coup
- More than 250 scientists from 31 countries have signed another open letter https://lnkd.in/e2W-iaxg criticising the latest EU #chatcontrol draft. The letter reconfirms 2 earlier letters from July 2023 https://lnkd.in/eTxh-CYn and May 2024 https://lnkd.in/eeP7uZC9.
- Phoenix R&D are hiring two positions https://join.com/companies/phoenix
- eQualitie are hiring for five positions https://equalit.ie/jobs/
Guest post: Paul Biggar announces the Tech For Palestine Incubator
One year later, 40,000 lives fewer, the devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure and the worst escalation of violence across the West Bank in a generation, Palestine remains under brutal occupation.
Tech for Palestine (T4P) joins the many groups organizing around the world to end the crisis. Launched today, the T4P Incubator aims to create thousands of advocacy projects, each designed to build, grow, and scale work towards a Free Palestine. The T4P Incubator supports projects — whether collections of individuals, registered non-profits, or even companies — whose mission helps Palestine, especially advocacy groups building technical products or in the tech space.
T4P launched in January 2024 as a collection of like-minded tech people building projects to help a Free Palestine. The projects were advocacy campaigns, websites and datasets so that we can see how our actions fund war, and holding pro-Israel investors accountable. We have taken our experience of supporting the projects that formed T4P, and turned it into an incubator that hopes to launch thousands of advocacy projects, all supporting a Free Palestine.
Though T4P is still a new initiative, we work hard to be a team player within the movement. We work with, and take advice from established groups with deep expertise. Projects within T4P are encouraged to learn about the ecosystem and are introduced to key partners to gain leverage and scale.
The open secret about tech is that tech is not about code, technology or technical solutions. Fundamentally it is about pairing leaders with the resources they need to achieve strategic goals, combined with the tried and true techniques of building and scaling movements.
T4P supports our projects with mentorship, volunteers, marketing support, and connections to the international Free Palestine solidarity movement, as well as a community of like-minded leaders. Support from our broad-base network of dedicated and skilled volunteers is free.
We are currently supporting 23 projects in our incubator. The biggest, Boycat and Newscord, have taken off in the past few months! Others are newer and also exciting:
- ethics.vc is bringing divestment action upon venture capital.
- Find a Protest makes it easy to find protests.
- Apricot helps Palestinians get jobs.
- Pal-Chat provides an AI with deep Palestine expertise to Pal activists.
With our launch today, we hope to encourage many early stage projects for Palestine to join our incubator. Most projects that join are 1-2 people with an early idea, limited progress, or have hit roadblocks where mentorship, advice, and support may be beneficial to them.
Those interested in joining can apply via our public form: https://techforpalestine.org/project-application-form
We want T4P projects to be about execution and scale, not necessarily about technology or code. We evaluate on these important grounds:
- do the leaders seem competent and know what they're talking about?
- does the idea seem like a good idea, or at least a good direction?
- can the leaders speak intelligently about their work and their plans?
- do the leaders seem open to feedback and mentorship?
If you know projects that might benefit from joining the T4P Incubator, let them know about our incubator: https://updates.techforpalestine.org/announcing-the-tech-for-palestine-incubator/
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