[Themaintainers] invitation to engage: Race and Maintenance

[Jaime Taylor]

Here's an example from a couple years ago in NYC -- the NYPD was required, through a court decision, to preserve their records of surveilling the Young Lords. And then....well, you can read about it. There was also an interview on Democracy Now & plenty of other news articles, as well as the book that was the original impetus to find the records. (FTR, I'm acquainted, through political work, with the lawyer who made the NYPD find the records, as well as the writer of both articles below.)


https://gothamist.com/news/remember-the-young-lords-neither-does-the-nypd-which-is-odd


<https://gothamist.com/news/remember-the-young-lords-neither-does-the-nypd-which-is-odd>

<https://gothamist.com/news/remember-the-young-lords-neither-does-the-nypd-which-is-odd>https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/06/16/under-media-spotlight-city-locates-missing-records-of-nypd-political-meddling/

________________________________
From: themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu <themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu> on behalf of Irish, Sharon Lee <slirish at illinois.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2020 5:34:15 PM
To: themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
Subject: Re: [Themaintainers] invitation to engage: Race and Maintenance

Dear colleagues,
I have been in a number of Zoom meetings about policing during the last week, and the Maintainers' "invitation to engage" has prompted me to wonder about mechanisms that have been created in response to _lack of maintenance_ of information about policing. In other words, if data is not collected or maintained, then we remain even more ignorant or in denial about the scope of the problem.

Specifically journalist Brian Burghart (whom I do not know) in 2012 created fatalencounters.org as a way "toward creating an impartial, comprehensive, and searchable national database of people killed during interactions with law enforcement." This data is not maintained by government or other entities, as far as I understand it, and it is hard to obtain, and even harder to maintain, especially given trolls' efforts to intervene. I have been very minimally involved with his huge effort by occasionally recruiting volunteers for data entry.

Burghart's website provides information about his impetus to start this project, his collaborations and uneven support for his work. I imagine there are similar efforts out there to track other state actions that some would prefer to remain undocumented. In this essay, Burghart noted in 2014 "the most heinous thing I’ve learned in my two years compiling Fatal Encounters: You know who dies in the most population-dense areas? Black men. You know who dies in the least population dense areas? Mentally ill men. It’s not to say there aren’t dangerous and desperate criminals killed across the line. But African-Americans and the mentally ill people make up a huge percentage of people killed by police."

I am way outside of my research areas, so perhaps there is ample attention to this already, but I am interested in this DIY approach to tracking state violence, which also means maintaining documentation about it for others to consult.

Also, big congratulations to Jess, Lee,+ Andy on the Sloan Foundation grant!

Sharon Irish
Research Affiliate
School of Information Sciences
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

    Message: 1
    Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 16:22:55 -0500
    From: Jessica Meyerson <jmeyerson at themaintainers.org>
    To: themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
    Subject: [Themaintainers] Community Message and Invitation to Engage:
         Race    and Maintenance
    Message-ID:
         <CAO-YdTE2Ap6vGh+TkKf8q8V=S=JUHUYN6Ec2V4fqHtkGFtZywQ at mail.gmail.com>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

    Fellow Maintainers,


    Like many of you, we have been watching the events of the past few weeks
    with sadness, trepidation, but also hope. We see people suffering right now
    because of deep-seated racism that results in inequities and violence; we
    also find hope in the incredible protests and movement to build a more just
    and equitable society.

    Racial inequity is a critical consideration in discussions of maintenance,
    maintainers, and infrastructure. We know - and data makes clear - that
    Black people in the United States are disproportionately affected both in
    terms of being maintainers (people of color hold a larger number of
    essential, front-line jobs during the pandemic1
    <https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/color-and-gender-covid-19-essential-workers-not-disposable-people>,
    2
    <https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/01/texas-coronavirus-frontline-workers/>,
    3
    <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kadiagoba/coronavirus-new-york-brooklyn-essential-workers-black-poc>,
    4
    <https://abcnews.go.com/Business/heroes-hostages-communities-color-bear-burden-essential-work/story?id=70662472>,
    5
    <https://sff.org/bay-areas-essential-workers-are-disproportionately-people-of-color-women-and-immigrants-new-study-finds/>,
    6
    <http://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/most-bay-area-essential-workers-are-people-of-color-women-immigrants>
    and often receive lower compensation for the same hours worked1
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_wage_gap_in_the_United_States>,2
    <https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/news/2019/08/22/473775/racism-sexism-combine-shortchange-working-black-women/>
    ,3
    <https://www.epi.org/blog/black-white-wage-gaps-are-worse-today-than-in-2000/>
    ,) and regular maintenance (crumbling infrastructure is most often found in
    communities of color1
    <https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2016/04/25/136361/5-things-to-know-about-communities-of-color-and-environmental-justice/>
    ,2
    <https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/21/roads-nowhere-infrastructure-american-inequality>
    ,3
    <https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/any-federal-infrastructure-package-should-boost-investment-in-low-income>
    ,4
    <https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/08/28/to-build-safe-streets-we-need-to-address-racism-in-urban-design/>
    ,).

    With members of this community, we earlier articulated our Maintainers
    values <http://themaintainers.org/about-us> of Care, Research, and
    Capacity. Under Care: ?Our community is dedicated to recognizing these
    crucial individuals who keep society?s systems running. We seek to identify
    and confront the issues that prevent maintainers from flourishing as
    individuals, in collectives, and in their varied occupational roles.?

    Grounding ourselves in these values, we want to invite a discussion on the
    list that will inform our activities moving forward. Some prompts for this
    discussion might include:


       -

       What questions should we all be asking and discussing about the
       relationship between race and maintenance?
       -

       Where have you already seen this connection being made (projects,
       community-based work, scholarship)? Examples that we enjoy include books
       such as Venus Green?s Race on the Line
       <https://www.booksandcranniesva.com/book/9780822325734>, Ruha
    Benjamin?s Race
       After Technology
       <https://blackpearlbookstore.com/?q=h.tviewer&using_sb=status&alt_filter=1>,
       and Meredith Broussard?s Artificial Unintelligence
       <https://www.thedockbookshop.com/book/9780262537018>, to name a few, as
       well as papers at Maintainers conferences--such as Renee Blackburn?s
       paper on busing
       <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a8e2fca12f446482d67a7a/t/5703d6be356fb0cea95a32db/1459869374305/Maintainers+RMB+2016.pdf>
       and Nancy Anderson?s paper on apartheid
       <http://themaintainers.org/s/MAINTAINING_DESTROYING-APARTHEID-79es.docx>.
       -

       What forms or formats would be helpful for highlighting existing work,
       or encouraging/supporting new work on race and maintenance (e.g.,
       commissioned essays or other creative works, virtual roundtables, financial
       support for ongoing projects)?


    Based on our own research, and resulting discussion on the list, we commit
    to reparative work, monetarily and otherwise, that explores the
    relationship between race and maintenance. As Robin D. G. Kelly and others
    teach us, we believe this work should acknowledge both the pain currently
    and historically felt as well as ?shared knowledge, joy, and humor? (Robin
    D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams
    <https://www.booksandcranniesva.com/book/9780807009772>).


    Thank you all so much.


    Yours in Maintenance,

    Jessica, Lee, Andy
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