[Themaintainers] invitation to engage: Race and Maintenance
Anastasia Bennett
ab233 at uw.edu
Fri Jun 12 14:54:47 EDT 2020
Hello all,
If you are interested in further resources for tracking information
concerning police violence, I highly recommend looking into the work of Sam
Sinyangwe who is a co-founder We The Protesters
<https://www.wetheprotesters.org/> which is responsible for Mapping Police
Violence <https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/> and Campaign Zero
<https://www.joincampaignzero.org/>, among other projects. From going to
one of his talks, it is my understanding that data maintenance is a concern
of his and part of that maintenance is wrapped up in police policies and
contracts.
Here is a shorter explanation of his work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVzGrj8HtcY
And a longer one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1pCX4amXEQ
Tender regards,
Ana Bennett
On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 7:09 AM Irish, Sharon Lee <slirish at illinois.edu>
wrote:
> 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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> End of Themaintainers Digest, Vol 52, Issue 7
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--
Anastasia Bennett (she/her)
PhD Student, MLIS
Information School
University of Washington
ab233 at uw.edu
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