MediaJustice Network Fall Political Education Series: Public Health & Surveillance

From COVID-19 to abortion access to Monkeypox, we continue to see massive public health failures. In the face of this organized abandonment and criminalization, we are simultaneously struggling against the impact of profit-driven technology that catalyzes mass surveillance and rampant misinformation and disinformation. The MediaJustice Network’s Fall political education series examines the current landscape of public health, technology, & information with a historical and structural lens. We aim to have dialogue about the information sharing environment of public health as it intersects with surveillance and misinformation as well as provide tools and frameworks that support media literacy and agency over our data.

Panel Description: What can we learn from the history of the criminalization and stigmatization of infectious disease to understand today’s landscape of health inequity? How does data secured in the name of public health relate to surveillance? How do we harness technology to build the power of our communities? Hear from writer / activist Kenyon Farrow,  whose work has long focused on public health and infectious disease with a focus on racial, gender and economic justice; Jamie Garcia, registered nurse practicing in the community of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles who has organized with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition for over a decade; Bita Amani,  a social epidemiologist who also works with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, and whose work highlights how state-sanctioned disinvestment and violence creates and maintains racial inequity through public health crisis; and Alice Aguilar, Executive Director of Progressive Technology Project and Board Co-Chair of May First Movement Technology, whose current work involves leading the fight against racism and sexism in technology, bringing women, queer and Trans people of color into movement resistance technology, and winning respect for the people of color already doing technology work within social justice movements. The panel will be moderated by Rose Lang-Maso, Campaign Manager at Free Press, a nonprofit which sits at the intersection of media and tech justice. Rose builds winning corporate accountability and policy campaigns that advance digital civil rights and mitigate the harms caused by disinformation, hate, surveillance, and related online forces.  Register today to attend the panel! Participants requesting ASL, live captioning, or Spanish translation, please register by September 23rd.