 Hello everyone, hello, welcome back. It is wonderful to see your lovely faces. My name is Andrine Soli. I am the director of the Public Interest Tech Program at New America. I am so delighted to be a part of this MLK Junior celebration. It has been my long dream to blend public interest technology and the civil rights movement. I am so fortunate to have someone I think of as a partner in crime in many ways, but not in crime, in wonderful things as well, Dr. Fallon Wilson as our keynote this afternoon. The reason why this is so important to me is that Fallon and I have been having an ongoing dialogue about the intersection of public interest technology and historically-backed universities for a very long time. And we have always believed that HBCUs are public interest institutions. And we have been interrogating what that means together on this journey. And so it is just an honor to be able to have her reflect on that to you all. And I am going to do the thing that you must do with fantastic scholarly black women. We're going to give them their props. So I am delighted to read briefly through her bio so you understand all of the wonderful things that Fallon has done. Dr. Fallon Wilson, she is the co-founder of Black Tech Futures Research Institute. And vice president of policy at the Multicultural Media Telecom Internet Council. Through her work with nonprofits, academia, and government partnerships, Dr. Wilson strives to make visible the work of historic and modern day black crisis solvers. I just love that framing. She invests her time in strengthening the tech ecosystem nationwide, especially as it relates both to black women technologists and also underrepresented persons of color who may not have access to the ever-changing arena of technology. Her TED national presentation of Stop Ignoring Black Women and here of our tech prophecies eloquently addresses the intersection of historical realities for black women, spirituality, and technology. If this is not a moment for that, I don't know what is. So her work aims to end the great technical divide that exists between the races while also seeking to put an end to misconceptions about the abilities and skills of black people that allow the perpetuation of said divide. Dr. Wilson acts with a strong lens of equity and tech inclusion within tech ecosystem for positive workforce outcomes. She is a proud graduate of Spellman College. Please do me the honor of welcoming Dr. Fallon Wilson. Thank you. I'm going to bear with you today. Good afternoon. You can bring me up. I need a little more. Come on. I want to hear myself reverberate. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Much better. I open my mouth. And I called unto the Lord. I shall I will. I am going to see what the end is going to be. That is an old Negro spiritual. And I had to do it because, number one, you're coming back from lunch. And so you need some entertainment, whether I can sing or not, that's debatable. But also it ties into my speech. But before I get there, let me just begin by saying a heartfelt thank you to Andrine, the faithful and fearless leader of Pitt UN. Thank you, sister. Give it up for her. Thank you, sister, for this invitation. I get asked to speak at a lot of things. I'm very blessed. But when they actually do an MLK weekend, you'd be like, I have arrived in life. So thank you. And to the MLK, the Northern Cal MLK Foundation, Erin, I want to say thank you also for doing, yes, as you walk in, for doing the amazing work of keeping Dr. King's dream ever present. So let's give it up for both of them. On this day as we prepare to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Junior's birthday and in the hallowed and immorial threshing floor of justice, I want to begin with a history lesson. Say, why? This is going to be entirely interactive. So it's going to be a whole call and response tradition here. So why? Because of the times in which we live in. We live in a time where cultural remembrance and the erasure of our history as black people in this country is the norm. We're in southern states, critical race theories and book chapters about American slavery are being banned from primary and secondary education. We live in a time where the Supreme Court, stocked with conservative judges, opened the floodgates for colleges, universities, nonprofits, foundations, and companies too loudly at times, but more recently, quietly at times, discontinue their digital equity, inclusion, efforts, and dismantling the thing they love so much during George Floyd that black lives indeed matter. We live in a time where simply mumbling racism and xenophobia will cause you to lose your presidential appointment, your job, your business, your fearless fund for black women. These are the times in which we live. We live in this time, which is why I want to start a history lesson, because let me tell you, you can't go forward unless you know what's happened in the past. And I just told you we're living in a historical time. So let me begin with a history lesson, in particular for those who do social justice work. Where is your hand if you do any type of social justice work? That should be everybody in here. OK, and then everybody to raise their hands. I'm not going to call you out. But also in particular for those who do justice work in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, computer science, today I'm going to talk to both groups, the traditional social justice activists, those who have been organized and immobilizing for their communities on a host of social justice issues. And I'm also going to talk to the new kids on the block, all of the public interest technologists in the audience, right? Those who for the eight or 10 years have sought to hold tech companies accountable for how they use our data and their technologies in ways that negatively impact our democracy. Say democracy. In our everyday freedoms. Today I teach a brief history lesson on two black freedom movements. Come with me. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. There we go. To 1925, A. Philip Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleepy Car Porters to improve the working conditions of being a black porter in this country, a porter. They were the domestic help on the train. That is the best way I'm going to say it. They helped white people get their bags up. They gave them tea. They were service, right? And so A. Philip Randolph founded this union because the white union said, you can't come with us. But they founded this union, this act of resistance to discriminatory and oppressive working conditions helped improve, after 10 years of organizing, helped improve the financial standing and the health of black porters and helped to cede motion, put into motion our modern day civil rights movement, where a porter named Edgar D. Nixon was a poor man porter in Montgomery, Alabama. And we'll get a little bit more into his story and the Montgomery busbark out in a moment. But here's a critical history lesson here. I set a group of black men organized to talk about the oppression they experienced as being porters. But they did not have to have the scientific knowledge of how a superpower local motive train worked. They didn't have to know that you have to have a big firebox to increase the horsepower of these local motive trains. Philip Randolph and other porters were not train engineers. Y'all are quiet, you're like, where I'm going, I'm going with this. However, that did not stop them from organizing against discrimination because they were experts in justice. Say justice. Keep that, I'm going somewhere. So jump, 30 years from 1925 to 1955. Joanne Robinson, president of the Women Political Council under the founding leadership of Mary Fair Burks. You gotta talk about all the black women in civil rights. I'm gonna be naming a lot of folks. Lunch to Montgomery bus boycott. Often when we tell the story of the Montgomery bus boycott, no offense to Dr. King. It was founded by black women. It was organized by black women in particular the Women Political Council. And so they, under the leadership of Joanne Robinson with the help of the poor men porter that helped found the sleeping car porter movement, right, 30 years prior, lunch to Montgomery bus boycott, chose Rosa Parks to be the face, organized for a year, took them to court, and all of that ended discrimination on the buses of Montgomery. But to achieve these outcomes, Joanne Robinson and the other black women did not need to know how a 1950s motorized bus worked. Do you see where I'm going with this, right? They didn't have to know that it had to have a rear engine and that it had to have a lot of space for it to drum up the energy. The Women's Political Council were not educated as bus engineers, even though they were scholars and professors at HBCUs in Montgomery hold that there too. Okay? However, that did not stop them from organizing against discrimination because they were experts in... Oh, y'all gonna get this going, yes. The historical point I'm trying to make is that both the locomotive train and the 1950s motorized bus were disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence that revolutionized transportation and drastically changed everyday American life. And that both operations and their business practices were changed by non-technical black people who were not scientists, who were not engineers. They were like, dang, we thought we were gonna talk about technology as evil. Black people altered how these technologies could treat them because they believed in... Ooh, keep that. Because they as former slaves and as two generations removed from slavery, they knew firsthand what injustice looked like. It looked like strange fruit hanging from the popular tree, sung by the words of Billie Holiday. It looked like hungry black families in the rural Southern counties doing a great depression who had no help from our government. It looked like 14-year-old Emmett Till with a bludgeoned face in a child casket. It looked like and was injustice. Therefore, to the traditional social justice advocates out there who are watching me online, people who organized for all types of issues, you can completely, so I'm about to make it right, you can completely change how artificial intelligence will affect your community without having a science, a technology, an engineering, a mathematics, a data science degree. Ooh, see, I didn't drop the mic on the people here. They don't know what to say. Let me clarify though, let me clarify. Science and technology and engineering and mathematics and computer science, I say the whole thing, I don't say STEM because you don't know where people are so you need to say the whole, thank you. I'm just saying that these disciplines, they alone cannot make justice live and breathe for us. The women political council and the brotherhood of the sleeping car porters led with justice, they were drawn to freedom. They used science in the service of freedom like many other black freedom fighters because it was important and other freedom fighters before them such as Harriet Tubman who used the stars in the sky and the pictographs on quilts to navigate enslaved people to freedom. Again, it was science in the service of freedom. If you don't believe me, I'm gonna give, look, we don't have to go to the past, I'll give you a more contemporary example. In 2014, say 2014. It was a son of the civil rights movement, a son of the black church, Reverend Jesse Jackson Jr. who went, I guess this is Silicon Valley, who came here to Silicon Valley and demanded that Google, Apple and other tech companies show him an anointed son of the civil rights movement that they are committed to diversity and inclusion in tech fields. Jesse Jackson Jr. said, show me your diversity numbers. And you know, when Jesse comes, he gone boy, so the company's like, ugh, ugh, they didn't know what to do, right? But Jesse says, show me your diversity numbers. He did not have a computer science bone in his body, but he knew and understood justice. He knew the tech companies lacked people of color on their board. He knew their staff wasn't reflective of the growing diversity of our country. It was a black man without a science degree, technology degree, engineering degree, mathematics degree, computer science degree, yet armed with degrees in sociology, armed with a degree in divinity, the humanities and the social scientists, I'm gonna keep humanities and the social scientists, made the tech companies publish for the first time in 2014, and Lily, you know, K-4, you can agree with, made them share their numbers so that we knew and we were all appalled when we saw the numbers, right? You see, they were afraid of Jesse's anointing. Some things are not about what you know. Some things are about the spiritual power you gain for doing justice. They were afraid of what his spirit would convict in them. The one Jesse's act opened the door to tech companies and for the last 10 years, until this recent anti-affirmative action moment, that companies launched all types of ways to experiment with DEI. We had ERGs. I mean, everyone was thinking about how to improve the numbers over that 10 year period. It was a black man, a black man of faith, a son of the civil rights movement who forced tech companies to their knees. He understood justice. He did justice, meaning every social justice advocate once again can be leaders in artificial intelligent futures. I'm gonna need a clap on that. I told you, I'm gonna have some church in here today. Now that we have established that social justice advocates without technical skills can lead in tech and AI futures, I now wanna talk to the new kids on the block. I wanna talk to the public interest technologist, people who for the last eight or 10 years who have sought to hold tech companies accountable for how they use our data and their iterative technologies to negatively impact our democracy and affect our everyday freedoms. I say this with great care, with so much love in my heart. We public, including myself, we public interest technologist. We liberals, we who G. Roddenberry and George Lucas were called the Galactical Democratic Freedom Fighters of a new AI age. Oh yeah, I'm going somewhere. We are in fact failing Justice. Now y'all gotta say it with more conviction. We are indeed in fact failing. Justice. Oh yeah. And the question is, Dr. Wilson, how are we failing justice? We have all, we have pinned you in. We have, we have all these, oh my, oh my God. I'm glad you asked me why. We were failing justice because we have allowed the threat and global fandom of artificial intelligence to overshadow and at critical moments dim the light upon other salient tech inequities, issues that form the foundation of a future liberated AI future. What does that look like? In our discourse and in our practice of being artificial intelligent regulation experts and practitioners and scholars and we pat ourselves on the back, we unconsciously participate in dismissing the work of ending the digital divide in this country. Oh, now we're quiet. Our endless regulation fight against would-be tech allogarks leaves us emotionally exhausted, which is the perfect breeding ground of presumptions, say presumptions. We presume that everyone in this country has internet access. We presume that everyone in this country has access to a computer, not their mobile phones that black and brown people over index on and has data caps and I want to give you into my little stump story on why that's problematic and why we allow people to perpetuate that narrative. We presume that everyone in this country has the digital literate media literate skills to understand what it means to work alongside future AI machines. We presume, we presume that every cultural community, anchor institution within black and poor communities such as churches, say churches, libraries and HBCUs all have access of high speed internet to support the thousands of black people who live within their spaces around these institutions of what we call tech deserts. We presume the bipartisan funding of the $45 billion for the internet in this country will magically solve all the decades long digital divide. We presume our weariness of daily fighting, the seen and unseen AI trappings of tech bros makes us presume when the reality is that 42 million Americans don't have high speed internet, 31% of black Americans don't have internet and 38% of black Americans living in the black rule belt where the majority of black people live in this country don't have any type of internet. So tell me public interest technologies, tell me galactical freedom fighters, how do you have a future AI moment when people don't have the basics foundations for a future because they don't have internet? Where is your discourse there? Hey, we presume. And so I say this, this is what I say. With the weary heart and the weight of my ancestor, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, a black woman educator, an activist, founder of Bethune Cookman College, great thinker, scholar, actor. Oh, I simply shake my head also because we're failing justice, I'm going back to that. I shake my head at the number of funds created by foundations to assist AI threats and I know I'm gonna step on some toes and I may not get any funding, but it has to be said. I shake my head at the number of funds created by foundations to assist with AI threats and opportunities and the sheer lack of immediate help and pooled funds to support states and municipalities with their digital equity plans. Our government is giving away $45 billion to end the digital divide in this country, but to actualize, say actualize. To actualize the funding for communities of color who actually needed funding, other funding is needed to match requirements, to support letters of credit, to do costs and reimbursements from government, to hold accountable Southern states who want to block the funding for urban communities where black and brown people live to get internet. I don't, I'm gonna just stop, let me just look up here. I spent so much time angry at LinkedIn, y'all just be looking at LinkedIn angry. I be trying not to be this way. Every time I see something about AI, AI brother, I just, oh, just, oh. And then I see the good people I know running, so oh, let's fix it, oh. And then I'm like, can we get funding so that everyone can get internet in this country? Can we just teach simple media literacy? And now we're on the brink of the Affordable Connectivity Program, our first internet subsidy in this country going away because our Congress can't figure out how to fund it. Help me to make the math, come on, y'all are signed. The math ain't math thing today, okay? I don't understand how you have an AI future and people don't have internet. And now we have to figure out how do we get, keep 22, how do you unenroll 22 million people from an internet subsidy who had, oh, okay. But somehow we presume that all of these present day funding challenges do not exist and only focus on the future threat of artificial intelligence because the robots are coming. But yet we don't have electricity, we ain't got no, we got lead in our water, but we care about them robots that are yet not here. To the public interest technologists here, all that I'm asking, let me just say this, is that we develop an integrated and nuanced way of talking about the digital divide, racial tech inequities and the building of equitable and liberating artificial intelligent futures for black people in this country. I need nuance. In your platforms, in your speeches to Congress, in your testimonies, none of you mentioned internet access. How dare you? All that I'm asking that we recognize that there is no artificial intelligent future without digital equity and there is no digital equity without racial equity, let me repeat that. Quote me, I guess ex me, in case I Twitter me, tweet me. Don't tweet me, because I, don't tweet me, yeah, keep me off of there. What I'm saying, yeah, I'm gonna say it again, I want you to hear it. There is no artificial intelligent future without digital equity and there is no digital equity without racial equity in this country. Quote me. And if we can do this, then public interest technologists, galactical freedom fighters of a new AIAs, we would not be failing justice. And so to both the traditional social justice advocate and the new kids on the block, public interest technologists, this work against oppressive systems now enshrined in computer code, what my beloved spellman sister, Dr. Ruha Benjamin calls the new gem code, is designed to dehumanize us, to completely exhaust us of our collective joy. And because of this, I started my speech with a history lesson, we going back there because it's not all make sense. A lesson about my ancestors, not only to demonstrate the everyday power of black people to change discriminatory practices of buses and trains, new technologies of their time, but also to teach two lessons. First, my black ancestors proudly did work with black institutions, such as black churches and historically black colleges and universities, affectionately known as HBCUs, because they were counterpublics, say counterpublics. Analog, 2D distributed networks that centered blackness and loved black people. This is an important point, you don't wanna miss this. I believe in my core that in order to develop a nuance and intersectional digital equity, artificial intelligence policy platform, I've given this to y'all, and a larger social movement that Latanya talked about last night in her remarks, that propels it, it will require we work and fund, say fund, black and brown cultural and legacy institutions, because this is where black people feel honored, safe and seen as leaders. And this is what I want to say to thank you and dream for. You are intentionally seeking how to build out this space for HBCUs, for tribal colleges, and for HSI's. It is a noble and a godly like task to do this work because people don't seek us out. Let's give her another round of applause. But I will say this, I get why we don't want, why you don't wanna work with HBCUs. Let me tell you why. You overlook these physical institutions of brick and mortar and only focus on saving our HBCU students, not the institutions, there's a difference, or helping the local activists and not the recreation center on the corner where they actually do the work. Because these cultural physical spaces, they look vintage. They lack the federal communications definition of internet. They implore dracronian processes. They worship at the altar of called Weber's theory of bureaucracy. And they use these, and these historic institutions are completely imperfect, say imperfect, complicated, downright sticky. When it comes to supporting the pristine black or white agenda of the progressive left, that's why you push us away because we don't always agree with you. But we have our reasons. But mark my words, as shown in my history lesson, as it was in the civil rights movement, it will be these lumbering, not always politically woke institutions that spark and sustain a social movement for an inclusive, liberated, artificial, intelligent future, the one that a fool and others are building, it will be these institutions that come to aid at the end of the day and stay when funding runs out. Because they know justice. Because they know justice. The second reason why I started with the history lesson was to talk about how my black ancestors called forth their faith against oppression. I opened my mouth and I called unto the Lord. Their communal faith and biblical stories of deliverance that if God did it for Daniel in the lion's den and if God did it for the children of Israel, then that same God way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh, let my people go. Then surely that same God will do this for enslaved black people. Which is why Harriet Tubman is called the Moses of her people. What I'm trying to say in this moment, in commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King's Junior's dream in his birthday, to both the traditional activists and to the public interest technologists, is that doing this reparative work of justice in building liberating artificial, intelligent futures will require some fight, say fight. It will require some faith, say faith. It will require some joy, say. This is why as the director of black churches for digital equity, because I like to think of myself as a social impact. I can't politically say what I can say, but I have a lot of jobs. This is one of them. If I was among family, I would say something else, but this is why I invest my time translating emerging technologies, whether it's artificial intelligence or virtual reality, or tech policies about broadband to black churches, because they have the substance of justice. Say substance. Oh, yeah, people. Hebrews 111 says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I am going to shorten the verse and say, the substance of things not yet here. Let that settle in for those who are, who could call it. The substance of things not yet here. And this is what is missing from this discourse of artificial intelligence. Whatever we are speaking about, regulation of artificial intelligence or the fear-mongering comments of tech leaders about the dangers of artificial intelligence is the substance of things not yet here is what we need. Examples of the substance of things not yet here is our collective dreaming of freedom. You see, it is easier for me to talk about hope and faith and within churches and mosques and temples because they believe in the unseen and in the substance of the things not yet here. Furthermore, every Sunday or Saturday, they translate concepts of hope, grief and pain through images, stories and allegories, which is why I believe they can also translate and transmute the substance of these issues of digital equity and artificial intelligence by using the same holy and figurative language that they employ on Sunday and Saturday services, such as when the spirit of the Lord said to Ezekiel in the Christian tradition in the valley of dry bones, can these bones live? Let me just say as a child hearing this, I was like, oh, God can bring people back from the dead. And so the spirit of the Lord, not God, but the spirit of the Lord said, can these bones live to Ezekiel? And Ezekiel said, by your word, God, it can live. And then the imagery is that you see God like wrapping tendons and ligaments and forming a human body and this thing that was inanimate became alive. I say to all of the preachers and e-monds I talked to, you can take that same Old Testament story and talk about are robots alive? Can they live? What type of coding do we need to infuse into their digital ligaments so that they can uplift and understand and see black people as people and not deficits as cold? Same thing for me, right? And so you see it is this type of spiritual coding, spiritual pouring that is collective and is aggregated within our historical cultural institutions. So when you only want our students and you don't want our institutions, you miss the substance of things not yet here because they're one and the same. And so for me, this is important because we need to breathe life into the coming robots but also into us. We're tired of fighting against the would-be tech alligarchs and also this work can be deeply demoralizing but we have the substance. And as my 80-year-old grandmother would say, sometimes you have to stir up your soul for the work ahead because this work be about freedom, this work be about justice, this work for both the traditional social justice advocate and for new public interest technologists, it is about freedom. And freedom is of substance and of people and of non-technical things. Therefore, just as Dr. Martin Luther King did in his speech delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation's capital standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963, I leave you with a dream. You know, every good pastor got to close out again, just had a digital pastor in a moment. I dream of a United National Black Tech ecosystem reminiscent of Tulsa's Black Wall Street before it was annihilated by white supremacy. Reminiscent of Dr. Mary McLaughlin's Black Cabinet during the Great Depression. A United National Black Tech ecosystem fraught with the ideological debates of Dr. W. Dabors and Booker T. Washington. Shall we invest time in tech trades of solar peddling and digital fabrications or dive into machine learning language models? Interwoven digital tropes with writing past movement wrongs of sexism and homophobia by investing in black women and black queer leadership as we build a digital future. I dream of a flesh and blood Wakanda-like United Black Tech ecosystem that spans the world's black political thought in artificial intelligence. Weaving between historical black diasporic justice movements, black nationalism, pan-Africanism, integration ideologies, negritude, liberation theologies, pan-African political thought, hornest encode to teach machines to truly love and honor the melanated hues of black skin. Black genius and black brilliance will cascade down the red hills of Georgia and in the red deltas of Mississippi, deconstructing years of an ever-widening racial wealth gap because we have fostered through traditional sussus, come on sussus, and black church tithing before crowdfunding. Black, we would have created the first black unicorn billion-dollar tech company. Machines and AI were rushed to greet us as living, breathing black people and not as data deficits in their code. I dream that this movement will be led by black faith communities, pastors and emons and rabbis, all organizing a social movement because they know future is their future. This is my favorite part, though, of the dream that I'm giving, mind you. I dream as baby Soogs dreamed in Tony Morrison's The Beloved. I love the book in general, but there's one part of the book that I just love more so. So Baby Soogs was the slaves would gather in the clearing. Let me just give you the context. They would gather in the clearing and they would have their own church. They would talk about scriptures in the Bible that gave them life and it was like a counter public space. So this is it. Baby Soogs, it started that way, laughing children, dancing men, crying women, then it got mixed up. Women started crying and dance. Men sat down and cried, these are slaves, children danced, women laughed and then they all through exhaustion fell down into the clearing, breathing in each other's joy. In the silence that followed, Baby Soogs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart. She did not tell them to clean up their lives or go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the bless of the earth and it's inheriting meek or it's glory bound pure. Listen, she told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they, the only grace justice, the only grace justice that they could have was the grace justice that they could see, that they could imagine. The ultimate prophecy for black people has always been that we would be seen as human beings, not as objects in chattel slavery, as people, not as objects in your defective, your defective code. I am a black woman seer. I claim that it is who I am. I stand in the tradition of my ancestors and the black dreamers that I've mentioned in my speech that I've named. These futures seem freedom justice black people. We build tech ecosystem that have not yet been seen or yet to exist. This is prophetic work, prophetic digital work of fluid. It is deeply spiritual. It is saying that both in the present and in the future that black lives matter. Computers will know us. We will be seen. This is my dream. This is my prophecy. I opened my mouth and I called unto the Lord. I shall go. I will go. I am gonna see what justice is gonna bring. Thank you.