 This panel is on partnering and so Pitt requires that we pay close attention to the impact of technology on human lives and communities Particularly those the most vulnerable marginalized in society Pitt invites us to engage those people in communities throughout all stages of a technology's lifespan from the identification of Which community needs technology can respond to to the design development testing deployment and governance of that technology Here members and friends of Pitt UN will discuss how they've established and grown collaborative partnerships With civil society organizations to foster individual and community rights advanced justice and build resilience Thank you everyone for coming What we're gonna do is we will go down the line or break the rule and we'll go down the line in introductions Starting with David here to my left. Oh, okay Hey everyone, it's really nice to be here. I'm David. I'm an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz where I direct the tech for good lab I design technologies for education work and community engagement My interest in pits started during my PhD at Stanford when we worked on different participatory democracy initiatives and it was during that time when I also started feeling the tension between academic work that needs to generate knowledge valued in your particular discipline and You know supporting community projects and needs that often requires, you know working across the disciplines having longer term Engagement for bringing ideas from needs all the way to Deployed, you know sustainable solutions and so that Led me to some soul searching during my PhD like oh, it's my PhD worth it. You know, what am I doing and to finally? Thinking that maybe we could bridge that tension if it's possible And if I can work across disciplines if I can develop new models new organizational structures that can connect research and student learning and Advancing community projects. So that's what I've been doing Since starting my faculty job. I am running several programs for Expanding experiential learning for students and trying to connect that to supporting, you know, real needs I have over a hundred undergraduate students in my research lab Outside of a course and I run a Exploratory reading group program that helps, you know students as early as first years to explore You know the different ways that computing is impacting society and how Faculty engage with that and then as a pet you in grantee I also have been you know restructuring my courses to explore this concept of a course-based Community consultancy we organize the whole class around delivering a large project for a non-profit and Also in my lab build tools to think about how we can make that Scalable and sustainable So it's been really fun. I've been learning a lot and still learning a lot. I'm looking forward to the conversation with everyone Yeah, this is my first panel also, so I'm a little bit a little bit nervous Good afternoon. Good morning. Are we before noon? I guess it depends on what time zone you're from I'm Amy Sanders. I'm an associate professor of journalism and law at the University of Texas Austin And it's my distinct privilege to be here as a representative of the scales open knowledge network We are a group of 12 interdisciplinary scholars from data science computer science journalism law business engineering public policy Whose project is designed to increase access and transparency to court records? We started the project with very generous funding from the National Science Foundation And we've continued to do work with funding from pit you in so thank you very much We have created a machine learning tool that is designed to do large-scale analysis of court records And as some of you in the room may know Federal court records, which are of course public records are behind a paywall That require you to pay 10 cents a page to get access to those records and our initial work has been really important in determining Disparities in granting access to fee waivers to get into federal court And so we've been working with lots of pro bono legal organizations and others To find out what they need to know about the legal system in order to better represent their clients and in order to work with policy policy shops like Chris's and others To change the way we know about the courts and and how we get access to justice My name is Nathan Williams. I'm an assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology I work at our Golisano Institute for Sustainability You know Pit is a new concept to me. Although I've come to realize that it's what I've been doing all along I just didn't know what it was called. I I do a lot of work with underserved communities in terms of sort of electricity access. How can we leverage? clean renewable decentralized energy technologies to Sort of close that energy access gap. I've done a lot of work in sub-Saharan Africa the project that's being supported by Pit, which I'm very grateful for Is a partnership with Navajo Technical University and an organization a nonprofit called the Energy Sovereignty Institute in New Mexico? And the goal there is to understand how you know to create a framework for how renewable energy Can be a public interest technology that serves the needs of tribal communities and reinforces their sovereignty tribes have this unique status and this country as First people there's sovereign self-government communities But there's a long history of that not being respected and there's plenty of examples in the energy space where energy technology is being exploited Not to their benefit but actually to their detriment And so how can tribes exert their sovereignty over their energy resources to their benefit and how can that as well? Reinforce their sovereignty by making them more self-sufficient in terms of their energy supply and so Yeah, there's a few pieces of this project. We are one just you know with any technological solution. It really requires starting in the community and understanding the problem as they define it and so We're doing interviews with tribal leaders and energy professionals Trying to understand what does energy sovereignty mean to them? What is the goal? What does an energy sovereign future look like we're partnering with Navajo Tech and some of their students as well to do this work One of the things that come out of that work very strongly is that Education is critical if you want to be a sovereign community You need to have the skills and abilities to make decisions Informed decisions by yourself and not rely on expertise from other people that might not have your best interest in mind part of what we're doing is working with but talented Indigenous filmmaker to make a series of educational videos in the Navajo language About renewable energy. What is it? How does it work? How can you benefit from it? Very excited about that the tribal utility has expressed interest in using those videos As well as doing some case studies to work through the energy sovereignty Institute's network to sort of spread the word I'm like, what are our tribes doing? What can you learn? What are the successes and the failures? That we can sort of build on to build that knowledge base And so I'm trying to build that conversation in that community That's on my name is Carlton Williams. I'm an assistant clinical professor of law at Cornell University at the law school And I run a movement lawyer in clinic and I think Movement lawyer might not be a thing that people have heard of because even in the law school when I say it people say What do you actually do? But it's really it's very pit. It's connecting It's understanding that Solving social justice issues Access to justice issues. We must first start with talking to people who are directly affected by those things people who are organized in their local communities Addressing those problems. There are so many examples. I wrote down a whole bunch of them But I'm not gonna do that in three minutes that we could List through that that people are trying to address in their communities and many Organizations trying to address those but sometimes that that gap right because when we are Experts in our fields or so-called experts in our fields. We say, oh, well, we know right like I went to school for a very long time We went to school for a very long time. I know about the technological solution. I know about the legal solution I know about the policy solution right, but I said in a very simple way The person with the boot on their neck knows what the problem is right and I'll just say because I'm gonna point to it and I brought a friend of mine from Cambridge just ten months ago just about that's the Wynn hotel So a little bit over to the left of that Syed Faisal young Bangladesh American Recent immigrants to the United States Was killed by the Cambridge Police Department. I think January 4th of this year and that there are so many issues of Attempted technological solutions with that so like in recent years police having body cameras And many other actually in in that in that interaction police use so-called less than lethal weapons To initially try to diffuse the situation which didn't work right they shot these Rubber metal or excuse me wooden rubber coated blocks at him to when he was having a mental health crisis Obviously that didn't help and then they just shot him with traditional bullets and murdered him Murdered is my word the Cambridge Police Department justice system are not using the word murdered after an inquest, but I worked for a very long time here in Boston with the the American Civil Liberties Union and We people might know or I to brag a little bit about people might have seen the Netflix series Called how to fix a drug lab scandal There was a major drug lab scandal here in Boston with forensic laboratory testing on drugs People were fraudulently Giving results on what drugs were in criminal cases that required massive amounts of data Ultimately it led to the dismissal of about 40,000 criminal cases That were fraudulently. Well, I wouldn't say fraudulently prosecuted but based on fraudulent evidence that was presented But that took when we first started that and it was a bunch of lawyers and we said if we have 40,000 records, they're also in four different departments and they're not I'll just say technology They're not keyed on anything because there were police report numbers on this side and on the other side There were like lab numbers and nobody decided to join them. So it was a massive effort brought in many many data scientists To try to solve that problem, but in all of those Every time I've been involved in a project I've always said we need to talk to the people who are Absolutely affected who are in the courts who are or were the criminal defendants and say and their families and say what is happening to you People who are organized in communities with this was in Western mass and also here in and around Boston How we can try to fix those problems and what things people are encountering on a day-to-day basis For those for those social justice issues I'd be remiss if I didn't say I'm also an expert in residence here at the spark program with with Ziva and we're doing work on right now a project to to document the internal affairs records salaries of Members of the Boston Police Department. So when there are positive things that happen or negative things that happen in journalists Public defenders Prosecutors want to know who is this officer has he has she have they been in trouble before are they one of the people who makes You know a line-level officer in Boston that makes $390,000 a year that does exist in Boston and why does that person make that much money not to say that that that just Seems a lot of money for a police officer So that we're developing that data that database. I'm putting it online getting that through some public records and collecting it from other areas And we'll soon be ready Some of the stuff we're working on but understanding that you know working directly with directly affected people who are organizing their communities is Always where the answer is going to come from always Hi everyone. My name is Chris Lewis. I'm The president of public knowledge. We are not a member of pit and UN but I've been reading and following about you guys over the course of the the last four or five years and What we are is we're a policy shop as Amy said we're based in Washington DC We're a public interest nonprofit working on internet and tech policy and law and I Think I'm on this panel of kind of to represent the broader civil society groups outside of pit UN Which is interesting because there's a diverse set of groups outside of the just the pit UN part of what I would Consider the public interest community. So that you know, there's the pit UN types of the researchers the academics. There's folks like us I would count New America because we work with them all the time Who are diving into policy talking to policymakers? Working in coalition to get it answers Yes, doing policy research, but often built on the the academic research that many of you do And we also have a large Cohort of colleagues who have other strengths and weaknesses that build out the field folks who have grass roots organizing activists Small sectors of communities who care about public interest values, but from a specific perspective be it a racial justice perspective or a One of my favorites is the fandom community You talked about open access To the government records we try to dabble and work on some of that But we also work with the fandom community who wants open access to creative works because they build on each other And how do you get policy that allows that the library community? I can keep going on where Folks who touch folks on the ground who are using technology. That's a whole part of the civil society public interest field and then even folks who do direct services and One of my favorite parts of that community That is growing and rightfully so is what we refer to as the digital equity movement These are the folks when you hear about the digital divide and and we fought in Washington for billions of dollars to help get people connected to broadband These are the people who are on the ground in communities who are in and of communities Helping people get connected helping them to sign on to subsidies to get broadband helping them get devices learning how to use These devices learning how to use broadband so that communities can Use technology for its highest and best public interest uses so civil society and the public interest community is broad And I'm glad to be up here representing it so Rather than starting with the three-pit UN technology projects Carlton, I'm gonna go back to you and and Nathan I would ask you specifically to be ready to respond as well because I Think we're talking about direct engagement with people directly affected as a principal What does it look like to actually go build a good partnership with the community? What do you need to be thinking about where the pitfalls and what should this community be thinking about and keeping in mind as they as they Embark on these kinds of community-based partnerships Many things So first I think we're all part of communities right and I'll say the thing that I say to my students, right? So when students are in the law school first year second year third year or other, you know LLM students or people getting Other legal degrees. I say you're in this community. Most people. I mean in Ithaca Most people are not from Ithaca that are going to a Cornell law school very few are but I say you're in this community now There are things that are happening in this community that you know about that you may want to do when you graduate That you're interested in that may direct you affect you directly, right? There's a tenants rights movement going on in Ithaca because rents for being a small town are wildly $4,000 for a two bedroom apartment in a town of 30,000 people seems expensive to me so there's a strong tenants and many people are being sent out of their homes because Cornell students are can pay right so people realize that sometimes they realize that they're involved and they were like We should try to do something about this and so we all have that impact on the world and And maybe we're impacted or maybe we're maybe causing that We're doing both and finding out what those things are right? So if you are let's say you're a student here in Boston And you're not from Boston find out what's going on in Boston find out what is connected to you know Where you came from before what things you were interested in maybe your religious community ethnic community linguistic community? Racial community gender there's so many things going on There's a protest going on actually just got a text when I was on my way here because someone's like You have to represent these people tomorrow in Cambridge, but at a technology company you can find out about it I'm not gonna talk about it because we're gonna get a big argument, but there's a protest going on right now at Weapons technology company in Cambridge right and a bunch of people are getting arrested at that right and I know for a fact Because they want me to represent those people that most of the people are not from Boston right? But those are things there are so many things going on anywhere you are anywhere and being connected to those Communities being involved in those communities finding out what's going on in those communities And expanding that circle right is something I think just for us to stay healthy is like sort of Ethically and morally healthy is an incredibly important thing, but also I always When I do this when I go to meetings and people like oh, it's really great You know you're the lawyer and you came here. I'm like I'm here to find out what's going on You're doing a thing for me right for a long time. I Volunteer taught a class at the South Bay House of Corrections, which is the jail facility here in in by South Bay Plaza here in Boston and I volunteer taught a class with with some other folks and I would tell the students I say I learn I know so much about internal jail security Because I would go through it and then a lot of times our students wouldn't come to class and they were like oh unit H Is on lockdown? Oh, why they locked out? Well, they found this something somewhere And I'm like so the whole unit is on lockdown they're like oh, that's what they do and I know that I wouldn't there's no manual That I would have read that about and I would tell my students I said we learn so much from you and it's not I'm not trying to be gracious or friendly or nice I'm saying we actually learn from you you learn from us and in all circumstances You're gonna do that and I think valuing that is an incredible thing But also leaving that the same way as you might go to the gym the same way as you might get a coffee in the morning Being involved in community in whatever way and Understanding that that's a part of what we need to do to do the work the technological work the legal work the policy work that we do Right and I think it can seem like too much time sometimes But it's that is a necessary thing and it will it you will be better at what you do If you spend that time if you spend that time and make those connections Nathan if you want to maybe pull on that string and talk about you know What that looks like across time scales geography scales and the work that you're doing sure yeah I mean, I I do a lot of work with Under-resourced communities that are not my own I don't come from and you know, I think I don't have a blueprint for how to make that work. I think it's very unique to the situation in the context But it is something to be very careful about I think it requires a lot of patience a lot of humility That you know sometimes we think we've identified the problem and we have to listen when they say that's not the problem, right? You know, I think working with civil society is crucial because we get pulled in lots of directions as faculty members And we don't have the time to spend on the ground on the front line That people in civil society do so having those partners that are sort of your ears on the ground and can make that Connection and and help establish that trust to I mean working with indigenous communities There are good reasons why they shouldn't trust someone like me walking into their Communities saying I'm gonna solve your problems Then somebody showing up with a clipboard Communities right here to help. Yeah, exactly. So I think it requires a lot of caution. It requires good partnerships. It requires Building trust in communities. I most of I work mostly with PhD students doing research and most of them come from the communities That my work is trying to serve and they understand things that I don't understand The student working on this kit you and project is from the Navajo Nation. She's a member of the tribe and so You know, and the other thing that I found is that you know people Complain sometimes it's difficult to bring students from these communities into academia I Guess my experience has been if you give them opportunities to do work that speaks to them That's meaningful for their communities. That's how you bring them in You don't just hope that they apply to do your work on. I don't know quantum physics or which is great important But you know not gonna get everybody excited You know, so I guess that you know patients partners humility And you know bringing in people from the community to be an integral part of the work And so well David Amy do you want to comment Chris to comment on this one? Well, I think I really liked what everyone said I think one thing that I You know feel for my own experience is just taking that slow deliberate approach to building long-term Relationships and finding ways to create alignment. I think that One of the first steps we took when we started, you know feeling like okay Maybe we're ready to connect our student, you know process to supporting community projects is we actually first started by running a Matchmaking program where we would you know interview community members understand their needs and instead of serving directly ourselves We were helping them to navigate all the existing programs that already exist on campus Helping them, you know reach out make those connections and actually by viewing it as you know Maybe our project can support these other projects that enabled us to learn about, you know, the different needs Figure out. What's the right partnership that can have a long-term alignment and while we're doing that? We can actually you know be delivering value for the community members at that time I think that was really helpful and there may will be these disconnects between the time scales of technology and the time Scales of engagement, right? You know technology goes fast engagement is slow, right? So Amy actually I'm gonna see do you want to pull on these threads and talk about you know, because you're actually building the tool Absolutely in partnership with the community and then and David I'm gonna come back to you because you're also doing some tool Building I want to talk about tool building in this context, but please so I think one of the real challenges that That presents itself when you're working with community partners, and I would say pulling on what everybody said my personal keys are Respect and curiosity and acknowledging the position of privilege that I'm in because our partners are Journalists our partners are Public defenders our partners are folks doing pro bono legal work It's really easy for me to sit in the ivory tower as a tenured professor and say oh my gosh my life is so busy I have so many things I need to do in fact We've we found ourselves doing that a little bit at the table making excuses for why these connections can be so hard and and You know my community partners our community partners have fires raging around them Like anyone who's doing this kind of public interest work knows that that there are really really massive Problems happening that my partners have to attend to at that moment and so I Have to be really good about explaining to them that we can't build a machine learning tool overnight. I Have to be really good at respecting the fact that when they don't get back to my email It's not because they don't think the project's important It's because something has caught fire that they have to attend to the protest across the way that they have to go to immediately to help the people who are arrested, right and so When I get that time with them, I have to respect that time I have to you know make that time as valuable as possible and so I think you know for me It's always asking them. What can we do for you short term? What can we do for you medium term and and what would you like from us long term and I think being open and Upfronts about the work that you're doing and the limitations of the work that you're doing We're fighting a battle with the federal government right now because they want us to keep buying access to court records And so we have partners who are saying well, it's great that you've got 880,000 dockets, but we actually need these you know hundred and fifty over here I have to be transparent with those folks and say I Want those for you, too? But you don't have the money and we don't have the money, so I'm gonna have to go find the money And that's gonna take some time So I think that relationship once you build the trust Honesty is so key to that relationship and not Over-promising because these these folks that we're working with have been disappointed so many times Like I can't be the one to do that again In the project I worked on once we did a qualitative and mixed methods analysis back to the people that we had partnered with And the number one question that came out was what are you not telling us? Right, and it's in start stopping and thinking about what am I not telling you because I think you understand it Or I think you have that knowledge already is a really good place to go So David David didn't talk about his work on coordination costs But his is one of the things he's doing in the tool space is around Coordinations costs that would otherwise be managed by hierarchies and so I'm curious How do you how does this interact when you actually do a project with a nonprofit? Yeah, so maybe to explain a little bit about My work one of the things that I am really interested in is how to design organizational structures that connect You know integrate in students who are still learning And actually be able to connect that work to the projects and advancing Progress even when students are coming in and out and there's a lot of those coordination costs. I think that There's so many different levels. I would say I think like within a class, you know in a particular Quarter there is thinking about, you know, how do I take this class and Divide them up into different teams and you know how in a particular Week I might have students working on different roles that build on each other Instead of the traditional like one homework assignment, you know for that week and I'm designing that to Build so that someone who's learning the first time the second week they can repeat and learn or if they are already Kind of mastering that they can now take on the role of a mentor in the second week Then there's also like across quarters and thinking about how You know if you have students who are there for one quarter and then they're gone That can be a big cost for the nonprofits a big barrier and I think that I like to think about the projects not as one quarter projects, but as multi-year that I you know, I have this Student cohort that is you know working on this but then the outcomes they produce We want to design in a way so that the next class can take and build on it or the next year Or my research lab can you know connect with it. So just really thinking about All those different levels and how to make that continuity Be a decent segue to to where I think I'd like to have the panel spend the last ten minutes And I'm gonna Chris I'm gonna call on you a lot of projects get funded a small number of projects become organizations a small number of organizations become institutions and I think Chris is the leader and steward of an institution public knowledge has been here for a long time It's been in matrix with a lot of projects a lot of communities a lot of organizations I'm sure that's not easy and so and I and I'm gonna raise the s-word of sustainability as well So what is it? Yeah, sorry. I'm sorry, man That's the nice word, but what can make what what can you talk about cash money? Doesn't matter what business you're in you're in the cash business right the if you're making payroll And that's but that's part of the challenge of doing this kind of work is the nonprofit has a different set of goals from the community Has a different set of goals from the project and so can you sort of talk to us about that tension and what you've done at PK? To manage across that and then I invite everyone else on the panel to just start jumping in and ignore me Let's Chris's his words. That's that's hard. I could you know just done Let's see where do I start Yeah, we're 22 years old as a policy shop and so in the digital rights tech policy Like tenure we were founded When everyone was really optimistic about technology open technology the internet's gonna change the world and It means that a lot of the values that we've worked on for years and continue to work on like open access to information People think differently about them now now that we've seen some of the harms that the internet brings and so The way that's manifested for us is that we've seen the field change and also the funding go in different directions and so There's competition for funding. There's competition for projects and then there's just the fact that the pace the speed of policy work Is different than the pace of technology and it's definitely different than the pace of what's happening on the ground with people Who are impacted in using the technology? So you have the the pop-up fires that people are talking about, you know real problems that are happening in community You have the the fast-paced of technology and then you have the disappointment when Change at the policy level takes a long time and so institutional dollars are really important to make sure that the power that needs to be built to Change and make policy Is there over the course of a decade decades even because the fights keep coming back And you don't want to disappoint a community when they say hey, I thought we solved this eight years ago or worse sometimes we see Because of the way technology is changing The values are being lifted up and it may not all be about Openness and access now and now it may be about Accountability and Content moderation and and bias and rightfully so how do you get the money and the institutions to take that long look and Think about balancing those values because you don't want to lose what the technology brings as a benefit But it needs to be accountable For how it impacts community. So it's a real challenge To align those I think it takes cross cross Sector conversations and and it'd be great if funders fund those cross-sector conversations so that the different parts of civil society can align The timelines that we're on and even the values that we may be lifting up one group may be working on one value But not another and they need to see how how they interact with each other because I Guarantee you in Washington and I'll stop on this point I guarantee you in Washington that civil society only wins when we band together I'm up there. I used to be a registered lobbyist. I now have some who work for me We have a handful of public interest lobbyists in Washington, DC each company has like hundreds that they contract out for and so Sometimes we're on the side of some industry players. Sometimes we're not but we are always outgunned and so We're successful when we work in coalition and we we consolidate our power I I'll join in on that and say I told you that we're Scales as a group of over a dozen academics We're a dozen academics at Seven different institutions now We're at at Texas Northwestern Georgia State University of Richmond Oh my gosh. I'm embarrassed. I'm forgetting the others I'm One of the things that we have really thoughtfully done in terms of leveraging powers Texas is a is a Hispanic serving institution Georgia State is a historically black serving institution Find your partners and and leverage everything that you can leverage to reach out to funders to get Benefits and access to communities We realize that the technology that we're using We're creating is is really going to impact historically marginalized communities the most and we also realized very unfortunately that most of us working in that space do not belong to one of those communities and so how do we use our students and leverage their knowledge Right, how do we bring those people and train the group of leaders that's going to replace us that has that knowledge? and so I think thinking outside of your little sphere and finding people who have That lived experience Makes you stronger and we've had to bond together because some of our institutions are quite small And don't have resources to get federal grants. So Find your partners and treat them well I think one thing that I Find really helpful and I'm I'm a novice compared to you know where they are where I'm starting to feel the tensions of needing It to be sustainable, but I found that it's really helpful to Try to find ways to integrate with other things that exist out there already like we were doing Some of our user research projects with nonprofits. It was really helpful when we Discovered that you know the Santa Cruz County grant-making process for nonprofits required the nonprofits to have you know thoughtful Reflection on their metrics for impact and to be talking about how they are using those that data for Iterating and so we realized that if we could adjust our user research process to help the nonprofits position themselves better for the you know county grant-making process Then that was providing value for everyone who's kind of creating all these alignments and incentives And so I've just found that finding ways to think beyond like my direct partnership to how that can help them connect better with other people just creates a lot of Help for sustainability Can jump in briefly as the other junior faculty member on the panel early career Yeah, well, I know you talked to But you know, I mean there is you know building these things requires patience it requires time My university media department loves this sort of thing my tenure committee doesn't I mean they say they care But do they really care? You know, what are we getting rewarded for is this work something that's actually being Appreciated as sort of a primary outcome not something we sort of do nicely on the side In addition to our publications and our teaching and all these other things and so, you know I think there's some thinking to do at an institutional level. How do we view this work and how do we reward it? Or is it something we want to incentivize because sometimes it's not I mean something I want to do so I do it But it's not necessarily as a plug to funders. It is rewarded when we attach it to funding. So have us out I will I will second that patient funding. Yeah, they should make funders were different color name tags You'll never be alone at lunch So we're gonna take audience Q&A in a second So please if you have something that you've got in mind start thinking about a question and looking for some of the microphone But Carlton I'm gonna ask you as we in we've talked about what's hard And what we have to do, right? You've been in a lot of these community partnerships for a long time like what what's the upside of this when you do it, right? So I'm just gonna say I Frequently when I meet I'm gonna use the word civilians like people who don't do this kind of work They go, oh, let's be really depressing You know you're working with like Muslim communities that are being oppressed and immigrant communities that are being deported and people many of my Colleagues work on death penalty issues and people who are being executed literally executed like how depressing is that work? I'm always very confused by this question But if I just watch if I watched the news of the last three days, and I wasn't like able to do something It would I would lose my mind. I can't I'm not gonna leave the house I'm gonna stay under the couch and and curl up in a ball But being able to leverage technology being able to use the law being able to you know do trainings and and educate people over COVID I Have an identical twin brother who's also a lawyer So it's if you can have an identical twin It's a good idea and also I hate the saying when people say I you know There's not two of me if there's two of you you have like five times more work But we got a call from folks from the Wampanoag Community here Indigenous people here on Cape Cod and they said you know we we go clam digging on our traditional lands that we don't not treaty rights We have aboriginal rights to it like before any treaty They're like we were never that was never taken away from us So they go clam digging regularly right they do it on very very very wealthy people's Beach access so you can imagine what happens a lot of amazing videos on the internet of these things happening And they said can you do a training for us and I'm like about clam digging They were like no about access and like what rights we have and how we should engage with police I'm like engage with the police. I got you we know how to do this that same week We got a call my brother and I got a call or email or somebody called somebody from Some women in Western Massachusetts in in Boston, Massachusetts who are sex workers and they said we are regularly harassed by police They fake or they make up charges to arrest us and they force us to do things and I was like holy shit Sorry, I was like that's I didn't know that that's horrifying and they said can you help us and I'm like whatever I'm gonna say exactly what I said to them. I was like whatever the fuck you need I was like we will do anything that you need Thank you and and even right now like it makes me tingle. I'm like this is like I get to do this I get to do this right and That I feel blessed to be and I'll say actually this because it's We judge people by appearance, but I am so I'm African-American and I'm from the Narragansett Nation ancestry from native from Rhode Island and When all of the people came on the phone call from the Wampanoag Nation, which is our sister nation, right? I Looked at him and I looked at my brother. We're on zoom and I was like it's funny and they're like why you laughing I was like because y'all look like our cousins right because all of the native nations I don't know if people know the native nations in New England are Historically for very long time were mixed with African-Americans because when when I was gonna say escaped slaves But I say freedom seekers when freedom seekers, you know Actuated their own freedom that people fled and they went to indigenous nations, right? So those are answers. So I'm like y'all are our cousins, right? And to me like it just even saying it now it just warms my heart to be able to do that and I think that Understanding that and understanding the value that comes from that is is it's just a blessing to be able to do that and to have Some degree or some funding or some training and to be able to do that with communities is Is just incredibly encouraging all of the time and and I just feel lucky. So when people say thank you for helping me I'm like this is what we do. Yeah, this is what we do So let's get a quick round of applause for that sentiment We're gonna work our way just across the room until we run out of time. So please Hey everybody, my name is Leah Alexander. I work at my Harry Medical College. So we're a historically black academic health center in Nashville, Tennessee So I just got here and I don't want to cause a whole bunch of problems First I want to say thank you to Elena from Swanee because that's how we kind of got our first Introduction into this we were an early partner in their data science lab stuff And then also I need to recognize black tech futures because without that work in that group I don't know that this would have been prioritized for us But at my Harry, you know, we have a real strong commitment to community engagement. I mean, I'm in public health I don't know nothing too much about tech, but I do know public health It makes me nervous when we're talking about underserved under resourced Minority populations and they are not in the room so I really want us to You know find some time to think about what other strategies might be So that we bring our partners with us, right? So for the panel Because I do want to make this a question What would it look like, you know the resources that you need for you to bring your partners with you? I have colleagues and I try to do this myself when there's resources I don't want to go talk about my research in the community without a plan to build Capacity of my partners and that means bringing them with me when I go places if they you know are interested And it's not just a token thing, but it's a commitment, right? So I know we're hopefully I'll be invited back next year But it's you know Resources for our community that we're working with this room is wonderful But it feels very academic to me and we're talking about underserved people and we're doing them a Injustice by not having resources for them to be with us and correct me if I'm wrong y'all seem real professional and academic But I could be wrong right I could be wrong, but thank you, but I think the question is Thank you very much. I think the question is what is it? What would it look like? Yeah, and so let's and we have another question. We have a couple of other But let's let's run through that real quick. I think that's a question that we want to answer Well, can I can I start because this room is very professional and academic? But it's a great room and so as long as you know, we're asking that question to answer I think we can get there When I talked about cross sector or cross value conversations, that's what I'm talking about There are some places where this is starting to happen, but we have to go we need to invite folks here we need to go to where they're convening and we need to go in the community and You know just in you know, I don't know health sciences, but just in the internet Tech space know where I go to connect with folks, you know the digital equity movement I was talking about folks who are on the ground helping people get connected. They have a conference It's called net inclusion run by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance It's my favorite conference to go to every year because I'm one of three or four people who does policy work and advocacy in DC And there's 800 people there who are touching lives Internationally there's rights con that has a mix of tech People like me and people who are on the ground touching folks, but it's very diverse and it's a global community We need more of that and we need the those sorts of conversations to be funded on Everyone's turf I guess is where I'm going Very quick and then we'll take one more question I one of the things that I think is really important and I'm speaking to a room of academics So I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna piss y'all off Stop using free student labor Write students into your grants Because my students at the University of Texas at Austin are working 20 hours a week so they can feed their families And so they can send money back to their families They can't work for free and so if I'm not paying them $15 an hour They're going somewhere else and so we don't get to come communities by bringing in students to work for free So stop doing it Because we can't make them pay for internship credit to work with us that privileges rich people funders insist that there is student support in your grants All the students on my research team come from the Rio Grande Valley And I love working with them and they connect me to people that I would never ever otherwise be connected to We start propping students up to become academics to become leaders in undergrad spaces and you do that by paying them and giving them meaningful experiences not by making them work for free Amy that's how that's how I lose I go in at law clinics and we recruit those students folks from hopefully from your programs to come do policy work We'll train you to do policy advocacy, but I don't know how many students at Georgetown's clinic or NYU or wherever where the or Howard Where they do an internship with us, but then they're going big law And it's about the money We have time for one more question Hi, my name is Hannah. I go to Berkeley. My question is for Chris How often do you have your public interest lobbyist package their concerns to meet the needs also of corporate interests and When do you have a? Hardline to say no That's a great question Because I'll just speak for public knowledge But across the field like our money comes from a mix of philanthropy and corporate donors The way we handle it is we cap how much we'll take from any one company and then we tell the companies You don't get to determine what positions we take or what issues we advocate on if you're in agreement with us We'll work in coalition with you because power Consolidated power wins in DC And so we've had companies walk away and come back a decade later and it's just we live with it So that's how we approach it, but You have to be structured and you have to be funded in a way that allows you to do that Yeah So I'd like to say thank you again to our panel. Can we get a round of applause, please?