Torn Apart / Separados: immigrant detention after “zero tolerance”
Torn Apart / Separados visualizes the geo-spatial, financial, and infrastructural dimensions of immigrant detention in the US in the wake of the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. The map above is just one of their visualizations of the locations of ICE facilities and private detention centers, based on aggregating and cross-referencing publicly available data.
With this information, perhaps our communities will begin to see the magnitude of the threat to human dignity occurring on our watch and the complex machinery driving government policy. Perhaps rather than feeling helpless, we can recognize that we have skills to tread these troubled waters, particularly in collaboration with each other.
— Roopika Risam, in What We Have, What We Can:
It’s an important project. The data’s extremely useful for activists, advocates, and journalists. If you have the skills and a bit of time to help, Torn Apart / Separados offers a chance to make a huge impact in a humanitarian crisis. Here’s a few links with more information:
- Textures has context from the project team.
- Emily Dreyfuss’ Wired article ICE Is Everywhere: Using Library Science to Map the Child Separation Crisis is an outstanding overview of the project’s rapid evolution since the original DM discussion between digital librarian Alex Gill and historian Manan Ahmed.
- Danica Savonick’s Torn Apart/Separados Hackathon & HASTAC Meet-up Recap describes the design sprint and hackathon at the Digital Humanities 2018 conference in Mexico City, and includes a list of short- and long-term project ideas.
- Lindsay McKenzie’s Digital humanities for social good, on Inside Higher Ed, has some excellent context for how Torn Apart / Separados and other other rapidly produced and highly topical digital humanities projects are challenging perceptions of the field.
So please consider getting involved. Sylvia Fernández’ Torn Apart / Separados Call for Contributors and Reviewers, on HASTAC, describes several different ways people can help — as well as surveys for allies, activist and advocacy organizations and lawyers and legal advisors asking how the project’s resources could be useful to their work and whether they have any data or other resources to contribute.
And please also help get the word out — share the links above (or this post), and like and RT key tweets on the #TornApart and #Separados hashtags.
Originally published at A Change Is Coming.
