Learning to be a radical developer: lessons from the Zero waste movement

I’m currently on my way back from the Post-Landfill Action Network’s Students for Zero Waste 2018 conference. I’ve been thinking about blogging my experiences, so here’s a nice opportunity to comment on all the things that I learned, and the effect it had on some of my own personal ideology. I think I’ve come away with four basic principles.

1. It is critical to attend conferences far outside of our area of expertise.
2. Supporting survivors of sexual violence is vital to any and all activist movements, and this is a unique problem due to several characteristics of activist communities.
3. While there is no “saving the world” with technology, there is mindfully supporting activist work via technology; and I am refining some best practices as a radical developer.
4. I have radical optimism about the future.

It is critical to attend conferences far outside of our area of expertise.

I have been developing a sense of identity that revolves around reducing harm. I’d say that a lot of this work has focused on technology equity, challenging structural violence, and trying to make ethical decisions under late capitalism. But by attending a Zero Waste Conference (the conference itself was also zero waste), I’ve now added an entirely new radical way of thinking into my repertoire. I was surrounded by passionate, hardworking, creative thinkers. Each of them pushing the boundaries of what we accept as a society (e.g. rejecting the idea that non-recyclable materials should ever even be produced). I’m very interested in systems that allow humans to have equitable and safe experiences; my particular area of expertise is in computing. But this conference allowed me to situate my work in the environmental movement. Inequity, structural violence, and systems that cause harm are perpetuated by misinformed beliefs (“recycling is sustainable.”, “we need plastic”, “incinerating trash is acceptable”). I was genuinely provoked to challenge my base assumptions about how I operate within our American and global system. As we design solutions, participatory design with the communities most affected is vital. The overlap between the Zero Waste Movement and technology equity work was profound.

Supporting survivors of sexual violence is vital to any and all activist movements, and this is a unique problem due to several characteristics of activist communities.

I had the privilege of leading a particularly intense workshop at the Zero Waste Conference. My experience organizing protests against sexual and intimate partner violence give me the unique perspective of an organizer, an activist, a survivor, and a systems designer. I’ve learned many “tricks of the trade” in organizing activism, including logistical things like making sure there is water for everyone and hiring interpreters for deaf attendees, etc. But my biggest takeaway has been that we don’t know how to handle when our identities conflict. There is a false belief that “good guys do good” and “bad guys do bad” and that makes it easy to have theoretical justice. I challenge you to think of how we can effectively address violence within activist communities (which is absolutely not hypothetical).

Activists often:

• Have a cause to fight for. Any disruption to leaders or members in the community could jeopardize success of activist work, specifically due to delicate timing.
• Can’t rely on traditional systems of “justice”. e.g. Black Lives Matter cannot rely on police intervention. Indigenous environmentalists don’t have the same legal rights to rely on.
• Are minority, underrepresented, and/or disadvantaged groups. Health, stability, and safety are often jeopardized. This often puts them at higher risk for violence.

All of this together puts survivors within activist communities at high risk of isolation, rejection from the movement, and repeated violence. You can find our resources, specifically pertaining to #MeToo and Environmental Justice, here. (Andie Burkey & Yim Register SZW18)

We must begin to regard the loss of our members’ mental health, safety, and potential as a significant loss to the movement itself. We must radically protect, acknowledge, and support survivors within broken systems; including the systems that we often assume are solely fighting for good. We proposed several ways to support survivors and perpetrators through transformative and restorative justice, drawing on the Socioecological model for change and transformative Justice tools.

While there is no “saving the world” with technology, there is mindfully supporting activist work via technology; and I am refining some best practices as a radical developer.

I know that I personally have entered into the tech field because it brings me joy. I am curious, I am passionate, and I am happy when I’m creating solutions to technical problems. I find it fun. But there is a strange moral and elitist rhetoric surrounding the ability to produce technology solutions that I’d like to actively reject. Many well-intending developers put forth an attitude of “saving the world”. It’s a very top-down and egocentric view of how technology can assist social change. I myself have been guilty of seeing my own potential to “save the world” with technology. Over the past few years I’ve actively refined this techno-savior complex to arrive at a more pragmatic philosophy: Don’t save the world. Use your skills to mindfully support communities.

I’m learning a lot about active listening. As someone who almost compulsively always has something to say, I’m trying to challenge my privilege in order to better inform my role as a radical developer. I learned a new technique called “Move Up, Move Back” which encourages traditionally quiet people to challenge themselves to speak, and traditionally vocal people to challenge themselves to listen. I will be challenging myself to listen better. To mindfully absorb what affected communities are saying; to trust their intuitions and advice; to ask questions instead of assuming. And when that gets to be far too outside my comfort zone, to do what I do best. Talk talk talk with EVERYBODY. Ask them their opinions, their experiences, their struggles, their worldviews. Ask them why, ask them how, ask them when, ask them what, ask them who. Keep asking in order to mindfully inform yourself as a developer, a scientist, an activist, and a human being.

I have radical optimism about the future.

During the conference I was thinking to myself “Not only do I believe in a better world, but I will fight for one too.” It’s a decent way to actively reject passive activism. But I was far more pleased when I switched the order of the phrases. “Not only will I fight for a better world, but I will believe in one too.”

I watch countless leaders and activists taking tangible steps to fight against oppressive systems. Many of us identify flaws in ideology and current structures, and are already taking actions each and every day to promote change. I’m now surrounded by active people, rejecting passive support for social change. I know many people who organize, create, design, speak, educate, and fight to make our world a better place.

But something I know about myself is that I radically believe that what we are doing will succeed. I believe in the actions we are taking. I believe in the solutions we are designing. I can picture how a future world will look like; and I believe in our collective potential to create it. I don’t deny that this radical optimism may come from a privileged or naive view. I could probably write an entire blog post about how to manage a healthy balance of skepticism in research and activism while retaining your radical optimism. But for now, I’ll leave it at this: For me, I believe in the activism that I do. I believe it will work. I believe with all of my being that it’s going to work.