Two new racial justice solutions fueled by passion and purpose
Contribute to the latest Call for Code for Racial Justice projects that just went open source
In response to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and too many others, Call for Code for Racial Justice launched in October of 2020. The initiative provides developers with the opportunity to build open source solutions to address three focus areas: Police & Judicial Reform and Accountability; Diverse Representation; and Policy & Legislation Reform. The initiative builds upon Call for Code, which was created in 2018 and has grown to over 400,000 developers and problem solvers across 179 countries, in partnership with Creator David Clark Cause, Founding Partner IBM, Charitable Partner United Nations Human Rights, and the Linux Foundation.
Today, the Linux Foundation and IBM announced two new open source projects that have just been released, Fair Change and TakeTwo.
Fair Change is a platform to help record, catalog, and access evidence of potentially racially charged incidents to help enable transparency, reeducation, and reform as a matter of public interest and safety. Leveraging React Native and other technologies, Fair Change can assimilate real-world video footage related to routine traffic stops, stop and search or other scenarios, and may be recorded and accessed by the involved parties and authorities to determine whether the incidents were handled in a biased manner. Visit the tutorial or project page to learn more.
TakeTwo aims to help mitigate bias in digital content, whether it is overt or subtle, with a focus on text across news articles, headlines, web pages, blogs, and even code. Leveraging open source technologies like Python, FastAPI, and Docker, TakeTwo is designed to leverage directories of inclusive terms compiled by trusted sources like the Inclusive Naming Initiative, which was co-founded by the Linux Foundation and CNCF. The terminology is categorized to train an AI model to enhance its accuracy over time. Visit the tutorial or project page to learn more.
The Call for Code Digest team was able to catch up with members of both teams to learn about their inspirations for answering the call and contributing to Call for Code for Racial Justice:
What was your motivation for getting involved in Call for Code for Racial Justice?
Jodith Fecadu Tefferi, Fair Change: Tragic events that have come to light have unfortunately been happening for far too long. Instead of looking to others, I made it my personal mission to be active and essential in driving change to better society. My own past experiences and feelings, as well as acknowledging that I am working in an industry where I can leverage technology to impact society in significant ways, is what inspired me to get involved. What also motivated me was the opportunity to work with amazingly talented IBM colleagues from all over the world and take on roles outside of my usual day job, which allowed me to evolve and enhance my own technical skills. This experience has easily been the highlight of my time at IBM so far, and I can’t wait to see how our solution will flourish to help people all over the world.
Naoki Abe, TakeTwo: I have always wanted to pitch in for the good of people/the world. Now with IT and AI playing an increasing central role in society, I felt we can contribute something significant as technologists.
Why is racial injustice an issue that can be addressed by the tech community and why is now the time to do so?
Sabine Justilien, Fair Change: You are not excluded. Your work in the tech community does not exclude you from either the benefits or burdens that come with your cultural and genetic identities. I am both Black, a cis-gender woman, and a techie. By observing that intersection, I cannot possibly ignore the issues that come from being a woman in tech nor Black in it. Using that intersectionality, I believe the tech community can use their perspective to challenge the norm and seek to understand those who are suffering most, due to racial bias, inequity, and inequality. You have a skillset, knowledge base, and expertise that the majority of the world doesn’t, so why not create impact that will last beyond you?
Naagma Timakondu, TakeTwo: While I think racial injustice is something to be addressed by all communities, I believe that technology can be used as a tool to help facilitate important conversations and translate meaningful change through the means of technical solutions.
Who can you see benefiting from your solution and how?
Sabine Justilien, Fair Change: This solution will benefit law enforcement, government agencies and accountability offices, and the communities they both serve. By increasing accountability from law enforcement, we allow them to learn from how they engage with their neighbors and empower those community members to support each other in their most vulnerable moments.
Iain McCombe, TakeTwo: I can see this benefiting both individuals and organizations. Individuals can learn more about the significant impact of language, and how their word choices can impact others. Organizations can stop the perpetuation of racist language by running all their copy through the tool.
What would you say to fellow technologists around the world who may be interested in contributing to CFCFRJ?
A.G.F.A., Fair Change: Doing your part is your civic duty as a member of the Human Race….. You have a CHOICE…. I see it as a mandated contribution — We MUST make our environment and communities safe for everyone. As technologists, it is time we show the world that some of us are advocates of Tech for Good.
Naagma Timakondu, TakeTwo: Please join us! Working on TakeTwo has been so much fun. Due to language being foundational to so much of what we do, there is incredible opportunity for TakeTwo to influence many aspects of our world!
Are there any key learnings you have had from developing the solution to this point?
James Stewart, Fair Change: The single biggest learning for me was the real power of collaboration from around the globe. Our team was based in both the UK and the US, so it was fantastic to see people with diverse backgrounds and skills come together in order to meet the common goal of equality for all.
Otis Smart, Fair Change: This solution has global impact for a global problem. GOD willing, open-source solution development can facilitate the greatly needed worldwide allyship, perspective diversity, crowdsourced innovation, transparent code, and accelerated progress to help achieve accountable police reform for racially equitable public safety. Furthermore, machine learning (and possible other artificial intelligence techniques) with ethical explainability can be a potent component of this solution to attain the mentioned goals.
Which components of the solution do you think developers can help in further improving your solution?
Kyleni Rivers, Fair Change: To further FairChange, a list of additions, but not limited to, was drafted into GitHub issues to give developers a starting point, and elucidate direction we were looking to possibly go towards. For instance, issue #27 is to create additional face(s) to display location specific news, guidance and/or advice, like community resources. We still need logon capability. There are several issues that the team did not get to, but could benefit the users in the long run. No issue takes predence over the other, to me. They are all important, and will lead to a bigger and better application to paint out a larger picture of incidents globally. Beneficial add-ons are welcomed, as it shows we have dedicated developers using their skills, or learning new skills along the way, for something that will hopefully lead to positive outcomes for dwellers. Further issues for contributions are found here.
Johanna Saladas, TakeTwo: Across each of the TakeTwo components, there are plenty of starter issues we have identified, so I would encourage people to start there. There are a lot of design and UX improvements that could be added to both the TakeTwo chrome extension and the online text editor.
Ready to get involved? These seven Call for Code for Racial Justice open source projects are looking for your help. Do your part and advance the vision of using technology to help combat systemic racism. Act now: contribute to Call for Code for Racial Justice.
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