November 4, 2021 • 35 mins
Esra’a is a Bahrani human rights activist and founder of Majal, a multiplatform organization that amplifies underrepresented voices in the Middle East and North Africa. She works collaboratively with technologists and designers across the world to create alternative digital spaces that are safe from censorship and trolling. Utilizing gamification and music, Majal’s platforms offer a safe space for people who face persecution based on their identity and politics.
Guest: Esra’a Al Shafei
Bio: Founder of Majal, Migrant Rights, and Mideast Tunes; civil rights activist dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ youth in the Middle East.
Online: Majal website; @ealshafei on Twitter
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ACTIONS
- PERSONALLY REFLECT
Personal Security
When have you felt concerned for your safety and security online? What features online made you feel vulnerable or exposed? Was it something you could control or was it outside of your control? If you’ve never felt insecure on online platforms, why do you think that is?
- BECOME INFORMED
Question Scale in Philanthropy
Check out Majal.org and look at the platforms they operate.
When you are engaging with nonprofits and philanthropy, look at who founded and runs the groups you support or amplify. Find ones that are run by those closest to the problem, which are often people from marginalized communities. Start your learning journey by reading Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva.
- PUBLICLY PARTICIPATE
Challenge the philanthropic norms.
Instead of supporting large organizations that emphasize scalability and unsustainable growth, consider getting as local and grassroots as you can in terms of your time and resources. Often smaller, on-the-ground, and grassroots organizations have a more direct impact despite far fewer resources. And make the How To Citizen community look good: donate over at Majal.org so they can keep supporting the important platforms serving activists and LGBTQ youth in the Middle East.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a
podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
This season is all about tech and how it can
bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
you the people using technology for so much more than
revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
(00:29):
Take me to the scene and and paint a picture
for me of Bahrain, the place where you grew up.
I think Bahrain is honestly one of the most beautiful countries.
We're surrounded by watcher as an island obviously, but there's
(00:50):
palm trees. Um. I could do without the traffic because
we're also a very small country, you know. But what
I love about it so much is that everything is
community and family oriented, and it's oftentimes regardless of what
(01:10):
you think and who you are and how you feel.
When it's family time, it's family time. That's where you
get together and you eat that type of togetherness. It's
where everybody kinds of just melts together and it's chaos,
but it's beautiful chaos. You don't have as many fights
(01:32):
when you have these get togethers as because nobody can
actually hear the other person. Everybody's just talking over people,
and it's like you're you're you're talking to somebody, but
you also have a mouthful of dates. It's a great
place to be, but it's also a terrifying place to be.
(01:52):
You want to be yourself, but you also can't. But
you also don't want to fault the communities and the
people there. For the most partits it's not our faults.
Of course, we are accountable, but it's not like we
can just rise up and say, hey, yeah, I would
disagree with this and we're going to do something about it,
because the consequences are dire. But you also love everything
(02:17):
that it stands for when it comes to community and
passion and people really care about each other. I mean,
a couple of years ago we lost our house to
a fire. There's not a single person in the neighborhood
that didn't come to help us. This is Estra al Chaffe.
(02:42):
She's the founder of Masall, a network of digital platforms
that amplifies underrepresented voices. Today we're going to be focusing
on one of those platforms called Awa, a gamified social
media app designed for the l g B t q
I plus community. In the Middle East and North Africa.
What does that mean exactly? Well, imagine you were on
(03:04):
a social media app where you were anonymous but also safe.
Are you thinking baratun day? That's impossible. As long as
there's an Internet, there will be trolls and threats and surveillance.
Oh my, and I hear you trust me. I've got
haters too, But it's true. Eestra's built a platform where
kindness earns you points, and points give you access and
(03:27):
trolling that costs you points. But first, let's learn a
little bit about the person behind the platform. We forget
that sometimes, right there's always a person. Hello, Etra, how
are you doing. I'm doing very well. Thanks, how are you?
(03:48):
I'm doing well as well you should be if you're
talking to me, all right, and we're off to a
fiery start. I love it. Normally, when I'm doing these conversations,
I have the video of the person i'm speaking with
up and we can see each other. Your video is off, though,
why is that my video is a is off? And
(04:10):
that's for my safety. I've always been physically anonymous with
the type of work that I do, which is of
course human rights, working with vulnerable communities, including the lgbt
q I community in the Middle East and North Africa.
If I really want to continue doing this work, There's
only so much that I can do from the front line.
There's a lot that I need to keep underground, and
(04:33):
my physical anonymity is becoming harder and harder with the
types of different surveillance technologies that we have to protect,
Especially knowing that I'm amongst millions of activists that are
monitored and surveilled on a daily basis. It sounds massively
inconvenient and like something that takes a lot of energy
(04:54):
to try to remain anonymous in this way. Are there
any advantages to it? Absolutely? I mean, it's the reason
I'm speaking to you today. Um, I get to talk
about this work. When people go and give talks, they
know that this talk is going to be seen not
just by the people in the room, but by everybody.
Snippets of it are going to be on Twitter and
(05:14):
on YouTube and wherever you know it's going to be hosted.
And for me, I feel like it's going to stay
in that room and I can make very dark jokes
and get away with it. You really get to be
your authentic self without fearing for your life. I've seen
some of the work you've been up to and it
(05:36):
is positively, ridiculously impressive what you've been working on these
past many years, over a decade. Tell me about the
work you've dedicated yourself to over the years. Sure, So
I created Michelle dot org Um somewhere around two thousand five.
During that time, you know, this was before Twitter was big.
Facebook was still limited to a lot of colleges and
(05:59):
things like that, and not just anybody can can sign up,
So our treach was much more challenging because it was
hard to reach the communities that you wanted to reach.
What communities were you trying to reach? We were trying
to reach ourselves. I mean, we were just young people
at the time in a country that made censorship the norm.
(06:19):
Where you go to school and there's certain information that
you can't find and can talk about where you go
in the household, and people are scared to talk about
certain things. But you see the injustices around you, but
you keep it to yourself, and it's a traumatic situation
to do that. That's really what got me interested in
creating a platform where when we see an injustice, we
(06:41):
can talk about it we can talk about how migrant
workers are being treated in our country, how corrupt leaders
were getting away with insane policies that were keeping us
away from our own dignity. We wanted to talk to
and with communities that were completely visible at the time
and had to be for security reasons. These were really
(07:04):
the communities that we wanted to make sure that they
felt welcome, that we wanted to build something inclusive, and
that it wasn't going to be just about us. It
was going to be just a space where we can
just share our stories and speak with people that we
were discouraged from even acknowledging. What are you not allowed
to say that has such direct consequences? I mean, first
(07:27):
and for most, it's it's not to democracy. We don't
have to say politically, how things are run, what policies
are being enforced upon. US government issues a statement, you
do this, we do it. There's direct consequences we need
don't So that's for me, a big part of the
(07:48):
fear no fair trial. So if you're an activist and
you get accused of something, sometimes even a tweet criticizing
a member of parliament, you will get arrested for that
and there are laws now that have been revised where
there are certain tweets that there are social media crimes,
but what makes a social media crime criticism. So it's
(08:10):
a scary situation to live in that type of environment,
and it's not something that is unique to Behrain, it's
really everywhere we went. So even when we would travel
to neighboring countries, we have to be very very conservative
in what we are expressing because as much as we
are changing, we are getting a lot of pushback from
(08:33):
really well resourced countries. I mean, these are countries that
are spending billions of dollars on surveillance technology from some
of the most sophisticated companies out there, whether there Israeli
companies that specifically build surveillance videos and tools, and or
u S companies actually that are not being held accountable
(08:54):
working with repressive governments like this, that are putting the
lives of activists at risk as it means they get
a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So that type of
fear really gets to you. Or we wanted to be
sure that we could creatively bypass a lot of that,
and that's why we turned to music. That's why we
(09:15):
turned to gamification. That's why we turned to art, because
we're trying to do things in such a way where
it's not just a group of investigative journalists who are
going to publish this bombshell report through Human Rights Watch
or something like that. Of course this stuff is important,
but this is also the stuff that will get you killed.
So we wanted something in the middle. We didn't want
(09:38):
to get arrested. At the same time, we didn't want
to stay silent and therefore complicit. Everybody I know would
be in jail because all we do is mouth off
on the internet against people with power. It just doesn't
It feels literally foreign. We'll be right back. I want
(10:17):
to talk about one of those platforms that you helped create.
Tell me what Awah is and where did the idea begin.
So it began in two thousand nine, and it began
as a platform for the lgbt Q plus community in
the Arab region where we could just share stories, share
(10:38):
support um, share resources, and really just build a supportive
network where we can be who we want to be
without the fear of bullying, prejudice, trolling that we saw
was prevalent in many of the other platforms. Everywhere we went.
We felt punished, we felt humiliated, we felt threatened, and
(11:00):
it was really tough because you can build, you know,
you can go on Facebook, and even when you create
those private groups, a lot of the times, what we
saw was a lot of them were being deleted because
oh you this is against community policy and they're not
obligated to explain any further. They had a lot of
moderators in the region, which we felt that for them,
(11:23):
being queer was against community policy because it's against cultural norms.
We thought, okay, look, nobody out there were sitting saying, hey,
let's design something that a bunch of queer Arabs can
really Also, you know, nobody's sitting there and saying, well,
what about this community, what about this small niche? You know,
let's put monetization aside and growth metrics aside, and let's
(11:45):
put the people. Nobody is going to think that. Why
do you think it wasn't in a Twitter, for example,
in their interest or Facebook and their interests to serve
the queer Arab community. I mean, for them, it's really
about us grow because it helps our strategic direction on
how best and how quickly we can monetize a specific tool.
(12:09):
That's the bottom line for them. It's not security, it's
not community, it's not people like me. One time, the
Committee to Protect Journalists invited a group of us to
go and speak at Facebook headquarters at Twitter headquarters, and
nobody cared. It was over like a lunch brown bag.
Everybody was disappointed because they didn't get the sandwich order
(12:32):
that they wanted, and they're just like, this is just
a meeting for me. This is not a place where
I'm going to come and somebody's going to try and
push the boundaries for me. The designers were showing up
and you could tell that they were just doodling and
could not care less about what my colleague from Syria
was saying about being hunted, what my colleague in as
(12:52):
Our Beijan was saying about being arrested on a weekly
basis and investigated. They couldn't care less. I mean, they
felt pity, but one person would actually say, well, why
do you use these tools for those purposes? That's not
what we designed them for. You know what. Facebook is
really a place where you can go and connect with
the classmates that you haven't heard from in a long time.
(13:15):
And so that was for us. That's them saying we're
not building this for you, and we never will. If
these are the people who are setting the rules, setting
the stage, then that's all they're ever going to care
about it. We can force them to care about us.
That scene is so familiar and so infuriating. So so
(13:35):
what have you built as a contrast? How does awah
work and what is it providing for this l g
B t Q plus community that a Facebook or Twitter
wasn't willing to provide? Well, first of all, we spoke
to everybody that we could. What are you using to
find support in this space? And why isn't it working?
(13:56):
And so that's that's where we started finding the void
and what was already available. It's um, okay, we don't
have proper anonymity. Facebook obviously for a long time, discourage
an enimedia altogether. It was crazy, I'm not boarding a flight,
I'm using you know, a social media site. And so
for a lot of people that's really where the line
(14:16):
was drawn and they felt that they just didn't have
that security. So for us, what we felt was what
if we built a platform where everybody was welcome, you know,
we didn't want to build something clicky and we didn't
want to build anything that was invite only where somebody
had to know somebody to know somebody to come in,
because most of the time the target communities that you
are scared to even express, sometimes to even come up
(14:40):
to yourself. So we said, okay, you can log in,
you can introduce yourself a little by little, based on
the type of interactions that you're having. On the side,
if you're posting something that's helpful, some people say they
would mark that contribution as helpful, and that gives you
more points. And based on the number of points you have,
you lock more sections of the platform, for example, access
(15:04):
to a page of resources where if you have three
thousand points, now you can have resources organized by country,
like in Lebanon, this is where you can go to
do this. In Sardi Arabia this is a counselor that
is very LGBT friendly, for example. And then you are
able to create a chat room. You're able to join
a chat room, all based on the different level of
points that you have. And the thing is is, of
(15:27):
course you can you know game the system, but it
requires you to be super tolerant, supportive kind for like
hundreds of posts, so that you can call somebody a
jerk for one second before that you lose all your points.
This is amazing you have You've increased the price of trolling.
(15:49):
I mean it's exhausting. Basically, if you're going to effectively
troll on this platform, you've got to go undercover as
a decent person. Exactly for weeks. The most homophobic people
in our communities won't even put themselves in that. But
we have had a couple of stories where people would say, look,
(16:09):
I came here to troll. I'm not gonna lie. I
saw this, somebody posted about this. But when I put
myself in that situation with fake support, I realized I
was actually connecting with people. It was actually changing some
mindset because they realized, wow, I'm talking to somebody who
would rather kill themselves than come out, and they would
(16:29):
really put themselves in that shoes, and they started empathizing.
We didn't just want to build a place where it's
an advocacy organization, it's like, recognize us, we need this.
We wanted a place where it humanized the community in
all of its different phases and with many different people.
And we never wanted to say that this was a
singular story. It was thousands of stories. I mean now
(16:52):
we have about eleven thousand users. That's eleven thousand very
different experiences. That clicks with me because as the other
platforms are very flat and their incentive structure is around
pretty much letting everyone do as much as possible, as
quickly as possible, so there's no there's no investment. It's
almost like when I go on a place like Twitter,
(17:15):
people are showing up with such a disrespect because they're
not actually invested in the platform. They haven't had to
work for any of it. And so of course you
can trash somebody else's house, and what you set up
is a kind of a different incentive structure where people
have a sense of belonging, they put time in, which
is a form of investment. Here's what I'm not hearing.
(17:36):
I'm not hearing scale, I'm not hearing growth. I'm not
hearing maximize shareholder value. Like in the in the language
of the commercial internet, this is small, this is cute,
this is a failure. What why are you not building
to make this the biggest, fastest, growing, most amazing thing.
(17:58):
You've got all these great people, now add some zeros
behind that eleven thousand. Why are you not doing that?
Because scale is moronic. Honestly, every platform that has built
for scale sucks. Either the people they're suck or the
features suck, or both, more often than not both. Honestly,
people always complain it's like, oh, the Internet is full
(18:19):
of idiots, because that's by design. Mark Zuckerberg was very
famed for saying, is oh, you have to move fast
and break things. And the thing that you're breaking are
people's confidence, people's spirits, people's banks. I mean, these are
the things that you break, people's dignity, people's security. These
are all things that you cannot build at scale, period.
(18:43):
And so that's why the Internet today looks very homogeneous.
And so when you move away from that, the Internet
starts looking a lot better, a lot healthier. We'll be
right back. So you've painted a hilarious, truthful and clear
(19:07):
picture a contrast and how the Internet has been built
and a bit of how else we can build it
with something with a platform like AWA, who's maintaining a
Who are the people that have been operating it for
the past decade. So we have a very small group
of volunteers, primarily a lot of us are women women
in Lebanon, we have women in Jordan's. It's not a lot,
(19:30):
it's a small team, but we don't need a lot,
and that's the beauty of it. And then we have
a community of volunteers as well, and so these volunteers
they show up and they help moderate some of the
content just to make sure that people are not maybe
sharing something like an address or outing somebody, just to
kind of keep things a little bit more safe. But
oftentimes they're also helping people with onboarding. Nobody's paid, and
(19:52):
that's tough, but at the same time, it kind of
keeps things sustainable as well, because you know that they're
doing this because they too. They're doing this because they
care about the platform, they care about the community, they
care about the integrity of the information that's being shared
on there. But it's it's all volunteers. That also is remarkable.
(20:12):
I think two parts of that. One the human interaction
uh and second is the role of women on the
human side. So many of the platforms most of us
are used to, we don't interact with people, right. They
try to automate as much of the onboarding as possible
to get us on as fast as possible. To get
us producing as much as possible, Like we're factory workers
on the Internet model that most of us experienced, and
(20:34):
it's like, get on there, give us your data, interact,
smash that like button, and to have a human slows
all that down and makes it more intimate and again
increases that investment. I think the role of women is
also fascinating because in the very early Internet in the US,
there's history in the early bullets and board systems and
forums where women were actually about half or even a
(20:58):
near majority of the users, and they were designing different
types of spaces that weren't about scale, that weren't about
aggression as much, and they essentially got chased out by
a bunch of dudes who are like, but we can,
we can maximize things. It's Graham. And so before the
trolling and the abuse took over, there was a different
(21:19):
Internet possible here, and I'm glad to see it. It's
more than possible. You're building a part of it there,
so thank you, But I'm I'm still curious, how is
this all funded? Like how do you keep this all going? Unfortunately,
in the region, when you're building these types of tools,
it's very difficult to get them funded. And so that's
(21:40):
one of the biggest challenges that we've had, but also
the biggest frustrating points because we see the colossal waste
that the philanthropic community in the global North, whether it's
you know, in the UK or Canada, but primarily the
US were a lot of private foundations give a lot
of money to people who don't know what they're doing.
(22:02):
You see that also when people are trying to build
a tech platform, it's like, well, that person had to
have gone to Stanford and then went on to work
at Twitter, and only they will know what and our
blesbin may need. In Saudi Arabia, those are the people
that helped destroy whether internet could be like and now
we're paying them to do the same. But in the
(22:23):
nonprofit industry. So it really kills us to see that
when we go and when we're asking for funding and
we have look, this is decades worth of work. I
mean other people, they would show up with no track
record whatsoever, But simply because of who they are and
who they may know, they get access to funding a
lot quicker. And not just access to like a hundred
(22:44):
thousand These are people getting access to millions and millions
and we see platforms low through fifty million dollars because
again they were trying to do things at scale and
not work directly with the activist communities, with the journalist communities,
and they're not collaborating with us. So this is the
thing that bothers me the most is a lack of
collaboration and the fact that a lot of private foundations
(23:06):
are now encouraging competitiveness. That's what's killing organizations. That's where
you come in and they say, we want metrics, we
want scale, and we want you to do it. By
the way, in a very dangerous setting. Let's get as
many LGBT people together to use the tool that has
not doesn't have a proven concept, or has not been
(23:27):
tested for security. So now we are putting lives at
risk so that you can say that you were this
many people. So, I mean, I'm just very frustrated at
the current environment of philanthropy. I think it's so broken
and they are so in denial that it is, and
it's just upsetting. You know, something's got to give. You
either remove the obsession with metrics, or you make sure
(23:52):
that access to funding is equitable, that is generally inclusive
and not just you want to fund the two token
organizations that everybody fund to say well, we funded you
know this and that organization, and that shows that we're
not racist. You are still you know in many different ways, um.
And I love reminding this. And by the way, that's
another reason why sometimes it's hard to get funding, is
(24:13):
because we became outspoken, you know for too many years.
I was sitting and I was like, I'm not going
to say anything, you know, because it's gonna ruffle their
feathers and there they're not going to give me access
to money. And then I realized, you know what, I've
always been broken. They will never give me money. So
now the gloves have totally come up. Every time I
come across this, I tell them to their face, what
(24:33):
you're doing is idiotic. You know, your strategy doesn't work.
It hasn't worked for years, and you're part of the problem.
And it doesn't bother me that they get Some of
them actually say, you know what, we needed to hear this, um,
and then they go back to not doing anything about it. Yeah,
don't get me started. Ye I mean this is I
(24:54):
think I feel like I wound you yet. So so so
what would it take for other social media platforms to
create safe digital spaces, like I don't think they can't.
Too late for them, Yeah, absolutely, I don't think they can.
(25:16):
I don't think they will, and honestly, I don't think
they should. I think it's time for other creators. If
they work at these organizations and at these companies, then
they feel I don't feel like I'm doing the right thing,
leave it and create something else, and don't think that
it's going to have all these different metrics to succeed.
(25:36):
It doesn't matter if even you have five thousand super
active users that are enjoying generally enjoying your tool, that
are finding it super helpful, and you grow every year
we grow by just a thousand users, just a thousand.
We're at eleven thousand now. We've been at going for
a little over eleven years, and that's just fine. We
(25:56):
have enjoyed that type of growth because it's meaningful growth,
and it enables us to test out these features at
a scale that is reasonable and that is manageable, and
that is more efficient and secure, and that's fine. I
think we need to start understanding that the Internet is
not what is already out there, and we stick to
it that's not the Internet. Those are just tools on there.
(26:21):
It's kind of like saying, there's all this land and
we all have to crime ourselves into these two buildings
because we can't build. Honestly, we need to stop looking
at the Internet as if what can you do for me?
What can you do for the Internet? What role can
you play in building these communities? You know? Oh? You
are you? Did you just John F. Kennedy quote the
(26:43):
Internet as not what the Internet can do for you,
but which you can do for the Internet? As you
got me fired up. I mean, I feel like the
parallels to what you're describing abound. If if we thought
of the only way we could create food is through
some giant agribusiness versus starting with our backyards and growing
a few tomatoes, and it's not all our food needs,
(27:06):
but those tomatoes are gonna be bound, right, It's gonna
be amazing. Grow those damn tomatoes, you know, And every
now and then you're gonna be like, you know what,
I'm going to get some cilantro as well, and Parson,
suddenly you see that vibrant, amazing thing that you don't
have to go with somebody else to rely on and
that is empowering. Sometimes we're like, well, we have to
wait for that empowerment to arrive to us. We have
(27:28):
to do that ourselves most of the time because nobody
gives a crap about us the way that we want
them to. We're never gonna be somebody else's priority. M
So we're not saying completely dismantle it. I mean, you
know me, I'm on Twitter as well. I mean, sure,
you're going to grow tomatoes, but then you've got to
go to the store and get something else, baking soda.
I don't know something that you can make yourself. So
(27:50):
it's it's really about creating that healthy balance, but making
sure that you don't wait for somebody else to give
you a voice. As for this show is called How
to Citizen. We use citizen as a verb. Taking that interpretation,
what does it mean for you? What is to citizen mean?
(28:12):
It's to be responsible. It's to hold yourself accountable when
you're falling short, and to hold others accountable when they're
abusing your rights or the rights of those around you.
It's the way that I can live with myself to
wake up every day and say, I think I citizens
my ass off today. You know, how can I citizen
(28:33):
even better? And that's really where the tools come in,
because it's not just about you, but sometimes it's about
giving those in your position the tools to do exactly
what you did and to facilitate that. People are going
to be fired up when they hear you era, and
they're gonna be like, what what can I do? Tell
me what to do? How can we support your work?
(28:57):
The most important thing is to help spread the word
that scale is not good and to do it in
any setting, in for profit setting and nonprofit setting. We
need to get rid of that word or we need
to reclaim how it is defined. The second thing would
be build your platforms UM support open source communities because
(29:19):
just finding places like that where you can contribute to
a different kind of web that would be great. Um.
You can do it with your skills, you can do
it by spreading the word. You can do it with
your money. Speaking of money, I've never seen note of that.
I remember that actually you had tweeted about Michelle and
he said, hey, you know, I just heard this talk
(29:41):
and everybody should give this organization money. UM. I regret
to inform you that nobody took you up on that offer.
So this is ah. So this is the second opportunity
for those UM. But you know, organizations like ours we
operate on very little, and that's not by choice, but
it is by choice that we will continue to work
(30:02):
despite having so little. Well, Eestra, you are not alone.
We hear you. We will get some money to you.
This time my tweet failed, but I'm gonna blame the
algorithm and the like and the lack of context. We
have a lot more context here, is it magele dot org.
Is that the best place to direct people? Yes? Or
(30:22):
would be the best place UM people can connect with
me if they want to support in any other way.
And I will say that if you feel this time
there will be diret consequences. I won't go into detail
because this is there. And there goes the threat she
promised when she when the videos off and she got
that anonymity. Sometimes she makes really exactly and you know what,
(30:43):
if somebody comes after me after this, I'll say it's
a deep fake. There. Thank you, Estra al Chaffee, thank
you so much for this time. I am fired up
and ready to go good good and I hope you know,
I hope you stay fired up and thank you so
much for you know, amplifying the story. Um, this is
(31:05):
always a great opportunity to speak with you. And it
was definitely the least boring podcast have been a part of.
So that's good, you know. Can you put that on
our iTunes reviewed? How the Citizen the least boring podcast
I've been a part of. Okay, if after that my
(31:27):
social media following doesn't give money to ms all, Yo,
let's just say we might not even get season four
of How the Citizen because this is how you citizen.
It's right there in front of you. So please don't
make me look bad. People come on you. But in
all seriousness, that's the kind of fire we need to
truly think outside the box, or maybe, as might put it,
(31:49):
smash the box completely. Next episode, we're speaking with Pia Mancini,
another huge advocate of open source. I'm starting to see
a theme here, and she's co founder of open Collective,
an organization that enables collectives to receive funding without needing
(32:09):
a legal entity or a bank account to do so.
You can't beat the nation state, so stop trying build
around it until it becomes obsolete. But the nation states
weren't always here and they're not going to be here always.
As part of how to Citizen, we want to offer
you more than a chance to listen to cool conversations.
(32:32):
We want to give you ways you concitizen. That's why
we're building a universe of citizen actions over at how
to citizen dot com. So for this episode, here are
some things you can do personally. Reflect on one of
you felt concerned for your safety and security online? What
features made you feel vulnerable or exposed? Was it something
(32:53):
you could control or was it outside of your control?
Next type of action, get informed and question the idea
of scale in philanthropy. I want you to check outs
dot org, m A j a L dot org that's
Esther's joint and take a look at all the platforms
they create. Then, beyond Ra's work, when you're engaging with
(33:15):
nonprofits and philanthropic organizations, take a look at who founded
the group and who runs it, who's funding it. Then
try to find groups that are run by people closest
to the problem or experiencing that problem directly. Here's a
great way to start that learning journey. Read this dope
book by Edgar Villenueva. He's an Indigenous person, former philanthropic operator,
(33:40):
and he's written this beautiful book called de Colonizing Wealth.
I can't recommend it enough. Third level of the game.
Publicly participate by challenging some of those philanthropic norms. Many
of us support large organizations that emphasize scale and unsustainable
growth in the way they try to help. Instead, I
(34:01):
want you to consider getting as local and grassroots as
you can. So I want you to do an extra
favor to all of us here because you heard as
recall us out. Donate dot org, m A j A
L dot org. All this is available at how to
citizen dot com. Find us on Instagram at how to
citizen to share your thoughts, to learn from others, and
(34:24):
why don't you post with that hashtag how to citizen
goodbye for now. How to Citizen with barrittun Day is
a production of I Heart Radio podcast and dust Light Productions.
Our executive producers are Me Barritton Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart,
and Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Tamika Adams. Our
producer is Ali Kilts, and our assistant producer Sam Paulson.
(34:46):
Stephanie Cohne is Our editor Valentino Rivera is our senior
engineer and Matthew Laie as our apprentice. Additional production help
from rwin Nicks, original music by Andrew Eapen with additional
original music for season three from Andrew Clawson. This episode
was produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks
to Joel Smith from I Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia
(35:07):
at Dustlight Production
Yeah, Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a
podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
This season is all about tech and how it can
bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
you the people using technology for so much more than
revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
(00:29):
Take me to the scene and and paint a picture
for me of Bahrain, the place where you grew up.
I think Bahrain is honestly one of the most beautiful countries.
We're surrounded by watcher as an island obviously, but there's
(00:50):
palm trees. Um. I could do without the traffic because
we're also a very small country, you know. But what
I love about it so much is that everything is
community and family oriented, and it's oftentimes regardless of what
(01:10):
you think and who you are and how you feel.
When it's family time, it's family time. That's where you
get together and you eat that type of togetherness. It's
where everybody kinds of just melts together and it's chaos,
but it's beautiful chaos. You don't have as many fights
(01:32):
when you have these get togethers as because nobody can
actually hear the other person. Everybody's just talking over people,
and it's like you're you're you're talking to somebody, but
you also have a mouthful of dates. It's a great
place to be, but it's also a terrifying place to be.
(01:52):
You want to be yourself, but you also can't. But
you also don't want to fault the communities and the
people there. For the most partits it's not our faults.
Of course, we are accountable, but it's not like we
can just rise up and say, hey, yeah, I would
disagree with this and we're going to do something about it,
because the consequences are dire. But you also love everything
(02:17):
that it stands for when it comes to community and
passion and people really care about each other. I mean,
a couple of years ago we lost our house to
a fire. There's not a single person in the neighborhood
that didn't come to help us. This is Estra al Chaffe.
(02:42):
She's the founder of Masall, a network of digital platforms
that amplifies underrepresented voices. Today we're going to be focusing
on one of those platforms called Awa, a gamified social
media app designed for the l g B t q
I plus community. In the Middle East and North Africa.
What does that mean exactly? Well, imagine you were on
(03:04):
a social media app where you were anonymous but also safe.
Are you thinking baratun day? That's impossible. As long as
there's an Internet, there will be trolls and threats and surveillance.
Oh my, and I hear you trust me. I've got
haters too, But it's true. Eestra's built a platform where
kindness earns you points, and points give you access and
(03:27):
trolling that costs you points. But first, let's learn a
little bit about the person behind the platform. We forget
that sometimes, right there's always a person. Hello, Etra, how
are you doing. I'm doing very well. Thanks, how are you?
(03:48):
I'm doing well as well you should be if you're
talking to me, all right, and we're off to a
fiery start. I love it. Normally, when I'm doing these conversations,
I have the video of the person i'm speaking with
up and we can see each other. Your video is off, though,
why is that my video is a is off? And
(04:10):
that's for my safety. I've always been physically anonymous with
the type of work that I do, which is of
course human rights, working with vulnerable communities, including the lgbt
q I community in the Middle East and North Africa.
If I really want to continue doing this work, There's
only so much that I can do from the front line.
There's a lot that I need to keep underground, and
(04:33):
my physical anonymity is becoming harder and harder with the
types of different surveillance technologies that we have to protect,
Especially knowing that I'm amongst millions of activists that are
monitored and surveilled on a daily basis. It sounds massively
inconvenient and like something that takes a lot of energy
(04:54):
to try to remain anonymous in this way. Are there
any advantages to it? Absolutely? I mean, it's the reason
I'm speaking to you today. Um, I get to talk
about this work. When people go and give talks, they
know that this talk is going to be seen not
just by the people in the room, but by everybody.
Snippets of it are going to be on Twitter and
(05:14):
on YouTube and wherever you know it's going to be hosted.
And for me, I feel like it's going to stay
in that room and I can make very dark jokes
and get away with it. You really get to be
your authentic self without fearing for your life. I've seen
some of the work you've been up to and it
(05:36):
is positively, ridiculously impressive what you've been working on these
past many years, over a decade. Tell me about the
work you've dedicated yourself to over the years. Sure, So
I created Michelle dot org Um somewhere around two thousand five.
During that time, you know, this was before Twitter was big.
Facebook was still limited to a lot of colleges and
(05:59):
things like that, and not just anybody can can sign up,
So our treach was much more challenging because it was
hard to reach the communities that you wanted to reach.
What communities were you trying to reach? We were trying
to reach ourselves. I mean, we were just young people
at the time in a country that made censorship the norm.
(06:19):
Where you go to school and there's certain information that
you can't find and can talk about where you go
in the household, and people are scared to talk about
certain things. But you see the injustices around you, but
you keep it to yourself, and it's a traumatic situation
to do that. That's really what got me interested in
creating a platform where when we see an injustice, we
(06:41):
can talk about it we can talk about how migrant
workers are being treated in our country, how corrupt leaders
were getting away with insane policies that were keeping us
away from our own dignity. We wanted to talk to
and with communities that were completely visible at the time
and had to be for security reasons. These were really
(07:04):
the communities that we wanted to make sure that they
felt welcome, that we wanted to build something inclusive, and
that it wasn't going to be just about us. It
was going to be just a space where we can
just share our stories and speak with people that we
were discouraged from even acknowledging. What are you not allowed
to say that has such direct consequences? I mean, first
(07:27):
and for most, it's it's not to democracy. We don't
have to say politically, how things are run, what policies
are being enforced upon. US government issues a statement, you
do this, we do it. There's direct consequences we need
don't So that's for me, a big part of the
(07:48):
fear no fair trial. So if you're an activist and
you get accused of something, sometimes even a tweet criticizing
a member of parliament, you will get arrested for that
and there are laws now that have been revised where
there are certain tweets that there are social media crimes,
but what makes a social media crime criticism. So it's
(08:10):
a scary situation to live in that type of environment,
and it's not something that is unique to Behrain, it's
really everywhere we went. So even when we would travel
to neighboring countries, we have to be very very conservative
in what we are expressing because as much as we
are changing, we are getting a lot of pushback from
(08:33):
really well resourced countries. I mean, these are countries that
are spending billions of dollars on surveillance technology from some
of the most sophisticated companies out there, whether there Israeli
companies that specifically build surveillance videos and tools, and or
u S companies actually that are not being held accountable
(08:54):
working with repressive governments like this, that are putting the
lives of activists at risk as it means they get
a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So that type of
fear really gets to you. Or we wanted to be
sure that we could creatively bypass a lot of that,
and that's why we turned to music. That's why we
(09:15):
turned to gamification. That's why we turned to art, because
we're trying to do things in such a way where
it's not just a group of investigative journalists who are
going to publish this bombshell report through Human Rights Watch
or something like that. Of course this stuff is important,
but this is also the stuff that will get you killed.
So we wanted something in the middle. We didn't want
(09:38):
to get arrested. At the same time, we didn't want
to stay silent and therefore complicit. Everybody I know would
be in jail because all we do is mouth off
on the internet against people with power. It just doesn't
It feels literally foreign. We'll be right back. I want
(10:17):
to talk about one of those platforms that you helped create.
Tell me what Awah is and where did the idea begin.
So it began in two thousand nine, and it began
as a platform for the lgbt Q plus community in
the Arab region where we could just share stories, share
(10:38):
support um, share resources, and really just build a supportive
network where we can be who we want to be
without the fear of bullying, prejudice, trolling that we saw
was prevalent in many of the other platforms. Everywhere we went.
We felt punished, we felt humiliated, we felt threatened, and
(11:00):
it was really tough because you can build, you know,
you can go on Facebook, and even when you create
those private groups, a lot of the times, what we
saw was a lot of them were being deleted because
oh you this is against community policy and they're not
obligated to explain any further. They had a lot of
moderators in the region, which we felt that for them,
(11:23):
being queer was against community policy because it's against cultural norms.
We thought, okay, look, nobody out there were sitting saying, hey,
let's design something that a bunch of queer Arabs can
really Also, you know, nobody's sitting there and saying, well,
what about this community, what about this small niche? You know,
let's put monetization aside and growth metrics aside, and let's
(11:45):
put the people. Nobody is going to think that. Why
do you think it wasn't in a Twitter, for example,
in their interest or Facebook and their interests to serve
the queer Arab community. I mean, for them, it's really
about us grow because it helps our strategic direction on
how best and how quickly we can monetize a specific tool.
(12:09):
That's the bottom line for them. It's not security, it's
not community, it's not people like me. One time, the
Committee to Protect Journalists invited a group of us to
go and speak at Facebook headquarters at Twitter headquarters, and
nobody cared. It was over like a lunch brown bag.
Everybody was disappointed because they didn't get the sandwich order
(12:32):
that they wanted, and they're just like, this is just
a meeting for me. This is not a place where
I'm going to come and somebody's going to try and
push the boundaries for me. The designers were showing up
and you could tell that they were just doodling and
could not care less about what my colleague from Syria
was saying about being hunted, what my colleague in as
(12:52):
Our Beijan was saying about being arrested on a weekly
basis and investigated. They couldn't care less. I mean, they
felt pity, but one person would actually say, well, why
do you use these tools for those purposes? That's not
what we designed them for. You know what. Facebook is
really a place where you can go and connect with
the classmates that you haven't heard from in a long time.
(13:15):
And so that was for us. That's them saying we're
not building this for you, and we never will. If
these are the people who are setting the rules, setting
the stage, then that's all they're ever going to care
about it. We can force them to care about us.
That scene is so familiar and so infuriating. So so
(13:35):
what have you built as a contrast? How does awah
work and what is it providing for this l g
B t Q plus community that a Facebook or Twitter
wasn't willing to provide? Well, first of all, we spoke
to everybody that we could. What are you using to
find support in this space? And why isn't it working?
(13:56):
And so that's that's where we started finding the void
and what was already available. It's um, okay, we don't
have proper anonymity. Facebook obviously for a long time, discourage
an enimedia altogether. It was crazy, I'm not boarding a flight,
I'm using you know, a social media site. And so
for a lot of people that's really where the line
(14:16):
was drawn and they felt that they just didn't have
that security. So for us, what we felt was what
if we built a platform where everybody was welcome, you know,
we didn't want to build something clicky and we didn't
want to build anything that was invite only where somebody
had to know somebody to know somebody to come in,
because most of the time the target communities that you
are scared to even express, sometimes to even come up
(14:40):
to yourself. So we said, okay, you can log in,
you can introduce yourself a little by little, based on
the type of interactions that you're having. On the side,
if you're posting something that's helpful, some people say they
would mark that contribution as helpful, and that gives you
more points. And based on the number of points you have,
you lock more sections of the platform, for example, access
(15:04):
to a page of resources where if you have three
thousand points, now you can have resources organized by country,
like in Lebanon, this is where you can go to
do this. In Sardi Arabia this is a counselor that
is very LGBT friendly, for example. And then you are
able to create a chat room. You're able to join
a chat room, all based on the different level of
points that you have. And the thing is is, of
(15:27):
course you can you know game the system, but it
requires you to be super tolerant, supportive kind for like
hundreds of posts, so that you can call somebody a
jerk for one second before that you lose all your points.
This is amazing you have You've increased the price of trolling.
(15:49):
I mean it's exhausting. Basically, if you're going to effectively
troll on this platform, you've got to go undercover as
a decent person. Exactly for weeks. The most homophobic people
in our communities won't even put themselves in that. But
we have had a couple of stories where people would say, look,
(16:09):
I came here to troll. I'm not gonna lie. I
saw this, somebody posted about this. But when I put
myself in that situation with fake support, I realized I
was actually connecting with people. It was actually changing some
mindset because they realized, wow, I'm talking to somebody who
would rather kill themselves than come out, and they would
(16:29):
really put themselves in that shoes, and they started empathizing.
We didn't just want to build a place where it's
an advocacy organization, it's like, recognize us, we need this.
We wanted a place where it humanized the community in
all of its different phases and with many different people.
And we never wanted to say that this was a
singular story. It was thousands of stories. I mean now
(16:52):
we have about eleven thousand users. That's eleven thousand very
different experiences. That clicks with me because as the other
platforms are very flat and their incentive structure is around
pretty much letting everyone do as much as possible, as
quickly as possible, so there's no there's no investment. It's
almost like when I go on a place like Twitter,
(17:15):
people are showing up with such a disrespect because they're
not actually invested in the platform. They haven't had to
work for any of it. And so of course you
can trash somebody else's house, and what you set up
is a kind of a different incentive structure where people
have a sense of belonging, they put time in, which
is a form of investment. Here's what I'm not hearing.
(17:36):
I'm not hearing scale, I'm not hearing growth. I'm not
hearing maximize shareholder value. Like in the in the language
of the commercial internet, this is small, this is cute,
this is a failure. What why are you not building
to make this the biggest, fastest, growing, most amazing thing.
(17:58):
You've got all these great people, now add some zeros
behind that eleven thousand. Why are you not doing that?
Because scale is moronic. Honestly, every platform that has built
for scale sucks. Either the people they're suck or the
features suck, or both, more often than not both. Honestly,
people always complain it's like, oh, the Internet is full
(18:19):
of idiots, because that's by design. Mark Zuckerberg was very
famed for saying, is oh, you have to move fast
and break things. And the thing that you're breaking are
people's confidence, people's spirits, people's banks. I mean, these are
the things that you break, people's dignity, people's security. These
are all things that you cannot build at scale, period.
(18:43):
And so that's why the Internet today looks very homogeneous.
And so when you move away from that, the Internet
starts looking a lot better, a lot healthier. We'll be
right back. So you've painted a hilarious, truthful and clear
(19:07):
picture a contrast and how the Internet has been built
and a bit of how else we can build it
with something with a platform like AWA, who's maintaining a
Who are the people that have been operating it for
the past decade. So we have a very small group
of volunteers, primarily a lot of us are women women
in Lebanon, we have women in Jordan's. It's not a lot,
(19:30):
it's a small team, but we don't need a lot,
and that's the beauty of it. And then we have
a community of volunteers as well, and so these volunteers
they show up and they help moderate some of the
content just to make sure that people are not maybe
sharing something like an address or outing somebody, just to
kind of keep things a little bit more safe. But
oftentimes they're also helping people with onboarding. Nobody's paid, and
(19:52):
that's tough, but at the same time, it kind of
keeps things sustainable as well, because you know that they're
doing this because they too. They're doing this because they
care about the platform, they care about the community, they
care about the integrity of the information that's being shared
on there. But it's it's all volunteers. That also is remarkable.
(20:12):
I think two parts of that. One the human interaction
uh and second is the role of women on the
human side. So many of the platforms most of us
are used to, we don't interact with people, right. They
try to automate as much of the onboarding as possible
to get us on as fast as possible. To get
us producing as much as possible, Like we're factory workers
on the Internet model that most of us experienced, and
(20:34):
it's like, get on there, give us your data, interact,
smash that like button, and to have a human slows
all that down and makes it more intimate and again
increases that investment. I think the role of women is
also fascinating because in the very early Internet in the US,
there's history in the early bullets and board systems and
forums where women were actually about half or even a
(20:58):
near majority of the users, and they were designing different
types of spaces that weren't about scale, that weren't about
aggression as much, and they essentially got chased out by
a bunch of dudes who are like, but we can,
we can maximize things. It's Graham. And so before the
trolling and the abuse took over, there was a different
(21:19):
Internet possible here, and I'm glad to see it. It's
more than possible. You're building a part of it there,
so thank you, But I'm I'm still curious, how is
this all funded? Like how do you keep this all going? Unfortunately,
in the region, when you're building these types of tools,
it's very difficult to get them funded. And so that's
(21:40):
one of the biggest challenges that we've had, but also
the biggest frustrating points because we see the colossal waste
that the philanthropic community in the global North, whether it's
you know, in the UK or Canada, but primarily the
US were a lot of private foundations give a lot
of money to people who don't know what they're doing.
(22:02):
You see that also when people are trying to build
a tech platform, it's like, well, that person had to
have gone to Stanford and then went on to work
at Twitter, and only they will know what and our
blesbin may need. In Saudi Arabia, those are the people
that helped destroy whether internet could be like and now
we're paying them to do the same. But in the
(22:23):
nonprofit industry. So it really kills us to see that
when we go and when we're asking for funding and
we have look, this is decades worth of work. I
mean other people, they would show up with no track
record whatsoever, But simply because of who they are and
who they may know, they get access to funding a
lot quicker. And not just access to like a hundred
(22:44):
thousand These are people getting access to millions and millions
and we see platforms low through fifty million dollars because
again they were trying to do things at scale and
not work directly with the activist communities, with the journalist communities,
and they're not collaborating with us. So this is the
thing that bothers me the most is a lack of
collaboration and the fact that a lot of private foundations
(23:06):
are now encouraging competitiveness. That's what's killing organizations. That's where
you come in and they say, we want metrics, we
want scale, and we want you to do it. By
the way, in a very dangerous setting. Let's get as
many LGBT people together to use the tool that has
not doesn't have a proven concept, or has not been
(23:27):
tested for security. So now we are putting lives at
risk so that you can say that you were this
many people. So, I mean, I'm just very frustrated at
the current environment of philanthropy. I think it's so broken
and they are so in denial that it is, and
it's just upsetting. You know, something's got to give. You
either remove the obsession with metrics, or you make sure
(23:52):
that access to funding is equitable, that is generally inclusive
and not just you want to fund the two token
organizations that everybody fund to say well, we funded you
know this and that organization, and that shows that we're
not racist. You are still you know in many different ways, um.
And I love reminding this. And by the way, that's
another reason why sometimes it's hard to get funding, is
(24:13):
because we became outspoken, you know for too many years.
I was sitting and I was like, I'm not going
to say anything, you know, because it's gonna ruffle their
feathers and there they're not going to give me access
to money. And then I realized, you know what, I've
always been broken. They will never give me money. So
now the gloves have totally come up. Every time I
come across this, I tell them to their face, what
(24:33):
you're doing is idiotic. You know, your strategy doesn't work.
It hasn't worked for years, and you're part of the problem.
And it doesn't bother me that they get Some of
them actually say, you know what, we needed to hear this, um,
and then they go back to not doing anything about it. Yeah,
don't get me started. Ye I mean this is I
(24:54):
think I feel like I wound you yet. So so so
what would it take for other social media platforms to
create safe digital spaces, like I don't think they can't.
Too late for them, Yeah, absolutely, I don't think they can.
(25:16):
I don't think they will, and honestly, I don't think
they should. I think it's time for other creators. If
they work at these organizations and at these companies, then
they feel I don't feel like I'm doing the right thing,
leave it and create something else, and don't think that
it's going to have all these different metrics to succeed.
(25:36):
It doesn't matter if even you have five thousand super
active users that are enjoying generally enjoying your tool, that
are finding it super helpful, and you grow every year
we grow by just a thousand users, just a thousand.
We're at eleven thousand now. We've been at going for
a little over eleven years, and that's just fine. We
(25:56):
have enjoyed that type of growth because it's meaningful growth,
and it enables us to test out these features at
a scale that is reasonable and that is manageable, and
that is more efficient and secure, and that's fine. I
think we need to start understanding that the Internet is
not what is already out there, and we stick to
it that's not the Internet. Those are just tools on there.
(26:21):
It's kind of like saying, there's all this land and
we all have to crime ourselves into these two buildings
because we can't build. Honestly, we need to stop looking
at the Internet as if what can you do for me?
What can you do for the Internet? What role can
you play in building these communities? You know? Oh? You
are you? Did you just John F. Kennedy quote the
(26:43):
Internet as not what the Internet can do for you,
but which you can do for the Internet? As you
got me fired up. I mean, I feel like the
parallels to what you're describing abound. If if we thought
of the only way we could create food is through
some giant agribusiness versus starting with our backyards and growing
a few tomatoes, and it's not all our food needs,
(27:06):
but those tomatoes are gonna be bound, right, It's gonna
be amazing. Grow those damn tomatoes, you know, And every
now and then you're gonna be like, you know what,
I'm going to get some cilantro as well, and Parson,
suddenly you see that vibrant, amazing thing that you don't
have to go with somebody else to rely on and
that is empowering. Sometimes we're like, well, we have to
wait for that empowerment to arrive to us. We have
(27:28):
to do that ourselves most of the time because nobody
gives a crap about us the way that we want
them to. We're never gonna be somebody else's priority. M
So we're not saying completely dismantle it. I mean, you
know me, I'm on Twitter as well. I mean, sure,
you're going to grow tomatoes, but then you've got to
go to the store and get something else, baking soda.
I don't know something that you can make yourself. So
(27:50):
it's it's really about creating that healthy balance, but making
sure that you don't wait for somebody else to give
you a voice. As for this show is called How
to Citizen. We use citizen as a verb. Taking that interpretation,
what does it mean for you? What is to citizen mean?
(28:12):
It's to be responsible. It's to hold yourself accountable when
you're falling short, and to hold others accountable when they're
abusing your rights or the rights of those around you.
It's the way that I can live with myself to
wake up every day and say, I think I citizens
my ass off today. You know, how can I citizen
(28:33):
even better? And that's really where the tools come in,
because it's not just about you, but sometimes it's about
giving those in your position the tools to do exactly
what you did and to facilitate that. People are going
to be fired up when they hear you era, and
they're gonna be like, what what can I do? Tell
me what to do? How can we support your work?
(28:57):
The most important thing is to help spread the word
that scale is not good and to do it in
any setting, in for profit setting and nonprofit setting. We
need to get rid of that word or we need
to reclaim how it is defined. The second thing would
be build your platforms UM support open source communities because
(29:19):
just finding places like that where you can contribute to
a different kind of web that would be great. Um.
You can do it with your skills, you can do
it by spreading the word. You can do it with
your money. Speaking of money, I've never seen note of that.
I remember that actually you had tweeted about Michelle and
he said, hey, you know, I just heard this talk
(29:41):
and everybody should give this organization money. UM. I regret
to inform you that nobody took you up on that offer.
So this is ah. So this is the second opportunity
for those UM. But you know, organizations like ours we
operate on very little, and that's not by choice, but
it is by choice that we will continue to work
(30:02):
despite having so little. Well, Eestra, you are not alone.
We hear you. We will get some money to you.
This time my tweet failed, but I'm gonna blame the
algorithm and the like and the lack of context. We
have a lot more context here, is it magele dot org.
Is that the best place to direct people? Yes? Or
(30:22):
would be the best place UM people can connect with
me if they want to support in any other way.
And I will say that if you feel this time
there will be diret consequences. I won't go into detail
because this is there. And there goes the threat she
promised when she when the videos off and she got
that anonymity. Sometimes she makes really exactly and you know what,
(30:43):
if somebody comes after me after this, I'll say it's
a deep fake. There. Thank you, Estra al Chaffee, thank
you so much for this time. I am fired up
and ready to go good good and I hope you know,
I hope you stay fired up and thank you so
much for you know, amplifying the story. Um, this is
(31:05):
always a great opportunity to speak with you. And it
was definitely the least boring podcast have been a part of.
So that's good, you know. Can you put that on
our iTunes reviewed? How the Citizen the least boring podcast
I've been a part of. Okay, if after that my
(31:27):
social media following doesn't give money to ms all, Yo,
let's just say we might not even get season four
of How the Citizen because this is how you citizen.
It's right there in front of you. So please don't
make me look bad. People come on you. But in
all seriousness, that's the kind of fire we need to
truly think outside the box, or maybe, as might put it,
(31:49):
smash the box completely. Next episode, we're speaking with Pia Mancini,
another huge advocate of open source. I'm starting to see
a theme here, and she's co founder of open Collective,
an organization that enables collectives to receive funding without needing
(32:09):
a legal entity or a bank account to do so.
You can't beat the nation state, so stop trying build
around it until it becomes obsolete. But the nation states
weren't always here and they're not going to be here always.
As part of how to Citizen, we want to offer
you more than a chance to listen to cool conversations.
(32:32):
We want to give you ways you concitizen. That's why
we're building a universe of citizen actions over at how
to citizen dot com. So for this episode, here are
some things you can do personally. Reflect on one of
you felt concerned for your safety and security online? What
features made you feel vulnerable or exposed? Was it something
(32:53):
you could control or was it outside of your control?
Next type of action, get informed and question the idea
of scale in philanthropy. I want you to check outs
dot org, m A j a L dot org that's
Esther's joint and take a look at all the platforms
they create. Then, beyond Ra's work, when you're engaging with
(33:15):
nonprofits and philanthropic organizations, take a look at who founded
the group and who runs it, who's funding it. Then
try to find groups that are run by people closest
to the problem or experiencing that problem directly. Here's a
great way to start that learning journey. Read this dope
book by Edgar Villenueva. He's an Indigenous person, former philanthropic operator,
(33:40):
and he's written this beautiful book called de Colonizing Wealth.
I can't recommend it enough. Third level of the game.
Publicly participate by challenging some of those philanthropic norms. Many
of us support large organizations that emphasize scale and unsustainable
growth in the way they try to help. Instead, I
(34:01):
want you to consider getting as local and grassroots as
you can. So I want you to do an extra
favor to all of us here because you heard as
recall us out. Donate dot org, m A j A
L dot org. All this is available at how to
citizen dot com. Find us on Instagram at how to
citizen to share your thoughts, to learn from others, and
(34:24):
why don't you post with that hashtag how to citizen
goodbye for now. How to Citizen with barrittun Day is
a production of I Heart Radio podcast and dust Light Productions.
Our executive producers are Me Barritton Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart,
and Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Tamika Adams. Our
producer is Ali Kilts, and our assistant producer Sam Paulson.
(34:46):
Stephanie Cohne is Our editor Valentino Rivera is our senior
engineer and Matthew Laie as our apprentice. Additional production help
from rwin Nicks, original music by Andrew Eapen with additional
original music for season three from Andrew Clawson. This episode
was produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks
to Joel Smith from I Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia
(35:07):
at Dustlight Production
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