Assata taught me that “Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is.” May her spirit fly free!🤲🏾

Assata Shakur has "died in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health conditions and her advanced age." She was 78.

On institutional “neutrality” and “restraint” in the face of slavery, civil rights movement, South African apartheid, and now the Palestinian genocide: “Princeton will take the lead when there is no longer a lead to take.” —Massie *stay tuned for a talk recording

Princeton area friends, join us for “Divestment & the Boundaries of Conscience” on 9/23 @ 630pm w/ Robert K. Massie ‘78: What challenges do activists face when invoking divestment? What can divestment accomplish? What are its limits? Where can it work & where not? aas.princeton.edu/events/2025/...

“(T)he way someone makes the argument – how nice they look, how erudite they sound, how polite they seem – has long taken precedent over the actual argument itself… as long as the tone is cheerful, there's no need to examine the ugliness of the words.” campaign-trails.ghost.io/the-white-ci...

NEW WRITING: "What will you stay curious about, even when authoritarians try to shape your reality by telling you not to think, not to read, not to ask questions, not to dare consider the possibility that there’s more to life than this?" 🧪

Other Tech Worlds Are Possible. Comics project funded by the University of Toronto and SSHRC. The volume 1 was co-created with the Homeless Workers’ Movement in Brazil. The online launch will be available next week in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.

Join us!

Happening soon!

O vol. 8 saiu! Entrevista com @carolinelevine.bsky.social sobre o ativismo humanista. Artigo de @ruha9.bsky.social sobre IA e eugenia. Texto de @chaykak.bsky.social sobre homogeneização pelo algoritmo. Notas sobre abundância, de @brankomilan.bsky.social. E resenha de Diego Farina.👇 ufrgs.br/carbono

As someone targeted by the ADL, this is welcome news: The National Education Association, the largest union in the US representing over 3 million members, voted to cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League. www.labornotes.org/blogs/2025/0...

Good teacher union news today: the NEA cur ties with the racist, pro-genocide, anti-labor ADL Bad teacher union news today: the AFT has accepted a $21 million bribe from racist, pro-genocide, anti-labor Microsoft/Open AI

Under your "leadership" AFT is partnering with billionaires using tech to privatize education. Your partner steals our work! AFT is complicit. What an outrage! bsky.app/profile/did:...

Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

“In his efforts to demolish & disappear Black culture & the instns that support it, Trump has made a loud admission: if he truly believed that Black culture were inferior, he would be leaving it on display & intact. Its mere existence would prove white supremacy.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Here are three whole books that talk about the incomprehensibility of race and tech and the way that has been hidden. @thetrudz.photo discussed it for years on Twitter And I’d link new stuff but my old stuff keeps being relevant about how journalism aids erasure www.wired.com/story/listen...

Philly friends, this event tmrw at 530pm has a new location: Science History Institute (315 Chestnut St), details here: africana.sas.upenn.edu/events/2025/...

When ICE comes into our neighborhoods targeting our communities and hurting our leaders, we show up! United. Organized. Ready to protect families.

Good morning rebels...

Who owns the future? - Thurs 19 June 2025 5-6pm (hybrid event) @ruha9.bsky.social wants to shift our focus in her talk, from the dystopian & utopian narratives of #AI we are sold, to a sober reckoning with the way these tools are already a part of our lives. Tickets: www.lse.ac.uk/Events/LSE-F...

Thank you @ruha9.bsky.social for the wonderful twin Tanner lectures: the first a critique of the ‘Artificial Intelligentsia’ and the destructive ideologies that fuel their technologies: youtu.be/ZseJigkUhuE?...

Added! Join us at Brooklyn Public Library on Wed June 4 @ 7:00 - 8:30pm at Central Library, Dweck Center 🔗 bklynlib.org/4kb7FrE

Added! Join us on Wed June 25 @ 5:30 - 730pm at Library Company of Philadelphia. 🔗 support.librarycompany.org/event/junete...

🤖💻🛰 Is Technology Our Savior - or Our Slayer? decidim.org Sociologist Ruha Benjamin is here with a more radical vision of the future: one where humanity isn't saved or slayed by tech, but rather used to uplift ordinary people, healthcare and housing for all a reality. 👊🫂🔥 youtu.be/QO3nY_u6hos?...

I love my book club, there's a lawyer, an astrophysicist and me! I sit in awe of their brilliance and irreverent humor! We are reading Imagination a manifesto by Ruha Benjamin, I highly recommend it!

Join us for a public lecture with Professor Ruha Benjamin: Who Owns the Future? Explore how AI shapes education, society, and our future — and how we can imagine something better. 🗓️ 23 June | 🕠 5:30 - 7 PM | 📍Online & In-Person (Room 2.55, Edinburgh Futures Institute) Book now - edin.ac/4dzZ0x5

Why We Give Black: Remembering, ‘Restorying’ and Reimagining - mailchi.mp/cllctivly/wh... @ruha9.bsky.social @ruha9.bsky.social @ajamonet.bsky.social @pinkrobedpastor.bsky.social @jamyewooten.bsky.social @revdrstarsky.bsky.social

“Billionaires building bunkers to survive an AI apocalypse, attempting to disrupt death through cryopreservation, scouting the planet for pop-up cities and network states — are not reliable stewards of the collective good.” — @ruha9.bsky.social

Science Magazine gets it wrong. 🧵

📢 If you’re able to get to Newark: Protest outside Department of Homeland Security office! 📢 620 Frelinghuysen Ave. Newark, NJ 07114 Organizations and community members on the ground are asking for support and for all of us to stand with them now.

To save runaways from slavery who were trying to make lives in the North “illegally,” local Vigilance Committees formed. They kept watch for slave catchers, secreted away those in danger, and posted placards that outed slave catchers, sometimes hounding them till they left town.

For those who’ve read Viral Justice, you remember the story of the newborn baby who I would bring with me to Prof. Ruthie Gilmore’s grad class at Berkeley? Well, this is that newborn… reunited.☺️

I’m watching this right now and I encourage you to take the time, too. Even if you just watch the first 15 minutes, @ruha9.bsky.social brings Toni Morrison’s thoughts on how final solutions begin with first solutions, often implemented by liberal institutions, do it.

"We should think carefully about the fact that the most influential AI boosters are also the most ruthless higher ed attackers. And if those attacking the educational enterprise understand the dangers of liberatory pedagogy, then we sure as hell need to channel it for social transformation.” 🔥🔥🔥

Abolish ICE It was absolutely the right call 7 years ago, and more so now, with nightly reports of violent raids gone awry, strip-searching tourists, and snatching student op-ed writers How America created a secret police, and how to get rid of it. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/ice-...

I still have little time to read outside of my own work, but I keep reading Ruha Benjamin's 'Imagination, a manifesto' on walks & on the train, and can only recommend this book. @ruha9.bsky.social #imagination #booksky #rethink #empower #resolve I'll get into some details, probably in June.

“There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as before an ancient friend.” —Baldwin’s words grounded my Tanner lectures at Harvard, “Imagining Beyond the Artificial Intelligentsia”🤖 Lecture 1, Who Owns the Future? youtu.be/ZseJigkUhuE?...

“To that end, we are reviewing—not resisting, not questioning, just, you know, vigorously squinting at—the new NIH grant conditions that now require applicants to solemnly swear they’ve never even thought about organizing a potluck for underrepresented scientists.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/our...

“I don’t think enough people recognize how the normalization of human suffering and disposability happen. When you stop caring about any group of people and their suffering…you also become more vulnerable to the violence they’re experiencing.” organizingmythoughts.org/sarah-kendzi...

My latest is a conversation with @sarahkendzior.bsky.social about dehumanization, fighting back, and what the oligarchs can't take away from us. "They want us to forget our own humanity, to surrender our humanity and to not know what it means to be a human being."

So grateful for these kind and generous words from @dreanyc123.bsky.social and @ruha9.bsky.social, both of whom have so fundamentally shaped my understanding of this world!!! Such an honor that they would read and even maybe like something that I was lucky to work on!!!

The Battle for Higher Ed 👉🏾 “Becoming Unloved & Dangerous: Black University Life in the Age of Palestine Protest” w/ Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, April 23 @ 6pm EDT. Register: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

TOMORROW! Stand Up for Higher Education! Join an action in your area! @actioninhighered.bsky.social @higheredlabor.bsky.social

Central NJ friends, join us for a discussion of GOOD FRIENDS: Bonds that Change the World on 4/14 @ 7:00pm at Princeton Public Library, princetonlibrary.libnet.info/event/13125577

Today’s lesson: “We can only be chased if we run.” —Janet Jemmott, SNCC field secretary during Freedom Summer

By eliminating USAID and gutting global humanitarian aid, the eugenics freaks who hide behind the veil of “long-termism” and “utilitarianism” are getting exactly what they want: the mass death of people they view as unnecessary. lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

🙏🏾 Another one from “Imagination.” @ruha9.bsky.social

Imagination by @ruha9.bsky.social is a fantastic read. "...the dominant story told by techno-utopianists...is that the world’s major crises can be solved with even more investment in their energy-intensive digital dreams, which usually also means less public participation and collective dreaming."

It’s patently false, but notice that “humans won’t be needed” to these people is identified as the desired future rather than the deeply dystopian vision that it actually is.