I think the next big thing in technology is accountability. Now, more than ever, we have access to such an amazing amount of information online. This information ranges from cute cat videos to the names of every major US CEO. My point being, there is a lot of stuff to be found online and filtered through in order to get to the good stuff. And in 2016, there has been a lot of bad stuff. Bad stuff including war in Syria and Iraq (just to name a couple); a lack of clean water in the United States in places like Flint, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio; what seems to be never ending police brutality against people of color; fraud by national banks on a huge scale; and another new Star Wars movie. What separates 2016 from previous colossally terrible years, though, is we have a very powerful internet. An internet that breaks news and disseminates information faster than ever before imagined. Movements like Black Lives Matter and even the alt-right would not rise to prevalence without the reach of the internet, in part thanks to Twitter. My point in raising this discussion is that in 2016 a simple Google search can tell you who is responsible for your bank opening several accounts in your name and charging you fees on them. Though many ignorant people do not care, it is easier than ever to fact check what a politician is saying to you in real time! And with this all of this information, there is accountability.
The goal of my project is to expose people who have a powerful anonymous voice online, and putting a name and location to their online personality. Thanks to groups like Anonymous, many dangerous online trolls and real life villains have had their identities exposed and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. One story that particularly interested me was Anonymous’ exposing of a police officer who assaulted protesters at the site of the Dakota Pipeline. I am not personally a hacker so there is not much for me to do in that world other than applaud the talented and morally inclined hackers who already do this online. However, I believe I can come in and provide a way to present all of this information in a constructive manner.
As we’ve seen with this year’s presidential election, people’s’ opinions and sharing of these opinions can have dangerous repercussions–like electing someone unqualified for president and promoting hate speech and hate crimes. In the wake of our country’s political transformation, our new presidential elect has promised to compile a registry of Muslims living in America in an effort to track these people on the basis that they have ties or information related to terrorist organizations in the Middle East. It is almost impossible to not draw parallels between this proposed policy and those of Nazi Germany. At the beginning of Hitler’s reign of power, every Jew in Germany was required to wear a yellow magen david (Jewish Star of David). It was this first impeachment on Jews’ rights that eventually led to businesses being stripped from their rightful owners, deportation to ghettos and concentration camps, and ultimately the mass genocide of the Jewish people. As a person who is very affected by my ethnicity history and civil rights/social justice in general, I will not sit idly while our nation discriminates against a group of people based on their religion or ethnicity– as we did to the Japanese during World War II with internment camps and Muslims after 9/11 with a registry system similar to the one being proposed today. So, my solution to this very discriminatory policy is to mess with the registry. Non-profit organizations like the Anti Defamation League (ADL) have risen up and pledged to enter their names as Muslims in solidarity. But I think there’s more to be done here. I wanted to put together a registry of our country’s most dangerous citizens.
Thus I have created a Google Map with the names and locations of every person in the United States who made an individual contribution to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. I obtained this list of 118,141 names legally through the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) website. If members of the alt-right and Republican Party are naming Muslims as the ones to watch, I believe they are the ones who truly must be watched. So on the map, you can see points on the map indicating the location of each donor by zip code along with his or her name.
One of the big challenges in carrying out this project is that I had to limit myself to very specific groups of people in creating my registry. There are very few lists of useful information that could be easily imputed into the map. For example, there is no list of FBI’s most wanted with addresses (because obviously they do not know where these people are. There is no list of sex offenders on a national level that is accessible to the public, there is only a database which people can search with exact names. There is no list of alt-right members nor racist trolls nor KKK members nor Holocaust deniers with both names and addresses. So a large goal of this project is to crowdsource information to add to the map. By allowing people to contribute genuine lists to the registry project, we can begin to further the dialogue of who should really be worried about in this country, and continue the dialogue of how ridiculous creating a Muslim registry is.
The target audience of my project is primarily the liberal media, political and social activists, as well as non-profit organizations and hopefully sensible conservatives. The main organization I would target is most likely the ADL, since they’ve expressed solidarity towards the Muslim people at this time and pledged to resist the Muslim registry by any means possible. To expand on this point, I think targeting Jewish communities in general will be a meaningful goal, too. The Jewish people have been discriminated against for thousands of years for their religious beliefs, and it is a responsibility to stand up and say no to such injustice– especially when our core beliefs and values align so closely to those of Muslims. It is a wakeup call to show that people all over our country either support or overlook racism, sexism, xenophobia and other pillars related to American white nationalism. If I were to release my project publicly, it would serve as a sort of art/social experiment project, and my target to gain traction would be news sites and activist organizations concerned with the outcome of the election. I would also target liberal leaders and outlets on Twitter and other social media platforms. Perhaps, I could print out the map as an art piece and an accompanying very long, extensive chart of all the names and zip codes.
I guess the primary way to gauge whether my project is successful is to see who reaches out and expresses enthusiasm about the project. Additionally, I would love to set up a forum or means of communication for people to send over lists (that are fact checked obviously) to add to my map/registry. The incoming lists would have to be fact checked, of course, and reflect the mission statement of my project. So potential lists I would like to see are: sex offenders in every state, the FBI’s most wanted (and the location of their last spotting), prisoners convicted of heinous hate crimes and general crimes against humanity, politicians and special interests who have outwardly supported the president elect and his racist policies and many of the other lists I mentioned earlier, such as KKK members. I think after a couple weeks or so, if the map grows even just by 20% with new lists and has over a couple thousand views with some media coverage, it will be a big success.
Depending on the feedback I receive from the class, and friends of mine who are involved in politics and social justice, I will consider releasing my project to the public. I would really only like to do so, though, if it is backed with some sort of press coverage or organizational support. This is not for any selfish reason. I just do not want to release this to no response or action. I’d hope to see some progress as a result from this project. Optimistically, this would be progress towards disavowing a Muslim registry, or progress in supporting the Muslim people and all other people threatened by the president elect and his policies. I would without a doubt encourage viewers and those interested in the project to contribute to the ADL and other organizations fighting for civil rights, like the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Sources:
- https://api.open.fec.gov/developers/
- The open source list of all campaign contributions.
- http://time.com/4529054/stumpf-wells-fargo-fraud/
- Article about Wells Fargo fraud
- http://anonhq.com/breaking-exposed-online-community-leaks-identity-dakota-pipeline-dog-attackers/
- Anonymous article revealing officer who assaulted protesters at Dakota Pipeline
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