Empowermentors Collective empowermentors@identi.ca
The Empowermentors Collective is a skillshare, discussion, and support network for intersectionally marginalized people of color with a critical interest in technology and media hacking. We are called Empowermentors because we focus on sharing knowledge and technical skills, producing free software and free media, and supporting one another however we can. In this way we are both teaching and learning from each other to collectively empower ourselves.
2013-11-26T04:39:52Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: a(n) collection
"Depending upon its vantage point, the law can either empower or disable creativity, while also having a powerful impact on who actually receives access to and protection within the marketplace of cultural products. Further, as these examples might suggest, propertizing expression benefits some authors and artists, often within the mainstream, sometimes at the cost of chilling other types of artistic expression and commentary, often from “outsider” groups like women, people of color, and sexual minorities. Ignoring this result matters. If we construe a marketplace of copyrighted cultural products as akin to, or at least reflective of, the rich diversity of the marketplace of ideas itself, then the denial of the privileges of authorship to some suggests that we are missing an important and illuminating facet of the relationships between production, representation, and consumption within copyright law."
— Sonia Katyal, “Performance, Property, and the Slashing of Gender in Fan Fiction” (h/t Susana Loza)2013-11-26T04:38:24Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: a(n) collection
The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the Free/Libre Open Source Software Community
"As the people who exist within this supposed meritocracy don’t exist within a vacuum, we also have to realize how our actions affect others. Meritocracy creates a hierarchy amongst the people within it. Some of those at the top or striving to at least be above other people have been guilty of using their power for bullying, harassment, and sexist/racist/*ist language that they use against others directly and indirectly. This creates an atmosphere where people who would otherwise be deemed meritorious within this system choose not to participate because of a hostile, unrewarding environment.
A lot of people hold the idea of meritocracy close. I believe they mean well, too, but don’t they aren’t necessarily seeing the whole picture. We all want a system where we feel we can be rewarded for what we contribute: that society’s injustice toward certain groups of people - most specifically geeks, many of us who grew up feeling abused, persecuted, and ignored (blog post coming on this soon) - would be rendered irrelevant. In striving for that, our community has become a microcosm of society at large.
The idea of a meritocracy presumes that everyone starts off and continues through with the same level of access to opportunity, time, and money, which is unfortunately not the case. It’s a romanticized ideal - a belief in which at best ignores and at worst outright dismisses the experiences of everyone outside the group with the most access to these things. A certain demographic of people have three or four steps above other people, so the playing field is not even.”
http://ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
2013-11-26T04:34:16Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: a(n) collection
The range of Western beliefs that define intellectual and cultural property laws—that ideas can easily be separated from expressions, that expressions are the singular products of the individual minds of Romantic authors, and that these expressive works can be abstracted from the meaningful worlds in which they figure to circulate as the signs of unique personality, and that these expressive works can be abstracted from the meaningful worlds in which they figure to circulate as the signs of unique personality, that cultures have essences embodied in objects that represent unbroken traditions—are not universal values that express the full range of human possibility, but particular, interested fictions emergent from a history of colonialism that has disempowered most of the peoples on this planet.
— Rosemary Coombe, “The Properties of Culture and the Politics of Possessing Identity: Native Claims in the Cultural Appropriation Controversy” (h/t Susana Loza)New website and ways to join the Empowermentors Collective!
2013-11-26T04:33:19Z via Identi.ca Web To: Public CC: Followers
2013-10-02T19:23:54Z via Identi.ca Web CC: Public
shared by Empowermentors Collective at 2013-03-14T23:54:09+00:00 via web To: Public
Upcoming first meeting for @Empowermentors Collective: intersectionally marginalized POC in free software & culture http://ur1.ca/d2e0tChristopher Allan Webber likes this.
Christopher Allan Webber, Christopher Allan Webber, Empowermentors Collective, Empowermentors Collective shared this.
shared by Empowermentors Collective at 2013-03-03T05:37:31+00:00 via web To: Public
Signal boost! @Empowermentors Collective & LibrePlanet13 http://ur1.ca/cy2ca http://ur1.ca/cy2cb @nathanjurgenson #TtW13Empowermentors Collective, Empowermentors Collective shared this.
2013-03-02T21:03:55+00:00 in Kūh-e Zardar, Ostān-e Lorestān, Iran To: Public
Do the assimilationist inclusion-based goals of most initiatives benefit POC/queer/women hackers or hacker hegemony? #TtW13 #b3 @jgiesekinga(n) person, a(n) person shared this.
Free Culture Foundation shared by Empowermentors Collective at 2013-03-02T17:23:44+00:00 via web To: Public
Announcing the Empowermentors Collective for Women of Color & Queer People of Color in !freeculture and !freesoftware http://ur1.ca/co0jga(n) person likes this.
Empowermentors Collective, Empowermentors Collective, a(n) person, a(n) person shared this.
@freeculture That program seems very specific. Will you also help non-colored women, queers, or female queers with other programs?
Maybe @OnlyGirlInTech could promote the Empowermentors Collective http://ur1.ca/co0jg