By Tawana Petty In 1985 my father died of AIDS. I was nine years old and it was nine days after my ninth birthday. Although a devastating loss for me, it would be years before I would learn the truth about why my dad died, what AIDS was, how the United States treated AIDS patients,…
In 2019, the city of Detroit caught the national spotlight with its efforts to resist facial recognition technology (FRT). The implementation of this technology was through an initiative called Project Green Light, a public-private partnership led by the Detroit Police Department. The project seeks to present itself as means of making communities safer. But as…
Kim M Reynolds spoke with Tawana Petty to learn more about the anti-surveillance work going on in Detroit, which is currently one of the national spotlights for resistance against facial recognition technology. Can you briefly introduce yourself and the work you do? My name is Tawana Petty, and I’m also known as Honeycomb.…
By Kim M Reynolds and Seeta Peña Gangadharan In March 2019, Our Data Bodies celebrated the publication of the Digital Defense Playbook, a popular education resource that captures ODB’s three-year journey in talking with residents in the most marginalized neighborhoods of Charlotte, Detroit, and Los Angeles. This pop-ed resource outlines ODB’s method of storytelling-as-research and…