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In a revolt against techno-optimism and the real-world
violence it upholds, members of radical research collective
Lucy Parsons Labs (LPL) call for an empiricism rooted in
technopolitical critique. Drawing from their own years of
Iabor in the struggles against racial and surveillance
capitalism, current work in HCI, and radical theorists like
Alfredo M. Bonanano and Modibo Kadalie, LPL invites us to
incorporate an ethics of rebellion and progress our tech

practices into principled, anti

-authoritarian praxis.

By Alejandro Ruizesparza and Freddy Martinez

our oxésniz,;non, Lucy Parsons
Labs (LPL), is a collective of

researchers, journalists, artists, and

activists who challenge
technologically-driven harm and
state-corporate wrongdoing. Our
namesake LuCK Parsons was a
Chicago anarchist, labor agitator,
and expert orator. The Chicago
Police Department (CPD) once said
she was “[m] ore dangerous than a
thousand rioters” (1]. Seeing
ourselves as inheritors of the anti-
authoritarian spirit carried by those
{ike Lucy, we work at the
intersectlon of activism, social
justice, and technology, carefully
develobing counter-“power to
surveillance capitalism, In the late
“60s when Up Against the Wall/MF
sought to challenge the
counterculture movements,
especially the art world, it did so
through a series of provocations
and stunts. Against that backdrop
and disillusiohed by
overwhelmingly technocratic
critiques of tech, we created LPL as
aunique space with a politic rooted
in abolitionist, anarchist, and anti~
colonial thought.

As such, we do not limit our critique
of tech fo features like economic
utility or algorithmic model
efficacy; ouf critique digs into the
relationship tech and kniowledge
production have with persistent
Structures of domination. And
because tech does not emerge in a
vacuum, because tech is a socio-
cultural'and economic artifact
itself, the work of “undesigning,”

“de-biasing”, or even foreclosing
deployments }s insufficient.

Instead, we seek to nurture
analyses, critiques, and conditions
in opposition to one where _
ostensibly apolitical institutions
hold unparalleled influence across
industry, research, an
governmiental settings. Knowledge

roduction is not valtie neutral,

ven declarations like “[the] ACM is
not a political organization” 2]
cannot go unchallenged. In writing
this piece, LPL members weighed
the potential benefits in reaching
the eyes of many young
computational scholarS against our
own disavowal of the toolS for
carceral violence and war [3].

In higher education, we are lucky to
getan implict discision of ethics.
exhaps students are assigned texts
to read like Brighter than a
Thousand Suns by Robert Jungl
which examines the development of
the atom bomb from the personal
viewof the scientsts, o are gven
space to discuss the so-calle
“Science Wars” of the ‘90s that
contributed to a rift between the
hard sciences and humanities. We,
however, believe critical ethical
inquiry i essential to all aspects of
scientific work. As HCI scholars
Keyes, Joy, and Drouhard wrote, an
“explicitly articulated vision of an
HCI grounded in emanpipator‘y
autonomy...aimed at dismantling
all oppressive systers by
‘mandating suspicion of and a
reckoning with imbalanced
distributions of power” is needed
(4). We agree with their call and its
extension beyond HCI to all STEM
practices.

Anti-colonial scholar and Black
feminist geographer Katherine
McKittrick réminds us that there is
no time to waste, “If we do not do
this work, if we do not
collaborafively call into question a
system of knowledge that delights
in accumulation by dispossession
and profits from ecocidal and
‘genocidal practices, if we do not
roduce and share Stories that
onor modes of humanness that
cannot and will not replicate this
system, we ate doomed (5] To
avoid critically assessing the work
we do as empiricistsis
complacency—an aifirmation of
domination and death.

Praxis and Community
Solidarity

Resistance to the development and
proliferation of harmful technology
Is an urgent and necessary need,
and one'we endeavor in through a
prefigurative politic, which refers
to strategies and prattices that
reflect iberated futures—means
and ends in harmony.

In one example, LPL formed a
coalition against Chicago’s use of
ShotSpotter, a notorious acoustic
surveillance product embedded
across Black, brown, and poor
neighborhoods in the USS. that uses
microphones and machine learning
systems to “detect” gunshots and
deploy polce,Shosporter has faced
years of criticism for its
amplification of racist and classist
policing (6], concerns about its
accuracy (7], and the way it allows
CPD to manufacture arrests [8]. Our
local coalition to cancel the city’s
contract was built on abolitionist
principles following the police
shooting of a seventh-grader
before broadening to a national

‘movement.

The formation of Chicago’s Stop
Shotspotter coalition ocaurred after
the kifling of 13-year-old Adam
Toledo by police responding toa
ShotSpoiter alert in the
predominantly Mexican
heighborhood of Little Village
‘Adam, who dropped a handgun and
raised empty hands high following
acommand to do so, was killed by
CPD officer Eric Stillman.
Immediately after, the Cook County
prosecutor gave a Statement
erroncously saying Adam was
armed when shot. A false narrative
regurgiated by police and then-
mayor Lori Lightfoot until eleased
body-cam footage showed
otherwise.

Animated by Adam’s death,
‘members from LPL joined fellow
Chicago grassroots organizers and
collectives to discuss the
circumstances leading up to the
shooting, Immediately, our
conversations approached the
nature of Chicago’s immense police
surveillance dragnet—a web of
interconnected technologies
mediating the deploymerit of police.
‘As our focus landed on the role of
ShotSpotter technology, we were
able t0 hit the ground unning
because LPL had already spent the
past few yeats researching

icago’s rlationship to
ShotSpotter and the related tech
acquired by its parent company,
SoundThinking. As such, we came
inwith a strong base of information
and a deep, collective will to ensure
the harm we saw would not be
repeated.

At the time we wrote: “As
abolitionists, we are not fooled by
calls to merely modify police
policies and procedures, as the
mayor has called for finall
implementing recommended foot-
chase reforms following the killing
of Adam Toledo” [9]. OCr position
s that reigning in and ultimately
abolishing these technologies is
critical for preventing more deaths
and in bringing ustice toall
‘harmed by the consequences of
mass surveillance like Adam. And as
we mentioned earlier, it was not
just enough to “foreclose” the.
design of hew technology [10] but
for our visions to be prefigurative in
building a new world in the shell of
the ld e concluded by saying
“Justice for our youth requires that
we dismantle the technology of
militarized policing and build a
society based on care, equity, and
mutual aid” [9]. In this way,

uestions of technological

levelopment cannot be separated
from the nature of our social
relationships.

We must expand where
we challenge power and
build solidarity across
our workplaces and
communities to change
how technology shapes
our world.

Of course, campaigns lke the push
to cancel the ShotSpotter contract
donot emerge overnight. Our local
coalition was built on years of
research, trust built among
organizers, knowledge generated
collectively, and a peFsistent belief
that we will win regardless of how
powerful the opposition seems.
irst, for our part, we stake our
claim that rigorous and strong
research was critical to this
campaign and for all organizers,
particularly in the face of State and
Corporate power. Our campaign did
nothave the luxury of annouricing
implausible and inflated statistics
(“zero false positives in over
20,000 alerts” (11]) that are
accepted at face value by virtue of
proximity to State and corporate
power. This is an important point:
{When organizing for justice,
nobody will view your credentials as
authentic when we are talking

about power. Second, we are rooted
inan abolitionist tradition that is
only compatible with a clear-eyed
Tejéction of technological fatalism.
As Chis Gilliard reminds us when
describing bans on the use of facial
Tecognition technology, “No one
would look at asbestos and say,
‘Well, you can’t outlaw chemistry”
[12] This draws us to another
reminder for technoloj

ractitioners: “(Tjhe ultimate,
hidden truth of the world is that it
is something that we make, and
could just as easily make
differently” (13].

Atthe time of this writing, we've
entered a phase in Chicago where
the existing ShotSpotter contract
will be decommissioned ater
September. This does not resolve
the larger issues of mass
surveiflance, data extraction, or
digitally-driven state violence, but
the decision represents a major
organizing victory following
coalition-building and rigorous
research efforts.

As Alfredo Bonnano, John
Carpenter, and Guy Debord all
remind us, we experience the world
and culture through symbols and
this relationship with symbols can
be broken, Bonnano writes, “Every
now and then we reemerge due toa
surviving trace of culture and
become aware of what is happening
to our ears. But this step cannot be
taken without mediation and _
support” [14]. Building solidarity is
apre-condition to building kinder
worlds. We must expand where we
challenge power and build
Solidarify across our workplaces
and communities to change how
technology shapes our world.

Against Techno-
Optimism

‘While we've highlighted the work
we labored on in collaboration with

community members, it would be a
mistake to think companies like
ShotSpotter and research into
surveillance tech are rogue
exceptions. Among STE!
practitioners, we sée a fendency
oward technio-optimist beliefs,
which must be challenged. Recent
critiques of tech billionaires have
pointed toa rise of accelerationist
rhetoric, a set of philosophies
positing that accelerating
econonic, social, and technological
development toward a point of
collapse can lead to a viable post-
collapse society. And even before
these newer tendencies, political
scientist James C. Scott Spoke
disparagingly of what he called
“high-rodernist ideologies”
guiding Western statecraft: “a
sirong,".. muscle-bound, version of
the selt-confidence about scientific
and technical progress, the
expansion of production, the
‘growing satisfaction of human
Reeds, the master of nature
(including human nature), and
above all, the rational design of
social order commensuraté with the
scientific understanding of natural
laws. .. It was, accordingly,
uncritical, unskeptical, and thus
unscientifically optimistic about
the possibilities for the
comprehensive planning of human
settlement and production” [15).

A commitment to
uprooting that which
causes inequity,
oppression, and
domination requires the
courage to destroy.

Ultimately, regardless of what these
ideologies are Called, it's apparent
tous that the futurist utopias they
express are an uncritical aesthetic.
The function of these techno-
optimist ideologies i to jusify
authoritarian, efitist, and
dominating practices enhancing
State and corporate power at the
expense of communities denied
autonomy.

‘We find these techno-optimist
frameworks to be dangerous and
self-justifying Following a logic
akn to imperialism, techifio-
optimist ideologies Share a vague
notion of a greafer good that can be
achieved via domination—be it
through extraction from exploitable
communities, territory capture
through extefisive hardware
deployments, or population control
via automated systems. Prominent
biologist and historian of science
Stephen Jay Gould frequently
warned of the way eugenics and
genetic determinism have and
Continue to haunt scientific work.
He wrote, “[s]cience must be
understood as a social
phenomenon, a gutsy, human
enterprise, subject to external
incentives and nasty prejudices”
[16]. For Gould, and for us, science
is “not the work of robots
programmed to collect pure
Information” as techno-optimists
may suggest.

In examining the way algorithmic
technology S “implicated in global
racial power relations” that
underpin anti-Blackness, Safiya
Noble writes that (wle have more
data and technology than ever in
our daily lives and more social,
political, and economic inequality
End injustice to go with it” (17,
Beyond a mode of techno-
pessimism, where does this leave
us?

Producing Knowledge
and Reproducing
Injustice

Lucy Parsons reminds us that “a
long period of education must
precede any great fundamental
change in society” and it must be
one geared toward “the
development of self-thinking
individuals” [1]. As researchefs,
scientists, and empiricists, a love of
learning and a belief that it can help
us achiéve social progress is
certainly core. However, we must go ChicagoPoliceSurveillance.com on

beyond idealizing the accumulation

owledge. We must emphasize a and legal concerns as well

ritical peddigogy that Interrogates
howlnowledges produced, what
kinds of knowledge are
incentivized, and how the
accumulation of knowledge actually
interacts with the world we live in.
Simply, knowledge production
cannot be divorced from questions
of value, ethics, and power.

An uncomfortable truth we must
face is that the utility of knowledge
does not grant it absolute moral
lmgor[ance. Reflecting on racism
and the climate crisis, Social
ecologist and Black anarchist
ModiBo Kadalie points out “human
knowledge has taken a dangerous
direction” where its expansion has
fed ecological catastrophe. The
reasons he gives are because
“[s]cientific development is
entangled with the production of
both war materials and goods for
markets (and] (clapital needs to
supply these markets, so it needs to
destroy more of the ehvironment or
transform it” [18).

Neither we nor Kadalie want to
wholly reject knowledge production
ortechnological develpment
Following Kadalie’s words, we
believe the “task of sciencé should
be to integrate technology into_
society in Such a way that provides
for an ecologically sound world, a
world in which we won’tbe
shooting at one another all the time
{and a] world without these giant
risons” (18]. Now, how do we get
here?

Acritical part of our workis public
education, sharing both our
olitical ahalysis and technical

owledge. To that end, we put on
workshops, create infographics,
and guide original research into
survéillance téchnologies. One such
project s primer an al o the

own surveillance technologies in
Chicago. For years, we have képt
detailéd documentation via

the kifown tools of police, efficacy,
asthe

‘many funding streams for these

tools (some of which rely on off-

the-books funding sources (19]).

1f the current modalities of learning
and producing knowledge
reproduce existing social _
prejudices, scholafs ke Saidiya

artman Highlight that tacked on
educational Teforms are insufficient
for liberatory change [20]. Speaking
of white supremacy, she states that
it “can’t be rectified by learning
‘how to be more antiracist.”” For
Hartman and ourselves, liberatory
practice requires “a radical
divestment in the project of _
whiteness” via a “redistribution of
wealth and resources.” It requires
“the abolition of the carceral world,
..of capitalism, ... remaking of the
Social order, and nothing shott of
thatis going to makea difference”
[20]. While e may see similar lines
of thinking across critical fields like
the history and philosophy of
science, i£'s not often that we see
these arguments take place within
STEM writ large.

Techno-Revolt and
Revolution

‘While evil flourishes in banality,
liberatory praxis has nosuch '
luxury. A commitment to uprooting
that which causes inequity,
oppression, and domination
requires thé courage to destroy.
Recognizing that we can
collectively Set the conditions for
more just worlds tg emerge only via
the devastation of harmfl socio-
political relations, we are reminded
of the dictum by anarchist Mikhail
Bakunin who wrote that “[t he urge
todestroy is also a creative urge.
And in realizing that the will toward
liberation exists as a profound love
for others juxtaposed against an
immense revulsion at all which
uphold tyranny, revolutionary
eorge Jackson wrote of the
“[pJerfect love, perfect hate” [21],
T e ot el and e

hope to cultivate in ourselves.

‘The formation of LPL as a place for
challenging surveillance was born
out of séveral like-minded
individuals working to form the
organization. None of us had formal
ediication in public policy but were
still able to scratch out our
expertise through our research
experience and Shared commitment
to each other. LPL can exist because
of a shared possibility of solidarity
and above all, we sought a project
that brought s political enjoyment.
We are rethinded from Bonarino
that, “It’s easy. You can do it
yourself. Alone or with a few trusted
comrades. Complicated means are
not necessary. Not even great.
technical knowledge. Capital is
vulnerable. All you heed is to be
decided” [22].

Acknowledgment

This piece was collectively written
by members of Lucy Parsons Labs
(LPL). LPL explores technology’s
role in creating harm and counters
it through education, investigation,
and litigation. Initially a
collaborative of technologists and
transparency activists narned after
the 19th-century Chicago labor
organizer, agitator, and anarchist,

is curkeritly structured as a
501(c)3, We believe liberation
Comes from sustained community
relationship-building and are
continuously working alongside our
co-travelers to deepen each other’s
work.

For more information, please visit
our website at lucyparsonslabs.com
and follow us on social media.

Authors

Alejandro Ruizesparza s a co-

Executive Director at Lucy Parsons

Labs. They are a Public Voices

Fellow on Technology in the Public

Interest with The Opkid Project in

partnership with the MacArthut
oundation.

Freddy Martinez is the co-
Executive Director of Lucy Parsons
Labs where he focuses or the use of
technology by police. He i the child
of Mexican immigrants and holds a
B, in physics. HIs work has been
fcatured in the New York Times, the
New Republic, NPR, and other
media outlets.
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