For the week of Thanksgiving I will list some of the things I am deeply grateful for. As per usual, they are all over the map, which is reflective, I believe, of an interesting life rather than a scattered brain. Or so I tell myself.

I’ll start with the folks at Dark Inquiry who are living proof that you can marry arts and politics in ways that matter (one of my own quests). They are models for applied activism, not just for moving something in our heads.

They set out with a project called White Collar Crime Risk Zones. https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com 

It took the fact that police departments across the US use software to anticipate hot spots of street crime and turned the concept on its head for us to anticipate where white collar crime might occur. The police software is, of course, guided by algorithms that use biased data sets focussed on poor communities and communities of color. Dark Inquiry reappropriates this algorithm applying it to the community at large. If you click the link above, and allow access to your geographical location, the map will provide white crime targets in red. It is funny, cynical, thought-provoking – and based on the systems art of Hans Haacke, who did something along those lines tracking a particular NYC slumlord in the early 70s. Here is the map that came up when I engaged with the website.

Today’s photographs are of some of the PDX sites above in deep red…

The collective has now turned to a practical, political matter – the fact that multitudes in this country cannot put up bail and so linger in jail before their trials. https://bailproject.org/the-approach/

The new app designed by them and offered as rhetorical software, is called Bail Bloc, conceptual art linked to digital activism.If you sign up to the app, a complicated process is started, all out of your sight, not interfering with what you do on the computer, but using its space for complex computations. Your donation of that computing power earns cryptocurrency that is pooled by the collective, exchanged into real money that is donated to the bail project.

The exact details, about the open source process and the collective, can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/can-a-social-justice-app-be-art?utm_source=Narratively+email+list&utm_campaign=ccb4f74bd3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f944cd8d3b-ccb4f74bd3-66322689

Full disclosure: If you are like me it will take some time to overcome a hesitancy to sign up for this app, since I have no clue what powers I really support in this process, what entry holes into my computer I offer. But I love – and am grateful for –  the idea that folks are trying to open-source help for those who need it most. I ask myself what is different for me who constantly answers to kick starter projects or some such? Fear of novel concepts like cryptocurrency or just being digitally vulnerable?

Thoughts to be mulled over while preparing the feast.