Hi friends,
Yesterday, I heard Esosa Osa on Stacey Abrams's podcast, Assembly Required. Osa’s organization, Onyx Impact, is investigating
how Black communities engage with information [in order to] fight harmful information ecosystems targeting Black voters, and empower Black communities.
On the podcast, Osa explained the differences between misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, the last of which is a new term for me. She defined malinformation as
true information that is pushed with the intent to harm.
Discouraging voters — particularly Black voters — from participating in elections is one way that malinformation can cause harm. I am familiar with this strategy because negative messaging about rates of youth voter registration are frequently characterized incorrectly as voter apathy.
Osa discussed a leaked video from 2020, in which a Trump official described
a new strategy to take specific instances of voting issues or voting misconduct and label them as voter fraud and then use the presidential platform to amplify them as much as possible.
Trump continues to spread the falsehood that crime is out of control.
Osa’s work — to amplify positive, truthful messages as a sort of prophylactic to protect Black voters from misinformation (inaccurate information), disinformation (deliberate lies), and malinformation could not be more important.
Onyx Action is careful about whom they take money from and I am exploring how we can support their important work.
Abrams’ episode on “Deepfakes, Lies, and How to Fight Disinformation” could not have been more timely. Yesterday,
the Departments of Justice, State, and the Treasury announced sanctions against 10 individuals and 2 entities, and criminal charges against two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, who allegedly funded a company in the U.S. to hire right-wing social media influencers to push Russian propaganda before the 2024 election.
The Russians aimed their messaging at White, Republican voters, especially those in swing states. As it turns out, this population may be more vulnerable to manipulation than the average American. No one likes to be duped by a deepfake or a lie.
Osa offered a cogent and hopeful discussion about how we can change the information environment, beginning with friends and loved ones. She stressed the importance of encouraging people to check their sources, rather than trying to correct people.
Osa’s shorthand for how to talk to others is to “Be human.” She advises starting from a place of shared values, which disarms people and makes it possible to engage in a more open discussion. Here’s Osa:
You are not out to catch them in a falsehood. You are not out to prove that you’re smarter. These are folks that we care about. . . . Curiosity is key. I don’t care if you’re actually curious about what they have to say or not. You need to come to that conversation with curiosity. That is how you get folks to open up.
Ask about their sources of information and their thoughts on what they are hearing and seeing. If you can encourage them to ask their questions, that’s great too. This is not a one-conversation strategy. Osa recommends self-deprecating humor and openness. None of us knows everything.
Check out Assembly Required, with Stacey Abrams.
We all respond more strongly to negative messages and it’s worth remembering as we watch the party of carnage spread their lies about immigrant voters. To be clear, the “scourge of noncitizens’ casting ballots” is disinformation.
claiming their mailing of voter registration forms would either “confuse” noncitizens about their eligibility to vote, or “induce” them to fraudulently register.
Ask the Department of Justice to investigate Attorney General Ken Paxton. This quick action is from Public Citizen.
When I first conceived of the wiffij — this publication — I wanted to address the disconnection between wanting to do something and knowing what to do.
Because I am a teacher, I also like to make sure you have the information and context you need for understanding the issues and try to make it easy for you. We are all overwhelmed by too-muchness.
In my eagerness to get back to work yesterday, I didn’t make things easy enough, so I’ve granted all of us a do-over.
I did get on the Zoom with Katal yesterday to phone-zap members of our city council to get them to co-sponsor a resolution to put Rikers under federal receivership.
Calling up council members’ legislative directors to talk about the failure of the Adams administration to make detention facilities safe and humane was a good opportunity to review my own reasons for working on this issue.
The good folks at Katal shared their phone script, as well as an easy way to email your council member and a petition, if you’re not going to get to pick up the phone today.
Two people died in custody this summer and at least 33 people held in Department of Corrections facilities have died since Adams became mayor.
A friend from Massachusetts expressed surprise that Rikers is under city control rather than state control, so I want to add some clarification.
Facilities on Rikers are mainly for pre-trial detention, so they are locally controlled. You may remember, however that Allan Weisselberg, Trump’s CFO, is serving his sentence there. Trump himself could be sentenced there on September 18. Even he deserves humane conditions.
Email your council member and a sign the petition to urge them to remove Rikers from NYC control. These are quick actions from Katal. For extra credit, make the call!
A miscarriage of justice in Minnesota has kept Brian Pippitt, an Indigenous man, in prison since his 2001 conviction for murder
A thorough investigation of the prosecution’s faulty case led Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to call for Pippitt’s exoneration.
Yet the rural county prosecutor’s office that sent Pippitt to prison is now fighting to keep him there. The local sheriff in Aitkin County (pop. 16,500), Daniel Guida—who has earned national attention in recent years with his aggressive crackdown on Water Protectors protesting an oil pipeline—has similarly objected, saying he needs to conduct yet another investigation.
Tim Walz has the power to remove the case from the prosecutor’s jurisdiction.
Tell Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to stand up for justice! This quick action is from Drop Site News.
with love,
L
JOIN US. On Saturday, 14 September for a daylong educational and inspirational event of speakers, poets, artists, activists to fuel us with information, strategies, solidarity and energy to ignite the movement we need right now.
Throughout the day, we will unpack what fascism is in the US and globally and what we can do to combat it. We will explore the impact on all of us from women’s bodies to anti-Blackness and the suppression of LGBTQ+ and the disabled, to the banning of books, erasing history and immigration bans, union busting, increasing violence and expansion of the police state, and the destruction of the Earth.
We come together in solidarity, the antidote to loneliness and alienation that are fundamental to fascism.
Already confirmed are Kimberlé Crenshaw, Robin Dembroff, Laura Flanders, Bill Fletcher, Alixa García, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, LaLa B Holston-Zannell, Daniel Martinez HoSang, Meena Jagannath, Guerline Jozef, Maya Penn, Lori Ro, Jason Stanley, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Elizabeth Yeampierre and from V-Day/One Billion Rising – Taína Asili, aja monet, and V (formerly Eve Ensler).
The event will be paired with a series that V (formerly Eve Ensler), founder of V-Day/One Billion Rising, is guest editing for The Guardian on this topic featuring Susan Abulhawa, Sophie Binet, Jimmie Briggs, Petra Costa, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Laura Flanders, Daniel Martinez HoSang, Mukul Kesavan, Pia Klemp, Gabor Maté, Luisa Rizzitelli, Monica Simpson, Jason Stanley, V, Terry Tempest Williams, and Zoya.
JOIN US: $10 tickets and info, visit onebillionrising.org/howwedofreedom
HOW WE DO FREEDOM: Rising Against Fascism
Saturday, September 14 from 10-6pm
Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South, NYC
Sponsored tickets are available, please email info@vday.org.
Accessibility: ASL Interpretation will be provided. Judson’s 243 Thompson Street entrance is accessible.
V-Day, One Billion Rising
4104 24th Street
#4515
San Francisco, CA 94114
United States.