Dear Friends,

The last time I wrote to you, I was headed to Capitol Hill to speak at the Congressional Briefing on AI & Civil Rights. You can watch my remarks below.

I am back in DC today for the White House event on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI, where the new Executive Order will be unveiled. While warfare rages overseas, the result of decades of conflict, Data for Black Lives continues to stand against the use of data weapons to enforce apartheid regimes. We stand against the militarization of the region as a whole - and support demands for a ceasefire and the end to the occupation that is being maintained by massive human casualties on both sides.

But as Black Americans, we know that we cannot end apartheid as the primary governing strategy for Black and Brown people worldwide until we reverse engineer and disable the algorithm of apartheid right here. This email is the title of my new keynote, Apartheid is an Algorithm, which I debuted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a few days after I left the Congressional Briefing. We will share the audio of this speech and the dates of future keynote speeches in the next newsletter.

While I have never been to Palestine, I have been to South Africa, where apartheid was pioneered, and have lived my whole life in the United States where, 56 years later, Dr. King’s speech, The Other America, continues to describe the conditions of social death created by generations of racist public policy.

In Milwaukee, I saw firsthand the stark reality of apartheid conditions on American soil. Milwaukee is home to the most incarcerated zip code in the country; it is the most segregated city in the US and, by numerous metrics, ranks as the worst city for Black people. It is also a picture of American prosperity; on the other side of the highway, mansions, manicured lawns, and unobstructed lake views are the norm.

A few days later, on October 19, I flew to London to speak at The Oxford Union, where I debated the Founders of the Pause AI Open Letter on the motion: The House Believes AI Is an Existential Threat. I argued that the phrase ‘Existential Threat’ is not neutral but is grounded in the resurgence of the eugenics movement parading as ‘AI ethics’ and that we are not concerned about AI becoming human but how AI is being used to define who is human and who is not.

Eugenics is more than a theory but a political and ideological regime. Segregation, mass incarceration and criminalization, forced sterilization, and the annihilation of people deemed less human or scientifically inferior are all examples of eugenics enforced as public policy. We will share the video of my speech once it is available.

My work with Data for Black Lives is too crucial for hot and cold takes. But it is to lead this movement amid extreme polarization, political upheaval, and economic crisis - while always keeping sight of the fact that the advancement of AI presents both the greatest civil rights battle and opportunity for structural change of our lifetimes.

Through discernment, laser focus, and unending faith, I will continue to fight for a country where we do not tout Chat GPT as the apex of innovation – but can proudly boast of an economy where everyone can put their bills on auto-pay… a much better use of AI.

If you are in the Miami area, please join us for another Decompress this Saturday. I look forward to seeing you there.

Much love,

Yeshimabeit

P.S. If this moment shows us anything, it is that we urgently need to build the political power of Black people so that when our voice is needed on important foreign policy issues, we can provide input without persecution and the loss of our livelihood. It should go without saying that we condemn violence of any kind. We do not stand with governments but with people.