Reflecting on Year 2 of Collective Action School

A conversation between Emily Chao and Xiaowei Wang

Xiaowei Wang: I’m wondering to start off, how do you describe what Collective Action School (CAS) does to someone who hasn’t been in our space before? What’s our theory of change?

Emily Chao: CAS is a space for tech workers to prioritize learning and community building—building organizing power so that we can create the technology and cultivate the technology industry that we want to see in this world. Obviously it starts with baby steps, and I would say that CAS provides the space and grace for those who are beginning their organizing journeys to be able to exercise their organizing muscles. Mainly, this looks like political education, speculative explorations, deep discussion, and of course community building and strengthening.

Xiaowei: I’m thinking about CAS this year and reflecting on how grateful I am that you (and D) were open to being lead steward. It was beautiful to see how D was willing to steward in the fall while you were busy doing zine fest stuff. I’m curious why you decided to come back to CAS, as a lead steward this year, even with a full time job?

Emily: I am also eternally grateful for your unwavering support as a co-steward. And of course, if it wasn’t for your vision for the first cohort, which I was incredibly fortunate and grateful to be a part of, I wouldn’t be here today. I think for me, CAS was a pivotal moment to reflect on the feelings I had regarding my work in Trust and Safety at the time. It gave me language to translate those feelings into understanding and ultimately into action. I can’t speak for D or others from the prior cohort who have also graciously offered their time to be mentors, note takers, yearbook coordinators, librarians, but it does speak to the power of the community built in the first cohort that all of us wanted to come back and help out in some way.

I wanted to come back because I wanted to give back and help bring forward the work you’ve done and the community we built with the first cohort. I also had an interest in seeing what new ideas we could explore, new issues and problems we could tackle, and wanted to learn alongside the cohort as well. So, yes, selfishly, I wanted to learn from all of our guest speakers and students.

It definitely was quite the challenge to do this while working a pretty cognitively taxing full-time nonprofit job, but coming from work (where I was often frustrated and depressed) to CAS, was always a beautiful change. I can’t say that it was all smooth. I did have some struggles, and given the state of the world I know that our cohort struggled as well, but I think ultimately, we were able to hold each other through it.

It’s a prime example of how we can choose to exit the toxicity that is capitalism to cultivate and enjoy a community-oriented space, even if it’s just for a little while.

Xiaowei: How do you feel like CAS has changed from the first year when you were a participant to this second cohort? What are the ways that you see the first cohort’s experience shaping year 2?

Emily: From a macro standpoint, I think CAS from the first year (2021) to the second year (2023) has encountered a major shift in what people wanted to think about, learn more about and discuss.

During our cohort, I recall (hopefully correctly) that folks were primarily trying to understand how to affect the circumstances in their workplaces or change sectors by better understanding said circumstances. People were still stuck at home, as vaccines were just starting to be distributed widely, but I think there was a sense of wanting to have more hope. Folks also wanted to dive into archival work (e.g. Adrian’s Looking Glass project) or start volunteering their skills for other efforts, like combating homelessness (e.g. Lexi’s work with Coalition on Homelessness), preserving tenant rights (e.g. Sadie’s work with Ventura County) or doing child Internet safety education (e.g. Nichelle’s TikTok videos).

During cohort 2, the times had shifted. Not only were we co-stewards doing more on-the-fly lecturer invitations, but folks were undergoing and enduring a barrage of challenging circumstances: layoffs, union-busting, personal struggles, pandemic-related trauma. With the CAS community we were building, we became more readily able to adapt as layoff news continued to fly in: we were able to provide funds to defray some cost-of-living expenses for the cohort, as well as bring in folks who could share their own similar experiences.

With this cohort, we focused more inward, on our communities, exploring themes like how technology affects friendship (e.g. Arianna’s work), how technology affects our memories (e.g. Alison’s work with her grandmother’s artifacts), smaller or more distributed Internets (e.g. Arushi’s tiny server sending letters or Lizz’s Tor workshop materials), and how we might close the technological gap, one person at a time (e.g. Kathy’s work on seeing how technology affects her elderly mother).

A decent number of cohort members also used art to reflect on their experiences with technology, in hopes that we can not only use it to understand the future we want, but also to bring delight as well. M handmade ceramic mugs for their friends based on conversations they had around worker power and queer/trans futures. Raya explored what it means to have a physical presence and an altar while being a digital nomad. Kristi made pop-up books reflecting on how Alexa and other Internet of Things devices are perpetuating surveillance capitalism.

We also went international—Cass did an amazing project on educating Brazilian tech workers about their worker rights and power, especially in the aftermath of the Bolsonaro regime.

Despite the different circumstances though, I see the same ethos from cohort one carried over in cohort two. I remember seeing how excited and how inspired the cohort two members were when cohort one came to welcome them and present their projects. I remember then seeing how cohort one members comforted them when life got really stressful or when they were struggling with doubt on their projects. I remember seeing how cohort one members participated in feedback sessions for cohort two members who wanted to test out some project ideas. It was amazing and heartwarming to finally see the joy that everyone shared when presenting their projects at the class close.

Xiaowei: I’m also curious what were some of the challenges you encountered, within yourself or during the CAS school “semester”? Had you done something like CAS stewardship before, whether at your day job or outside of work?

Emily: I hadn’t really done anything like this before and to be quite honest, when I started out in this, I didn’t really know what to expect. I quickly learned to have no expectations.

I have been honing event organizing skills outside of CAS—but corralling zinesters through a fair venue setup is entirely different than building out individual relationships and fostering those relationships in a community setting like CAS. A zine fest is kind of just one and done (until next year), but a community is continuous, ever-changing and requires consistent attention and care. Only once I finished stewarding CAS did I realize that none of our current systems of work under capitalism allow for any amount of this attention and care to be given without the risk of burning oneself out.

The beauty of stewarding CAS was that it was the first time where I, with the cohort, could hold space for emotions to be explored around technology and organizing. With my prior experiences doing 1:1 relational building in tech work settings, emotions have mostly focused on frustration and then anger at the everlasting bleak circumstances. When you’re at work everyday, you don’t have time to distance yourself from the current stress, so all of the 1:1 tech conversations I have had over the years revolve around the present. With CAS, however, people could reflect on the past, could speculate about the future—I didn’t really have prior experience facilitating those kinds of conversations, nor did I get to have them very much myself. But that’s what makes it so wonderful, despite it being hard to do.

I also think stewarding CAS really taught me how to be a better listener. I learned so much from our cohort members. A steward doesn’t know everything, so getting a chance to learn from different members of the community about what they were interested in, what their expertise was, what their past experiences were, it was a privilege to be able to do so.

Xiaowei: How do you see the future of tech worker organizing, and organizing around community technology, getting more folks in the industry to make change either at work or switching to a new sector? Particularly in this time of what feels like an ongoing planetary crisis of injustice everywhere? Feel free to talk about your personal journey as much as you’d feel comfortable.

Emily: The past seven to eight years have seen a rapid rise in the need for tech worker organizing. When I first became aware of the tech industry in 2009, the common narrative was that these companies were fast growing and were on their way to making great apps for everyone to use. And I presume that much of the organizing work on making tech ethical or just fell largely on academics, who weren’t in the mainstream’s attention, or on the Trust and Safety, Legal and Policy departments of these companies.

Not to say that tech workers haven’t been organized before—we can look to the Polaroid workers opposing South African apartheid, who, after a successful organizing campaign, successfully advocated for Polaroid to suspend business in South Africa—but there’s been a period of dormancy, it feels like, and a sense that we’ve kind of forgotten how to organize. The newer generation doesn’t have as many recent examples.

But I think a turning point was the lead up to Donald Trump’s election. This was around the time I joined the Trust and Safety engineering department at Twitter (internally called Health). We saw a massive rise in the number of concerns and problems tech, especially social media, was responsible for: terrorism, filming of violent acts, hate speech, misinformation, election interference. No longer was the conversation relegated to academics and the departments I mentioned earlier. Everyone became concerned and horrified. Tech was now a political tool that was starting to be weaponized against the structure of society.

I felt like I was placed right at the center of organizing necessity, but did not have the proper frameworks or tools or strategies to do it well. I thought that by voicing my concerns, raising other people’s voices, essentially raising hell within the company (all while existing in an extremely toxic work environment, largely fostered by the fact that leadership did not know what to do), that I could make change and that my peers and I would see the tide turn. But instead, it was a snowball effect of things getting worse.

When I came to CAS I had just watched in horror the insurrection instigated by Trump happen on Twitter, the Capital was stormed. Numerous Twitter all hands were called and nearly 300 employees signed a letter asking him to be banned from the platform to extend the initial Twitter response of a 12-hour timeout. And through CAS, I was finally able to reconcile the anger, frustration and hopelessness into an understanding, both historical, economic and political, of why these events unfolded and why my efforts as a singular person were a bit futile (although still worth the effort!).

While the snowball continues to grow, and unfortunately roll down the hill faster and faster, we’re seeing an increased urgency for tech workers to organize and to better advocate for themselves and for a better industry. We’re seeing successful unions form, like Kickstarter United and the New York Times Tech Guild. We’re seeing how worker power can make change and move ourselves the direction we want to go. But the future of tech worker organizing lies in more and more awareness and more and more action, and we need it now. The gap between those who have benefited / continue to benefit from the cushy perks of high-paying tech roles and the apathy that it affords versus those who are not benefiting from these roles has grown exponentially this year with the numerous layoffs and post-pandemic burnout suffered by workers. It still continues. Not to mention the use of technology for imperialism, worker exploitation (especially in the Global South), and genocide (particularly right now in Palestine). We can no longer turn a blind eye.

But organizing tech workers is challenging and we need to make sure we sustain ourselves. The way the tech industry scales itself and produces “impact” is not the same way we can organize as tech workers. We need to build and foster meaningful relationships with each other, provide care and space and grace for those who are at different points in their organizing journeys, and give attention and time to those who need help. And we need to do it sustainably, while trying to exist and survive under rampant capitalism. 1 5

Xiaowei: How can tech workers get started, when they feel like something isn’t quite right at work/in the world, and be part of change?

Emily: It can be overwhelming to know where to start, but I am here to say, everyone has to start somewhere. I did, I’m sure you did, our cohort members did.

Oftentimes, when something’s not right at work or in the world, it starts off as a feeling. I will often say that education and learning is the first step to understanding the structures and the systems that have led to these feelings. Feelings of inequity and injustice are rarely isolated incidents; there is likely a systemic explanation as to why they exist. Bringing in tools, theory, ideas from others who have similar experiences can help build awareness and give language, power and understanding to those feelings. It can also start with talking to trusted coworkers who may be experiencing the same thing—relationships, after all, are the foundation for organizing. Finding an Employee Resource Group (ERG) at work can help build initial relationships amongst coworkers, which can be a great start to building solidarity beyond the ERG. Joining a local community organization or a digitally-based one can also help tech workers feel less isolated and can help channel learning into action.

But the most important thing is to still hold onto a sense of hope. There is a lot of sadness, violence, and injustice in the world right now, but as Mariame Kaba says, “Hope is a discipline” and we all must continue to practice it.

Xiaowei: What were some of the biggest learnings you walked away with? How do you imagine year 3, especially now that you have more time to lead the school?

Emily: This year we experimented a lot more and adapted a lot more. Like I mentioned, the tech industry has had (and continues to have) a number of layoffs, workplace issues and union busting proclivities. The industry is building technology that continues to harm and further marginalize people. As events unfolded and circumstances changed, we found that we needed to bring in speakers who could help provide language to understand and analyze the world in its current state. I foresee us likely needing to have some flexibility in this into the future, and will lean on our wonderful partners like Collective Action in Tech to continue to make sure that we are addressing what our community is most concerned about or struggling with the most.

We also saw this year that being of a place and understanding how the tech industry affects that place uniquely come hand-in-hand. The conditions in Brazil, for instance, are quite different than the conditions in Australia, which are then quite different than the Bay Area or New York City or the American Midwest. The pandemic has rapidly altered what it means to be of a place (or of no place!) and I think we’ll need to continue to make sure that we incorporate an understanding of place when it comes to our organizing strategies and relational building. Whether this means trying out place-based community building and learning through CAS or bringing in more perspectives like those from the Global South or Asia or Europe. I think we’ll want to do some brainstorming on it.

I am overall excited to explore more of these ideas, one step at a time, with you and the rest of our community this year. I have decided to take a personal sabbatical from working full time and while that does pose some risk, it comes with the reward that I can now give way more time, attention and care to this wonderful community that I so very much want to see grow and flourish.

Xiaowei: How are you thinking about scale, the future, and sustainability of CAS? What do you think are the special, magical ingredients that make us flow?

Emily: I think the fact that we have kept our cohorts small initially does mean that we are limiting the number of people we can invite in. But the beauty of building this community is that now our community can bring others into the space. The trust that we build with each other and the trust that is inherent with our cohort members and their own communities means that even if we cannot accept everyone into a CAS cohort, we can help provide a basis and a foundation for collective action.

There’s a certain amount of care and attention that we bring to the community that makes CAS really flow. We also bring in incredibly thoughtful, amazing organizers to share their experiences with our cohort members, who are all willing to learn and hold space for each other. Perhaps the future is that we can now have our community take forward some of these learnings and distribute within other communities, scaling outwards while still continuing to cultivate meaningful relationships amongst the tech worker contingent.

Xiaowei: What do you feel like are the big picture things that need to happen amongst tech workers in order for the industry (or outside of the industry?) to be less terrible?

Emily: There’s an extreme chasm that still exists amongst tech workers today—those of who subscribe to or do not critique the neoliberal forces at play in the tech industry and those who are adversely affected by capitalistic forces in the industry. Similar to the Ehrenreichs’ analysis of the “professional-managerial class,” tech workers are increasingly being bisected into those who are capitalist-adjacent and those who are marginalized. This chasm must close in order for us to be fully mobilized.

We also need more community-centered technology tools that are easy for people to adopt and use, both as a way for their technology needs to be met, but also as a way to resist using big company solutions that over-surveil and engage in unethical practices. Technology should not be relegated to only those who can afford to learn and to use it. It instead should be a resource for everyone to be able to live and thrive. We also need to continue to hold big technology companies accountable, as they are not likely to disappear overnight. Abolition of the tech industry in its current state requires us to not only develop alternatives but to also resist the main institution. This means advocating for those who are burdened with visa or financial obligations, advocating for disabled and marginalized people who enter the tech industry, advocating for all tech workers not just those who have respect and power. Companies need to be held accountable not just by policies and laws, but also by their workers in the form of unions and due accountability processes. If work is increasingly automated, there should be a means of alternative employment or training for other opportunities. Employees can only be fired with due process.

I’m sure there are many other smaller actions that we need to take as well, and of course the common threads of organizing mutual aid and sharing resources also exist, but the overall course here is that we need to continue to push forward community building and use collective action to obtain the technology industry we want to see.