Airbnb—Technology, home sharing and the steady march toward justice - Amsterdam News

Privacy, travel and boarding, hospitality and generosity. These words do not appear in the U.S. Constitution, but for generations they have been cherished virtues and rights especially for the African-American community, which endured centuries of bondage only to be liberated into the clutches of Black Codes, Jim Crow, redlining, the prison industrial complex and a legion of discriminatory laws that prevented it from amassing economic, social and political power.

As a result, Black Americans have used every lever at their disposal to seek liberty and justice for their families and communities, leveraging technology and innovation, along with unparalleled fearlessness and determination.

In the 19th century, a network of abolitionists used private homes and businesses to provide shelter and safe harbor to liberate tens of thousands of enslaved individuals via the Underground Railroad. In fact, like most revolutionary struggles, technology played a significant role in communication among abolitionists and to persuade the public of the virtues of the cause of Emancipation. The print press was one form of such technology.

In the 20th century, Black Americans once again leveraged technology to confront and overthrow the system of Jim Crow segregation. In Birmingham, Selma and beyond, civil rights leaders used the new medium of television to showcase the depraved violence of law enforcement against citizens—from fire hoses turned on grandmothers and children to police dogs attacking pregnant woman and young Black men. The images shocked the conscience of the nation, with President John F. Kennedy stating that the struggle was, “so much more eloquently reported by the news camera than by any number of explanatory words.”

During the struggle for economic justice and political empowerment of the ’60s through the ’80s, technology was again employed for communication and persuasion. Black radio and print media such as newspapers and magazines served multiple purposes in pursuit of equality, including organizing the Black community around certain economic and political interests. From the South African divestment movement of the early ’80s, which sought to disrupt and end the system of apartheid, to the presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, when millions of Blacks, Latinos, Native-Americans and poor whites were mobilized into a populous political movement that culminated in more than 7 million votes and several primary victories in 1988.

Today, in the 21st century, activists are once again using technology to organize, to inspire and to uncover injustices in big cities and small towns around the world. In 2000, the Million Mom March for common sense gun laws was launched by one woman using the computer in her basement. The presidential campaigns of Barack Obama were powered by groundbreaking innovations in the application of social media and digital communications for fundraising, voter engagement, mobilization and organizing. The Arab Spring was fueled by social media, which brought millions of young people into the streets of North African and Middle Eastern countries to demand change. And today’s Black Lives Matter movement began as a hashtag. In my own work as a civil rights activist in the tradition of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I can attest to the immeasurable impact that technology is having on the criminal justice reform debate. From Eric Garner on Staten Island, N.Y. to Walter Scott, in North Charleston, S.C., technology is transforming our perspective and reinvigorating a mass movement.

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