Radically Reimagining Tech Reform: Teaching Abolition in Tech Law & Policy Clinics

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Plaza B

Floor: Lobby Level

This session brings together clinical instructors with a movement lawyer to discuss what "Hope as a Discipline" can look like in our tech law and policy (TLP) clinics. This panel will explore what the tech justice movement can learn from prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition perspectives and techniques. Our goal is to imagine how to implement abolitionist insights into our clinical practice. What kinds of TLP projects could students work on that can truly transform the status quo? What skills and knowledge would they need to do so effectively? How can clinicians assess fieldwork opportunities to ensure they are transformative for clients and enriching for students? And how can we identify those key moments in student learning for engaging in abolitionist perspectives in TLP advocacy? PIC abolition work provides a systemic approach challenging the notion that incarceration ensures safety by (1) tracing its history back to slavery and (2) showing how it functions to oppress Black and other marginalized groups to maintain a racial capitalist regime. It is difficult to imagine an abolitionist future where societies deal with social problems without relying on police and prisons; an abolitionist framework invites imagining new, positive forms of social connection and collective safety that render the PIC obsolete. Just as the PIC might feel inescapable today, so does the endless stream of new technologies that claim to solve social problems while further ingraining systemic issues. Increasingly, many technologies have a negative, disempowering impact on BIPOC and immigrant communities but seem intractable and unavoidable. How can we begin to imagine abolitionist futures where alternatives to harmful tech allow marginalized communities to flourish? And what can clinicians do to inspire students to view TLP issues with this liberatory lens?