Triad : Law, Democracy and Digital Tool

Glenn Cantave during “Slave auction 2017” (photo: Kinfolk Foundation)

A glimpse into the triad analyzing Glenn Cantave activist movement

As our readers might have seen in the post titled”The Future of social media activism : will governments resist or embrace the technology?”, there are several interesting considerations on how states react to digital activism. The blog explained how politicians use new digital tools to engage followers, mobilizing masses and seeking consensus. 

To build on this, I will pose some open questions and reflections on law, democracy and digital tools. This will be done by analyzing digital activism through exploring a specific organization that aims in implementing development giving voice to the oppressed. I will then move to interviewing Pierangelo Marano asking his position on digital tools in terms of democracy and legacy.

The activist organization taken into account  is  “Kinfolk”that uses AR, to reflect public opinions for social and civic purposes.

Kinfolk’s founder is the 35-year-old activist named Glenn Cantaves from Haiti. He is a performance artist and social entrepreneur who was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 education entrepreneurs list, distinguishing himself by using immersive technology to highlight the narratives of the oppressed. Consequently, enabling a new form of social, civic participation and activism by creating immersive and engaging ways to communicate, collaborate and mobilize.

 But first some context…

Glenn Cantave & Kinfolk

Kinfolk is an app that presents black and brown history through interactive digital media experiences (photo: Kinfolk Foundation)

Glenn Cantave could be considered a representative of technology transformation; he uses augmented reality to develop activism.

He is founder of “Movers & Shakers NYC”, nowadays known as “Kinfolk”, a non-profit organization that highlights the narratives of marginalized communities. The organization executes direct action and advocacy campaigns with the aim of highlighting and providing solutions to issues that affect marginalized communities. 

Kinfolk have done several actions, among these, created an augmented reality book on the story of Christopher Columbus from the perspective of the oppressed. The viewpoint around the historical figure is that of genocide, slavery, and patriarchy started in America by Christopher Columbus,  therefore having a statue in his honor is like trying to erase and ignore years of colonialist abuses, forgetting those who suffered the consequences.

In November 2017, the organization led by Glenn Cantave organized a demonstration in Times Square. They wanted to knock down the Columbus monument from the Columbus Circle as they consider it to be a symbol of the atrocity perpetuated by white men. 

During his speech to the crowd in Queens he stated :

“ A terrorist is someone who intimidates people for a political cause” 

“For (Columbus) , that cause was the expansion of the Spanish empire for profit. Columbus threatened and raped and murdered. It is as backwards that a city like New York, with such a high awareness of terrorism, has a terrorist as a landmark.”

Cantave argues that in schools and in public spaces only white people have, for centuries, been delivering the messages. The viewpoint (and fact) is that many books are not about colored people and public spaces overflow with white men statues in NY.

In spite of Cantaves efforts in Time Square, that culminated in staging a “Slave Auction 2017” performance in Herald Square, he was ignored by the city government and Columbus statue remains (unfortunately) on his pedestal. The performance had the goal of  trying to force New Yorkers to confront Columbus violence toward indigenous people .

However, the movement began to spread across the country.In Boston on the 11th of june 2020, protesters beheaded a statue of Columbus. Moreover, in Richmond on the 9^th June 2020, another group tore down a Columbus sculpture before throwing it into a lake.

In both cases the statue has been recovered .

The attempts did not work as intended and given that even these crucial protests  ended with a partial failure, gave Cantave and his team the opportunity to explore a new way in making their voice heard. The answer was: augmented reality and how it could make their dream come true by replacing Columbus Statue with one that highlights the voices of the oppressed by using AR. 

They understand that augmented reality doesn’t need permission from the government to put up a monument or to make a statement and has the power to tell stories that need to be told. 

Cantave and Kinfolk with Idris Brewster (co-founder), took advantage of this legal vacuum with no regulation of the topic. They wanted to democratize access to narratives and resources.

The consequence became the release of a free app in 2020 that uses augmented reality and content where users can place and view monuments of oft-forgotten historical figures in public spaces. The app shows historical context through text, music, and video. 

A brief interview with Brewster from TIME will illustrate the project.

 https://time.com/6235841/kinfolk-augmented-reality/: Triad : Law, Democracy and Digital Tool

Cantave, Brewster and their team demonstrate that “representations matter” by redefining how we harness tech to fight injustice. Actions could be taken in a specific way with no physical efforts or risk of being arrested by using digital tools.

 Augmented reality is used as an “interactive campaign”, pushing people to be aware of injustice and racism. It also enables anyone to learn about underrepresented leaders through AR monuments, and listening to a narrated biography about their legacy. AR has the resource to tune in all five senses combining the real world with computer generated content giving people the power to see the physical and the new digital world causing impactful results. 

Interview with Pierangelo Marano – more than 20 years of experience in representations and content creators delivered by media

To get further insight to this interesting project I decided to talk to Pierangelo Marano.Current position: Head of Format Department in Lovit srl, based in Rome Italy. He has been content creator for over 20 years in Italy and abroad for Endemol Shine, Magnolia, Banijay group. The interview was held on October the 7^th , 2023 in Rome.

I asked him:

What is your position around digital tools in terms of democracy and legacy comparing them to conventional media communications tools? 

”The problem that arises has to do with ensuring that what is being spread is not misleading, biased, or even completely false. Conventional media should, and has law regulations in guarantee the use of some sort of ethical and deontological code that makes them more reliable: verified news, contradictions, balance, fact-checking, these are all tools that should help clarify and make the message verified and confirmed. Through a digital tool, anyone can spread facts and opinions, even completely invented ones, which, thanks to their widespread dissemination, can become “real” and have devastating effects. Who is policing this in the digital realm? Who has the time and patience to verify what they read and adopt it without any correctness criteria? In my opinion, this is very dangerous. In such a fragmented world, an unverified piece of news can travel from one country to another until it becomes real and causes devastating effects. It’s one thing if I publish a wrong recipe or a deliberately positive restaurant review: no one will suffer serious harm from this. It’s different if I engage in political discourse, which affects the real life of all citizens, by conveying inaccurate information that will lead to further misinformation and so on, ultimately triggering storms and uprisings that will have a serious practical impact on the population. So what might appear to be the highest level of democracy is not actually so because not all topics can be provided with accurate information without serious consequences.

In my opinion, regulation regarding political, health , and scientific matters seems necessary to prevent the world from dealing with false assumptions that become true through their dissemination.”

Final Remarks

The interview with media professionals and the TED TALK speech from Danielle Citron  Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, confirms a general alarmism around the legal aspect and how this lack of legislation could contaminate and damage democracy. This was also highlighted in my previous post about deepfakes.

But the lack of laws provides Glenn Cantave and his team, embracing democracy, the chance to make their voice heard contributing to development against colonialist states in a specific way. 

Personally, I wish the government will be able to find a solution to regulate this confusion around the usage of digital tools to avoid lack of trust in the media.

But realistically IT development is too fast, and laws can’t maintain the same pace at least not nowadays. Despite this I have faith in mankind, confident that knowledge and consciousness will go forward into the future at the same rate. 

Drop your suggestions on what could be done making the triad law, democracy and digital tools staying on the same track down in the comment section. 

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