Formal/Informal Crisis Response birthday party

Posted on 2024.04.30 by bl00

A couple weeks ago was my 40th birthday. And as you may know, I occasionally throw conferences for my birthday party (CatCon in 2013 & 2016, Animal Talks in 2020, and governance structures in 2022). This year I did the same, focusing an intimate group on the interface between formal and informal groups in crisis response. You know, my jam.

I was graced with the presence of John Crowley, Liz Barry, Joseph Pred, Evan Twarog, Suzanne Frew, and Schuyler Erle. I will forever be so grateful to these folks for showing up to share their brains and hearts on this topic.

Scoping the problem

We started with a retrospective of our experiences of this interface, domestically, at the point in time when response is transitioning into recovery. It sort of looks like this:

Informal groups are ALWAYS the first to respond – neighbors helping neighbors. They keep supporting each other until the formal groups show up on the timeline of days after the inflection point. Need for the local groups wanes as formal groups provide services. But then, as the formal groups pack up to move on to the next thing, the informal groups are vital again. So there are two main problem times that an interface would help out with – one as the formal groups are showing up, to know how to interact with the informal groups, and to not trample existing effort and knowledge; and a second when formal groups should be handing back off to the informal groups.

In this retrospective, we ended up with headers about preparedness, a culture of friendliness, necessary support, knowledge transfer, interface, and leadership. From that, we drove to three main conversations.

Cultural competency

While we all love a good story about cultural competency issues, we realized we had our own gaps here. Although we who were in this conference might personally be equipped to translate between formal agency members and social justice flavored activist groups, a very real possibility is emerging of right wing groups being the first responders on the ground. Suzanne focused us around the idea of Cultural Competency.

We talked a lot about the difference between carrying guns to deal with roving people with guns trying to take over your community space, a la Black Flags and Windmills post Katrina, and people carrying guns to claim ownership of supplies or territory. We talked about motorcyclists and Anonymous doing work to prevent interruption of mourning in Sandy Hook. We also talked about how people in the formal sector may not be aware of how those are different, or frankly care why.

Joseph brought up a way to cope with this type of problem and its ilk would be to unify folks through Management by Objective and to make space for cultural competency. At the end of the day, if people are feeding other people with no strings attached, they should be welcomed in doing so even if our political ideologies differ.

We also talked about how different groups fail based along lines of their ideology. Many conservative groups double down on control when things aren’t going their way. Disaster capitalists try to make a business out of a single experience without understanding the larger context, and anarchist groups fall apart.

Speaking in a way the audience can hear

John and I (and many others) have been working on a pamphlet for individuals in formal entities for awhile now, and it shaped much of the conversation we had. The thinking being that we will never know who the informal groups are in advance of finding them, so better to focus on finding groups we can find in advance, to help them hold space for the power of informal organizing in times of crisis. Joseph had the incredible idea during our sessions that we should make an ICS form in addition to the pamphlet which is essentially “here’s how to do this,” assuming the pamphlet or other mechanisms have made it clear why it’s worth doing.

Another friend and I continue to plug away slowly on a zine for informal groups, which could be found on the internet, or handed to informal groups by the formal groups following the ICS form.

Decision making

We had two threads here – Joseph brought up how unified command would work way better for having informal participation and representation than a traditional command pyramid structure for ICS, and Liz brought up Sociocracy. For the formal and informal groups to get along with each other, we assume some demystification of how the other type makes decisions would help to build some trust.

Wrap up

We’ve got a lot of work left in front of us, and most of us have shifted our focus from this interface to things that are more sustainable for us. However, we’ve all been reinvigorated to restart the conversation and see if we can make improvements here. If you’d like to join up with us to do anything from reviewing docs for readability to finding funds to support this work, please do reach out.

Special thanks to my husband for keeping the house livable while I had friends invade it and we got thoroughly comfortable.

Footnotes

IMG ref: Where “search” is when we hope an informal group might find a guide online by finally having enough time to do a search; “ICS form” is when a formal entity might follow an ICS form to understand how to navigate things with the informal group; and “governance” is when these groups would need some sort of governance structure unifying them to continue working together.

All photos in here are by Suzanne. The chart is from yours truly.

A clear “no” as responsibility

Posted on 2018.08.28 by bl00

While we still deeply believe in the mission behind Digitally Responsible Aid, Seamus and I are severing our direct ties with the organization for shared reasons.

I would like to take a moment to explain why, in my opinion, 1) DRA (or something like it) is needed and 2) some of why it didn’t work out for us.

The humanitarian sector should be guided by Do No Harm principles when using digital means

The Do No Harm framework has proven to be a vital and meaningful step forward for the humanitarian sector. One of the benefits of Do No Harm is in reviewing not just what aid is sent, but how it is delivered. For instance, something as pedestrian as selecting which local groups are employed at your field office can exacerbate or alleviate a conflict. Do No Harm provides a framework to analyze unique circumstances to have the positive impact you want on complicated situations.

We need something similar for considering the digital tools the humanitarian sector is adopting. Humanitarian organizations are rapidly adopting new technologies like biometrics and blockchain without sufficient consideration of the new risks created. We are wading into deep risks by using technology with untested frequency of failure in new contexts with new threat agents working on new threat surfaces. We worry that it will be too late when people finally start considering data breaches, the history of surveillance, and the politics of companies which are building and maintaining the software, hardware, and datasets.

Joe, Seamus, and I were a dream team. Joe focuses on research and policy, Seamus focuses on running the organization, and I focus on action and centering in communities. These things in balance meant grounding in the real world, taking action at what points were available to us, documenting the process, pushing on creating a copasetic operating environment, and consistently empowering stakeholders.

Here’s our concept note! It’s good.

I hope the org can still live up to its potential. We assembled an amazing board and advisor set. I’m rooting for the success of the group. I’m also still rooting for groups like Responsible Data, the UN Digital Blue Helmets, Amnesty’s Decoders, and a slew of other groups working in this space. Together, the space can be transformed to be not only more effective but also more equitable.

Then why step out?

I have been working to reduce the number of side projects¹ in my life². Seamus has been doing the same. This blog post is of course mostly covering my specific reasons.

Having a full-time gig which is also fulfilling means I’m wanting to spend my other time on things like deepening relationships, reading, and boxing. I knew upon taking the job at Truss that I could no longer do all the things associated with being a cofounder of a nonprofit, communicated that, did the paperwork involved to move from an executive to board position, and then acted as a very active board member to transition the organization to a healthy, sustainable place. I love it when other people similarly have an idea of how much they can (and can’t) give. I have literally high-fived people when they tell me “no” in response to a request for their time. It means I can figure out another way to get the thing done, instead of pestering someone who, in the end, can’t or won’t do it.

My stepping back removed the pull into balance around focusing on action⁴ in addition to policy. Without that, the organization had become focused solely on research and policy. Good for the space, but not something to dedicate my limited time on.

In Summary

Know and communicate your boundaries.

I get more time to box now.

I hope the space continues to grow and examine itself. I’ll be helping with that, but in a role different from what I expected.

Footnotes

My side projects this year: being a lead organizer for an 1150-person art and music festival called Priceless, writing content and building a website for a resource repository for baby boomers about digital estate planning, researching and writing a white paper about getting journalists connected in post-disaster zones for the Ford Foundation, creating a significant talk about disaster tech and coauthoring a paper to accompany it for Frontiers of Engineering, doing all the things associated with bootstrapping the nonprofit mentioned in this post, and co-organizing and facilitating an unconference for coordinators of community-led crisis response called Crisis Convening. I put a book proposal about bridging formal and informal decision making structures in crisis response on the back burner. I’ve picked up one new thing since December, which is being a reviewer for the Canadian Grand Challenge.
July was a bit of a slog for me to get much of the above out the door. I didn’t see my friends much. While there are still some editing passes to do, and rooms to be locked in with people to argue about who gets what grants, and emails to send about what organization is adopting the maintenance of some resources, most of the actual work is done.³
I have been planning on seeing my loved ones more often and in a more relaxed way, boxing a lot more, diving back into the book proposal, and getting involved in local activism around homelessness. Maybe attempt being bored occasionally, which is very uncomfortable for me (if you can’t tell).
I like designing systems more than most, but the moment those designs touch reality, they change. I’ve learned to speak my vision and take concrete steps toward it, rather than wait for everything to line up perfectly at scale.

“Show you can be free in a colony.” – a brief history of Puerto Rico

Posted on 2018.07.16 by bl00

This post is being staged here while the presenters and other Public Lab attendees review it. It will updated in the next few weeks and pushed to Civic and Occupy Sandy blogs (as well as anywhere else that wants to share). Many intended links are missing, as are images.

“Know the history of the region” is something community-led crisis responders tend to repeatedly say those coming into a region impacted by crisis. But most histories are written by the colonizers, and so the role of educator also falls on the shoulders of those fighting to survive.

At an event called the Crisis Convening Public Labs Barn Raising in Newark, NJ in July, 3 Puerto Ricans (Jessica, Luis, and Raquela) gave a brief history of Puerto Rico to a room of folk interested in community-led crisis response and environmental justice. We took a rough transcript and created this blog post to distill their knowledge. With this documentation, those who wish to be in solidarity with Puerto Rico can educate themselves. Much of the blog post is comprised of pulling the transcript and doing slight rewording. The transcript follows the post. None of it should be considered mine. It is published here with their consent and endorsement.

Puerto Rico was first colonized by the Spanish for 400 years. Just as the fight for independence was taking hold, the Spanish-American war ended and Puerto Rico fell under United States rule. Our summary begins there, in 1898.

It is a story of resistance, industrialization, imposed poverty and debt, diminished schooling, imprisonment, bombs hidden on beaches, and a growing trust in self-sufficiency. It doesn’t end with a plan of action beyond listening more.

Resistance has always been a thing in Puerto Rico

In 1917, Puerto Rico got their “citizenship.” But as a different category – it meant if residents could receive financial aid for education, but of those of those who did, the men could be drafted into the military, and that Puerto Ricans still couldn’t elect anyone who has a hand in U.S. politics (no Congressional, no House, no Presidential votes). While local elections for local positions can occur, no matter what is decided in the island the U.S. has veto power, and the last decision.

The United States wanted to make an example of the impact of industrialization to lift a place out of poverty, but that poverty persisted. In 1920, a new fight for independence began. To push back against this fight, the official language (including the language of education) was changed to English, forcing many to drop out of school. After a couple/few decades of this, it was finally accepted that it wasn’t working, and the official language was changed back.

In 1952, a ray of hope! Countries fighting for their freedoms were released as colonies by the UN. But it was fake in Puerto Rico, which was named as a “Estado Libre Asociado,” which translates to “state free associated” – none of which are true.

All this happened during a brutal oppression of the movement. In the ‘20s, more than half of Puerto Ricans were working towards independence. Now it’s far less¹. There is a well-documented history of persecuted, killed, and jailed those who stood up for Puerto Rican independence. Oscar López Rivera just released (in 36 years)²; two more are still there.

In the 1960s, organizing against the military complex reached a new height. Here’s as good a time as any to tell you about how the U.S. military used Puerto Rico to test bombs, contraceptives, and Agent Orange (all without consent). We even rented out the region for other countries to bomb! Organizing against these joined the existing movements for independence and educating community members they can be self-sufficient.

In 1999, the realities of these activities were realized when a civilian was killed by a bomb. People took to the streets to stop bombing, told Marines to get out of the land. It wasn’t until 2003 that Marines got out of Vieques. This was a huge deal, compared to the moments where it felt like Occupy Wall Street could win. It crossed political lines, generational lines, those who wanted statehood or independence. Side note that the bombs are still there, marines don’t want to clean it up.

During all this time, Puerto Rico was borrowing money³. Anything produced there had to be shipped to the U.S. and back in order to be used because of a bullshit act called Ley Jones⁴. In 2016, Obama put in place a fiscal control board, called “P.R.O.M.E.S.A,” which put 7 people who don’t live in Puerto Rico as a fiscal control board to determine how budget is spent. In addition to the standing requirement of having to pay creditors before investing in infrastructure or anything else, these people now also had a say in what budget cuts were. Further privatization, creeping into schools, hospitals, and power occurred in addition to the airport and telephone companies. As you might imagine, this has caused further poverty.

Bombs hidden on beaches are no longer the priority (somehow)

With Hurricane Maria in 2017, all the poverty, destruction of land, and poor infrastructure was revealed. The same thing that happened with Katrina in New Orleans is happening across the island – cutting social services, closing schools and hospitals. Money is going to contractors who often don’t do the work. School closures help transition to charter schools, which pull more money into outside pockets.

The government (as this history might indicate) have not shown up in a useful way, and so it’s up to the community organizers who have been around through these movements to serve the people to Puerto Rico. Solidary work has become the flag. The work done to build community kitchens, farming projects, occupying abandoned schools for housing, rebuilding infrastructure, and have become the shoulders on which local response to Maria are occuring.

This is a moment to build the empowerment movement. Puerto Ricans know they can do things by themselves, for themselves. They opened roads, created community kitchens, held spaces for sorrow. It is a place for freedom, but it is delicate.

So when you ask to help, this is why there is push back. This is why impeaching Trump is not a good first (or even tenth) topic of conversation.

“I am protecting the 35 years of wins we’ve had.”Your first plan in helping Puerto Rico should always be listening more, first.

Footnotes

We don’t know the percentage. Less than half of the population voted last election, about 3% for independent party, but there are many more non-party affiliated fighting for independence.
More than Mandela!
Something like 72 billion?!?!
What the everliving fuck

Transcription

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When Things Go Wrong: Response and Recovery

Posted on 2018.05.29 by bl00

Originally posted on the Truss blog

When building systems with threats in mind, it’s not enough to just plan, not enough to just raise the cost to a bad thing happening — we still have to have an idea of what we’ll do when the bad thing happens despite our best efforts.

Truss modernizes government and scales industry through digital infrastructure. Information which is sensitive to individuals and to the welfare of the organization flows through the pipes we set up. Whether hospital records, the move locations of a military family, or financial data, Truss takes the best care possible in setting up infrastructure which mitigates the likelihood of a breach. We also have a plan for such a breach, in case it happens anyway.

At RightsCon, I moderated the panel The Rules of Cyberwarfare: Connecting a Tradition of Just War, Attribution, and Modern Cyberoffensives with Tarah Wheeler, Tom Cross, and Ari Schwartz. The question was this: if “cyber”* is a fifth arena of war (the existing domains being land, air, water, and space) what is a just response to a cyberattack which follows the international expectation of deescalating?

The panel and audience knew that the responses which are happening now — the assumption of “hack back” against other state adversaries, the use of CFAA against people who might otherwise entertain the thought of being a patriotic hacker — we don’t agree with. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is what makes breaking those terms of service that are too long and dense to read fully a federal crime. That’s right, logging into your partner’s bank account after their death in order to pay the house’s electrical bill is a federal crime, and it’s the same law that’s used in most of the “hacker” cases you read about in the news. It’s also the number one reason the infosec professionals I know and love refuse to work with the government. The ACDC bill which allows “hacking back” is an exception to CFAA which means you can attack a computer that’s attacking you. Except of course it’s not that clear-cut.

Which brings in the questions that many folk in the audience had. What about attribution (the ability to know who is taking the action)? This is hard in digital space because it’s easy to attack something from behind someone else’s IP address. What about asymmetry (an imbalance between those in conflict with one another)? Is it ok if one country attacks the other in cyberspace when the other country is just beginning to get online? These are hard problems, but we can’t wait until they are solved to have conversations about responses. If you’re having a hard time moving on without those hard problems being “solved enough” first, you’re not alone – the audience also had a deeply difficult time with it.

But what would be acceptable? If there was a breach of military moving data, do you think it would be responded to differently than the malicious changing medical records? Do you think who the adversary is would matter? Does the immediate or the potential future impact on those involved matter more? Where is the line between war and espionage? We ended the panel with the a comparison to disaster response, so attendees would have a framing to continue the discussion.

Disaster response also focuses on preparedness (stockpiling water for the next Bay Area earthquake), response (digging our neighbors out of the rubble), and mitigation (enforcing building codes which make collapse in an earthquake less likely). We are terrible at recovery. When it’s time to rebuild, the money, attention, and volunteers have dried up. Huge swathes of Far Rockaway (2012) and New Orleans (2005) are still a wreck from hurricanes.

The same is true for online attacks — whether doxxing (the nonconsensual revealing of personal information) or DDoSing (a distributed denial of service attack is when many computers all pester your computer for a response, not allowing it to say anything). We spend so much attention on battening down the password hatches and doing incident response that most don’t think about what being whole again after an attack that might happen anyway looks like. And so much of infosec and government work is about trying to prevent the Bad Thing from ever happening. Plan A is to make a perfect system. But we must own up to Plan A rarely being the plan that works out. Don’t your contracts also have release clauses in them? Planning for worst case isn’t inviting calamity, it’s being pragmatic.

One of our engineers recently said, “I would rather throw away some work than have to be under a too-tight deadline later.” This was said as Plan A seemed less and less likely due to bureaucracy and too many moving parts. But Plans B and C were being procrastinated on by our government protective cover. Why? I see the cost of exploring options in government as high, with extremely limited resources to work with. This means all sorts of fragility and resources wasted putting out fires when Plan A didn’t work exactly as planned. A balance of ownership, accountability, and flexibility would have helped alleviate this difficult situation. Additionally, setting aside resources for recovering from inevitable failure helps the entire system be more robust.

While Truss doesn’t specialize in the actual recovery (there are firms and insurance providers who do focus on response and recovery plans), we know it’s a necessary part of a complete plan, and you should, too. Good luck out there today, and remember to keep in mind what you’ll do if it doesn’t all work out.

* Note that I have a deep visceral reaction to the word “cyber,” but it’s the word that has been thoroughly adopted in this discipline and so it has been used here for the sake of readability. The confusing image for this post is the inoculation to having to use the word.

Natural Disasters and Environmental Events

Posted on 2018.05.14 by bl00

This post was collaboratively written by Liz Barry, Greg Bloom, Willow Brugh, and Tamara Shapiro. It was translated by Mariel García (thank you). Español debajo.

Every year, communities are affected by “extreme environmental events.” These might include hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, or floods. There are, of course, official response agencies with mandates to rescue, feed, heal, and rebuild; however, the true first responders are always people who live in the affected regions — neighbors and community leaders.

The matter of who responds — and who is supported by formal institutional response — is complicated by patterns in which historically marginalized people are often ignored or unseen by outside actors.

These patterns have been further complicated in the aftermath of recent disasters during which spontaneously-forming networks have “shown up” to assist in ways that are more rapid and distributed than is typical of the formal disaster response sector — yet without any of the accountability that formal institutions (supposedly) uphold.

During these experiences, we’ve seen clearly both the promise and the peril of modern digitally-enabled and network-led crisis response and recovery. After 2017’s alarming hurricane season, a network of people formed with interest in improving the capacity for disaster response to more effectively support local priorities and leadership in times of crisis. We are now calling for the convening of people who have worked together through crises such as Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Maria, and the like. At this “Crisis Convening,” we will share experiences and skills, explore ways to promote equity and justice through modern crisis response, and build resources for the type of assistance that we offer.

Here is our key question: in times of climate crisis, how can outsiders — formal ‘disaster response institutions,’ grassroots community organizers from other locations, emergent networks of volunteers on the ground, and ‘digital responders’ — most effectively engage and support community-based responders to achieve a more accountable, humane, and adaptive response?

At this ‘Crisis Convening’ event, we will converse and take small, actionable steps towards addressing some of the following questions, and many more we haven’t considered:

How can formal institutional responses best support those who are most impacted by a crisis?
How can spontaneously forming networks provide assistance in a way that centers the needs, interests, and leadership of people who are experiencing the crisis?
How can we ensure that data about a community stays in that community’s control?
In what ways are environmental justice and disaster response related?
How can outside intervention support recovery as well as response?

We hope you’ll join in this conversation with us here, or (better yet!) at the event. If you are interested in participating in the convening, please fill out this form to let us know – and we’ll be in touch.

About the Event

We’re excited to announce that we’ve been invited by Public Lab to host this convening during their upcoming network gathering on July 13-15, in Newark, NJ.

Public Lab is an open community which collaboratively develops accessible, open source, Do-It-Yourself actions for investigating local environmental health and justice issues. Twice a year, they convene in an event called a “Barnraising” in the spirit of coming together to achieve something larger than can be achieved alone. At a Barnraising, people share advocacy strategies through telling stories from their lived experience, build and modify tools for collecting data, deeply explore local concerns presented by partner organizations and community members, and connect with others working on similar environmental issues across regions.

During this convening, we will gather between 30-60 people from areas that have been hit by climate crisis in the past 15 years to discuss real-world scenarios and discuss actionable steps to help ourselves and others practice more effective community-centric crisis response.

Here’s how we hope to do that:

Dedication to local voices and representation

The impacts of crisis often fall heaviest on those who are already struggling. We hope to include those most impacted, though we also understand such folk might have a diminished capacity to engage. To address this, we are inviting an intentionally broad set of people, actively supporting child care at the event, and offering scholarships to those who express interest and need.

We will need all kinds of help to make this happen. Will you sponsor a participant who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to participate? Click here to contribute to travel and accommodation costs.

An advance day for Crisis Convening

On Friday, July 13th we will gather to focus on the matter of crisis response. Attendees are encouraged to have a quick conversation with the facilitator in advance to shape the agenda. We might share skills, contribute to a resource repository for communities entering a time of crisis, or further explore how inequality plays out (and can be counteracted) in response.

Public Lab Barnraising

Building on the energy coming out of the Crisis Convening, we can continue our conversation in the same location Saturday and Sunday as more people join for Public Lab’s Barnraising. On the first morning of the barnraising, all participants, including those from Crisis Convening, will collaborate to create the schedule via an “Open Space” approach. This process will ensure that the agenda speaks directly to the interests of the people present. Crisis Convening delegates will be welcomed to add their topics to the schedule. The Code of Conduct applies here as in all other Public Lab spaces.

Please Let us Know What You Think

In comments
Reach out to discuss directly
Join us at the event. If you are interested, please fill out this form to let us know. We will follow up with an official registration form shortly
Sponsor a participant who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to participate. Clickhere to contribute to travel and accommodation costs

Together, we hope to discover small, actionable projects together which will equip community-first response, whether through organizing, technology, institutions, or things we have yet to discover. We hope you will join us.

Este post fue escrito en colaboración por Liz Barry, Greg Bloom, Willow Brugh y Tamara Shapiro. Fue traducido por Mariel García.

Cada año, hay comunidades que son afectadas por “eventos ambientales extremos”. Éstos pueden incluir huracanes, terremotos, tornados o inundaciones. Por supuesto, hay agencias de respuesta oficial con mandatos para rescatar, alimentar, reconstruir, etcétera; sin embargo, los verdaderos primeros intervinientes siempre son personas que viven en las áreas afectadas: vecinos, líderes comunitarios, etcétera.

La cuestión de quién responde, y quién recibe apoyo por parte de la respuesta institucional formal, es complicada por los patrones en los que poblaciones históricamente marginadas tienden a ser ignoradas o no vistas por actores externos.

Estos patrones se han complicado aun más en las secuelas de desastres recientes a lo largo de las cuales redes de formación espontánea han “llegado” a asistir de maneras que son más rápidas y distribuidas de lo típico en el sector de respuesta formal a desastres, aunque sin la rendición de cuentas a la que las instituciones formales (supuestamente) están sujetas.

A lo largo de estas experiencias, hemos visto con claridad la promesa y el peligro de la respuesta a y recuperación de crisis modernas, habilitadas por tecnologías digitales y redes. Después de la alarmante temporada de huracanes en 2017, se formó una red de personascon interés de mejorar la capacidad de respuesta en desastres para apoyar liderazgo y prioridades locales de manera más efectiva en tiempos de crisis. Ahora estamos llamando a personas que hayan trabajado juntas en crisis como Sandy, Harvey, Irma, María, y otras similares. En esta “Reunión de crisis” compartiremos experiencias y habilidades, exploraremos maneras de promover equidad y justicia a través de la respuesta moderna, y construremos recursos para el tipo de asistencia que ofrecemos.

Aquí está nuestra pregunta clave: En tiempos de crisis climática, ¿cómo pueden los extranjeros (las instituciones formales de respuesta a desastres, líderes de desarrollo comunitarios de otros contextos, las redes emergentes de voluntarios y las personas que hacen respuesta digital) involucrarse y apoyar a los respondientes locales de la manera más efectiva para promover la respuesta más humana, adaptativa y responsable?

En esta “Reunión de crisis”, conversaremos y tomaremos pasos pequeños y accionables para abordar algunas de las siguientes preguntas, y otras más que aún no hemos considerado:

¿Cómo pueden las instituciones de respuesta formales apoyar de la mejor manera a aquéllos que son impactados por una crisis?
¿Cómo pueden las redes de formación espontánea proveer asistencia de una manera que se centre en las necesidades, intereses y liderazgo de quienes están experimentando la crisis?
¿Cómo podemos asegurarnos de que los datos de una comunidad queden bajo el control de esa comunidad?
¿De qué maneras están relacionadas la justicia ambiental y la respuesta a desastres?
¿Cómo puede la intervención externa apoyar tanto la recuperación como la respuesta?

Esperamos que te unas a esta conversación con nosotros aquí, o (mejor aun) en el evento. Si estás interesado/a en participar en la reunión, por favor llena esta forma para comunicarlo, y nosotros nos pondremos en contacto contigo.

Acerca del evento

Nos emociona anunciar que nos invitó Public Lab a ser anfitriones de esta reunión en la próxima reunión de su red del 13 al 15 de julio en Newark, NJ.

Public Lab es una comunidad abierta que colabora para desarrollar acciones accesibles, de código abierto en el espíritu de “Hágalo usted mismo” para investigar salud ambiental local y temas de justicia. Dos veces al año, se reúnen en un evento llamado “publiclab.org/barnraisingBarnraising” (“construcción del rebaño” en inglés) en el espíritu de juntarse a lograr algo más grande de lo que se puede lograr en soledad. En un barnraising, la gente comparte estrategias de defensa a través de contar historias de su experiencia vivida; la construcción y modificación de herramientas para recolectar datos; la exploración de preocupaciones locales presentadas por contrapartes organizacionales y miembros de la comunidad; y la conexión con otras y otros trabajando en problemas ambientales similares en distintas regiones.

Durante esta reunión, juntaremos entre 30 y 60 personas de áreas que han sido afectadas por crisis climáticas en los últimos 15 años para discutir escenarios del mundo real y pasos accionables para ayudarnos a nosotros y a otros a practicar respuesta de crisis centrada en la comunidad de manera más efectiva.

Esperamos hacerlo de la siguiente manera:

Dedicación a voces locales y representación

Los impactos de la crisis seguido caen con mayor peso sobre aquéllos que están de por sí batallando antes del evento. Esperamos incluir a los más afectados, aunque también comprendemos que estas personas podrían tener una capacidad disminuida para involucrarse. Para abordar esto, estamos invitando a un conjunto intencionalmente amplio de personas, activamente apoyando el cuidado infantil en el evento, y ofreciendo becas a quienes expresen su interés y necesidad.

Necesitaremos todos los tipos de ayuda para lograr este cometido. ¿Podrías patrocinar a un participante que de otra manera no podría costear su participación? Haz clic aquí para contribuir a los costos de viaje y estancia.

Un día de preparación para la Reunión de crisis

El viernes 13 de julio nos reuniremos para enfocarnos en el tema de respuesta de crisis. Se alienta a las y los participantes a que tengan una conversación rápida con el equipo de faclitación con antelación para influir en la agenda. Podemos compartir habilidades, contribuir a un repositorio de recursos para comunidades que entran a un tiempo de crisis, o explorar más cómo las inequidades operan (y pueden ser contrarrestadas) en la respuesta.

“Barnraising” de Public Lab

Para aprovechar la energía resultante de la Reunión de crisis, podemos continuar la conversación en el mismo espacio el sábado y el domingo con las personas que lleguen al Branraising de Public Lab. En la primera mañana del barnraising, todas las personas que participen, incluyendo a las de la Reunión de crisis, colaborarán para crear la agenda a través de la técnica de “espacio abierto”. Este proceso ayudará a que la agenda apele directamente a los intereses de las personas presentes. Las y los participantes de la Reunión de crisis serán bienvenidos a añadir sus temas a la agenda. El Código de conducta aplicará en éste y todos los demás espacios de Public Lab.

Por favor dinos qué piensas

En los comentarios
Contactándonos para platicar directamente
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Juntas y juntos, esperamos descubrir proyectos pequeños y accionables que equipen respuesta donde la comunidad esté adelante, ya sea a través de la organización, la tecnología, las instituciones, o mecanismos que tenemos aún por descubrir. Esperamos te unas a nosotros.

Natural Disasters and Environmental Justice

Posted on 2018.05.02 by bl00

This post was collaboratively written by Liz Barry, Greg Bloom, Willow Brugh, and Tamara Shapiro. It was translated by Mariel García (thank you).

At this ‘Crisis Convening’ event, we will converse and take small, actionable steps towards addressing some of the following questions, and many more we haven’t considered:

How can formal institutional responses best support those who are most impacted by a crisis?
How can spontaneously forming networks provide assistance in a way that centers the needs, interests, and leadership of people who are experiencing the crisis?
How can we ensure that data about a community stays in that community’s control?
In what ways are environmental justice and disaster response related?
How can outside intervention support recovery as well as response?

About the Event

We’re excited to announce that we’ve been invited by Public Lab to host this convening during their upcoming network gathering on July 13-15, in Newark, NJ.

Here’s how we hope to do that:

Dedication to local voices and representation

An advance day for Crisis Convening

Public Lab Barnraising

Please Let us Know What You Think

In comments
Reach out to discuss directly
Join us at the event. If you are interested, please fill out this form to let us know. We will follow up with an official registration form shortly
Sponsor a participant who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to participate. Click here to contribute to travel and accommodation costs

Este post fue escrito en colaboración por Liz Barry, Greg Bloom, Willow Brugh y Tamara Shapiro. Fue traducido por Mariel García.

A lo largo de estas experiencias, hemos visto con claridad la promesa y el peligro de la respuesta a y recuperación de crisis modernas, habilitadas por tecnologías digitales y redes. Después de la alarmante temporada de huracanes en 2017, se formó una red de personas con interés de mejorar la capacidad de respuesta en desastres para apoyar liderazgo y prioridades locales de manera más efectiva en tiempos de crisis. Ahora estamos llamando a personas que hayan trabajado juntas en crisis como Sandy, Harvey, Irma, María, y otras similares. En esta “Reunión de crisis” compartiremos experiencias y habilidades, exploraremos maneras de promover equidad y justicia a través de la respuesta moderna, y construremos recursos para el tipo de asistencia que ofrecemos.

En esta “Reunión de crisis”, conversaremos y tomaremos pasos pequeños y accionables para abordar algunas de las siguientes preguntas, y otras más que aún no hemos considerado:

¿Cómo pueden las instituciones de respuesta formales apoyar de la mejor manera a aquéllos que son impactados por una crisis?
¿Cómo pueden las redes de formación espontánea proveer asistencia de una manera que se centre en las necesidades, intereses y liderazgo de quienes están experimentando la crisis?
¿Cómo podemos asegurarnos de que los datos de una comunidad queden bajo el control de esa comunidad?
¿De qué maneras están relacionadas la justicia ambiental y la respuesta a desastres?
¿Cómo puede la intervención externa apoyar tanto la recuperación como la respuesta?

Acerca del evento

Nos emociona anunciar que nos invitó Public Lab a ser anfitriones de esta reunión en la próxima reunión de su red del 13 al 15 de julio en Newark, NJ.

Esperamos hacerlo de la siguiente manera:

Dedicación a voces locales y representación

Un día de preparación para la Reunión de crisis

“Barnraising” de Public Lab

Por favor dinos qué piensas

En los comentarios
Contactándonos para platicar directamente
Viniendo al evento. Si te interesa, por favor llena este formulario para informarnos. Te contestaremos con una forma de registro oficial.
Patrocina a alguien que de otra manera no podría costear su participación. Haz clic aquí para contribuir a los gastos de transporte y estancia.

How Could This Have Been Prevented? The Art of the Pre-Mortem

Posted on 2018.02.08 by bl00

Originally posted on the Truss blog

In the world of disaster response, teams engage in something called a “hot wash” after each deployment. If something went wrong, we ask ourselves: How could this have been prevented? It’s a question that helps us mitigate crises rather than simply respond to them. Sometimes, if a responder is about to do something particularly ill-advised, say in a social context, another responder will ask them, “How could this accident have been prevented?” as they walk towards potential harm or embarrassment.

As someone who has done crisis response for the past eight years, the pre-mortem we held on my third day at Truss made me feel right at home. It was the last day of an intensive kickoff event for our DOD project (more about how we won that here). Our engineering architect Nick Twyman led the assembled team in a session to brainstorm issues which might be severe enough to tank the project. He opened with the prompt, “Imagine you’re presenting to the entire company 12 months from now and must explain why this project completely failed.”

Engaging in this practice:

Surfaces potential issues before they become problematic.
Prevents team members from suffering in silence or needlessly worrying.
Replaces reaction with strategy.

We’ve already benefited immensely from this practice. For instance, we learned to identify and engage early with stakeholders who otherwise might have been invisible until too late. This has allowed us to pay attention to serious concerns while also staying focused on the emerging roadmap for the project.

Where did this idea come from?

Our CTO, Mark Ferlatte, learned about the practice from Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow. He noted that it “felt incredibly weird the first time you do it.” The book covers different modes of thinking and responding to what feels immediate versus the strategic, tricks to help you move from reacting to planning, as well as how to be self-aware when in difficult conversations.

We’ve developed our own flow for pre-mortems, and have benefited in various ways. In one instance, the team indicated that they were feeling unsure about being able to track things properly. This feedback resulted in an ad hoc training session on our task tracking tool with positive results.

How do I do it?

You, too, can avoid delays, derailments, and failures by following this process. Whether you refer to it as “forecasting” or “generalized anxiety,” there are a few simple steps.

First, think about when it makes sense to have a pre-mortem. We do ours at the end of a project kickoff (when folks have the project fresh in their minds but haven’t yet started building habits and opinions about how things “should” be). You can also run more than one for any given project. It’s particularly helpful to do during sprint planning sessions or prior to irrevocable commitments (before we sign the contract, before we begin execution on the contract, before we go live with the product).

Don’t lead the session by asking a broad question like: How might this go wrong? Instead, be very specific. We used the prompt mentioned above, emphasizing two important factors. “Imagine you’re presenting to the entire company 12 months from now and must explain why this project completely failed.” These two aspects helped people move beyond generalized anxiety and into thinking strategically about what they are unlikely to be able to adapt to themselves. In a larger group, give everyone sticky notes and about five minutes to write down their thoughts, then group their ideas into categories while reading them out loud. In a smaller group, take a minute or so to think about it, and then go around in a circle to hear what folks came up with.

Some of the concerns raised might not surprise you. Ideally, you’re already mitigating risk around the topics some people bring up. Sometimes, though, someone will say something new or extremely obvious and scary (for example: “None of us have ever published a book” when the project is to write a book). Mark treats these concerns very seriously and attempts to mitigate them as quickly as possible (for example: hire an agent to help us navigate book publishing).

We found that those obvious and scary observations were more likely to come from junior rather than senior employees. Senior people often overlooked obvious risks because they had “always managed before.” Junior team members were justifiably concerned when they felt like the project was missing key factors, but they wouldn’t speak up if their concerns were dismissed. Yet another reason to be sure your environment is open and safe for employees to voice their concerns.

Good luck out there!

Pre-mortems are a tool to start thinking about the future and to do so strategically rather than reactively. This helps teams avoid pitfalls and focus their work. Pre-mortems are easy to hold and can happen at multiple points during a project’s lifespan.

May all of your difficulties be novel, and good luck out there!

Rights Based and Needs Based Response

Posted on 2017.12.11 by bl00

The humanitarian aid groups I work with are “needs based.”

The advocacy groups I work with are “rights based.”

These are useful frames which mean different things, and while a person can operate with both of them in mind, it is not possible for an organization to operate under both pretexts. Let me explain.

Rights Based

Rights based groups include the United Nations, Amnesty International, the ACLU, HURIDOCS, Islamic Human Rights Commission, and International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. Find more listed on Wikipedia.¹

The UN was born out of the aftermath of WWII. One of the things the UN immediately² did was to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. These include both freedoms from and freedoms to, such as the right to “rest and leisure,” “life, liberty and security of person,” and “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”³ Sounds dreamy.

From the UN Populations Fund on why the UN decided to go with a rights based, rather than a needs based approach:

an unfulfilled need leads to dissatisfaction, while a right that is not respected leads to a violation. Redress or reparation can be legally and legitimately claimed.

The rights based approach states a baseline expectation of how humans should be treated. However, if a government, group, or individual is violating that baseline, public opinion are used against the perpetrator to change behavior. While countries may base some of their laws on the UDHR, the international courts use them as customary law, rather than anything more rigid.

But what about in unusual circumstances, such as conflict? Rights based organizations do not care about the unusual circumstance–rights are rights–and so rights based groups are rarely “allowed” access to conflict zones, although they may go regardless.

Needs Based

In war, the Geneva Conventions apply, which

are international treaties that contain the most important rules limiting the barbarity of war. They protect people who do not take part in the fighting (civilians, medics, aid workers) and those who can no longer fight (wounded, sick and shipwrecked troops, prisoners of war).

These are also enforced through a special international court called the International Criminal Court.

While there is a neat and tidy list of rights based organizations on Wikipedia, there is instead a category of humanitarian aid organizations. The only organizations founded on the Geneva conventions are the International Committee of the Red Cross and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies which operate under the full set of humanitarian pricinples, including neutrality.⁴

Neutrality is the hard one which is often forgone by groups which call themselves “humanitarian”⁵ because of how difficult it is to maintain. It means laying aside a personal sense of justice (related to rights) in order to provide for human needs. It means fixing up the wounds of a militia with the assumption that the wounds of the civilians and the “other side” will also be fixed up.

This means needs based groups are allowed access to regions which rights based groups are not. But if that neutrality is ever called into question it is hugely detrimental to all people in conflict zones everywhere. A needs based organization can never act as if it is rights based.

Making Choices

It is from this background that I asked a question of Twitter about a project I’ve been working on called Do No Digital Harm.

Should mitigating the harm of information activities in humanitarian and disaster response be rights based or needs based? https://t.co/9Tcj2B8PTE

— Will-o-the-Wisp (@willowbl00) November 9, 2017

Should the people who help secure an ICT⁶ network in use by groups in conflict align/organize themselves with/like a group like Amnesty, or a group like the Red Cross? The first allows for a much broader conversation and pushing of an agenda. The latter allows access to places otherwise inaccessible.

As always, one of the key groups I continue having a massive crush on is Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Even in their founding is the combining of a rights and needs based approach, and though comprised of many fiercely rights based individuals, the organization itself remains needs based and trusted to be neutral in conflicts of all severities.

I’ve talked before (with the amazing Margaret Killjoy) about how humanitarianism needs to be politicized. But that political action can happen by other groups to those which are needs based, in different arenas. We must be strategic in meeting needs while also increasing access to rights in the future.

Footnotes

Bless you, Wikipedia. Have you donated to them, or called your rep about Net Neutrality? If not, please do so now.
well, for them… it took 3 years
If you’d like to feel inspired and crushed all in one go, visit the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner website to see what they’re up to.
Yes, IFRC and ICRC are different, I’m so sorry.
Also sometimes Proselytism because people gonna people.
information communication technology

The Contributions of Grassroots Technical Communities

Posted on 2017.11.07 by bl00

The Haitian Earthquake saw the first significant uptick in responding entities. Gisli Olafsson brought this up the first time we’d met, at a talk of his at the Wilson Center. I was just starting to visually take notes (having broken my arm), and I was a year into leading a group called Geeks Without Bounds, one of the many technical response groups which had emerged and then stuck around. It was hard to know what we would be good at, where we fit in. Disaster response has such a long and complicated history, and the culture of technology is so used to being new, shiny, and the Fixer of All Things.

Seven years later, and the patterns of digital response are becoming so well ingrained in my soul that I can use the Socratic method to help new groups as they spin up without becoming frustrated, and insist on things like self care. There’s still a lot to learn – especially as our physical and digital environments are changing all the time – but here is what I have figured out about where digital/technical/whatever response fits into the larger response ecosystem: crowdsourcing (and microtasking), increasing everyday capacity, information communication technology, and easing collaboration through standards.

Because each of those is a hefty thing to speak about, this entry covers crowdsourcing and microtasking.

What’s the difference between crowdsourcing and microtasking?

Crowdsourcing is about gathering data, microtasking is about parsing through data. Both are predicated on a very large task being broken down into many tiny pieces, which can can then be done by relatively unskilled/untrained labor. Then all those individual contributions need to be able to re-combine into a logical Whole again without too much overhead. Because of the need for a very clear workflow, the problem-solving creativity of in this process exists in the creation of the workflow, the systems on which it runs, and the creation of the experience for the individual participant.

What follows is an example of an emerging crowdsourced practice and one with a smoother flow and two examples about microtasking. A later entry will cover how citizen science exists in the overlap between crowdsourcing and microtasking,

Crowdsourcing

Rescue Requests and Dispatch

The way I’m used to seeing rescue requests happen is through an overloaded emergency response system asking people to stay in their homes and wait it out. It’s never sat well with me, but I’ve been at a loss as to how, as a remote responder, assist. During Harvey, the Coast Guard activated the Digital Humanitarian Network to help go through rescue requests on social media to provide them with summaries every 12 hours which they could then respond to. 12 hours is a long time to wait, even if it’s a quick cycle for the formal sector. Locals started using Zello to request and offer help via the Cajun Navy. (Let’s return to a rant on redundancy in dispatched resources based on a lack of sharing another time, yes?) Rescue.fm has since started working on ways to coordinate dispatch beyond scribbling on pieces of paper and spreadsheets. Good work, Zello, Cajun Navy, and Rescue.fm! I’m excited to see how this evolves over time, and to see such clear improvements to systems for mutual aid.

Shelter Information

During Harvey response (and then again for Irma), Sketch City set up a workflow for volunteers to call shelters to ask for their capacity, available beds, location, etc. That information was then entered into a data structure which could be queried via SMS through code built by the HarveyAPI team.

Eventually, something like a data standard for health and human services could automate much of this process. But until and unless that happens, this sort of information doesn’t become available to people under stress unless folk are chipping in to make those phone calls and enter the data. Good work, Sketch City!

Microtasking

Mapping Infrastructure

The remote mapping of regions (whether in crisis or not) is something that Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has been doing as a core component of digital response since before their mapping of Port-au-Prince in less time than it would have taken to set up a contract through a response agency. Their Tasker is a beacon of how anyone can get involved in helping a response (or “Putting the World’s Vulnerable People on the Map“). Those maps are then used by responders and locals to allocate resources, find useful paths across treacherous ground, or focus restoration efforts. This most recent round of hurricane response was no different, and for that we thank you.

Translation

People should be able to ask for, and offer, help in whatever language they are most comfortable in. Areas affected by extreme environmental events will always be home to multilingual populations, whether or not they are visible. The incoming and outgoing information is often so varied as to mean blanket translations won’t work. Thankfully, Meedan stepped in with their Bridge tool and community to create a workflow around translating individual messages, announcements of services, and some documentation of products. Without them, we would have been even more colonial than usual (another rant for another time).

Closing

In short, there are many people in the world who want to help, and many who need help. Often, they’re one and the same. Our role as remote responders and system-builders is to help them find each other and to interact with fewer things in the way. A good first step for many people wanting to help is to have a quick, easy way to contribute – often through crowdsourcing or microtasking. A next step to plug in for more complex and longer-term efforts is ethically desirable as well.

If we work together to build an ecosystem around different ways for people to contribute and request, we strengthen our social fabric and become more resilient.

With thanks to supporters on Patreon, who made it WAY less stressful to take the time to write all this down, and to Greg, Jeff, and others who reviewed the post.

Looking for Help

Posted on 2017.10.09 by bl00

Want to help me survive while I help with crisis response? Now there’s a way! I launched my Patreon recently. I’m excited to do community response as backed by the community.

I still feel a bit strange, asking the community to support my work in this as I’m also looking for more regular work gigs. If you see any program, project, or product management positions that I might be a good fit for, please do let me know. My work portfolio website, designed by the amazing Jen Thomas, has been live for a bit.
You can also contract me for facilitation gigs specific to employee retention through Vulpine Blue.