Lessons, myths, and lenses: What I wish I'd known in 1998
Sumana Harihareswara
Source: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/lessons-myths-and-lenses-what-i-wish-i-d-known-in-1998/
License: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

As a teenager arriving at university in the fall of 1998, Sumana Harihareswara was about to meet the free software movement and dive in. Free software taught her engineering principles and political truths. It snuck myths into her head that she'd have to take several years to scrub out. And it gave her lenses, models for understanding the world, that she would reuse in her work, relationships, and activism. For the first time, Harihareswara sums up this two-decade diff into what she wishes she could tell her younger self.

LibrePlanet2018 coming soon... https://www.libreplanet.org/2018/

LittleSis: mapping the powers that be
Kevin Connor, LittleSis
Source: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/littlesis-mapping-the-powers-that-be/
License: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

LittleSis is a free software, wiki-style database that tracks connections between the world's most powerful people and organizations. In the workshop, participants are trained in the site's basic functions (e.g. editing profile pages and searching for interlocks between corporations) and advanced functions (e.g using the site's Oligrapher tool to create maps of information stored in the database). We also share stories about the ways in which LittleSis and power analysis research have been used in movement and organizing contexts, including how activists in St. Louis used LittleSis to map and challenge the local corporate Powers Behind the Police and how activists in Philadelphia are using LittleSis to research the corporate entities behind education privatization.

LittleSis: https://littlesis.org

Who Rules America: https://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/

LibrePlanet2018 coming soon... https://www.libreplanet.org/2018/

Technology for direct actions
Andrew Seeder
Source: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/technology-for-direct-actions/
License: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

This strategic action session follows-up from last year's "Community Technology for Solidarity Economies." This year's session is for anyone interested in activism through non-violent direct actions, such as boycotts, protests, advocacy, and political organizing. We explore how free software technology can empower organizers, with special emphasis on economic democracy initiatives. The session includes a presentation about which technology supports and which technology hinders direct actions. The session ends with an open conversation about how else organizers and technologists might support each other in the future. Please come ready to share ideas and best practices.

* https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/community-technology-for-solidarity-economies/

LibrePlanet2018 coming soon... https://www.libreplanet.org/2018/

Meet them where they are: Free software and social justice today
Brett Smith
Source: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/meet-them-where-they-are-free-software-and-social-justice-today/
License: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

At LibrePlanet, we often talk about how free software intersects with human rights and social justice issues. This talk will review recent technology choices and promotion in other activist communities, discuss how recent changes in politics and technology have motivated these changes, and use these lessons to learn how the free software community can improve its outreach to other advocacy groups. We'll also look at imminent technology developments, and consider where the free software movement can work now to affect change in the future.

LibrePlanet2018 coming soon... https://www.libreplanet.org/2018/

The free software movement in the age of Trump
Eben Moglen
Source: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/the-free-software-movement-in-the-age-of-trump/
License: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

One sixth of the human race lives under the control of a regime that intends to use the Net to extinguish the very idea of freedom. Pettier despots of every description use computer networks to perfect civil unfreedom on a platform of unfree technology. Illiberal movements are sweeping towards political power in advanced democratic societies, which are also the hubs of surveillance capitalism. The rush to cashless society is replacing the anonymity of the free market with the tracked and monitored control points of a new totalitarian economy. The most powerful man in the world has no respect for freedom of speech or the rule of law. The free software movement came into existence fighting to prevent a future which is now our present. Ready or not, we have entered a new phase. Training is over. Here's the plan.

LibrePlanet2018 coming soon... https://www.libreplanet.org/2018/