s1e4: Technology in Movements with Tawana Petty

“It’s not our fault but it is our fight.”

-Monica Lewis Patrick

In this episode of Radicals for Good, we discuss utilizing technology in movement spaces and what digital justice could look like in Detroit with Tawana Petty, a mother, digital justice organizer, poet, and author.

Tawana Petty, also known by her poetry stage name Honeycomb, is a mother, social justice organizer, poet, author, facilitator and keynote lecturer. Her work focuses on racial justice, equity, privacy, and consent. She is the founding Executive Director of Petty Propolis, Inc., an artist incubator, which leverages poetry, policy literacy and advocacy, anti-racism facilitation, political education and community-centered initiatives in pursuit of data and digital justice and racial and environmental justice. In 2024, Petty was named on Business Insider’s AI Power List for Policy and Ethics.

Sources

1. https://geezmagazine.org/magazine/article/waawiyatanong-land-acknowledgement

2. https://unsplash.com/photos/text-zO7VVw7Hxik

3. https://www.bridgedetroit.com/detroiters-get-oversight-of-surveillance-technology-but-is-it-enough/

4. https://www.bridgedetroit.com/michigan-central-is-collecting-a-lot-of-data-can-we-trust-it/

5. https://tawanapetty.org/selected-media/f/defending-black-lives-means-banning-facial-recognition

6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/11/tsa-airport-security-facial-recognition/

7. https://stoplapdspying.org/

8. https://voicesfromthegrassroots.org/lewis-patrick-monica/

9. https://www.detroitk12.org/about-dpscd/initiatives/one-to-one-student-technology-iniiative

10. https://www.wxyz.com/news/coronavirus/detroit-police-to-enforce-ticket-people-not-following-stay-at-home-order

11. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymichigan/PST045224

12. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/14dd97b35cbb4a4298786c75855f8080

13. https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2024/08/28/detroit-police-department-celebrates-1k-project-green-light-partners/

14. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/09/detroit-bridges-internet-access-digital-divide/

15. https://connectyourcommunity.org/cleveland-and-detroit-lead-worst-connected-large-cities-of-2023/

16. https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2025/10/07/grim-reality-more-than-half-of-detroit-children-are-now-living-in-poverty-census-bureau-data-shows/

17. https://poverty.umich.edu/projects/detroit-partnership-on-economic-mobility/

18. https://www.epa.gov/mo/town-flood-and-superfund-looking-back-times-beach-disaster-nearly-40-years-later

19. AI and Assembly: Coming Together and Apart in a Datafied World by Toussaint Nothias and Lucy Bernholz

20. Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence by Mizue Aizeki, Matt Mahmoudi, and Colin Schupfer

Defending Detroit