Equality Labs

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'smash Brahmanical patriarchy'

Equality Labs is a leftist activist organization. Thenmozhi Soundararajan is Equality Labs Executive Director.

Description

From their website:[1]

"Equality Labs is an Ambedkarite South Asian power-building organization that uses community research, political base-building, culture-shifting art, and digital security to end the oppression of caste apartheid, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and religious intolerance.
We work towards dynamic South Asian feminist futures from religious minorities and caste oppressed communities, while creating spaces where women, femmes, gender non-conforming, intersex, nonbinary and trans leaders are architects of their freedom.

Open Letter to the Biden Campaign on “Unprepared”

Open Letter to the Biden Campaign on “Unprepared” was released May 12 2020.

":Our demands: The country’s greatest priority at this moment is to beat the COVID-19 crisis, and this requires embracing principles of antiracist solidarity and international cooperation. The Biden campaign can and should beat Trump and the GOP with a message centered on our real public health needs and the progressive values that are required to meet those needs. The “Unprepared” ad must be taken down, and all campaign messaging that fuels anti-Asian racism and China-bashing must end. We refuse to allow the Biden campaign to sacrifice our dignity in the name of political expediency."

Signatories included Equality Labs

Cited by Columbia Journalism Review

On May 5, 2020, George Civeris and Ishaan Jhaveri of the Columbia Journalism Review published a post "The Tow Center COVID-19 Newsletter: India’s lockdowns and Islamophobia"[2] citing the Equality Labs report on Hate Speech on Facebook in India titled "Facebook India: Towards the Tipping Point of Violence"

Report encourages Facebook to remove 'Hate Speech'

Equality Labs wrote a report claiming that Muslims were the victims of "Hate Speech" on Facebook and Facebook did not do enough to remove the posts.[3] The report was launched at RightsCon 2019 by Thenmozhi Soundararajan[4] and cited at Buzzfeed in an article by Megha Rajagopalan.[5]

From the report:

"The vast majority of violations we observed and reported were Islamophobic in nature. Islamophobic content is foundational to the hate speech echo chamber in Facebook India, accounting for almost 40% of the content we reported. Islamophobic content is often the most violent, most threatening, and most gruesome. This is in alignment with the growing tide of violence against Indian Muslims with India Spend’s Hate Crime Watch reporting that Muslims were the victims in 58% cases of religiously motivated violence, between 2009 and 2019. This atmosphere of violence underscores the reality that hate speech in a cultural context that has already seen an exponential rise of violence is like adding gasoline to kindling. All that is needed is the spark, and as we have seen in Myanmar, social media can be that tragic spark."

South Asian Power Building program

Cultural Organizing: through the arts and community engagement work, we create media, political education workshops and host exhibits across major cultural institutions and organizations to bring history, art and music across the country.
Political Campaigns: with organizations and members across the country, we organize.
Digital Security and Research: through our feminist praxis of digital security, we host workshops, provide rapid response support and consultation, and partner with social movement organizations to protect their identities, technology and movement.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar Resolution

Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17) Introduced Resolution honoring Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar[6] on April 14 2020.

“Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was a pioneer in the movement to make India a free, fair, and just society for everyone in it,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17). “He mobilized a generation to push back against discrimination and to instead celebrate equality, human rights, and universal tolerance. Today, we stand at a moment in world history when we could all use more of that compassionate spirit. I’m proud to work with Equality Labs and South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) to make this landmark resolution a reality.”

Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Equality Labs Executive Director, said:

“We are thrilled to have worked with Rep. Ro Khanna’s office on the first Congressional Resolution to celebrate the life of Dr. Ambedkar and have it be introduced in the House on Ambedkar Jayanti. This historic resolution marks an important milestone in the movement for caste abolition and we hope Americans will join us in celebrating this powerful historical figure. Dr. Ambedkar’s impact on economics, democracy, religion, and philosophy are felt across the world to this day, as is his tireless advocacy for Dalit Bahujan communities.

“As a Dalit American and as executive Director of Equalty Labs it is a special honor. Founded by Dalit women our leadership is focused on the rights of the caste-oppressed globally. It was one of the reasons we founded Dalit history Month and to see Dr. Ambedkar celebrated by the world is a light even now in these dark times. ”

Letter to Stop 'Islamophobia'

To have your organization sign onto this letter, fill out this form.
We’re hosting a Twitterstorm on Wednesday, April 8 at 10am ET. Join us by following hashtag #StopCOVIDIslamophobia and follow @EqualityLabs
April 6, 2020
RE: Stopping the rapid spread of Islamophobic hate speech and disinformation
We write this urgent letter as members of concerned international organizations who work collectively on the issues of human rights, internet freedom, ::racial justice, religious freedom, feminism and caste liberation.
This is a time when the entire world is reeling under the pressure of dealing with the devastating impacts of COVID-19 (known commonly as coronavirus). As ::a result, we are appalled that despite the calls to end disinformation and hate speech targeted at minorities, we are seeing a virulent form of ::coronavirus-related Islamophobia, through hashtags like #CoronaJihad, #CrushTablighiSpitters, #MuslimMeaningTerrorist, and #BioJihad, among others.
These hashtags originatexd following a religious gathering of Muslims in India, and have been opportunistically deployed on multiple social media ::platforms. Far right Twitter users have weaponized the gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat to both demean and demonize millions of India’s Muslim ::minority community members, leading to many upper caste Indians asking for ‘shoot at sight’ orders, as well as the denial of healthcare. For some, these ::conditions have resulted in death, including a case of suicide by a Muslim man in Himachal Pradesh who was bullied by community members, despite ::testing negative for COVID-19. The snowballing impact of the aforementioned provocative hashtags is that they normalize the stigmatization of minorities, ::particularly as some newshouses, like Zee News and Republic TV, are amplifying and mischaracterizing these polarizing claims as unequivocal fact.
The devastating reality is that COVID-19 does not and will not distinguish between faiths, castes, race, or geographical location. It is a relentless ::pandemic that requires national, and even global unity. Public health, in turn, requires us to build national trust so that the broader public can feel ::comfortable with government-issued recommendations. Using the pandemic to justify hate-based communal and religious politics will not solve it; only ::scientific rigor and global cooperation will help turn the tide of this deadly disease and its ever-growing impact.
That is why, until this crisis passes, we need to do better. Throughout human history pandemics have bred misinformation, hysteria, and scapegoating, ::ultimately leading to a surge in discrimination and ostracisation against minority groups.
Muslims represent nearly 24.1% of the world’s population (1.8 billion people as of 2015) and we cannot allow the normalization of dangerous speech against ::any community. This is especially relevant, since the pandemic is occurring against the backdrop of India’s frightening turn towards genocide. In January ::of this year, the Indian Parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which lays the legal foundation to start denationalizing Muslims, and ::subsequently target other minorities. During the fervor of months of protest that on February 23, while US President Trump was visiting India, New Delhi ::experienced a horrific pogrom that killed over 50 people (the majority of whom were Muslim) and made thousands homeless, compounding their vulnerability ::to the global pandemic. Hate speech is the forerunner to atrocity, which is why we need to act immediately to prevent a larger loss of life.
To that end, we have the following recommendations:
To PM Modi and other Indian Parliamentarians,
We urge you to immediately stop targeting Muslims and other caste-oppressed communities in speeches, social media and other public communications. Per the ::WHO’s guidelines, refrain from using geographic locations or groups of people when addressing COVID-19. Much of the incendiary coronavirus-related ::Islamophobic content is shared from sites affiliated to or followed by Modi and Hindu nationalist factions. That requires accountability and immediate ::action.
India can only be unified in its fight against the virus if the hate speech and relentless targeting of Muslims and caste-oppressed minorities ends. ::Sowing communal distrust at a time when Indians need to join forces is misguided and will ultimately end in only prolonging the pandemic and result in a ::greater loss of life.
We need you to consider the legacy of what it will mean to have been a divisive and communal world leader at a time of a global pandemic. We urge you for ::the good of all Indian people to change course before it is too late.


To Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey,
As the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter respectively, we, the global community, remind you of the critical corporate responsibility you have at this time. ::When genocidal hate speech ran rampant on social media in Myanmar, the lack of action in dealing with it led to untold suffering, as millions of ::Rohingyas were rendered stateless and were abandoned to violence.
Mr. Zuckerberg, we would especially want to remind you that despite Facebook making a pledge to never repeat this, we are seeing genocidal hate speech ::stemming from coronavirus-related disinformation, hosted and promoted prominently on your platform. This is a lethal combination. You have a significant ::responsibility to the Indian population and the global religious community to address this violence before it is too late.
Mr. Dorsey, Twitter has a crucial role in combating this Islamophobia: #CoronaJihad, as a hashtag, began trending on Twitter. In the time it went viral, it went on to impact nearly 2 billion conversations across all other social media platforms as well. We need Twitter to step up to the plate and create a response team to tackle the Islamophobic vitriol on the platform, as there is an even more urgent duty of care for your company to stop this hate speech before it snowballs into mass atrocity and casualties.
Every death that results from communal violence will be your doing, owing to ample awareness of the consequences of your lack of action. Underfunding and understaffing resources that combat violence is the same as doing nothing, particularly when civil society has been ringing the alarms to both Facebook and Twitter for many years. Ensuring that you have experts from this community, advising your position on these issues, is an effective way to approach the religious hatred being spread in the name of solving the pandemic.
If there was ever a time to act aggressively, it is now. Ensuring that you have experts from this community, advising your position on these issues, would be a way to address it. Think of this as your Christchurch 2.0 moment, where millions of users’ lives hang in the balance of your actions. The time to stop a genocide is before it happens.
And finally, to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
We are asking for the WHO to issue firm guidelines against the demonization of religious communities, similar to the rapidly deployed guidelines against coronavirus-related anti-Asian racist hate speech. There is an urgent need to both condemn coronavirus-related Islamophobia and for it to come from the highest level of the UN. This hate speech severely impacts our ability to fight the global pandemic.
Over 200 million Indian Muslims are impacted by communal hate. However, social media is not insular in existence. Given its global reach, these Islamophobic hashtags have the potential of harming hundreds of millions of more Muslims around the world. We urge you to protect the millions who only want to shelter in place and weather this burgeoning pandemic.
Public health works best when it is centered in education and compassion. The rampant sharing of hate speech and disinformation directly impacts us all, and we need to come together to build unity.


Thank you,


To sign onto this letter, fill out this form.

Jack Dorsey holds sign "Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy"

Twitter's Jack Dorsey holds sign "Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy"

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey met a group of activists in India in November 2018 "for an off-the-record conversation." From an article from a leftist perspective where he held up a sign by Equality Labs referencing Brahmanical Patriarchy:[7],[8]

"However, a photo of him from the session did make it to to the outside word, in which he was seen holding a poster titled “smash Brahmanical patriarchy”.
"The photo set off a storm. “By holding that offensive poster Twitter head, Jack just proclaimed he is a Brahmin hating, racist, bigot, masquerading as a woke Feminist,” thundered columnist Smita Barooah. Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education, called it a “hate poster” which served to “malign a community” and Bollywood screenwriter Advaita Kala termed it “hate speech”. Most confusingly, Chitra Subramaniam, editorial advisor with Republic TV, drew an analogy between Brahmanical patriarchy and Chinese totalitarianism, rhetorically asking whether Dorsey would ever “hold up a poster asking Xi Jinping to hold free and fair elections?”

References

  1. ↑ Homepage (accessed April 20 2020)
  2. ↑ The Tow Center COVID-19 Newsletter: India’s lockdowns and Islamophobia (accessed May 19 2020)
  3. ↑ Facebook India: Towards the Tipping Point of Violence (accessed May 19 2020)
  4. ↑ Facebook India: Towards the Tipping Point of Violence (accessed May 19 2020)
  5. ↑ Facebook Failed To Delete 93% Of Posts Containing Speech Violating Its Own Rules In India (accessed May 19 2020)
  6. ↑ On Ambedkar Jayanti, Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17) Introduces Ambedkar Resolution (accessed April 20 2020)
  7. ↑ A call to ‘smash Brahmanical patriarchy’ is not hate speech – it's progressive, anti-caste politics accessed 10/19/2019
  8. ↑ accessed 10/19/2019
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