Project Abstract
“Amplifying Justice: Community Oral Histories and Racialized Surveillance in Chicago” is a project led by Assistant Professors Audrey Silvestre (Latina/o Studies) and Ignacio F. Cruz (Communication Studies). It delves into the enduring racialized surveillance practices within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and their decades-long history of corruption, police misconduct, and bias, which have disproportionately impacted Black, Latinx, Indigenous lives, and communities of color. The project places focus on the ramifications of technologies of racialized surveillance, such as big data policing. This technique involves the use of data and algorithms to identify and predict individuals likely to commit crimes, a practice that has contributed to the intensification of deep distrust of the CPD among Black and Brown Chicagoans.
In response to these practices, Chicago’s grassroots organizations and activists have risen to challenge such technologies, demanding increased transparency, accountability, and advocating for alternative restorative justice forms. “Amplifying Justice” intends to spotlight these initiatives and resistance movements.
By drawing on oral histories, this research underscores the challenges grassroots organizations and activists face in combatting predictive policing technology, while advocating for transparency, accountability, and alternative forms of justice. Funded by the RJC seed fund, the project aims to create a digital archive documenting the efforts and strategies of these organizations. “Amplifying Justice” aims to illuminate the intersection of race, surveillance, and resistance, thereby exposing and challenging the implications of these emerging technologies on social justice in Chicago. The goal is to conduct oral histories, and create a digital archive of short-lived organic, grassroots, and formal community organizations led by marginalized communities, and to learn from their strategies, coalitional, and abolitionist practices in Chicago.
Investigators
Audrey Silvestre
Audrey Silvestre (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in Latina/o Studies at Northwestern University. Silvestre is an interdisciplinary scholar and community organizer from Southeast Los Angeles, CA. Her teaching and research interests include visual and sonic cultural productions, sound studies, queer nightlife, aesthetics and politics, feminist and queer studies, and audio cultural studies. She received her BA in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies from California State University, Long Beach and a PhD in Chicana/o and Central American Studies from University of California, Los Angeles.
Ignacio Fernandez Cruz
Ignacio Fernandez Cruz is an Assistant Professor of Communication in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. Dr. Cruz’s expertise focuses on the areas of emerging technology at work, the sociotechnical practices between AI tools and their users with a focus on bridging bias and equality within technology design and adoption. He is currently working on various projects examining hiring and selection practices of personnel who use AI for talent acquisition. Additionally, he is interested in the reshaping of work and personnel practices that are impacted by accelerating digital technologies and platforms. He is affiliated with AI@Northwestern, Center for Latinx Digital Media, and Humans, Machines, and Society Research Lab (USC).
His scholarship has been featured in various outlets within the areas of communication studies, management, and information studies research. He has won several research awards from the National Communication Association and International Communication Association. Prior to joining Northwestern, Dr. Cruz was a former National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Ronald E. McNair Scholar. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and fellowships from the University of Southern California and University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.