Tech Learning Collective: A Grassroots Technology School Case Study

Grassroots education is important for making sure advanced technical knowledge is accessible to communities who may otherwise be blocked or pushed out of the field. By sharing this invaluable knowledge and skills, local groups can address and dissolve these barriers to organizers hoping to step up their cybersecurity.

The Electronic Frontier Alliance (EFA) is a network of community-based groups across the U.S.  dedicated to advocacy and community education at the intersection of the EFA’s five guiding principles: privacy, free expression, access to knowledge, creativity, and security. Tech Learning Collective, a radical queer and femme operated group headquartered in New York City, sets itself apart as an apprenticeship-based technology school that integrates their workshops into a curriculum for radical organizers. Their classes range from fundamental computer literacy to hacking techniques and aim to serve students from historically marginalized groups.

We corresponded with the collective over email to discuss the history and strategy of the group's ambitious work, as well as how the group has continued to engage their community amid the COVID-19 health crisis. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

What inspired you all to start the Tech Learning Collective? How has the group changed over time?

In 2016, a group of anarchist and autonomist radicals met in Brooklyn, NY, to seek out methods of mutual self-education around technology. Many of us did not have backgrounds in computer technology. What we did have was a background in justice movement organizing at one point or another, whether at the WTO protests before the turn of the century, supporting whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, participating in Occupy Wall Street, or in various other campaigns.

This first version of Tech Learning Collective met regularly for about a year as a semi-private mutual-education project. It succeeded in sowing the seeds of what would later become several additional justice-oriented technology groups. None of the members were formally trained or have ever held computer science degrees. Many of the traditional techniques and environments offering technology education felt alienating to us.

So, after a (surprisingly short!) period of mutual self-education, we began offering free workshops and classes on computer technologies specifically for Left-leaning politically engaged individuals and groups. Our goal was to advocate for more effective use of these technologies in our movement organizing.

We quickly learned that courses needed to cater to people with skill levels ranging from self-identified “beginners” to very experienced technologists, and that our efforts needed to be self-sustaining. Partly, this was because many of our comrades had sworn off technical self-sufficiency as a legitimate avenue for liberation in a misguided but understandable reaction to the poisonous prevalence of machismo, knowledge grandstanding, and blatant sociopathy they saw exhibited by the overwhelming majority of “techies.” It was obvious that our trainers needed to exemplify a totally new culture to show them that cyber power, not just computer literacy, was a capability worth investing their time in for the sake of the movement.

Tech Learning Collective’s singular overarching goal is to provide its students with the knowledge and abilities to liberate their communities from corporate and government overseers, especially as it relates to owning and operating their own information and communications infrastructures, which we view as a necessary prerequisite for meaningful revolutionary actions. Using these skills, our students assist in the organization of activist work like abortion access and reproductive rights, anti-surveillance organizing, and other efforts that help build collective power beyond mere voter representation.

Who is your target audience?

Anyone who is serious about gaining the skills, knowledge, and power they need to materially improve the lives of their community, neighbors, and friends and who also shares our pro-social values is welcome at our workshops and events.

Importantly, this means that self-described “beginners” are just as welcome at our events as very experienced technologists, and we begin both our materials and our methodology at the actual beginning of computer foundations...

 We know what it's like to wade into the world of digital security as a novice because we've all done it at one point or another. We felt confounded or overwhelmed by the vast amount of information suddenly thrown at us. Worse, much of this information purported to be “for beginners”, making us feel even worse about