MIC Book Talk: Christopher Robé, Florida Atlantic University

Book Talk and Panel with Chris Robé - "Abolishing Surveillance: Digital Media Activism and State Repression"

About Chris Robé

Robé's primary research concerns the use of media by various communities and social movements. In the twenty-first century, media does not simply offer a representational platform for different communities but more importantly serves as a material practice to engage in collective struggles for a wide variety of purposes.

He has written about the emergence of anarchist-based video activism in his book Breaking the Spell: A History of Anarchist Filmmakers, Videotape Guerrillas, and Digital Ninjas (PM Press, 2017). His co-edited collection with Stephen Charbonneau InsUrgent Media from the Front: A Media Activism Reader (Indiana University Press, 2020) investigates global trends in media activism through a historic lens. His most recent book Abolishing Surveillance: Digital Media Activism and State Repression (PM Press, 2023) concerns the relationship between video/digital media activism and state repression pertaining to animal rights campaigns, counter-summit protesting, Latinx copwatching and community organizing, and Muslim-American youth resistance.

Panelists

Mizue Aizeki

Aizeki is the founder and Executive Director of the Surveillance Resistance Lab. For nearly twenty years, Aizeki has been organizing to end the injustices at the intersections of the criminal and migration control systems—including criminalization, imprisonment, and exile. While at the Immigrant Defense Project, Aizeki led multiple policy and individual case campaigns to end the entanglement of local law enforcement and ICE policing, and also built community defense programs to combat ICE raids.

Jack Z. Bratich 

Bratich is a Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information. He is author of On Microfascism: Gender, War, Death and Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture as well as coeditor of Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality. 

Arun Kundnani

Kundnani is a writer based in Philadelphia. His books include What is Antiracism? And Why it Means Anticapitalism (Verso, 2023), The Muslims are Coming! (Verso, 2014) and The End of Tolerance (Pluto, 2007). Born in London, he moved to the U.S. in 2010. The Guardian has described him as “one of Britain’s best political writers.”