Our Pillars
Our work rests on three pillars: environmental justice with indigenous knowledge, labour justice for digital workers, and democratic justice in civic spaces.
Pillar 1: Environmentalism, Digitalization, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems
This pillar explores the intersection of environmental sustainability, digital technologies, and traditional ecological knowledge, rooted in principles of environmental justice and care for the land. It recognizes that indigenous communities hold centuries of wisdom about ecosystem management, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable resource use. The focus is on how digital tools can be leveraged to document, preserve, and amplify indigenous environmental knowledge while ensuring communities maintain sovereignty over their knowledge systems.
A critical component is documenting the impacts of extractive industries mining, logging, oil and gas extraction, and large-scale agriculture on (indigenous) communities, territories and ecosystems. This includes holding companies accountable for their environmental footprint, including data center energy consumption, e-waste, and mineral extraction for hardware production. Digital technologies can enable communities to monitor environmental degradation, track resource exploitation, provide evidence of violations, and advocate for their rights. The pillar challenges the narrative that all digitalization is inherently progressive, demanding that technology development respects indigenous rights, protects ecosystems, and centers care ethics rather than extraction and exploitation.
Pillar 2: Labour and Technology
This pillar examines the evolving relationship between work, workers’ rights, and technological transformation through a lens of labor justice and care for workers. It focuses on how automation, artificial intelligence, platform economies, and digital tools are reshaping labor markets, working conditions, and employment structures.
This includes holding big tech companies accountable for labor practices throughout their supply chains, from content moderators experiencing psychological harm, to warehouse workers under surveillance, to miners extracting rare earth minerals in dangerous conditions. The pillar documents labor conditions in extractive industries, including workplace safety, exploitation, informal labor, and the effects of automation on jobs. It demands that technology corporations take responsibility for the full human cost of their operations and challenges business models built on worker precarity and algorithmic control. This pillar seeks to ensure that technological advancement serves workers, promotes decent work and dignified conditions, and is grounded in care and solidarity rather than exacerbating inequality or eroding labor protections.
Pillar 3: Civic Spaces, Democracy, and Digitalization
This pillar addresses how digital technologies are transforming civic engagement, democratic processes, and public discourse, grounded in principles of democratic justice and care for communities. It explores both the opportunities and challenges that digitalization presents while holding big tech companies accountable for their impact on democratic institutions.
This work is rooted in care ethics centering the wellbeing of marginalized communities most harmed by digital inequalities, surveillance, and platform exploitation. It emphasizes creating digital environments that strengthen democratic values, protect vulnerable populations, ensure digital inclusion and accessibility, and hold powerful actors accountable. Justice requires that technology serves all people equitably, respects civic freedoms, and enables rather than constrains collective action for social change.
