Mission Forward with Carrie Fox

Nabiha Syed is the President of The Markup. Just what is The Markup, you ask? If this is your introduction to The Markup, we stand as both disheartened that you’re not already a regular reader, yet delighted that we may serve as your guide by way of this week’s show. 

The Markup, an investigative journalism startup that explores how powerful actors use technology to reshape society, which, if you’ve never explored the pages of the publication, might sound like a bite far too big for any publication to take. And yet, what we hope you discover in our conversation this week, this approach is not only a standard readily achievable, but with the right tools and an eager team, it can serve as a standard bearer for other institutions of the fourth estate to follow. 

It turns out that beyond the top notch journalistic chops, central to The Markup’s DNA is a dedication to developing and releasing the same data analytics investigative tools used by their reporters. This transparency in the process allows the publication to report news that is, as Syed calls it, “bulletproof.” And you can get in on the action. 

Take Blacklight, for example. This Markup service asks you to input any website address you frequent and will report back the user-tracking technologies at work on that site that are accessing information about you through your computer and your behavior while using it. 

Why would they need such a tool at the news site? Because data — and how it moves through our economy — is part of the central story of the anthropocene. The Markup has invested as heavily in technology tools and journalists as it has in traditional journalism and the results show in every story. 

That’s why we’re so lucky to have Nabiha Syed on the show this week. We talk about what it means to exist in the journalism space, and about building a news organization bespoke for us, our modern age, and dedicated to the modern information perils that stand before us. 

Links & Notes

• The Markup
• ‘The High Privacy Cost of a “Free” Website’ by Aaron Sankin and Surya Mattu — The Markup
• Blacklight — The Markup
• Follow Nabiha on Twitter
• Connect with Nabiha on LinkedIn

About Nabiha Syed
Previously, she was Vice President and Associate General Counsel at BuzzFeed. As the company’s first newsroom lawyer, she oversaw litigation, including the “Steele Dossier” litigation, as well as select intellectual property, security, international, and cross-company strategic initiatives. Nabiha has been described as “one of the best emerging free speech lawyers” by Forbes magazine. 

Before BuzzFeed, Nabiha was an associate at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, a leading media law firm, and the First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times. She has worked on legal access issues at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; represented asylum-seekers in south Texas; counseled on whether to publish hacked materials; and spoken about misinformation at the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit. For her work, Nabiha was named a “40 Under 40 Rising Star” by the New York Law Journal in 2016, a finalist for the Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year Award from the International Bar Association in 2017, and received an inaugural Reporter’s Committee for the Freedom of the Press award in 2018. She holds a law degree from Yale Law School and from Balliol College, Oxford University, which she attended as a Marshall Scholar.

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Anand Giridharadas is a writer who walks headlong into the storm of corporate institutional power. His latest book, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” is a rebuke of the “unelected upper crust” and their efforts to lobby and influence in the face of our public institutions.

It is not a particularly rosy portrayal of the function of our institutions.

In so writing, however, Giridharadas has become something of a cheerleader for the systems and services institutional wealth has eroded. His call for corporate citizens to stop thinking in terms of doing good, and instead focus on doing less harm is one that the next generation appears to be internalizing. For that, he has hope.

Even as this conversation was recorded three years ago, it could have been held today. To hear just how consistent — and doggedly persistent — Giridharadas is, we invite you to read this piece from Business Insider documenting a recent talk for which he served as a keynote. The audience, the National Association of Corporate Directors. His talk, according to the writer in his newsletter The Ink, “went very well or very badly depending on whether you’re a corporate board member.” In short:

A lot of your children and grandchildren do not respect your work. Some of them say this to you, some of them don't. But we know this from public attitudes. You know this from survey data. There is a sense among younger people coming of age in the most diverse, open-minded generation in American history that what their parents and grandparents did in corporate boardrooms near broke America.

And if for no other reason than to have a less awkward Thanksgiving this year with your relatives, try to get on the right side of history.

Read the whole thing here. But first, please join us for this conversation on the challenge — and yet the inevitability — of serving our collective civic duty if we’re to navigate our way through this generational challenge toward equity.

Links & Notes

• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
• Subscribe to Anand’s newsletter
• Follow AnandWrites on Twitter
• Connect with Anand on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Anand Giridharadas

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Last week, we introduced you to Natalie Burke, founder of CommonHealth ACTION, by way of a three-year-old interview on health equity. Since then, her advocacy has taken many turns and become more incisive, more aware, more focused on the disruptive journey toward equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Natalie is back with us today for a conversation that addresses one central question: how does racism harm us all? It’s a deceivingly simple question that is achingly difficult to answer. Natalie’s efforts to create what she calls “constructive discomfort” goes a long way toward helping us all adapt to the pain that can come through learning and change. When we can face our discomfort in trust we all win through transformation.

Links & Notes

• Common Health Action
• Follow Natalie S. Burke on Medium

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This week on Mission Forward, we bring you a conversation from 2017 with two guests who boldly challenge assumptions we hold in our everyday lives. They stand unafraid to say the things many of us think, using their words and ideas as waves cresting in and over us, then receding, laying bare our understanding of ourselves and how we relate to the world around us a little more clearly.

We start with a reading from The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty Is Wrong by the author, Mauricio Miller. Miller has leveraged his experience in poverty —  and as founder of the Family Independence Initiative — into a book that addresses the issues of poverty with audacity and courage and we love that we captured some of the words from the author’s mouth.

Natalie S. Burke is the founder of CommonHealth ACTION and if you aren’t following her writing on Medium, then you’re not following her writing yet. Since this conversation in 2017, her work has only become more incisive, more aware, more focused on the disruptive journey toward equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Join us for this conversation that presses on our existing charitable organizations, privilege, and oppression, and what we can do together to change our values.

Recorded live at our 2017 April Mission Forward Convening.

Links & Notes

• The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty is Wrong by Mauricio L. Miller
• Common Health Action
• Follow Natalie S. Burke on Medium

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We’re exploring the work of the Center for Common Ground this week with founding board member, Andrea Miller. When it comes to racial justice and equity, she’s an incredible fighter, a noted leader in Virginia working to turn the tide on compressed voter access, and a firebrand when it comes to elected leaders working against the will of the people of her state.

With the Reclaim our Vote campaign, the Center for Common Ground demonstrates their incredible focus:

Andrea tells us how Reclaim Our Vote is working to expand their volunteer base across for key states specifically, and more nationally. She outlines the tools and techniques her organization is counting on to spread the world of voter disenfranchisement, calling on all of us to gear up, get out, and vote.

Links & Notes

• The Center for Common Ground
• Reclaim Our Vote
• Learn More about Communicating for Change, a course from Mission Partners

About Andrea Miller

Andrea Miller is Founding Board Member, Executive Director, People Demanding Action, Founding President, National Women’s Political Caucus of Virginia, Founding Tri-Chair Virginia Poor People’s Campaign and a member of the Democracy and Governance working group of the Virginia Green New Deal. Andrea is an IT and Political Director, a digital and elections strategist. She designs and administers digital phonebanks and texting programs. From 2013 to 2015 she led the Progressive Round Table on Capitol Hill bringing together members of Congress, activists, and non-profit leaders. Her expertise is in voting rights, climate, and the Equal Rights Amendment. She has successfully advocated for legislation on both the Federal and State level. In 2008 she was the Democratic nominee for the Virginia 4th Congressional district.

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