No Data About Us Without Us: An Afrofuturist Reflection on Building Grassroots Infrastructures for Digital Liberation
Who do you call when AI labels your child a criminal?
By the time Tammie Lang Campbell answered her phone to speak with the distraught family, their 14-year-old child had been locked in a central Texas juvenile detention facility for three days. In September 2024, he’d been arrested during his first-period class—handcuffed at school, taken without his parents’ knowledge, and sent to a prison for children. His charge? Making a joke on social media that authorities deemed a “terroristic threat.”
For Tammie, founder of the Honey Brown Hope Foundation and a longtime advocate for Black families navigating the harsh terrain of school discipline, much of this story was disturbingly familiar. For years, she had stood on the frontlines with families, helping them protect their children from the school-to-prison pipeline.
But this time felt different.
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This essay has been developed as part of the No Data About Us Without Us, a research fellowship developed by the Edgelands Institute and NOTICE Coalition.
