Digital Uprising: Reclaiming our Tech Sovereignty
Learners will gain the knowledge, critical frameworks, practical tools, and collective imagination needed to understand how technology perpetuates oppression, how to resist digital surveillance capitalism, and how to migrate to and/or think about building alternative technologies rooted in community ownership and liberation.
Course Overview
Digital Uprising: Reclaiming our Tech Sovereignty is a four-week lecture series exploring how technology functions as colonial infrastructure that perpetuates systems of oppression, while providing concrete strategies for resisting big tech and thinking about building liberatory alternatives.
Note that no technical background is required to take this class.
This course includes:
- How Big Tech platforms mirror occupation systems through surveillance, control, and displacement of marginalized communities.
- We'll analyze algorithmic bias, predictive policing, and how surveillance technologies function as tools of control.
- Participants will learn practical resistance tactics including privacy tools, encryption, and community defense networks, while exploring Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) as cooperative infrastructure that distributes power equitably.
The series centers liberation movements such as Palestinian liberation as a framework for understanding digital resistance while incorporating Afro-futurist visions, Indigenous digital sovereignty, and other liberatory movements.
Through interactive workshops, collaborative hands-on activities, and a real-world group project (a community zine participants co-create during the course of the class) participants will develop the critical frameworks, technical skills, and collective imagination needed to reclaim technology for liberation.
This course is urgently needed as Big Tech continues to expand its control over our digital lives, exacerbating existing inequalities while enabling new forms of oppression. In an era where surveillance capitalism threatens our autonomy and collective action, understanding how to resist and build alternatives has become essential for anyone committed to social justice and liberation movements.
Who Is This Course For?
This course is designed for:
- Ethical tech workers looking to deepen their knowledge and divest from oppressive tech
- Movement organizers looking to learn about the impact of Big Tech on their communities, and practical steps for divesting from oppressive platforms
- Collective liberation practitioners looking to deepen their knowledge of the impact of Big Tech on them and on their communities, and looking for ethical alternatives
- Entrepreneurs and builders curious about the political and ethical dimensions of building alternatives to Big Tech, and looking for a liberatory framework to inform their work
What You'll Learn
- Analyze technology as a political system — Apply a critical liberation framework to understand how Big Tech platforms function as colonial infrastructure that surveils, extracts from, and disproportionately harms marginalized communities.
- Identify and diagnose specific mechanisms of digital harm — Recognize how algorithmic bias, predictive policing, content suppression, and surveillance technologies operate as tools of control, and evaluate their real-world impact on individuals and communities.
- Adopt concrete tools and strategies for digital resistance — Implement practical privacy practices, alternative FLOSS-based technologies, and community defense strategies appropriate to their own skill level and context.
- Contribute to collective imagination and community education — Collaborate with peers to produce a real, shareable community resource that translates course learning into accessible tools for digital sovereignty and liberation beyond the cohort.
What's Included
Live Sessions
Interactive classes with your instructor
Session Recordings
Lifetime access to all recordings
Community Access
Connect with fellow learners
Certificate
Proof of course completion
Real-World Project
Reclaim Your Digital Life: A Community Zine
Throughout the four weeks, participants collaborate to create a community education zine designed to be shared beyond the classroom. The zine is built as a parallel assignment running alongside the course where each group works on their section between sessions and shares it with the full cohort for community input. The final section and edits are completed and submitted one week after the final class session.
Session Schedule
About the Instructor
Technologist, Community Builder, and Culture Bearer working towards Collective Liberation
Hala Saleh, Founder of Future Collective Coaching, is a leadership, startup, and product management career coach. Hala is a technologist with 20+ years of experience in the Tech industry. In addition to coaching, Hala offers fractional and interim Product Leadership and Product Strategy consulting for all sizes and stages of companies and digital product development. She is a partner and advisor to multiple non-profits. Hala is a community builder who founded a community space and café called Ya Hala Seattle. Hala is also a writer, a Tatreez (traditional Palestinian embroidery) artist, a culture bearer, and most importantly, a mother.
1 Course Credit
Stay informed about this course and future offerings.
Need financial support?
We believe learning should be accessible. A limited number of partial scholarships are available for those who would not otherwise be able to join.
If cost is the only barrier, we invite you to apply thoughtfully below.
Apply for a ScholarshipHaving issues or questions? Contact us
July 8
20 students max
4 sessions
90 min each
