CARE White Paper Launch – Issue #15: Experiences with COVID-19 Among Gig Workers

presented by Prof. Mohan Dutta and Dr. Leon Salter with panelists Ibrahim Omer, Anita Rosentreter and Rebecca Macfie.

Thursday, 24th March 2022 @ 12 PM NZDT via Facebook Live (Link in description)

Abstract

Experiences with COVID-19 Among Gig Workers : Findings from interviews with 25 rideshare and delivery drivers about their navigation of precarious working conditions in a pandemic environment.

Livestream Link: https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey/videos/291971153109628

Location via Facebook Live and CARE YouTube channel

About our panelists:

Ibrahim Omer became an MP to represent communities who often struggle to have their voices heard. His experience spans fleeing his home country, being in a refugee camp, working as a minimum wage cleaner, graduating from university, and representing low paid workers as a union organiser.

Rebecca Macfie is an award winning New Zealand journalist, with a background in workplace, health and safety, business and climate writing. She is the author of Tragedy at Pike River Mine:How and why 29 men died (2013), and Helen Kelly: Her Life (2021).

Anita Rosentreter is the Strategic Project Coordinator for Transport, Logistics and Manufacturing at FIRST Union. She leads the campaign Real Work Real Jobs, which aims to turn insecure work into secure work. Target groups include gig workers, those in labour hire, and dependent contractors.

#WhitePaper #COVID19 #GigWorkers #CAREWhitePaper #CAREMassey #CAREMasseyNZ #MasseyUni

CARE White Paper Launch- Issue #14: A Culture-Centered Approach to Community-led Social Cohesion in Aotearoa

Join us on Thursday, 17 March 2022 at 7PM (NZDT) for the release of the CARE White Paper: “A Culture-Centered Approach to Community-led Social Cohesion in Aotearoa New Zealand”

The launch will be presented by Professor Mohan J Dutta, Dean’s Chair of Communication & Director of CARE.

The White Paper is co-authored with Pooja Jayan, Md Mahbub Rahman, Christine Elers, and Francine Whittfield, CARE: Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation

Facebook Event Link : https://www.facebook.com/events/2196384167179941/

Facebook Premiere Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/311510504299109


Rescheduled: CARE White Paper Launch: Experiences with COVID-19 Among Gig Workers on 14th March 2022 @ 12 pm NZDT- TBC

presented by Prof. Mohan Dutta and Dr. Leon Salter with panelists Ibrahim Omer, Anita Rosentreter and Rebecca Macfie

CARE EVENT UPDATE: Unfortunately, tonight’s CARE White Paper Launch: Experiences with COVID-19 Among Gig Workers is rescheduled to Monday 14th March 2022.We will be in touch with you soon with an updated time. Apologies for any inconvenience. Thank you.

CARE White Paper Launch: Experiences with COVID-19 Among Gig Workers- presented by Prof. Mohan Dutta and Dr. Leon Salter with panelists Ibrahim Omer, Anita Rosentreter and Rebecca Macfie.Abstract: Experiences with COVID-19 Among Gig Workers : Findings from interviews with 25 rideshare and delivery drivers about their navigation of precarious working conditions in a pandemic environment.Monday, 14th March 2022 @ 12 pm NZDT-TBC
Location Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey/videos/984089835577558
and on CARE YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF760E7rBst3U5GmJ5FhDDw

RSVP HERE: https://www.facebook.com/events/2761363950838111/

#CAREWhitePaper #COVID19 #GigWorkers #CAREWhitePaper #CAREMassey #CARECA #CAREMasseyNZ #MasseyUni

CARE Invitation: India on the Brink Summit: Preventing Genocide-February 26-28, 2022

Join us CARE along with 20+ global diaspora organisations documenting the genocidal hate being disseminated by Hindutva extremists in India.

Monitoring and Countering Genocide in India

Date: 28 Feb 2022 Time: 2-3pm EST, 8-9pm CEST, 0:30-1:30am (next day) IST

Speakers: Nicole Widdersheim, Christopher Tuckwood, and Mohan Dutta

Moderator: Ritumbra Manuvie

Join session: https://tinyurl.com/yutepc5r

Talk abstract: What does monitoring genocide look like? Who does the monitoring? How is technology being used to monitor genocide?

About India On The Brink Summit:

20 years on #Gujarat Massacre, #India continues to be ravaged by #HindutvaTerrorists. #Modi has radicalised the country but #Indians will prevail.

Join us @CAREMassey along with 20+ global diaspora organisations documenting the genocidal hate being disseminated by Hindutva extremists in India.

Attached are the event posters for the all-digital events to be held between 26-28 February 2022

Speaker list and their Bio’s https://indiaonthebrink.com/speakers/

#StopIndianMuslimGenocide

For more details visit: indiaonthebrink.com

#CAREMassey #MasseyUni #CARECCA

News: Massey research paper on Hindutva leads to trolling, persecution and threats via NZ Herald

Massey research paper on Hindutva leads to trolling, persecution and threats via NZ Herald

CARE: Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation stands in solidarity with its research team members Richa Sharma, Balamohan Shingade, and others (Indigenous women and women of colour) not mentioned in this report for their courage in documenting extremist #Hindutva nationalism and in building culture-centered preventive interventions rooted in dialogue, peace, and voice.

Massey University researcher Richa Sharma. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Full article:

Richa Sharma was doing research on religious extremism in Aotearoa when she got a call from her mother. Her aunties and uncles, close family friends who have known her since she was born, were convinced she was a terrorist.

For a few months last year, Richa Sharma did not go out after dark, always making sure she had safe ways to get around for work and meetings.

The 18-year-old was interning at Care, a Massey University research centre that was copping online abuse for publishing a white paper about the far-right nationalist ideology known as Hindutva and its creeping presence in Aotearoa.

There were calls for centre director Professor Mohan Dutta to be sacked, even burned alive. Police said the trolls were overseas, but an Auckland-based Indian news site published a piece calling Dutta a “left-leaning bigot under the garb of an academician”, and part of “a gang of some smelly rats”.

The Hindu Council and Hindu Youth New Zealand chimed in with nearly identical statements, condemning the paper for “accusatory and unsubstantiated assertions” that made the Hindu community look bad. Hindu Youth said it was “outright Hindu hatred”.

Most of the vitriol was directed at Dutta but his team, some of them South Asian and female, were not spared. Their profiles were public on the Care website and social media pages.

“We had to watch our steps carefully,” said Sharma, now 19. “I really didn’t feel safe. We had a police file open.”

Shortly after, an auntie and uncle reached out to Sharma’s mother back home in Palmerston North. They were not related by blood but it was custom in the community to address close family friends as auntie and uncle.

Over tea, Sharma’s mother was told her daughter worked for an anti-Hindu outfit and was urged to intervene. Auntie and uncle were convinced Sharma was a “left-wing, radical terrorist”.

Another auntie sent text messages condemning the white paper, including a petition against Massey University to take it down.


Source: NZ Herald

#CAREMasseyNZ #MasseyUni #CARECCA #CultureCenteredApproach #Solidarity #Hindutva #Nationalism #Aotearoa #NewZealand

CARE White Paper Launch – Experiences of Indian Muslims with Digital Hate: A Preliminary Report

CARE White Paper Launch – Experiences of Indian Muslims with Digital Hate: A Preliminary Report

presented by Prof. Mohan Dutta with panelists Anjum Rahman, Sapna Samant, Ashok Swain, Haroon Kasim

Abstract:
Release of CARE white paper on anti-Muslim hate in India

Wednesday, 26th January 2022 @ 8 pm NZDT

Location Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey/videos/547809686874118
and on
CARE YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF760E7rBst3U5GmJ5FhDDw

#CAREWhitePaper #DigitalHate #CAREMassey #CAREMasseyNZ #MasseyUni

CARE WHITE PAPER: Solidarity in anti-racist struggles: A culture-centered intervention

ISSUE 5. (AUGUST 2019)

Solidarity in anti-racist struggles: A culture-centered intervention

by Teanau Tuiono and Mohan J. Dutta

In this white paper, we depict
solidarity as the organizing concept
for addressing racism in Aotearoa,
New Zealand. After defining the
concept of solidarity, we address the
questions: Why do we need solidarity
in activist and advocacy interventions
seeking to address racism? What does solidarity look like in struggles
against racism? We wrap up the
white paper with key elements drawn
from our dialogue, foregrounding
“seeing connections” as a way for
bringing together anti-racist, anticapitalist, and decolonial struggles.
Seeing Whiteness as the very basis for the production of various forms of
marginalization sets up the
groundwork for anti-racist struggles.

CARE Director’s Blog: Reflecting back on 2021: Academia in the politics of transformation

by Mohan J. Dutta on December 30, 2021

The year 2021 brought with it a lesson that I hope to carry forward in my academic journey in the coming years.

That the sources of power will seek to silence the voices emergent from the margins is a lesson I have borne witness to over the last two decades of academic-community work, in some instances, at personal cost. 

As we built the activist-in-residence program, starting with the transformative conversations with Braema Mathi, Sue Bradford, and Tame Iti, the organizing role of power in silencing dissenting voices became all too evident.

From generating disinformation campaigns, to planting false narratives, to carrying out witch hunts framed as audits, to targeting academics with hate messages, threats of violence, and incarceration, dominant structures will draw upon a wide array of strategies and tools to silence academic voices that speak with and alongside the margins.

In the face of these practices of silencing, academia can continue to thrive as a vital space of dissent that generates oppositional intellectual registers, working alongside intellectuals and activists in movements, political parties, and communities.

2021 brought home the message that academia is a critical resource in the ongoing work of challenging extreme neoliberalism, hate politics, and authoritarian populism. Academia is a powerful space for resisting, intervening into, and dismantling these structures of dominant power that threaten to colonize communities, societies and democracies across the globe. 

This recognition of the power of academia as a space that can offer a critical anchor to dismantling the control of dominant actors is vital to the ongoing politics of transformation. 

The role of academics in building infrastructures of listening to voices of the subaltern margins that are hitherto erased, working alongside social movements and activist organizing, is an important ingredient in the labour of challenging oppressive structures.

For academics to participate in and sustain dissent, our power lies in forging solidarities as collectives. These collectives ought to be built both within academia, and outside academia. 

Within academia, our ongoing work ought to build strategies for challenging the precarization of academic labour. Centering conversations on academic freedom and connecting these conversations to the ongoing challenges of precarious academic labour are vital to our unions in the education sector. Connecting across diverse spaces, linking with the struggles of non-academic staff, connecting with the struggles of students are vital elements to sustaining collectives within academia.

Connecting across spaces in academia also translates importantly into connecting across geographies. In the face of the increasing repression of academic freedom across geographies, listening across, centering attention on, and building bridges that reach out to the margins of global geopolitics is an essential ingredient in a global politics of transformation.

Outside of academia, building connections with unions, working-class movements, movements against neoliberalism, Indigenous movements, movements for diversity (gender, race, ability) are critical resources in sustaining the politics of transformation. 

Most importantly, 2021 has highlighted the vital role of community agency in empowering academia in its role in the politics of transformation. 

The recognition that the neoliberal onslaught on academia that has privatized it through donor and state control can be resisted by re-turning to community, forms the basis for re-imagining the relationship between academia and community. 

That academics are accountable to communities at the margins re-imagines the textures and roles of academia in creative ways. In this imaginary, academics are sustained by communities,  and in turn, are committed to sustaining communities.

It is in this friendship with communities, particularly communities at the margins, that academia offers a politics of transformation.

Link to the blogpost on : https://culture-centered.blogspot.com/2021/12/reflecting-back-on-2021-academia-in.html

CARE welcomes Dr. Leon Salter, recipient of the 2021 MBIE Science Whitinga Research Fellowship

We at CARE are delighted to welcome Dr. Leon Salter, the 2021 recipient of the MBIE Science Whitinga Research Fellowship. Dr. Salter will be leading CARE’s work on precarity, labour and digital futures.

Dr Leon Salter graduated with a PhD in Communication and Journalism in 2018. Leon has taught widely on the Masters and Bachelor of Communication at Massey and his research interests are in Political Communication, Digital Media, Social Justice Movements and Unionism. Leon began working for CARE on the Experiences with COVID-19 among gig workers project and was awarded the MBIE Science Whitinga Research Fellowship in June 2021 to chart the expansion of the gig economy in Aotearoa New Zealand.