Good Law | Bad Law - Social Change and Tech: A Conversation w/ Ray Brescia

Good Law | Bad Law

How do we use technology to create change? How do you empower a movement?

Aaron Freiwald, Managing Partner of Freiwald Law and host of the weekly podcast, Good Law | Bad Law, is joined by Law Professor Raymond Brescia, of Albany Law School, to discuss social movements, social change, and the impact of technology. The Hon. Harold R. Tyler Chair in Law and Technology at Albany, Ray is a student of today’s topic, having long been interested in the intersection between technology and community organizing.

In his most recent book, The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions, Ray identifies a series of “social innovation moments” in American history. Today, Aaron and Ray explore the notions of “The Future of Change” and how these ideas relate to today’s technology, social media platforms, and cultural movements. In both his book and today’s episode, Ray explains that, almost without fail, developments in how we communicate shape social movements, just as those movements change the very technologies themselves. Aaron and Ray discuss these ideas using historical parallels and examples, such as the effects of the advent of the steam printing press on the Abolitionist movement, as well as contemporary instances and examples like Twitter and the #MeToo movement. Ray illuminates the complicated, dangerous, innovative, and exciting relationship between these technologies and social change. Aaron and Ray delve into how social movements have embraced communications technologies, touching on the topics of grass roots organizing, the duality of technology, shared destiny, group thinking and combating confirmation bias, deep fake videos and “fake news,” creativity in problem solving and advocacy, messaging and promotion, Ray’s notion of “the matrix,” and more.

Professor Brescia combines his experience as a public interest attorney in New York City with his scholarly interests to address economic and social inequality, the legal and policy implications of financial crises, how innovative legal and regulatory approaches can improve economic and community development efforts, and the need to expand access to justice for people of low and moderate income. Before his time at Albany, Professor Brescia was the Associate Director of the Urban Justice Center in New York, N.Y., where he coordinated legal representation for community-based institutions in areas such as housing, economic justice, workers’ rights, civil rights, and environmental justice. Prior to his work at the Urban Justice Center, Professor Brescia was a staff attorney at New Haven Legal Assistance and the Legal Aid Society of New York, where he was a recipient of a Skadden Fellowship after graduation from law school.

Professor Brescia also served as a Law Clerk to the pathbreaking Civil Rights attorney-turned-federal judge, the Honorable Constance Baker Motley, Senior U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. While a student at Yale Law School, Professor Brescia was co-recipient of the Charles Albom Prize for Appellate Advocacy; was a student director of several clinics, including the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Homelessness Clinic; and was a Visiting Lecturer in Yale College.

Listen in to learn more!

To learn more about Professor Brescia, please visit his bio page here. Here you will also find a comprehensive list of Professor Brescia’s publications, other books and forthcoming works.

To check out, The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions (Cornell University Press 2020), please click here.

To check out Professor Brescia’s blog, The Future of Change, please click here.

Professor Brescia is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. To view a collection of these works, please click here.

Host: Aaron Freiwald

Guest: Raymond H. Brescia

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