Thread by @lizthegrey

Next #VelocityConf speaker is @jessicamckellar on ending mass incarceration. She spends a lot of time in prisons, including San Quentin.

@jessicamckellar 800 people on death row; the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere.

She works on "The Last Mile" project, which prepares incarcerated individuals for successful re-entry into society with job/skills training. #VelocityConf

She teaches people technology skills. Without internet access, just thumb drives and PDFs.

And she had rich discussions with incarcerated men about everything from software to software and predictive policing to demographics of tech. #VelocityConf

Why does she care about the 2.3M incarcerated people in the US? It starts from her efforts in the Python community, diversity work, and teaching people to program. #VelocityConf

She's really into the Python community, but it's not about Python, it's about systems.

@jessicamckellar believes that "programming changes how you think about, debug, and interact with the world." #VelocityConf

It helps you learn rules and debug problems according to those rules, and work with other people on projects and making things better (and changing the rules!).

"Programmers master systems and gain the power to change them." ---@jessicamckellar #VelocityConf

Think about the original principles of Free Software -- running code, studying/changing it, redistributing originals, and distributing derivative works.

But it's not just software systems. "The most important systems are people systems." --@jessicamckellar #VelocityConf

and programming enables people to believe in themselves and their power to change the rules of systems. In non-programming contexts too. #VelocityConf

"Becoming a programmer made me an activist, and for changing big people systems such as the criminal justice system in the United States." --@jessicamckellar

[ed: p.s. if you're interested in bail reform, @BKBailFund is one of our local bail funds in NYC] #VelocityConf

How do you get started? How do you overcome the feeling like you are a tiny cog and that you can't do anything?

Does stuffing envelopes and gruntwork matter? Well, we spend hours triaging bug reports despite our myth that we have such high leverage... #VelocityConf

We have to think back to the reasons that we originally learned programming and how we dealt with the gruntwork of tracebacks and little things.

"The levers for impact come with time and fluency." --@jessicamckellar #VelocityConf

We can translate leverage from programming to people systems; we understand things like accessibility, version control, data analysis, etc.

Remember & use your power. Pick a problem. And if you're already working on changing a people system, inspire other people. #VelocityConf

.@jessicamckellar's suggestions if you're not sure what to work on: learn about district attorneys and become an informed voter. Learn about your employer's policies about banning the box asking about criminal records. become involved in prison training. [fin] #VelocityConf