Thursday, March 28th
Introduction by Cara Pike, Founder and Executive Director, Climate Access
With climate advocates subject to surveillance and censorship and giant companies controlling the ways information and knowledge flow around the world, the fight to save our climate is now inextricably intertwined with digital rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has long been at the forefront of protecting those rights, has helped environmental activists protect their emails from Chevron, understand the surveillance they are under and develop “Security Self-Defense” practices to protect themselves. Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Executive Director, one of the nation’s leading civil liberties attorneys specializing in Internet law, will explain why EFF’s push for open access to scientific information, for net neutrality, for open source/patents, “creative commons” licenses, and more, is critical in the fight to prevent climatic unraveling.
March 28th | 10:28 am to 10:50 am | Zellerbach Hall
Introduced by
Cara Pike
Founder and Executive Director | Climate Access
Cara Pike, the founder and Executive Director of Climate Access, is a leading thinker in climate communications with 20+ years’ experience. Her expertise has been sought by nonprofits, academic institutions and government agencies including the City of Boston, the State of Vermont, EPA, FEMA, Urban Sustainability Directors Network, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others. Her studies and toolkits on environmental engagement translate complex issues into actionable strategies that are helping thousands of climate advocates more effectively frame sustainability issues and promote behavior change. Cara is also co-founder and Senior Communication Advisor to Climate Access’s partner organization, Re.Climate.
Keynote
Cindy Cohn
Executive Director | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Cindy Cohn, the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2015, served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel from 2000 to 2015. In 1993, she served as lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Among other honors, Ms. Cohn was named to The Non-Profit Times 2020 Power & Influence TOP 50 list, and in 2018, Forbes included Ms. Cohn as one of America's Top 50 Women in Tech. In 2013, The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America, noting: "If Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn."
3:00 pm: How to Fight for a Fair and Free Digital Landscape
Hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, founded in 1990, is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. EFF champions user privacy, free expression, innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development, to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. Come join some leading figures at EFF for an interactive conversation in which we’ll share information and ideas at the juncture of the environmental, social and digital struggles for a better future. Topics will include: tools to protect environmental defenders from surveillance; legal strategies to combat governmental and corporate tracking and censoring; how researchers and activists can successfully fight for open access to information and data; and more. Let’s talk about what more we can do together. Moderated by Cindy Cohn, EFF Executive Director. With: Cooper Quintin, EFF Senior Staff Technologist; Mario Trujillo, EFF Staff Attorney; nash Sheard, EFF Managing Director, Advocacy; Beryl Lipton, EFF Investigative Researcher.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Magnes Museum
Panelists
Cindy Cohn
Executive Director | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Cindy Cohn, the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2015, served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel from 2000 to 2015. In 1993, she served as lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Among other honors, Ms. Cohn was named to The Non-Profit Times 2020 Power & Influence TOP 50 list, and in 2018, Forbes included Ms. Cohn as one of America's Top 50 Women in Tech. In 2013, The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America, noting: "If Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn."
Cooper Quintin
Senior Staff Technologist | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation Threat Lab and a board member of Open Archive, has worked on projects including Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and the analysis of state-sponsored malware campaigns such as Dark Caracal. He has given talks about security research at prestigious security conferences including Black Hat, DEFCON, Enigma, and ReCon and has been published or quoted in a wide range of publications including The New York Times, Reuters, NPR, CNN, and Al Jazeera. Cooper has given security trainings for activists, nonprofit workers, and vulnerable populations around the world.
Mario Trujillo
Staff Attorney | Electronic Frontier Foundation
F. Mario Trujillo, J.D., is a Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's civil liberties team, where he focuses on the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights. He is also part of the Coders' Rights Project. Prior to joining EFF, Mario was an attorney at the privacy law firm ZwillGen and clerked for a federal magistrate judge on the southern border. Before law school, Mario worked as a technology policy reporter at The Hill newspaper.
nash Sheard
Managing Director, Advocacy | Electronic Frontier Foundation
nash Sheard, Managing Director for Advocacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), works to assure that the organization's work is impactful, collaborative, and innovative. Before joining the executive team, nash led EFF's grassroots, student, and community organizing efforts, supporting member organizations of the Electronic Frontier Alliance in educating their neighbors on digital-privacy best practices and advocating for privacy and innovation-protecting policy and legislation.
Beryl Lipton
Investigative Researcher | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Beryl Lipton, an Investigative Researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), focuses her work on government transparency, law enforcement surveillance technology, and other uses of technology by government actors. She has extensive experience using Freedom of Information laws and large-scale public records campaigns in her research. At EFF, Beryl supports the Atlas of Surveillance, The Foilies, and The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance, among other projects. She enjoys teaching others about the strengths and limitations of public records laws and discussing the potential and real harms of the surveillance state.
Since 2005 nearly a third of the newspapers in the U.S. have folded up for good, many at the hands of rapacious capital firms intent on squeezing every last drop of profit out of the “Third Estate.” Local news, so vital to the practice of democracy on the ground in communities, is seriously at risk. Half of the counties in the country now qualify as “news deserts,” but against this specter of corporate domination, a booming expansion of nonprofit newsrooms, along with a renewed public interest in local news, is pointing the way towards a truly innovative media future. In this session, some leading editors and journalists will share their visions about what a future of news built on collaboration, community engagement and a commitment to exceptional journalism could look like, if enough of us get involved. Hosted by Christa Scharfenberg, Director of the California Local News Fellowship program at UC Berkeley. With: Larry Ryckman, Editor and co-founder of The Colorado Sun, previously Senior Editor at The Denver Post; Jacob Simas, Community Journalism Director at Cityside Journalism Initiative; Madeleine Bair, founder of El Tímpano.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | The Marsh Theater
Panelists
Madeleine Bair
Founder | El Tímpano
Madeleine Bair is the founder of El Tímpano, an award-winning civic media organization designed with and for the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrant communities. Madeleine, who has been carrying a microphone in her backpack since she belonged to the Oakland bureau of Children’s Express, has taught radio production to young adults, worked on a morning show at Chicago Public Radio, produced multimedia for Human Rights Watch, and collaborated with media activists from around the world. Her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Colorlines, and Orion, and broadcast on PRI’s The World and Independent Lens.
Larry Ryckman
Co-Founder and Editor | The Colorado Sun
Larry Ryckman, co-founder and Editor of The Colorado Sun, was previously: Senior Editor at The Denver Post; Managing Editor at The Gazette in Colorado Springs; and City Editor at the Greeley Tribune. Ryckman also spent 22 years at The Associated Press (AP), where he was Assistant Managing Editor and a National Editor and Supervisor of the AP's national desk in New York. He also spent nearly four years as a Moscow correspondent for AP and helped cover the fall of the Soviet Union and supervised AP's coverage of the Columbine High School massacre and directed its coverage of the presidential election recount in Florida in 2000.
Jacob Simas
Community Journalism Director | Cityside Journalism Initiative
Jacob Simas, Oakland-based Community Journalism Director at Cityside Journalism Initiative, previously managed social-impact initiatives at Univision, established a youth journalism training program with Fusion Media Group, and was a Senior Editor and Director of Youth and Community Media at New America Media/Pacific News Service. Before journalism, Simas was a school-based counselor and program director for Latino youth and families at the nonprofit Horizons Unlimited in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Christa Scharfenberg
Director of the California Local News Fellowship Program | UC Berkeley
Christa Scharfenberg, Project Director of the California Local News Fellowship Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, was previously Senior Vice President at the American Journalism Project (AJP), a venture philanthropy that invests in the growth of local nonprofit newsrooms across the country. Prior to AJP, Christa spent more than 18 years at Reveal/The Center for Investigative Reporting, serving as CEO from 2017-2021. She is also on the advisory boards of the Poynter Institute, the Legal Clinic Fund and Correctiv (in Berlin).
Friday, March 29th
Directed by award-winning Berkeley-based filmmaker Rick Goldsmith, is the story of one secretive hedge fund that is plundering America’s newspapers and the journalists who are fighting back. Investigative reporter Julie Reynolds, Denver Post editorialist Chuck Plunkett and a handful of others, backed by the NewsGuild Union, go toe-to-toe with the faceless Alden Global Capital in a battle to save and rebuild local journalism across America. Who will control the future of America’s news ecosystem: Wall Street billionaires concerned only with profit, or those who see journalism as an essential public service and the lifeblood of our democracy?
March 29th | 8:40 pm to 10:35 pm | Goldman Theater, Brower Center
Panelists
Rick Goldsmith
Filmmaker
Rick Goldsmith is a San Francisco Bay Area filmmaker who has been making documentaries for four decades. Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink is the third of his trilogy of films focusing on journalism, following Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (co-produced/co-directed with Judith Ehrlich), both Academy Award nominees for Best Documentary Feature and numerous other awards. Among Goldsmith’s other films are Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw, the intimate story of a super-star athlete’s struggle with mental illness, and Everyday Heroes, a behind-the-headlines look at race, youth and national service through a eyes of a group of Americorps volunteers.
