Thursday, March 26th
Now in his 50th year working as a media creator, actor and musician, Gary Farmer has been a groundbreaking figure in prying open doors for Indigenous contributors to the performing arts, helping found a magazine and radio and TV networks in Canada highlighting Native creators and voices, as well as appearing in many TV series and several legendary films including Powwow Highway, Dead Man and Smoke Signals. Today Gary will explore why it is more important than ever for Native people to control their own narratives, in an era in which our collective survival will depend on our learning to put the Earth first. It is time for Turtle Island TV!
March 26th | 10:01 am to 10:23 am | Zellerbach Hall
Introduced by
Cara Romero
Executive Director | Bioneers
Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Executive Director and Program Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program, previously served her Mojave-based tribe in several capacities, including as: first Executive Director at the Chemehuevi Cultural Center, a member of the tribal council, and Chair of the Chemehuevi Education Board and Chemeuevi Headstart Policy Council. Cara is also a highly accomplished photographer/artist.
Gary Farmer
Renowned First-Nations Actor and Musician
Gary Farmer, an actor and musician born on Six Nations land along the Grand River, Ohsweken, Ontario, is widely recognized as a groundbreaking figure in the development of Indigenous media in Canada. The founding Director of Aboriginal Voices Radio Network, he was also the Publisher of Aboriginal Voices Magazine from 1993 to 2003. As an actor Gary has been nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards for Best Supporting Male Actor in: Powwow Highway, Dead Man, and Smoke Signals, and, most recently, he is a regular on two popular television series—Resident Alien and Reservation Dogs.
David Sirota, an award-winning journalist, author, podcaster, founder of the invaluable investigative news outlet, The Lever, and a one-time speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, is one of the nation’s most penetrating analysts of the corruption of our political system. For anyone interested in social movements and momentum for change, it’s hard to think of a more urgently important systems-level conversation in this critical moment in our history. In this session, David will be interviewed by Rose Aguilar, renowned Bay Area progressive journalist, host of KALW’s Your Call, the Bay Area’s premiere public affairs program, as he draws from his profoundly revelatory audio series and book, Master Plan, to elucidate the history of the corporate capture of our political system, where we stand today, and what we can do to begin to reclaim our democracy before it’s too late.
March 26th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Golden Bear Room, Hotel Shattuck Plaza
Panelists
David Sirota
Founder and Editor | The Lever
David Sirota, an award-winning journalist and bestselling author of four books who served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter in 2020, is founder and Editor of The Lever, a reader-supported investigative news outlet, and host of the weekly podcast Lever Time and the audio series Master Plan, whose first season won the 2025 National Press Club and the Signal awards. He also created Audible’s financial crisis podcast series Meltdown, named one of the best podcasts of the year by The Atlantic. Sirota also co-won the Writers Guild of America’s 2022 award for best original screenplay (with Adam McKay).
Rose Aguilar
Host | KALW’s Your Call
Bio coming soon.
Friday, March 27th
Renowned science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” in 2022 to describe the degradation of online platforms. Today, he will draw from his most recent nonfiction book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, to assure us that it’s not our imaginations: the internet does indeed suck now. And this isn’t the result of great historical forces or iron laws of economics: it’s caused by specific policy choices made in living memory by named individuals, but Cory will argue that we aren’t helpless prisoners of the depraved foolishness of early 21st century policymakers. We can – and we must – break free of the prison they built for us, consigning their terrible ideas to the scrap-heap of history, so we can create a new, good internet that is fit to serve as the digital nervous system of this fraught young century.
March 27th | 11:46 am to 12:08 pm | Zellerbach Hall
Introduced by
Zephyr Teachout
Professor of Law | Fordham Law School
Zephyr Teachout, Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, is a renowned and influential expert on the intersection of corporate and political power. She is the author of Corruption in America, which traces the history of what corruption has meant at different times in our history and, most recently of: Break 'em Up, which makes a case for reimagining the relationship between democracy and antimonopoly law. Zephyr also ran for Governor and Attorney General of New York State, getting the New York Times endorsement in the latter race, and is a leading figure in national antimonopoly and democracy defense movements.
Cory Doctorow
Technology Journalist and Science Fiction Author
Cory Doctorow, a renowned, award-winning science fiction author, activist, and journalist, is the author of dozens of books, most recently, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, (nonfiction); and the novels Picks and Shovels and The Bezzle. His other notable books include the “solar-punk” novels Walkaway and The Lost Cause, and the tech policy books The Internet Con and Chokepoint Capitalism. Cory also: maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net; works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and is: an AD White Professor at Cornell University; an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate; a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University; a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science; and a co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group.
4:45 pm: Resisting Enshittification: From Monopolies and Mediocrity to Reviving Democracy
Cory Doctorow and Zephyr Teachout in Conversation
The monopolistic dominance of the technosphere and media ecosystem by a handful of immense corporations has led to extraordinary erosions of privacy, dignity and sanity, and may threaten the very survival of those democratic institutions we still have. In light of these realities, what can we do to resist what Cory Doctorow has brilliantly tagged as the “Enshittification” of online reality and its nefarious impacts on the larger cultural and socio-political context? In this conversation, Cory, one of the world’s leading, long-time warriors for a truly functional internet that genuinely serves our needs, joins Zephyr Teachout, attorney, law professor, author, political leader, pioneering anti-monopoly and internet activist, and one of the nation’s leading experts on democracy and antitrust law, as they delve deeply into the best strategies we can employ to reclaim what should be our information and communication commons.
March 27th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Freight & Salvage
Panelists
Zephyr Teachout
Professor of Law | Fordham Law School
Zephyr Teachout, Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, is a renowned and influential expert on the intersection of corporate and political power. She is the author of Corruption in America, which traces the history of what corruption has meant at different times in our history and, most recently of: Break 'em Up, which makes a case for reimagining the relationship between democracy and antimonopoly law. Zephyr also ran for Governor and Attorney General of New York State, getting the New York Times endorsement in the latter race, and is a leading figure in national antimonopoly and democracy defense movements.
Cory Doctorow
Technology Journalist and Science Fiction Author
Cory Doctorow, a renowned, award-winning science fiction author, activist, and journalist, is the author of dozens of books, most recently, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, (nonfiction); and the novels Picks and Shovels and The Bezzle. His other notable books include the “solar-punk” novels Walkaway and The Lost Cause, and the tech policy books The Internet Con and Chokepoint Capitalism. Cory also: maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net; works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and is: an AD White Professor at Cornell University; an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate; a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University; a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science; and a co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group.
