Collective Liberation & AI: A Decolonial Practice

Artificial intelligence is often framed as neutral, inevitable, and revolutionary. This course challenges that narrative by examining AI as a political and cultural infrastructure shaped by colonial histories, extraction, surveillance, and dominant knowledge systems. Drawing from the intellectual traditions of Audre Lorde, Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, Walter Rodney, James Baldwin, and contemporary scholarship on AI governance and technofeudalism, learners will explore how artificial intelligence reproduces existing systems of power — and how communities can respond creatively and collectively.

This course moves beyond conventional AI literacy. Rather than treating technology as separate from philosophy, history, ecology, or embodiment, we examine how AI intersects with language, labor, climate extraction, epistemology, and the nervous system itself.

Across six live sessions, learners will engage both critically and practically through dialogue, reflection, collaborative analysis, and applied frameworks developed through years of work in movement, educational, and nonprofit spaces.

Topics include:

• Decolonial praxis and the “colonized nervous system”

• How machine learning and large language models actually work

• AI, extraction, labor, and climate infrastructures

• Narrative sovereignty and language politics

• Somatic and contemplative approaches to technology

• Organizational and movement-based AI literacy

• Building liberation-centered alternatives and practices

Learners will work with three original frameworks throughout the course:

• Language Audit for Solidarity Work

• Narrative (Re)Frame Method

• Activated Solidarity Method

The course culminates in a real-world Liberation Artifact designed for learners’ own communities, organizations, or creative practice. This is rigorous, interdisciplinary work rooted equally in political analysis, imagination, embodiment, and collective responsibility.

This course is designed for:

• Community organizers and movement workers

• Educators and curriculum designers

• NGO and nonprofit professionals

• Journalists, writers, and communicators

• Artists and cultural workers

• Researchers and public interest technologists

• People seeking a deeper ethical and political framework for understanding AI

• Learners interested in decolonial thought, narrative sovereignty, and collective liberation

Helpful background includes:

• Familiarity with social justice or liberation-oriented work

• Curiosity about AI and emerging technologies

• Willingness to engage critically, collaboratively, and reflectively

This is not a beginner coding or technical AI course. It is designed for people interested in the social, political, cultural, and embodied implications of AI.