Lisa and Laura talk about how the People's Archive preserves and amplifies local stories. In this episode, we explain why the department decided not to collect protest pictures for Archive This Moment DC. Lisa also highlights new oral history projects, including one with Nadine Seiler, curator of the Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence.
More on Archive This Moment D.C.
Archive This Moment D.C. in Dig DC
Nadine Seiler Oral History, part of the Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence Oral History
DC Oral History Collaborative projects
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
dc, protests, ding, document, fence, collect, materials, people, donors, collection, interviews, faces, nadine, black lives matter, instagram, oral history, lisa, oral history project, decided, oral history interview
SPEAKERS
Nadine Seiler, Laura Farley, Lisa Warwick, Labs DCPL, Patrick Swayze
Labs DCPL 00:00
DC Public Library Podcast is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and is a production of the Labs at DC Public Library.
Lisa Warwick 00:13
Hello, and welcome to the second episode of the People's Podchive. Coming at you fully vaccinated [siren sounds] from the Labs at Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. I'm Lisa Warwick, Reference and Outreach Coordinator.
Laura Farley 00:31
And I'm Laura Farley, Digital Curation Librarian.
Lisa Warwick 00:35
We work at The People's Archive, DC Public Library's Local History Center. We collect all kinds of materials that document the culture, politics and day to day life in the District. That means we collect things like photos, maps and letters, reference books, and also digital objects like tweets and websites.
Laura Farley 00:58
Today, Lisa and I will discuss why we decided not to collect protests pictures and videos in the Archive This Moment DC collection. And in collection corner, Lisa will highlight a new oral history interview with Nadine Seiler from the Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence oral history project.
Lisa Warwick 01:19
In case you missed our first episode, we launched Archive This Moment DC in March of 2020 to document daily life during the stay at home order. This is a participatory collection. What does that mean you might be asking? Well, the traditional model of collecting involves working with donors, sometimes over the course of years, to bring in materials related to their lives, their work, or an organization. There is a formal deed of gift where the donor transfers custody of the materials to an institution. But the participatory model we used is focused on collecting materials about an event as it's happening, or shortly after, going directly to people living through history, and asking them to share their experience now. People submitting materials are still consenting to participate, in this case by adding #archivethismomentDC to Instagram posts, but there are no formal deed of gifts or in depth conversations about donating. And while a lot of archival collections come from just one donor, Archive This Moment DC has hundreds of donors.
Laura Farley 02:38
By the beginning of June, #archivethismomentDC was used on Instagram to document protests and marches in response to the murder of George Floyd. We had a passionate debate within our department about whether or not to collect videos and images of the protests in DC. In the end, we decided not to include any videos and images from the Black Lives Matter protest in Archive This Moment DC collection. And you're definitely thinking "why?" It doesn't get much more this moment than the social and political demonstrations of last summer. We turned to the Society of American Archivists code of ethics, which states: "Archivists recognize that privacy is an inherent fundamental right and sanctioned by law. They establish procedures and policies to protect the interest of the donors, individuals, groups, and organizations whose public and private lives and activities are documented in archival holdings." What stood out to us from this statement is the mandate to protect both the public and the private actions of those living through history.
Lisa Warwick 03:49
What if someone posted to Instagram with #archivethismomentDC while attending a protest, we archived the content, and then they deleted it from Instagram because they didn't want to be identified? But they forgot they use our hashtag. People had real concerns over the summer about their privacy and safety during and after protests. We did not want to push those boundaries. We also debated only including materials that didn't show people's faces, or placing an embargo on material gathered from protests, meaning that the pictures would not be released until years later. We didn't think these measures would go far enough. We were getting videos and pictures of crowds that included lots of faces and bodies. Even with face masks on there's still plenty of identifying characteristics from hair, tattoos, clothes, and even a person's physicality. While the person who created the media and posted it on Instagram may have consented to themselves being archived, there's no possible way to get consent from everyone else in the crowds. And remember, the code of ethics protects the interests of both the donors private and public lives.
Laura Farley 05:07
Plus, we all know there were and still are activists who have been arrested in connection to current events, and will be undergoing active trials. Our department does not have a precedent for collecting from active investigations and trials. And this is a prospect that made us very uncomfortable. We just couldn't come up with an ethical way to collect images and videos of protests and marches. So instead, we took inspiration from work of Blackivists and Witness, organizations focused on teaching people how to safely document demonstrations and human rights violations. And we decided what we could do to support activists in this moment was to hold workshops on how to preserve your digital materials instead of preserving those materials ourselves.
Lisa Warwick 05:53
We take the decision to not collect more on the protests right now very seriously, and extended the policy even to traditionally collected photos from individual photographers who are at the protests. We know telling the story of what happened this summer is covered in detail by so many other sources like newspapers, and rest assured, just because we aren't collecting these videos and pictures today, does not mean that we won't collect them in the future. In the meantime, we are recording history around the protests in a way that is safe for everybody involved.
Lisa Warwick 06:30
Welcome to collections corner.
Patrick Swayze 06:32
Nobody puts baby in the corner.
Lisa Warwick 06:33
I wanted to wrap up our podcast highlighting one of the ways we are documenting the Black Lives Matter protests in DC. It is an oral history interview with Nadine Seiler, who became one of the caretakers and curators for the Black Lives Matter Memorial fence that stood in front of the White House during the summer of 2020. I learned a lot more about the dedication that was required from needing and others to keep the fence standing. I'll let Nathan's words explain why the memorial fence was important to her and what she felt when she saw the names and faces of African Americans who have been killed by police on the fence.
Nadine Seiler 07:13
I mean, I know. I know that we're not treated the same. I mean, I just know it as somebody who have been in this country for 23 plus years. I know, I know it. But I am older. So I guess sometimes, you know, and then I am, I read a lot, you know, of, you know, politics and the news or whatever. So for somebody who is not a reader of the news, or who doesn't follow politics and stuff like that is more jarring to that person. But for me it's like it could easily obviously, you know, it could easily be you. So when you see when you see it, you know, circumstances just it wasn't you because you know, like I could be insolent to the police. Like if the police have stopped me on more than one occasion. And I am the type would say, "Why did you stop?" And that simple question caused a lot of those people to die. So I know that they were just a matter of that person's faith or whatever it is that cause that person to die are not me, but it could easily be me. So it is it. I know that I have to speak up for these people because it could be me the next - I could be the next victim because just a simple question as why did you stop me could change the mood of a police officer who you know, because he felt I was being uppity to you or something like that. It's, you know, it's not fear. And I know that that is the reality of being black in America.
Lisa Warwick 08:49
And one more clip from Nadine. This is in response to questions about how she decided to curate the fence.
Nadine Seiler 08:58
For this fence, I'm here to stay with the voices of black people. And this image is going out to the world let's take this wealth and use it as an avenue to be able to tell the world show the world first of all what is going on in this country how we are dying here and also to use it to show Trump to show up. So the other day we decided to take all the faces of the dead that we had available and put it on the very top line of defense. So if you don't if you with a watch it in some aspect, not a lot of them you're probably not going to see it because it's not zoned in but at the very top line especially in exactly in front of the White House right there with the faces of a lot of the up to date. And I purposely did that because if you're want to see the white house you are not gonna you know you're gonna look at this. But that was one of my one of my messages
Lisa Warwick 09:57
For anyone who is able to be the in the presence of the Memorial Fence and especially for those who are not able to come to DC this interview gives a great window into history art and creating a space that people came from all over the country to see and contribute to. People also came to the fence from all over the country with the intent to destroy it. But I'll let you listen to the full oral history to hear more about that.
Lisa Warwick 10:22
On a more positive note to wrap up collections corner, I want to mention the eight other oral history projects that have gone up in dig DC since April alone. It's a lot so I'm going to try to go through them fast.
Lisa Warwick 10:35
[ding] Number one is the Davis center, an oral history project on an arts education and dance center that has been open since 1969.
Lisa Warwick 10:43
[ding] Number two, empower Do you see Berry Farm oral history project, this Oral History Project documents a disappearing way of life as well as the contours of resistance and displacement.
Lisa Warwick 10:57
[ding] Number three, Marshall heights civic mindedness and engagement in current pre DC Home Rule documents the neighborhood's organized efforts that led to the federal funding of a neighborhood library and the creation of an organization that provided home ownership opportunities.
Lisa Warwick 11:14
[ding] Number four women of the wire stories of DCs formerly incarcerated women, amplifies the voices of women from DC and conversations about policymaking mass incarceration, and criminal justice reforms.
Lisa Warwick 11:30
[ding] Number five Chinatown voices a collection of interviews with Chinese Americans who emigrated to DC as children, or are first generation Americans in their family.
Lisa Warwick 11:43
[ding] Number six anthology of booty is a collection of five interviews with the all female DJ collective
Lisa Warwick 11:50
[ding] Number seven Asian American voices in the making of washington dc his cultural landscape interviews Asian Americans who have opened restaurants in DC.
Lisa Warwick 12:01
[ding] And finally number eight voices of the DC fort totten storytellers interviews black residents who lived in Fort Totten in the 1950s when families began to enjoy the Equal Opportunity of purchasing homes in the community developed by Morris Cafritz. Each of the nine oral history projects I just named have multiple interviews. Most of them can be found under the DC oral history collaborative icon on Dig DC. That's www.DigDC.dclibrary.org
Laura Farley 12:34
[old timey music] This episode was written by me Laura Farley and
Lisa Warwick 12:43
Lisa Warwick.
Laura Farley 12:44
Sound engineering was provided by Robert LaRose and Siobhan Hagan. Shout out the staff in the labs at DC Public Library for the help with this episode.
Lisa Warwick 12:55
Check out our show notes for links to the Memory Lab, Blackivists, and Witness and how to donate to Archive This Moment DC for our 2021 collection now. Find us on Facebook at The People's Archive at DC Public Library have a question email us at Peoples.archive@dc.gov that peoples.archive@dc.gov.
Laura Farley 13:25
Bye!
Labs DCPL 13:27
You just tuned into DC Public Library Podcast. Listen and subscribe at dcpubliclibrary.org/podcasts or wherever podcasts are available. Send us your comments @DCPL on Twitter, or follow us at DC Public Library on Instagram and Facebook. Thank you for listening.