Ember McCoy

Title: Taking Back Technopower: STS and strategic interventions for the fight against technofascism with authors and research areas

The current moment is characterized by resurgent struggles against technofascism. These struggles include community resistance against data centers, strategic actions against tech companies complicit in genocidal violence, and organizing efforts across many sectors against the proliferation of AI in the workplace. This open panel gathers people engaged in these sites of struggle to collectively consider the following question: how can STS approaches advance these struggles against fascist technopower, and work towards constructing more liberatory futures? In addressing this question, we seek to surface the incipient militant potential of STS, often submerged under scholarship that muddies strategic analysis and disarms political action through the register of subversive critique. Through close attention to relationality and sociality, STS may help build solidarities while unsettling the sedimented categories that impede movement building (Breymen et al, 2017). By incorporating materialist, political economic accounts of technology, STS may help push beyond the boundaries of "ethical tech” by revealing the imbrications of economic and financial processes with technoscience (Birch, 2013). And as a roving, interdisciplinary field attuned to embodied and situated practices (Haraway, 1988), an STS lens may help ensure that analyses are constantly attentive to the lively contingencies of on-the-ground struggles.

We seek to explore theories born through political struggle, and examples of how STS theory informs praxis. Submissions may include, but are not limited to: strategic reflections from organizers and activists; historical accounts that can inform future organizing and activism; or the analysis of organizing artefacts (e.g., propaganda, slogans, campaigns) and their role in advancing political struggle. We will facilitate this panel as an open discussion among folks situated across different sites of struggle, aiming to provide a space for advancing the struggle against technofascism through the development of relationships, theories, and strategic insights.

hi STS people! are you engaged in political struggle against fascism? do you have things to share: strategic reflections, organizing artefacts, etc.? do you have thoughts about how we will win? if so, you should submit something to our open panel at 4S this year! www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...

A huge win for the residents I work with in Southeast Michigan! We're celebrating this victory, while continuing the work to push for a system that prioritizes community health in the first place without relying on on polluter-payouts after damage is done. lnkd.in/er67EuP5

Sierra Club & SW Detroiters Celebrate $100M Penalty, Clean Air Wins in EES Coke Ruling - CleanTechnica Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. Or support our Kickstarter campaign! DTE and EES Coke were ordered to invest $20 million in community projects. Detroit, MI —...

Sierra Club & SW Detroiters Celebrate $100M Penalty, Clean Air Wins in EES Coke Ruling cleantechnica.com/2026/02/17/s...

i don’t see how any of the benefits of chatgpt and other consumer-facing LLMs can possibly outweigh their incredible ability to induce suicides

didn't CMU recently announce that it's going to be like extremely important that incoming students know how to use this thing that nobody seems to use in reality, and that appears to make work reliably worse for anyone who's not half-assing everything they do?

I want to drive a dump truck of cow manure to the Microsoft headquarters and drop it off in the lobby as a thank you.

They didn't ask for it, they didn't want it, but maybe they can figure out how to get rid of it.

Campus life is unrecognizable in the Trump era: ‘There’s so many cops everywhere’ As the federal government continues its top-down assault on higher education, universities are internally building repression and surveillance machines that mirror the Trump administration.

As the federal government continues its top-down assault on higher education, universities are internally building repression and surveillance machines that mirror the Trump administration.

Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ Critics of New York City’s mayor-elect have said his pledges of free bus service and universal childcare are unrealistic, but in Europe it’s a given

"Europeans recognize his vision about free public transit and universal childcare. We expect our governments to make these kinds of services accessible to all of us,” said Verbeek. “We pay higher taxes and get civilized societies in return."

Why we do not use generative AI in STPP

If someone says (as they did to my student), Are you trying to fight AI by yourself? They can say, thankfully I am not alone.

And if it is useful, STPP has developed an explanation: stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/research/com...

As people increasingly use AI—especially with institutional support—it is getting harder for scholars (esp junior) to practice informed refusal. I am guiding my students how to still say no, and explain how it violates their ethical and environmental principles. A movement starts from below!

Accountability in a time of genocide The regents, who steadfastly refuse to cease funding the murder of Palestinian families and directing police violence against our community, must be held accountable. Disrupting a genocide is a moral ...

in @michigandaily.bsky.social -- Op-ed written by students and grad workers organizing against disciplinary charges for students alleged to have protested

Accountability in a time of genocide
www.michigandaily.com/opinion/op-e...

Are you a UM worker/student and want to hear better takes than the dude below on AI from university of Michigan faculty, students, staff?

then join the mass meeting on 10/28 at 7 to stop the UM-Los Alamos data center and its support of nuclear weapons!

bit.ly/UMichNoAIMeeting

DTE Energy's control over Zug Island subsidiary 'unprecedented': Expert witness DTE Energy companies actively operate EES Coke Battery on Zug Island and make environmental decisions, a U.S. attorney says.

The government is seeking injunctive relief and penalties of up to $109,024 per day, per environmental violation from EES Coke Battery and DTE Energy. planetdetroit.org/2025/09/dte-...

A neighborhood in River Rouge, Mich. A doctoral student’s grant was canceled because she was studying low-income neighborhoods with high rates of air pollution.

Ember McCoy, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan who studies the politics of air pollution, found out on Monday that her N.S.F. grant was canceled. She did not receive an official reason for the cancellation. But she sensed it was coming, she said, because in the United States, the places with the highest rates of air pollution are low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Ms. McCoy was planning to use the rest of her grant money to pay community partners in southwest Detroit, with whom she collaborates to conduct research. She also hoped to use the funds to host a public presentation about her research for the community she studies.

This example particularly stood out to me: great way to piss off voters in a swing state is by cancelling grants related to air pollution.

"A doctoral student’s grant was canceled because she was studying low-income neighborhoods with high rates of air pollution."

Michigan Researcher’s Work on Air Pollution and Racial Inequities Caught in Funding Freeze at National Science Foundation - Inside Climate News A doctoral candidate examining air pollution effects in mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Detroit was among the wave of researchers who have had federal funds halted.

I talked to @embermcc.bsky.social, one of the hundreds of scientists who had their grant money revoked by NSF. Her research, focused on environmental injustices, and exemplifies what type of research the government is trying to eliminate. @insideclimatenews.org insideclimatenews.org/news/0605202...

I find these articles frustrating because in so far as AI is denigrating academic labor and the learning process (and it is), it’s doing so in a system that was already denigrating academic labor and turning college into a transactional investment.

Proud of you @embermcc.bsky.social! Gift link to NYT article on NSF terminations here: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/s...

Live footage of me today:

We also need to talk about the knock-on burdens these grant terminations are creating, for university administrators, students, and PIs, who have to find replacement funds, hop on crisis meetings, figure out how to file appeals, expedite paperwork and reimbursement requests, etc.

Mahmoud Khalil’s Son Arrives After ICE Refuses to Let Him Attend Birth (Gift Article) Mr. Khalil, a permanent resident detained in Louisiana, had requested a monitored furlough for the birth. His request was denied in less than an hour.

NEW: Mahmoud Khalil's wife gave birth to their child without him after ICE denied their request to let him be present.

“This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer,” Dr. Abdalla said. “My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud."

This is so depressing: the Trump admin has terminated a grant that was going to reinterview Black Americans from the National Survey of American Life, one of the most important mental health surveys of the 21st century and one that sociologists still use more than 2 decades after data were collected

Here’s a list of some of the grants with amounts listed: bsky.app/profile/etha...

I sent ours! Thanks for collecting these!

I sent ours! Thank you for collecting these!

Does that include downriver communities, e.g. Ecorse, Inkster, River Rouge? The pollutants in that area have been so bad that in years past (not sure how bad it is now), you knew when the wind was out of the SW due to the rotten egg aroma from the smelters.

It does include interviews with folks in Ecorse & River Rouge, too!

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There are some folks (who I can vouch for for whatever that's worth) tracking the terminated NSF grants to facilitate coordinated responses, media coverage, etc:

Form to add a terminated grant: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

Current grants on the list:
airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

My PhD student's NSF grant was terminated today. Her dissertation investigates why air pollution monitoring, metrics, and regulations don't properly capture the harms experienced by marginalized communities--esp in the most polluted Detroit neighborhoods. She and I are happy to talk with press etc.

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.