What We Build with Power

A historically conscious manifesto calling for worker organizing in tech, led by Black and Latinx technologists What We Build with Power is an urgent call for organizing shared strategies in order to disrupt the tech industry and move toward a more economically inclusive and equitable workforce. Economic disparities between White, Black, and Latinx workers persist. Activist and organizer David Delmar Sentíes argues that tech is in a position to move beyond empty platitudes and toward an organized workforce that values the economic well-being of Black and Latinx communities. Delmar Sentíes uses his firsthand experience as the founder of Resilient Coders—a free and stipended nonprofit coding bootcamp that trains people of color from low income communities for careers as software engineers—to highlight how we must identify and dismantle the intentional systemic barriers in tech that are precluding nonwhite people from participating in their cities’ prosperity. He shows how diversity and inclusion initiatives fail, reveals how philanthropic efforts often exacerbate racial inequalities, and argues for a total overhaul of tech culture.