Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios.
I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding.
I am your host Rams' job. He is Rams's job.
I am q Ward.
You are tuned inna Civic.
Scycer, Yes you are, and we would like for you to stick around today because we are.
Going to be talking uh to somebody who's very special. Very special guest is coming on the show.
Marissa Estrada Rivera, also known as Ritzy P, is a un speaker, first generation Mexican American activist and host of Word to Your Mama, the podcast that amplifies diverse voices and celebrates shared experiences. She is also the co host of the get Down podcast, which covers policy and industry trends in DeFi and Web three and emerging tech affecting Black, Latino and Indigenous communities. Welcome to the show. We appreciate you taking the time out to talk to us today.
Thank you well, Gia samagannized this for having me And let me just start off by saying, happy Happy Block History Day, month, year, all day, every day.
We take that.
Yeah, we will take it all and you know, obviously this is Black History Month and one of the things that we've been doing is providing excellent coverage on the Black Information Network. We can't always fit everything we'd like to endo this show, but for people who want more during Black History Month, please check us out on the Black Information Network, both myself and Q on the Black
Information Network Daily podcast. But for now, we want you to stick around because we're going to be having a conversation really about the intersection of emerging tech and activism, emerging tech and marginalized communities and the opportunities there and
things that people need to know about. And for those who are able to grab some additional content from our podcast or online, or for those able to stick around for the second part of the show, we're going to be discussing the protests around the country, the Day Without Immigrants protests with Ritzy on the show with us as well. So stick around for that and so much more. But first it is time for some ebony.
Excellence, shall we? I think we shall.
So today's abny excellence comes from Huffington Post, and there's a lot of ebony excellence that has to be celebrated, but this is the article that we chose, and then we'll go from there. Alicia Keys appeared to call out President Donald Trump's efforts to mix diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as she accepted the Doctor dra Global Impact Awards at the twenty twenty five Grammy ceremony last Sunday.
Quote.
DEI is not a threat, It's a gift, she said at one point opening her acceptance speech, prompting applause from the audience. She goes on to say, this is not the time to shut down the diversity of voices. We've seen this on stage, talented, hardworking people from different backgrounds, in different points of view, and it changes the game. DEI is not a threat, It's a gift. The more voices,
the more powerful the sound. When destructive forces try to burn us down, we rise from the ashes like a phoenix. And as you see tonight, music is the unstoppable language that connects us all. It's so beautiful and you know, she's not the only example of the ABNY excellence, but of course her using her platform to push back where she could and the biggest night in music, we thought
that was fantastic. I know there's another few examples Q is a little bit more learned when it comes to what actually happened.
Right, the person who pulled me into the music space is going to try to make it seem like I'm the senior here. Just a lot of artists shared that stage in a way that was glorious. A lot of people were more engaged with the Grammys this year than prior, just because of the presence of some very very powerful black voices. Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce and Doci among those that
were great winners and Janello. Ny got on the microphone at an after party and made sure she gave a shout out to Nelly for crossing over to the other spicy shout out. Shout out as a good way to put it, the kind of way I can say it. But black people showed up at the Grammys in a way that the Grammys hasn't always amplified us and platformed us, and it was a really good thing to see.
I love that.
I love that, all right, So Ritzy p family, family, Welcome to the show.
Now.
We gave a brief introduction, and I think that there's obviously a little bit more to the story. So beyond your bio, give us a little bit more about you, and in particular tell us about you know, Word to Your Mama, and tell us about the get Down podcast that this is kind of the space where you work. So we want to make sure that our listeners know who they're listening to and what qualifies you to kind of provide insight into the areas we're going to discuss today.
Thank you, guys, I really appreciate it.
So beyond the bio first gen gen X Mexican American, I'm a consultant and founder of Ritti Periwinkle. Through my consultancy, I help companies navigate the ever evolving Aberni tech space. I'm also a partner of Ola meteverso a member of Women of Web three. We just released a book entitled Women in the Web three Space Inclusive Futures. And I'm
also a homeschooling mom. In regards to the podcast, Word to Your Mama, like you mentioned before, we amplify diverse voices from oscar winners to activists, and they just happen to be folks that are part of my tribe because I've come from the music industry and the art industry and emerging tech and then when we talk about The Get Down that is a newer podcast that launched end of May last year, and we explore policy, market trends, and emerging tech and how that impacts our communities, Black,
Latin and Indigenous communities. So that's the gist of me and the two podcasts that you know, including your show and other shows like this super important right now, especially right now to just take up all the space.
Wow, you are described as a diversity and emergent tech advocate for those who are unfamiliar and a little less tech savvy like myself. Give us some explanation around DeFi web three, AI, blockchain, and a bunch of other emerging tech and how that can potentially impact Black and Latino and Indigenous communities.
So emerging tech, I don't want people to be afraid of it. Emerging tech just basically means innovative tech that significantly impacts industries, economies, and societies. So I'm talking about like stuff that really changes the game. So currently, as of today, emerging tech is AI, artificial intelligence, blockchain, spatial web that includes augmented reality, virtual reality, extended reality, and more.
And to you know, because of time, let me just kind of break down some of the main points into try to break it down into like laming terms.
We got block time, we got time, let's learn.
Let's learn then okay, then let me let me, let me back it up.
Okay.
So you've heard like negative connotation when people talk about crypto and web three. Right, But let me break down and what I do and a lot of my presentations, whether it's for big tech conferences or if I'm speaking to middle schoolers, black and brown middle schoolers, I tell them about when the Internet was invented. Right, there's Web one, Web two, went three. But when it first started, and I think it was nineteen eighty six January of nineteen
eighty six, it wasn't invented by us. It wasn't invented for us. We weren't even a thought, right, And then you had that. It was basically the beginning. You could have a page and that's it to give information. Web two is when you were able to have a dialogue online with email, social media, back and forth. Web three, which some of us are in and some of us on a two point five it's where we're on a
whole nother situation. We're on a network of things, we're on the blockchain, and it's decentralize, we own our data, we can build on it. It's immunable to break it down. Blogchain is a public, decentralized ledger that records transactions via a network, and you can think of it kind of like a digital notebook where it records transactions and then when something's written on there, it can't be changed or erased, so it's really secure. And people say that it's immunable.
And then there's records and they're public records. So say you know, Ramseys, you have a song, right, you came up with a song. You're going to put it on chain, on one of the different protocols, and Q you produced it. Then when you write on this ledger, there's a thing called a smart contract that's basically a receipt saying this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm putting on here, and it says Ramses did this song, he gets this percentage from all sales into perpetuity.
Q did the production. He gets this.
So it's on that and I can see at any time, so no one can go in. I can't go in and say like, oh no, he did this and this and this, No it's like on this chain of networks, so people can't really change it. So crypto is short for cryptocurrency, and it's basically digital money, but that is also on chain, so it's digital cash that exists online. And then it's not controlled currency, not controlled by banks
or governments, and instead it runs on the blockchain. So you have different cryptocurrencies because they're named different things because they're on different chains, right. And then DeFi is just short for Decentralized Finance, and it's basically all of that, all of those transactions. It's online banking without the bank. It's how you handle money. You save it, borrow it,
invest it. There's things called staking, there's stable coins, there's all these different things, and that also runs on the blockchain, and it lets you know, people manage their finances directly without a middleman or and you get to own your
data and get to see what's happening. Sure, there's a lot more to it, and I feel like it could be very intimidating, But the reason why I'm in it, and the reason why I'm a diversity in Emergency tech advocate is because all this can and actually does right now help marginalize communities domestically and globally via social, creative and economic empowerment because there's less barriers to entry. There's a study when we were sent over via the get down to the DNC. I forget her name right now
and should have wrote it down. She was at one of our events and they did a study. I think it was through Paradigm. They did a study and that showed how voters, Democratic, voters of color, how they're interacting with blockchain, Web three, emergent tech stuff, and it said that more are black and brown folks are interacting, not according to main media, but are interacting and contributing into Web three and using crypto than the stock market.
And why is that? Because there's less barriers to entry. You can learn.
From communities, you can learn by yourself and just experimenting, right do you I think? I think system systemically we've been told like, oh, stock market and all this stuff is kind of like a white people's type, you know what I mean. So so the studies are out there, but I think mass media just portrays you see the negativity of Web three and and uh you know crypto, and you see tech bros. And you see, but it's
really according to the data. It's really black, brown and in genous folks that are really utilizing building and not just consumers like we are in in you know web two spaces where we we we are huge consumers of a lot of things. And I think you guys recently like had a conversation about that. Here we're building, our people are building, you know, and it's about shifting the
power to the people. And when we're you know, building and learning and engaging in the space, I mean, we could really shift for ourselves but also for other people. And so it gets a bad rap, but it's really us that are in that. I've been there since the end of the Fall of twenty twenty one and what people call a bull run. When I started, it was
a bull run. It was like, oh, crypto people were making mad money and people were also getting rugged, which is when you know, people get you know, scammed and stuff like that.
And then when that went down, everyone a lot of people left.
But the people that stayed, including myself, were the communities that I connected myself with, the communities that I'm a part of, the communities that I build with. And we're all of color, where women, you know, we're LGBTQI were disabled. We're like, oh, this is new. We don't have to have, you know, that much capital to be a part of this. All we need is, if possible, a good Internet connection, a phone and maybe a laptop. Doesn't even have to be new, and I can participate in this and build
and you don't have to be a developer. You don't have to have that type of skills. There's a lot of no code stuff you can get with someone in a community. You know, Like one of the things I'm gonna mention, UH is on NAJU. It's a it's an HBCU on chain. They're one of the first communities that I built, UH, you know, a bridge with and in different communities, connecting us all Latinos, not just in domestically, but internationally and globally.
So yeah, a lot of a lot of.
You know, there's a lot of it's a huge intersection of creative innovation, UH, emerging tech, utilizing all these different facets. There's so many different things, and then a social impact and I think that's where all this connects. And you know, as a as a advocate and activist, this is this is exciting to me.
This is why I'm in the space.
Sure, and I could see that because.
You know, for a lot of folks who are again community to organizers and activists, especially under the current administration, it very much feels like there are a lot of forces out there that oppose your reality, that oppose your vantage point.
You know. Think you know, social media.
You mentioned barriers to entry with respect to you know, the stock market and so forth. Those are historical sort of barriers, but nowadays people can kind of silence your voice, People can interfere with your capacity to organize. People can allow misinformation to flow and silence your correct information, you know what I mean.
And so.
You know, I definitely see the benefit in terms of, like you know, moving your finances beyond a bank, you know, so there's you know, that might provide a little bit more security actually if you're an organization or something like that and you're you know, going against what you know,
the current administration is saying should be the norm. But you know, speaking about you know, social media platforms and so forth, and a figure like Elon musk Uh and you know, remember we had that scare about the sale of TikTok and that I guess that's still lingering in the air. You know, I mentioned meta removing the fact checkers.
How can marginalized communities and activists reclaim the ownership of their online voice because I remember you mentioning something about there there being alternative platforms.
Yes, and let me just speakin with recently on social media, something was written about this person that you mentioned, and they said, you can take the part, you can take the boy out of the aparth type, but you can't take the apartheid out of the boyd. So marginalized community is what we can do right now because before TikTok was a place where we could learn, share resources, learn activate, make plans for all these different things.
And it was a beautiful thing.
When we had that pause right where they took us offline and came back. I don't know if you guys noticed it, but we all did. It's not the same.
It's been compromised. And I don't know if you've seen people on TikTok talking about lipsticks, been holding holding paper with what they're really talking about, because they'll push beauty stuff, they'll push that type of frivolous stuff that when when they hear because they're listening to audio they're listening, they're they're seeing what's being said and what's in the captions, so they're suppressing those that are telling the truth that
are you know, there's certain trigger words. So what I want us all to do is look for alternatives and not have to, you know, relate lie on big tech because really, right now, all the platforms are mostly meta.
Right, A lot of people don't know.
They're like, oh, well, WhatsApp Well it used to be, but now that's meta, and so there's not even that many spaces that the regular community that's not in emerging tech knows up. So what are some alternatives if you want to go into centralize and stay within that network because you feel that that's safe. Then there's two that I know that are black owned that I've found that are are big platforms. There's fan base that you guys
know about. And then there's Spill that was two black owners that used to work at Twitter.
I refuse to call it x and then they started that right.
But I really feel this is a great opportunity for those to know more about blockchain and to learn and to be on decentralized social platforms. I'm not paid, I'm not sponsored by them, but I believe in what they're doing. There's so many social media apps on on chain, on chain, but the one that sticks out right now is blue Sky.
I mean there's there's institutions and activists and academics and companies that are literally announcing we're leaving Twitter and we're going to blue Sky because of what's happening that we're you know, we're being silenced, it's being watched, all that stuff like that.
I don't want to be on a platform owned by a Nazi, No, not at all.
Right, So blue Sky for those who do not know, because there's a lot of people that are on Blue Sky that have no idea that it's decentralized and that's a good thing that helps with mass adoption.
We're all on the Internet.
You don't know how it's built, you don't know how it's run, you're just using it, right, But blue Sky is decentralized. It's it's right currently in its iteration right now. It's similar to Twitter. They're currently working on a TikTok esque you know, part of it on arm of it, photo arm of it like to to you know, to bring more people in. But it's built on what's called at protocol. It's its own type of blockchain, and you can customize your algorithms. It's open source, so you can
dictate what you see and don't see. It's people can build with their own things on top of the platform. And then also it's a place where you know, it feels when you log on, you don't have to do all this extra stuff that a lot of things in emerging tech have you do where it's like I don't know what I'm doing, this is so foreign and it feels unsafe. But you can definitely just log on and it just works like you don't even know. You log on with the email if you want to, you don't
necessarily have to do with the wallet. So I feel like those are great places right now, go claim your your user name, even if you're not going to use it immediately, you know, like I did to your brother, I was like, claim those things because people can claim them now, and then you're not going to be able
to have your name, you know what I mean. So so those are the types of things that was what can you do to you know, decentralize and get off and have to worry and rely on big tech because they make if you don't know already, folks, they make
money off of your data. They want as many people to be on there, they want you to post, they want you to put your because if you notice, you're like, oh, I was just talking about that dog food boom, yeah, dog dog ads and stuff like that, because they're making money off of your search stuff like what your algorithm is, what you're into and if you're on decentralized then you know that's your data.
Yeah. I'll take it a step further too, because I saw something recently saying that Google was rolling back their DEI initiatives and that felt kind of hurtful. They were talking about they were going to restructure or something like that. So so yeah, kind of reducing your reliance on big tech seems like as a smart move.
Before we change subjects, I just want to, you know, before we move on, can you let us know some community resources, things that folks can learn more about and get more information, more access to emerging tech, and ways they can incorporate that into their community organizing efforts.
Yes, about about one minute.
Okay, one minute, okay, hold on one second, because I it's.
Not in order, and I had some listed it's.
Okay, okay, okay, got it, got it, got it okay. So for trusted sources for our communities to learn more about emerging tech, they can go check out Ola, meta verso, they can check out on agu, Women of wib three and for those that are Spanish speaking, they can check out cryptoc And as far as utilizing emerging tech, they can use it for fundraising so that it's transparent, you know exactly where it's going to so it's not you're not getting you know, bamboos.
Out of that.
You can use AI to help you make data driven decisions and how to engage with the community better. And then you can utilize the centralized social media platforms so you can organize digitally across the nation.
Yeah, yeah, I remember back in it might have been twenty twenty, I was introduced to a couple of platforms that existed beyond the reach and the discernment of police departments. And so this idea that you know, community or sorry, information needs to be able to flow freely without being compromised is something that has been with us for at least a few years in the tech space. And so to know that there are some additional resources out there.
That certainly helps out real quick. What is your social media?
It's ritzyp across all social media.
Fantastic