In this powerful video message, Ambassador Harriet Elam-Thomas draws on her decades of experience in diplomacy, education, and civic engagement to affirm why digital civil rights are essential to the preservation of liberty in the 21st century.
Amb. Harriet Elam-Thomas Retd. highlights the ways in which technology both elevates opportunity and intensifies risk—making clear that safeguarding privacy, free expression, and equitable access to information are not just policy concerns but human rights imperatives. Her endorsement is both a call to action and a reminder: defending digital civil rights is defending democracy itself.
On September 17, we mark Digital Civil Rights Day — a new civic tradition rooted in the unfinished work of freedom and democracy. This date is no accident. September 17 is Constitution Day, the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Just as that document set the foundation for American self-governance, Digital Civil Rights Day marks our collective responsibility to protect those freedoms in the digital age.
Today, the battleground is not only the ballot box or the public square. It is also the algorithm, the cloud, and the platforms that quietly decide what we see, how we are judged, and whose voices count.
The Digital Civil Rights Movement is about more than resisting surveillance or bias. It is about ensuring that technology itself is accountable to the people it serves. Without action, digital systems risk becoming tools of exclusion, exploitation, and authoritarian control.
The Digital Sovereignty Coalition (DSC) was founded in 2025 to lead this effort. DSC is building civic infrastructure, coalitions, and public-interest technology to ensure that digital life remains pluralist, participatory, and democratic.
The movement carries forward a lineage of civil rights leadership. DSC’s founder, Everett N. Kelsey Jr., is the grandson of Dr. George D. Kelsey, the theologian and professor who profoundly influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Kelsey taught King that racism was not only unjust, but a moral sin against human dignity. Today, Everett applies that same moral clarity to the fight for digital rights, ensuring that new technologies do not strip people of the freedoms previous generations fought to secure.
The launch of Digital Civil Rights Day takes place in Silicon Beach, California — a symbolic choice. California is the birthplace of the digital economy, but it is also the epicenter of movements demanding ethical technology, privacy protections, and civil rights in the digital sphere. From pioneering consumer privacy laws to leading debates on AI and data accountability, California represents both the promise and the peril of the digital age.
By launching here, DSC signals that the future of technology must be guided not only by innovation, but by ethics, equity, and democracy.
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