Pulitzer Center

Educators, there’s still time to register for the next learning workshop in the "Defining Democracy" series!

On Monday, June 1, we’ll go beyond simply marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring how to teach a more accurate, inclusive, and culturally responsive history of the United States, and how “The 1619 Project” can help cultivate purpose and belonging for your students and community.

Next week’s workshop will focus on the different models educators have used to center the Black and Indigenous histories that are often erased when we teach about the shaping of the country. Workshop participants will engage with sample classroom and community projects and brainstorm an application of a relevant model to their own community.

Reframing American Democracy
Monday, June 1, 2026
4:30-6:30pm EDT

Register to save your spot: https://events.zoom.us/ev/AmYZE2yOVddMbYFIFOm56ic4JiK-vtE7Z-Nw7Z5xVP8ZfRlrcb88~Aosjkj887TA7ndcejEBNNMf7oIvOhwWb70wItqj_a_RykkS-l22xmBnbTQ

RightsCon 2026 in Zambia was canceled, so the Pulitzer Center and Amnesty International are bringing the conversation online instead.

On May 21, Pulitzer Center Senior AI Editor Joanna S. Kao will moderate a discussion on how civil society, journalism, film, and advocacy can come together to hold AI systems accountable. The event is part of the Pulitzer Center's AI Accountability Network.

Speakers:

- Hajira Maryam, lead adviser on artificial intelligence and strategic communications, Amnesty International's Algorithmic Accountability Lab
- Patricia Clarke, investigative journalist and technology reporter, The Observer
- Valerie Veatch, documentary filmmaker, director of Ghost in the Machine
- Maria Karienova, AI engagement manager, Pulitzer Center

An audience Q&A will follow. Registration is required.

📅 May 21, 2026 | 11:00 am EDT
✍️Register here: https://pulitzercenter.org/event/building-power-and-partnerships-ai-accountability

You’ve heard about AI models trained using billions of words in order to predict the next sentence. The same principle is being used to find illegal gold mines in the Amazon, in South America, and soon, the Congo Basin in Africa.

Five years ago, Joseph Poliszuk, a Venezuelan journalist with Armando.Info exiled after exposing corruption in the government of Nicolás Maduro, couldn’t reach his sources. Getting to one mine meant a two-hour flight, a six-hour car ride, a four-hour boat ride, and another 4 hours through a jungle controlled by armed militia. So he worked with Earth Genome to train a model on satellite imagery instead.

It found 3,718 mining locations across two Venezuelan states. A week after his first story was published in El País, the Venezuelan military bombed several of the airstrips his reporting had identified.

His work, alongside that of Brazilian RIN Fellow Hyury Potter, became the foundation for Amazon Mining Watch, a platform that now tracks illegal mining across all nine countries of the Amazon basin.

Now, the same tool is coming to Africa. Africa Mining Watch, built with Code for Africa, could track the cobalt, copper, and coltan mines driving the race for strategic minerals across the Congo Basin. It launches in July 2026.

Visit Amazon Mining Watch
🔗 https://amazonminingwatch.org/en

Join Africa Mining Watch
🔗 https://www.africaminingwatch.org/

Read Andrew Deck’s full story here:
🔗 https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/04/geospatial-ai-is-reinventing-the-rainforest-beat/

The deadline for this year’s Fighting Words Poetry Contest is swiftly approaching! Have you entered yet?

Visit the Pulitzer Center website to select a news story, and then write a poem of any form, length, and language that includes lines from the story and responds to its themes and central issue. Through this contest, participants can flex their creative writing skills while exploring how processing journalism through poetry can help create connections between global issues and our own lives.

This contest is open to K-12 students and young adults ages 18-24 worldwide. Winners and finalists will win cash prizes and have their poetry published on the Pulitzer Center website.

⏳ All entries are due Sunday, May 10, 2026, by 11:59pm ET.

Read contest guidelines and enter at pulitzercenter.org/poetrycontest.