In 2016, a coalition of media, tech, and community organizations launched the Equitable Internet Initiative, a project that will result in the construction of wireless broadband internet networks across three underserved Detroit neighborhoods. Leading the initiative is the Detroit Community Technology Project, a digital justice project sponsored by Allied Media Projects. "During the economic and housing crisis, communities had to fend for themselves," [executive director of DCTP Diana] Nucera says. That's why, she explains, "we developed this approach called community technology." The coalition raised just under $1 million from local and national foundations. Funds were used to hire employees, buy equipment, and internet bandwidth. They purchased three discounted wholesale gigabit connections from Rocket Fiber, a Detroit-based high-speed internet service provider. Their contract with Rocket Fiber allows the coalition to share its connection with the communitya provision not allowed by other companies. Each neighborhood is represented by a partnering organization, whose locale is used as the central connection hub for service. The community members are responsible for installation. DCTP trains a representative of the partnering organization, who then trains five to seven neighbors to install the equipment. "Being a digital steward was completely out of the range of what I usually do," [neighbor and digital steward Roston] says. "I was so used to using the internet ... but I didn't know how internet networks work." So far, he's helped with getting 19 of the 50 designated households in the Islandview neighborhood online. The bottom-up approach ... strengthens community relationships, increases civic engagement, and redistributes political and economic power to otherwise marginalized neighborhoods. "If the community has ownership of the infrastructure, then they're more likely to participate in its maintenance, evolution, and innovation," [Nucera] explains. "That's what we believe leads to sustainability."
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.