Connect Me, Invest in Me
Making Our Cities Whole Again Cannot Be Done Without All Residents Having Access to Broadband; it Connects Communities and Institutions, and the Present to the Future
As I have communicated over the past year or so with David Harris, the Managing Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, I found myself saying repeatedly that technology had reinvigorated the civil rights movement. I was thinking first about smartphone video shared through social media. The images of Ferguson, MO and Charleston, SC opened the eyes of many Americans to injustices that had been mostly visited upon poor residents of color in local communities across the country without much national notice for far too long. Recently, smartphone videos and social media have been the primary sources for images of division, despair and humanity on some of the most difficult days in the modern history of the United States.
In retrospect, it’s not that surprising that people — angry and frustrated — living in communities with not enough jobs, public education systems that haven’t prepared students for the 21st century economy and public safety organizations more focused on revenue generation than justice, have turned to smartphones, technology that people of color and young people in urban areas rely on for Internet access, in an attempt to level the playing field.
What’s happening in communities today — individuals, whether part of an organized protest or ad hoc observers of their surroundings using their personal technology to advocate for themselves — should only be the starting point for an exploration of the role of the Internet and broadband-enabled services in revitalizing communities. On June 9, 2011, the Federal Communications Commission released its “Information Needs of Communities” Report. In the Mobile chapter, which I co-authored, the Commission stated: “Because smartphones can capture still images — and many can record digital video footage — they are becoming critical to the distillation of newsworthy events.” That five year old quote feels vastly understated today. Corporations and governments now have divisions focused on civic engagement and innovation through technology. But, individuals in Chicago and Baltimore neighborhoods are still disconnected from opportunity.
With the Houston/Marshall Plan for Community Justice, we want to go beyond conversations and advertisements encouraging people to use smartphones to address the bigger issues surrounding the availability and affordability of wired and wireless broadband, technology’s role enabling civic engagement and participation, and its role in fostering economic opportunity, including through the sharing economy. We are working to bridge the gap between people in struggling communities and opportunity. As our mission statement reads, “[their] voices must be raised, heard, and at the center of our efforts to rebuild.” We want to provide research, ideas and access to partnerships with institutions invested in these communities, whether established corporations, start-ups, universities or non-profits.
One of our main goals is digital inclusion. Empowering communities to develop solutions to economic, public health, housing and educational challenges in American cities cannot be done without ensuring access to and facility with the technological tools of the 21st Century.
We have a three part plan: (1) Find the best solutions from cities across the country and amplify them here; (2) Develop solutions on our own with students and experts affiliated with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute and Harvard Law School; and (3) Provide a forum for debating the key technology policy issues affecting communities of color in America’s cities and residents’ abilities to access information, jobs, health care, education, housing and participate civically in their communities.
While we understand that no one solution will work in every community, we believe that by recognizing the great work of people in cities across the country and amplifying their ideas, we can offer both practical assistance and inspiration to people in other communities. We plan to work across Harvard with internet and public policy experts and also photography and design scholars to broaden the means by which people can engage and organize. We will continue our series of events and conversations that began with a panel in Washington, DC on broadband, digital inclusion and education — both on campus and in the broader community. We hope to influence the national debate on the revitalization of poor communities of color in America’s cities and ultimately give residents the ability to become partners in the economic reintegration of their communities with the larger city and region. Access to the internet is a fundamental building block for any progress and has rightly been called by one educator, “the civil rights issue of our time.”
