Groups Work to Close Digital Divide
February 23, 2011
Special to the Michigan Citizen
A group of people and organizations have joined forces and created Detroit Digital Justice Coalition (DDJC). They believe communication is a fundamental right. DDJC is securing that right through activities grounded in the digital justice principles of: access, participation, common ownership, and healthy communities.
There is a disproportionate number of people in Detroit who lack the ability and hence are denied access TO participate digitally. It is commonly referred to as the digital divide. Lottie Spady Associate Director of Eastern Michigan Action Environmental Council said DDJC is dedicated to bridging the divide and creating a more just society by expanding the communication abilities and rights of ordinary people through advocacy, networking and education.
“In the discussion of public computer centers, where to place them became an issue. Traditionally they have been placed in academic institutions, schools, libraries…” Spady said. “But our surveys indicated the traditional places may not be the place they are really needed and thus have the greatest impact. Maybe the Coney Island, beauty shop or liquor store, wherever the community may gather to use them.”
Then there’s how to provide access. Spady said it is not enough to just give people computers. “What good is a computer if you can’t afford internet,” Spady said.
DDJC will set-up wireless mesh networks where neighbors in a couple of blocks radius can share wireless internet service.
The initiative is also about teaching skills. There is a large gap between people who have knowledge and feel comfortable with computers and those who don’t understand how computers can be of use to them. “If it doesn’t feel useful then how much access do you have,” DDJC Executive Director Dianna Copeland said. “However, if you have the skills you can explore how to use it to start a business or if you have a business you can use it to enhance your business like create a website to let people know about your beauty shop, barber shop, grocery store.”
The other justice aspect is to train Detroiters in digital media that will create jobs, foster cooperative forms of community wealth creation, and support media-based community organizing.
Copeland said DDJC is comprised of people who had worked together on a number of justice issues, food justice, environmental justice and recognized the role media plays. “In our conversations along with asking how do we leverage our funding sources, how do we do this or that better, we also asked how do we get our stories out and whose telling them,” Copeland said.
“So many of our stories are not told by us,” Spady said. “And that’s a huge factor in what stories are told and how they are told.”
Along with teaching digital and media literacy, DDJC also supports grassroots media because it believes the people should not leave it to the corporate media to write our history, interpret our culture and foster democracy. “Folks from the outside are telling Detroit’s story, instead of hearing from the people who have lived in and through the intellectual and economic crisis. Those stories are not being told by mainstream media,” Spady said. “So it’s really about access to the media as well.”
http://michigancitizen.com/groups-works-to-close-digital-divide-p9566-74.htm
