While I may have spent a fair amount of time putting this post together I received a lot of assistance from artificial intelligence and many thanks go to Christopher Mitchell of ILSR who moderated this panel discussion.

Otter AI transcript, summary, & action items.

Summary

Without Political Power, There is No Path to Digital Equity – Episode 591 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Summary

• Digital equity challenges and solutions at Net Inclusion Conference.0:01
  • Christopher Mitchell opens the panel by expressing concern that many people are not on track to achieve digital equity, despite 1300 attendees at the event.
  • Panelists discuss challenges to digital equity, including criticisms of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and the impact of moving the conference from Chattanooga to Philadelphia, which has a long way to go in terms of digital equity.
  • Christopher Mitchell introduces panel discussion on community broadband networks.
• Digital equity and internet connectivity in Los Angeles.3:39
  • Shayna Englin, director of the digital equity initiative at the California Community Foundation, is speaking about the importance of ensuring everyone in Los Angeles County is connected to the internet.
  • England explains why he decided to come to the panel despite not being invited, highlighting the critical need for strategies to address digital equity.
• Digital equity and power in California.5:42
  • Director of digital equity initiative at California Community Foundation discusses convening coalition, pooling philanthropy for regulatory advocacy.
  • Speaker 3 highlights the shift from in-person organizing to online work, noting a significant decrease in community engagement and political power.
• Workplace culture, diversity, and digital equity.8:57
  • Transgender speaker shares experiences of discrimination and advocates for digital equity in workplace culture and community.
• Leveraging political power for community benefits.10:38
  • Speaker 2 emphasizes the importance of political power and coalition-building for achieving goals in the community.
• EPV projects and marginalized communities.11:56
  • Speaker 5 shares their experience working on EPV projects since before the announcement, identifying as queer non binary and using he/she/they pronouns.
  • Joshua Edmonds joins the panel after Tasha went to Detroit, with Leon connecting him to Digital See for an opportunity to make a real difference in Cleveland.
• Digital inclusion and political power.14:07
  • Speaker 6 highlights the importance of political power and equity in digital inclusion efforts, sharing their experiences in Detroit and Cleveland.
  • Speaker 6 emphasizes the need to scale political organizing tactics to achieve meaningful change in the digital inclusion space.
• School leadership and goal achievement.16:51
  • Speaker expresses concern about school’s progress towards goals despite hard work.
• Missed opportunities in addressing digital divide.18:21
  • Speaker 3 highlights the inefficiency of spending $100 million on digital divide initiatives in Los Angeles, as only 80% of eligible families were connected.
  • Speaker 3 argues LAUSD missed opportunity for system change by relying on charter schools instead of partnering with city departments to build community capacity and power.
• Digital equity and advocacy for long-term solutions.22:19
  • Speaker 6 expresses frustration with a focus on short-term solutions to affordability issues in education, arguing for a longer-term plan.
  • Speaker 6 emphasizes the importance of demanding long-term solutions and holding providers accountable for digital equity.
• Comcast’s monopoly and internet access in Chattanooga.25:56
  • Comcast hinders municipal network expansion in Chattanooga.
• Internet access inequality and lobbying efforts.27:01
  • Speaker 5 discusses Comcast’s influence in Chattanooga, Tennessee, highlighting their role in blocking competition and limiting access to internet service.
  • Speaker 5 emphasizes the need for local organizing and collective action to address the digital divide and hold companies like Comcast accountable.
• Workplace culture, LGBTQ+ rights, and safety.30:03
  • Speaker 4 highlights the importance of understanding and dismantling internalized systems of oppression in organizations.
  • Speaker 2 shares their experience of feeling besmirched by the reputation of Chattanooga and wanting to give a platform for queer people to share their experiences.
  • Speaker 5 discusses the challenges of being queer in the South, including the fear of being outed and the lack of safety, particularly in rural areas.
• Political power and polarization.35:08
  • Speaker reflects on polarization and fear, seeking to appreciate others for who they are.
  • Speaker 4 discusses the challenges of living in the South as a foreigner and the importance of political power at different levels to achieve shared goals.
• Digital equity in municipal government.38:19
  • Speaker 6 describes their experience as Director of Digital Equity and Inclusion for the city of Detroit, highlighting the challenges of being a newcomer without infrastructure or support.
  • Speaker 6 built a grassroots movement to validate their position and influence municipal government, using tactics such as calling out federal leaders and leveraging resident complaints to create a machine for fundraising, support, and accountability.
  • Speaker 6 describes how a lack of trust in internet providers led to a grassroots organizing effort to counteract media campaigns and ensure political protection.
  • The speaker emphasizes the importance of having a full political spectrum and engaging with every level of government to protect interests and ensure survival.
• Building coalitions for digital equity and power.44:02
  • Speaker 3 shares personal experiences with threats to their job and family due to advocacy for inclusive policies.
  • Identify key decision-makers and structures to influence in local government to build coalitions for digital equity.
  • Speaker 3 highlights the unique approach of the Coalition for Community Control of Health (CCF) in prioritizing systems change through political power building, rather than solely focusing on digital equity and inclusion.
  • The CCF identifies and supports organizations already working in various social justice areas, such as health justice, climate justice, and education justice, with a focus on building sustainability and power through political work.
• Digital equity and community benefits agreements.51:14
  • Speaker 4 emphasizes the importance of building digital equity into community benefits agreements to ensure marginalized communities are not left behind in development projects.
• Digital equity and community support for marginalized groups.53:52
  • Speaker 5 emphasizes the importance of digital equity and community connections for marginalized groups, particularly the trans community, to find support and help.
  • Speaker 5 shares a personal anecdote about a mother who found support and help through a Discord chat for mutual aid, highlighting the power of organizing and connecting for marginalized communities.
• Intersectionality and coalition building in social justice movements.56:04
  • Speaker 2 reflects on the intersectionality of issues, such as housing justice, and the need for coalition building and partnerships to address them effectively.
  • Speaker 5 emphasizes the importance of recognizing the limits of one’s expertise and leveraging the strengths of others in the pursuit of social justice.
  • Partnerships between employee resource groups and HR can help organizations support diverse employees better.
• Community organizing and conflict resolution.59:58
  • Speaker 6 mentions finding partners and building relationships with unions like CWA, SEIU, and IBEW, despite complicated politics between them.
  • Speaker 8 highlights the importance of acknowledging and leaning into conflicts between grassroots and municipal levels, with examples from Tennessee and Detroit.
  • Speaker 6 emphasizes the importance of introspection and acknowledging past mistakes in community work, while also moving forward with a vision.
  • Speaker 2 suggests playing and sharing book recommendations at the end of the session to wrap up the discussion.
• Municipal leadership and equity in Texas.1:05:32
  • Speaker 9 reflects on their time as a public official in Austin, Texas, and their desire to maintain diplomacy while establishing a legacy.
  • Speaker 6 shares their experience as a municipal leader in Detroit, highlighting the importance of accumulating knowledge and resources over time to achieve success.
  • Speaker 6 suggests leveraging equity and credibility to co-sign initiatives and accelerate progress towards a better tomorrow.
  • Speaker 5 emphasizes the importance of having big plans and dreams, but also being adaptable and ready to act sooner rather than later.
• Strategic fight picking and pricing disparities in the telecom industry.1:10:23
  • Speaker 3 strategically picks fights with large companies to create space for advocacy on issues like pricing disparities and digital discrimination.
• Problem management vs. problem eradication in IT.1:11:42
  • Speaker 2 predicts that throwing money at a problem without addressing the root cause will lead to a lack of progress.
  • Speaker 6 shares a personal experience of struggling to solve a puzzle despite having the necessary tools, highlighting the importance of understanding the problem at hand.
  • Speaker 6 highlights the importance of hearing from practitioners with “legitimate scars” on problem eradication, suggesting that their experiences should be prioritized on main stages.
  • Speaker 6 shares their personal growth journey from nonprofit to enterprise infrastructure, emphasizing the value of diverse perspectives and experiences in problem management.
  • Speaker 6 discusses the importance of asking “what’s next” after achieving a goal, and how this can lead to a more unified approach to eradicating the digital divide.
  • Speaker 3 highlights the need for genuine curiosity and asking tough questions to drive progress towards eradicating the digital divide.
• Decentralizing power in philanthropy.1:18:01
  • Community leaders in Chattanooga are decentralizing traditional philanthropy by giving power to local decision-makers, leading to more inclusive and responsive investments.
• Accessibility and equity in a conference.1:20:31
  • Speaker 5 expresses frustration with inadequate speaking time for some presenters at the conference, advocating for more opportunities for diverse voices and equitable distribution of time.
  • Speaker 5 also raises concerns about accessibility issues at the conference, including lack of American Sign Language (ASL) and Braille accommodations, and suggests improving digital accessibility for colorblind attendees.
• Digital equity and broadband investments in local governments.1:22:59
  • Local government worker seeks help pressuring decision makers for unfulfilled funding commitments.
  • Dan’s willingness to confront power sparks discussion on path to digital equity.
• Digital equity and funding allocation.1:26:05
  • Speaker 6 expresses frustration with lack of planning and coordination in addressing digital equity issues, suggesting a need for a collective effort to determine costs and formulate a plan.
  • Unknown speaker interjects with a comment about operating cycles.
• Representation in politics and advocacy.1:28:24
  • Local and regional representation is key to federal change, according to Speaker 3.

Action Items

The key action items discussed in the meeting include:

– Pressure local governments that have publicly committed funding/resources for digital equity to deliver on those commitments (Assignee: Christopher Mitchell)

– Build digital equity requirements into community benefits agreements around infrastructure projects (Assignee: Melanie Silva)

– Use current momentum around ACP freeze to accelerate incremental policy changes (Assignee: Joshua Edmonds)

– Identify and engage people with “broadband scars” as speakers at future conferences (Assignee: Joshua Edmonds)

– Ask “and then what?” questions to move from digital equity management to eradication (Assignee: Shayna Englin)

– Calculate the full cost to bridge digital divides in specific localities as part of formulating a plan (Assignee: Joshua Edmonds)

– Pressure state/local elected officials to influence federal legislators on digital equity legislation (Assignee: Shayna Englin)

– Ensure greater representation of underserved communities at future NDIA conferences (Assignee: Audience Member)

Transcript

Welcome to the Community broadband bits podcast. This is Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for local self reliance, just got a little bit of a weird thing in my head, my throat. So the voice is a little bit off, but doesn’t much matter. Because today, we’ve got a special recording for you that’s a little bit longer than our normal show, but I hope will provide some really valuable perspectives. This is a panel that I helped to run at the net Inclusion Conference by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. And we have some great voices, some of whom you will find familiar, we’re talking about digital equity. And this is a panel that we did that I’d use the hand recorder, and an engineer and a mat party helped me to clean it up. Well, he did the work cleaning it up to make it sound better. So I hope that you will enjoy that. This is a panel in which we cover challenges to digital equity, whether or not people are on track to achieve digital equity, you got 1300 people at this event. And I am start off the panel by noting that I am concerned that a lot of people are not on a path to achieve their goals. And so we talked about that and whether we can see the path to digital equity from our current strategies that are being used in the field. We also discussed the role of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, which has been crucial in helping digital inclusion efforts. But we talk about some of the

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:27

criticisms that that some people have. This panel comes about in part, because of NDAs decision to pull that conference out of Chattanooga, and to put it in Philadelphia, going from one of the best cities for digital inclusion in the world, to one that is run by Comcast and has a long way to go on toward digital equity. We talk about that more a little bit more toward the beginning. And then we focus more on what it will take to achieve digital equity toward the end. We also discussed some of the challenges and why the conference was moved because of the discrimination that some people feel because of their identity. And and a little bit about how that is changing in the world. So so we talked about a number of different issues. But I thought this is a really valuable conversation that I hope you will also get something out of

CM

Christopher Mitchell

2:18

I’m just just draw recorder on because I wanted to remember this since I cajoled these folks into joining the panel.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

2:27

I am Christopher Mitchell with the Institute for local self reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. And I’ve been doing this for 16 years community broadband networks work have been excited to be a part of NDIA

CM

Christopher Mitchell

2:42

we are working at the Institute for local self reliance is focused on recognition that not everyone was waiting to have high holiday internal access and that not everyone would necessarily have the capacity to use it absent some kind of focused community effort. And so we look at ways in which communities can make sure everyone is well connected. And I like to say gets the benefits of the network. That’s ultimately why we’re here. No one really cares at the end of the day of attraction. The question is, is it making your life better is it make giving more opportunities in the next generation, and that sort of thing. Today, I’m going to introduce the panel, we’re going to dive into it, I think this is going to be pretty lively.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

3:24

I like to to keep it moving. And so if someone has a question in the middle or wants to make a point, but most of the people that I know, here you have judgment. And so we’re gonna make really good points.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

3:39

And I don’t I don’t say that to discourage anyone. But I will be walking around the mic, as needed people have questions throughout, won’t still have a little bit of time at the end, I think to try and do some extra q&a. But if in the middle, you’re just like early on assets, go ahead. Yeah, I’ll take care. When, like, I just want to say like this, this panel, we’re not taking this lightly. We’re gonna have some fun, I’m sure. But for all of us, this is very serious. And we’re going to be talking about some serious things. Some of our friends may get criticized, some of Johnny’s may be criticized, I might get criticized. This is something that we think is terribly important, as we’ll be clear as we start going in terms of making sure that we are on a path to make sure everyone is well connected, and that we are able to ensure the benefits of the Internet are shared far and wide. So I just want to get that out there that we are. We’re taking this very seriously. Please do come in. If you’re standing outside, there are chairs all over the place over here. There’s still standing room in the back. There’s a lot of space. And if you could, if you don’t need to be on an aisle because you move on down and credible. It’s basically easier for folks to go. So let me start. We’re gonna do short introductions. And like I said But actually, I think of the five of us. I’m the only one who planned to come here, regardless of what this panel was accepted. And then I was I thought it was really important that we hear these voices. Because there’s something critical at times for some of the strategies that we use. So let me start by introducing Shayna Englin, director of the digital equity initiative at the California Community Foundation, and someone who I think is doing pathbreaking work, to building a strategy to actually make sure everyone in Los Angeles County is connected and even well beyond that. So Shana, tell us briefly why you’re here. Why you decide to make the trek across California, to come out here and

S

Shana

5:42

talk to us. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, as you said, Shayna Englin, I’m the director of the digital equity initiative at the California Community Foundation. In that role, I run programming and a grant making program. And as sort of as unavoidable volunteer projects, convene the digital equity la coalition through that also the statewide California Alliance for digital equity. Through that, and I see a number of folks who joined us for a meeting last week, good to see y’all are a couple of weeks ago now, and also have brought together a pooled fund of philanthropy from around the state to support technical assistance for nonprofits and local governments to engage in regulatory battles in at the CPUC, primarily, and at the FCC. And why am I here? Well, because Chris, you asked me to. And it’s just the first

CM

Christopher Mitchell

6:37

thought of the subject.

S

Shana

6:38

At first I thought about political power. No. So I come from a My My background is in political campaigns and political organizing. And I come to digital equity work through the lens that none of the other equity or justice that we fight for is possible. Without digital equity. Especially that’s been true for a really long time. Just a quick aside, I, my political background is in field organizing, I ran field campaigns for years and years and years. And I’m ancient. And so when I was running new campaigns, it was, you know, when I first started doing that, there really was no internet, you didn’t text people, you didn’t email people, like you went to people’s doors, you hosted house parties, you were in community. And then there was a campaign cycle. That was kind of the first one that everything really started to move to online work. And the expectation was less that you would have like a great list of organizers and you stopped having kind of like in person, precinct captains and things like that. And instead, you had email lists. And what we saw very quickly, really early in the course of one cycle, and the work that I was doing, was that that move, reduced by at least half the people that we were working with in certain communities, just like completely cut the amount of our communication or organizing and therefore also out of our policy work, our equity work or power work. And that was really my kind of pathway into digital equity work was because that seemed bad. And so that’s really the lens through which I approach this work. And not that I don’t think that that digital inclusion is important. I think that digital Navigators are important. I think all the work that we do is important. I also think that none of it is going to be effective if we don’t figure out power, and that’s politics. And

CM

Christopher Mitchell

8:37

Melanie silver Chief Operating Officer of intention company out of Chattanooga doesn’t even begin to get into all of the experience that you bring. Although I think Melanie is sitting here hoping that you will all have questions about broadband technology because that’s your specialty.

MS

Melanie Silver

8:57

That’s and how I transformed from Jeff milliner. Quite an upgrade. Very rich, we’re behind. Thank you, Chris. And, yeah, so my work is primarily I get to work in, you know, workplace culture and diversity, equity inclusion, so centered around, you know, meeting people where they are, but in a workplace environment, but that also comes with over a decade rooted in community. Not only grassroots organizations, but foundation work, just like shanann and so that one of the things that that comes up in that work is how do we bridge the digital divide. So, you know, why am I here today? Because, because Deb sosi asked me to be here today. And I, you know, I love I’m a queer person, like In the south, and that’s not always easy. And so digital equity is important for people like me and people in the trans community to have access to safety and community through digital spaces. Because we can’t, we don’t have the luxury of doing things, the good old fashioned way, because we might get fired from our jobs, or we, bad things can happen to us. And so those spaces are very important. And so I’m here to talk about that, as well as you know, that equity lens that that kind of gets brought to everything that that I get to do in my work.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

10:38

Thank you. So it’s a reminder for me that I approach this often from a strategic point of view, in terms of how do we achieve the goals that we’re trying to do, one of the things that that we’ll be touching on is how for some people, political power is important to be thinking about and organizing on just to make sure that they have the basic rights that people like me take for granted. Dan Ryan is the vice chair at the Enterprise Center, which is something that especially if you’re doing for a long time, because you you know all the history about the the EPB fiber and what’s been going on there and how to make sure that the community has done well. Before you start, I do want to say one of the things that as someone who has studied deeply the Chattanooga Fiber project, see, like people don’t always appreciate all of the work that has been done by people who had nothing to do with the fiber network for the network was built. And after it was built, it is truly something where the fighter has enabled a lot of new investment and benefits, but because of all kinds of people didn’t really care about the fiber. And so it when you’re looking around, and you’re trying to figure out how can we be another Chattanooga, we’ll plan on 10 years of preparatory work, building a whole lot of coalitions and then being effective at coming up with cool plans and executing them afterward. Thanks.

S9

Speaker 9

11:56

And then Ryan, the Vice Chair at the Enterprise Center. I’ve been actually working on EPV projects since a year before it was announced. Mike, I was a web developer by trade. My agency was doing the website for the secret project that DPB so we got to beta test it not app. So like, yeah, it’s been since before it was ever announced, we were doing it. I’m a queer non binary person, I use he she they pronouns interchangeably. So take your pick. I think I’m here primarily because this is not in Chattanooga, which is where it was, it was moved because Tennessee passed some anti trans legislation. And politics got involved. And that’s not what anybody wants to talk about, or think about about why it is here. But this is not where it was meant to be this year. And we got asked to come to make sure that that wasn’t silenced. But this is also not the panel I was meant to be on. I was meant to be on a panel to talk about being doing this work when you are in a marginalized community and your life is politicized. But they didn’t want that panel happening either. So they took the word politics and threw me with this Kirk threw out a lot of them super are like, but let’s be real, like, there’s not a narrative they want to talk about here today. This is what I’m gonna focus on at a time, we just want to talk about what had happened. Can I just ask who they is? In the Age board? Okay.

S9

Speaker 9

13:19

I want to be specific. Yes, sir. That’s great. I appreciate that. Thank

CM

Christopher Mitchell

13:22

you for that question. Yes, this could be the best Frankenstein monster that has ever been. Joshua Edmonds doesn’t want any instructions from digital seeing. Does anyone here not know who? All right, all right, Joshua, aliens, ratio reasons.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

13:48

So Leon got Joshua into this working fleet, when Tasha went to Detroit and do really important work, learn a lot about politics had an opportunity to come back to Cleveland and make a real difference with an awesome organization called Digital. See, there’s a whole podcast on it that’s coming out in two weeks. Talking about that. So welcome, Joshua.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

14:06

Well, thank you. And similar to what everyone else is saying. I also wasn’t coming to this. And it’s not because I don’t find this conference, or even engagement valuable. I mean, this has actually been like a very, very nice family reunion, minus the smell of barbecue because there wasn’t a smell of barbecue. However, it was a very nice family reunion, and that there’s been a lot of you all that I’ve been able to see since the beginning. And what I mean, the beginning, you all remember, when getting a hotspot and getting a computer and doing some training. That was it. I mean, that was digital inclusion if you did that, but you were far ahead of the curve. And, you know, it’s great to see how far we call them. But it’s also necessary now that we’re having this conversation, how far we have to go and, you know, really undergirds some of the stuff that we’ve seen even with basically seeing the freeze, seeing kind of where we might have missed the marks and some things, I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight what I see someone like GG song not see the incredible work that she’s doing now. But what I’ll be honest, what she should have been doing had the organization and the political power of and actually, you know, in place in the way they needed to be. But see, that’s just a microcosm of the example that many of us on on the local part, we also feel those ramifications too. And so, you know, today I’ll be sharing a little bit more about the political experience that happened in Detroit, where you know, the stuff that we wanted to do, I know did swear, solder the first swear word today, guys. So it’s like, you know, municipal broadband.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

15:55

You know, we were pushing for municipal broadband. And that really catapulted us into the political fight. And we had to, there was no choice but to lean into a lot of those organizing tactics. And now that I’m over in Cleveland, it’s very similar work. And so you know, today, I just wanted to talk much more about how we need to scale that and that, yes, all these other conversations that we’re having that are happening even simultaneous to this panel, they’re important. But what we can’t do is we can’t skip past some of these things that make us maybe a bit uncomfortable when we say political Yes. And you know, going to that like that, that land or that realm of you know, the equity side of visual equity, or with an actual emphasis on equity, and doing that in an honest way. And so that’s more so what I want to talk about today.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

16:51

All right, so the way that I wanted to kick this off, and this will be a conversation that pops around quite a bit, and there’s some parts of it, some people might be more engaged, and then a pull them anymore. And other parts which are more engaged and less engaged, is that I can’t shake the feeling that when I walked in that room, upstairs this morning yesterday, that there’s a lot of people out there doing really good work, but that we are not on a path to winning, we are not on a path to achieving our goals. And not only that, I think if the pandemic, the virus will mutate significantly over the summer, resulting in everyone agree that schools cannot be open in the fall. I think 90% of the people who did not have internet access in the autumn, in 2020, will not have home internet access in 2024. Being the school leader, we have squandered a historic opportunity. Even though people are doing really hard work that’s really important. We have missed some key parts. And I want to just wrestle with that a little bit to start off with what that means about whether we are on the right track, to achieve our goals and what we might be missing, that we need to do in order to achieve our goals. If you’re just gonna normal us to jump in on any hands, I’m gonna take the shame right away.

S

Shana

18:10

I’ll just I’ll just start to get this conversation about like if we were going to allow that.

S

Shana

18:21

But actually, that’s probably a reasonable summation that my initial feeling about that, given that we’re not anywhere where I can just post emojis, like the like that emoji. But I mean, Chris, as you know, like, I agree, and I think the boat that we missed several big boats. One, we missed a systems change boat, right? Like there has been so much money. So I’m here from Los Angeles are the Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest in the country has spent $100 million to date and like, I spent a lot more than that. But to date 100 million of the digital divide dollars that they spent was in paying subscriptions for families to get online to either charter or AT and T so in LA charter is our monopoly provider, and that there’s a little bit of overlap with at&t charter I’d read a first refusal than at&t did not get particularly good rates for that and did not have anything in that that said if we have a family who needs to get online, you that you don’t serve yet you’ll serve them. So $100 million in two years, to not be able to get every family that every LAUSD is doing that wasn’t connected because something like 15 to 20% of the addresses that they forwarded to charter and then AT and T they could not serve $100 million imagine Two things. One, even if we could have served all of those kids with that 100 million dollars with those expensive subscriptions, that’s over, there’s not another 100 million dollars for that. So all of those families are disconnected again, fun to imagine what else we could have done with that. I imagine LAUSD partnering with say the city of LA bureau of street lighting to tap into streetlight dark fiber, or Department of Water and Power, or partnering to build natural networks or any number of systems solutions, as opposed to continuing to write big checks to charter in a TNT. And that’s not to even talk about the 10s of millions of dollars and Verizon hotspots that are turned up didn’t actually work, because a bunch of our families who give weren’t covered live in apartment buildings that are built out of cinder blocks. And those hotspots just don’t work in there. So

MS

Melanie Silver

20:56

I,

S

Shana

20:58

I totally agree with you, Chris. I think like a big, a big sort of piece that we’ve missed was system change opportunity. And we focused on more of the same. And I think the second thing about that is that, in doing that, we’ve missed an opportunity to do that power building and organize. Right, there is nothing like a crisis to actually build some power, and to build some community and to build some community capacity and understanding around how power works. And by being like, no, no, we’re gonna, like, yeah, ACP and much, they’ll spray more and more public checks to these companies, rather than do anything else. We missed that opportunity to organize and do power building, I don’t think it’s gone, I think we still have that opportunity. I actually think with ACP going away. And again, we all knew it was going to for quite some time. But with ACP going away, there’s another kind of opportunity to actually do that organizing and capacity building and power building. If we can figure out how not to get her.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

22:03

I want to see who else was a comment. But I also want to warn the audience. This is not all doom and gloom. So if you came here, for 90 minutes of doom and gloom, we’re not going to do that. We are going to start off there.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

22:19

I always want to add something I’m sharing. So, yes, with respect to the systems, I mean, there are votes that we’ve missed. And I would even argue, if we just really focus on ACP for a second, and obviously we’re gonna acknowledge ACP being the child of EBV, or the mercy of Bob and benefit. And by nature, that was an emergency response, a crisis response to affordability. So with a crisis response, how long do you plan on having an emergency? All right in so if it’s an emergency, that’s instant, right? Like I am, I need this now our families need this net. So you got it. Then we had a program, great VCP as its ending, the thing is, what maybe irks me sometimes is when we begin talking about equity, it comes with at least the people who are maybe I’m going to do the best way I can say all caps equity and italicized lowercase. Because it’s like the all caps equity. We’re looking at ACP and look at something like that, and say, Great, that’s the immediate relief. But what’s the long term plan? And in many cases, we actually know what that is already made your own communities. You know what that is? And there’s almost some times like this, while what satiable to be set, what is something that could pass the smell test that’s digestible for enough people that’s not going to ruffle enough feathers? So therefore, that must be good enough? And I think like that good enough, is the part that would really it riles me up a bit? Because I think about the parallel between digital equity, racial equity and gender equity, and take your pick if there’s any other equities I did miss or that I missed. And in no way would you settle for good enough. Any of those either? I absolutely would. And it’s February, so I knew I would have other people February. Yeah, it’s February. You’re gonna rehab it’s already already here, Mike. But the point is, the point is, I would I would settle for this. And I think that when we are looking at this, it’s not a that’s, that’s poopoo on the momentum that we have. But rather, it’s a question that we have to ask ourselves, do we deserve more? And if the answer is a resounding yes, and we know we do. Well, now we have an obligation to push a more pushing. It’s Yes, it’s our people at the state level as people in this room. It’s people who are respected people who are listening, you got to push everybody. And when that doesn’t happen And what it looks like to people on the outside looking in, is we are a unified group who is crying over ACP nd. And that’s what optically looks like. But it doesn’t look like go group as actually demanding long term solutions on the ground. And who’s not afraid to call out a provider for digitally redlining a community. Or it’s not afraid to say to the FCC, hey, look, your digital redlining stuff doesn’t have any any restorative justice, justice components to it. There’s nothing about this that looks at the past. It’s your redlining. All it is is a very currently we can say those things. And it’s okay, it’s required for us to do that. And I think that we’re missing the requirements of just basic equity and standing up and calling people out. And as a result of this, we then get lowercase italicized equity. And for anyone else who’s looking at this for the all caps equity, we’re like, this is incongruent, why are you using the word equity?

CM

Christopher Mitchell

25:55

I want to pick up all night. related comment building off of that, which is, I will defend all day long that Comcast is beat bastes of the big monopoly national companies that Comcast has hired people who feel in the core that they want to use some of the power that Comcast has to connect people, Comcast unlimited essentials, has done more than all the other big companies combined. Comcast has also made sure that 1000s of people in Chattanooga are not connected 10s of 1000s, perhaps hundreds of 1000s, around Chattanooga, had DSL or satellite because Chattanooga is a municipal network. And Comcast doesn’t want to see that expand to areas where Comcast is not interested in serving. And so we’re going to be a little critical of Comcast, but I also just want to know that it’s complicated and my outline of Comcast and the sponsor, but I also want to be clear and call it an out that like in Chattanooga, I want you to explain this and then one, whatever she wanted, but Comcast is literally sitting at the state preventing PD from connecting people hold him the city in the county and outside of the county.

S9

Speaker 9

27:01

Does anyone know who’s Senator Marsha Blackburn? Does anyone know that she got their Senate seat because Comcast paid for it because she carried their water in the state legislature. She got EBVs footprint that’s our local ISP locked at where it launched and it can never expand. We have counties all around us. Yeah, counties all around us ask him to come to service here. We are not allowed to, we can expand inside their footprint where there are gaps. But I earlier today, when you were doing your panel, sign the check for 18 grand to Verizon for hotspots this month, because we have 700 families that are on Verizon hotspots who live in the middle of Chattanooga Hamilton County, in an area ABB is not allowed to serve and can’t run new lines to because of all his politics, right. So we have a very different takes on odd Comcast, mark them off of my benefit. The analogy that popped in my head a couple days ago thinking about this very topic with him being the sponsor at that conference that they weren’t before it moved to Philadelphia. It’s like asking a rattlesnake that bit you to provide your emergency care that we can extract the good and the bad for the rattlesnake to solve the problem. But the snakes are not trained or qualified or able to save us. It is against their interest. They will just keep biting you while you sit there. So take the money from Comcast when they want to give it but do understand that their digital equity budget is net negative. Yeah. Right. Like we were talking about numbers before this today. 2.7 5 billion he got thrown around a lot yesterday and thought is six weeks profit for Comcast. It’s three weeks when you add charter into the mix. That’s profit. They also spent what 25 billion on lobbying? Oh

S

Shana

29:02

164. So by 2023 at the federal

S9

Speaker 9

29:07

federal lobbying was 164 billion million, 1 million, 1 million. Who right like to say that. That’s not in their profit statement. That’s a business expense. So they’re not paying taxes on the money they’re using to fight our programs. Like it’s just a circle. And it’s why we have to get real power to like, take the systems on and trying to change the systems. Like I’ve been doing this in Chattanooga, I’ve lived there for 25 years, I’ve been working on this pretty hardcore for about a dozen. And like it’s just been eye opening every day. And like I love the work we do because we work get to see all the people we work with and like you could hear these impacts. Like that’s where it’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen from the top down. They have no incentive to fix this problem. We have to stand up for ourselves and organize and stand together and fix it.

MS

Melanie Silver

30:03

And, you know, I would just add that recognizing that these systems are in place because they were built to be here, just like this. And dismantling them is something that can only happen from the inside. And we only us only only the people in this room and people like us. Because Because we’re in them, and we understand how to navigate them. And so, you know, this comes up a lot of times when we going to corporations into organizations, talking about creating a culture of belonging. And, you know, we, we run into systems that are in place for a reason, and a lot of times is systems that are in place for the reason was because a lot of the Boomers coming out of management MBA school, were trained and taught to not engage with employees as people don’t ask, what your race why you’re, you know, who you are, what your story is, we don’t we don’t hear that, right. But now, the workplace requires the Gen Z, that are up and coming that are soon going to be managers and the leaders of organizations, why we have, you know, ESG programs in Comcast and Verizon, and these companies because they have to recruit and retain workers, they’re, they’re saying, This has to be here, or we won’t work here. So it’s only going to grow as the generation shifts and leaders shift. And we identify these systems that are in place that are now broken, and we redo them.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

31:48

Hello, and before we go on to talk a little bit more about what political power might look like and how to achieve it. I do want to make sure that Dan and Valerie in particular have a chance. It wasn’t good. Melanie, it’s Jeff. Having a chance to talk about something that I think everyone should know, which is just to be clear. How welcoming is Chattanooga for people who don’t identify as straight? Are you straightening? Oh, God, no. No,

MS

Melanie Silver

32:25

yeah, maybe they’re,

CM

Christopher Mitchell

32:27

I feel like I was put out there. I feel like the reputation of Chattanooga was besmirched, and I want to give you a chance as people who love it and live there to say a word about it.

S9

Speaker 9

32:37

Great, yeah, that’s nice. It’s complicated. Like I I’m a big outdoor person, I love hiking and like all that and like, when I’m in the city of Chattanooga, I’m pretty okay. Like, I don’t I don’t worry too much. I have had the Deputy Sheriff put his hand on his gun when I pulled out a pride Debit Card to pay at a gas station in rural Tennessee when I was hiking. never said a word just looked at me put his hand on his gun. I’m probably not alone in that kind of vibe in this room. Right. I’m never not thinking about it. Like that is the thing that not everyone has to deal with. I had to ask a lawyer last year, I have painted toenails. Is that a drag show? If there’s kids on the sidewalk, I go into jail. And they had to tell me we don’t know. Do you want to be the one who finds out in court? And I absolutely did not. Right. Like, I don’t want to be on Fox News league or anybody else does. It sucks. So nowhere is safe. For queer people and trans people. There are places that are safer. I don’t know the Philadelphia is safer. The Chattanooga I’m not qualified to say so. I’ll say that. And I do think lumping all of us together by what gerrymandered minority government did to us in Tennessee, it was in thrown out by the courts and has never been enforced. We could use all your help down himself. Right. And instead you’re here to be helped here to not have to be are all going to be those all together. Right. You talked about being in the south I think a lot of times the south just gets written off. It’s like it’s unsavable CDC latest census on queer population is we are the South is the most dense queer population in the country. 16%, which is roughly 16 million people are queer in the South. That is bigger than the Northeast that is bigger than the west coast by dint like per capita. You’re on his writing off a few people in the mountains. You’re writing off millions and millions of people and they help connect these programs. So I think that’s probably enough on that one. Yeah, Red Flags.

MS

Melanie Silver

35:02

Mostly I get more than normal

MS

Melanie Silver

35:08

I remember taking a sea trip to West Virginia, and I look the way I look on purpose, I want to make sure that I, I’m very clearly we’re a person. It’s not something that I that I hide, or that I want to, that I’m ashamed of. But I remember we were on the ski trip, and I, you know, I’m covered up in clothes as a cold. And I thought, you know, or something happens, and I have to be rescued. Like, I think in a rescue me. Yeah, I cuz I’m not, you know, and I think, you know, I say all that to say, because we, we, again, it’s, it’s recognizing that we are being polarized in, in our lives, in our news consumption, in our, in our churches, in our community groups, there, there, there. There are so many facets of our lives that are 99.9%, the same, we are the same. And yet, and we categorize things because it’s human nature. And it’s it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s how we assess threats and, and how we survived as humans. But we are activated by by fear, and we are we are polarized and we have to figure out how we can just like, appreciate each other for who we are. And the South is heels a little further behind than the rest of the country having lived that foreigner race, why growth multicultural experts to so many different cultures and people and and, and the South is different. And you know, we choose to be there, we recognize that, that it’s a choice for us to live there. And it’s always during election season, when I really get what I really get angry, because because that’s when, you know, my rights are potentially being taken from me by a polarized group of people that I love, that just don’t know that this is happening to them. They don’t know that, that they’re being separated, instead of being pulled together. And so if each of us could just approach conversations with curiosity and ask questions and come together, instead of being a part of this system, that is putting us farther apart. We can do a lot, just all of us each.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

37:45

And since the Lean Startup there Melanie Silva. I want to talk about political power at different levels, because I feel like to some extent, we’re like lead political power. Yeah. Where do we get that? All right? Well, we need different kinds of political power to achieve different kinds of things along the way to achieving our shared goals. So I don’t know who wants to jump in. But let’s talk about different political power at different levels to achieve our shared goals.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

38:16

This back a little bit for you.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

38:17

Yeah, thank you. So it’s interesting. When I first moved to Detroit, that was January 2019. So obviously, before the pandemic, and at that time, director of digital equity and inclusion for the city of Detroit. And, you know, digital inclusion wasn’t co-signed, because in the way that it is now because there wasn’t a pandemic. And so when I went in, people thought I was the Director of Diversity and Inclusion, which I’m like, No, I’m not. And it’s interesting, because when you’re going in to a city government, and even the people within the city, the mayor, ultimately, they didn’t understand this up either. And so you’re going in to understand, not validated, I wasn’t from Detroit, so no one knew me. So it’s like, what are you going to do? What type of political power, if any, are you going to be able to wield in that case, you had to start grassroots, because at that point, I could show a unified constituency, which would then influence the municipal government, specifically, you would be able to influence the council layer, which would then allow the mayor to then be supportive or whatever I did. And he saw that was the strategy at the onset, get validation as much as possible from the grassroots. Then over time, in order to do the fundraising that was necessary. Again, we didn’t have our but we didn’t have infrastructure jobs. I didn’t have any of that stuff. So all the maybe Oh gee, digital equity practitioners, you were fundraisers, everyone that was her job to fundraise. And so we had to do a lot of fundraising. And at that time, it was grass tops. And one of the things that I was able to do was just, I’ll be honest, people might remember, but I was calling out a lot of the federal leaders at that time. Because in calling them out one, I felt like that was necessary to call them out. The result, as a result of that result was calling them out, they would oftentimes either book trips to Detroit directly, which then led to external validation, which then was able to start the connection point between the grassroots and grasstops. With that then resulted in with a clear pathway from the resident who maybe I went to I went to their church I spoke or whatever, maybe they were coming to some of our neighborhood technology hubs or whatever we were doing. So we’re able to go from the grassroots, whatever the complaints, were, then cycling through Council through the mayor’s office, through our state, and then all at the federal level, we kept doing that over and over and over again. And as a result, you had a machine. And that machine allowed you whether you needed additional fundraising, additional support, or digital storytelling, or if you wanted to hold someone accountable, you then were able to then pull the punch with all of your mind as a municipal government. The time when that mattered the most was when we switched from being I would say, even by my own admission, the italicized digital equity, to the all caps digital equity, when there was a 45 day internet outage in Detroit, and they hold the other neighborhood by TNT. And for 45 days, those residents didn’t have internet, they didn’t have voice. And it got brought to light. And that’s what we said, Our infrastructure is unstable. And since the providers, we can’t trust you, because when we did trust you this is what happened. We believe it is in the interest of the municipality to serve our people best. And so as a result, we did that. And then that’s when all of those political relationships matter the most, because the tax tactics that they use was they began attacking every every thing that they could. They weren’t at, you know, my credibility. They weren’t at our offices, credibility. And even people that have working for Detroit at the time, they wanted as many ways as possible. Whenever we were doing a community event, somehow a hit piece would come out that same day, that same morning, whenever we were doing any type of outreach or engagement, somehow there’d be some type of messaging that would go out, it was just very, very methodical. But at the same time, when I was able to see it, that moment, was the grassroots organizing could counteract the grass tops, you know, media campaigns that they have run. And so those same stories over and over and over again, once you have that full political spectrum built out, once you have that machine built out, you’re essentially protected. And you got to do the work that ensuring that that stays in tech, you got to keep people engaged, keep people organized. But every single one of those layers I couldn’t do, we couldn’t do it without anyone that was missing. And so as a result of that we were able to survive enough, there was a digital tactics that we did. But again, we had to rely on every layer and level of government all the way down to the non governmental actors, like a voter, or even a non voter who are still within the political atmosphere. And everyone played a role and you couldn’t discount anybody. Because if you did, it came down to a game of inches. And the inch that we lost was essentially what killed a project. And so that would just be the thing that from my experience working in municipal government, that you need every single one, because that’s going to protect your interest as well. A lot of these people do not have the ability to stand alone. And we all know this, when you all go back to your respective geographies, digital equity, you’re still in an island. Yeah, you might have a coalition. But if you’re a decision maker, you’re like one of five who’s actually making decisions, everybody else is working with you. But it’s just it’s you and Nick. And so as a result of that, you got to make sure that whatever you’re building, like you have people who are around you can actually protect you because if not, it will fall apart. And these providers or anyone who’s who’s lobbying against you will start picking you off, and they will ruin your credibility, or at least they’ll attempt to and that’s exactly what we saw happening in Detroit.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

43:59

That was pretty all encompassing.

S

Shana

44:02

And terrifying. Plus 1000, to all of that, I’ll speak from personal experience and, and we had talked about this before, the moment you step out of your lane of inclusion and, and literacy and basically, and they love it when we fight for ACP. As soon as you step out of those lanes. It gets dark. I’ll tell you that. I my own personal history has come back at me from elected officials that charter lobbyists have been in touch with I will tell you that people in my family their jobs have been threatened because they were for organizations that are partly funded by some of these ISPs. It does get very dark and the reason that that is okay, first of all, I have on a pit of bottomless rage and so if you buy I mostly and because my skin is this color, and I look like this. And so I have also a well, privileged male to fight back at that. And I’m very clear on that. But truly, it’s because we have built this cross sectoral cross geography of very anyway and a coalition, I think you have capital, all capitals equity, we also have all capitals and lowercase, italicized light gray font coalition to Yes. And what we have is big, bold, all caps coalition, then we have each other’s backs. And we have built that power and that trust and that actual organizing relationship to do that. And there’s someone out there remember, I’m not going to call her name, but she should actually probably be sitting up here instead of me, that entire coalition has actually come under threat, but has done the same thing and has built that, that, that strong kind of base, so yes to all of that. And then I would also just say, and again, this probably ages me. But we should all go back and read Solomon’s these 10 rules. It’s it’s real here, right? Find ways that you can win together, however big or small, because winning begets winning, and it when it looks like power and His power. And so really kind of building around that. So identify where is the what are the structures that you need? So whether it’s Council or the mayor’s office, or in our case, like the Department of Water and Power, or the legislature, or the governor’s office, or the Public Utilities Commission, and figure out, you know, okay, this is where we need different decisions to be made. Where what do they care about? What influences them? What do they consider power? And how do we get into those spaces? And then would also just say that no power is too small. I mean, we talked about Marsha Blackburn. But here’s the other thing that we know, and I can’t remember the latest statistic, but the percentages of people who are in Congress that were in state legislatures that before that were in council or school board is astonishing. Almost nobody first runs for Congress or Senate. Some people do, but almost nobody does. And so the person who is your, you know, freshman city council member, who maybe has no power right now is, you know, somewhat likely to be your the Congress person or agency head or something moving forward. So it’s never too soon to indicate them that brought them up.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

47:51

CF is a unique entity. So make sure that groups that are stepping into the drycleaning stepping up on digital equity, have some capacity to do allies. You can say a word about that. But also, can you give any examples of where groups haven’t had that same level of support and have been able to build a coalition?

S

Shana

48:09

Sure. So the California Community Foundation, that’s a digital equity initiative that that I ran started as a three year project is now a five year project. And, yeah, I’m extremely lucky in that CCF is a systems change Foundation, obviously find the director versus work and things like that, but does so entirely through the lens of systems change. And has both in our former, our former president and CEO, was a civil rights attorney and had been at CCF for 20 years. But before that was at MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, so how to this kind of political and power lens already, and then our newest co president to kind of has the same and so and our borders, situated that all of that kind of stuff. So we actually have the political lens, and have the kind of independence to be able to operate in this space. And a very clear eyed focus on systems change. And so I’m able to run a grant program and have been now raising additional money. So we can continue to do that without having been compromised by ISP funding and allow some of our grantees to stop being compromised by our reliance on ISP funding to be able to do that, and part of our mission is to also situate this coalition for ongoing sustainability in that way. And then in terms of some of the other groups around the state and and elsewhere that is kind of have supported, I guess I’ll call it kind of technical assistance and building in this way that haven’t had that. Again, there’s other folks in the room. They give me the high sign up what you do them, if you who I think have a ton of really direct experience on this, but it has been it’s just like a Different kinds of slog, right. So it’s in the same way that our coalition then were kind of our our focus has been has been not actually to identify digital equity and digital inclusion organizations and trying to convince them to do political work. Although there’s been a little bit of that it’s been more like finding the organizations that already do that. Right. So what are the organizations that are already working in health justice, or climate justice, or housing justice, that’s been a big one, obviously, education justice, but you know, who are the organizations that already have a political lens that already do power building, and that have also through lived experience, a very real understanding of how digital equity gets in the way of their mission. And digital inequity gets in the way of their mission. And so to kind of build that together. And so they come with kind of a base of sustainability because they get funded, to do their education work to do their healthcare, work, etc. And then, I ESPYS don’t usually care about that, unless you’re also doing ACP, or something like that. So it’s been kind of a strategic kind of finding where there is sustainability already around power.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

51:12

Political power.

MS

Melanie Silver

51:14

Yeah. Okay. The thing that comes to mind for me is, you know, you had talked about digital equity used to be getting people online, right event, it was getting people online, with devices, and now it’s getting people online with devices, and skills, training and resources. Dan and I were talking earlier about what if that’s a circle, and we were getting people online, with devices, with skills training, and then connected back into their community? Are we registering them to vote? Are we providing them with nonpartisan civic engagement and education? Chattanooga has a platform called Shadow matters, where you, you can learn about your city council and how it works. And it’s just an email engagement. For other forms email, Tik Tok you to use the TIC TOCs. Or to all the the community component is, is is part of this right? And that’s how we’re gonna get to sustainable long term change is getting plugged back into our communities through technology. And so, you know, kind of also thinking through this, you know, we’ve talked about organizing a good bit. How can we build digital equity into things like community benefits agreements, where we’re building out infrastructure and municipalities and states that we can if we’re going to build cevin, because in the process of building, potentially building a new minor league baseball stadium and massive construction along with that, but But it’s in right borders up against a neighborhood that might get all get pushed out from this development.

53:12

But my,

MS

Melanie Silver

53:15

my, but there’s, there’s a grassroots community organizing organization that’s stepping in and saying, Hey, we’re gonna need to set up a community benefits agreement with this neighborhood, the surrounding neighborhoods to make sure that these people are going to be served by this investment. This is not going to just be a top down decision that affects all of these communities. So how can we build digital equity into these processes into these community engagements that whether they happen or not, whether they might or not, but anything you want to add?

S9

Speaker 9

53:52

Totally agree, I mean, having those CPAs in place was like super important, and we should be trying as much as we can. I have other issues with billing and understanding the challenges related to this conversation. But we’ve always been like, nibbling around this thing. I think I just want to say clearly, like, digital equity isn’t the end game with Justice Liberation’s the end game, but like, this is part of the path, right? So like, it takes all of this stuff, and like, the thing I just think about all the time is like, we can’t win this fight if like, we’re gonna You’re winning their fight, if we’re organizers are winning their fight, like we gotta have each other’s backs and work together. And like, one of the things you’ve talked about a lot as we prep for this panel, it’s like, part of why we want everybody connected as connected. That means they can organize, right and like, particularly the trans community, like it’s such a small group of people, they’re gonna often geographically close, like having that online connection to find support and find help is critical, like health care, mental health care, just community at all. And like, I mean, a discord chat with a bunch of people for mutual aid. In store Jada, like, a couple of weeks ago, this mom hopped out with like, My daughter just told me that she’s trans and like, I’m super excited and super nervous. And like three other moms of trans kids jumped in and like, talked her through it. And it’s like, they will never meet in real life. But she all like instantly had community, because they were in there organizing around economic justice. And when she needed help, she got it, it was just awesome to just sit back and watch that conversation happen. And like, Oh, she’s going to be great. Let’s get this doctor and like, this is what it’s gonna be like, like call if you need help, and like, whatever my family, like, if we didn’t do this work to have these connections for these people like, that wouldn’t have happened. And there’s another scared mom, or scared kid and trans outcomes often are suicide. So like, just seeing that maybe there’s an off ramp here for this kid that’s happy is awesome. Like, that’s why we’re doing this work right like that, it gets so easy to get bogged down in the fight, to forget to look at the chimneys on top of the buildings and see where we’re heading.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

56:04

An example that I think about is a moment when I was thinking about like, as I’m required to do by some funders, what does it look like to really win? And we’ll see, well, how do we get new chairman as high quality of access? Well, not going to happen to people are living in a campus where they’re moving around constantly looks like housing solution is a school district, right? By right by my house. 33% of the kids don’t have stable housing throughout the entire year, they’re on a house that part of the year. And my son went to that school for a year. And it’s a lot of worst schools in Minnesota, which is still pretty good. And the teachers were amazing resources were amazing. And it struck me, you know, most of the discussion about school policy I learned is not about how we fix the schools. It’s about all the stuff outside of the schools that’s causing the problems. And so similarly wrong, and we’re trying to be too focused on that record, record. My frame, I’m struggling with post nasal drip. Sir Lee. The anyway, just the fact that these are related. And I will ask your question in a second, I’m giving you a warning. I’ve got a great question that come back if no one has one. But I do want to ask Dan, in particular, I’m sure it’s if anyone else has an answer. I sometimes fear that the discussions about how these things are intersectional leads to a paralysis, where we’re like, well, we can’t do anything unless we’re doing everything. So how do we wrestle with that?

S9

Speaker 9

57:34

Absolutely. But the key is just coalition building partnerships. We don’t need to do everything we are doing if they were gonna, like, I’m a software developer by trade. I ran Obama’s reelect web team in 2012. That’s kind of what got me a little bit of notoriety in the space and got a voice in a room. That’s where I can lend my voice. Like, I don’t understand housing justice enough to be in that room. But I know that they need sort of what we do, and we need their networks like, so. Yeah, don’t get paralyzed, like understand that we’re not going to solve it all. You can’t solve it all. That’s a really perverse place to be mentally, anyway, it’s only going to happen in community in tandem. And then like, everyone does the work they’re good at and hopefully, that’s the idea. Yeah,

MS

Melanie Silver

58:20

and we see this a lot in the workplace, where you have large organizations with employee resource groups that are all focused on early group professionals, or for queer, black, you know, Latinos, whatever dimension of diversity that feels like they need that extra support to feel like they belong at your organization. A lot of them can feel overwhelmed with some of the programming that they want to do, or the all the things they want to talk about, or all the things they want to implement, and work with HR on. And we, if they can just rely on each other, the leaders of those groups and work together and share planning and share certain responsibilities. They’re able to do so much more when they work together. And so I agree, Dan, I think it’s it’s partnerships in what we’re talking about. Right? And, and having those those those people that have your back, because they haven’t a similar shared fight, or shared experience in the space.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

59:18

Question. Whoa, man, y’all gotta keep it queer.

1

Speaker 1

59:26

So I have a question about kind of question. Good statement, one partner that I haven’t heard mentioned at all that can be a huge boon to building political power, historically has been us is labor. And now I understand there’s, oh, there’s a two way street. Fair Labor has to reach out and be part of that conversation as well. I’m here for an employer. I want to add to the tenor of this conversation, but I’m also late. So if you guys found any partners in that realm, CWA IBEW, Cleveland, I’m Midwestern boy, too, and we went for

JE

Joshua Edmonds

59:58

about an hour Yeah. Okay, so yeah,

1:00:01

have you found any partners? Have you started building relationships?

S

Shana

1:00:06

with CWA, SEIU and IBEW all three, there’s obviously complicated politics between that amongst them. And so it’s been sort of interesting to navigate that. But yes, in different spaces in different times where we’ve been able to stand in the middle of that a little bit, or in some cases, even kind of help be appraised for some critical thinking happen. It’s been incredible. And I would say the other place that that’s been useful has been informally, so you know, where it’s like, wow, like, the logo hasn’t taken a position on this. And, and there’s a bunch of other like leadership, things going on, and whatever else, but you know, what, like, we are going in and like looking at these cabinets in all these buildings, that unnamed company is claiming is totally deserved with upgrading technology, and like, well, we’re in there, we’ll shoot you a quick picture. And stuff like that. That’s been incredibly valuable.

2

Speaker 2

1:01:08

Hey, remember the granite by around and thank you so much. It’s such an important and beaded conversation. I just wanted to name something. Which is like, it’s great for us to all get together and be in unity. That conflict is part of that. Michonne Hannah sosman, who many of you know who’s an amazing organizer, and has been like leading leaning into what comfortable means and what happens when there’s conflict at the grassroots or between the grassroots to municipal levels. And I want to just name, you know, Tennessee, there’s the southern Connected Communities project, which isn’t mountains, and they don’t have the political power, the Chad Vinca has access to the Detroit digital Justice Coalition, going way back with the principles of access participation, common ownership and healthy communities, both mesh networks, and even fiber in three parts of the city. These are trailblazers, and they’re working at a very small scale and relatively so, you know, in between these are layers, right? They’re misaligned incentives. So how do we acknowledge that and lean into conflict so that we can

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:02:22

unify? Pretty much? Yeah, I think it’s great to call out the conflicts too. Because yes, harmony, or rather, it’s just a consensus is the hardest thing to reach in any equation? You know, sometimes I’ll do this little exercise where I ask people do use pineapple belong on pizza. And overwhelmingly it does, but people somehow find ways to disagree with that. And the point is, you know, on weighing really look at this, I think that there is there’s always room to grow. I would say that anyone who’s doing this work at the community level, it requires a significant degree of introspection. And oftentimes, I can reminisce on the times when I didn’t do things the right way, either, that I didn’t print things, and it’s those our thoughts are like, dang it. And you’ll you’ll look back on that. And, you know, I think that there’s a simultaneous kind of back and forth that has to happen, where it’s like, look, we have to move forward, because we have to move forward that we cannot be paralyzed. But at the same time, it does require a persistent and consistent acknowledgement, when expectations are misaligned. And sometimes that’s not as sexy to do when you are invigorated by a vision when you see a fight in front of you. And you know, you’re going to get oh, yeah, I mean, for me, at least, I mean, my ears get hot, and I’m like, oh, yeah, we’re ready to fight. And so people are like, Well, hold on, hey, and it’s worth acknowledging the hold ons and the A’s, too. And I think that sometimes when you get these, again, he’s very visionary things that you’d be like, Okay, we’re ready. Some of those times it gets lost. And I think that’s a part of the requirement that requires us even when you know what you’re doing, you’re supposed to be doing, you’re feeling like that’s purpose driven. It still does require you to bring as many people if not everybody with you. And oftentimes I can look at ways that I didn’t do that. And that is a that’s just more of an acknowledgement. I would say that for everybody doing this, if you are going to go the grassroots. It does matter that you do have to honor the sentiment. You have to honor the trailblazers people were doing that work before you do, no matter the scale, you have to honor that. But at the same time, you know, if you have that vision, you have to move forward with that too. And that’s a two way process and that’s going to happen consistently and persistently to do it right.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:04:57

You remember the essay that she should have the parents shares the smell, I was trying to remember, well, if you can dig it out and get a feel, and that’s at the end of the session, also, I will just say that like, I think this is a good time to just play. I’m going to take a question over here. We’re gonna think about, think about a book or reading recommendation at the end also. So, God, you don’t have to. Oh, Mark.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:05:32

Thank you for being here, this panel, this session is awesome. My question really, here’s this honing in on the differences in our communities. I represent as a public official, the city of Austin, Texas, and I’m approaching the end of my term and being able to do things I couldn’t do within government while maintaining diplomacy that I have for the past eight years. So I’m excited. But I still have to maintain that diplomacy to continue to build off of the Britons that I have established, establishing the status. So I think about your success. You know, we’re in the state of Texas, so So there’s certain things that we can’t do unless we can somehow take on the state legislature. And that’s not likely for the foreseeable future. So I’d like you to be candid, if you all can about how you work within Dynamics that aren’t so friendly to labor, for example. And in spaces where, frankly, equity as a word is a boogeyman the best net to get around artfully, but are willing to write, I don’t want to fall into the pitfalls of cultural war. At the same time, I do think it’s important to know its history. And there were so many things you guys said that I’ve wanted to speak to, but obviously you’re very sure the time.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:06:54

All right. I mean, all right. Well, so when, from the municipal perspective, when I look at it, you have you said eight years, eight years of equity, eight years of equity, the equivalent is you’ve been born to the arcade and play that game this whole time. And there’s that laser pointer, you can finally get that laser pointer with all the tickets that you’ve accumulated over all the years. That’s the price already. So it’s like you have that I think it’s more of I did the same thing, so to speak. So when I was in Detroit, first year, I couldn’t do that second year, couldn’t do that third year. But it got to a point I’m like, Okay, now it’s time when you know, you know, there was a certain fight, that is, now there’s this, if it’s not abundantly clear today, there is a way to do it. And again, this is leaning more so into the organizing principles, which is like, Okay, I don’t need to be Superman, I don’t need to be. Now I can be the key. I can be the IRS I can be I can be something but I don’t need to be the center. And so like the thing is, you don’t have to take on unnecessary risks. But at the same time, like you can use the equity that you build up and the credibility that you have to co sign something that could also be the difference maker, too. It’s like, what is the big picture? And Austin, what are the what are the organizers saying? What’s something that’s like, hey, we could do? So it’s like reverse engineering. If I know that I want to change the state statute over time. It’s like, Alright, look, I don’t have ability to do that now. Great. Are those incremental changes that could get us there? And how do I use the current inertia over the ACP freeze to accelerate that sounds like everything that’s happening now use everything that we have that’s at our disposal. So I know that this ACP freezes a thing. And everybody is suffering from this. And this is so great. I mean, not great. But like for real great, like, because now all of a sudden, my equity and credibility plus the moment, plus this other group over here that we don’t know, but that once we get acclimated to that could be the thing where you’re able to invite out and say, All right, I did all this. And that thing that y’all got going, Yeah, that was me. And then you get the you get the ball or do whatever you want to do. But it’s like, you don’t have to, like take the biggest risk today. It’s more so looking at whatever you can wager, and whatever is already happening juxtapose with what we already know, the ACP stuff represents and using the power of that moment, because next year is time, this this ACP fi doesn’t even we can’t even use that card anymore. It kind of expires next year. And so if someone disagrees fine, but like Toriel, like now’s the time to use that, especially with the freeze being last week.

S9

Speaker 9

1:09:40

I just throw in there to real quick, big plans and big dreams are awesome because one day they’re gonna happen. Like the pros. We’ve had an Enterprise Center in our work. We plan for a decade and then COVID happened. Everybody’s like, oh, well, we’re good with money. We only been asking for 10 years. It’s fine. Right like you Could we have done that work sooner and help people sooner? Yes. But the thing is we’re doing it now. We’re doing it at a scale that’s so much bigger than we could have even imagined five years ago, because we have those dreams and those plans, and we’re ready. Like, it’s not futile to think about a better tomorrow. Right? I agree, like use that equity, where you wait, cheers, chapter

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:10:20

four verse novels,

S

Shana

1:10:22

that the one does, the one thing I’ll add is, we’d sort of gotten into it, but skirted around a little bit, is, in addition to enjoying picking fights with charter atmc, Comcast and Verizon, I genuinely do. I dropped some say it’s strategic, right? Like you don’t always have to be picking fights with people who have unique with you. And so you know, part of the thing about picking a fight with a like, multinational, billions, profits dollar company is that there’s not a lot of appetite to come there, like their defense. And so kind of using some of those like fight picking, like picking some of those fights really strategically, with maybe the entity that isn’t actually the opponent there, but you make them the opponent. And that creates some space to do some other things. And this is where like, as a coalition, we focused a ton on on like pricing disparities. And this is partly where we’re really using the opportunity around digital discrimination, which I know, Chris likes to fight with me about, like the extent to which that’s going to be useful. And we can totally fight about that. But just as a, as a mechanism, like as a strategy, it’s really useful.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:11:42

So this is one of the habits, what to say about that is, I feel like if you’re in an area where you’re dealing with loyal opposition, or honest opposition, where someone like actually disagrees with you in their hands person, as opposed to a lot of the stuff that we see now from elected officials, particularly at the national level, where they’re just saying anything that’s convenient. If you have someone that you think is, is opposed to you, but honest, start making some predictions, you know, and so with ACP, you know, we’re going to spend all this money, and at the end of it, the money is going to get cut off, and we’re not going to be in a better place, because it’s not systemic change, right? There’s like Los Angeles, stop spending that 100 million dollars, those kids don’t have access anymore, we haven’t made an investment that leads to a similar to an ongoing change. And so you can make that prediction and say, Look, I want to come back the next year, I’m gonna remind you, I’m saying this, this is what’s going to happen, they might start to listen to you a little bit more recognize the dangers of just throwing more and more money at it. So that’s something that that we’ve tried to do in different circumstances. Once you get the book title, Okay, how about you at the end, I want to ask a question, do we still have time for questions after this, but I do want to make sure that we just randomly we just came up with this. And I feel like this question of project management or project around LinkedIn problem, sorry, for Problem Management, or problem eradication, I will I will lead this into a free session talking about what we should be doing upstairs. So the coop of people, I think all of them if you ask them, Do you want to solve this problem, or you want to keep working on this problem with the rest of your life? They would say that will solve the problem. But I think many of us feel that we’re not on a path to solving it that we are managing it rather than trying to eradicate it. And so this is something that he could go on for a long time. But some quick thoughts about that.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:13:29

For so yes, it’s true. It’s true. I didn’t say that earlier today. You know, and I think that it’s worth noting that this, it couldn’t happen at a better time. So upstairs, forgotten visit Ella, I LSRs. Desk, they have this puzzle. And this is the most confusing puzzle in the world we’re trying to put together I don’t care. Yes, I’m colorblind. And that could be making the degree of difficulty way higher. But it doesn’t make sense. But the reason why I’m highlighting that puzzle upstairs is because better coin, there are, there’s me who is working my eyes to the point that I can’t even it’s blurring, to try and fix this thing. And maybe iosr is happy that that puzzles in all the way put together, because it keeps people at the table longer. And there is a really, really sly way that I am saying this. So if you read between the lines, there’s like three metaphors within that. But you know, the point that I would say I think that it’s not a matter of finger wagging and saying well, why aren’t you on problem eradication, because that almost has a tinge of arrogance to it. I think that it’s more of an opportunity to look at maybe some of how do you get more of the practitioners who have legitimate scars and putting them on those main stages, because you’re going to get a very different experience from those people. They’re going to tell you what’s real hearing it the wisdom from them. So while you have a other people who might be newer to this. That’s not to say they don’t deserve any medicines. I think everyone’s story should be heard. But I think that it’s really how did you get to this problem eradication standpoint? It’s because you had people who started maybe on the problem management side, who were doing the hotspots who were doing the tech support, who were doing those things, who quickly realized that’s like, Man, I, I’ve been in this for a few years now. This isn’t these numbers aren’t really changing. I need to be I need to go deeper. There’s a reason why even through my own growth, I mean, my first NDI conference was like 2016. And after over time, I went from maybe that more nonprofit side to now the enterprise infrastructure side to say, no, if you’re not, if you’re not talking infrastructure out, what are you talking about? And like, that’s where I’ve gotten to, because of all those experiences that I’ve had that led me to that point. So I think that is really a unique opportunity to say to maybe the organizers, or the people upstairs. All right, so it’s just scars, I want some of your your quote, broadband scar, what about that time when you release that? And they maybe it didn’t work out, but you got stabbed? You got a cool scar, like, Alright, so what’s that, like Jason’s in the crowd? Now? I know, Jason, Jason’s got a nice scar right here in the back. But it’s like, those are those things where I think that that’s a really unique opportunity for us to talk more about that. And I think, in that that’s letting wisdom guide the discussion, versus like, you know, what camp? Are you in a secret handshake, or, you know, get them out of here like no, like, like, let’s actually Let wisdom guide the discussion, based on our experiences that will then transform our understanding and ways when it’s done in love. And it’s not an understanding, I think we will then walk out with a more unified approach to what I do believe is the necessary outcome, which is eradicating the digital divide, and everybody was employed off the digital divide all of us being unemployed.

S

Shana

1:16:51

I’ll just say quickly, I think there’s a it’s about kind of a genuine curiosity and asking those questions. So to me, and this is where an island and others continue to pick on ACP, then there’s lots of them, which is like the genuine honest question there is, like, let’s say that through some miracle, it turns out, like, there’s actually more power behind this than we think or that like the ISPs actually, really are going to push for this rather than their giant tax break that they’re probably going to win instead. And like, we get the $7 billion to fund ACP through the end of the year. Okay, then what? Right, like, is there so so but have we eradicated anything like, no, have maybe solved a little bit of suffering for a while? Yes. And like, that’s good. But then what? And so I think this sort of, I think moving along that path, from management to eradication, releasing how to my own goals, and my conversations with folks has been around asking some of those like, and then what questions with, you know, honesty and curiosity, but also a certain level of harshness?

MS

Melanie Silver

1:18:01

Yeah, I think it requires you to give up your some of your power. And that can be scary, right? Cuz it makes you feel safe, it makes you feel a certain way and to not have it. Him the uncertain, and you may not want to leave that lane that you’re in, right. I’m involved in it in a project in Chattanooga, that’s taking up a foundation model, traditional philanthropy model and D centralizing it and taking 20 community leaders, and they decide where millions of dollars goes in the community, not the family that owns the foundation, that half of which live in California. Not them, us, we’re going to create the framework, we’re going to change the system, we’re going to change how it works. And they’re saying we don’t we want the community to have the power and you know what, I mean, community has the power to make the decisions. The decisions come out really differently. And we’re seeing that already in this process where, okay, it’s not just we’re not making investments, from the top down for people. We’re all in church wine in the community, and figuring out how this how does it what do we want as leaders in the community? So another way of just thinking about okay, how do we, how do we power share, how do we how do we put this in the hands of the people that are doing the things and are and know the people and know what they want and if we can figure that out, even just in our own boards, in our own roles in our families, in our in our lives, and then bring that to all of our space? juices will be able to feel this to a much larger degree. And it’ll move quicker. You know, we were talking earlier, people are afraid of a sudden change of abrupt change, but they’re not afraid of incremental change. And I know it takes longer and it requires more patience, and it can be a pain in the ass. But that incremental change is going to get us where we want to go barring another pandemic that speeds things along very quickly.

S9

Speaker 9

1:20:31

Just a couple of things that bounced around in my mind, this is my first time in the IEA. I have learned more out of people getting three minutes on stage than people give them 30. And I keep saying why are they getting half an hour? This morning, particularly, every one of those people should have had as much time as rising that.

S9

Speaker 9

1:20:55

Equity, Washington’s the term we’re going to start talking about. Like maybe that needs to be a bigger space. So there’s more breakouts so that we can have more opportunities like that, like, it doesn’t have to be mainstage. But like, we talked about this earlier, binding talks are awesome. Like, I love it, they happen. And they happen because there are some things that should be quick like that and go, not everything needs to be a 90 minute panel. But too many people are given the time they could be using to actually share real knowledge. And why is that? I haven’t been around this organization long enough to know why that is. And I want to Yes, but let’s figure it out. Right? So maybe the lightning talks this year, or how do we pick the speakers for next year? Like don’t give feedback and like, oh, I want to hear more about that program. And everybody comes together and talks about it. Yeah, that that’s the biggest one. I also have, like 40 bullet points for accessibility problems that we’ll talk about. But I will throw in that just because I said it like digital equity can’t happen if we’re not being actually digitally accessible. And like following the actual guidelines for what that means for colorblind folks. People use Braille and all that that’s a much longer topic. I’m happy to talk to anybody about what that means. But like, there’s no ASL here. I don’t know how to even when a wheelchair would get around that room upstairs. The subtitles aren’t readable over the slides. Like that’s just the truth. Interesting. So like, we have to be better at that. Because you said earlier, I think or what have you, is anyone at this conference on ACB? Right, like, where’s their stories? And who are you? Like, I want to hear from them. Right? Like, what is that? What does that look like? What are people that they’re not going to let? Right? Where are they this week? Right? Yeah.

S

Shana

1:22:59

So I think mine is less of a question and more of a call for help. As a as a local government worker, it seems straightforward to question and pressure, the governments that have not made, you know, public announcements of investments hire people in their offices, or John big shine days. But I am asking, you know, I’ve challenging you all to pressure. So as municipalities and those decision makers that have publicly committed those dollars, or have stood up those offices and have made commitments, because a lot of times, those broadband office workers, we go round, and we promote the good that we’ve done, because that big dollar sign that also wasn’t enough to start with, we were probably only given a fraction of that. And now I’m on a campaign to get the rest of that. So yes, I only highlight the good things that we do. I only highlight the impact that we’ve had. But I promise you, there are a million challenges a million barriers that I’m facing. And you know, there’s a lot of things that I could but probably wouldn’t have my job tomorrow. So I can’t say it. So pressure, then ask them that dollar sign amount that you have on your article in your press conference. Where are you at with that? How much money have you actually get into that office? And in fact, sometimes you’d be surprised to see that it’s been taken back. And we you know, you can’t go out there and say that and you’d have to promote your program. So I just call to action on that. Please, please.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:24:28

Listen more, and I saw your

3

Speaker 3

1:24:31

Thanks, Chris. My name is Preston Ernie. First, I want to honor Dan’s willingness from the beginning to confront the board to confront power about the decisions about what wouldn’t be discussed in this conference, inaugurating productive conflict. And, and then secondly, I want to ask the room and I want to ask the panel, you know, what is the path to a digital equity digital injustice. You know, like a caucus in Congress? How do we look at the past several years where we had a $6 trillion potentiality for a build back better Bill reduced to another smaller trillion dollar potentiality for a build back better Bill reduced to an infrastructure only bill that at first had $100 billion listed for broadband, to then published with only $65 billion for broadband that also cut out explicit preference for, you know, community and municipal construction. What is the path that we need, so that those numbers are not eclipsed horizon ahead of us, but there will behind us, and that the power of the state is lifting or intersectional equity goals? By default? That’s

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:26:01

fine, you just get one last question in the audience here.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:26:05

Wow, okay. Wow, while you’re while you’re walking. So, yeah, I think that’s where it gets disheartening. And it’s hard because it’s like you watch that ladder to point gets smaller, and smaller and smaller and smaller as the points I’ll come on. Like, like for real. And I remember there was a line that was said that maybe we said on Twitter, or x or whatever. And it stuck out to me because it bothered me. And it was, we should keep ACP until we have a plan and command that bother me? Oh, my God, see, when I say now I get itchy. Because it’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, one if we don’t have a plan now than we ever, but fine. Let’s just say we don’t have a plan, let’s say collectively, we do not have a plan. All right. If we were to go to every single locality, and not think to the level of the allocation that someone predetermined, and said, No, no, no, no, we only have 20 million. So you got to think within 20. But other 20 You only get 10? No, no? How much do the problems cause for us our digital empowerment, and every one of our respective geographies everyone? How much does it cost? And I think that that’s where I would like, if there could be a charge for us all to do about legitimate mabie. Or we’re not thinking in this deficient manner. Because so many of the digital equity space, it’s from the nonprofit part of it. And the problem with that is nonprofits, very valiantly are used to working and deficits. So so much of that deficit operation, then goes into your perception on things. So as a result, you’re always going to ask for less in perpetuity, so then we all get less and perpetuity. So it’s like what happens if we remove the deficits and we say, okay, in order to bridge Elise disorder by, I don’t care what a map says that was, whatever. How much does it cost the British Phillies digital goodbye? How much does it cost the British Baltimore’s digital divide? How much does it cost to bridge Memphis digital divide? How much? And at that point, I would then say that is the formulation of a plan, and then we collectively organize off of those numbers. And then that’s the number that we all collectively agree on.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:28:20

operating cycle. Sorry.

S

Shana

1:28:24

I just quickly I’m way less inspirational. I think I say this, because I would say way more tactically, is like, who does Congress give a shit about? What first of all, where does Congress come from? States? Who does Congress give a shit about? Like they, from what I can tell, don’t really give a shit about individual constituents. Like they give a shit about what they’re hearing from state folks. So you know, even in California, where Congress people or whatever a diamond doesn’t mean that you can’t go in grocery store without running into a congressperson. Maybe even they’re the people like if we want to get a congress person to say something on our behalf, we have to get the mayors and county supervisors and the state legislators and the governor’s office even to like, go and be like, Come on, do something here. So, you know, less inspirationally at work kind of like fascinatingly. But I think more tactically, is we don’t get there at the congressional level or the federal level until we get there and more of the local, regional and state level.

2

Speaker 2

1:29:29

Um, first of all, I wanted to say thank you, this has been the most valuable session that I’ve attended today.

S

Shana

1:29:44

You should know that NDIA had a staff member outside of the door preventing people from funding including me, which is the reason why I’m going to ask my next question, how can we as attendees and as people pressure nvra He make sure that these underserved voices are present at this conference, like one person actually know us in the room and haven’t had the actual like, what is it a discounted internet program? You know, very few people that are impacted by the decisions that are made are present. But Verizon gets 30 minutes to get PR, how

Welcome to the Community broadband bits podcast. This is Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for local self reliance, just got a little bit of a weird thing in my head, my throat. So the voice is a little bit off, but doesn’t much matter. Because today, we’ve got a special recording for you that’s a little bit longer than our normal show, but I hope will provide some really valuable perspectives. This is a panel that I helped to run at the net Inclusion Conference by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. And we have some great voices, some of whom you will find familiar, we’re talking about digital equity. And this is a panel that we did that I’d use the hand recorder, and an engineer and a mat party helped me to clean it up. Well, he did the work cleaning it up to make it sound better. So I hope that you will enjoy that. This is a panel in which we cover challenges to digital equity, whether or not people are on track to achieve digital equity, you got 1300 people at this event. And I am start off the panel by noting that I am concerned that a lot of people are not on a path to achieve their goals. And so we talked about that and whether we can see the path to digital equity from our current strategies that are being used in the field. We also discussed the role of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, which has been crucial in helping digital inclusion efforts. But we talk about some of the

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:27

criticisms that that some people have. This panel comes about in part, because of NDAs decision to pull that conference out of Chattanooga, and to put it in Philadelphia, going from one of the best cities for digital inclusion in the world, to one that is run by Comcast and has a long way to go on toward digital equity. We talk about that more a little bit more toward the beginning. And then we focus more on what it will take to achieve digital equity toward the end. We also discussed some of the challenges and why the conference was moved because of the discrimination that some people feel because of their identity. And and a little bit about how that is changing in the world. So so we talked about a number of different issues. But I thought this is a really valuable conversation that I hope you will also get something out of

CM

Christopher Mitchell

2:18

I’m just just draw recorder on because I wanted to remember this since I cajoled these folks into joining the panel.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

2:27

I am Christopher Mitchell with the Institute for local self reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. And I’ve been doing this for 16 years community broadband networks work have been excited to be a part of NDIA

CM

Christopher Mitchell

2:42

we are working at the Institute for local self reliance is focused on recognition that not everyone was waiting to have high holiday internal access and that not everyone would necessarily have the capacity to use it absent some kind of focused community effort. And so we look at ways in which communities can make sure everyone is well connected. And I like to say gets the benefits of the network. That’s ultimately why we’re here. No one really cares at the end of the day of attraction. The question is, is it making your life better is it make giving more opportunities in the next generation, and that sort of thing. Today, I’m going to introduce the panel, we’re going to dive into it, I think this is going to be pretty lively.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

3:24

I like to to keep it moving. And so if someone has a question in the middle or wants to make a point, but most of the people that I know, here you have judgment. And so we’re gonna make really good points.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

3:39

And I don’t I don’t say that to discourage anyone. But I will be walking around the mic, as needed people have questions throughout, won’t still have a little bit of time at the end, I think to try and do some extra q&a. But if in the middle, you’re just like early on assets, go ahead. Yeah, I’ll take care. When, like, I just want to say like this, this panel, we’re not taking this lightly. We’re gonna have some fun, I’m sure. But for all of us, this is very serious. And we’re going to be talking about some serious things. Some of our friends may get criticized, some of Johnny’s may be criticized, I might get criticized. This is something that we think is terribly important, as we’ll be clear as we start going in terms of making sure that we are on a path to make sure everyone is well connected, and that we are able to ensure the benefits of the Internet are shared far and wide. So I just want to get that out there that we are. We’re taking this very seriously. Please do come in. If you’re standing outside, there are chairs all over the place over here. There’s still standing room in the back. There’s a lot of space. And if you could, if you don’t need to be on an aisle because you move on down and credible. It’s basically easier for folks to go. So let me start. We’re gonna do short introductions. And like I said But actually, I think of the five of us. I’m the only one who planned to come here, regardless of what this panel was accepted. And then I was I thought it was really important that we hear these voices. Because there’s something critical at times for some of the strategies that we use. So let me start by introducing Shayna Englin, director of the digital equity initiative at the California Community Foundation, and someone who I think is doing pathbreaking work, to building a strategy to actually make sure everyone in Los Angeles County is connected and even well beyond that. So Shana, tell us briefly why you’re here. Why you decide to make the trek across California, to come out here and

S

Shana

5:42

talk to us. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, as you said, Shayna Englin, I’m the director of the digital equity initiative at the California Community Foundation. In that role, I run programming and a grant making program. And as sort of as unavoidable volunteer projects, convene the digital equity la coalition through that also the statewide California Alliance for digital equity. Through that, and I see a number of folks who joined us for a meeting last week, good to see y’all are a couple of weeks ago now, and also have brought together a pooled fund of philanthropy from around the state to support technical assistance for nonprofits and local governments to engage in regulatory battles in at the CPUC, primarily, and at the FCC. And why am I here? Well, because Chris, you asked me to. And it’s just the first

CM

Christopher Mitchell

6:37

thought of the subject.

S

Shana

6:38

At first I thought about political power. No. So I come from a My My background is in political campaigns and political organizing. And I come to digital equity work through the lens that none of the other equity or justice that we fight for is possible. Without digital equity. Especially that’s been true for a really long time. Just a quick aside, I, my political background is in field organizing, I ran field campaigns for years and years and years. And I’m ancient. And so when I was running new campaigns, it was, you know, when I first started doing that, there really was no internet, you didn’t text people, you didn’t email people, like you went to people’s doors, you hosted house parties, you were in community. And then there was a campaign cycle. That was kind of the first one that everything really started to move to online work. And the expectation was less that you would have like a great list of organizers and you stopped having kind of like in person, precinct captains and things like that. And instead, you had email lists. And what we saw very quickly, really early in the course of one cycle, and the work that I was doing, was that that move, reduced by at least half the people that we were working with in certain communities, just like completely cut the amount of our communication or organizing and therefore also out of our policy work, our equity work or power work. And that was really my kind of pathway into digital equity work was because that seemed bad. And so that’s really the lens through which I approach this work. And not that I don’t think that that digital inclusion is important. I think that digital Navigators are important. I think all the work that we do is important. I also think that none of it is going to be effective if we don’t figure out power, and that’s politics. And

CM

Christopher Mitchell

8:37

Melanie silver Chief Operating Officer of intention company out of Chattanooga doesn’t even begin to get into all of the experience that you bring. Although I think Melanie is sitting here hoping that you will all have questions about broadband technology because that’s your specialty.

MS

Melanie Silver

8:57

That’s and how I transformed from Jeff milliner. Quite an upgrade. Very rich, we’re behind. Thank you, Chris. And, yeah, so my work is primarily I get to work in, you know, workplace culture and diversity, equity inclusion, so centered around, you know, meeting people where they are, but in a workplace environment, but that also comes with over a decade rooted in community. Not only grassroots organizations, but foundation work, just like shanann and so that one of the things that that comes up in that work is how do we bridge the digital divide. So, you know, why am I here today? Because, because Deb sosi asked me to be here today. And I, you know, I love I’m a queer person, like In the south, and that’s not always easy. And so digital equity is important for people like me and people in the trans community to have access to safety and community through digital spaces. Because we can’t, we don’t have the luxury of doing things, the good old fashioned way, because we might get fired from our jobs, or we, bad things can happen to us. And so those spaces are very important. And so I’m here to talk about that, as well as you know, that equity lens that that kind of gets brought to everything that that I get to do in my work.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

10:38

Thank you. So it’s a reminder for me that I approach this often from a strategic point of view, in terms of how do we achieve the goals that we’re trying to do, one of the things that that we’ll be touching on is how for some people, political power is important to be thinking about and organizing on just to make sure that they have the basic rights that people like me take for granted. Dan Ryan is the vice chair at the Enterprise Center, which is something that especially if you’re doing for a long time, because you you know all the history about the the EPB fiber and what’s been going on there and how to make sure that the community has done well. Before you start, I do want to say one of the things that as someone who has studied deeply the Chattanooga Fiber project, see, like people don’t always appreciate all of the work that has been done by people who had nothing to do with the fiber network for the network was built. And after it was built, it is truly something where the fighter has enabled a lot of new investment and benefits, but because of all kinds of people didn’t really care about the fiber. And so it when you’re looking around, and you’re trying to figure out how can we be another Chattanooga, we’ll plan on 10 years of preparatory work, building a whole lot of coalitions and then being effective at coming up with cool plans and executing them afterward. Thanks.

S9

Speaker 9

11:56

And then Ryan, the Vice Chair at the Enterprise Center. I’ve been actually working on EPV projects since a year before it was announced. Mike, I was a web developer by trade. My agency was doing the website for the secret project that DPB so we got to beta test it not app. So like, yeah, it’s been since before it was ever announced, we were doing it. I’m a queer non binary person, I use he she they pronouns interchangeably. So take your pick. I think I’m here primarily because this is not in Chattanooga, which is where it was, it was moved because Tennessee passed some anti trans legislation. And politics got involved. And that’s not what anybody wants to talk about, or think about about why it is here. But this is not where it was meant to be this year. And we got asked to come to make sure that that wasn’t silenced. But this is also not the panel I was meant to be on. I was meant to be on a panel to talk about being doing this work when you are in a marginalized community and your life is politicized. But they didn’t want that panel happening either. So they took the word politics and threw me with this Kirk threw out a lot of them super are like, but let’s be real, like, there’s not a narrative they want to talk about here today. This is what I’m gonna focus on at a time, we just want to talk about what had happened. Can I just ask who they is? In the Age board? Okay.

S9

Speaker 9

13:19

I want to be specific. Yes, sir. That’s great. I appreciate that. Thank

CM

Christopher Mitchell

13:22

you for that question. Yes, this could be the best Frankenstein monster that has ever been. Joshua Edmonds doesn’t want any instructions from digital seeing. Does anyone here not know who? All right, all right, Joshua, aliens, ratio reasons.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

13:48

So Leon got Joshua into this working fleet, when Tasha went to Detroit and do really important work, learn a lot about politics had an opportunity to come back to Cleveland and make a real difference with an awesome organization called Digital. See, there’s a whole podcast on it that’s coming out in two weeks. Talking about that. So welcome, Joshua.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

14:06

Well, thank you. And similar to what everyone else is saying. I also wasn’t coming to this. And it’s not because I don’t find this conference, or even engagement valuable. I mean, this has actually been like a very, very nice family reunion, minus the smell of barbecue because there wasn’t a smell of barbecue. However, it was a very nice family reunion, and that there’s been a lot of you all that I’ve been able to see since the beginning. And what I mean, the beginning, you all remember, when getting a hotspot and getting a computer and doing some training. That was it. I mean, that was digital inclusion if you did that, but you were far ahead of the curve. And, you know, it’s great to see how far we call them. But it’s also necessary now that we’re having this conversation, how far we have to go and, you know, really undergirds some of the stuff that we’ve seen even with basically seeing the freeze, seeing kind of where we might have missed the marks and some things, I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight what I see someone like GG song not see the incredible work that she’s doing now. But what I’ll be honest, what she should have been doing had the organization and the political power of and actually, you know, in place in the way they needed to be. But see, that’s just a microcosm of the example that many of us on on the local part, we also feel those ramifications too. And so, you know, today I’ll be sharing a little bit more about the political experience that happened in Detroit, where you know, the stuff that we wanted to do, I know did swear, solder the first swear word today, guys. So it’s like, you know, municipal broadband.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

15:55

You know, we were pushing for municipal broadband. And that really catapulted us into the political fight. And we had to, there was no choice but to lean into a lot of those organizing tactics. And now that I’m over in Cleveland, it’s very similar work. And so you know, today, I just wanted to talk much more about how we need to scale that and that, yes, all these other conversations that we’re having that are happening even simultaneous to this panel, they’re important. But what we can’t do is we can’t skip past some of these things that make us maybe a bit uncomfortable when we say political Yes. And you know, going to that like that, that land or that realm of you know, the equity side of visual equity, or with an actual emphasis on equity, and doing that in an honest way. And so that’s more so what I want to talk about today.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

16:51

All right, so the way that I wanted to kick this off, and this will be a conversation that pops around quite a bit, and there’s some parts of it, some people might be more engaged, and then a pull them anymore. And other parts which are more engaged and less engaged, is that I can’t shake the feeling that when I walked in that room, upstairs this morning yesterday, that there’s a lot of people out there doing really good work, but that we are not on a path to winning, we are not on a path to achieving our goals. And not only that, I think if the pandemic, the virus will mutate significantly over the summer, resulting in everyone agree that schools cannot be open in the fall. I think 90% of the people who did not have internet access in the autumn, in 2020, will not have home internet access in 2024. Being the school leader, we have squandered a historic opportunity. Even though people are doing really hard work that’s really important. We have missed some key parts. And I want to just wrestle with that a little bit to start off with what that means about whether we are on the right track, to achieve our goals and what we might be missing, that we need to do in order to achieve our goals. If you’re just gonna normal us to jump in on any hands, I’m gonna take the shame right away.

S

Shana

18:10

I’ll just I’ll just start to get this conversation about like if we were going to allow that.

S

Shana

18:21

But actually, that’s probably a reasonable summation that my initial feeling about that, given that we’re not anywhere where I can just post emojis, like the like that emoji. But I mean, Chris, as you know, like, I agree, and I think the boat that we missed several big boats. One, we missed a systems change boat, right? Like there has been so much money. So I’m here from Los Angeles are the Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest in the country has spent $100 million to date and like, I spent a lot more than that. But to date 100 million of the digital divide dollars that they spent was in paying subscriptions for families to get online to either charter or AT and T so in LA charter is our monopoly provider, and that there’s a little bit of overlap with at&t charter I’d read a first refusal than at&t did not get particularly good rates for that and did not have anything in that that said if we have a family who needs to get online, you that you don’t serve yet you’ll serve them. So $100 million in two years, to not be able to get every family that every LAUSD is doing that wasn’t connected because something like 15 to 20% of the addresses that they forwarded to charter and then AT and T they could not serve $100 million imagine Two things. One, even if we could have served all of those kids with that 100 million dollars with those expensive subscriptions, that’s over, there’s not another 100 million dollars for that. So all of those families are disconnected again, fun to imagine what else we could have done with that. I imagine LAUSD partnering with say the city of LA bureau of street lighting to tap into streetlight dark fiber, or Department of Water and Power, or partnering to build natural networks or any number of systems solutions, as opposed to continuing to write big checks to charter in a TNT. And that’s not to even talk about the 10s of millions of dollars and Verizon hotspots that are turned up didn’t actually work, because a bunch of our families who give weren’t covered live in apartment buildings that are built out of cinder blocks. And those hotspots just don’t work in there. So

MS

Melanie Silver

20:56

I,

S

Shana

20:58

I totally agree with you, Chris. I think like a big, a big sort of piece that we’ve missed was system change opportunity. And we focused on more of the same. And I think the second thing about that is that, in doing that, we’ve missed an opportunity to do that power building and organize. Right, there is nothing like a crisis to actually build some power, and to build some community and to build some community capacity and understanding around how power works. And by being like, no, no, we’re gonna, like, yeah, ACP and much, they’ll spray more and more public checks to these companies, rather than do anything else. We missed that opportunity to organize and do power building, I don’t think it’s gone, I think we still have that opportunity. I actually think with ACP going away. And again, we all knew it was going to for quite some time. But with ACP going away, there’s another kind of opportunity to actually do that organizing and capacity building and power building. If we can figure out how not to get her.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

22:03

I want to see who else was a comment. But I also want to warn the audience. This is not all doom and gloom. So if you came here, for 90 minutes of doom and gloom, we’re not going to do that. We are going to start off there.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

22:19

I always want to add something I’m sharing. So, yes, with respect to the systems, I mean, there are votes that we’ve missed. And I would even argue, if we just really focus on ACP for a second, and obviously we’re gonna acknowledge ACP being the child of EBV, or the mercy of Bob and benefit. And by nature, that was an emergency response, a crisis response to affordability. So with a crisis response, how long do you plan on having an emergency? All right in so if it’s an emergency, that’s instant, right? Like I am, I need this now our families need this net. So you got it. Then we had a program, great VCP as its ending, the thing is, what maybe irks me sometimes is when we begin talking about equity, it comes with at least the people who are maybe I’m going to do the best way I can say all caps equity and italicized lowercase. Because it’s like the all caps equity. We’re looking at ACP and look at something like that, and say, Great, that’s the immediate relief. But what’s the long term plan? And in many cases, we actually know what that is already made your own communities. You know what that is? And there’s almost some times like this, while what satiable to be set, what is something that could pass the smell test that’s digestible for enough people that’s not going to ruffle enough feathers? So therefore, that must be good enough? And I think like that good enough, is the part that would really it riles me up a bit? Because I think about the parallel between digital equity, racial equity and gender equity, and take your pick if there’s any other equities I did miss or that I missed. And in no way would you settle for good enough. Any of those either? I absolutely would. And it’s February, so I knew I would have other people February. Yeah, it’s February. You’re gonna rehab it’s already already here, Mike. But the point is, the point is, I would I would settle for this. And I think that when we are looking at this, it’s not a that’s, that’s poopoo on the momentum that we have. But rather, it’s a question that we have to ask ourselves, do we deserve more? And if the answer is a resounding yes, and we know we do. Well, now we have an obligation to push a more pushing. It’s Yes, it’s our people at the state level as people in this room. It’s people who are respected people who are listening, you got to push everybody. And when that doesn’t happen And what it looks like to people on the outside looking in, is we are a unified group who is crying over ACP nd. And that’s what optically looks like. But it doesn’t look like go group as actually demanding long term solutions on the ground. And who’s not afraid to call out a provider for digitally redlining a community. Or it’s not afraid to say to the FCC, hey, look, your digital redlining stuff doesn’t have any any restorative justice, justice components to it. There’s nothing about this that looks at the past. It’s your redlining. All it is is a very currently we can say those things. And it’s okay, it’s required for us to do that. And I think that we’re missing the requirements of just basic equity and standing up and calling people out. And as a result of this, we then get lowercase italicized equity. And for anyone else who’s looking at this for the all caps equity, we’re like, this is incongruent, why are you using the word equity?

CM

Christopher Mitchell

25:55

I want to pick up all night. related comment building off of that, which is, I will defend all day long that Comcast is beat bastes of the big monopoly national companies that Comcast has hired people who feel in the core that they want to use some of the power that Comcast has to connect people, Comcast unlimited essentials, has done more than all the other big companies combined. Comcast has also made sure that 1000s of people in Chattanooga are not connected 10s of 1000s, perhaps hundreds of 1000s, around Chattanooga, had DSL or satellite because Chattanooga is a municipal network. And Comcast doesn’t want to see that expand to areas where Comcast is not interested in serving. And so we’re going to be a little critical of Comcast, but I also just want to know that it’s complicated and my outline of Comcast and the sponsor, but I also want to be clear and call it an out that like in Chattanooga, I want you to explain this and then one, whatever she wanted, but Comcast is literally sitting at the state preventing PD from connecting people hold him the city in the county and outside of the county.

S9

Speaker 9

27:01

Does anyone know who’s Senator Marsha Blackburn? Does anyone know that she got their Senate seat because Comcast paid for it because she carried their water in the state legislature. She got EBVs footprint that’s our local ISP locked at where it launched and it can never expand. We have counties all around us. Yeah, counties all around us ask him to come to service here. We are not allowed to, we can expand inside their footprint where there are gaps. But I earlier today, when you were doing your panel, sign the check for 18 grand to Verizon for hotspots this month, because we have 700 families that are on Verizon hotspots who live in the middle of Chattanooga Hamilton County, in an area ABB is not allowed to serve and can’t run new lines to because of all his politics, right. So we have a very different takes on odd Comcast, mark them off of my benefit. The analogy that popped in my head a couple days ago thinking about this very topic with him being the sponsor at that conference that they weren’t before it moved to Philadelphia. It’s like asking a rattlesnake that bit you to provide your emergency care that we can extract the good and the bad for the rattlesnake to solve the problem. But the snakes are not trained or qualified or able to save us. It is against their interest. They will just keep biting you while you sit there. So take the money from Comcast when they want to give it but do understand that their digital equity budget is net negative. Yeah. Right. Like we were talking about numbers before this today. 2.7 5 billion he got thrown around a lot yesterday and thought is six weeks profit for Comcast. It’s three weeks when you add charter into the mix. That’s profit. They also spent what 25 billion on lobbying? Oh

S

Shana

29:02

164. So by 2023 at the federal

S9

Speaker 9

29:07

federal lobbying was 164 billion million, 1 million, 1 million. Who right like to say that. That’s not in their profit statement. That’s a business expense. So they’re not paying taxes on the money they’re using to fight our programs. Like it’s just a circle. And it’s why we have to get real power to like, take the systems on and trying to change the systems. Like I’ve been doing this in Chattanooga, I’ve lived there for 25 years, I’ve been working on this pretty hardcore for about a dozen. And like it’s just been eye opening every day. And like I love the work we do because we work get to see all the people we work with and like you could hear these impacts. Like that’s where it’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen from the top down. They have no incentive to fix this problem. We have to stand up for ourselves and organize and stand together and fix it.

MS

Melanie Silver

30:03

And, you know, I would just add that recognizing that these systems are in place because they were built to be here, just like this. And dismantling them is something that can only happen from the inside. And we only us only only the people in this room and people like us. Because Because we’re in them, and we understand how to navigate them. And so, you know, this comes up a lot of times when we going to corporations into organizations, talking about creating a culture of belonging. And, you know, we, we run into systems that are in place for a reason, and a lot of times is systems that are in place for the reason was because a lot of the Boomers coming out of management MBA school, were trained and taught to not engage with employees as people don’t ask, what your race why you’re, you know, who you are, what your story is, we don’t we don’t hear that, right. But now, the workplace requires the Gen Z, that are up and coming that are soon going to be managers and the leaders of organizations, why we have, you know, ESG programs in Comcast and Verizon, and these companies because they have to recruit and retain workers, they’re, they’re saying, This has to be here, or we won’t work here. So it’s only going to grow as the generation shifts and leaders shift. And we identify these systems that are in place that are now broken, and we redo them.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

31:48

Hello, and before we go on to talk a little bit more about what political power might look like and how to achieve it. I do want to make sure that Dan and Valerie in particular have a chance. It wasn’t good. Melanie, it’s Jeff. Having a chance to talk about something that I think everyone should know, which is just to be clear. How welcoming is Chattanooga for people who don’t identify as straight? Are you straightening? Oh, God, no. No,

MS

Melanie Silver

32:25

yeah, maybe they’re,

CM

Christopher Mitchell

32:27

I feel like I was put out there. I feel like the reputation of Chattanooga was besmirched, and I want to give you a chance as people who love it and live there to say a word about it.

S9

Speaker 9

32:37

Great, yeah, that’s nice. It’s complicated. Like I I’m a big outdoor person, I love hiking and like all that and like, when I’m in the city of Chattanooga, I’m pretty okay. Like, I don’t I don’t worry too much. I have had the Deputy Sheriff put his hand on his gun when I pulled out a pride Debit Card to pay at a gas station in rural Tennessee when I was hiking. never said a word just looked at me put his hand on his gun. I’m probably not alone in that kind of vibe in this room. Right. I’m never not thinking about it. Like that is the thing that not everyone has to deal with. I had to ask a lawyer last year, I have painted toenails. Is that a drag show? If there’s kids on the sidewalk, I go into jail. And they had to tell me we don’t know. Do you want to be the one who finds out in court? And I absolutely did not. Right. Like, I don’t want to be on Fox News league or anybody else does. It sucks. So nowhere is safe. For queer people and trans people. There are places that are safer. I don’t know the Philadelphia is safer. The Chattanooga I’m not qualified to say so. I’ll say that. And I do think lumping all of us together by what gerrymandered minority government did to us in Tennessee, it was in thrown out by the courts and has never been enforced. We could use all your help down himself. Right. And instead you’re here to be helped here to not have to be are all going to be those all together. Right. You talked about being in the south I think a lot of times the south just gets written off. It’s like it’s unsavable CDC latest census on queer population is we are the South is the most dense queer population in the country. 16%, which is roughly 16 million people are queer in the South. That is bigger than the Northeast that is bigger than the west coast by dint like per capita. You’re on his writing off a few people in the mountains. You’re writing off millions and millions of people and they help connect these programs. So I think that’s probably enough on that one. Yeah, Red Flags.

MS

Melanie Silver

35:02

Mostly I get more than normal

MS

Melanie Silver

35:08

I remember taking a sea trip to West Virginia, and I look the way I look on purpose, I want to make sure that I, I’m very clearly we’re a person. It’s not something that I that I hide, or that I want to, that I’m ashamed of. But I remember we were on the ski trip, and I, you know, I’m covered up in clothes as a cold. And I thought, you know, or something happens, and I have to be rescued. Like, I think in a rescue me. Yeah, I cuz I’m not, you know, and I think, you know, I say all that to say, because we, we, again, it’s, it’s recognizing that we are being polarized in, in our lives, in our news consumption, in our, in our churches, in our community groups, there, there, there. There are so many facets of our lives that are 99.9%, the same, we are the same. And yet, and we categorize things because it’s human nature. And it’s it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s how we assess threats and, and how we survived as humans. But we are activated by by fear, and we are we are polarized and we have to figure out how we can just like, appreciate each other for who we are. And the South is heels a little further behind than the rest of the country having lived that foreigner race, why growth multicultural experts to so many different cultures and people and and, and the South is different. And you know, we choose to be there, we recognize that, that it’s a choice for us to live there. And it’s always during election season, when I really get what I really get angry, because because that’s when, you know, my rights are potentially being taken from me by a polarized group of people that I love, that just don’t know that this is happening to them. They don’t know that, that they’re being separated, instead of being pulled together. And so if each of us could just approach conversations with curiosity and ask questions and come together, instead of being a part of this system, that is putting us farther apart. We can do a lot, just all of us each.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

37:45

And since the Lean Startup there Melanie Silva. I want to talk about political power at different levels, because I feel like to some extent, we’re like lead political power. Yeah. Where do we get that? All right? Well, we need different kinds of political power to achieve different kinds of things along the way to achieving our shared goals. So I don’t know who wants to jump in. But let’s talk about different political power at different levels to achieve our shared goals.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

38:16

This back a little bit for you.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

38:17

Yeah, thank you. So it’s interesting. When I first moved to Detroit, that was January 2019. So obviously, before the pandemic, and at that time, director of digital equity and inclusion for the city of Detroit. And, you know, digital inclusion wasn’t co-signed, because in the way that it is now because there wasn’t a pandemic. And so when I went in, people thought I was the Director of Diversity and Inclusion, which I’m like, No, I’m not. And it’s interesting, because when you’re going in to a city government, and even the people within the city, the mayor, ultimately, they didn’t understand this up either. And so you’re going in to understand, not validated, I wasn’t from Detroit, so no one knew me. So it’s like, what are you going to do? What type of political power, if any, are you going to be able to wield in that case, you had to start grassroots, because at that point, I could show a unified constituency, which would then influence the municipal government, specifically, you would be able to influence the council layer, which would then allow the mayor to then be supportive or whatever I did. And he saw that was the strategy at the onset, get validation as much as possible from the grassroots. Then over time, in order to do the fundraising that was necessary. Again, we didn’t have our but we didn’t have infrastructure jobs. I didn’t have any of that stuff. So all the maybe Oh gee, digital equity practitioners, you were fundraisers, everyone that was her job to fundraise. And so we had to do a lot of fundraising. And at that time, it was grass tops. And one of the things that I was able to do was just, I’ll be honest, people might remember, but I was calling out a lot of the federal leaders at that time. Because in calling them out one, I felt like that was necessary to call them out. The result, as a result of that result was calling them out, they would oftentimes either book trips to Detroit directly, which then led to external validation, which then was able to start the connection point between the grassroots and grasstops. With that then resulted in with a clear pathway from the resident who maybe I went to I went to their church I spoke or whatever, maybe they were coming to some of our neighborhood technology hubs or whatever we were doing. So we’re able to go from the grassroots, whatever the complaints, were, then cycling through Council through the mayor’s office, through our state, and then all at the federal level, we kept doing that over and over and over again. And as a result, you had a machine. And that machine allowed you whether you needed additional fundraising, additional support, or digital storytelling, or if you wanted to hold someone accountable, you then were able to then pull the punch with all of your mind as a municipal government. The time when that mattered the most was when we switched from being I would say, even by my own admission, the italicized digital equity, to the all caps digital equity, when there was a 45 day internet outage in Detroit, and they hold the other neighborhood by TNT. And for 45 days, those residents didn’t have internet, they didn’t have voice. And it got brought to light. And that’s what we said, Our infrastructure is unstable. And since the providers, we can’t trust you, because when we did trust you this is what happened. We believe it is in the interest of the municipality to serve our people best. And so as a result, we did that. And then that’s when all of those political relationships matter the most, because the tax tactics that they use was they began attacking every every thing that they could. They weren’t at, you know, my credibility. They weren’t at our offices, credibility. And even people that have working for Detroit at the time, they wanted as many ways as possible. Whenever we were doing a community event, somehow a hit piece would come out that same day, that same morning, whenever we were doing any type of outreach or engagement, somehow there’d be some type of messaging that would go out, it was just very, very methodical. But at the same time, when I was able to see it, that moment, was the grassroots organizing could counteract the grass tops, you know, media campaigns that they have run. And so those same stories over and over and over again, once you have that full political spectrum built out, once you have that machine built out, you’re essentially protected. And you got to do the work that ensuring that that stays in tech, you got to keep people engaged, keep people organized. But every single one of those layers I couldn’t do, we couldn’t do it without anyone that was missing. And so as a result of that we were able to survive enough, there was a digital tactics that we did. But again, we had to rely on every layer and level of government all the way down to the non governmental actors, like a voter, or even a non voter who are still within the political atmosphere. And everyone played a role and you couldn’t discount anybody. Because if you did, it came down to a game of inches. And the inch that we lost was essentially what killed a project. And so that would just be the thing that from my experience working in municipal government, that you need every single one, because that’s going to protect your interest as well. A lot of these people do not have the ability to stand alone. And we all know this, when you all go back to your respective geographies, digital equity, you’re still in an island. Yeah, you might have a coalition. But if you’re a decision maker, you’re like one of five who’s actually making decisions, everybody else is working with you. But it’s just it’s you and Nick. And so as a result of that, you got to make sure that whatever you’re building, like you have people who are around you can actually protect you because if not, it will fall apart. And these providers or anyone who’s who’s lobbying against you will start picking you off, and they will ruin your credibility, or at least they’ll attempt to and that’s exactly what we saw happening in Detroit.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

43:59

That was pretty all encompassing.

S

Shana

44:02

And terrifying. Plus 1000, to all of that, I’ll speak from personal experience and, and we had talked about this before, the moment you step out of your lane of inclusion and, and literacy and basically, and they love it when we fight for ACP. As soon as you step out of those lanes. It gets dark. I’ll tell you that. I my own personal history has come back at me from elected officials that charter lobbyists have been in touch with I will tell you that people in my family their jobs have been threatened because they were for organizations that are partly funded by some of these ISPs. It does get very dark and the reason that that is okay, first of all, I have on a pit of bottomless rage and so if you buy I mostly and because my skin is this color, and I look like this. And so I have also a well, privileged male to fight back at that. And I’m very clear on that. But truly, it’s because we have built this cross sectoral cross geography of very anyway and a coalition, I think you have capital, all capitals equity, we also have all capitals and lowercase, italicized light gray font coalition to Yes. And what we have is big, bold, all caps coalition, then we have each other’s backs. And we have built that power and that trust and that actual organizing relationship to do that. And there’s someone out there remember, I’m not going to call her name, but she should actually probably be sitting up here instead of me, that entire coalition has actually come under threat, but has done the same thing and has built that, that, that strong kind of base, so yes to all of that. And then I would also just say, and again, this probably ages me. But we should all go back and read Solomon’s these 10 rules. It’s it’s real here, right? Find ways that you can win together, however big or small, because winning begets winning, and it when it looks like power and His power. And so really kind of building around that. So identify where is the what are the structures that you need? So whether it’s Council or the mayor’s office, or in our case, like the Department of Water and Power, or the legislature, or the governor’s office, or the Public Utilities Commission, and figure out, you know, okay, this is where we need different decisions to be made. Where what do they care about? What influences them? What do they consider power? And how do we get into those spaces? And then would also just say that no power is too small. I mean, we talked about Marsha Blackburn. But here’s the other thing that we know, and I can’t remember the latest statistic, but the percentages of people who are in Congress that were in state legislatures that before that were in council or school board is astonishing. Almost nobody first runs for Congress or Senate. Some people do, but almost nobody does. And so the person who is your, you know, freshman city council member, who maybe has no power right now is, you know, somewhat likely to be your the Congress person or agency head or something moving forward. So it’s never too soon to indicate them that brought them up.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

47:51

CF is a unique entity. So make sure that groups that are stepping into the drycleaning stepping up on digital equity, have some capacity to do allies. You can say a word about that. But also, can you give any examples of where groups haven’t had that same level of support and have been able to build a coalition?

S

Shana

48:09

Sure. So the California Community Foundation, that’s a digital equity initiative that that I ran started as a three year project is now a five year project. And, yeah, I’m extremely lucky in that CCF is a systems change Foundation, obviously find the director versus work and things like that, but does so entirely through the lens of systems change. And has both in our former, our former president and CEO, was a civil rights attorney and had been at CCF for 20 years. But before that was at MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, so how to this kind of political and power lens already, and then our newest co president to kind of has the same and so and our borders, situated that all of that kind of stuff. So we actually have the political lens, and have the kind of independence to be able to operate in this space. And a very clear eyed focus on systems change. And so I’m able to run a grant program and have been now raising additional money. So we can continue to do that without having been compromised by ISP funding and allow some of our grantees to stop being compromised by our reliance on ISP funding to be able to do that, and part of our mission is to also situate this coalition for ongoing sustainability in that way. And then in terms of some of the other groups around the state and and elsewhere that is kind of have supported, I guess I’ll call it kind of technical assistance and building in this way that haven’t had that. Again, there’s other folks in the room. They give me the high sign up what you do them, if you who I think have a ton of really direct experience on this, but it has been it’s just like a Different kinds of slog, right. So it’s in the same way that our coalition then were kind of our our focus has been has been not actually to identify digital equity and digital inclusion organizations and trying to convince them to do political work. Although there’s been a little bit of that it’s been more like finding the organizations that already do that. Right. So what are the organizations that are already working in health justice, or climate justice, or housing justice, that’s been a big one, obviously, education justice, but you know, who are the organizations that already have a political lens that already do power building, and that have also through lived experience, a very real understanding of how digital equity gets in the way of their mission. And digital inequity gets in the way of their mission. And so to kind of build that together. And so they come with kind of a base of sustainability because they get funded, to do their education work to do their healthcare, work, etc. And then, I ESPYS don’t usually care about that, unless you’re also doing ACP, or something like that. So it’s been kind of a strategic kind of finding where there is sustainability already around power.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

51:12

Political power.

MS

Melanie Silver

51:14

Yeah. Okay. The thing that comes to mind for me is, you know, you had talked about digital equity used to be getting people online, right event, it was getting people online, with devices, and now it’s getting people online with devices, and skills, training and resources. Dan and I were talking earlier about what if that’s a circle, and we were getting people online, with devices, with skills training, and then connected back into their community? Are we registering them to vote? Are we providing them with nonpartisan civic engagement and education? Chattanooga has a platform called Shadow matters, where you, you can learn about your city council and how it works. And it’s just an email engagement. For other forms email, Tik Tok you to use the TIC TOCs. Or to all the the community component is, is is part of this right? And that’s how we’re gonna get to sustainable long term change is getting plugged back into our communities through technology. And so, you know, kind of also thinking through this, you know, we’ve talked about organizing a good bit. How can we build digital equity into things like community benefits agreements, where we’re building out infrastructure and municipalities and states that we can if we’re going to build cevin, because in the process of building, potentially building a new minor league baseball stadium and massive construction along with that, but But it’s in right borders up against a neighborhood that might get all get pushed out from this development.

53:12

But my,

MS

Melanie Silver

53:15

my, but there’s, there’s a grassroots community organizing organization that’s stepping in and saying, Hey, we’re gonna need to set up a community benefits agreement with this neighborhood, the surrounding neighborhoods to make sure that these people are going to be served by this investment. This is not going to just be a top down decision that affects all of these communities. So how can we build digital equity into these processes into these community engagements that whether they happen or not, whether they might or not, but anything you want to add?

S9

Speaker 9

53:52

Totally agree, I mean, having those CPAs in place was like super important, and we should be trying as much as we can. I have other issues with billing and understanding the challenges related to this conversation. But we’ve always been like, nibbling around this thing. I think I just want to say clearly, like, digital equity isn’t the end game with Justice Liberation’s the end game, but like, this is part of the path, right? So like, it takes all of this stuff, and like, the thing I just think about all the time is like, we can’t win this fight if like, we’re gonna You’re winning their fight, if we’re organizers are winning their fight, like we gotta have each other’s backs and work together. And like, one of the things you’ve talked about a lot as we prep for this panel, it’s like, part of why we want everybody connected as connected. That means they can organize, right and like, particularly the trans community, like it’s such a small group of people, they’re gonna often geographically close, like having that online connection to find support and find help is critical, like health care, mental health care, just community at all. And like, I mean, a discord chat with a bunch of people for mutual aid. In store Jada, like, a couple of weeks ago, this mom hopped out with like, My daughter just told me that she’s trans and like, I’m super excited and super nervous. And like three other moms of trans kids jumped in and like, talked her through it. And it’s like, they will never meet in real life. But she all like instantly had community, because they were in there organizing around economic justice. And when she needed help, she got it, it was just awesome to just sit back and watch that conversation happen. And like, Oh, she’s going to be great. Let’s get this doctor and like, this is what it’s gonna be like, like call if you need help, and like, whatever my family, like, if we didn’t do this work to have these connections for these people like, that wouldn’t have happened. And there’s another scared mom, or scared kid and trans outcomes often are suicide. So like, just seeing that maybe there’s an off ramp here for this kid that’s happy is awesome. Like, that’s why we’re doing this work right like that, it gets so easy to get bogged down in the fight, to forget to look at the chimneys on top of the buildings and see where we’re heading.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

56:04

An example that I think about is a moment when I was thinking about like, as I’m required to do by some funders, what does it look like to really win? And we’ll see, well, how do we get new chairman as high quality of access? Well, not going to happen to people are living in a campus where they’re moving around constantly looks like housing solution is a school district, right? By right by my house. 33% of the kids don’t have stable housing throughout the entire year, they’re on a house that part of the year. And my son went to that school for a year. And it’s a lot of worst schools in Minnesota, which is still pretty good. And the teachers were amazing resources were amazing. And it struck me, you know, most of the discussion about school policy I learned is not about how we fix the schools. It’s about all the stuff outside of the schools that’s causing the problems. And so similarly wrong, and we’re trying to be too focused on that record, record. My frame, I’m struggling with post nasal drip. Sir Lee. The anyway, just the fact that these are related. And I will ask your question in a second, I’m giving you a warning. I’ve got a great question that come back if no one has one. But I do want to ask Dan, in particular, I’m sure it’s if anyone else has an answer. I sometimes fear that the discussions about how these things are intersectional leads to a paralysis, where we’re like, well, we can’t do anything unless we’re doing everything. So how do we wrestle with that?

S9

Speaker 9

57:34

Absolutely. But the key is just coalition building partnerships. We don’t need to do everything we are doing if they were gonna, like, I’m a software developer by trade. I ran Obama’s reelect web team in 2012. That’s kind of what got me a little bit of notoriety in the space and got a voice in a room. That’s where I can lend my voice. Like, I don’t understand housing justice enough to be in that room. But I know that they need sort of what we do, and we need their networks like, so. Yeah, don’t get paralyzed, like understand that we’re not going to solve it all. You can’t solve it all. That’s a really perverse place to be mentally, anyway, it’s only going to happen in community in tandem. And then like, everyone does the work they’re good at and hopefully, that’s the idea. Yeah,

MS

Melanie Silver

58:20

and we see this a lot in the workplace, where you have large organizations with employee resource groups that are all focused on early group professionals, or for queer, black, you know, Latinos, whatever dimension of diversity that feels like they need that extra support to feel like they belong at your organization. A lot of them can feel overwhelmed with some of the programming that they want to do, or the all the things they want to talk about, or all the things they want to implement, and work with HR on. And we, if they can just rely on each other, the leaders of those groups and work together and share planning and share certain responsibilities. They’re able to do so much more when they work together. And so I agree, Dan, I think it’s it’s partnerships in what we’re talking about. Right? And, and having those those those people that have your back, because they haven’t a similar shared fight, or shared experience in the space.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

59:18

Question. Whoa, man, y’all gotta keep it queer.

1

Speaker 1

59:26

So I have a question about kind of question. Good statement, one partner that I haven’t heard mentioned at all that can be a huge boon to building political power, historically has been us is labor. And now I understand there’s, oh, there’s a two way street. Fair Labor has to reach out and be part of that conversation as well. I’m here for an employer. I want to add to the tenor of this conversation, but I’m also late. So if you guys found any partners in that realm, CWA IBEW, Cleveland, I’m Midwestern boy, too, and we went for

JE

Joshua Edmonds

59:58

about an hour Yeah. Okay, so yeah,

1:00:01

have you found any partners? Have you started building relationships?

S

Shana

1:00:06

with CWA, SEIU and IBEW all three, there’s obviously complicated politics between that amongst them. And so it’s been sort of interesting to navigate that. But yes, in different spaces in different times where we’ve been able to stand in the middle of that a little bit, or in some cases, even kind of help be appraised for some critical thinking happen. It’s been incredible. And I would say the other place that that’s been useful has been informally, so you know, where it’s like, wow, like, the logo hasn’t taken a position on this. And, and there’s a bunch of other like leadership, things going on, and whatever else, but you know, what, like, we are going in and like looking at these cabinets in all these buildings, that unnamed company is claiming is totally deserved with upgrading technology, and like, well, we’re in there, we’ll shoot you a quick picture. And stuff like that. That’s been incredibly valuable.

2

Speaker 2

1:01:08

Hey, remember the granite by around and thank you so much. It’s such an important and beaded conversation. I just wanted to name something. Which is like, it’s great for us to all get together and be in unity. That conflict is part of that. Michonne Hannah sosman, who many of you know who’s an amazing organizer, and has been like leading leaning into what comfortable means and what happens when there’s conflict at the grassroots or between the grassroots to municipal levels. And I want to just name, you know, Tennessee, there’s the southern Connected Communities project, which isn’t mountains, and they don’t have the political power, the Chad Vinca has access to the Detroit digital Justice Coalition, going way back with the principles of access participation, common ownership and healthy communities, both mesh networks, and even fiber in three parts of the city. These are trailblazers, and they’re working at a very small scale and relatively so, you know, in between these are layers, right? They’re misaligned incentives. So how do we acknowledge that and lean into conflict so that we can

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:02:22

unify? Pretty much? Yeah, I think it’s great to call out the conflicts too. Because yes, harmony, or rather, it’s just a consensus is the hardest thing to reach in any equation? You know, sometimes I’ll do this little exercise where I ask people do use pineapple belong on pizza. And overwhelmingly it does, but people somehow find ways to disagree with that. And the point is, you know, on weighing really look at this, I think that there is there’s always room to grow. I would say that anyone who’s doing this work at the community level, it requires a significant degree of introspection. And oftentimes, I can reminisce on the times when I didn’t do things the right way, either, that I didn’t print things, and it’s those our thoughts are like, dang it. And you’ll you’ll look back on that. And, you know, I think that there’s a simultaneous kind of back and forth that has to happen, where it’s like, look, we have to move forward, because we have to move forward that we cannot be paralyzed. But at the same time, it does require a persistent and consistent acknowledgement, when expectations are misaligned. And sometimes that’s not as sexy to do when you are invigorated by a vision when you see a fight in front of you. And you know, you’re going to get oh, yeah, I mean, for me, at least, I mean, my ears get hot, and I’m like, oh, yeah, we’re ready to fight. And so people are like, Well, hold on, hey, and it’s worth acknowledging the hold ons and the A’s, too. And I think that sometimes when you get these, again, he’s very visionary things that you’d be like, Okay, we’re ready. Some of those times it gets lost. And I think that’s a part of the requirement that requires us even when you know what you’re doing, you’re supposed to be doing, you’re feeling like that’s purpose driven. It still does require you to bring as many people if not everybody with you. And oftentimes I can look at ways that I didn’t do that. And that is a that’s just more of an acknowledgement. I would say that for everybody doing this, if you are going to go the grassroots. It does matter that you do have to honor the sentiment. You have to honor the trailblazers people were doing that work before you do, no matter the scale, you have to honor that. But at the same time, you know, if you have that vision, you have to move forward with that too. And that’s a two way process and that’s going to happen consistently and persistently to do it right.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:04:57

You remember the essay that she should have the parents shares the smell, I was trying to remember, well, if you can dig it out and get a feel, and that’s at the end of the session, also, I will just say that like, I think this is a good time to just play. I’m going to take a question over here. We’re gonna think about, think about a book or reading recommendation at the end also. So, God, you don’t have to. Oh, Mark.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:05:32

Thank you for being here, this panel, this session is awesome. My question really, here’s this honing in on the differences in our communities. I represent as a public official, the city of Austin, Texas, and I’m approaching the end of my term and being able to do things I couldn’t do within government while maintaining diplomacy that I have for the past eight years. So I’m excited. But I still have to maintain that diplomacy to continue to build off of the Britons that I have established, establishing the status. So I think about your success. You know, we’re in the state of Texas, so So there’s certain things that we can’t do unless we can somehow take on the state legislature. And that’s not likely for the foreseeable future. So I’d like you to be candid, if you all can about how you work within Dynamics that aren’t so friendly to labor, for example. And in spaces where, frankly, equity as a word is a boogeyman the best net to get around artfully, but are willing to write, I don’t want to fall into the pitfalls of cultural war. At the same time, I do think it’s important to know its history. And there were so many things you guys said that I’ve wanted to speak to, but obviously you’re very sure the time.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:06:54

All right. I mean, all right. Well, so when, from the municipal perspective, when I look at it, you have you said eight years, eight years of equity, eight years of equity, the equivalent is you’ve been born to the arcade and play that game this whole time. And there’s that laser pointer, you can finally get that laser pointer with all the tickets that you’ve accumulated over all the years. That’s the price already. So it’s like you have that I think it’s more of I did the same thing, so to speak. So when I was in Detroit, first year, I couldn’t do that second year, couldn’t do that third year. But it got to a point I’m like, Okay, now it’s time when you know, you know, there was a certain fight, that is, now there’s this, if it’s not abundantly clear today, there is a way to do it. And again, this is leaning more so into the organizing principles, which is like, Okay, I don’t need to be Superman, I don’t need to be. Now I can be the key. I can be the IRS I can be I can be something but I don’t need to be the center. And so like the thing is, you don’t have to take on unnecessary risks. But at the same time, like you can use the equity that you build up and the credibility that you have to co sign something that could also be the difference maker, too. It’s like, what is the big picture? And Austin, what are the what are the organizers saying? What’s something that’s like, hey, we could do? So it’s like reverse engineering. If I know that I want to change the state statute over time. It’s like, Alright, look, I don’t have ability to do that now. Great. Are those incremental changes that could get us there? And how do I use the current inertia over the ACP freeze to accelerate that sounds like everything that’s happening now use everything that we have that’s at our disposal. So I know that this ACP freezes a thing. And everybody is suffering from this. And this is so great. I mean, not great. But like for real great, like, because now all of a sudden, my equity and credibility plus the moment, plus this other group over here that we don’t know, but that once we get acclimated to that could be the thing where you’re able to invite out and say, All right, I did all this. And that thing that y’all got going, Yeah, that was me. And then you get the you get the ball or do whatever you want to do. But it’s like, you don’t have to, like take the biggest risk today. It’s more so looking at whatever you can wager, and whatever is already happening juxtapose with what we already know, the ACP stuff represents and using the power of that moment, because next year is time, this this ACP fi doesn’t even we can’t even use that card anymore. It kind of expires next year. And so if someone disagrees fine, but like Toriel, like now’s the time to use that, especially with the freeze being last week.

S9

Speaker 9

1:09:40

I just throw in there to real quick, big plans and big dreams are awesome because one day they’re gonna happen. Like the pros. We’ve had an Enterprise Center in our work. We plan for a decade and then COVID happened. Everybody’s like, oh, well, we’re good with money. We only been asking for 10 years. It’s fine. Right like you Could we have done that work sooner and help people sooner? Yes. But the thing is we’re doing it now. We’re doing it at a scale that’s so much bigger than we could have even imagined five years ago, because we have those dreams and those plans, and we’re ready. Like, it’s not futile to think about a better tomorrow. Right? I agree, like use that equity, where you wait, cheers, chapter

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:10:20

four verse novels,

S

Shana

1:10:22

that the one does, the one thing I’ll add is, we’d sort of gotten into it, but skirted around a little bit, is, in addition to enjoying picking fights with charter atmc, Comcast and Verizon, I genuinely do. I dropped some say it’s strategic, right? Like you don’t always have to be picking fights with people who have unique with you. And so you know, part of the thing about picking a fight with a like, multinational, billions, profits dollar company is that there’s not a lot of appetite to come there, like their defense. And so kind of using some of those like fight picking, like picking some of those fights really strategically, with maybe the entity that isn’t actually the opponent there, but you make them the opponent. And that creates some space to do some other things. And this is where like, as a coalition, we focused a ton on on like pricing disparities. And this is partly where we’re really using the opportunity around digital discrimination, which I know, Chris likes to fight with me about, like the extent to which that’s going to be useful. And we can totally fight about that. But just as a, as a mechanism, like as a strategy, it’s really useful.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:11:42

So this is one of the habits, what to say about that is, I feel like if you’re in an area where you’re dealing with loyal opposition, or honest opposition, where someone like actually disagrees with you in their hands person, as opposed to a lot of the stuff that we see now from elected officials, particularly at the national level, where they’re just saying anything that’s convenient. If you have someone that you think is, is opposed to you, but honest, start making some predictions, you know, and so with ACP, you know, we’re going to spend all this money, and at the end of it, the money is going to get cut off, and we’re not going to be in a better place, because it’s not systemic change, right? There’s like Los Angeles, stop spending that 100 million dollars, those kids don’t have access anymore, we haven’t made an investment that leads to a similar to an ongoing change. And so you can make that prediction and say, Look, I want to come back the next year, I’m gonna remind you, I’m saying this, this is what’s going to happen, they might start to listen to you a little bit more recognize the dangers of just throwing more and more money at it. So that’s something that that we’ve tried to do in different circumstances. Once you get the book title, Okay, how about you at the end, I want to ask a question, do we still have time for questions after this, but I do want to make sure that we just randomly we just came up with this. And I feel like this question of project management or project around LinkedIn problem, sorry, for Problem Management, or problem eradication, I will I will lead this into a free session talking about what we should be doing upstairs. So the coop of people, I think all of them if you ask them, Do you want to solve this problem, or you want to keep working on this problem with the rest of your life? They would say that will solve the problem. But I think many of us feel that we’re not on a path to solving it that we are managing it rather than trying to eradicate it. And so this is something that he could go on for a long time. But some quick thoughts about that.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:13:29

For so yes, it’s true. It’s true. I didn’t say that earlier today. You know, and I think that it’s worth noting that this, it couldn’t happen at a better time. So upstairs, forgotten visit Ella, I LSRs. Desk, they have this puzzle. And this is the most confusing puzzle in the world we’re trying to put together I don’t care. Yes, I’m colorblind. And that could be making the degree of difficulty way higher. But it doesn’t make sense. But the reason why I’m highlighting that puzzle upstairs is because better coin, there are, there’s me who is working my eyes to the point that I can’t even it’s blurring, to try and fix this thing. And maybe iosr is happy that that puzzles in all the way put together, because it keeps people at the table longer. And there is a really, really sly way that I am saying this. So if you read between the lines, there’s like three metaphors within that. But you know, the point that I would say I think that it’s not a matter of finger wagging and saying well, why aren’t you on problem eradication, because that almost has a tinge of arrogance to it. I think that it’s more of an opportunity to look at maybe some of how do you get more of the practitioners who have legitimate scars and putting them on those main stages, because you’re going to get a very different experience from those people. They’re going to tell you what’s real hearing it the wisdom from them. So while you have a other people who might be newer to this. That’s not to say they don’t deserve any medicines. I think everyone’s story should be heard. But I think that it’s really how did you get to this problem eradication standpoint? It’s because you had people who started maybe on the problem management side, who were doing the hotspots who were doing the tech support, who were doing those things, who quickly realized that’s like, Man, I, I’ve been in this for a few years now. This isn’t these numbers aren’t really changing. I need to be I need to go deeper. There’s a reason why even through my own growth, I mean, my first NDI conference was like 2016. And after over time, I went from maybe that more nonprofit side to now the enterprise infrastructure side to say, no, if you’re not, if you’re not talking infrastructure out, what are you talking about? And like, that’s where I’ve gotten to, because of all those experiences that I’ve had that led me to that point. So I think that is really a unique opportunity to say to maybe the organizers, or the people upstairs. All right, so it’s just scars, I want some of your your quote, broadband scar, what about that time when you release that? And they maybe it didn’t work out, but you got stabbed? You got a cool scar, like, Alright, so what’s that, like Jason’s in the crowd? Now? I know, Jason, Jason’s got a nice scar right here in the back. But it’s like, those are those things where I think that that’s a really unique opportunity for us to talk more about that. And I think, in that that’s letting wisdom guide the discussion, versus like, you know, what camp? Are you in a secret handshake, or, you know, get them out of here like no, like, like, let’s actually Let wisdom guide the discussion, based on our experiences that will then transform our understanding and ways when it’s done in love. And it’s not an understanding, I think we will then walk out with a more unified approach to what I do believe is the necessary outcome, which is eradicating the digital divide, and everybody was employed off the digital divide all of us being unemployed.

S

Shana

1:16:51

I’ll just say quickly, I think there’s a it’s about kind of a genuine curiosity and asking those questions. So to me, and this is where an island and others continue to pick on ACP, then there’s lots of them, which is like the genuine honest question there is, like, let’s say that through some miracle, it turns out, like, there’s actually more power behind this than we think or that like the ISPs actually, really are going to push for this rather than their giant tax break that they’re probably going to win instead. And like, we get the $7 billion to fund ACP through the end of the year. Okay, then what? Right, like, is there so so but have we eradicated anything like, no, have maybe solved a little bit of suffering for a while? Yes. And like, that’s good. But then what? And so I think this sort of, I think moving along that path, from management to eradication, releasing how to my own goals, and my conversations with folks has been around asking some of those like, and then what questions with, you know, honesty and curiosity, but also a certain level of harshness?

MS

Melanie Silver

1:18:01

Yeah, I think it requires you to give up your some of your power. And that can be scary, right? Cuz it makes you feel safe, it makes you feel a certain way and to not have it. Him the uncertain, and you may not want to leave that lane that you’re in, right. I’m involved in it in a project in Chattanooga, that’s taking up a foundation model, traditional philanthropy model and D centralizing it and taking 20 community leaders, and they decide where millions of dollars goes in the community, not the family that owns the foundation, that half of which live in California. Not them, us, we’re going to create the framework, we’re going to change the system, we’re going to change how it works. And they’re saying we don’t we want the community to have the power and you know what, I mean, community has the power to make the decisions. The decisions come out really differently. And we’re seeing that already in this process where, okay, it’s not just we’re not making investments, from the top down for people. We’re all in church wine in the community, and figuring out how this how does it what do we want as leaders in the community? So another way of just thinking about okay, how do we, how do we power share, how do we how do we put this in the hands of the people that are doing the things and are and know the people and know what they want and if we can figure that out, even just in our own boards, in our own roles in our families, in our in our lives, and then bring that to all of our space? juices will be able to feel this to a much larger degree. And it’ll move quicker. You know, we were talking earlier, people are afraid of a sudden change of abrupt change, but they’re not afraid of incremental change. And I know it takes longer and it requires more patience, and it can be a pain in the ass. But that incremental change is going to get us where we want to go barring another pandemic that speeds things along very quickly.

S9

Speaker 9

1:20:31

Just a couple of things that bounced around in my mind, this is my first time in the IEA. I have learned more out of people getting three minutes on stage than people give them 30. And I keep saying why are they getting half an hour? This morning, particularly, every one of those people should have had as much time as rising that.

S9

Speaker 9

1:20:55

Equity, Washington’s the term we’re going to start talking about. Like maybe that needs to be a bigger space. So there’s more breakouts so that we can have more opportunities like that, like, it doesn’t have to be mainstage. But like, we talked about this earlier, binding talks are awesome. Like, I love it, they happen. And they happen because there are some things that should be quick like that and go, not everything needs to be a 90 minute panel. But too many people are given the time they could be using to actually share real knowledge. And why is that? I haven’t been around this organization long enough to know why that is. And I want to Yes, but let’s figure it out. Right? So maybe the lightning talks this year, or how do we pick the speakers for next year? Like don’t give feedback and like, oh, I want to hear more about that program. And everybody comes together and talks about it. Yeah, that that’s the biggest one. I also have, like 40 bullet points for accessibility problems that we’ll talk about. But I will throw in that just because I said it like digital equity can’t happen if we’re not being actually digitally accessible. And like following the actual guidelines for what that means for colorblind folks. People use Braille and all that that’s a much longer topic. I’m happy to talk to anybody about what that means. But like, there’s no ASL here. I don’t know how to even when a wheelchair would get around that room upstairs. The subtitles aren’t readable over the slides. Like that’s just the truth. Interesting. So like, we have to be better at that. Because you said earlier, I think or what have you, is anyone at this conference on ACB? Right, like, where’s their stories? And who are you? Like, I want to hear from them. Right? Like, what is that? What does that look like? What are people that they’re not going to let? Right? Where are they this week? Right? Yeah.

S

Shana

1:22:59

So I think mine is less of a question and more of a call for help. As a as a local government worker, it seems straightforward to question and pressure, the governments that have not made, you know, public announcements of investments hire people in their offices, or John big shine days. But I am asking, you know, I’ve challenging you all to pressure. So as municipalities and those decision makers that have publicly committed those dollars, or have stood up those offices and have made commitments, because a lot of times, those broadband office workers, we go round, and we promote the good that we’ve done, because that big dollar sign that also wasn’t enough to start with, we were probably only given a fraction of that. And now I’m on a campaign to get the rest of that. So yes, I only highlight the good things that we do. I only highlight the impact that we’ve had. But I promise you, there are a million challenges a million barriers that I’m facing. And you know, there’s a lot of things that I could but probably wouldn’t have my job tomorrow. So I can’t say it. So pressure, then ask them that dollar sign amount that you have on your article in your press conference. Where are you at with that? How much money have you actually get into that office? And in fact, sometimes you’d be surprised to see that it’s been taken back. And we you know, you can’t go out there and say that and you’d have to promote your program. So I just call to action on that. Please, please.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:24:28

Listen more, and I saw your

3

Speaker 3

1:24:31

Thanks, Chris. My name is Preston Ernie. First, I want to honor Dan’s willingness from the beginning to confront the board to confront power about the decisions about what wouldn’t be discussed in this conference, inaugurating productive conflict. And, and then secondly, I want to ask the room and I want to ask the panel, you know, what is the path to a digital equity digital injustice. You know, like a caucus in Congress? How do we look at the past several years where we had a $6 trillion potentiality for a build back better Bill reduced to another smaller trillion dollar potentiality for a build back better Bill reduced to an infrastructure only bill that at first had $100 billion listed for broadband, to then published with only $65 billion for broadband that also cut out explicit preference for, you know, community and municipal construction. What is the path that we need, so that those numbers are not eclipsed horizon ahead of us, but there will behind us, and that the power of the state is lifting or intersectional equity goals? By default? That’s

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:26:01

fine, you just get one last question in the audience here.

JE

Joshua Edmonds

1:26:05

Wow, okay. Wow, while you’re while you’re walking. So, yeah, I think that’s where it gets disheartening. And it’s hard because it’s like you watch that ladder to point gets smaller, and smaller and smaller and smaller as the points I’ll come on. Like, like for real. And I remember there was a line that was said that maybe we said on Twitter, or x or whatever. And it stuck out to me because it bothered me. And it was, we should keep ACP until we have a plan and command that bother me? Oh, my God, see, when I say now I get itchy. Because it’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, one if we don’t have a plan now than we ever, but fine. Let’s just say we don’t have a plan, let’s say collectively, we do not have a plan. All right. If we were to go to every single locality, and not think to the level of the allocation that someone predetermined, and said, No, no, no, no, we only have 20 million. So you got to think within 20. But other 20 You only get 10? No, no? How much do the problems cause for us our digital empowerment, and every one of our respective geographies everyone? How much does it cost? And I think that that’s where I would like, if there could be a charge for us all to do about legitimate mabie. Or we’re not thinking in this deficient manner. Because so many of the digital equity space, it’s from the nonprofit part of it. And the problem with that is nonprofits, very valiantly are used to working and deficits. So so much of that deficit operation, then goes into your perception on things. So as a result, you’re always going to ask for less in perpetuity, so then we all get less and perpetuity. So it’s like what happens if we remove the deficits and we say, okay, in order to bridge Elise disorder by, I don’t care what a map says that was, whatever. How much does it cost the British Phillies digital goodbye? How much does it cost the British Baltimore’s digital divide? How much does it cost to bridge Memphis digital divide? How much? And at that point, I would then say that is the formulation of a plan, and then we collectively organize off of those numbers. And then that’s the number that we all collectively agree on.

CM

Christopher Mitchell

1:28:20

operating cycle. Sorry.

S

Shana

1:28:24

I just quickly I’m way less inspirational. I think I say this, because I would say way more tactically, is like, who does Congress give a shit about? What first of all, where does Congress come from? States? Who does Congress give a shit about? Like they, from what I can tell, don’t really give a shit about individual constituents. Like they give a shit about what they’re hearing from state folks. So you know, even in California, where Congress people or whatever a diamond doesn’t mean that you can’t go in grocery store without running into a congressperson. Maybe even they’re the people like if we want to get a congress person to say something on our behalf, we have to get the mayors and county supervisors and the state legislators and the governor’s office even to like, go and be like, Come on, do something here. So, you know, less inspirationally at work kind of like fascinatingly. But I think more tactically, is we don’t get there at the congressional level or the federal level until we get there and more of the local, regional and state level.

2

Speaker 2

1:29:29

Um, first of all, I wanted to say thank you, this has been the most valuable session that I’ve attended today.

S

Shana

1:29:44

You should know that NDIA had a staff member outside of the door preventing people from funding including me, which is the reason why I’m going to ask my next question, how can we as attendees and as people pressure nvra He make sure that these underserved voices are present at this conference, like one person actually know us in the room and haven’t had the actual like, what is it a discounted internet program? You know, very few people that are impacted by the decisions that are made are present. But Verizon gets 30 minutes to get PR, how