organizing

Content tagged with "organizing"

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Digital Equity Starts in Our Cities and Towns - Episode 565 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

This week on the show we're featuring an episode of our new Building for Digital Equity podcast, which looks at how organizations and individuals around the country do work at the intersections of broadband infrastructure, affordability, access, and skills. From frontline specialists helping households sign up for the Affordable Connectivity Program to building small, digital equity-minded ISPs in Arizona, this series showcases the work and lessons from those helping folks get and stay connected in our communities and towns.

On this episode of the podcast, we talk with Brandon Forester - the National Organizer for Internet Rights at Media Justice. Christopher and Brandon talk about helping communities build more agency over how technology shows up in their neighborhoods and among the digital communities they create for themselves. He shares how Media Justice came to prioritize prison phone justice as one of its first issues, what organizing is and how local solutions may differ across communities, and the need to avoid purity politics in doing digital equity work.

This show is 20 minutes long and can be played on this page or using the podcast app of your choice with this feed.

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or see other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Joseph McDade for the music. The song is On the Verge and is used per his Free-Use terms.

Brandon Forestor Puts Local in Local Internet Organizing - Building for Digital Equity Podcast Episode 13

Media Justice logo

Brandon Forester is the National Organizer for Internet Rights at Media Justice. We talk about organizing for digital equity and more specifically Brandon's vision for communities having agency over how technology shows up in their neighborhoods and digital communities. We discuss how Media Justice came to prioritize prison phone justice, what organizing is and how local solutions may differ in different communities, and the need to avoid purity politics in doing this work. 

This show is 20 minutes long and can be played on this page or using the podcast app of your choice with this feed.

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or see other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Joseph McDade for the music. The song is On the Verge and is used per his Free-Use terms.

Last Year and Next Year: Predictions Evaluated and Recharged - Episode 488 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

In this episode of the podcast, we're back for another staff conversation about all that 2021 had to offer and serve up some predictions for the coming year. Joining Christopher on the show are Senior Reporter and Editor Sean Gonsalves, Community Broadband Outreach Team Lead DeAnne Cuellar, Senior Researcher Ry Marcattilio-McCracken, GIS and Data Visualization Specialist Christine Parker, and Associate Broadband Researcher Emma Gautier.

Christopher, Ry, and Sean reckon with their predictions from a year ago, with DeAnne, Christine, and Emma joining the podcast for the first time. During the conversation, we talk about the number of preemption laws we hope to see disappear in 2022, the strides taken in small and medium-sized cities to take control of their telecommunications infrastructure future, mapping, and the impact the unprecedented amount of federal money is likely to have across the country in the coming year.

This show is 50 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

The Michigan Moonshot Broadband Summit is November 9th

Need better Internet access in your community but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re in the middle of a community broadband project but have hit a roadblock?

Be one of 100 broadband champions attending the Michigan Moonshot Broadband Summit at the one-day event on Tuesday, November 9th in Traverse City, Michigan. 

The Michigan Moonshot Summit is a day-long conference focused on helping representatives of local governments, community anchor institutions, and economic development groups navigate the hurdles involved when pursuing a regional or community broadband project. The event will include workshopping opportunities where attendees can collaborate with industry thought leaders to address impending issues and identify solutions.

Merit, a statewide educational and research network run by Michigan’s public university system, is hosting the event. Michigan Moonshot is Merit’s effort to improve Internet access in the state by collecting accurate data, disseminating educational resources, influencing policy decisions, and connecting communities to funding.

“From determining ownership models and drafting network designs, to navigating the grant landscape, developing public-private partnerships, and deploying mapping initiatives, this year’s focus is singular — ACTION,” reads the Moonshot Summit website.

To attend this year’s event, “attendees must be a Merit Member and/or Broadband champions who are part of regional planning, building, and running efforts; economic development groups and local governments; or, institutions, community anchors and municipalities addressing the ‘digital divide.’”

Breakout Sessions and Speakers

The first breakout session of the Moonshot Summit will assist municipalities in “Navigating the METRO Act.” 

Interested in Announcements of or Organizing for Community Broadband? Join Our Listservs

Some years ago the Community Broadband Networks initiative ran an email listserv for interested folks to sign up and get the latest news and resources regarding projects around the country and to advance efforts in their own communities. 

With the addition of a bonafide Outreach Coordinator to the team, we’re reviving those listservs. Doz will be heading these groups, and helping to facilitate the sharing of resources. 

The first of these will be the Announcements Listserv, which will “function as a way to relay important information about community broadband going on around the nation and how they impact communities in the various stages of the process. Since the information will be focused on news and events, we plan to keep emails to the minimum.”

The second is the Organizing Listserv, which will “function as a way to relay information around tools that will help you organize and advocate for broadband services within your communities. The emails you receive will provide you with fact sheets, links to training, and other resources that will help empower you on your mission to connect communities to affordable, reliable, and available broadband. As our members grow we will be able to rely on each other for strategies, troubleshooting organizing issues, and networking among various communities. The listserv will be lightly moderated, but we encourage everyone to keep discussions focused around organizing. 

To join either or both of the Announcements or Organizing Listservs, please email dlee@ilsr.org.

Lighting Up the Dark (Fiber) in Jacksonville

Is a major metropolitan Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network on the horizon for one of the Sunshine State’s most populous cities?

Longtime Jacksonville, Florida (pop. 890,000) resident Eric Geller is spearheading a citizen-led effort to rally residents and officials around a vision that would catapult Jacksonville into the fiber-connected frontier of Internet access and reinvigorate the economy of a city that was once known as the "Bold New City of the South."

As an IT consultant and former public policy research analyst, from Geller’s tech-savvy perspective the key is for the city’s utility company, JEA, to move beyond providing electricity, water, and sewer services and expand into building the necessary Internet infrastructure that would give all Jacksonville residents access to reliable and truly high-speed connectivity.

“Nationally, it’s been well accepted that we are at a point where the Internet is absolutely mandatory. Every business and home has to be connected,” Geller said in a recent interview with WJCT Radio, noting how the pandemic has made it clear that universal access to broadband is nearly as important as running water and electricity.

JEA’s Dark Fiber Infrastructure

If it’s a pipe dream, it’s one with light at the end — if Jacksonville residents can first see and appreciate all the dark. That is to say, the city’s existing dark fiber network, or the unused capacity of the fiber optic cables JEA has already deployed and how it could be leveraged and lit up to serve as the backbone for a citywide FTTH network.

JEA already leases routes to businesses along its 500-mile fiber optic network spanning the Jacksonville metropolitan area, which includes all of Duval Country and parts of St. Johns and Nassau Counties. In fact, with all that underground (and overhead) fiber already in place, Jacksonville can boast of having “more fiber in the ground than any city in Northeast Florida,” much of it passing through vital commercial and industrial parts of the city.

Building a Network to Build a Network in Southwest Michigan - Episode 449 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

We don’t often get to spend a whole episode diving into the earliest work that communities do to set the foundation for progress in expanding high-quality broadband access down the road, but that’s what we’re talking about today.

This week on the podcast Christopher is joined by Pierrette Renée Dagg, Director of Marketing and Communications for the MERIT Network, and John Egelhaaf, Executive Director of the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission

The two share the history of efforts in Berrien County, Michigan, and how a group of residents and local officials began pursuing better Internet connectivity a few years ago. Pierrette and John share the work that’s gone into the formation of a broadband task force, the identification of avenues and goals, and collaboration with hundreds of community partners along the way.

The story they tell is one of the power of partnerships and outreach groups (like anchor institutions andlibraries, senior centers, HOAs, fraternal orgs, and PTA groups) in contributing to a growing momentum.

This show is 36 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Listen to How One Citizens Group in Falmouth, Mass. is Banding Together for Better Broadband

Local citizens and officials have been moving the needle on the Falmouth Community Network, completing a feasibility with the help of CCG Consulting in December and continuing to pursue public awareness and education efforts in the area. ILSR's Christopher Mitchell joined Cape, Coast, and Islands Radio on Tuesday to talk about the effort and the promises it holds for those who live in the area.

Other guests on the show include:

David Isenberg, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs, Senior Advisor to the FCC's National Broadband Plan, and Board Member of FalmouthNet.

Marilois Snowman, CEO of MediaStruction, a media and marketing firm in the Boston area, V.P. of FalmouthNet, Inc.

Sam Patterson, Falmouth Select Board member and Select Board's Representative to the Falmouth Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (EDIC).

Listen to the episode here.

A Call in Vermont to Assemble A Broadband Corps

A new report out by CTC Technology and Energy and Rural Innovation Strategies, commissioned by the state of Vermont, gives us one of the clearest and most detailed pictures so far of the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on our attempts to live and work remotely. 

The “Covid-19 Responses Telecommunications Recovery Plan” [pdf], presented to the state in December 2020, includes both a comprehensive survey of conditions after a half-year of social distancing and intermittent lockdowns as well as recommendations for addressing immediate needs. But it offers solutions that provide a path forward by making sure that dollars spent now are in service to the state’s long-term goals of getting everyone in the Green Mountain State on fast, affordable wireline broadband service at speeds of at least 100/100 Megabits per second (Mbps). 

The report brings together network performance assessments from every level of government across the state over the last six months, pairs it with survey responses from citizens, libraries, hospitals, businesses, regional development corporations, and Communications Union Districts (CUDs), and offers analysis based on conditions for moving forward.

“Covid-19 has laid bare the challenges of lack of universal broadband in Vermont,” the report says, with “inequities in the availability and affordability of broadband create further inequities in areas such as education, telehealth, and the ability to work from home.” It offers a wealth of findings:

Milton, Mass. Municipal Fiber Initiative Launches Petition for Community Broadband

The Milton, Massachusetts Municipal Fiber Initiative recently launched a friendly petition to collect signatures to present to the city select board in support of a city-wide Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network to increase competition, speed, reliability, and customer service while lower Internet access costs for residents. From the group's website:

We are a community-led effort to create a fiber-optic, municipal broadband network in the town of Milton, MA.  We believe a community-owned, state of the art, 100% fiber network is necessary to provide everyone in town - residents, town government, local businesses and non-profits - with better access, more choice, lower prices, blazing fast speeds, and superior reliability...now and for decades to come!

The group indicates that the town has already created a municipal broadband committee as well as a design and cost estimate done by CTC Energy and Technology [pdf]. 

From the petition:

To all our Milton friends and neighbors -

The MMFI is collecting signatures for a friendly petition to the Milton Select Board. Our intention is to demonstrate public support for municipal broadband, and to urge the board to take the next steps towards the establishment of a municipal broadband network.

The Select Board has made some great progress already with the appointment of a Municipal Broadband Committee.   The committee's efforts culminated in a cost and design estimate for the creation of a 100% fiber, municipally-owned broadband network, providing the town with a viable road map to a town-wide, fiber-to-every-premise network.   

We're asking you to join us in our efforts to keep the process going.  We hope we can make the case to you, our Milton friends and neighbors, that municipal broadband is an investment in Milton's future, a public asset that will serve community needs for generations.