Fair Internet Initiative Comes to Kingston | Community notebook | Hudson Valley
Detroit: The face of post-industrial economic decadence in America. High foreclosure rates and bad credit have deterred telecommunications companies from providing Internet access in many Detroit neighborhoods. In 2013, almost 40% of homes in the city did not have internet access.
A year later, in 2014, the Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP) was born. Community organizers and tech experts have built their own infrastructure, bringing the internet to neighborhoods abandoned by telecommunications companies. Radio Kingston Technical Director Kale Kaposhilin was inspired to bring this model—the Equitable Internet Initiative (EII) — in Kingston. “It’s powerful how people [in Detroit] came together because no one came to save them,” Kaposhilin said.
A nonprofit radio station with a social justice agenda, Radio Kingston will build a local wireless network over the next three years to provide low-cost Internet service outside of the corporate telecommunications system. Radio Kingston works with NY Tech Community—the New York chapter of the Equitable Internet Initiative—on bringing the EII to the city. CTNY has guided other neighborhoods in New York and upstate New York with the creation of Internet access and technological knowledge.
The initiative is not just about giving people access to the Internet, nor does it stop at Radio Kingston. Residents also learn how to build and maintain this technology themselves. It is a community-owned project because it is created and managed by the community. A digital steward training program provides residents with the skills needed to create and maintain a resilient digital ecosystem.
CTNY Director Greta Byrum points out that those who learn how to install the equipment to access the Internet in and around homes, offices and other buildings are usually not tech savvy. But they are experts in their communities – grassroots activists, church leaders and after-school program directors. “They know how to connect with the community about this project and how to get people excited,” she says. “They know how to tie the work we do with digital infrastructure to what’s going on in a community,” she says.
For Monique Tate, EII trainer and original DCTP advocate, EII’s success stems from this personal understanding. “We can go beyond the gates because we don’t need to earn trust. We already work with community members who have that trust,” she says. “They are rooted in their communities, fighting for fair water, housing and public transit.”
In Detroit, that problem-solving spirit has fueled communication boards for urban farmers, solar-powered charging stations and Wi-Fi hubs, and technologies for measuring air quality in neighborhoods. with a high rate of asthma. Kaposhilin is excited about what awaits him in Kingston. “We can’t predict all the beautiful things our community will come up with and how their imaginations will be fired up by that possibility,” he says.