Disrupting Denial
This week the corporate elite celebration of the Detroit bankruptcy was brought to an abrupt halt. Gathered on the campus of Wayne State University, the Governor, Mayor, bankruptcy judge, and members of the mainstream media left the stage in the face of protests. Governor Snyder, who was greeted by boos from the audience, left in a huff. Judge Rhodes was drowned out. Mayor Duggan never appeared. Host Stephen Henderson admonished the audience saying, "This is not Detroit behavior."
The Detroit Journalism Cooperative, a media collaborative that provided coverage of the bankruptcy and its aftermath, sponsored the event. The gathering was billed as a public meeting to assess the city in the wake of bankruptcy.
“Detroit Bankruptcy: One Year Later,” however, was put together without any consideration of those who objected to the process or who are being harmed by it. Only one viewpoint was allowed from the stage. If you weren’t willing to say the bankruptcy was a success and everything in the city is better than ever, you were not invited to speak.
That is not a true assessment of the state of our city, which is becoming increasingly divided by race and class, and increasingly impoverished in most neighborhoods.
This event was little more than a public relations stunt, marked by soft questioning from interviewers, canned responses by politicians, and efforts to reduce citizen perspectives to twitter feeds. No one should be surprised that the audience decided to challenge these constraints.
The organizers did not invite anyone who has challenged the bankruptcy, emergency management, the decisions to pursue aggressive water shut offs, the give away of revenue streams and assets, and the decision to use federal money to tear down houses rather than fix up homes.
Henderson defended this decision by resorting to name-calling. In a twitter exchange he said, “Protesters were not on program cuz it's not the Springer show. They don't want to discuss; they want to shout down.”
Of course, when people are not on the program, when the destruction of lives are rendered invisible, there is little left to do but to shout. In fact, our humanity requires it.
This defensive response by Henderson and the corporate elite to the disruption of their little show reflects how out of touch they are with most of the people in the city.
The reality is that the direction set by this bankruptcy has resulted in a boom for a few neighborhoods. It has increased the number of young whites in midtown at the expense of elder African Americans and opened a kind of land rush in neighborhoods as foreclosures force out long-term residents. These contradictions of race and class are increasing tensions all over the city. The Mayor, Governor, and the Judge refuse to talk about them. But they are real.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau between 2009 and 2014, median household income in Detroit fell by 20 percent from $32,493 to $26,095. The poverty rate increased from 33.2 percent to 39.8 percent. On any given day almost half the city is behind on water bills that are not affordable. Nearly 3,000 customers were threatened with water shutoffs last month alone.
We should applaud all those who raised their voices to disrupt the denial and evasion of the real questions facing our city. Pretending that our future is measured by bond ratings and buildings, rather than the quality of life of all our people and the care we show for one another, will lead to disruptions far beyond those of a simple meeting.
The Revolutionary Soul of Ron Scott
Barbara A. Stachowski
In contemplating the life of my friend and comrade Ron Scott, I’ve struggled to encompass all the aspects of the man that I saw embodied as he walked in the world.
Ron Scott was a soulful man, always expressive of deep feeling and emotion. Ron Scott was a revolutionary, a man committed to changing what he believed needed change.
And, Ron Scott was a man of rich faith rooted in the Christian tradition. Ron was unique. He had the wisdom to set aside theological dogma and advocate for peace in communities with a spirit of ecumenism and inclusiveness embracing all faith traditions. Even if there seemingly were no faith traditions in a situation he encountered, he was able to intuit the “tradition” at hand. He would effortlessly sense the dynamics of the moment and elegantly craft his response to the crisis. The “tradition,” very often, was that of the streets that so many live with and in.
His talent to de-escalate a situation most certainly saved lives when people, hurt and desperate to react in a moment of utter pain, were drawn to his words of peace and logic. Ron’s soothing, yet piercing, logic was critical in advocating for generations of individuals engaged in what he called the “War on Mack.” Ron knew that Detroit’s most crucial challenge was to teach people to de-escalate volatile situations within the community before calling law enforcement. This was the foundation for Ron’s work to establish Peace Zones for Life.
I have imagined Ron’s transition into the spiritual realm and have taken comfort in believing that his life work would gain eternal recognition from the great leaders in the afterlife.
Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” describes a hero as “someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” Campbell taught that myths represent the stories of the hero’s journey that transcend all cultures. He describes the hero’s quest: “You leave the world that you’re in and go to a death or a distance or up to a height. There you come to what was missing in your consciousness in the world you formerly inhabited. Then comes the problem of either staying with that, and letting the world drop off, or returning with that boon and trying to hold onto it as you move back into your social world again. That’s not an easy thing to do.” Ron took on this hero’s quest selflessly, knowing, all too well, the costs. His decision to walk a hero’s path was not one he would have described as heroic: he walked with humility.
Gandhi's favorite Hindu devotional song was “Vaishnava Jana To,” a 15th century Gujarati hymn he included in his daily prayer. In it, a vaishnava is described as someone who “feels the pain of others, helps those who are in misery, but never lets ego or conceit enter their mind.” Ron was a vaishnava in this sense. He was especially adept at embracing the pain of mothers and fathers who had lost children, whatever the situation.
Buddhists describe a bodhisattva as “an enlightened being who, out of compassion, forgoes nirvana in order to save others.” Ron was a bodhisattva whose heart ached with compassion.
Ron was a hero because he had the strength to blend what he knew about faith, philosophy, politics, media, human nature and suffering and hone a message that encouraged people to be the best they could be. He challenged all of us to think about what we “bring to the table” and he challenged all leaders to ask the question, “Who is at the table and who needs to be at the table?”
Ron’s commitment was 24/7. When a tragedy happened, Ron was often the first one called. This weighed heavy on a soul so committed to his work. But Ron never said, “No. I’m too tired.” Ron kept going until the end of his life on this earth. And now…
Rest in peace, Ron: son, brother, partner, friend, comrade, hero, mentor, disciple of peace, vaishnava, bodhisattva, and revolutionary soul. Rest in peace, dear friend, at last, rest in eternal peace.
The Case for Wireless Community Ownership
Tawana Petty
In just a few months, Detroit will boast one of the fastest internet speeds in the world. For those living in already invested areas of Detroit like Midtown, Woodbridge, Eastern Market, Corktown, New Center and Lafayette Park, this may be cause for celebration. Rocket Fiber purports to provide internet speeds “up to 1000 times faster than the average residential connection,” but what does that mean for a predominantly Black city, ranked number two in internet disparity? Currently, approximately 40% of Detroit’s population lacks access to the internet.
Research gathered this year by data firm Silk, provided an analysis on Google Fiber, and how discriminatory practices in laying fiber optics further perpetuates wireless access disparities. Silk’s reporting identified that “about 75% of the selected Fiber launch cities have above state average median household incomes and below state average poor populations. The data also showed that the lion's share of neighborhoods Google Fiber targets tend to be better educated and younger. For example, out of all 50 Fiber communities, 41 had a significantly higher percentage of college graduates residents than the respective state averages.” This and additional information can be found at dslreporting.com and Huffington Post’s article “Is Google Fiber Discriminatory?”
The disparities identified with Google Fiber in its implementation, make it imperative that Rocket Fiber consider a Community Benefit Agreement (CBA), and expand laying fiber and providing wireless access to the neighborhoods that are historically underrepresented in Detroit.
There is a lot of work currently being done in the city to minimize technological disparities. The Detroit Community Technology Project is a great example of that. To date, “DCTP has facilitated 19 local and international community wireless mesh networks through its partnership with the Open Technology Institute. We coordinate the Digital Stewards Program, which trains community members to build and maintain their own wireless communications infrastructure. Additionally, DCTP offers technical support to various grassroots networks including the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, the Allied Media Conference, and more.”
Recently, members of one of the grassroots networks, the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition (DDJC), traveled abroad to expand our wireless knowledge and networks. Diana Nucera, Katie Hearn and myself spent a week in Brazil learning wireless protocols from international community tech allies. We wanted to strengthen our understanding of what community ownership of fiber optics and wireless mesh networks could look like when significantly scaled up. Conversations and training sessions with representatives actively working with Guifi.net, the largest community network in the world, provided several viable options and perspectives on ownership, maintenance and expansion of mesh networks.
We also spent part of our time in Visconde de Maua, Brazil, about 3 hours into the mountains. This location really provided perspective regarding the possibilities and challenges of wireless mesh reach. The home we stayed in was an artist and technology collective residence dedicated to supporting technology incubation and training, as well as artist residency and workshops. It is in a rural area and shares a wireless connection with a neighbor. The network is fast and although it rained heavily every day we were there, it only went down for a few hours on one of the days.
This mesh network was intended to be part of a larger wireless network, but because the location is so rural, there are many trees, and it rains often, some of the other connections do go down frequently. Also, because the location is not easily accessible, and residents are only minimally trained on how to flash their routers, when other issues arise, residents have to wait until someone who is more thoroughly trained on their network can make the trek into the mountains to reset it.
This example is one of the reasons why Detroit’s Digital Stewards Program was designed as a train the trainer style program. This model of training “prepares teams of community organizers, people with construction skills, and techies to design and deploy communications infrastructure with a commitment to the Detroit Digital Justice Principles”
ACCESS
· Digital justice ensures that all members of our community have equal access to media and technology, as producers as well as consumers.
· Digital justice provides multiple layers of communications infrastructure in order to ensure that every member of the community has access to life-saving emergency information.
· Digital justice values all different languages, dialects and forms of communication.
PARTICIPATION
· Digital justice prioritizes the participation of people who have been traditionally excluded from and attacked by media and technology.
· Digital justice advances our ability to tell our own stories, as individuals and as communities.
· Digital justice values non-digital forms of communication and fosters knowledge-sharing across generations.
· Digital justice demystifies technology to the point where we can not only use it, but create our own technologies and participate in the decisions that will shape communications infrastructure.
COMMON OWNERSHIP
· Digital justice fuels the creation of knowledge, tools and technologies that are free and shared openly with the public.
· Digital justice promotes diverse business models for the control and distribution of information, including: cooperative business models and municipal ownership.
HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
· Digital justice provides spaces through which people can investigate community problems, generate solutions, create media and organize together.
· Digital justice promotes alternative energy, recycling and salvaging technology, and using technology to promote environmental solutions.
· Digital justice advances community-based economic development by expanding technology access for small businesses, independent artists and other entrepreneurs.
· Digital justice integrates media and technology into education in order to transform teaching and learning, to value multiple learning styles and to expand the process of learning beyond the classroom and across the lifespan.
By utilizing these principles to govern the work that we do, we are able to ensure accountability to the communities we engage, while increasing community knowledge and capabilities to maintain their own networks.
One of the major ways that we engage the community in technology discussions and training is through DiscoTechs. "DiscoTech is short for Discovering Technology. It is a term coined by the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, which defines a replicable model for a multimedia, mobile neighborhood workshop fair. DiscoTechs are designed so that participants learn more about the impact and possibilities of technology within our communities.
DiscoTechs feature interactive, multimedia workshops designed to demystify, engage, and inform the community about issues of Internet use and ownership, and our communications rights on and offline.
The DDJC's DiscoTech model has spread far beyond Detroit, as the model has been shared through sessions at the Allied Media Conferenceand through the 2012 publication of the How To DiscoTechzine. In 2014, the Codesign Studio of the MIT Center for Civic Media coordinated "Counter-surveillance DiscoTechs" in San Francisco; Karachi, Pakistan; Bangalore, India; Ramallah, Palestine; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Mexico City; Boston, and New York City. That same year, the Bento Miso Collaborative Workshop hosted a DiscoTech in Toronto, and there was a DiscoTech at the Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul.”
If you are interested in learning more about wireless mesh networks and Data Discotechs, or you want to consider facilitating a station at an upcoming Data Discotech, visit: Detroit Digital Justice Coalition.
We look forward to seeing you at the 2016 Allied Media Conference!
Evolving Community Commitment
Kimberly Sherobi
For years, I’ve been attending community gatherings on the northwest side of Detroit near the Jefferies Freeway and Wyoming. In the past, I would see the same faces at neighborhood events. Recently new faces have emerged. These newcomers appear eager to learn more about our community and have their voices heard.
On Friday, December 4, 2015 people from the area attended a Race & Power in Detroit discussion about blight sponsored by the Michigan Roundtable (MRT). The event was held at the Northwestern Christian Church. It was the first time that several people had attended a MRT conversation. That evening, I was the moderator for the panel discussion, table dialogues and report-outs. Although the definition and framing of blight needed more grounding, many first timers experienced the satisfaction or frustration of hearing differing opinions about blight.
The community engagement that was taking place was just as important as discussing the deterioration in our neighborhoods. This increased level of residents participating in neighborhood activities is a welcome change because it is only through interacting with one another that we will be able to make collective decisions.
Another event that took place in the area, where both regulars and newcomers were present, was the Detroit Police Commission meeting. Adams Butzel Recreation Center hosted the event on Thursday, December 10, 2015. Those who attended the meeting were able to get policing updates, celebrate ten police officers for their outstanding work and hear acknowledgements about the dedication of recently deceased community activist Ron Scott. The majority of the meeting was focused on Ron’s commitment to the people of Detroit. A salutation about Ron was read by Police Commissioner Rev. Edgar Vann, comments of admiration for Ron flowed freely, and a moment of silence for the usually seven minutes that Ron took at the mic, when he should have taken 3 minutes, gave people in the room a moment to smile as we reflected on his dedication to humanity. Having new people hear about the life of Ron Scott was a wonderful way for them and us to learn what community participation is all about.