Media Alliance

By Dorothy Kidd

The networked political and financial power of citizens on the Internet played no small part in President Barack Obama’s election, so it is not surprising that his administration has targeted more than $8 billion of the national recovery stimulus for broadband deployment in rural and urban areas on the short end of the “digital divide.” However, much of that money may not reach underserved African-American and Latino neighborhoods, because the cable and telecommunications giants that control up to 90 percent of the broadband lines will get the biggest hand outs. While the Media Democracy Coalition, made up of media activist and consumer groups, is organizing in Washington to ensure that the infrastructure is provided where it’s needed most, a growing number of groups are working at the grassroots to ensure full communications rights, seeing them as an integral part of a twenty-first century vision of community development.

Interview by B. Jesse Clarke

Participants

•    Juliet Ellis, Executive Director, Urban Habitat
•    Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Executive Director, Green for All, Former Director,  Working Partnerships USA
•    Dorothy Kidd, Co-Chair of Media Alliance and Professor of Media Studies, University of San Francisco.
•    Adam Kruggel, Director, Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization
•    Shalini Nataraj, Vice President of Programs, Global Fund for Women
•    Renee Saucedo, Community Empowerment Coordinator, La Raza Centro Legal

Clarke: One of the themes that we’re trying to investigate is whether you make a rights framework (tenants’ rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights) part of your organizing work. The United States has a long tradition of civil rights with a certain level of successful organizing, particularly to gain equal rights for African Americans and overcome the legacy of slavery. But people organizing around the right to a job or the right to housing have a much more challenging environment. It’s not a given that people believe that you actually have a right to housing or a right to a job or a right to freedom to control your own social and economic participation.