Equitable Internet Initiative

Since 2016, organizers with the Equitable Internet Initiative (EII) have been working to end this crisis. A program of the Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP), EII uses money raised from foundations and a donated upstream connection to bring broadband to hundreds of homes in Detroit.

– Internet for the People

The organizers in Detroit are proposing another possibility. They are building a network that brings people into new relationships of trust and support and mutual concern, forged in the course of caring for collective infrastructure and caring for one another.

– Internet for the People

But digital stewards aren’t just technicians. They are also trained to be community organizers. They receive both a technical and a political education, with a curriculum that draws on the work of revolutionary thinkers like Paulo Freire and Grace Lee Boggs. This points to the deeper purpose of the project, which is to increase not just the connectivity of Detroit’s poorer neighborhoods, but their connectedness. “We are working towards a future where neighbors are authentically connected,” read the Working Principles of the Equitable Internet Initiative, “with relationships of mutual aid that sustain the social, economic, and environmental health of neighborhoods.”