Dear Future: Meet the people building their own internet in Detroit

[MUSIC] The state of internet in Detroit, is quite sad. 40% has no connection. So from food, housing, clothing, shelter, all the skills been stripped from us. It's like, damn, I got to build everything from the **** floor up. Digital justice looks like no chains. It looks like giving internet to people. It looks like building networks, that's why I'm doing it. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] So we've now entered into Southwest Detroit, which is actually where I live. I just recently moved cuz I got priced out of my neighborhood. So, I think that's a big part of the narrative too is that people are just trying to keep their resources because so much is changing. I'm Diana Nisera. Sounds a little load of me. Aka Mother Cyborg [MUSIC] I've been teaching people technology for as long as I can remember. To me Mother Cyborg is someone who's supposed to like, help people come to the realization of the potential of technology. I'm the director of the Detroit Community Technology project which is responsible for the Equitable Internet Initiative. [BLANK_AUDIO] Will he know Detroit's one of the top five least connected cities in the United States. So what happens when you have half of the city that has a 1,000 megabits per second, and then the people with the least resources only have 10. I think that causes a huge problem as far as what you can do with access because of high foreclosure rates and because of bad credit a lot of telecom companies don't offer good service within these areas or they won't even turn on their fiber. So we have a lot of dark fiber that doesn't have internet running through it throughout the city. So we have a gigabit fiber that we've purchase from a ring that was recently built downtown. They have built fiber up to a rooftop and that rooftop then has a router then is being pointed to each of out community centers. [SOUND] There's a global infrastructure a lot of that fiber runs underneath Cities and under the floors of oceans that in an infrastructure then has these six change points throughout the world. And the exchange points are where internet service providers then tap into to be able to exchange information. And then from there internet service providers then build infrastructure to then share the signal. And so that's where we come in. We need to build our own infrastructure and rethink Internet service providing and access in order to reach those people who have traditionally left out and marginalized. So the work we've been doing is not just about access. It's about building a healthy digital eco system. We're also building an infrastructure that was missing in Detroit. What evolved out of that was what we called the Digital Stewards Program. We have now trained trainers in three neighborhoods. In the north end. So yeah, we're just leaving our spot right here, our AP's on top of this building. We got our drivers right here, we got Gabi right there, we got young god Heru right here in the north end. And Islandview. The space, the maker's space, one church, share network is down here. You can see that there are computers. Dwight works on the wiring and cabling. A lot of the manual things that are on the tech side.>>And then Southwest Detroit.>>This would be an example of a public space. Some of the neighbors and do their homework in the alley. Because we can share the Wi-Fi. A lot of people right now they currently like there's people go to McDonald's for Wi-Fi. Why not have a public space for people to use it. [BLANK_AUDIO] 26, 24. It said 18 megabits, though. Hang on. [NOISE]. Usually, we have to put stuff up on the roof. But these trees are old on the north end. That's been our biggest complication. These like beautiful big **** trees. It's good to have trees that show complication. [SOUND] 87, 81, 82, 83. Let's try to find a window. This was our first one and it took three hours so our time has been decreasing. I feel like me and my teammate Gabby can get one done in about an hour honestly. You've gotta plan before you leave. We all gotta be aware of what's going on. Are we testing? Are we installing? We gotta communicate. So a few things on paperwork gotta be filled out, a few calls gotta be made, and that's it, it's simple. [BLANK_AUDIO] So this is the router that's on top of VS in Action. Anything that we can see like straight from here, is a house that we can be connected So the houses across the street. We could talk to the liquor store owner or to the body shop owner. We're using our community relationships to kind of zig-zag the connection down to [UNKNOWN] action. [BLANK_AUDIO] We're in now 60% of the trades without high speed Internet, like Even the what is it, the [UNKNOWN] dial up internet. And so things like water department, DTE, social services, they're not even translated. We're in a large Spanish speaking community as well. People are being left behind in the system where you know, technology's moving forward. There's a big digital divide and so we're trying to like make steps in order to. Bridge that gap. My name is Wallace Adam Gilbert Jr. I'm the assistant Pastor here at Church of the Messiah. We don't use titles so everybody basically refers to me as Wally. This neighborhood is called Island View, to our west is downtown Detroit it's booming and it's bustling We are two minutes from the Detroit River. It's a very diverse neighborhood. This is one of the older parts of the city. We have a Earn a Computer program here at the church. So the kids come in. We put the call out. We get all of these old machines. We bring them in and we help them build computers. [MUSIC] This past Christmas all of the kids were literally on every computer in this church. I'm walking around saying, what's going on? They said, well, we gotta go back to school tomorrow. So why are you on this machine? I helped you build a machine. I know you have a nice machine at home. He said, yes, Wally, but I don't have the internet. Without the internet, we basically only giving them typewriters. So right here with these blue dots with the house symbols on them, these are the people who have filled out applications and our interested in receiving the Internet. So we could service all of these people rather quickly. To get a signal from the Church of the Messiah, we would have to look at what buildings do they have over there that we can make a hub? So what we're doing now is we've done the physical mapping. We've actually turned up the network here at the church. And now the individual residents are coming and signing up. We have 37 people hat are on board. The main access is here at the church. And then we're broadcasting to other facilities. One of the requirements is that you do not have internet. Second requirement is that you cannot afford the internet. The third is that you have to be within our range. Look around and what you see is decay. But, at the same time, this community grew through developing. There's a food pantry. You know, the churches are still active in the community. We have an antennae here, by the way. It's on the back of the house. And another one that's on the front of this house. We're giving people the internet. Gabby, why are we doing this? Justice. This is the future of internet. This is the future of the world. New CCERI internet. [MUSIC] [NOISE] We found our spot. We're about to install. Took a little minute, a couple windows, We don't have to go to the third level, so we should be good. So this is the final step, y'all. We got our CPE outside, we got an RJ 45 coming into the grounding. The grounding got an RJ 45 coming out to the router, The router is now connected to this laptop that she's configuring, giving network information to the devices in the house. [BLANK_AUDIO] How do you leverage ownership of the networks that everybody uses every single freaking day? How do you leverage that? And then the connectedness between Island View Grace in Action Southwest and New CC on the north end. Again, different neighborhoods, but is there a community that gets established by those networks? The community is actually starting to get very involved. They're very informed. They're very aware, and it was not an easy process. But they're there now. Though some of the challenges in this process, it was a challenge negotiating to get our connections. Being a woman, specifically a woman of color, and all the people aren't gonna listen to me when it comes to technology or even the Internet. We primarily work with women of color, and that, to me, has been a success that's come out of this. And it's a proof that if you have people of color in leadership that it'll uplift other people of color to come into leadership, as well. I think it's important when you talk about businesses and places and organizations that do the things to have a face to it So, for me, this is a, [BLANK_AUDIO] A beautiful thing to be a part of. Because the faces that these people see are the same people who installed it, the same people who are protecting their privacy. The same people who will come back and be like, hey, you have a problem. What How do we fix that? If you think about it from a utility standpoint, the Internet service providers are likely to, at some point, start to merge. And then you've got one or two big behemoths that are controlling access, right, and the type of products that you get to use. And we're trying to do something different. This is a world wide problem not just here in Detroit, we see it in New York. Our equitable internet initiative can't stop at everyone needs a connection. Everyone needs to have a high speed connection or else we're gonna create a digital class system. Communication is a fundamental human right. The future of the Internet should be a collaboration between city, philanthropy and nonprofit sectors. In order to actually get to anybody, it's going to require quite a bit of community organizing [MUSIC] [UNKNOWN] My hope for the future of the Internet is that it stays free and open to the humans on this planet. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]