There’s a tiny piece of equipment on the roof of the soon-to-open Street Roots building on West Burnside Street that’s hard to glimpse from below.
It’s a weathervane of sorts, but instead of checking which way the wind blows, it’s creating a new direction.
That direction? An ambition for digital equity that Laquida Landford has been leading through the AfroVillage — an organization focused on the needs of unhoused people with a focus on racial equity.
A frequent partner of Street Roots, the AfroVillage headquarters is based in Old Town, the neighborhood with the lowest median income, Landford points out, and a neighborhood she loves.
Housing, jobs, utilities, food stamps and other federal benefits — all of this is difficult to connect to without a phone and Wi-Fi. Landford has long been chipping away at this, launching a “Hook a Neighborhood Up” initiative to connect people with devices and training.
But while each effort is piecemeal, her vision is holistic.
That tiny weathervane object is the hub for the AfroVillage Old Town Community Network. Wi-Fi access will grow exponentially through point-to-point signals that bounce from rooftop to rooftop, widening access. To work, they need more rooftops.
When Landford approached Street Roots to be the hub for this project, we were all in. The AfroVillage received a grant from the city of Portland Office of Community Technology to pilot this project, with Personal Telco providing technical and installation support. Street Roots has worked with Personal Telco for years. They maintain a system for our current office on Northwest Davis Street to provide Street Roots vendors internet access.
Portland nonprofit Free Geek — which is working on digital equity across the city — is leading the way to help people get trained in jobs by working on the AfroVillage Old Town Community Network. People experiencing homelessness and poverty have many aptitudes, and for some this includes technology.
Ease of connection is key. The digital divide creates its own system of haves and have nots.
These local efforts are part of a movement to make up for the backslide of the internet into corporate control. During the '90s, President Bill Clinton took a series of actions, including the 1997 Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, that “formally committed the federal government to a market-dominated one,” according to Ben Tarnoff, author of “Internet for the People.”
“Connectivity is never neutral,” Tarnoff writes. “The growth of networks was guided by a desire for profit and power.”
It might be easy to overlook that this is an important part of solving homelessness — but accessing charging stations and free Wi-Fi is a daily struggle, especially when that is what’s standing between people and the resources they need.
“Nothing's really gonna change if folks aren't getting the resources that they need,” said Rai Renee, the Director of Communications and Operations for the AfroVillage.
“If you are hungry or homeless or sick — if you’re shivering in the parking lot using free Wi-Fi to attend school online because you don’t have internet at home — it’s hard to live a self-determined life,” wrote Tarnoff.
But to imagine alternatives — such as a Wi-Fi commons — is to begin by centering those most impacted by an inequity. The shared vision of the AfroVillage PDX, Free Geek, Personal Telco and Street Roots begins with getting internet to people experiencing homelessness and poverty but, just like the library system, it’s about making it available to everyone.
“We're hoping to tie in some of the businesses with this whole project so that they can benefit from it as well,” Rai said. “We see Wi-Fi as community development.”
So maybe what we’ve built right now is only a tiny weathervane.
But the vision is much larger — that of a Wi-Fi commons for all. To get there, we need rooftops. Lots of rooftops.
Do you own a building in Old Town that could serve as one more node to keep spreading this service out? Let Rai Renee know at rairenee@afrovillagepdx.org.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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