Imagining Broadband Policy of, by, and for the People

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

Access to affordable, reliable high-speed internet is a prerequisite for nearly every part of modern life, from finding work and finishing schoolwork to seeing a doctor or staying in touch with family. Yet millions of American households remain stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide.

That's the starting point for "The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation," a report released in May from Public Knowledge, UnidosUS, and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. Rather than beginning in Washington policy circles, this report centers the lived experiences of low- and moderate-income households to find out what's actually standing in their way and what should be done about it. Justin Hendrix had the chance to dig into the findings with the report’s authors: Alisa Valentin, broadband policy director at Public Knowledge, and Claudia Ruiz, senior civil rights policy advisor at UnidosUS.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Alisa Valentin:

My name is Alisa Valentin, and I am the Broadband Policy Director at Public Knowledge.

Claudia Ruiz:

And my name is Claudia Ruiz, and I'm the Senior Civil Rights Policy Advisor at UnidosUS, the nation's largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization.

Justin Hendrix:

Pleased to talk to the two of you today and see you again. I just saw the both of you in Washington DC recently and we're going to talk a little bit about this report you've produced, “The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation” that has just came out, and it is a work product of Public Knowledge and UnidosUS and also NDIA, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. How long did this tome take to put together? This is 70-odd pages of material, including all the citations, as that's quite a lot more.

Alisa Valentin:

Yeah, it took a couple of years. We started this project in 2024, so this is kind of a part of Public Knowledge's ongoing effort to ensure that we're centering equity in all of our work through our partnerships on the national level and on the local level in the way that we advocate and what we advocate for as well. So in 2024, probably in the spring, I approached Claudia, whose organization has a ton of partners on the ground, as well as the folks at National Digital Inclusion Alliance, and I was essentially like, "Let's get out of DC. Let's talk to people in communities. Let's elevate their experiences." And I was super happy that Claudia immediately said yes and NDIA immediately said yes, and so it took about two years. Now, I don't know Claudia if you have anything you want to add.

Claudia Ruiz:

No, and I think the way that Alisa narrates it is exactly how it came together, where I think the one thing that our three organizations, despite the fact that we all have different missions, different areas of expertise, and even different sort of network or play in different coalition spaces, the one thing that unites the three of us is really our focus and emphasis on trying to channel authentic community voices all the way from on the ground up into Washington DC. And making sure that it is those authentic voices, it is the very constituents and voters themselves, that are actually communicating the kind of needs and solutions directly to law and policymakers. And that was really sort of the vision that I think Alisa really pitched to us when she first came to us with this project.

Justin Hendrix:

I want to ask about this idea of a battle of imaginations, and that's your project overview, your original statement about what you're contending with here. Oh, look, a lot has changed in this subject in particular since 2024 with the new administration, with changes that have been made to federal funding for broadband, and a lot of contentious events that have occurred. What is this battle of imaginations, how does that animate all of that activity over the last couple of years?

Alisa Valentin:

Yeah, I would say that a lot of times when we're thinking about the federal policymaking space in DC, it continues to operate largely through networks of access and networks of influence and very well resourced interests that end up reinforcing power structures, and those are power structures inevitably of inequality. And we wanted to make sure that we are actually bringing in the voices of consumers into these conversations. I think that a lot of times people can feel comfortable sitting in their ivory towers and telling people what it is that's best for them, but we wanted to hear directly from low income and middle income consumers across the nation.

And we did so by speaking with people in Colorado, speaking with people in New Mexico, speaking with people in Ohio and Georgia. We would love to have spoken to even more people across the nation, but we really thought it was important that when we're having conversations with policymakers, that we're bringing in stories from these consumers because we know that stories can change hearts, we know that data can change minds, and we are really making sure that we want it to be influential in the conversations that we're having about broadband access, broadband affordability, and broadband access.

Claudia Ruiz:

I want to offer an additional frame that was something that in a discussion that we specifically had early on when we talked about the design of this project in going into communities and having one-on-one focus groups directly with community members. And that's that this project in and of itself was very much sort of like an exercise in democracy. It's like we continue to talk about tech and telecom's policy as if they live or exist independent of sort of day-to-day life. But the reality is we also stopped calling electricity energy policy once we all came to the conclusion that every individual deserves to have the lights on at home. We stopped calling it energy policy, we just started calling it core infrastructure.

And I think the reality is that we haven't really made that decision just yet when it comes to the internet, which I think it's almost kind of baffling that we haven't made that decision yet given where we are with everything related to AI and the out-sized footprint that big tech and AI companies continue to have not only within our economy, but also certainly even within our democracy and our democratic processes.

And so in 2026, the other thing we really wanted to do with this project is that by 2026, really assert and underscore this notion that internet access is itself core infrastructure in the very same way that electricity is, that running water is, that roads are, which I also might say it's not a coincidence that these are also all the issues that tie into the data center issues that we're seeing right now as well is what happens to utilities writ large for consumers when something like a data center enters our neighborhoods.

And so I think it's interesting, that's a very concrete way of demonstrating the fact that broadband is itself its own connective tissue. The internet is a connective tissue that runs through every single issue area that our families face, whether it's healthcare access, whether it's education, employment, job mobility, even civic participation or housing. A lot of these really depend on your ability to access the internet and actually have the skills, the appropriate skills, to actually engage on these issues online.

And so I think that the other thing that happened at the same time is that this project coincided with the winding down of the ACP program. While we were doing these focus groups, it also coincided with the unlawful cancellation of the Digital Equity Act programming. And so it also was kind of an exercise in democracy in the sense that we were in live time able to capture some of the responses or some of the impacts of those programs ending, of those programs winding down, and actually capture the voices and the attitudes of what people most impacted by them, what they thought about the fact that those programs were wound down and if those programs could come back or if new programs could take their place, what those would look like and how they should be structured.

And so yeah, I always like to really uplift at the very top of our conversation about this paper about the fact that this was also such an exercise in seeing how our democratic processes need to evolve in the wake of the out-sized world that the internet, digital platforms, and increasingly AI-driven economy, what that looks like and how we need to modernize our own democratic processes to reflect this sort of new world that we're living in.

Alisa Valentin:

And if I could just quickly add, another quote that we had in our report was by Eddie Glaude Jr. He said, "We've got to struggle democratically if we're struggling for democratic ends, and you've got to lead democratically if you want democratic ends," so we were working to embody that.

And then I would also just add on the timeline piece that I didn't get to mention earlier. I know that Claudia and I were on a panel back in February at the National Digital Inclusion Alliance Conference, Net Inclusion, which took place in Chicago. And I know I made a joke that my friend Joey from Shelby may not have liked, but I said it's like a Rihanna album, it takes time. We just always kept saying, "It's coming out soon. It's coming out soon." But we were able to get this over the finish line in May of this year. And I actually think to Claudia's point, that it actually made it better because if we would have put this project out summer of last year, there's so many changes that have happened since then. So I think that this is the right time, especially given all the conversations going on right now about universal service fund reform.

Justin Hendrix:

I think one of the things that I just sort of intuited about these issues is that the most frustrating thing is that many of the solutions were on the table, we appear to be moving in the right direction, not perfectly, not without obstacles or difficulties still ahead, etc., but enormous amount of work, which has essentially been somewhat scrapped in the current policy moment. But I kind of get one of the headline findings of your work here is that this is about political will on some level. The solutions are there. I'm interested in maybe a couple of other examples where some of those focus group participants, some of the kitchen table conversations that you had, where their diagnosis was sharper than the policy framing you hear there in Washington or really cut to the quick of this.

Claudia Ruiz:

I would start with something that I think working at Unidos has always been very obvious to us, or to me at least, given the sort of unique needs of Latino communities, and that's actually the piece around cultural competency and linguistic competency. So the greatest thing I think that we uplifted or we were able to surface out of these focus groups is the notion that I think what we heard really kind of doubled down on this idea that the Digital Equity Act itself was truly revolutionary. And it was revolutionary in the sense that it gave a lot of agency and ownership to local regions, to states, to communities to actually have say an agency over the ways in which a federal program would fit and be molded into their neighborhood, into their local community, and what actually needed to be in place in order for that to be successful.

So one of the things that we heard directly from participants, let's say for example out of New Mexico and Albuquerque, was this idea that any kind of programs that were going to be delivered from the federal government needed to be done in ways that were in language, that were actually done with an assessment, let's say, of what the community needs. So for example, another focus group participant mentioned how they lived in a rural area and that presented unique challenges from even from some of their friends or family members that might've lived in more urban areas. So it really was the fact that even within small neighborhood or communities, there could be such disparate needs that those needed to be addressed first and foremost. So I think that was something that we heard a lot of.

I think related, and I think this is also kind of another example of something not necessarily being culturally competent but it kind of showed up in a different way, was one of our focus group participants out of our Appalachia interviews in Ohio, in a very rural area in Ohio, mentioned how another issue that they had is that whenever they tried to do broadband access and sign up tables or tents at local farmer's markets or at local markets, another issue they ran into was the fact that a lot of their community members themselves were not literate, that they straight up cannot read and write at even a basic level. And so that even if you have this wonderful program that gives away, that provides a benefit, that provides a discounted or free device that someone can use, even if you are able to deliver a one-on-one digital training course, if you are not realizing that your community can't even enter that barrier, that they're already facing a barrier of entry that they cannot surpass, that that was never going to be a viable solution for that community.

And so I think again, coming back to this idea that the program of the Digital Equity Act was really revolutionary in the sense that it really provided a lot of that self-direction that we really see is missing from any sort of the other legislative proposals that we even see pending right now. And so again, that's why I think the unlawful cancellation of the program is extremely disappointing because of how many steps forward it took us in terms of actually addressing the very needs of the community members who need it most.

And to just also call out, I think we haven't even named it yet, that today as we're talking about this, were the actual oral arguments in the litigation challenging the cancellation of the Digital Equity Act, so in many ways it's really timely. And you might hear me talk ad nauseam about the Digital Equity Act because it's so top of mind given that last month was the 12-month or first-year anniversary of its cancellation. Alisa ran a series of events during its month of action opposing DEA cancellation. The fact that today is the day that oral arguments are happening. I think again, it's a perfect kind of collision of timing I think.

Alisa Valentin:

And if I could just quickly add, and I was just over here scrambling in my text messages here because I saw a piece in Axios the other day that said roughly 130 million US adults read below a sixth grade level, and about 43 million U.S. adults cannot read, write, or do basic math above a third grade level. So to your point, Claudia, that was interesting to see that coming up when we were in Marietta, Ohio. And then even when we were in Denver, Colorado, one of the participants in our discussion was talking about the fact that they have issues with basic literacy and I thought that was ... I really appreciated how open and honest that they were, but it allowed us to be able to explore that intersecting issue of traditional literacy and digital literacy when it came to our report.

Justin Hendrix:

So you mentioned that we're a year on since DEA was canceled, of course, restructuring of BEAD. Can you tell me right now where we're at with state proposals? Where are the proposals with NTIA? What is happening? What does the spending look like that is being allowed to move forward?

Alisa Valentin:

So it depends on the state. I believe as of now, or at least as of this week, Illinois and California to my understanding, and I hope I'm not wrong in this moment or wrong when this podcast comes out, have not yet received final approval from NTIA, but there is money that's been going out the door. But I have seen reporting in states like Nebraska, in states like Texas, and states like Wisconsin, that there are some providers that are not signing that final agreement with the states. We're still trying to explore and understand why that is. I don't know, I can make some assumptions that maybe the economic conditions of the nation have changed, supply chain costs have gone up, but that's something that we still need to explore.

But I will also just say that ... Well, two other things. June of last year is when NTIA issued their policy restructuring notice that essentially would allow for satellite providers and for fixed wireless providers to have a bigger chance of being able to get this BEAD funding. And so we will see what the impacts of that are, but one thing that we've seen directly from NTIA are calling this the benefit of the bargain. They're saying they're going to save, and I'm putting it in air quotes here, save at least $21 billion. So there's a question right now of what's going to happen with that $21 billion. We heard from Secretary Lutnick a couple of months ago that there will be an announcement this summer about BEAD non-deployment funds, and something that Public Knowledge has been advocating for is for NTIA to follow the statute and for those funds to be used for broadband affordability and broadband adoption purposes. We don't know at this stage what's going to happen with those funds, but that is our consistent advocacy and other organizations have been in alignment with us on that front.

Justin Hendrix:

Claudia, what else do you think that Tech Policy Press listeners should be looking out for on these issues just in the next couple of months as some of these things become a little more clear?

Claudia Ruiz:

I think something else to keep in mind, and I think it's interesting that the sort of main focus we have right now in terms of telecom or broadband or internet policy is what's happening with BEAD dollars, BEAD deployment dollars, that Alisa just laid out for us. I think we're also kind of tracking what's going on with the universal service fund reform, we know that that's still something that's actively underway with the Universal Service Fund Reform Working Group that exists right now in the Senate. So those are two areas that we're keeping watch on very closely and that I think dominate a lot of the telecom policy discussions that coalitions are having right now.

But another area to keep an eye on that I think sometimes is not always surfaced in these conversations about telecom policy is the role that a lot of the legislation, the flurry of bills that we're seeing around AI adoption, AI literacy, AI deployment, a lot of those bills are really pulling in a lot of the threads that we're talking about when it comes to digital scaling or digital access and adoption. And so that's something else that we kind of are ... I would actually call it a little bit of a bright line because in some ways we are talking about internet policy without naming it explicitly, it's just happening to be folded into the conversation around AI. But I think it's also an important moment to make sure that telecom's advocates are actually getting involved in AI discussions to really underscore the idea that AI is no more revolutionary than the introduction of the internet itself and that frankly, without any sort of functioning internet that an overwhelming majority of us could take advantage of, AI tools themselves will necessarily not be as good as they should be.

And so that's something that I also like to talk about a lot when we talk about broadband policy is the fact that while there may not be such an emphasis on it the way that there was when the bipartisan infrastructure law passed and this suite of programs, the ACP, the DEA, and BEAD, the new vision for universal service, the vision that that suite of programs gave us, I think we're still very much talking about that vision when we talk about some of the pending AI legislation that we see. And I think another way that that really is bubbling up in conversations ... I mentioned the data centers, and so the questions around what will broadband affordability really look like when we have the 800 and some data centers that are being built out just this year. I think that kind of pulls in another corner of this sort of ongoing policy debate.

I think another piece is when we talk about workforce, we know that some of the biggest anxieties that Americans have around AI deployment is what it's going to do to the workforce landscape. And I mean when we already have a telecom platform where we call for investment in digital skilling programs, what we're really talking about is also skilling workers so that they are ready to be able to adopt AI in the workplace, so that they are actually appropriately skilled to engage with the tools, which again, but for their engagement, the tools will continue to be stagnant because it really requires iteration constant use for these, let's say for example, a large language model for it to be able to improve. It's constantly learning from any of the inputs or the queries that it's being used for, the functions that it's being deployed for, and so it is in many ways an imperative that we get as many people online so that they are able to access and adopt these tools.

Alisa Valentin:

And if I could also add, we have to track some of the actions going on at the FCC as well, particularly as it relates to the Lifeline program and the E-Rate program. There are some toxic proposals circulating right now, the FCC. So with the Lifeline proposal in particular, which we just submitted reply comments on last week and then the original comments were due in May and there was a lot of energy around this, there is a lot of energy around this proceeding as it relates to the public interest community. But it appears to be that the chair of the FCC is trying to weaponize the narrative of waste, fraud, and abuse as it relates to the Lifeline program. And that's very concerning because in an era of a lot of affordability concerns, you should be thinking about how to make sure that Lifeline is working for the nation's most low income consumers and instead you're proposing putting more hurdles in place with expanded identity verifications and full social security number collection and all types of toxic proposals. It's really, really concerning.

And Lifeline is a program that hovers at around a 19 to 22% participation rate. And even let's say state of Texas, for example, there's like two million folks that are eligible for the Lifeline program and yet they have about an eight to 9% participation rate. So why aren't we asking questions about why aren't people enrolling? Do people not know about the program? Is it difficult for people to enroll? Is a subsidy not enough? Those are the sorts of questions that we think that the FCC should be asking. And also in a couple of weeks, the FCC is also going to be voting on a proposal related to the E-Rate program and there's some questions in this notice of proposed rulemaking about if the E-Rate program, which helps support schools and libraries across the nation to get broadband connectivity, there are some questions about should the E-Rate program even exist? Should the E-Rate program just be for rural communities?

And the chair of the FCC is really engaged in this whole like the politics of deservingness here. And as we said in our comments that we filed with the FCC a couple of weeks ago, we think that this is an attempt to get invisible points on an invisible scoreboard as it relates to the chair and his relationship with the President of the United States. So very concerning and I want to be clear that these proposals, if they end up going through, the people they're going to impact is not just people in urban communities, it's severely going to impact people in rural communities who support the President of the United States.

Claudia Ruiz:

And I want to pick up a little bit on what Alisa was mentioning around the leveraging of this narrative of waste, fraud, and abuse that we're seeing this administration sort of weaponize to dismantle a lot of low income benefit programs. We're seeing that same sort of narrative, I would say fabricated narrative, being used to justify executive overreach across issue areas. And that's something that I really just want to name because another kind of feature or a bug maybe of working in policy and advocacy in Washington is that a lot of the times we tend to be siloed by our issue areas. We think of broadband policies existing in one area, which is distinct from let's say AI policy, which is distinct from voting, which is distinct from ... You tick down the list.

And the reality is that what we're seeing, I think first and foremost, again, identifying broadband as core infrastructure implies that it gets pulled into every issue regardless of what silo you may be sitting in. But I think another thing here, and that's something that's really meaningful, or not meaningful, but I think really important to name, is the fact that the same sort of weaponization of this narrative of fraud that we're seeing happen in the broadband space at the FCC, we're also seeing it leveraged to insist on the rollback of data privacy protections. It's what's being justified to share, let's say, Medicaid data lists with the Department of Homeland Security to fuse into their save database.

It is the same justification that this administration is using to demand really voter rolls from the states. That's the justification that is being used to justify a rollback across agencies of rights and that's something that we really, really need to be taking seriously and that we need to respond to. Because not only is it going to harm, not only are these narratives being used to justify some of the impacts directly to consumers that Alisa just laid out for us, but it's also being used to systematically dismantle a lot of the core infrastructure that we do have that we were able to build up that actually supports the communities in need and low income consumers that are struggling to really make it in a time of rising costs, rising inflation, and rising uncertainty when it comes to the labor market for sure and the AI-driven economy as we continue to move forward.

Justin Hendrix:

In this report, you also call in the industry ISPs to step up on low cost plans, to get more transparent in pricing, to end long-term contracts. You say that your focus group participants, they were blunt about gimmicks they see in the market, surprise price jumps. Is there anything for potentially the listener who might be working for one of these ISPs that you'd want to communicate or anything more you'd like to say to the industry, which I assume has largely been able to take advantage of the policy environment that we're in at the moment?

Alisa Valentin:

Yeah, I would say this, that when it came to the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law, public interest organizations and industry worked well together to make sure that that became a reality. What we really need support from from our friends and industry is related to USF reform. I think that there's a lot of debates ... Well, I know there are a lot of debates right now of who is it that's going to pay into USF. And that conversation is very frustrating for me because we are the wealthiest nation in the world and yet we haven't figured out how to make sure that everyone has access to affordable, reliable broadband. We can get this figured out.

And I think it's really important for our industry fronts to come along with us in advocating for an affordable broadband subsidy. They obviously put a lot of money and a lot of effort into advertising for the Affordable Connectivity Program, getting people enrolled. And when that program went away, that eroded trust in those companies, but it also eroded trust in the digital navigators that were working so hard to get people signed up for the Affordable Connectivity Programs. What we need with USF is a program that is sustainable, we need to make sure that it's a program that is absolutely long-term, and we need a program that's predictable, and I think that's an area of opportunity with us and industry.

And I'll also say for many, many years we heard industry talk about broadband adoption, "We need these digital skilling programs," and all of that, so come along with us. Senator Lujan and Congresswoman Matsui a few weeks ago introduced the Digital Opportunity Foundation Act, and that's something that Public Knowledge supports to make sure that we have money for broadband adoption. Industry could support that legislation. This inevitably will help them. They made money off of the Affordable Connectivity Program, so we want to make sure that they are collaborating with us on this. And this will help everyone. This will help consumers, this will help local economies, this will help small business owners, this will help our nation to be economically competitive as well. So I would say that's kind of my message for our friends in industry.

Justin Hendrix:

Are there bright spots out there that you're seeing across the country, particular places that maybe you visited in writing this report or that have come across your desk? Places where, I don't know, they're really good examples of folks who even in this more difficult time, maybe struggling with a loss of funding or a grant being effectively taken away that they anticipated getting, have figured out how to turn lemons into proverbial lemonade?

Alisa Valentin:

I would say the folks who work in the digital inclusion space are very creative and they're very resilient, but they still need support. And in December of 2025, Public Knowledge and National Digital Inclusion Alliance launched the Connectivity Policy Corps. We have about 18 members across the nation. It's a national cohort model. We're working to help get people in local communities and in states get their policy chops up so they can advocate before Congress. And those people who are part of our Connectivity Policy Corps in areas like West Virginia and Nebraska and Arkansas, in the state of New York, they are all doing excellent work and I invite folks to look up the Connectivity Policy Corps online.

We just had quite a few of them visiting Washington DC a few weeks ago where they were advocating for USF reform. They were advocating for getting the funds for Digital Equity Act are restored and out the door. They were also advocating for making sure that NDIA follows Congress' statute as it relates to BEAD non-deployment funds, that they're used for broadband adoption, broadband affordability. But I think the members of our Connectivity Policy Corps are excellent examples of folks who are doing fantastic work in their local communities.

Claudia Ruiz:

Yeah, so I have something kind of similar and I think it's the same kind of role that a lot of the cohort that Alisa is describing plays and that's that here at Unidos, we have a network of more than 300 community-based organizations around the country. They're their own independent, small nonprofits that provide direct services to communities. So whether it's a charter school or whether it's a health clinic, an immigration legal service, I like to joke that if you can imagine it, I'm sure I can find you an affiliate of ours that delivers that program somewhere in the country.

And one of the things again, because I think our community, the Latino and immigrant community in particular is very used to this idea of having to do more with less, one of the things that we've gotten very good at is identifying how to integrate programs in a way that is sort of wrapped up like it's a one-stop shop. So if you're someone who needs help filing your taxes, you may want to go to via the tax site and oh wait, this is the same sort of navigator who's helping you with your taxes might notice that when the ACP was around, you might've been eligible for an ACP benefit, and so then they get you signed up that way. And it's the same sort of mechanism that, "Oh, if you're eligible for this benefit program, chances are depending on the matching criteria, you could also enroll in this benefit program."

And so that's something that our network had already been doing, and so fast-forward to when we've seen these severe cuts, the good news is that we were already well versed in how to do more with less, so that was something I think that wasn't necessarily novel, though of course nobody wants to have their funding yanked or their funding streams dry up.

But I think the other thing is that now it's also forced folks to get more creative. I think especially in this moment, speaking for Latino communities specifically given a lot of the chilling effects that we've seen as a result of ICE raids and the ICE occupation of major cities, what have a lot of our community members have done is started to stay home, avoid government programs, avoid government services altogether, and they've really come to rely on their local community anchor institutions for solutions to any issue, ranging from finding a job, ranging from trying to find internet access so that they can work from home, whether it's figuring out how to enroll in let's say Medicaid. Now all of those sort of support services have transitioned from their local agencies to their local community-based organization or community anchor institution.

And so in many ways, as much as it should not be that our resources are squished that much further, I think that there is sort of a silver lining in the sense that then a lot of this knowledge is now consolidated in one place because these are already programs that we were running through these affiliates. And so I think that is one sort of silver lining is that ... And again, our report actually calls for this, is that we are now treating digital access, digital skilling, digital adoption programs as part and parcel of the everyday service delivery needs that families have. Whether it relates to support enrolling children in schools, whether it's needing support for health and nutrition support, those are now sort of being coupled with the sort of lifeline that is digital access and digital adoption. So I think that that's definitely a bright line.

And the last thing that I'll say is another bright line that we've seen since we're a little starved for those these days, I think, is that as much as the DEA funds were frozen, we lost ACP, the BEAD non-deployment funds continue to be a question mark, one thing that did happen last year in the fall of 2025 is that the Department of Labor issued guidance stating that states could use their WIOA dollars to specifically do AI skilling and adoption training programs. And again, as we mentioned at the top, as I said previously, in our review, that includes Digital Skills 101, because if you can't take let's say a prompt engineering class or if you can't take a AI Essentials 101 class, in order to take those, you need to have some requisite level of digital fluency and digital skilling.

So I think that that's another bright line that we've been sharing with our networks is figuring out how to leverage some of those WIOA dollars to really deliver the digital training programs that our communities desperately need.

Justin Hendrix:

Early in the report you opened with a line from Dr. Ruha Benjamin, who I believe the last time we saw each other in person, we all saw speak in person at the leadership conference event that we attended. It's her line about radical imagination pushing past what we're told is politically possible.

I'm kind of wondering, just to round us out here, what an equitable digital future actually looks like to each of you, why you're doing this work? What are we aiming towards? I mean you brought up AI earlier. There's so many different ways of thinking about this issue at the moment, they're both opportunities and threats, both in internet adoption and AI adoption, and yet I think we all still fundamentally agree that meeting those threats requires us to have everyone essentially on the same level playing field in terms of literally access to global connectivity to the internet. What does an equitable digital future actually look like to each of you?

Alisa Valentin:

Yeah. And as you can see here, I have Ruha Benjamin's book Imagination in my background here, but on a personal level, I grew up in South Georgia and my family, descendants of enslaved people in Georgia. And I've been doing a lot of research on ancestry.com and all of that about the history of my family and in reading Ruha Benjamin's book, I was thinking a lot about how someone, our ancestors, always had to imagine a better day, imagine that I would be sitting here with a PhD from Howard University advocating for communities of color, low income communities, rural communities. There was a lot of imagining that people had to do during the most difficult of circumstances for me to be sitting here on a podcast with you right now.

So I just want to make sure, and this is something I've heard Tressie McMillan Cottom, and I think we put this in our report as well, say that I don't want my lack of imagination to make somebody else's life impossible. I want to make sure that the equitable future is that of making sure that everyone's able to thrive, people have what they need, that they're not having to work two and three jobs in order to be able to afford broadband. I want everyone to be able to have access to healthcare. I don't want folks getting over-surveilled because of the color of their skin or their accents. I want people to be at peace. I haven't felt at peace in a while and I know that many people across this nation have not felt that.

And so yeah, I don't know if I really ... I have to think about this more, Justin, because I know it's kind of a rambling answer, and so maybe it's something that I need to spend some more time thinking about that, but I'm hoping that this Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation can be one step towards a more equitable future.

Justin Hendrix:

I think it's quite a good answer.

Claudia Ruiz:

Yeah, you've brought up peace and now I have to go after that. I might say, and I think I say this also wearing my voting rights and election protection hat because that's my other day job is running some of our election protection and democracy reform campaigns here at Unidos, and one thing that we hear ... I've been doing a lot of focus groups in the last two years, ranging on everything from broadband like this project with Alisa, all the way up to running focus groups on the ways in which Latino voters see themselves in their own body of rights and what that looks like day-to-day.

And I think one key takeaway that has sat with me for some time is this idea that I think especially ... I want to say this specifically as we're in an election year with the midterms coming up in just a couple months, and that's that people today just want to feel like they can see themselves in their own government. And that doesn't just mean representation in terms of congressional members or government or representation in that sense, though that piece is of course true, but it also means that even in the way that our government is designed should be reflective of the ways in which each of us live and exist individually. And so that means making sure that's, again, why I think this is very much part and parcel of the real heart of this project, this blueprint project that we did is, "Okay, tell us in your words, what does a successful program look like for someone living in your community?"

And I think that not only does the work of, of course, appropriately tailoring our government services and programs to the people that need them, but it also serves a very much an empowering sort of mechanism. It kind of restores power back to communities and makes them feel that they have a level of agency and direction over the ways in which this country is moving, over the ways in which we're deciding to rebuild or restructure in the wake of a global pandemic, in the wake of a lot of political strife, in the wake of a lot of terrorizing of communities right now, in the face of uncertainty, economic uncertainty, both given the economic realities we're living in and with the looming AI new world that we're really looking to embrace.

And I feel like with so much uncertainty with households and families experiencing that day-to-day, Alisa just mentioned it, the ways in which her sort of uncertainty manifests, the ways in which uncertainty is manifesting as we continue to get closer to the election, I think the main thing is really figuring out ways in which our democratic processes, our toolbox, these mechanisms can be reshaped and retooled in order to actually serve those individuals in those communities so that they can take hold of those tools and really self-direct and self-drive them.

And so I think I would really just close with the idea that broadband and broadband policy and adoption very much I think captures that story of power distribution and what it looks like to actually shift power away from a consolidated entity, which I know is something that we're struggling with right now quite literally in Washington DC, but what are the sort of areas of opportunity where we can shift that power back into communities, back into households, and have people live that agency day-to-day?

Justin Hendrix:

Alisa, Claudia, thank you very much for joining me. This report's called The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation, there'll be a link to it in the show notes for this podcast. Thank you both very much and I wish you a good day.

Claudia Ruiz:

Thank you.

Alisa Valentin:

Thank you.