On Wednesday, August 19 at 3pm ET, just eight days before the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous “Dream” speech, the on-going webinar series hosted by the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) returns to pose a pointed question to the digital inclusion community: what is our dream for digital equity — and what kind of ecosystems do we need to, at last, build a “Beloved (connected) Community?”
The free live-streamed webinar — “Normalcy, Never Again” — takes its name from the spirit of King’s August 28, 1963 address and will serve as a rallying point to reaffirm that the digital equity movement will not accept business as usual or be managed into irrelevance, even if the face of a federal government actively dismantling the programs and protections that were supposed to close the digital divide.
The webinar will examine what real modernization looks like, explore the striking geography of the digital landscape along Martin Luther King boulevards across the country, and conclude with a roundtable discussion around how community coalitions can reduce digital inequity and strengthen democracy, expanding on the legacy of King and the Civil Rights Movement’s commitment to building inclusive communities.