Now that Congress has passed the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill– with $11 billion for Georgia’s roads, reservoirs, bridges and broadband– folks should remember another historic moment when public investments improved our lives. Nine decades ago, inspired by his visits to Warm Springs, President Franklin D. Roosevelt invested in rural electrification to ensure all Americans had access to a necessity of modern life.
State Rep. Erick Allen
Now, President Biden’s program can accomplish a similarly transformative change: connecting every American to broadband. It’s the ticket to full participation in the Information Age.
Still, as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., often declared: “In the struggle for justice, there are no permanent victories.” While FDR’s New Deal uplifted Americans from every background, many African-Americans were excluded from its full benefits. Now we need to make sure that the infrastructure program’s great goal of universal connectivity becomes a living reality for America’s digital have-nots who are disproportionately Black, Brown and low-income.
When FDR focused on the neediest “third of a nation” and when Dr. King organized a Poor People’s campaign, they could have been prophesying today’s digital divide which polarizes our country along the lines of race, class and ethnicity.
Digital inequalities are stark: Yes, 77% of all Americans subscribe to broadband at home. But only 65% of Hispanics, 71% of African Americans and 57% of low-income households have high-speed internet.
Thankfully, the infrastructure program addresses every dimension of the digital divide – broadband availability, affordability and adoption. But, as with so many social programs grassroots organizing will be crucial to achieving national goals on the ground. As President Obama used to say, we will need to put on our marching shoes to go door-to-door helping our neighbors go and stay online and navigate the internet.
Georgia will get at least $100 million to help build broadband networks across the state to reach the 10% of Georgians who don’t have service available now. And more than 3 million Georgians — 31% of our population — will be eligible for the Affordability Connectivity Benefit. That helps low-income families afford internet access by offering a stipend of up to $30 per month.
But for the more than one in four households in urban areas who don’t have the confidence or know-how to connect to the networks in their neighborhoods – even when public or private subsidies are available – there are no easy answers. Just hard work ahead.
The challenges are complex and compelling. Almost 30% of Americans in one survey still don’t know about the low-cost connections that are available – or how to apply for them. Others are skeptical, hardened by the weight of history to distrust public programs and private companies.
Even with the new broadband benefit – a digital complement to nutritional, housing and healthcare subsidies – families still suffer serious problems. They range from juggling two or three jobs to put food on the table to aging apartments that can’t be wired and the growing threat of evictions. Small wonder that home computers, tablets and other devices – essential for internet access – may seem like luxuries.
That’s why we need to spread the message that, as education, job training and retraining, healthcare and civic participation all are moving online, broadband isn’t a luxury. It is a necessity.
And we can spread the word the same way that we promote vaccination, voter registration and enrollment in programs from the Affordable Care Act to the Earned Income Tax Credit.
As research demonstrates and public-spirited people are well aware, the best messengers are folks whom their neighbors already know and trust – religious and community leaders, small businesspeople, educators and civil rights activists.
Our front-line ambassadors should never take NO for an answer. All the tools for universal connectivity are at our fingertips now.
With the bill providing nearly $3 billion for digital outreach programs, now is the time to plan full-fledged campaigns to get eligible households signed up. As the late Congressman John Lewis famously said, internet access is “the civil rights issue of the 21st Century.”
Now it’s up to us to make sure that internet access is for all Americans, including those who have been left out and locked out for far too long.
Erick Allen is a Democratic member of the Georgia House of Representatives representing parts of Fulton and Cobb Counties.
