Community Technology Centers - Taking the next step

There's nothing quite like the community technology center movement, which focuses on making technology available to the large number of people who are being hurt and cast aside in what we are told are these best of economic times. We have so much to be proud of, but we have not finished building out the vision that inspired us; the vision that access to computer technology is linked in important ways to access to all kinds of essential opportunities, physical, mental, emotional nutritional, and spiritual. Even so, in order to help us complete this vision we have been working on, we need to take the next step toward a greater vision.

That greater vision is of a world without poverty. It is technology that has made a world without poverty a realizable goal, not a pipe dream. In a country as wealthy and as blessed as ours, the goal should be to eliminate poverty, not manage it. That is the vision we have at the Women's Economic Agenda Project (WEAP).

Our vision is based on the economics and technology of today:

• We are aware that modern technology in the form of computer-controlled processes and robotically-performed operations can produce enough material goods right now to satisfy basic human needs all over the world. Nobody has to go hungry or homeless or uncared for.
• We also know that visions become reality when people are willing to step out ahead of conventional wisdom and start asking questions and making plans.

The community technology center movement is in an incredibly strong position to start talking up this next step.

We as community technology centers might formally adopt policies to improve the income for our constituents, which means support training that allows for our folks to get living wage jobs. This includes sharing lessons and best practices regarding employment training, structured curriculum instructions, providing intermediate, and advanced training for participants. By supporting the work, health, and technological development to be developed by our shared interests and we can make significant steps in poverty elimination.

We have a special opportunity to address how poor youth, poor people and working women continue to be short changed by programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF. TANF is focused on managing the poor, as opposed to eliminating poverty. Managing poverty represents a failed social contract. It requires pushing people off the rolls even when that keeps them mired in poverty, and it provides no safety net. Our centers could expose and document the destruction that TANF has caused to the families and communities that we serve. This would help break the silence on poverty.

Another critical issue to be addressed is the link between health, health care, poverty and jobs. We can fight to help the people we serve get the health care they need whether or not they have jobs. Together, we can draw attention to the fact that America has a long-term healthcare crisis that calls out for a national health program guaranteeing health coverage from the cradle to grave. People should not have to wait for small health problems to develop into life-threatening crises before a way is found to give them some sort of too little, too late care.

Finally, we could advance the basic mission of our respective organizations and networks. There are key lessons we have learned here in California that might be transferred as critical components for successful community technology centers throughout the state and across the nation. For example, the lessons learned from WEAP's experience with Computers In Our Future (CIOF) is that creating the center is as much about community development as it is about learning and technology. In other states, CTCs and others have come to the same conclusion.

Our experience with CIOF helped WEAP see how too many people remain on the wrong side of the widening gap between the rich and the poor. We share a deep concern for people who don't have the basic foundation needed for a decent and productive life, a life that helps strengthen families and that brings decent health care, decent housing, a healthy diet and good jobs. We are about the same kinds of goals even though our methodology might be different. The time is now for the community technology movement to take the next step, and adopt a New Social Agenda beyond merely bridging the Digital Divide, and address the bigger issues.

Strategies for a New Social Agenda

By organizing and uniting nurses, social workers, unemployed workers, doctors, lawyers, students, musicians, artists, union members, religious leaders, and people with disabilities, we can develop a new strategy - unity, organization, computer users and leadership of the poor at the forefront of a broad movement to abolish poverty in this country. We call for:

• A new social agenda: to dismantle the digital divide. Promote the benefit and attributes of community computer centers.
• Living wage-plus: Share lessons from the CIOF Network's best practices regarding employment training, structured curriculum-based instruction, and intermediate and advanced training, so that participants are retrained for the "living wage-plus" job market.
• Just health care: Acquire universal access to quality health care. Get the health care whether or not they have jobs. Use one-on-one contact, teach-ins and trainings to draw attention to America's health care crisis. Organize broad support in our communities by supporting health security in a national health program with public oversight and planning.
• Universal declaration of human rights to eliminate poverty: Bear witness, speak truth to power, unite the troops, and use computerized technology to advance the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More than 50 years ago the founding members of the United Nations declared that all people have a right to adequate food, housing, education, and medical care. Now computerized technology has given us the means to achieve that goal. Break the silence on poverty, and particularly on the destruction that TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) has caused to our families and communities across this nation, because this law has been focused on managing the poor as opposed to eliminating poverty.