Raising Our Voices : 510pen

Short Synopsis

510pen is an infrastructure project designed to provide sliding scale broadband hardware and installation to Oakland community groups paired with capacity-building workshops.  

Description/Treatment

510pen is an extension of Media Alliance’s Raising Our Voices Program in San Antonio, East Oakland.  510pen is a potential community wireless network serving the East Bay region.

A community wireless network is a collection of people in a community sharing resources to improve electronic communication and enhance Internet access. The 510pen network is built on open-source mesh network technology including the OLSR mesh protocol. It is designed to have both decentralized network architecture and centralized management capabilities, with multiple gateways connecting to the global Internet. People who want to participate in 510pen need a mesh-enabled wi-fi router - available for $49 - and must either be within 15-50 meters of a participating neighbor or have their own Broadband Internet connection. As the mesh expands, its participants have more reliable and resilient Internet access. When users begin a new Internet access session through the 510pen network, they will be first directed to a portal splash page, which will serve as an information resource and community-building tool for local residents, organizations and small businesses, offering possibly community news and a wiki. 510pen will work with a variety of community partners - and the Raising Our Voices training program - to build and maintain the mesh portal. 

Raising Our Voices operated in San Francisco throughout the late 90’s and early 2000’s. It created compelling artistic and political material on the struggles of homeless and formerly homeless people in the Bay Area to survive with dignity, tell their stories in their own voices, and advocate for their needs.  The program connected the dots between telecommunications policy and social justice struggles and created a body of community-based media advocates who have served as a base for continuing media democratization campaigns.    
In response to the increasing isolation of East Oakland communities hit by growing waves of violence, media misrepresentation, and communication access challenges, Media Alliance reconvened the Raising Our Voices program in Fall 2008 with the generous support of the Social Science Research Council. Themed “Immigrant Women Women Speak Out”, the Fall 2008 Raising Our Voices cohort attracted an intergenerational group (12-62 years) of women from a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds (Mien, Filipino, Mexican, Afro-Caribbean, Mongolian), and included representatives from Mujeres Unidas Y Activas, Central American Resource Center, Streetside Health Project, East Bay Asian Youth Center, and the East Bay Asian Coalition.  To complement the Raising Our Voices media literacy and technology training curriculum, Media Alliance also worked to fund and establish a computer training lab in East Oakland for participating community members and organizations to access and use throughout the duration of the program.  Sited at the Eastside Arts Alliance and Cultural Center in the San Antonio neighborhood in Oakland – only blocks from the Fruitvale BART Station where Oscar Grant was murdered by a transit policeman and a community mourned and protested. 

There is a strong need in East Oakland for expression and community healing around issues of violence. There is also anger around problems of misrepresentation in the media.  This is evident in the works of our program participants which include local organizing efforts to support students struggling with the mandated English-proficiency high school exit exams, the displacement of families in ICE raids, and how families and residents cope with policing of their young people by both gangs and police authorities as captured by a mother’s tribute to her murdered son and a young woman’s tribute to events in response to the shooting of 22-year old Oscar Grant by BART security.  Their stories exemplify the power of media access training to create first-voice generated content.  In doing so, the Raising Our Voices Program builds value for technology in under-resourced communities by cultivating the spirit of community journalism, resulting in much-needed insight into the lives of those most impacted by violence and its many forms.