Digital Expansion Initiative

Click here to ask for more information about this project:

Images

Website:

Topics:

Broadband, Cable, Community networks, Digital divide, Internet, Media Literacy/Education, Public/Community media, Regulation, Spectrum/wireless, VOIP/Telephony/Phones, Youth

Budget

Raised to date: $65,000.00
Estimate to complete: $120,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $185,000.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 01/05/2009

Key Personnel

Joshua Breitbart
Policy Director

Joshua Breitbart is the Policy Director for People's Production House where he directs the Digital Expansion Initiative. He is also a principal of The Ethos Group, which conducts public interest research on municipal broadband. His report on Wireless Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Story: Learning from a Municipal Wireless Pioneer, was published by The New America Foundation in February 2008. Before entering the world of policy, he collaborated with community media outlets around the world through the Indymedia network. He was a founder of Brooklyn's Rooftop Films, then one of the smallest and now one of the largest film festivals in New York City. He is on the board of Allied Media Projects, which hosts the annual Allied Media Conference in Detroit, Michigan. A native New Yorker, he is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Deep Springs College, and Columbia University. Josh writes about media and technology in a monthly column for GothamGazette.com.

Funders

Name	Amount	Date
Manhattan Neighborhood Network	$15,000.00	02/01/2008
Media Democracy Fund	$25,000.00	01/01/2008
Media Justice Fund	$25,000.00	10/01/2007

Short Synopsis

Through our Digital Expansion Initiative (DEI), People’s Production House works to expand access to the Internet and secure open pathways to distribute our community’s media. Using participatory research, policy analysis, and community organizing, we foster public participation in the decisions that determine our communications future.

Description/Treatment

People's Production House provides young people, immigrants, and low-wage workers with a comprehensive education for the information age, combining media production, media literacy and media policy. We are fulfilling the promise of community journalism by closing the gap in skills and access.

Our recent accomplishments include

Premiering "The Internet is Serious Business," a 28-minute introduction to the broadband duopoly produced in collaboration with the Center for Urban Pedagogy and students from City-As-School.
Implementing our media policy curriculum in our community journalism trainings with members of organizations such as the Street Vendor Project, Picture the Homeless, Families for Freedom, and Make The Road New York.
Conducting a New York City white spaces campaign in response to an anti-white spaces resolution before the City Council. Our rapid-response videos reframed the issue, taking it out of the engineering lab and into the streets. See www.speakandlisten.net.
Launching a campaign to reform the Public Service Commission, the state agency that oversees cable. Working with Common Cause New York, we exposed a highly-flawed franchising process that allowed Verizon to continue potentially hazardous FiOS installations for over two years.
Partnering with the Harlem Consumer Education Council, Friends of Thirteen, and the New York Community Media Alliance, among others, on a DTV public awareness effort.
Opening an office in Washington, DC – the first step in DEI's "Project Beltway." Building on our successful engagement of new constituencies in New York and our existing media education program in Washington, DC, public schools, we will bring local DC residents currently at the margins of the Internet and journalism into the center of policy discussions at the federal level.