Digital Justice Campaign asks candidates for City investment in training and citywide access

Connect Your Community has launched a new effort to get Cleveland City Hall to finally make a serious investment in universal digital literacy and broadband access over the next four years.

The Cleveland Digital Justice Campaign has written to both of the city’s general election candidates for Mayor and all thirty-four candidates for City Council, asking them for commitments to support four measures “to bring digital literacy and affordable broadband access to our whole city”.

The four proposed measures are:

— City funding of at least $1 million a year for neighborhood technology training centers

— Expansion of the City’s free public wifi network throughout the city (it now serves just one ward out of seventeen)

— A City-owned, city-wide optical fiber broadband network to provide affordable, very fast Internet services to Cleveland homes and businesses — as a City utility service, a delivery option for new competitive private Internet providers, or both; and

— A new Cabinet-level executive position dedicated to promotion of universal digital literacy and broadband access.

The Digital Justice Campaign is reaching out to voters throughout Cleveland to ask for emails and phone calls to the candidates in support of these proposals.  If you’re a Cleveland voter, please consider sending emails to Mayor Frank Jackson, his opponent Councilman Zack Reed, and your ward’s candidates for City Council right now.

Cleveland can’t wait another four years for our Mayor and City Council to get serious about this.